Journey of the Americanist by Stanislav Kondrashov - HTML preview

The latest words of Bil Brocket, recorded by the Americanist, did not make it into the report from San Francisco.

"Be patient—that's my appeal to the Soviet public," said the lawyer with emotion. "Be patient and know that Americans are genuinely concerned about the threat of nuclear war. Perhaps there won't be positive changes under this administration, but another one wil come—and it wil take into account the mood of our people..."

And this was not the first cal for patience that he had heard from good and concerned people in America.

The Congress, dissolved before the elections, had not yet resumed its work, and the new one was scheduled to convene only in January. Senators and congressmen, re-elected, first-time elected, or not elected but not completing their term, had not yet returned from their cities and voyages or from trips around the world.

"His bet is in the city..."

"He hasn't returned yet..."

"He promised to be back in a week."

Such answers were heard by the Americanist from press secretaries and assistants over the phone. Those few who were in the

city cited busyness. He found that even the embassy staff, with their rich connections on Capitol Hil , could not help him. Espionage had returned to Capitol Hil , and someone did not want to meet with the "red" for the same reasons as Charles Week—considerations of ideological incompatibility.

Journalists were more wil ing to make contact. The Americanist met with the head of the Washington bureau of a influential newspaper—a tal , young blond with a soft smile and charming manners.

He used to be a correspondent in Moscow, and his softness, smile, and charm came in handy. Upon his return, he wrote such a book that the way to Moscow was closed to him for a long time, but the way up in his own newspaper was open.

The Washington bureau had many highly qualified political reporters known throughout political America. Like diligent bees, they daily gathered and transferred to the newspaper pages a honeyed information from the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and Capitol Hil . The bureau conducted the orchestra, giving freedom to soloists and finding time to write their own detailed materials. He was a journalist of a liberal orientation, not quite to the liking in today's conservative Washington, but he did not lose hope. Like any liberal, his hopes quickly died and revived just as quickly.

His latest hope was associated with the special envoy of the new Secretary of State, George Shultz. The Secretary of State, he impressed upon the Americanist, possessed unobtrusive, thoroughly convincing persuasiveness and could positively influence the president. Along with Shultz, in the direction of restraint and moderation, they influenced the president and some of his closest aides. Schultz's manner, praised the Americanist, was to gradual y and deeply delve into a particular problem, develop his own solution, and gradual y convince Reagan of his correctness. The Secretary of State had not yet had time to delve into the complex issue of arms control, but when he did, he would get there, take the reins into his own hands, expect changes for the better—a broader and healthier approach from the American side, reassured the Americanist by his knowledgeable and courteous interlocutor. In Congress, too, there was hope. There, the majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives restrained Reagan, and the position of some moderate senators, serious and influential people. The battle for the

military budget lies ahead, and it wil grow, no doubt, but not at the pace the administration would like.

The bureau spoke of restraining Reagan as if it were a common task of two journalists—an American and a Soviet. And in his analysis, there was not only the hope of a liberal but also a drop of reality. It remained to be seen whether these drops would accumulate and multiply or, hitting the reality of the near future, would shatter into pieces.

The Americanist's interlocutors also included two wel -known columnists from the largest Washington newspaper. One of them, young, handsome, and perhaps too confident, said that Reagan would not be re-elected for a second term because Nancy, his wife, wanted a return to a peaceful private life, and in general, the presidential job turned out to be more troublesome than Ronnie imagined; the military budget proposed by the administration might not pass, Congress is seriously intent on reducing it, it is not excluded that they wil cut the project to create intercontinental MX missiles, and the president is unlikely to be able to shake the issue of arms control.

The judgments of the self-assured young man, who enjoyed great weight in his newspaper and some weight in Washington society, also sounded reasonable in some respects.

The second observer, older in age, with a mournful expression on his face, spoke very sincerely, stating that we do not understand each other, and we do not want to understand persistently and desperately.

We see intrigues, conspiracies, and devilish plans even where there is actual y only chance, a combination of unrelated and unconnected actions. He chose the theme of the triumph of misunderstanding for his book. While working on the book, he spent some time in Moscow on an academic mission.

Clouds covered the land. When they thinned, the land appeared through their white fleeting curls, a gloomy land, a mountainous region with the peaks of autumnal forests staring into the sky. The Appalachians floated beneath the airplane's wing.

He usual y drove to where he was flying now, starting from Washington—first west on Route 50, running along the gentle waves of hil s past whitewashed buildings of large Virginia farms. Then, at the intersection with Route 81, he turned south, catching a sidelong glance of the faintly lilac haze of the Blue Ridge on the left. After that, he

headed west again, the old Route 60 twisting and turning, adapting to the folds of the Appalachian mountains, while the new Route 64 boldly chal enged the mountains, cutting through them—a deserted, straight, high-speed highway that, like a river, effortlessly carried both light cars and heavy roaring trucks on its hump, while on its banks, set back and subdued, cleanly trimmed by builders, safe tiers rose to the stony cliffs.

This time, the Americologist dreamt of a road trip, wanting to recount and reminisce about these American miles after a six-year hiatus and enjoy the spirit of cheerful companionship that once enticed him on his travels for two or three. Unfortunately, his old friends and col eagues, who were pul ing the correspondent's load in America for the third or even fourth time, found the ascent heavy. Initial y, the idea of taking a ride in West Virginia to reflect the misfortunes of this troubled mining region in the newspaper and on the screen intrigued both of them. Then, both had second thoughts, citing business, and one Americologist did not dare—he had grown accustomed to American cars and roads, and the round trip would cover no less than fifteen hundred kilometers.

And now he was not driving but flying to Charleston, the capital of West Virginia. This was not a flight on a wide-bodied giant across the entire continent. Piedmont Airlines was as little known outside the United States as the city of Charleston, where he was headed. Its plane did not depart from the spacious international airport in Dal as, under Washington, but from the National Airport, squeezed right into the suburban outskirts on the right bank of the Potomac. This had long provoked protests and complaints from residents, sometimes leading to accidents, but, in general, did not prevent this busy airport from daily releasing and receiving hundreds of planes, many more than its more modern and beautiful rival.

The flight to Charleston took less than an hour. Next to him sat a chubby African American Madonna in jeans, and the baby with black bulging eyes and a head of sparse curly hair screamed as if cut from Washington to Charleston. The mother could not pacify him, and she did not try too hard. The passengers seemed not to hear the roar, al owing the Americologist to reinforce two long-held conclusions with another example: firstly, Americans do not have the habit of interfering in other people's affairs; secondly, the black Madonna with the crying baby

traveled in an invisible capsule of alienation from whites. One thing he could not understand, accustomed to deciphering American mysteries: what was a black woman doing in Charleston, a city one hundred percent white? And he was right—she had nothing to do in Charleston.

Charleston was her first stop. The plane would then go to Chicago, where a third of the population was black, soon to become every second, and where even the mayor recently became black.

As the plane descended, the low, autumnal y unfriendly mountains stretched endlessly, and, as if finding no smoother place in this land, the plane landed on a cut-off mountaintop. While it taxied, slowing down, to the modest airport building, old pot-bel ied, spotted, paratrooper-like planes of the National Guard flashed by on the side.

The airport was no larger than what was due to a city with a population of sixty-four thousand people. The accordion-like gangway immediately aimed its nozzle at the hatch of the arriving plane, and entering the building with other passengers, the Americologist immediately saw the sign "Hertz," the most famous of the companies renting cars. By paying, he could take a car right at the airport and drive anywhere, even to the other end of America, because there are Hertz branches everywhere, and each of them wil accept the car rented by you from Hertz. However, being a Soviet citizen, he was not al owed to use this convenience. Although, blessed be the memory, two or three times he stil resorted to the services of Hertz and its competitor Avis in his early American years, when the ban had not yet been lifted. Then, in 1963, by a special explanation from the State Department, Soviet citizens working in America were deprived of this kind of American service, again in strict observance of the principle of reciprocity, which in this case implied the existence of a Soviet equivalent of Hertz for Americans working in the Soviet Union.

The Americologist looked at the Hertz sign with a Platonic gaze and walked out of the airport building to the yel ow taxis and shuttles, which in America are cal ed limousine services. He had permission for the limousine service and taxi.

The taxi rol ed down the mountain into the sun-drenched val ey, leaving the clouds in the mountains. In the val ey flowed the Kanawha River, which let's rename in Russian—Kanava: what wil the river become if its banks have been occupied by industry since the last

century? Over the old rumbling iron bridge, they crossed to the other side of this fairly wide and ful -flowing Kanava. On the other side was the main part of the old industrial city, the capital of the smal state of West Virginia (population about two mil ion), which chose a stone in the center and figures of a farmer and a miner on the sides for its coat of arms. At the bottom of the coat of arms was the corresponding Latin motto:

"Mountaineers Are Always Free."

