thought it was absolutely beautiful—it was long to the floor with a little train in back. The guests simply adored the zipper. Poor souls, they were so fascinated with the zipper zipping and the toast pumping they were in a state of complete exhaustion by the time they went home.
Robert felt I should go around with Americans more. When we went ice skating and saw Americans, he would bring me up to them and introduce me as his wife. Soon one of these couples invited us to dinner.
I’ll never forget this dinner. I was in a frenzy about what to wear, and I drove Robert into a frenzy too. Do I wear a hat? I asked him. Do I wear gloves? How long should my dress be? What color? He begged me to stop worrying. They are kind people, he said, and they know you’re a simple Russian peasant.
So we came to the party and they passed the martinis and I took one and that was the first cocktail I ever had in my life. In Russia it is not customary to drink before dinner. In an ordinary home everybody just sits and tries to squeeze the conversation and then everybody will be invited to the table and will drink vodka with the food.
So here I am drinking the martini and everybody talking to me in English how difficult is the Russian language and I not understanding scarcely a word. When Robert was courting me he said he would give me some English lessons and he did, but the day we were married, he dropped the lessons dead—not one more lesson. I suppose I was not a very inspiring pupil.
As we drink and talk, a man in a white coat passes a lot of little things to eat—all very nice, but never before have I seen such
Then the man in the white coat came and said dinner is served and we got up and went into the dining room. The hostess put me on the right of the host but I did not appreciate the gesture for I was not acquainted with this compliment.
Do you know, before we ate a thing, the man in the white coat took off the plate that was already on the table and put another plate and a bowl with soup in its place? Then he pass the crackers and celery and olives and all those things. This was all easy, but when the second course came I was just ruined.
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For the first time in my life I was served a platter of meat. I was served it even before the hostess because of this damned honor of sitting on the right of the host, so I could not watch her and see what to do. I thought I would just die.
The most I was afraid of was the servants. They were all Russians and the Russians are the most class- conscious of any people. They know I don’t belong at this fancy dinner and they scorn me like I can’t tell you. They really snobbed me. I was all the time like sitting on pins and needles. Poor Robert, he suffered too. He knows how serious I take these things. After the meat came the vegetables. Oh, my back was a hard nut of tense!
Finally, the servants took off everything and I thought thank God! it is over; but then came this last thing, the dessert. It was some kind of ring, a quite fat ring, with a sauce in the middle. I understand now I was supposed to cut a little piece of this one and then take sauce from the inside’ but I cut all the way through this ring and the sauce rushed out and ran all around the platter.
Quickly, the servant jerked it away from me and stomped out of the room, his head high in the air and his eyes looking down his nose. I was so furious I could have struck him between the eyes. Fortunately for the other guests there was a second ring in the kitchen, and in a few minutes he returned with it, but he never approached within three feet of me.
After this torture—I really can’t call it another way—we went back to the living room for coffee. When some time had passed I began once more to enjoy the beautiful life.
I must tell you from that night on I learned pretty fast the American ways. I didn’t know a lot of things. You just can’t imagine. American children learn them like they breathe, but nobody ever told me how to do all kinds of things: how to unfold your napkin (you know, the first dinner I had at Gordon Kashin’s apartment I didn’t use mine at all; I thought it would be terrible to soil its white innocence and I looked at Robert for approval, but afterwards he told me it was put there to use); how to hold your knife and fork; how to serve yourself from a platter.
Robert, of course, noticed when I married him that I didn’t know these things; but he was so kind and gentle he wouldn’t mention them. Now, though, when I insisted on knowing, he told me many things: not to reach across the table for something you wanted, not to eat chicken with your fingers at a formal dinner and so on.
The most complicated thing for me to learn was how to serve myself, so one day I fried a whole chicken and Robert, with a napkin on his hand, just like the man in the white coat, served it on a platter to me. He did it very seriously, not cracking a smile. Then he made me eat what I took with a knife and fork. I tell you it was real work, trying to finish this chicken without doing it naturally with the fingers.
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So life went on until June 22nd, 1941, when we heard on the radio that Germany had invaded Russia. Soon after that many Americans sent their wives back to the United States and Robert was most anxious to send me. However, he couldn’t get permission from the Russian government. He had applied for a visa for me soon after we were married. Then every six months he wrote a letter and asked has the decision yet been made; but like the real Russian bureaucracy, they never said no and they never said yes. They just said they had taken it under consideration and that Robert would be informed when the time came. We were both terribly afraid, of course, that they would never give the permission for me to go.
The war finally broke the stalemate. The American ambassador, Lawrence Steinhardt, called Robert one day and said, “I think I have good news for you. I think we have succeeded in getting permission for Nila to go to the United States. We have arranged with the Russians to exchange her and Pauline Habicht for two loads of high octane gas.” Pauline was the wife of Herman Habicht, the assistant chief of the United Press bureau.
That was all Ambassador Steinhardt told Robert and for many years Robert bragged that he was one of two men who knew exactly what his wife was worth—one load of high octane gas. Thirteen years later he and I learned that Pauline and I and several other people were exchanged not for gas but for a prominent Russian who was being detained in the United States.
Anyway, the morning after the ambassador telephoned, I got a call from the Moscow bureau that gives visas and they invited me to come there. When I arrived they say the visa is granted, but they must warn me that I must renounce my Russian citizenship. This was no more than I expected. Nevertheless, it was a terrible wrench. I was never a member of the Communist party and God knows I had suffered at the hands of the Communist regime; still I loved my country, my family and my friends, and it hurt me to turn my back upon them.
Everybody at the American embassy, though, helped me to feel better. Robert and I went there as soon as I got my visa and they all seemed so happy that I was going to Robert’s country and would some day be an American citizen. Everybody in the embassy knew there are two kinds of marriages between Russian woman and American man. One is when Russian woman’s aim is to get everything she can from the American man because of the hard life, and the other one is for love. Everybody knew Robert’s and my marriage was a real love.
Now we had to decide whether Robert would come with me to America. This was a very serious decision, for Robert recently had become chief of the NBC bureau in Moscow and broadcast over the radio. Robert said if I am afraid he will come with me, but I said absolutely not, for I understood how
