◆ SpookStack

weg! bei vid Wel, Oil ates eel be + bringing it ho 1 Meat baskets and then cooking ik fos ing the increasing cold;,goiig to" the , central post office three or four times a week by Metro, and discovering where the best markets were. Per- " baps we took refuge in these daily . chores to avoid too deep and lengthy _ discussions. ‘ _ problems, but [ at least did not have the courage to tackle:them, I: was Nonsense 40, suppose that moving “from Beirut to Moscow was like moving from London to New York, or that we could go on as before without some thorough-going ex- logical frontier, dropping the mask of a@ lifetime, and expecting me to seccept it as casually as if he had shaved off a moustache. ’ His faith. - As I have already said, 1 knew = and cared absolutely nothing about communism, whereas Kim had spent his life in the faith. He had a vast ” start on me. He took : conscienec, he hac resolved them s years before. Daily I half expected him to take me aside, throw an arm ' round my shoulder and say: ‘My dear, it’s like this. I did so-and-so all J these years, because I believed in "| such-and-such. ... These beliefs are my philosophy, my reasons for t living. They ‘explain my glad 7 acceptance of what we are here and : now experiencing —the piercing cold, the stale cabbage smells and the ‘solitary life we lead.’ But he said *no such thing, For kim, life in Mos- * cow needed no justification. He just -Mived it. in fact he adored t— . weather and all. I came to realise that his problems were of @ quite different sort from mine. I wanted to explore Moscow and understand Russia. but I saw this would be a formidable task, far eter heed ‘ede Pi. rie im Istanbul,’ Madrid, Rio, Lima, . Ineach case, I found it took at least two years to get a feel of the country and the people. But Russia was not the West, and I already knew it was . going to take me much longer. Go, First of all, I tried to make our 5 - flat beautiful and comforlable; to ‘find good things to eat and drink, longing for the day when we could _lead a normal sacial life with a variety 3, of friends. I understood the need for the restrictions which bound our life, but 1 looked forward to when ! we could throw them off. Perhaps . my Western standards and values “~. were an obstacle, but I was doing noseidls. _ To Kim all this: way secondary. | Of course he liked good food, drinix, <eomfort and friends, but his real pre- i Both of us realised that our re- Jationship faced certain fundamental’ ' planation. He had crossed an ideo-' Hall for granted. If he had any problems of © more difficult in every way than any-: . thing 1 bad yet attempted. I have - lived most of my adult life abroad-— Berjin, Beirut and many other cities. - my best to adjust as quickly as wee GPA Aas ue Jia RUS, Mohr colleagues though’ of him and ¢ ™ work with them, |lis whole life ¥ Bishop _ geared to the Russian Intelligence Casper Service. In the cause of Russia he Callahan had broken with men he liked and lost their respect, taken up with men Conrad he disliked. deserted his family, Felt embarked on ‘a lifetime of lies and x Gale shabbiness, Now, what was impor- Rosen tant was that these tremendous Sulit services should be recognised. ; ueawan I noticed that he seemed pathetic. - " Tavel ally pleased by the approbation of Trotter “the Russians. Every pat on the back: . ; Tele. Room was like a medal or a bouquet of =~ 7", Holmes flowers. The Russians understood: 20% Gandy ~ oN his psychological need for reassur-- ance. Far from throwing him on the i * sttap-heap now that his opin ‘work: was over, they treated.him with great deference. To them’ tie must have been an extraordinary phenomenon, a model of ideological dedication. But be never seemed to be quite at ease. “For 30 years he had served “ them devotedly but now he was in their hands. He wanted recognition. and got it, but would never dream of asking for it.“ 7s , . One day Kim toid me he was - expecting an important visitor,’, He asked me not'to open the door, to please keep away from the living: room windows and above all not on any account to disturb him in the study. He was clearly terribly excited. He never told me who his _ Visitor was, only explaining it was . one of the big chiefs and a man he greatly admired. From later hints I think it may have been Alexander Shelepin (Chairman of the KGB from December 1958 to 1962. He took over from ihe cold-blooded Ivan Serov and was replaced by ; Viadimir Semichastny). - Another puzzle Kim's excitement at any word of praise seemed disproportionate. To me if seemed out of character, and he went down in my estimation. But - this was one more puzzle for me to solve, At that time I was concen- trating, all my energies on learning enough Russian to get about op the Metro and make out a shopping list. It was a month or two before we ™ found a replacement for our house- - “Keeper, Zena, ‘We had always done most of our own cooking, but shop- _ ° ping was immensely complicated and could take many hour. You went to a special shop for bread, ° another for milk and cheese, and the market for vegetables, For any- thing other than staple foods we kept a close watch on other shops : >, Specialising in‘ regional. productsc sia... The biggesf headache was to figure out the quantities you warited, in grams or kilos. You then queued uD at the cash desk, explained in Russian what you wanted, and paid for it, Armed ~ with a chit you ioined another ‘quetls and waited to be served. 0 i I rarciy went out alone. I could -~ ‘ TURN FO PAGE ze ae Wasl.ington Post Times Heraid ie Washington Daily News 1 Evening Stat (Washington) —_ qe Sunday Star (Washington) —__ aily News (New York) inday News (New York) ew York Post he New York Times he Sun (Baltimore) he Worker he New Leader he Wall Street Journal! eople’s World Meee? “hate jhe Cb seve s * t Z eas re: foge ef