The Americologist noticed the multi-story building of the Charleston "Holiday Inn," where he had stayed a couple of times before, and next to it, a twenty-story building, the main bank of Charleston.

Vaguely remembering, as they drove by, the main shopping street with large stores and shop windows.

Meanwhile, the taxi driver took him further, to where, off the beaten path, among construction sites and steel skeletons of future buildings, a brand-new hotel building belonging to the Marriott corporation rose. In recent years, this corporation had aggressively entered the profitable hotel business, elbowing competitors like "Holiday Inn" and enticing with increased prestige and comfort those mobile American businessmen who spare no expense and enjoy putting on a show—mostly at the expense of their companies, for whose business they travel and in whose interests they must—and are obliged to—appear as wel -off and affluent as possible. Can everyone afford and be wil ing to shel out seventy or eighty dol ars from their own pockets to spend a night in a hotel in a smal provincial town?!

Hotels, inns—a recurring element in many of our contemporary journeys, including the travels of the Americologist. The hotel in modest Charleston was just as imposing as the fashionable and eccentric Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, returning him to the recurring motif—not in his comfort zone.

Whether he was Hecuba or to him Hecuba, foreign extravagance and obsession with prestige disturbed the Americologist, especial y since, while caring about the prestige of his newspaper and his country, even in provincial Charleston, he had to adhere to American notions of prestige, although internal y he rebel ed, regretting the budgeted dol ars.

By the way, regarding prestige. Prestige existed in the Russian language before, and prestigiosity appeared quite recently and, according to the

observations of the Americologist, came from across the ocean as the Russian equivalent of the English "status symbol."

Estimates approved by the Ministry of Finance in Moscow for the expenses of Soviet citizens sent to the United States were increasing, especial y in recent years, but they did not keep pace with American realities, which were changing even faster, with American inflation, which they cal ed gal oping. From this dissonance, from this private truth, our hero's troubles began in every American city as soon as he reached the next hotel. And we cannot dismiss this as a minor annoyance without changing the main truth about the dialectical interrelation of things. Yes, yes, don't laugh! In our world, where everything is dialectical y intertwined, the estimate of expenses provided for the hotel repeatedly led the Americologist to the main theme of the material, financial, political, psychological, moral—and what else?—incompatibility between us and the Americans. If a cosmic comparison is permissible for two states living such different lives, like two unified docking nodes, they move along different orbits and courses, and every time, no matter what, from the hotel fee to interstate agreements, the problem is how to dock?

A young clerk, provincial y proud that he worked in the newest and trendiest hotel in Charleston, was arranging a sixty-five-dol ar room, trying to determine by the surname, clothes, and suitcase of the new guest what kind of bird brought him. The Americologist did not like the clerk, the modernist sophistication of the hotel's main entrance, or the dimly lit lobby.

The room at the Marriott hotel was booked by an old acquaintance of the Americologist, Charleston publisher Ned Chilton. Now, standing in front of the beefy clerk, the Americologist mental y lamented: he couldn't even connect with a good acquaintance. Although, he understood upon reflection, Ned could not have acted differently. Is it not the duty of a true Charleston patriot to not hit the dirt in front of a citizen of a rival state?

And is it Ned's fault if he did not question whether the Ministry of Finance in Moscow is keeping up with American realities? He himself was accustomed to traveling on his own dol ars, from the newspaper of which he was the owner.

They met ten years ago when the Americologist, deciding to look at the upcoming American elections through the lens of the countryside, found himself in Charleston for the first time and paid a courtesy visit to

the "Charleston Gazette." Ned Chilton was surprised and intrigued by the unexpected guest. Ned was affable and teasing, though narrow-minded, he was an avid tennis player and a fan of scuba diving.

While the Americologist did not engage in tennis or diving, the Charleston publisher attracted him with his lively and friendly teasing, liberal views, and criticism of the ongoing American war in Vietnam.

Ned volunteered to help the Americologist and assigned one of his reporters. Together, under the October rain, in the autumn Appalachian gloom, they traveled to the surrounding mining towns—trailing Jay Rockefel er's campaign caravan, the senior of the fourth-generation famous bil ionaire dynasty. He was not yet over thirty then and was making his first attempt to become the governor of West Virginia, where he had recently relocated and where he was stil a stranger, a newcomer. They rol ed him over at first. The Americologist wrote an essay about Charleston and about publisher Ned Chilton, who criticized the Vietnam War, Rockefel er's transplantation into the political soil of West Virginia, and the struggling mining towns devastated by the mechanization of coal mining and the decline in demand for it.

Coal... Coal... Coal... Jay... Jay... Jay... These two words echoed through the Americologist's essay, interspersed with images of the Appalachian autumn. Jay Rockefel er became the governor of West Virginia in the next election—the transplantation was successful, and mil ions flowed into the state. And the demand for coal temporarily returned during the years of catastrophic oil price hikes, which, however, did not bring jobs back to the miners who had left their homeland in despair.

And Ned Chilton became a good acquaintance of the Americologist.

Their relationship couldn't be cal ed a friendship—by a broad Russian measure. It lacked intimacy, the Russian desire to confess, to bare one's soul, and if necessary, according to the old expression, to lay down one's life for one's friends. We wouldn't cal these relationships a friendship also because in Ned's eyes, the Americologist stil saw a question, some doubt or a shadow of doubt. Ned could not completely rid himself of suspicion: was this journalist his friend or someone else?

And was there some hidden motive in his attachment to their city and state, so far from international paths?

They saw each other rarely, the last time six years ago. Then, in the summer, during student vacations, the Americologist's daughter, who was studying journalism in Moscow, came to Washington, and he, after consulting with Ned, sent her to Charleston to gain life experience and practice in an American provincial newspaper. It was stil possible back then—a break. For several days, Tanyushka lived in the Chiltons' house on the other high bank of the Kanawha River, met his wife Betsy and adopted daughter, toured Charleston with Chilton's reporters, who took her to the municipality, court, local prison, and gave her the first interview for the "Charleston Gazette," accompanied by a photo portrait—a lovely shy girl. Tanyushka was nineteen. It took many persuasions to send her off to Charleston—she was embarrassed, afraid, hesitant. But she passed the test and behaved tactful y and dignified in the frighteningly unfamiliar environment. And when the Americologist, with his wife and son, came to pick her up, she gladly dropped the unfamiliar burden of responsibility and hid under her parents' wings, showing that children are in no hurry to grow up and prefer to remain children, as long as they can with the help of adults.

Ned always helped the Americologist and in this sense was a true friend. They did not maintain written or telephone communication, and times had changed for the worse, but Ned Chilton responded as if nothing had happened when the Americologist cal ed him from Washington and informed him that he was again temporarily in the States and that, in order to resume his acquaintance with American rural life, he would like to visit Charleston. Ned arranged a program of meetings for him in Charleston, ensuring, as he put it, a cross-section, that is, a cross-section of local society, meetings with the mayor, in the Chamber of Commerce (business circles), and at the AFL-CIO office (organized labor), a visit to the university and the state supreme court, as wel as an inspection of mining towns. But this time, too, Ned Chilton did not arrange a meeting with Jay Rockefel er, who was serving his second term as governor and occasional y cast meaningful glances towards the White House in Washington. Rockefel er IV avoided meeting with the Soviet journalist with the persistence of a superstitious person afraid of bad luck.

The first scheduled meeting, an hour after arrival, was with the mayor of Charleston. And so, the Americanist, not ful y discerning the pristine, like a virgin's attire, Marriott hotel room, strode along the muddy highway, stil wet from the recent rain, towards the city center. He grumbled about the hospitable Ned, who had placed him – to avoid getting his face dirty – in a brand-new hotel on the outskirts. Provincial, thoroughly motorized America had long outgrown sidewalks –

considering them unnecessary. And he walked along the highway on foot, clearly out of place, visible to everyone. Charleston residents passing by in their cars stared in surprise at the eccentric and stranger walking on the roadside that belonged to their cars.

The office in the old building of Charleston City Hal had phones on a dark walnut desk and a smal er one behind it. A thick red carpet.

Heavy chairs and sofas. The star-striped flag on a special stand in the corner. A typical office of an American official, and the Americanist, who had been there with another mayor, struggled to remember if everything remained in its place. Yes, it al seemed to be the same as before. But the photo of the mayor with Jimmy Carter, smiling too widely and showing white teeth, couldn't have been there – at that time, Carter had yet to become president (and ex-president). The doors, open to the secretary's and assistants' rooms, making the mayor's office seem like a thoroughfare, were probably there, but it was unlikely that the black cap with the Charleston police emblem hung on the wal – departing from this place, every departing mayor took with him al the souvenirs given to him, even the chair he sat in. The cap was a gift to the current mayor.

