◆ SpookStack

cared 1 could not tacnom, until im hinted that they thought te British, perhaps even the CIA, migbt try! to assassinate Kim if ther would fin him. Tiny circle Henes the extremely limited circle in which we were allowed to move. Wo were barred from tho diplomats, we were barred from the Press, Even the tiny group of ‘Western expatriates we were per- ‘mitted to meet were little more to ‘me than shadowy and sometimes pathetic figures. We saw them only necasionally, but hoped to know them better one day. Even Sergei, our closest Russian contact, still rerained his cautious, but ‘always courteous manner. We were never invited te his house. We never met his wife, but we did once meet his young daughter, who came with us to our first November parade. Life for me was becoming tremely lonely. 1 was driven to seek the company of Melinda Maclean. for whom F had no particular sym- pathy.. J had failed to make the grade with the language (although T could at east read the alphabet); my projects for keeping myself busy had been officially vetoed; and I had no friends. I lived y restric- ted life, cooped up in the flat and beginning to wish that Kim had not turned down an offer of a car and a dacha in the country. Above all, my relationship with Kim was no longer the trusting and innocent one it had been in Beirut KS . osevacid dvuus uidl UIE iwid me from the start that i could the Macleans invited us out to their come and go as 1 pleased. 1 bed, dacha’ in a birch. forest outside followed him to Russia on that. Moscow, We had been there once understanding; but did I really be- or twice in late autuma, and then lieve it? He could offer no guaran- again in the spring: the Macleans tees except his word, and I had could not cope with the problem of accepted it because I loved him. unfreezing the pipes in winter. The Now I resolved to put him te the da one of several cabins test. ina compound “for VIPs. We There were two persons in the recognised Molotoy strolling one whole world whom I dearly loved: day in the woods. It was wonder- Kim and my own daughter. Mine ful, unspoiled country of great was a very small family: I bad no beauty ; I thought the meadow with brothers or sisters, no parents alive, a rambling stream near by would no close relatives. Of course, I make a fine golf course, but whea J was also very fond of Kim's mentioned it, J was told golf was children, particularly the two a stupid capitalist game—not for youngest who had lived with us in the tovarich! ‘As Kim grew less approachable, %0._my_anxicty, for my daughter _ Inflated ego increased. She was at school in the <Shordly after we” arrived that United States and I had promised weekend, Kim tock me aside and her that we would meet in New told me that Donald ‘wanted to York on 30.June, As the weeks have a word with me and that he passed, I came to believe that i nothing was more important than that 1 should keep that promise. 1 cern was that, on my return to the knew that she was absolutely West, I should let out nothing dis- counting on my visit. creditable about him, his work, or L also sensed that if I were ever bis family. .- tke to put to the test my freedom to ‘Don’t go,’ Donald said, * but if travel, this ‘was the moment to do you must, don’ t say anything about so. If I allowed my American pass- what I'm doing.’ } pointed out that port to expire, if the Russians were J had not the faintest idea of what to think that I bad settled in for his work was, but I did not think good, and the Americans to believe (to myself) it was anything very that I was gone for ever it would important. Maclean had a vision of be infinitely more difficult, perhaps himself as a statesman and diplo- impossible, for me to obtain a new mat whose life had been dictated by his convictions. He possessed a orKtm did not like the idee of my highly inflated ego. He had been Jeaving but his feelings—in so far deeply wounded by his treatment as he expressed them—were subtla. in the Western Press and by his centred on my own counirymen rather than on the Russians. [had nothing against the Russians. They had not attempted to brainwash or indoctrinate me. It anything, they had treated me with a rather awk- ward courtesy, as if uncertain how to handle. the sort of humav phenomenon I was. I so patently was not part of Kim’s Intelligence background nor was I a naive. starry-eyed Western Communist of the sort they were familiar with. In many ways I was a pretty good envoy. The very fact of my unfettered return to the US unique for the wife of a known Soviet Ot—was a tribute to the tolerance -of th jet system. As the forests ot =~. ja slid away beneath me, I felt ‘ide sive and protective about the people and the society I was leaving. In nine months Russia had begun to feel like home. Life may not have been easy, but J felt a pang of nostalgia for the champagne bar at GUM and the long walks with Kim in our favourite birchwoods and through the charming streets of old Moscow. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that I would return to Russia, but I left Moscow A.rport with foreboding: Kim, flanked by the faithful Ser, of an ass to say to teling Look after my . husband.’ Instead I should have said to Sergei: ‘For heaven's sake, keep him br ©Copyright Eleanor Philon, ) . Patrick Seale 1967. Next week: The break with Kim.