might visit a synagogue to hear Jewish melodies, but as great national achievements.
He was thirty-four years old, of medium height, with genuine Slavic cheekbones. He looked the typical peasant, peasant face, peasant hands, gray peasant eyes, but every peasant feature had undergone refinement, just as Maxim Gorky’s peasant face had softened over the years. His shrewd, warm eyes were shrouded in a mist of true Russian sorrow. Warmth! That was the word to describe him, he simply exuded warmth. Khazhev spoke to me with the affection of someone who is wholesome and secure. He talked on and on, describing his country, which he had crisscrossed from one end to the other. And if he threw in the occasional, regretful remark about as yet unremedied Soviet shortcomings, he did it so artlessly, and with such brotherly goodwill that I didn’t want to offend him by seeming to notice.
Only once, in passing, did he mention the “Supreme Leader,” but the reference came unadorned, unaccompanied by the obligatory praise. He sincerely believed in the great Soviet experiment and, in his peasant naïveté, regretted that other countries were not following the Soviet path.
After treating me to this elegant propaganda, he let me know that, in addition to himself, there was also a sizable Soviet colony aboard ship, all returning home. He pointed to a corner of the deck where a woman lay on a deck chair with legs outstretched, not the delicate, shapely legs of a femme fatale, but legs unquestionably feminine all the same and not badly turned out either, a tribute to their Creator, whose infinite ingenuity could lend a touch of allure to a thickened ankle. The portrait was completed by a group of young men at her feet, looking up at her adoringly, like medieval troubadours.
She was the only one on board to be stricken by seasickness. The days and nights were so glorious that the rest of us were growing healthier by the minute, but she alone had fallen victim to the malady. Her pitch-black hair, parted in the middle, her dark, Jewish eyes, and her full, almost swollen, lips—all attested to her suffering, or rather, seeing that she was surrounded by a crew of melodramatic Russians, her “agony,” which she gave herself leave to express. The young men looked up at her, vying with one another to ease her discomfort, tossing off flowery phrases and chivalrous compliments. They called in reinforcements, quoting from Lermontov, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky, and Yesenin. The Russian-Jewish woman was in seventh heaven. She wasn’t a beauty, nor was she that young, yet she was the object of all this royal attention, her seasickness gaining her the favors of all these cavaliers. There were prettier women on board ship, but the Russian young men ignored them, preferring instead the enchantments of Russian cadences as they emerged from a Russian woman’s soft lips, on an English boat, amid alien surroundings.
“Children, take your dream-stricken eyes off the elegant Sonya Yakovlyevna and spare a word for this worthy gentleman,” said Khazhev good-humoredly and with exaggerated formality. “Let me introduce you.”
Four young men leaped up, as if by military command—a fine young specimen with a straw-blond head of hair and a wide Russian mouth, whose Chaliapin bass voice seemed to be issuing from a cello; another with the face of a dullard, but with remarkably friendly, merry eyes; a third, with a beret atop his head and a pair of fidgety, restless hands; and a fourth, with slightly stooped back and the mien of a serious student. Sonya Yakovlyevna extended a hand that made the quick metamorphosis from housewife to coquette. In less than a minute I was welcomed into the ship’s Soviet colony.
“
Pozhalusta,
welcome,” boomed the towhead, the most Russian of the group, in the rich baritone that only a Russian youth can allow himself. His unhurried gestures, his open manner and thundering resonance brought to mind Turgenev’s Bazarov,
He was thirty-four years old, of medium height, with genuine Slavic cheekbones. He looked the typical peasant, peasant face, peasant hands, gray peasant eyes, but every peasant feature had undergone refinement, just as Maxim Gorky’s peasant face had softened over the years. His shrewd, warm eyes were shrouded in a mist of true Russian sorrow. Warmth! That was the word to describe him, he simply exuded warmth. Khazhev spoke to me with the affection of someone who is wholesome and secure. He talked on and on, describing his country, which he had crisscrossed from one end to the other. And if he threw in the occasional, regretful remark about as yet unremedied Soviet shortcomings, he did it so artlessly, and with such brotherly goodwill that I didn’t want to offend him by seeming to notice.
Only once, in passing, did he mention the “Supreme Leader,” but the reference came unadorned, unaccompanied by the obligatory praise. He sincerely believed in the great Soviet experiment and, in his peasant naïveté, regretted that other countries were not following the Soviet path.
After treating me to this elegant propaganda, he let me know that, in addition to himself, there was also a sizable Soviet colony aboard ship, all returning home. He pointed to a corner of the deck where a woman lay on a deck chair with legs outstretched, not the delicate, shapely legs of a femme fatale, but legs unquestionably feminine all the same and not badly turned out either, a tribute to their Creator, whose infinite ingenuity could lend a touch of allure to a thickened ankle. The portrait was completed by a group of young men at her feet, looking up at her adoringly, like medieval troubadours.
She was the only one on board to be stricken by seasickness. The days and nights were so glorious that the rest of us were growing healthier by the minute, but she alone had fallen victim to the malady. Her pitch-black hair, parted in the middle, her dark, Jewish eyes, and her full, almost swollen, lips—all attested to her suffering, or rather, seeing that she was surrounded by a crew of melodramatic Russians, her “agony,” which she gave herself leave to express. The young men looked up at her, vying with one another to ease her discomfort, tossing off flowery phrases and chivalrous compliments. They called in reinforcements, quoting from Lermontov, Pushkin, Nekrasov, Mayakovsky, and Yesenin. The Russian-Jewish woman was in seventh heaven. She wasn’t a beauty, nor was she that young, yet she was the object of all this royal attention, her seasickness gaining her the favors of all these cavaliers. There were prettier women on board ship, but the Russian young men ignored them, preferring instead the enchantments of Russian cadences as they emerged from a Russian woman’s soft lips, on an English boat, amid alien surroundings.
“Children, take your dream-stricken eyes off the elegant Sonya Yakovlyevna and spare a word for this worthy gentleman,” said Khazhev good-humoredly and with exaggerated formality. “Let me introduce you.”
Four young men leaped up, as if by military command—a fine young specimen with a straw-blond head of hair and a wide Russian mouth, whose Chaliapin bass voice seemed to be issuing from a cello; another with the face of a dullard, but with remarkably friendly, merry eyes; a third, with a beret atop his head and a pair of fidgety, restless hands; and a fourth, with slightly stooped back and the mien of a serious student. Sonya Yakovlyevna extended a hand that made the quick metamorphosis from housewife to coquette. In less than a minute I was welcomed into the ship’s Soviet colony.
“
Pozhalusta,
welcome,” boomed the towhead, the most Russian of the group, in the rich baritone that only a Russian youth can allow himself. His unhurried gestures, his open manner and thundering resonance brought to mind Turgenev’s Bazarov,
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