That mayor's name was Hutchinson, and they, if memory served, sat right here – he on the sofa, and the mayor in the chair. The current mayor offered the chair, settled on the stool opposite, jacketless, bal point pens peeking from the pocket of a white shirt with a red tie, al attention and slightly wary of the guest – what was on his mind? What wind blew him to Charleston? And again, the doors to adjacent rooms were open – no secrets. Days of open doors.

The former mayor, during the years of the Americanist's absence in Charleston, had been to Congress, left from there, and entered private business. The current one had been a member of the city council for eight years, the city treasurer for five, and had been in the current

position for two and a half years. He had a plain face and the most common name imaginable – John Smith.

The mayor is not the most important person in an American city, where private business general y rules independently of municipal authorities. But certainly not the least important. Under the mayor's leadership are the police, private schools, and public services, and he must reconcile the interests of different population groups or secretly serve mafias and clans, pretending to democratical y serve everyone.

John Smith, resorting to figures and facts, tried to paint a picture of the city for the foreigner, where the population had recently decreased by ten percent. But the county, Greater Charleston, has been growing al these years, with about three hundred thousand people. Economical y, it thrives mainly due to the development of the chemical industry in the Kanawha River Val ey. Unemployment in Greater Charleston is lower than the national or state average in West Virginia. The city, serving the thriving county, is experiencing a construction boom. Since the guest stayed at the Marriott hotel, he must have noticed this. Next to the hotel, a local coliseum (project cost twenty-two mil ion dol ars) is being built for concerts and sports events. An exhibition hal is set up in the former Municipal Center, and, in addition, a large shopping center is being built on the outskirts, where the main city stores wil open their branches. A new private hospital, new administrative buildings housing insurance companies, various financial institutions, doctors, lawyers, and so on.

Charleston is in very good shape, said the mayor, and the influx of private capital means an influx of taxes into the city treasury. As for the activities of the municipality itself, over eight hundred city officials, the mayor proudly noted, maintain public services at a satisfactory level.

By party affiliation, the mayor was a Democrat in a city where the Democratic Party traditional y garnered the majority of votes, and in a state where the governor was also a Democrat, and where the majority traditional y voted for Democrats in presidential and congressional elections. This added a certain partisan color to his conversation with the Soviet journalist. The mayor did not approve of the Republicans ruling in Washington and complained that the government did little to help Charleston, and moreover, under Reagan, this aid was cut compared to previous administrations. And on the mayor's wal hung not the current Republican president, but the former Democratic president.

The Americanist was professional y overloaded with figures and facts and, as he wrote, grew bored. Facts interested him only when they sparked a new thought or feeling. But the figures and facts of John Smith only evoked a flat thought that in an economical y troubled state, the main city could prosper economical y.

They shifted to international affairs. The mayor joked that there's no position for a foreign minister in the municipality. Stil , he spoke wisely and engagingly. The mayor's international experience was limited to military service in the Far East, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. He didn't elaborate on the lessons he learned from those distant

years.

However,

his

statements

were

dominated

by

straightforward and, thankful y, unshakable common sense.

"To engage in hostilities, shooting is not necessary," the former soldier expressed his concern about the strange and dangerous situation in which they are neither at war nor living in peace.

"If you want, peace is tranquility," he clarified his concept of peace.

Common sense guided the mayor of Charleston that relations between the two superpowers should be strengthened, and their leaders should strive for personal contacts and mutual understanding.

Now they were talking about life, about what binds them and what is important to discuss when meeting each other. They found agreement.

Smith wanted both superpowers to focus more on the "affairs of their people," i.e., domestic matters.

"Too much money is being spent by both you and us because both of us are too preoccupied with our relationship," he chose such a diplomatic formulation to criticize the arms race. Later, he directly stated that he didn't agree with the military programs of the American president in everything. Are they necessary? Wouldn't it be better to strengthen contacts and find areas of common interest? The military expenditures of the two powers are structured based on what Jones, that is, the neighbor and potential adversary, has. In the end, "we continue to move in the wrong direction."

And having nuclear weapons creates entirely different "conditions of the game." The mayor summed up his reasoning with President

Johnson's favorite expression, which was often quoted in the newspapers at one time: "Let's get together and put our heads together."

John Smith is like our Ivan Kuznetsov. A man with a common name spoke with the voice of the people. Common sense is indelible, just like the two instincts of humans - the instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of procreation. Where, in which spheres, and at what heights is this unpretentious - and wise! - common sense lost, the ability to disregard the secondary for the sake of the main?

The Americanist was drawn to the American hinterlands to see the life of the people, to touch, in American terms, the roots of the grass. He was drawn to the province - and to simplicity. And he had long found a professional explanation for this attraction. There, in the provinces, the structure of society is built from the same bricks, but devoid of the embel ishments and decorations of the capital, it is better suited for observation and description. There, you see the main thing better, the essence. He thought this even in the years of his first correspondences in Cairo, occasional y traveling to vil ages or towns in the Nile Delta. This persisted in America, although over the years he came to understand that simplicity is a complex concept and that there is not only the simplicity of common sense but also the simplicity of mental laziness and underdevelopment and just foolishness, and that there is even cruel simplicity - and stupidity - of bourbons, and that true high simplicity is as rare and precious as wisdom.

Over the years, he came to understand something else: he was drawn to the provinces because he himself came from there. It was a cal of childhood, of ancestors, a return to the origins. If you wil , a provincial complex. That was his place, where, it seemed to him, a simple, integral, and healthy life remained, and even in his trips to the American hinterlands, there was a trace of the impulse of a prodigal son who, returning after wandering in big cities, kneels at the parental threshold.

In the tension of his foreign and predominantly service existence, the Americanist did not feel free even in such an involuntary matter as choosing memories. Another life was insidiously and powerful y imposing another order of the soul. He took with him on his business trip several volumes of his favorite poets. But the verses that he recited at home al

day did not come to mind across the ocean. The books lay untouched in his briefcase. He again fel captive to the changed internal rhythm, and this rhythm, regardless of his wil , was imposed by another land. Each land creates its own poetry, genuine verses seem to stand out by themselves from its air and cannot, with the degree of freedom needed for poetry, be transferred to the different atmosphere of another land and exist there.

The same applied to memories. And yet, some memories were quite fresh and somewhat relevant because they also related to the province. In late autumn, the Americanist traveled around America, and at the end of the summer, in August of the same year, he went for a few days to a Russian province, to his homeland. Frankly, he had not been there longer than in Charleston or New York, Washington, San Francisco, Panama City, Caracas, Havana, Paris, Bonn, Hamburg, Stockholm, Cairo, Beirut, Amman, etc. He had not been there for ten years, since his eldest daughter, living in Moscow without her parents, surprised them with the news of her intention to get married, and he flew from Washington, acquiring a new, striking quality of a father of a married daughter, decided to partake in the places of his fatherhood. It was a troubled summer of forest fires, with smoke and ash reaching Moscow, and in his homeland, near the city with a funny - for outsiders -

name, black, burned, stil smoking forests stood.

At that time, ten years ago, he came to Kulebaki not from Moscow but from Gorky - as always. The two cities were inseparably connected by childhood years. His parents moved from Kulebaki to Gorky when he was three years old, and his brother was half as old. The imprint of the consciousness formed in childhood. The road to Kulebaki always started from Gorky and was the first road for a child traveling with his mother by water to Murom, or by train to the Navashino station, or by car on a bumpy cobblestone road, longer than any in his prewar childhood world.

And more than thirty years after moving to Moscow, he could not imagine any other road home than the one that started in Gorky.

Without looking at the map, he could say that the city of Ithaca is approximately two hundred kilometers northwest of New York, but ask him in which direction from Moscow his native Kulebaki lies, and he would have trouble answering. Childhood is not sought on a geographical map. Homeland is not a settlement but a sacred place.

But did he have the right to utter these two words with a clear heart

- a sacred place? The Americanist, along with his sister and brother, did not visit even the parental grave in Gorky for many years, leaving it in the care of a distant relative. And he did not go there from the Kursk station but to Simferopol or Kislovodsk. From Moscow airports, he knew the international one in Sheremetyevo the best. And only in the sixth decade of his life did he discover that there was a direct road home from Moscow.

From Kazansky Station to childhood was only seven hours. And the ticket to childhood cost only six fifty. Passenger train No. 662

Moscow - Sergach was composed of general and coupe cars, only three

- coupe, and not a single - soft or sleeping car of direct communication, which used to be cal ed international. Old cars and rough conductors landed our internationalist, evoking echoes of distant years in his soul and reminding him of the modesty of his native places. With his wife, he merged into the crowd of passengers laden with bags and trunks with products from Moscow, and a simple thought struck him: he realized that in old dusty cars, his fel ow countrymen were traveling home, who, unlike him, had never detached from their native soil anywhere and at any time.

