The Stories of John Cheever

The Russians don’t seem to have gotten the bugs out of illumination. There is either too much light or too little and the light the young woman stood in was seedy. She had, however, or so he thought, enough beauty to conquer the situation. If a thousand portraits of Khrushchev could vanish in three hours, couldn’t he fall in love in three minutes? He seemed to. She was about five foot five. He was six feet, which meant that she was the right size, a consideration he had learned to respect. Her brow and the shape of her head were splendid and she stood with her head raised a little, as if she were accustomed to speaking to people taller than herself. She wore a tight sweater that showed her fine breasts and her skirt was also tight. She seemed to be in charge of the office, but in spite of her manifest executive responsibilities, there was not a trace of aggressiveness in her manner. Her femininity was intense. Her essence seemed to lie in two things: a sense of girlishness and the quickness with which she moved her head. She seemed capable of the changeableness, the moodiness of someone much younger. (She was, he discovered later, thirty-two.) She moved her head as if her vision were narrow, as if it moved from object to object, rather than to take in the panorama. Her vision was not narrow, but that was the impression he got. There was some nostalgia in her appearance, some charming feminine sense of the past. “Mrs. Kosiev will take you around,” she said. “Without taxi fares, that will be twenty-three rubles.” She spoke with exactly the same accent as the woman who had met him at the airport. (He would never know, but they had both learned their English off a tape made at the university in Leningrad by an English governess turned Communist.)

He knew none of the customs of this strange country, but he decided to take a chance. “Will you have dinner with me?” he asked.

She gave him an appraising and pleasant look. “I’m going to a poetry reading,” she said.

“Can I come with you?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” she said. “Of course. Meet me here at six.” Then she called for Mrs. Kosiev. This was a broad-shouldered woman who gave him a manly handshake but no smile. “Will you please give our guest from the United States the twenty-three-ruble tour of Moscow?” He counted out twenty-three rubles and put them on the desk of the woman with whom he had just fallen in love.

Going down the stairs, Mrs. Kosiev said, “That was Natasha Funaroff. She is the daughter of Marshal Funaroff, They have lived in Siberia.”

After this piece of information, Mrs. Kosiev began to praise the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and continued this for the rest of the day. They walked a short distance from the office to the Kremlin, where she first took him to the Armory. A long line was waiting at the door, but they bucked this. Inside, they put felt bags over their shoes and Artemis was shown the crown jewels, the royal horse tack, and some of the royal wardrobe. Artemis was bored and had begun to feel terribly tired. They toured three churches in the Kremlin. These seemed to him rich, lofty, and completely mysterious. They then took a cab to the Tretyakov Gallery. Artemis had begun to notice that the smell of Moscow—so far from any tilled land—was the smell of soil, sour curds, sour whey, and earth-stained overalls. It lingered in the massive lobby of the Ukraine. The golden churches of the Kremlin, scoured of their incense, smelled like barns, and in the gallery, the smell of curds and whey was augmented by a mysterious but distinct smell of cow manure. At one, Artemis said he was hungry and they had some lunch. They then went to the Lenin Library and, after that, to a deconsecrated monastery that had been turned into a folk museum. Artemis had seen more than enough, and after the monastery he said that he wanted to return to the hotel. Mrs. Kosiev said that the tour was not completed and that there would be no rebate. He said he didn’t care and took a cab back to the Ukraine.

He returned to the office at six. She was waiting in the street, waiting by the door. “Did you have a nice tour?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Artemis. “Oh, yes. I don’t seem to like museums, but then, I’ve never been in any and perhaps it’s something I could learn.”

“I detest museums,” she said. She took his arm lightly, lightly touched his shoulder with hers. Her hair was a very light brown—not really blond—but it shone in the street lights. It was straight and dressed simply with a short queue in the back, secured with an elastic band. The air was damp and cold and smelled of diesel exhaust. “We are going to hear Luncharvsky,” she said. “It isn’t far. We can walk.”