The Stories of John Cheever

The agency was in a dark, narrow room on a dark street, its walls blazing with posters of beaches, cathedrals, and couples in love. The agent was a gray-haired woman. Above her desk was a sign that said: YOU HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO BE A TRAVEL AGENT. She seemed harassed and her voice was cracked with age, whiskey, or tobacco. She chain-smoked. She twice lighted cigarettes when there was a cigarette smoking in the ashtray. Artemis said that he had five hundred to spend and would like to be away for about two weeks. “Well, I suppose you’ve seen Paris, London, and Disneyland,” she said. “Everyone has. There’s Tokyo, of course, but they tell me it’s a very tiring flight. Seventeen hours in a 707, with a utility stop in Fairbanks. My most satisfied customers these days are the ones who go to Russia. There’s a package.” She flashed a folder at him. “For three hundred and twenty-eight dollars, you get economy round-trip air fare to Moscow, twelve days in a first-class hotel with all your meals, free tickets to hockey, ballet, opera, theatre, and a pass to the public swimming pool. Side trips to Leningrad and Kiev are optional.” He asked what else she might suggest. “Well, there’s Ireland,” she said, “but it’s rainy now. A plane hasn’t landed in London for nearly ten days. They stack up at Liverpool and then you take a train down. Rome is cold. So is Paris. It takes three days to get to Egypt. For a two-week trip the Pacific is out, but you could go to the Caribbean, although reservations are very hard to get. I suppose you’ll want to buy souvenirs and there isn’t much to buy in Russia.”

“I don’t want to buy anything,” Artemis said. “I just want to travel.”

“Take my advice,” she said,—“and go to Russia.”

It seemed the maximum distance that he could place between himself and Mr. and Mrs. Filler. His mother was imperturbable. Most women who owned seven American flags would have protested, but she said nothing but “Go where you want, Sonny. You deserve a change.” His visa and passport took a week, and one pleasant evening he boarded the eight-o’clock Aeroflot from Kennedy to Moscow. Most of the other passengers were Japanese and couldn’t speak English and it was a long and a lonely trip.

It was raining in Moscow, so Artemis heard what he liked—the sound of rain. The Japanese spoke Russian and he trailed along behind them across the tarmac to the main building, where they formed a line. The line moved slowly and he had been waiting for an hour or longer when a good-looking young woman approached him and asked, “Are you Mr. Artemis Bucklin? I have very good news for you. Come with me.” She found his bag and bucked the lines for customs and immigration. A large black car was waiting for them. “We will go first to your hotel,” she said. She had a marked English accent. “Then we will go to the Bolshoi Theatre, where our great Premier, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, wants to welcome you as a member of the American proletariat. People of many occupations come to visit our beautiful country, but you are the first well driller.” Her voice was lilting and she seemed very happy with her news. Artemis was confused, tired, and dirty. Looking out of the car window, he saw an enormous portrait of the Premier nailed to a tree. He was frightened.

Why should he be frightened? He had dug wells for rich and powerful people and had met them without fear or shyness. Khrushchev was merely a peasant who, through cunning, vitality, and luck, had made himself the master of a population of over two hundred million. That was the rub; and as the car approached the city, portraits of Khrushchev looked in at Artemis from bakeries, department stores, and lampposts. Khrushchev banners flapped in the wind on a bridge across the Moskva River. In Mayakovsky Square, a large, lighted portrait of Khrushchev beamed down upon his children as they rushed for the subway entrance.

Artemis was taken to a hotel called the Ukraine. “We are already late,” the young woman said.

“I can’t go anywhere until I’ve taken a bath and shaved,” said Artemis. “I can’t go anywhere looking like this. And I would like something to eat.”

“You go up and change,” she said, “and I’ll meet you in the dining room. Do you like chicken?”