They set out at the very beginning of a stil long August evening.

The curtains on the open windows of the carriage bil owed from the wind, the wheels clattered through the forests and swamps under the vast, low, sunset-gilded pine sky. As darkness fel , there was an empty platform in Murom, and the iron bridge over the Oka River resounded, and precisely at midnight, they disembarked in Navashino — and the name also echoed in his soul. Here and then, in childhood, trains going further would stop for a few minutes, and he and his brother, smal , nestled among trunks and bundles, were awakened in the middle of the night, dressed, hurried, lowered into the darkness and damp chil from the high steps of pre-war carriages, where the scent of sleepers, coal, hissing locomotive steam prevailed, and sharp and mournful hoots of maneuvering cuckoos instil ed anxiety and longing. The narrow-gauge railway departing from Navashino connected Kulebaki with the wide world and the Kazan Railway. The terminal station of the narrow-gauge railway was cal ed Mordovshchiki — and this, too, was a word from childhood, and at the wooden station building, he and his mother waited for the morning work train to Kulebaki, catching the scents and sounds of

nocturnal railway life, half-dreaming about soft beddings, fluffy pancakes, and raspberry with milk in his grandmother's house.

That was how it was. However, the last time, in August, though with a shared train, he came to his homeland as a distinguished guest. They were met by the chairman of the city executive committee, the mayor of Kulebaki, in a black "Volga," and, without having time to examine the new concrete building of the Navashino station, on the deserted asphalt road, which the low, thickly golden moon glanced askance at, they rushed to their native city, tearing through bushes with their headlights on the outskirts and breathing the mysterious freshness of the native forests.

That first night, he did not recognize his city, where he hadn't been in ten years. They were accommodated in the dormitory of the metal urgical plant, or rather, in the factory hotel, which occupied part of the dormitory building. (They wanted to accommodate them in the guest cottage at the plant management, but other internationalists lived there

— two English consulting engineers.)

He did not recognize his city the next morning when he woke up.

The new residential area they found themselves in did not differ from other residential areas in other cities. Laundry was drying on balconies, flower beds were arranged under the windows, and young mothers with strol ers walked between five-story panel buildings. The wife of the Americanist, tuned in after her husband's stories to log houses, was surprised by the view of the new quarters, over which the spirit of yesterday's construction sites and the day before yesterday's vacant lots stil hovered.

They were taken care of by Alexander Mikhailovich Khlopkov, the chairman of the city executive committee. He was lean and sturdy, dark-haired, with wrinkles on his hol owed cheeks and black slanting eyes. With irony turned toward his own person, inherent in lively, intel igent, and charming Russian people of his kind, Alexander Mikhailovich gave himself two nicknames: the City Chief — according to his official position — and the Shard of Genghis Khan — according to his appearance. In him, there was a sense of inherent intel igence, both innate and developed by life experience, rather than early acquisition of academic knowledge. Behind the City Chief, who was by no means like Gogol's character, stood the universities of life. He started as a

craftsman, an electrician, was a shift supervisor, and then the head of a workshop. His factory tenure counted twenty-three years when he was nominated for the chairman of the city executive committee, and he served in this position without change for nineteen years.

The Americanist grew fond of the City Chief — his intel igence, irony, and hidden sadness. If they had met earlier, they probably would have become friends, and he would have cal ed Alexander Mikhailovich

"Sanya."

Alexander Mikhailovich knew everything and everyone in the town, where almost fifty thousand people lived. He could recite al the numbers and percentages about the housing stock—both public and private (as half of the residents stil lived in private houses), about gas, water supply and sewage, schools, kindergartens, healthcare institutions, stores, and the square meters of their trading areas, about canteens and cafes, and, of course, about industrial enterprises—the radio component factory, the metal structures plant, the sewing factory, and the dairy plant, as wel as the printing house, woodworking shop, oil depot, and two gas stations, not to mention the metal urgical plant.

Actual y, it al began with this plant, which smelted iron from swamp ores, back in the last century. Without the plant, the former vil age would not have become a smal industrial town. Without this plant, both our hero's grandfathers would not have come here from nearby vil ages, and his mother and father would not have met and married, and the reader would have been spared the description of the Americanist's journey, which suddenly led us to his homeland, in the forested and marshy Russian region.

But, on the other hand, let's agree, we have a clear and hidden yearning for the unusual and unexpected, and here you have it—an Americanist from Kulebaki. The smart and industrious City Chief was not devoid of the common Russian weakness for various kinds of exotic things. With his charm and humor, his soft persistence, he lured our internationalist back to his native land. Kulebaki celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Alexander Mikhailovich, raising modest celebrations, scoured the vast country to find fel ow townspeople who could be proudly presented not only to the world but at least to the neighboring

rival towns, Vyksa and Murom. There was a general of the army, though already deceased, a renowned colonel, an artist, a composer, a polar explorer... And among them, enriching the col ection, was a journalist who had worked for a long time in overseas lands and whose face occasional y appeared on the al -Union television screen. As the brochure released for the city's fiftieth anniversary mentioned, the Americanist's paternal grandfather was a wel -known revolutionary in Kulebaki, and his father was one of the first leaders of the Kulebaki Komsomol organization.

No matter how you tel it, one thing becomes clear: the Americanist ended

up

in

Kulebaki

as

an

honorary

guest

through

his

grandfather—and through America. They didn't invite his younger brother, although he had also achieved something in his non-exotic profession as a geologist.

And in his black Volga, the Head of the City showed the Americanist the sights and achievements, driving him and his wife to Veletma, where there was the large Batashovskiy pond (named after the first owner of the local metal urgical plants), and to Gremyachevo, where a plant for the production of building materials had been recently built.

They visited the renovated People's House, which also housed the city museum, and in the museum, among other exhibits, hung a vague, blurry portrait of his grandfather, taken from a smal photograph.

Standing on the green banks of the Tesh River, Alexander Mikhaylovich told

the

Americanist

a

local

legend,

handed down through

generations—that the Americans supposedly offered to clean this fast and cold river, meandering through picturesque groves, and even pay three mil ion dol ars to lift and take away the centuries-old oak logs that had settled in it, layer by layer. What is more in this legend - the lingering Russian boastfulness about the wealth lying underfoot and everyone too busy to bend down, or self-criticism and admiration for the business acumen of those who, even from across the ocean, are wil ing to bend down and lift?

The town was smal . Al ends in it were short. In five minutes, it was already the outskirts, an empty road, pale blue sky over flat land, birches and spruces on the sides, and rugged pines on sandy ridges with their spreading branches and sun-gilded bark.

The Americanist did everything expected of a distinguished fel ow countryman; he explored the city and its surroundings, addressed the local party committee, but beyond these official activities, there was also a personal side to his visit. He came for a meeting with his childhood. In the official black car, now without the discreet Alexander Mikhaylovich, he went with his wife to one of the outlying, largely untouched by the last decades, streets of Kulebaki—Krisapova Street. There, people stil walked and drove, sinking their feet and wheels into the sand. Wooden houses with gardens and old, no longer needed haylofts and cowsheds extended into the sand. In one of these houses lived Aunt Manya, his late mother's older sister, the last living thread connecting him to Kulebaki.

His heart beat differently when he saw this old house, when the noise of the frozen car subsided, revealing the face of Andrei Ivanovich in the window of the veranda. It became embarrassing when he hesitated for a moment near the wooden fence, forgetting how to open the gate. And both old men, like little children, tumbled off the veranda steps into their nephew's outstretched arms, faintly sighing and reaching out to kiss, their bodies frail and wrinkled, devoid of the juice and color of life. Hugging them gently, he felt their weightless, feeble flesh.

The five-room house was cornered, facing the street and the al ey where, in spring, to the joy of children, a stream ran. The other half once belonged to his maternal grandfather and grandmother. It was on that side that they stayed, three or four grandchildren, coming for school holidays from Gorky and Ivanovo—another sister of his mother, Nyura, lived in Ivanovo. They slept together on a quilt laid out on the floor, and hanging from the ceiling was a wooden wind chime with spread wings, and in the corner, above the lit lamp, the faces of saints glowed in the iconostasis led by St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The great-grandfather of the Americanist on the maternal side was Nicholas, and his father was also Nicholas. However, the grandmother respected and feared her

"party" son-in-law and made lazy-eyed Zhenya, Nyura's son, pray to St.

Nicholas the Wonderworker. When Zhenya didn't listen, she put him on his knees in front of the open cel ar in the kitchen, threatening to put him there, in the darkness and dampness, among jars of milk and barrels of cucumbers and cabbage and the unpleasant, slippery tadpoles...

