Authors: Ellen Feldman
The director of the show called the meeting to order and introduced a young man in a dark blue suit and wintry complexion as Mr. Forest, who had flown in from the American embassy in Moscow to brief us. The man stepped forward looking too ill at ease for a diplomat, even a young diplomat, and it occurred to me that he was not comfortable in front of a group of theater people, especially negro theater people.
He began by congratulating the entire troupe on its success. Someone in the audience called out that they weren’t a success yet. Forest said that everything that happened in the Soviet Union was carefully planned, then seemed to realize the implication of his words and added that the Soviet people were enormously excited about the tour. After that, he opened the meeting to questions.
Hands went up. Would the milk for the children be pasteurized? Yes, he assured them. Could we drink the water? Absolutely. How cold was it likely to get? It could go down to thirty-two below zero. In that case, would the hotel rooms be warm enough? Probably overheated.
A man in the first row raised his hand. “How should we address the Russians we meet?”
“I wouldn’t call them Comrade,” Mr. Forest answered. “Mr., Mrs., and Miss are fine.”
A woman asked about wiretaps and bugs in the rooms. Mr. Forest explained that no one knew for sure, but wiretaps and bugs were not uncommon. “I always assume I’m being monitored. I assume we’re being monitored right now.”
A hush fell over the room. Several people looked around. Clearly, no one else had made the same assumption, but it made sense. The Soviets would not wait until we were on their territory to begin keeping tabs on us.
“What about hidden cameras in the rooms?” someone else asked.
Mr. Forest assumed them too.
“That’s indecent,” a woman in the back cried.
Mr. Forest explained that the Soviet Union was an extremely puritanical country. “Couples can be arrested for kissing on the street.”
One man called across the room to another that he’d better watch his step.
“Will we be tailed?”
“Everywhere you go you will be followed. Americans are a great novelty in the Soviet Union. The Russians will want to know all about you, though most of them will be too aware of government surveillance to approach you. Soviet citizens can get in trouble merely for speaking to a foreigner. But you can expect a lot of stares, though not necessarily a lot of smiles. The Russians can be warm, but they are frugal with their smiles. You will also probably have official followers,” he added quietly.
A muscular man a few rows in front of me stood. “Let’s stop pussyfooting around. We all know there’s one big question, and it ain’t about water or wiretaps or what to call folks. What are we supposed to say when they ask us what it’s like to be a negro in America?”
Silence fell over the room. Mr. Forest looked as if he wanted to bolt. “You don’t have to say anything, any more than they will talk to you about their political system.”
“But they’re going to ask us,” the muscular man insisted. “They did last year in Yugoslavia.”
“In that case tell them the truth.”
“White truth or black truth?” someone shouted.
“Just remember,” Mr. Forest went on, “any interviews you give are likely to be picked up by the American press and printed at home. We don’t want this first tour to be the last. You are representatives of your country. Singing and dancing goodwill ambassadors. As Americans, we want to put our country’s best foot forward.”
“Tell it to Emmett Till,” a man behind me grumbled.
“Don’t you go making trouble,” the woman beside him whispered.
An arm went up in the second row. The gesture, or rather the head and shoulders of the man who made it, ambushed me. I knew it was only a familiar psychological phenomenon. People often mistake strangers walking toward them on the street or sitting a few rows in front in the theater for people they knew in the past. My mother-in-law sometimes saw her dead sister walking in Prospect Park.
The diplomat looked like a drowning man who has spotted a lifeline being thrown to him. He nodded and the man stood and made his way to the front of the group. This was not a common psychological phenomenon. This was a snake-hipped walk from my past.
He turned to face the group. That was when I saw the mustache.
How odd that while Charlie had shaved his mustache, Woody had grown one. Otherwise, he had not changed. His hair was cropped a little closer, but that made him look only more boyish. The finely arched eyebrows that gave him a faintly Faustian air were the same, and, beneath the mustache, the full soft mouth was too.
