As I neared our house, I saw Mother talking with the woman from next door. They were outside sitting, eating the sunflower seeds. I slipped around and came in the back door and I heard Mother telling the most beautiful tale about me. How I was going about abroad, everywhere doing first-class traveling; all the places I was staying and all the beautiful clothes I was wearing.
And there I was in the old rags! Oh, how guilty I feel to break this beautiful tale she was telling! I really couldn’t give her up before this woman; but after a while I say, “Sh-sh-sh,” and she heard me and came inside. I gave her the sardines that were left to quiet her down. With tears in her eyes she begged me not to go out in the town, and so for two days I stayed in the house.
By now my brother Nikolai was a member of the Communist party and was assistant manager of a repair factory shop. It was a small thing, but nevertheless he was quite prominent and he gave me the coupons for some material and Mother made me a dress. She wanted me when I went out to say it came from abroad, but it could be plainly seen it was made by the mother.
THE SADDEST ROMANCE ONE CAN IMAGINE
The most important thing as can be happened to me at a big skating rink in Moscow in November of 1936. You see I loved to skate more than anything.
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I was not very fancy, but fairly good that’s just to be modest for once in my life, for to tell the truth, I was really very, very good.
This evening when I was striding along fast and strong I saw in front of me a quivering figure, very unsure on his feet and z-zh-ip he went down. Then quickly with a z-zh-ip I cut the ice and came to a dramatic stop, and very beautifully my full skirt went around me. Now I understand my outfit was a little strange for the skating, but it was the best I had then. I had on a quite bright blue silk dress with a circular skirt and on top of it I was wearing a quite shabby man’s sweater, a beige-brown color, a black beret and heavy white socks and mits. I hadn’t developed at this time the talent for matching things. But no matter, for a very big orchestra would play for the skating and everybody would look so much more beautiful with the graceful movements than he actually was.
Well, I helped the sprawled figure to his feet and immediately I saw he was a foreigner by the way he was dressed. His jacket and gloves and skates were perfect and he was also wearing a beret, which was most unusual for a Russian man in those days. He thanked me in Russian with the accent and I left him and went on my way. In Russia we consider it not polite to talk to a man you’re not introduced to, and especially if he is a foreigner.
However as I went around I kept my eyes on him for my curiosity had jumped to the heaven—it was always before the Revolution and after the Revolution in Russia this great curiosity for the foreigner—and I noticed he kept his eyes on me. I pretended to pay no attention. Z-zh-ip I went by him. Z-zh-ip! Z-zh-ip! Once when I went by I heard him talking with a group of three people in English.
Then he fell down again quite close to me and as I assisted him once more to his feet I said. “It looks like I will have to help you.”
“Will you?” he asked very humbly with the shining eyes.
“I can even teach you to dance,” I told him and I took his hands and explained. “Now you just make this: one, two, three; one, two, three.” He was a very poor dancer, but I did the complicated part going backwards. The orchestra played “The Blue Danube” waltz as if we especially asked and very soon we found we could go rhythmically together. We never spoke a word; we were so fascinated by the dancing. The evening was perfect. The music; the cold, sharp air; the lights; the gracefully moving people. We felt like we already know each other, for not even conversation can bring people so close together as dancing. Already, I suppose, it was the beginning of love.
When the music stop, we talk. He tells me he is an American, and has come one year to Russia to gather material on Russian folklore; both old and new, and I tell him I’m working on the
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Then the music play and we dance again. Then his friends call him. I will remember forever how the woman call, “Robert, come here!” It is the first English I ever remember, “Robert, come here,” and he excused himself and went to talk to them and I just left.
For several days I didn’t go back to the skating rink, but I kept very busy working in the evenings. I understood, maybe, he would come again to skate there and I was afraid of the development of this friendship because he is an American. Hundreds of people, because they were connected with foreigners, were arrested, and so I thought I had better no get involved with him.
Then I was sitting at my desk one day, writing something, and I heard two people come up and this man on the paper said very officially, “Nila, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Robert Magidoff.” Robert asked me for a walk and I forgot all my resolutions and here we go.
After that I began to see him quite regularly. We went dating out to the tee-ater and hiking in the country and skating on the ice rink. Then suddenly an incident happened that almost ruined the romance in the bud. We were walking and a piece of dust came to my eye and there were tears just running. Robert in any circumstance, even on an uninhabited island, will always produce a clean, nice handkerchief. So it happened this time; he produced the handkerchief and gave it to me and I put it around my eye and came home with it, saying, “I will wash it and give it back tomorrow.”
The next day I washed it and put it near the window to dry and the wind blew or something and it went away. I just left the room for one second and when I came back it was gone.
I was horrified. I was sure Robert would think I wanted his friendship just for this fine handkerchief. I went to all the shops to try to find a handkerchief like this; but, my God, the few handkerchiefs I found were made of the roughest material that would tear your nose away. When I asked in one shop if they have a man’s handkerchief the clerk ask, “What, madam?”
“A handkerchief,” I say.
“I’m working here already for ten years,” he say, “and I never heard of a handkerchief.”
I even went to the second-hand stores. Americans would pay a lot with pleasure for the things they could buy in these second-hand stores: pearls, crystals, silver, rubies, diamonds, furs, grand pianos, but, of course, not one handkerchief. The old sheets and the old pillow cases when they would be torn would be used for the nose; a real handkerchief, never.
For days I would not see Robert because of this damned handkerchief. I kept telling him I had work to do and had no time to see him; but one day when I came out of my apartment house there he was waiting. I felt I ought to go through the ground I was so embarrassed. However, I never mentioned
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