The first wartime years took both grandfathers and both grandmothers at once (they were barely over sixty), as if burying them under the avalanche of shared sorrow, privations, and calamities. Trips to Kulebaki for summer vacations ceased, and after the war, other unrelated people bought their grandfather's half. They changed, and now a young working couple, helping the old people, lived there. Aunt Manya had no children of her own. Vera, the only daughter of Andrei Ivanovich from his first, long-deceased wife, settled with her family in the Urals.

The old people—both were over eighty—lived out their days alone, and Andrei Ivanovich dreamed of dying on the same day as Maria Mikhaylovna. A pitiful dream of helpless old age.

Meeting with a nephew who traveled through exotic overseas lands was also a long-standing dream, regularly communicated to him by Andrei Ivanovich in his congratulatory postcards, never forgetting to mention how weak they had become—thank God for the young neighbors' help; they can't even make it to the store anymore. And now, the nephew, without warning, dropped in like snow on their heads.

After calming down and catching his breath, having a smal shot of vodka and tasting the rich peasant soup from the Russian oven, they both went to the cemetery to the family graves on the metal hil s topped with crosses. There were no names on the pyramids, and Aunt Manya, sitting on a bench inside the fence, muttered, explaining: "This is Mom.

And this is Dad and the deceased. This is my mother-in-law. And here, Nyura took my place, and here they'l put me..." She referred to her first husband as the deceased, and Nyura, who took her place beside her deceased parents, was her sister.

Andrei Ivanovich sat in silence, taking off his old white cap. Aunt Manya lamented, informing the dead of her intentions and that she was gathering herself but stil not ready to join them. Andrei Ivanovich, once a handsome, kind, and active man, a good worker and community leader, a war veteran, sat crying like a little child. The honorable guest of Kulebaki was also bewildered by this turn of events, ran for the "Volga"

left at the gate, but the car couldn't maneuver through the narrow cemetery al eys.

When the fainting spel

passed, Aunt Manya, regaining

consciousness, lay on the grave mound on her side. They helped her up

to the car, took her home, laid her down, cal ed a doctor who administered an injection...

Leaving the car to his wife, the Americanist walked to the hotel through the entire city. He tested himself: would he find the way to the house where his other grandfather and grandmother lived, on his father's side, without any hints. They rarely went there for visits. On weekends, he and his brother were bathed, combed, dressed in short identical pants with suspenders and sailor shirts, and in this neat attire, they were walked on foot to the other grandfather and grandmother, across the entire city. At that time, he didn't know of a greater distance. And now he walked as if by touch along the forgotten road of childhood: along Truda Street, almost to the factory gates, where they used to rol out unbearably red and hot bricks on platforms, and down along the factory fence to the warm water technical pond emitting smoke, and through the park, where there was also a pond with a mound in the middle... My, everything here was so smal . As if since then, he kept growing and growing, while his city kept shrinking. Beyond the park, past the narrow-gauge railway, the street he never walked al the way through because his grandfather's house was at its beginning... Is it this one? —

he now asked himself. Wil he real y not recognize it? He summoned intuition and instinct to help his memory. This one? Or that one? There was no clear signal. He returned to the narrow-gauge railway and walked those few dozen steps again, and something faintly emerged from the distant past, and he was final y sure: yes, this one, the first one behind the railway track, a single-story wooden house divided into two halves with two picket fences — and these steps, this far-right door. For forty years, different unfamiliar people lived there — such a long time!

He decided not to disturb them with his memories.

His grandfather, by nature, was a true proletarian. The owner's instinct was entirely absent in him, and even in the city, where almost everyone owned their homes at that time, he lived with his grandmother in a state-provided apartment. But they did have a cow—back then, everyone had cows. In the state-provided apartment, the windows were larger than in the other grandfather's izba, the ceilings were higher, there

was white Dutch tile on the Dutch oven, and—a bath. Yes, it seems there was even a bath.

Grandfather Petr Vasilievich was respected by al , and the apartment provided by the factory testified to the recognition of his merits. But the future Americanist was frightened by his grandfather's gloomy silence and glass eye. The glass eye was inserted after a metal shaving got into his real eye. Grandfather's hands trembled—ever since he was cruel y beaten and dragged on an arc behind a Cossack horse in 1905; during that first revolution, he participated in the raid on the apartment of a police officer, trying to free arrested comrades, while the young metalworker revolutionaries, in turn, were breaking the Cossack squadron.

Grandfather Petr Vasilievich came to the metal urgical plant at the end of the previous century as a fourteen-year-old apprentice fitter. After the October Revolution, he worked as a foreman in the blooming mil shop. He was an excel ent craftsman, and, moreover, a self-made inventor. For inventions related to tire production, and for participation in revolutionary activities, the Al -Russian Central Executive Committee bestowed upon him the title of Hero of Labor. Yes, there was such a title in the early thirties, and the corresponding certificate—a large sheet adorned with images of factory pipes and the first bulky wheeled tractors, bearing the handwritten signature of M.I. Kalinin—now hung in the Moscow apartment above the Americanist's bed as a faded family relic.

Several photographs have also been preserved. However, when recal ing the image of his grandfather, the Americanist somehow always saw him in one pose not captured by photographs—silently sitting on a bent Vienna chair. Having lived almost to grandfatherly years, he now wanted to decipher his grandfather's silence, and one day it occurred to him that it was essential y the pose of Dostoevsky in the famous portrait by Perov—leg over leg, hands clasped on the knee to steady their tremors, which never stopped after the Cossack arc, and a narrow face though without a beard, also immersed in an unresolved thought.

Grandfather was silent because he disliked chatterboxes and empty talk; this quality was inherited by the Americanist's father. But what was he thinking so intensely about? Sometimes it seemed that the answer would be tantamount to deciphering the genetic code, his own, family.

Grandfather thought less about the future Americanist and his brother, the future geologist, than about his other grandson, the red-haired and freckled braggart and fantasist Vovka, who constantly lived in their house. They were the children of the elder son, and Vovka, the red-haired one, was the son of the middle son. The middle son, whom the grandfather could be proud of—he was the first in their family to receive a higher education, became an engineer, and a party worker at one of the Leningrad plants. In the late thirties, when many lives were abruptly and unexpectedly breaking, Mikhail was arrested as an "enemy of the people." Grandfather did not believe this accusation. Grandfather himself was the people, and his son could not be an enemy of the people. Mikhail's wife was also arrested, and Vovka was left alone.

Grandfather and grandmother took him in, in Kulebaki. And perhaps this thought tormented the silent grandfather: the boy wil be lost... And the thought of the fate of Mikhail and his daughter-in-law and the general thought: what is happening?..

What is a simple person? Grandfather was a simple—and not simple—worker, a simple—and not simple!—person. So, he lived a simple life of ordinary people in the depths of Russia. And his son, becoming an engineer and a party worker, went beyond the circle of simple life—and look what came of it. Perhaps, the grandfather thought about it, sitting in the pose of Dostoevsky, with trembling palms joined on his knees, gazing unsmilingly at his little clueless grandchildren.

Misfortune came—open the gates. Later, the grandfather was struck by the sudden death of his younger son, the most prominent and handsome in the family. He served as a submariner in the Far East, nurturing the youthful romanticism of his admiring cap-wearing and wide-breeched nephews, and the command's notice stated briefly and unclearly—death from freezing. When personal grief was added to the immense shock of war, Grandfather Petr Vasilievich and Grandmother Anna Alexeevna descended into an unnamed grave. He never knew that his middle son died exactly a year before Victory Day, which was reported approximately twelve years later when he was posthumously rehabilitated, that the rehabilitated daughter-in-law returned from imprisonment alive and found her already grown-up, red-haired son, who retained the orphan's unsettledness throughout his life. The three

children of his elder son, however, were sheltered under the parental wing from the storms of life, destructive for an immature age...

The Americanist was taken on a tour of the metal urgical plant, where they showed him the fifteen-ton steam hammer in the tire shop.

The hammer was 105 years old, but it worked vigorously, like a young one. It effortlessly and silently rose in the roar of the shop, and, taking aim, struck heavily and firmly on the hot, thick ingot, fed from the heating furnace. With each blow of the hammer, the ground resounded with a deep rumble, and the workers would instinctively crouch along with the onlookers. The head of the tire shop mentioned that he could hear the rumble at home, living two kilometers away from the plant.

The head was young and educated. "Your grandfather worked on this hammer," he said to the Americanist, who was both embarrassed and honored.

The Americanist was inspecting the plant with the party committee secretary, Alexander Mikhailovich, and his wife. They stood about fifteen meters away from the hammer, while two workers, with face shields pul ed down to shield from the heat, manipulated the fiery, infernal ingot with their tongs, presenting it to the hammer. The workers wore black, oily, and smoked clothes. Both of the Americanist's grandfathers—Petr Vasilievich and Mikhail Nikolaevich—had once been in their place. And now, the Americanist stood as an honored guest on the sidelines, feeling a mix of excitement and embarrassment at having the hammer demonstrated for him. Moving on to the rol ing mil shop, the Americanist lingered and approached one of the workers. The worker was not young.