His eyes swept over us and came to rest on me for a moment before they moved on. He did not look surprised. I hadn’t known he would be on the trip, because he had replaced the psychiatrist at the last minute, but he would have seen a roster. I wondered why he hadn’t contacted me before we’d left New York. There was no reason for him to, but there was no reason for him not to. Whatever had happened between us had been a long time ago.
“I’m Woodruff Jordan,” he began, “but everyone calls me Woody.” I had never noticed how practiced his smile was, or had it not been so practiced in those days? Then his face went sharp and serious as an ax. “Let’s not kid ourselves. The Soviets know about race relations in America. They know about Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys and all the others. The more bigotry there is, the more violence, the better informed they are. Their government makes sure of that. I’ve seen the headlines.”
“You read Russian, man?” someone called out.
Again, the practiced smile. He was smooth as silk.
“I know people who can translate Russian. What I’m trying to say is it’s no good whitewashing the situation. We can’t pretend the lynchings and cross burnings and rigged justice don’t happen.”
Mr. Forest looked as if he’d just realized that the lifeline he’d been hanging on to was a scrap of frayed rope.
“They know all about it,” Woody went on. “What they don’t know about is last year’s
Brown v. Board of Education
ruling; and what a woman named Rosa Parks did on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, two weeks ago; and what it means that we’ll all be there in the USSR, which is more than they can say about their being in the U.S.A. So don’t try to paint a rosy glow on the situation. Admit
America is rough on negroes. Admit we’ve got a long way to go. But tell them we’re fighting back. Tell them the days when we”—he hung his head and shuffled his feet and mumbled yassuh, nosuh—“are gone. Tell them these days we’re talking back, and maybe, just maybe, America is beginning, just beginning, to listen.”
Mr. Forest began to step forward, but Woody wasn’t finished.
“You’re mad about the way we’re treated back home, I’m mad, we’re all mad. But save your anger until you get back to the U.S. I’m not handing you the old line about being patient, change will come, you can’t rush it. What I am saying is, when you get home, march, picket, protest every which way from the sun. Parlay your anger into equality. But don’t waste your effort here, where it won’t do any good.”
A murmur of approval ran through the audience as Woody started back to his seat. Mr. Forest stepped forward. He didn’t look happy, but he did seem relieved.
As soon as the meeting broke up, a crowd gathered around Woody. Faith and I shared a taxi back to the hotel.
I SPENT THE
afternoon walking the city. There was still a lot of rubble, but on every block, new buildings were pushing up, amnesia masquerading as optimism. The rain was still coming down, and I got drenched, went into a café to dry off, came out, and got drenched again. The more I walked, the stronger the feeling I’d had driving down the Kurfürstendamm that morning grew. The city struck me as haunted, by too many tears and not enough shame.
It was dark by the time I got back to the Kempinski. The floor of the lobby was a swamp of black water, and the squeak of my galoshes as I crossed it sounded as mournful as a child crying. The clerk behind the desk watched me approach with gloomy resignation. Gloomy resignation seemed to be the operative temperament of West Berlin. He handed me my key. As I turned to head for the bank of elevators, I saw Woody coming through the door from the
street. His hat and trench coat were soaked through. As he crossed to me, his shoes made the same sad sounds on the marble. When he reached me, he took my hand and started to lean forward. I shied back. My reaction was ungraceful but effective. He straightened and asked how I was. I said fine and asked how he was.
We stood for a moment looking at each other. The experience was disconcerting, like tumbling down a rabbit hole. The world was different now, and we were different people, but the history still existed, even if it seemed, at this moment, out of focus.
Had he called me when he got back from Philadelphia that weekend or had I telephoned him? All I could remember was sitting in the sour-smelling dormitory phone booth, the receiver slippery in my sweaty hands, staring at the names of couples carved together for life on the scarred wooden table and the snatches of Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay scribbled on the walls. I could see that, but I couldn’t recall the words I’d used. “I’m not pregnant.” “It was a false alarm.” Or something more spiteful? “You won’t have to go into debt to your brother.” And then I made a melodramatic little speech that I must have read in a novel or seen in a movie, something about the course of life being altered by a single incident. Things could never be the same between us, I said. Not after this. I’d thought I meant the pregnancy scare, but I’d really been talking about Charlie.
