Fellow Travelers by James Cook Page A

apartments above. I could scarcely manage to climb up. There was garbage all over the steps, and at each landing, a privy, only partially enclosed, reeking to high heaven in the morning sun. We circled round and round, climbing higher and higher, and finally she led me into a doorway, down a hall and into a room whose squalor I can scarcely bear to remember.
    How can you live in a place like this? I found myself thinking. I knew she could only say, What other place can there be for me to live in? I could only begin to imagine the difficulty of maintaining any semblance of cleanliness in such circumstances; the primus stove in the middle of the room, the dresses and coats hanging from overhead pipes, the water stains on the ceiling, the fallen plaster, the scurry of rat’s feet in the walls.
    â€œThat settles it,” I said. “You’re going to move out of here.”
    â€œI can’t leave my sister, she can’t afford the place by herself.”
    â€œI’ll pay for it myself,” I answered.
    And I did.
    But I had to get her by Manny, and Manny didn’t approve.
    â€œYou can’t do that;” Manny said. “Don’t you know what she is? Don’t you know she’s little better than a whore? She’s already been laid by half of Moscow. For the right price, I could lay her myself.”
    I didn’t smack him in the face, I kept myself in check. I thought, he’s trying to bait me, he’s trying to get the upper hand by forcing me into a fight. But I must have gone white because he said, “I’m sorry I said that. That was uncalled for.”
    â€œSo what difference does that make? Everybody screws everybody else in this country. Look at you, look at Pop. Look at Mama Eva. I love Kasha, and I think she loves me.”
    But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was she didn’t have a work card, she wasn’t a party member, she hadn’t any important connections, she couldn’t bring anything to our position in Moscow. No, it was worse than that.
    â€œShe’s a nobody,” Manny said. “She doesn’t know how to speak or behave, she’s a bumpkin. Back home she’d be clerking in a dime store, or working in a shirtwaist factory.”
    â€œShe represents that most esteemed of classes, here in the Soviet Union, the proletariat,” I told him, “and that’s not good enough?”
    But in my heart I knew what he meant. I had thought the same things myself and decided they didn’t matter. I couldn’t bring her to any of the parties and receptions we were invited to in those days, occasions that were becoming increasingly essential to the business Manny was doing in Moscow. She couldn’t stand or eat properly, she couldn’t make small talk, and there was nothing we could do to teach her. She didn’t want to be taught. It made her uncomfortable, even more uncomfortable I discovered than it was for me to have her with me. And why did she have to be with us? If there was reception we had to go to, I would just go without her. Manny didn’t bring any of the women he got involved with to such affairs, and I didn’t see why I had to either.
    You would never have known Manny didn’t approve of Katya. He treated her as if she were some sort of queen, he was courtly, flattering, solicitous, and for a time it was good for us to be living with him. He had gotten involved with a woman named Yelena, who was no party member either. She was a singer, someone he had met in a café, a striking and glamorous woman who played the balalaika and sang gypsy songs. Manny and I would go, sit in the darkness and listen to her sing. She was just beginning her career then, but you couldn’t believe how good she was, what an exciting performer.
    Yelena was one thing, Katya was something else.
    â€œYou take my advice” Manny kept saying, “Get rid of Katya. If you don’t you’ll live to