He had already lifted his face shield and removed his gloves and initial y looked puzzled at the outstretched hand of a stranger. The worker's hand turned out to be unexpectedly limp.

The Americanist couldn't resist this gesture. He didn't say anything to the worker, remembering his grandfather's and father's aversion to empty talk. Yet through the handshake, he wanted to somehow connect with his grandfather—almost half a century later—and let him know that the grandson remembers him and did not pass by his distant successor at this century-old hammer…

As a surprise and wonder, they showed the factory greenhouse where palms, tropical vines, and bushes with succulent fleshy leaves

grew in the humid mist. The palms reached a height of fifteen meters, and to avoid restricting their growth, the greenhouse had glass wal s and a glass ceiling. The metalworkers from Kulebaki, in their eternal love of Northern children for the hot South, did not hesitate to incur expenses for these palms.

It was there, not near the hammer, that their photograph was taken—in the greenhouse, by the thick mossy trunk of a palm tree, amid exotic bushes and vines.

Their prolonged and lyrical digression came to an end. Too bad.

The author and his character, the Americanist, bidding farewel to childhood once again (and hopeful y not for the last time), did not want to leave the smal house of his modest homeland, nor the larger house of the Motherland, and travel again to a distant foreign soil. Home and wal s help—both the earth and the sky. And one's own people.

The author could have stayed in his native land and slowly described how, on a gloomy morning with light rain, a black "Volga" with a rear curtain left Kulebaki, carrying the Americanist and his wife to Moscow. How, with wet leaves drooping, the familiar forests bid him farewel , and the pontoon bridge across the Oka near Murom echoed heavily; how, on the other, right bank, Vladimir's vil ages with their palisades rol ed along the road, receding backward, and other no less familiar forests with pine and birch stood nearby. Right there, not far from his fifty-year-old city, the Americanist happened to pass through ancient, glorious places in Russian history—Suzdal with the beauty of empty white churches and communal cel s behind the red wal s of the Spaso-Evfimyevsky Monastery, Vladimir with its magnificent Assumption Cathedral and the melodious Italian speech of dark-haired tourists coming out of "Ikaruses"—a service was being held in the cathedral, old women in scarves crowded, and the Americanist, accustomed to scrutinizing Catholic churches abroad, not Orthodox ones, saw in this worship our special simplicity and habit of communal life, al standing, not on Catholic benches, al together, in fear before God, not in contractual, rationalistic relations with Him.

The author could have described in more detail the tal and handsome driver Valentin, who was embarrassed by the unusual fel ow countryman, and even more embarrassed was Nadya, his wife; in the

car, they only spoke to each other, which could seem impolite, but actual y revealed the extreme shyness of two young provincials who were traveling to the capital for the first time with city dwel ers. (How Valentin worried, merging into the multilane traffic on the Enthusiast Highway!) Observing the young couple from Kulebaki, the Americanist realized that he himself had almost outgrown his provincial complex...

What can be said: it is easier to draw handfuls from one's native element than from a foreign one—pitiful drops. Although, on the other hand, the more drawing, the more writing, thorough connoisseurs, and critical critics, and a tougher, more severe demand. It is easier to draw, but harder to write—and be responsible for what is written. We have managed to say something about the professional troubles and hardships of an internationalist writing from abroad and about the foreign land. Isn't it time, for balance, to mention its advantages and privileges?

For what he wrote about America, the Americanist answered in ful only before the judgment of other Americanists—and before his conscience.

Only they, knowing the subject and having been in the same shoes as him, and only conscience (shame turned inward), could truly and sternly judge how sincerely it was written, how much it corresponded to the truth or erred against it. The internationalist writes about a life that is unknown to the vast majority of his readers, and they are also trusting, generous, tolerant, and eager for exoticism (let's not forget this long-standing weakness of ours). What if some scoundrel finds an opportunity to take advantage of this reader's trust, stemming from insufficient knowledge, suddenly flatters (for he is a scoundrel to flatter) the temptations of cheap popularity and easy rewards? Wil there always be someone to point at the scoundrel, a knowledgeable person who also possesses the qualities of Andersen's brave little match-sel er, who, pointing a finger at the scoundrel, wil exclaim in front of al honest people, "The king is naked!"

The internationalist is trusted implicitly, and in this lies his enviable security, the measure of his responsibility, and the privilege not possessed by those writing about their own country. Because from one's native environment, from one's life, not only the writer draws but al of us, without exception. Living is, whether you want it or not, drawing from life. Sometimes more than the soul requests and is ready to endure.

At the beginning of our narrative, introducing the Americanist, we mentioned that he was tormented—increasingly by bouts of unspoken thoughts. Not everything fit into the newspaper, into articles and comments on current international affairs. He attempted to express himself, stepping beyond the steel newspaper frame. These attempts were unsuccessful. The profession became a way of life and life itself.

He was perceived as a journalist writing on international topics. Or, in the best case, as a title complaint—publicist. Journalist or publicist, does it real y matter, as long as you tel about the time and about yourself, bypassing the essential in both time and yourself—your own country?

And now, in the order of the first, though belated, experience, we gave the Americanist an outlet—released him from Charleston, West Virginia, to Kulebaki, Gorky Oblast. There he took a breather from the grim realities of the nuclear age. Old Aunt Manya spent her last days awaiting her death and a grave next to her deceased parents; visions of universal non-existence did not trouble her. Alexander Mikhailovich, the mayor of Kulebaki, did not interview the Americanist about war, peace, and Soviet-American relations—on these pressing topics, the mayor questioned the journalist more than the journalist questioned the mayor.

Now, having given the Americanist a chance to catch his breath, we wil send him again from the overgrown oak groves of the Techa, flowing into the Oka, which, in turn, flows into the Volga, to the shores of the industrial Kanava, flowing into the Ohio River, which, in turn, flows into the Mississippi.

Reclining in his chair with his feet comfortably on the table, Ned Chilton, the publisher of the "Charleston Gazette," was talking on the phone. Seeing the Americanist entering his office, he didn't remove his feet from the table but gestured with his free hand, inviting him to sit. The Americanist sat on the sofa on the opposite wal , observing the publisher and his workspace. Ned had aged and looked like an elderly teenager, with completely gray, boyishly short-cut hair and a wrinkled yet boyish oval face. Slim and wiry, dressed in a thick sweater that hugged his chest. He continued talking, making apologetic gestures to convey that the conversation couldn't be postponed.

When the Americanist contacted him a month ago from Washington, Ned had said he was ready to meet and assist but

suggested coming in early November because he would be flying to Fiji for a vacation at the end of the month, planning to indulge in underwater swimming. Escaping the chil y West Virginian winter to the other side of the world, to hel with everything, more precisely, to paradise, for just a couple of weeks. Now, on the phone, he was discussing the details of the trip in his abrupt and business-like ironic manner.

Among the new items in the office, the Americanist noticed a vase on the windowsil shaped like a large brandy glass, fil ed with meticulously smal iridescent seashel s. A new hobby. The shel s reminded him of deserted beaches, warm white sand sinking into ankles as you walk barefoot, waves lazily rol ing onto the shore, the sun hanging in the azure sky above the boundless ocean. For the Americanist, these were just scenes from American movies where children of the super-industrial country are increasingly returned to the pristine lap of nature. For Ned Chilton, the shel s in the vase were a reminder of the best days of his current, already not-so-young life, which would return if only one knew how to set aside al other matters for them.

"They live splendidly, bil ionaires," the Americanist flattered his Charleston friend when he paused the conversation, and they exchanged handshakes.

"I'm not a bil ionaire, although I wouldn't mind becoming one," Ned retorted.

"In that case, mil ionaires live splendidly," the Americanist conceded.

"And I'l be a mil ionaire only if I sel my shares in the newspaper,"

Ned clarified again, and it turned out that not only bil ionaires fly from the United States to Fiji to escape winter.

In the "Charleston Gazette," he was both the publisher and the editor-in-chief, and he co-owned it with his aunt, who, as they said, had more shares than he did.

Thus, with banter between friends, they met again after a six-year hiatus. Ned's wife and daughter were vacationing in Florida. The Americanist, satisfying Ned's curiosity, shared about his wife, daughter, and grown-up son who had embarrassed the Chilton girl during their last visit to Charleston, earning the nickname "woman-hater" from Ned. After brief inquiries, they turned to business, and the deputy editor-in-chief, Doug Marsh, a not-so-young man with a square head, a large forehead,

and dry humor, was summoned to the office. They discussed the schedule of events prepared for the Americanist, and unexpectedly, a snag arose, sparking a not-too-serious, temperament-fil ed dispute.