I reclaimed my hand, which he was still holding.
“Some weather,” he said.
I was relieved. We had nothing left to talk about but the weather. I told him I wanted to get out of my wet things and started for the elevator. As I stepped into the cage and turned back, I saw him standing there watching me. The smile still struck me as practiced, but it was not unwinning.
When I got to my room, I found a package wrapped in plain brown paper. My name was written on the front in a small tight hand, but nothing indicated who had sent it. I tore off the paper to
find a dozen or so pamphlets beneath a single piece of stationery.
BEWARE
was written in large letters. Beneath it were the words
Truth Institute
and an address.
I began riffling through the booklets. They appeared to be case histories, written in almost unintelligible English, of various inhabitants of West Berlin who had disappeared into the East, never to be heard from again. The propaganda was heavy-handed, but that did not make it any less frightening. I wondered if others in the group had received similar parcels. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to ask. If they had, it would be reassuring. If they hadn’t, the fact that I had would mark me in some way.
I was still wondering what to do when a knock sounded on the door. I opened it to find Faith holding a bottle of scotch.
“The Soviets!” She walked past me into the room, turned back to face me, and held up the bottle. “I don’t believe in drinking alone.”
By the time I came back from the bathroom with two glasses, she had put down the bottle and was standing beside the dresser staring at the pamphlets. “What are these?”
“That’s what I was trying to figure out. You didn’t get a package?”
She shook her head, then picked one up and began reading aloud. “ ‘Fraulein von Mokte was seen to no one again. The witnessing of many eyes spoke of the mystery of her disappearing.’ ” She put the pamphlet back with the others. “They told us to be ready for some peculiar approaches. The West Germans aren’t too happy about this tour. But if they’re trying to scare us off, you’d think they’d get a decent translator.”
“So much for legendary German efficiency.”
“Don’t talk to me about efficiency,” she said as she poured scotch into the two glasses. “The Russians have raised its absence to an art form. Our visas were supposed to be waiting at the hotel. Not only are there no visas, but they’re holding our passports. Then there’s the train. We were promised four first-class sleeping cars. Now it
turns out all they have are three second-class sleeping cars and two baggage cars, and the scenery and props will take up one of those.”
“I guess that means we’ll have to double up.”
“Double up? Ha!” She slumped into the chair in front of the window like a rag doll. Only her Maidenform breasts remained at attention. Behind her, rain continued to streak down the darkened window. “Try four to a compartment. They swear there are four berths in each compartment. Of course, they swore our visas would be waiting here too.” She lifted her glass to me. “
Na zdorovje!
I’ve been studying a Russian phrase book, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.”
I raised my glass to her.
“Na zdorovje.”
“I spent the entire afternoon trying to straighten out the sleeping arrangements. Between people demanding to share compartments and people threatening to quit if they have to share compartments—you have no idea how many feuds people can work up to in four years on the road—the situation is hopeless. There’s also the sex problem.”
“I don’t think that’s your responsibility.”
“I mean because of the uneven number of girls and men. I’m going to have to put the sexes together. Apparently, that’s the way the Russians do it.”
“Maybe they’re not so puritanical after all.”
She took a swallow of her drink. “I figure with four in a room, everybody will behave.”
“Either that or have an orgy.”
“Oh, god, I hadn’t thought of that. Half the group will end up in Russian jails.” She took another swig of her drink. “I put you in with the Delaneys—they’re a sister and brother in the cast—and the man from the NAACP. What’s his name? Jordan. After what you said in the taxi this morning and what he said at the meeting, I thought you’d get along. At least he said you would.”
“He said we would?”
“I was wailing about the sleeping arrangements just now, and he told me you were old friends from college and wouldn’t mind sharing the compartment. With the other two as chaperones, of course. I’m assuming you brought a warm flannel nightie and not some sheer satin number intended to drive the Ruskies wild with desire.”