◆ SpookStack

Wg. vitae. wekts Fe Aoed..bringing stb “Glskew aid then cooking ing the increasing cold ;.gouig tothe , central post office three or four times ns week by Meiro, and discovering where the best markets were. Per- : haps we took refuge in these daily - chores to avoid too deep and lengthy discussions. . + Both of us realised that our re- problems, but I at least did not have the courage to tackle them. T° was nonsense 40, suppase that moving “from Beirut, to. Moscow was like moving from London to New York, or that we could goon as before without some thorough-going ex- * planation. He had crossed an ideo- logical frontier, dropping the mask of a lifetime, and expecting me to smccept it_as casually as if he had shaved off a moustache. His faith. - ‘As I have already sai and cared absolutely nothing about . communism, whereas Kim had spent a a * his life in the faith. He had a vast start on me. He took it al! far granted. If he had any problems of : conscience, he had resolved them ‘ + years before. Daily 1 half expected him to take me aside, throw an arm * round my shoujder and say: *My dear, it's like this. I did so-and-so all these years, because I believed in #] sucb-and-such. ... These beliefs are my philosophy, my reasons for living. They “explain. my glad Po, 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 4 “no such thing, For kim, life in Mos- * cow needed no justification. He just v Sived it, in fact he adored i1— weather and all. T came to realise that his problems } were of a quite different sort from : mine. I wanted to explore Moscow and understand Russia. but I saw this would be a formidable task, far more difficult in every way than an; thing 1 bad yet attempted, I have lived most of my adult life abroad. in Istanbul,” Madrid, Rio, Lima, 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. to. First of all, I tried to make our > : flat beautiful and comfortable; to find good things to eat and drink, longing for the day when we could Jead a normal social life with a variety jx of friends, I understood the need for the tesirictions which bound our life, but 1 looked forward to when ~--1 we could throw them off. Perhaps 4 my Western standards and values 2, were an obstacle, but I was doing ‘sen, my best to adjust as quickly as get posit 4 a To Kim all this was secondary. Of course he liked good food, drinic, mfort and friends, but his real pre: lationship faced certain fundamental’ Berjin, Beicut and many other cities. - . In each case, I found it took at least MSEPALICR Ady Sus Es Ruse, — colleagues though’ of him and 4 ~ Mohr work with them, Tis hale life Bishop eared to the Russian Intelligen’o ; : Service. In the cause of Russia he carte had broken with men he liked and Jost their respect, taken up with men Conrad he disliked. deseried his family, Felt embarked on lifetime of lies and > Gale shabbiness. Now, what was impor- tant was that these tremendous Rosen ~ services should be recognised. : T 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 modal or a bouquet of Holmes flowers. The Russians undersiood: Gandy his psychological need for seass ance. Far from throwing him on the * skeap-heap now that his mia’ work: was over, they treated him with great’ deference. To them te must have been an extraordinary phenomenon, a model of ideological dedication. But he never seemed 10 be quite at ease. For 30 years he had served “them devoted?y’ but now he was in their hands. He wanted recognition, and got it, but would never dream of asking for it. . 7 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 T think it may have been Alexander Shelepin (Chairman of the KGB from December 1958 to 1962. "He took over from the cold-blooded Ivan Serov and was’ replaced by Vladimir Semichastny). Another puzzle Kim's excitement at any word of praise seemed disproportionate. To me it 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 2¢ Wasl.ington Post ‘Times Herald ve Washington Daily News —___ de Evening Star (Washington n¢ Sunday Star (Washington) aily News (New York) anday News (New York) ew York Post he New York Times he Sun (Baltimore) he Worker he New Leadér he Wall Street Journal enough Russian to get about on the Metro and make out a shopping list. he National Observer It was a month or two before we cople’s World found a replacement for ovr houses © "+! Wee “keeper, Zena. ‘We had always done fate SEF ‘ott of our own cooking, ut shops Ae tf Co ping was immensely complicat 6 Cbg. and could take many hours, You, 4 * went to a special shop for bread, 2p ene? 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. products. y.%3 a 'Pothe bigest headache wes’ to" Len ter 4 \ figure out the quantities you - wanted, in grams or kilos. You at the cash desk, explained in Russian what you wanted, and paid for it Armed ” with a you igined another queue and waited to bo terved. [rarely went out alone. I could -~ TURN TO PAGE 28 then queued uy