"Tomorrow, for lunch, you, Stan, wil meet Rabbi Kohler," Ned announced, elongating the pronunciation of "Stan" as he referred to the Americanist.

"But, Ned, I didn't request a meeting with the rabbi," Stan replied.

"Stan, upon learning of your visit, Rabbi Kohler expressed a desire to meet you."

"But you know, I came here as a reporter to ask questions, and, believe me, I have no questions for Rabbi Kohler."

"Don't get worked up, Stan. Rabbi Kohler has questions for you.

Something about the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union. Wil you refuse him this kindness?"

"Excuse me, Ned, but I have no intention of meeting with any rabbi over lunch. I came to see Charleston and West Virginia, and if Rabbi Kohler wants to ask questions, let him ask Begin, Sharon, and Shamir: what have they done to Lebanon? Why did they bomb Beirut? What made them let kil ers into Sabra and Shatila? And, by the way, where was Rabbi Kohler when children and elderly people in Lebanon were kil ed by bal bombs made in America?"

The Americanist was boiling. Some wanted to exploit his presence in Charleston for their own purposes. The rabbi was wil ing to meet him to tick a box somewhere in his reports to his people and, perhaps, publish an anti-Soviet article with both overt and covert meanings in Chilton's newspaper. He was being invited to play this game. The absurdity was heightened by the fact that this was just Charleston, not New York, Los Angeles, or Miami Beach, where no politician or publisher could raise their voice against Zionist organizations. However, was it real y absurd? It meant that they knew where to apply pressure, what to threaten with, and how to constantly stay in the spotlight. They probably influenced Chilton as wel , and now he was taking precautions against potential accusations of being "soft" on the "reds."

"Stan, but you yourself said you want to see a cross-section of society."

"But I didn't ask for this, Ned. You know how many problems there are in this damned world, and they haven't bypassed West Virginia either."

Don Marsh diplomatical y kept silent during the dispute between the host and the guest, although the guest found support even in his silence. However, Ned, not wanting to spoil relations with the rabbi, stuck to his line until the end.

"Stan, this is impossible. Rabbi Kohler is a pleasant and WORTHY

man. You'l see. He canceled lunch with his friends just to meet with a Soviet journalist. Think about the position you're putting me in. If you refuse, I'l have to broadcast it al over America."

"Ned, don't put me on the spot. No, and again, no..."

The incident was closed, and Chilton didn't revisit it. Instead of lunch with the rabbi, the program included a visit to Charleston University and lunch with its president. The university was located on the other side of the river, right across from the state governor's residence. It was tiny, with only two and a half thousand students. A private institution, with an annual tuition fee of five thousand dol ars. Relatively wealthy, with a budget of around ten mil ion dol ars per year (in addition to tuition fees from students and donations from alumni). A tiny university, but entirely American, with imperial aspirations—foreign branches in Rome, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. Each branch had around a hundred students studying and interning. Every year, the board of trustees, wealthy and respected patrons of the university, held one of its meetings abroad, in one of the branches.

The university president turned out to be a tal , youthful man. His appearance resembled more that of a spoiled playboy than that of a serious scholar or administrator. He chuckled as he talked about the overseas branches and how the trustees loved to hold their meetings in three famous capitals. The Americanist never quite understood the underlying tone of his jokes—whether it was pride (do you have such universities?) or mocking humility (we're so smal and modest that we want to show off at least a bit). Like his counterparts in larger universities, the president's main responsibility was to find and ensure a regular and sufficient influx of funds, which increased every year.

They sat for lunch in a separate room of the university cafeteria and discussed American Catholic bishops, who were extensively covered in the newspapers at that time. They were developing a pastoral letter to their multi-mil ion-member flock condemning the immorality and godlessness of nuclear weapons and cal ing for the freezing of nuclear arsenals. With his characteristic chuckles, the university president claimed that the issue of freezing nuclear arsenals didn't concern or excite an average person on the street. His deputy, casual y cal ed Sal y, and Doug Marsh, accompanying the Americanist, disagreed and argued with him.

"Jay Rockefel er proves that inheriting money is easier than brains," quipped a columnist from the "Charleston Daily" newspaper.

This aphorism seemed to unsettle even the speaker himself with its audacity and subtle anti-Americanism. Regardless of one's attitude towards the wealthy heir, casting a shadow on substantial wealth was not considered very American.

In the same building, sharing a printing press, coexisted newspapers of two political shades – the more liberal Chilton-owned paper and the more conservative "Charleston Daily." Their cohabitation was dictated by commercial considerations, providing cost savings. It transcended political disagreements since it determined the main thing –

the profitability or loss of both newspapers, their survival.

Now, Ned Chilton shared with his conservative neighbors and the guest from Moscow, fostering good neighborly relations, and perhaps, like Bil Brockett from San Francisco, demonstrating that he had no secrets with the "reds."

Two editorial offices were located on the same floor, and right next to Chilton's office was the office of the competing newspaper's editor-in-chief. There, the Americanist was talking to Mr. Cheshire, the editor-in-chief of the "Charleston Daily," and a young columnist whom he had invited for support and, perhaps, as a witness, taking precautions, as the new "witch hunt" made even the hunters cautious.

The conversation revealed a dislike for the governor with the most capitalist name, and it was explained very simply. Unlike other Rockefel ers, the West Virginian was a Republican by party affiliation and, moreover, had a liberal reputation and the biography of a man who

had walked the picket lines. In the mid-sixties, interrupting a diplomatic career that he had begun with an orientation toward Japan at the State Department, Jay Rockefel er suddenly went to the disaster-stricken coal state as a participant in Johnson's declared "war on poverty." It was a time of active youth involvement in public life – anti-war protests, the struggle for racial equality. The "war on poverty" directed this energy through the channels monitored by official Washington. Jay Rockefel er lived and worked for several months in the epicenter of coal miner poverty – the town of Emmons, fifteen miles from Charleston.

Once, the Americanist visited Emmons, inquiring about how the fourth-generation Rockefel er attempted to benefit the people personal y and found no traces of his victory over poverty. The town was stil dying, with no jobs; many had left for other places, but those who remained, rejected by society and broken by life, preserved a fond memory of the young, compassionate bil ionaire.

The editor-in-chief of the "Charleston Daily" had worked for a time on the staff of ultra-conservative Senator Jesse Helms. In his eyes, the current governor Jay Rockefel er was "pink," and this old dislike gave birth to a deadly – and accurate – aphorism: inheriting money is easier than brains.

As for the people, both liberals and conservatives spoke on their behalf with a certain pathos when the people themselves remained silent. The original inhabitants here in West Virginia lived secluded and provincial y, the Americanist heard familiar characteristics again.

Hil bil ies, hil people – that's what they cal ed these people who acquired a reputation as recluses and had no intention of descending from their hil s. Their language, believe it or not, retained archaic words, almost Shakespearean in nature. But they were a proud and very patriotic people, assured both conservatives. During World War II, West Virginia provided almost the highest percentage of recruits in the country; coal miners, exempted from the draft, were offered a reserve, but they refused privileges and went to the army to fight.

"They just thought that battles were safer than working underground," added Mr. Cheshire, lightening the pathos of his praise for the patriotism of his fel ow countrymen.

Now, in the mines, there is "fantastic technology," the process of preparing mine workings and coal extraction is ful y mechanized, and a

miner who fol ows the rules of interaction with machines is completely safe. Miners, the Americanist was told, earn up to a hundred dol ars or more per day if they work...

If... The main dangers awaited miners not underground but on the surface. The unemployment rate in West Virginia was fourteen percent, one of the highest in the country. However, this average level did not convey the scale of the public distress that had enveloped the relatively prosperous Charleston. Coal became a topic of discussion when oil difficulties arose. However, hope for West Virginia miners was short-lived. The situation with oil stabilized, the energy balance leveled off, and demand for coal sharply plummeted again. Moreover, in the inland regions of West Virginia, there were no seaports that would provide access to the world beyond American borders, through which coal could be conveniently and economical y exported overseas to Western Europe, where there was demand for it. And now, more powerful and efficient machines than ever were pushing miners out from underground.

...The worst situation was in the southern part of the state.

Unemployment among miners there reached eighty percent. Oil corporations, immeasurably richer and more predatory, acquired coal corporations and coal deposits and deliberately reduced production,

"sitting on the coal" like dogs on hay, until they squeezed the last penny from oil...

The fantastic unemployment figure — eighty percent — and dreadful suspicions regarding oil corporations, the Americanist heard in another conversation, this time with union officials.

