building and wanted to go into the office, but I said, “No, better not. If they arrest us both, who will fight?” Poor Robert, he was hurt by the Communists, I feel sure, more than most other foreigners, for he came so close to the bureaucracy and cruelty of the system. You know, you sometime read in books, the hero went pale. Well, I never saw anybody so pale in my life as Robert. He was gray-pale. Even his lips were pale. My heart wrings now when I think about it. I don’t know how I looked, but I was certain I’d never see Robert again. Only God knows how horribly I felt.
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We held both hands and kissed. Then I opened the door and the steps went up and I thought I’d never climb there. My feet were like stones when I moved them. I came to this smelly office and I showed my summons to a man sitting there. He said, “Sit down and wait. You will be called.”
Then I saw four more woman sitting there and by the expressions on their faces I knew they went through the same nightmare I did. I wanted to go down and tell Robert there is a line there and I got up, but the man say with such a roughness, “Sit down and wait your turn.”
All the woman was called before I was and what impressed me most was when a woman was called, she went into the next office and never come back, and so it was completely clear for me she is arrested and taken inside to prison.
Finally the man call, “Nila Ivanovna Shevko,” and I get up and go to the other office where they give me a long questionnaire. They ask your last name, your Christian name, your date of birth and your birthplace, your husband’s name and his occupation and so on.
Of course, they thought they knew my husband’s name and that he was already dead, so can imagine with what circumstances I wrote, “Robert Magid-off, American correspondent.” Then I handed in this questionnaire and in spite of my terror, I waited with devilish pleasure for the man to get to this piece of surprising information.
Ah, it was a comedy! He took the questionnaire with the boring look, for every day hundreds of people are arrested and fill these things out. Then suddenly his hair stand on end and I enjoy myself immensely. I know that even if this marriage to Robert will not save me, the NKVD will be most unpleasantly shocked to see I have an American husband working for foreign newspapers. I understand very well that at this time they don’t want an American to come so close to the real Russian life.
Then he jump from his chair and say, “Will you please sit down?”
I say nothing, but sit down very deliberately.
He disappears into the chief’s office and in about three minutes he returns and say most politely, “Will you come back in a week? In the meantime you will sign this paper that you will not leave Moscow until after the second interview.”
The week seemed interminable, but when I returned I was received immediately by the chief officer and he say, “The most horrible thing has happened. It’s all a terrible, terrible mistake your being asked to come here.” And he takes the summons with my name written on it and tears it in little pieces. “I most humbly apologize for such a stupid blunder.”
“You mean I’m free?” I say, scarcely able to believe my ears.
He laugh like an amateur on the stage, ‘Ho, ho, ho,” and say, “Of course. Of course. You can travel where you wish—that is inside the Soviet Union. And I do hope you will try to explain to your husband it was all a mistake.”
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“I will do my best,” I say in the meanest way. “He is downstairs now, waiting for me.”
As I went out, the man in the other office, who spoke so rough to me the first time, run and open the door, but God! I didn’t even notice him.
On the street just where I left him, Robert is standing, and I run to him and put my arms around him and cry, “I’m free! I’m free! I can go any place!”
After this, especially after we get the room with Gordon Kashin, is the most happiest time. It was the first time anybody take care of me. You American woman will not understand this for you are accustomed to the husband taking care of the woman, being sorry for you when you have the headache, getting a wrap for you when you are cold, asking when he comes home in the evening, “Darling, what have you being doing with yourself today?” and inviting you out for special suppers now and then; you know, showing the attention in all these little things. Well, I never experienced it before and I just bask in it with such a pleasure. It was pure and untouched happiness.
Then Robert became assistant to the chief of the AP Bureau in Moscow and went to the United States for a short visit. While he was gone I was telephoned to from the Russian Foreign Office, where we I had applied for an apartment for a long time, that they had an apartment for us. I thought, of course, it would be a room and a bathroom, but my God, it was three rooms. I sent Robert a cable, “We got apartment,” and in just two weeks he came rushing back with boxes loaded with things because the apartment was completely empty except for the most necessary furniture.
Robert had bought dishes and silver and the most terrific kitchen things— the things to turn the eggs, the pot to make the coffee, the beater to beat the eggs and frying things. Oh, to unpack it! Nothing will ever compare with unpacking these boxes. Never before did Robert like to shop, but he tell me that every time he bought something, even the can opener, he saw my happy face. There was only one disappointment. Robert has very plain taste and he bought very plain dishes. I want them all colors with big flowers.
The best thing he bought was the electric toaster with the pumping bread. Wonderful is not the word! I telephoned all my Russian friends—by this time the arrests and trials had subsided—and I said to them, “Please do come for American toast!” I ask husbands too. Everybody. When they came I put the toaster on an oval table in the middle of the room. I put two pieces of bread in it and then everybody sat around and waited.
Then z-zh-ip the toast pumped up! Ah-h-h, there is no way to express my friends’ faces; their childish happiness at this miracle thing. Then I buttered the two slices and passed them around and here we went again. Everybody waited, scarcely breathing. Then z-zh-ip and two more slices. I’m really afraid to say how much we ate of this amazing American toast. It sounds un-
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believable; but we spent the whole evening around this toaster and everybody eat five or six slices—about ten pounds of bread in all.
I remember I wore for the toasting a housecoat with a zipper that was going from the knee up to the neck, which Robert had also brought from America. I had never seen a zipper like this before and, naturally, none of my Russian friends had. Robert said the coat was just to wear around the house when there was no company but I
