A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online Page B

large and impressive airport building, we looked out of the window for some face which looked familiar to us, for someone who might be waiting for us. It was raining. We got out of the plane and assembled our baggage in the rain, and a great loneliness fell on us. There wasn't one person there to meet us. There wasn't a familiar face. We couldn't ask a question. We didn't have any Russian money. We didn't know where to go.
    From Helsinki we had cabled Joe Newman that we would be one day late. But there was no Joe Newman. There was nobody for us. Some very husky porters carried our luggage to the front of the airport and waited expectantly to be paid, and we couldn't pay them. Busses went by, and we realized we couldn't even read their destinations, and besides they were so crowded with people inside, and were so hung with people on the outside, that we and our thirteen pieces of luggage could not possibly have got in. And the porters, very husky porters, waited for their money. We were hungry, and wet, and frightened, and we felt completely deserted.
    Just then the courier for the French Embassy came out with his pouch, and he loaned us money to pay the porters, and he put our baggage in the car which had come to meet him. He was a very nice man. We had been close to suicide and he saved us. And if he should ever see this, we want to thank him again. He drove us to the Hotel Metropole, where Joe Newman supposedly was staying.
    I don't know why airports are so far from the cities they supposedly service, but they are, and Moscow is no exception. The airport js miles and miles from the city, and the road goes through pine forests, through farms, and through endless potato and cabbage patches. There were rough roads and smooth roads. The French courier had anticipated everything. He had sent his driver out for a little lunch, so that on the way in to Moscow we ate
piroschki,
and little meat balls, and ham. And by the time we reached the Hotel Metropole we were feeling much better.
    The Hotel Metropole was a rather grand hotel, with marble staircases and red carpets, and a great gilded elevator that ran sometimes. And there was a woman behind the desk who spoke English. We asked for our rooms, and she had never heard of us. We had no rooms.
    At that moment Alexander Kendrick of the
Chicago Sun,
and his wife, rescued us. Where, we asked, was Joe Newman?
    "Oh, Joe! He hasn't been here for a week. He's in Leningrad, at the fur auction."
    He had not received our cable, nothing had been prepared, and we had no rooms. And it was ridiculous to try to get rooms without preparation. We had supposed that Joe would get in touch with whatever Russian agency was responsible for it. But since he hadn't, and hadn't received the cable, the Russians hadn't known we were coming either. But the Kendricks took us to their room, and fed us smoked salmon and vodka, and made us welcome.
    After a while we didn't feel lonely and lost any more. We decided to move into Joe Newman's room to punish him. We used his towels, and his soap, and his toilet paper. We drank his whisky. We slept on his couch and his bed. We thought that was the least he could do for us, to repay us for having been miserable. The fact that he didn't know we were coming, we argued, was no excuse for him, and he had to be punished. And so we drank his two bottles of Scotch whisky. It must be admitted that we didn't know at that time what a crime this was. There is considerable dishonesty and chicanery among American newspapermen in Moscow, but it has never reached the level to which we brought it. A man does not drink another man's whisky.
     

CHAPTER 3
     
    WE DIDN'T KNOW YET what our status was. In fact, we weren't quite sure how we had got there, who had invited us. But the American correspondents in Moscow rallied around, and helped us, and held our hands-Gilmore, and Stevens, and Kendrick, and the rest, all good and sympathetic men. They took us to dinner in a commercial