Reading Chekhov

Sonia's initial negative response to my wish to see a synagogue-like her response to my wish to skip the Armory-presently turned into grudging aquiescence. It turned out that one of the Moscow synagogues was not all that difficult to reach. After Vladimir had parked the car a few yards from the synagogue, a rather gloomy nineteenth-century building, Sonia did not stir and said meaningfully, "I'll stay here." As I approached the synagogue, a group of people came toward me. I took them to be members of the congregation who had come out to greet a visitor. One of the group, whom I assumed to be its leader, came forward from the rest and looked at me eagerly. He was small and unshaven and wore a dark scruffy coat, and when he spoke to me I could not understand what he was saying. After a few moments a word that he repeatedly used became comprehensible. The word was dollari. So he and his cohorts were not, after all, characters from a Rabbi Small mystery but beggars. I was surrounded by hands reaching out for the dollar bills I was taking out of my wallet. When my dollars were gone, I gave out ruble bills, and the hands kept reaching out until my wallet was empty. The image came to mind-a horrible one-of someone feeding pigeons. I went into the synagogue, an uninviting place (I have seen such charmless synagogues in America) whose entry hall had announcements posted on its walls, like those posted in college buildings. I met no one; through a distant doorway I glimpsed a room where a stout man in a black suit and white shirt was eating. I started up a staircase, lost heart midway, and came down. Outside on the steps, the beggars were huddled over dark bundles, pulling pieces of cloth from them. They paid no attention to me. Back in the car, I saw Sonia suppress a look of triumph.

My visit to Moscow coincided with the celebration of Victory Day-the fifty-fourth anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis. Russia, which lost 27 million people in World War II, was far more absorbed by this occasion than by the current move to impeach President Yeltsin, with which the Western press was intensely involved. In Red Square there was a military parade followed by an evening celebration; thousands of people poured into the square, as if on their way to a rock concert; there were police barricades and a line of portable toilets. I joined the crowd, which was being channeled through a narrow arcade that led to an even narrower street, but when I reached an intersecting street leading away from the square I veered off, giving in to a fear aroused by the thought of the terrible disaster (mentioned in several of the Chekhov biographies) in Khodynka Field in Moscow in the spring of 1896, when nearly two thousand people were crushed to death during a distribution of gifts marking the coronation of Nicholas II.