For another conversation, he came to Broad Street, in a new building nestled near a towering road interchange supported by sturdy concrete pil ars. The major highway, running to other states, entered Charleston here and, for other motorists, promptly left it. Only people accustomed to living in noise and tumult could choose such an inconspicuous place for their headquarters. However, land there was probably cheaper. In the new brown building, the West Virginian branch of the largest American professional association AFT — CWA was located.

In the central Washington headquarters of AFT — CWA, ardent anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments prevailed. Heading to Charleston's Broad Street, the Americanist prepared for a fight. But instead of a verbal altercation, a friendly conversation unfolded in the chairman's office, where two wooden, lacquered gavels lay on the desk, and various union banners adorned the wal s. The chairman himself was absent, replaced by the secretary-treasurer and leaders of local unions of builders and steelworkers, as wel as the director of research and publications.

The Americanist was observing the Charleston union members with interest. They were a bit stocky, physical y strong people with a broad build. Neat suits, polished shoes, white shirts, ties, and glasses in thin metal frames; yet in their wide, porous faces, bearing the marks of labor, in their heavy hands and forced postures, the previous day's workers were stil discernible. They had the right to speak on behalf of the people living in working settlements beyond Charleston and, with expertise, could judge their needs and wel -being.

The crisis did not only affect the coal industry. Among builders, the Americanist learned, approximately sixty percent were unemployed (again, a fantastic figure!), as the record-high interest rates on loans in banks forced a sharp cutback in construction. The decline also extended to the steel industry, which supplied products for builders, and in the past year and a half, the number of organized union workers, members of AFT — CWA, in West Virginia dropped from seventy-two thousand to sixty thousand, weakening the labor movement and its ability to resist entrepreneurs. People who lost their jobs receive benefits for twenty-nine weeks; it can be extended for a total of about twenty more weeks — and what's next? Humiliating handouts through the welfare program? There are more cases of suicides; people increasingly seek and find solace in the bottle. Families break apart under the burden of deprivation, despair, the provider's authority disappears, ceasing to unite family members. Moreover, unemployed breadwinners see their last obligation to the family in leaving it; in their absence, the family becomes eligible for additional assistance.

The consequences of unemployment are horrifying. But...

But everyone suffers individual y, with themselves and their families. There is no observed mass organized protest. Union officials talked about this and were surprised.

They

defended

Ronald

Reagan in front of the Soviet

correspondent. From their point of view, Reagan proved to be a foreign and hostile president — for the wealthy, wielding the axe of ruthless economy on programs aiding the unemployed and other categories of those in need, which were hard-won achievements of the labor movement and progressive America.

But not everyone criticized Reagan from the other side of the class barricade for being too lenient and not wielding his axe cruel y enough.

This point of view was presented to the Americanist by an influential representative from the other side — the chairman of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, defending the interests of local businesses. For example, he did not conceal his dissatisfaction with Reagan not raising the retirement age from the current sixty-five years to seventy.

Americans are living longer and longer — and that's fine. John Chapman himself was stil in strong middle age, ful of health and energy; he general y had nothing against increasing the life expectancy of his compatriots. What bothered him, and even outraged him, was the fact that social security, this American pension, was now extended to almost everyone who reached sixty-five. And they al live for another ten, fifteen, or even twenty years, each receiving five to six hundred dol ars monthly from the treasury, plus half of that amount for the wife, even if she did not work. An excessive burden for the federal budget — for the taxpayer who funds it with their dol ars.

But overal , from the side where Mr. Chapman stood, things were going wel . He personal y appeared in Charleston eight years ago, coming from Chicago, where he came across a job vacancy at the Charleston Chamber of Commerce. He decided to try his luck and came here "for an interview." He was interviewed, checked — and hired. He settled in wel and came to love the local life, which attracted him with its calm pace. No one presses you on the bumper here, he said, and the Americanist marveled at the new expression: in an extremely motorized country, people step on each other's rear bumper, not just their heels.

People on highways are polite, John Chapman emphasized again.

Families are large and uphold old traditions of close ties between generations and respect from the younger to the older. Yes, miners are in distress, but in this county, only one in twenty workers is employed in the coal industry. There are even more people in medical institutions.

The chemical industry, the mainstay in the Greater Charleston area, did not undergo fluctuations in economic conditions. Over the past few years, eighteen thousand jobs have been added to the county. For additional income, more and more women leave their household chores, seek — and find — jobs. Visit the restaurants, the stores — aren't there plenty of customers and buyers there? And so on.

Everyone the Americanist met had their own place in Charleston and their own point of view. Their own work — or the absence of it. And a life where everyone stretches their legs according to their own cloth.

In his thick university notebook, the Americanist, reflecting on his impressions of Charleston and recal ing his trip to Kulebaki, jotted down the thought that he often approached but could never express satisfactorily because he never managed to articulate it adequately:

"Kulebaki and Charleston are products and images of two social systems and two civilizations. They have different appearances, different levels and architecture, sidewalks and cars, economic orientations.

Different mayors, although both are smart and experienced in their own ways... One, to move urban affairs, relied on funds during the plant reconstruction, and the other — on private construction, attracting private capital... In the hometown, people are calmer and, of course, confident in tomorrow; if they fear anything, it's wars, not unemployment.

Life is less dynamic than in Charleston, but wil you rejoice in this dynamism if it throws you overboard during the next turmoil, which the laws of capitalist competition are constantly 'organizing'? We are somewhat alike, very different in many ways, living different lives at the same time, distant from each other."

Another version of this thought, influenced by immediate impressions, was preserved in the same notebook:

"In these years of our intense debates and increased suspicion, when you come here for a few weeks and barely get through this time, longing for your family and homeland, approaching with a clear-eyed col eague from TASS to his temporary residence in a Washington

suburb, and in the crimson November sunset, scrutinizing their cars on their highways, and the road signs, outlines and signs of buildings and houses, for the thousandth time, you think about what you've long explained to yourself rational y but stil can't ful y comprehend: why this strange life in a foreign country among strangers? For the sake of some notes in the newspaper? Why do they need us? We — them? But we cannot help but scrutinize each other — not just out of curiosity, as in the times of Goncharov's 'Frigate Pal as,' not just as idle travelers. People of the nuclear age, we cannot establish a common life — and we cannot do without each other..."

A later version of the same thought emerged in the notebook upon returning to Moscow:

"Here is one of the most incredible sensations, not American, but domestic. In the uninhabited wilderness of the Gorny Altai, Old Believers-hermits, the Lykovs, were discovered. Vasily Peskov wrote about them in detail and expressively. In their homespun clothes, with staffs and bags, old Karp Lykov and his daughter Agafya stood in photographs next to the geologists who found them, and we marveled together: the coexistence of the 20th and 18th centuries. Can you cal the Lykovs our contemporaries? A case from the category of 'obvious —

incredible.' And this case, just right for a corresponding television program, was interpreted approximately in this spirit by Professor S.P.

Kapitsa and V.M. Peskov, examining photographs with TV viewers. But don't other distances within the obvious limits of our century, inside it, fal into the same category that one would not think of measuring in centuries and considering incredible? We say that the Lykovs do not understand modern people. But what about the lack of understanding between modern people? We have no doubt that Americans are our contemporaries, people of the 20th century, not the 18th. And yet, in a way, they are farther from us than Karp and Agafya Lykov. Is it about homespun fabric? Something much more incredible: the multitude, the capacity, the boundless capacity of the 20th century..."

In essence, a simple thought struggled within its dialectical y interconnected opposites, slipping from under the pen: we are different, yet we are al human, al children and particles of one family of humanity.

Don Marsh drove the Americanist to his meetings in Charleston, and for the countryside trip, reporter Steve was assigned to him. They were pleasant people, and it was easy and straightforward with them.

The house did not belong to the Charleston elite but was, so to speak, part of the community. Steve was an ordinary provincial journalist, a hardworking reporter, who had spent thirty years at the "Charleston Gazette." When the conversation turned to Ned Chilton, both, leaving aside the usual newspaper banter, spoke of him respectful y and cautiously. Ned was their boss, the owner, and opinions about the boss were kept to themselves. In the silence and cautious answers, there was a sense: wealthy, can afford a lot.

Life had treated Steve, a skinny, hunchbacked man, roughly, but he stil loved his work and enjoyed his reporting trips and writings. He had never traveled abroad, never even been to Canada, just planned to go there — to fish. He knew West Virginia like the back of his hand, and his car seemed to merge with him — a common trait of Americans born motorists. A bachelor, he lived with his mother about a hundred kilometers from Charleston and commuted to and from work every day.

In his words, one could feel a man who cared about nature, hunting, and fishing, about outdoor activities. Thanksgiving was approaching, the main holiday of late autumn, and with it, the deer hunting season — the most popular in the Appalachians. From Steve, the Americanist learned that in West Virginia, with a population of two mil ion, there are approximately half a mil ion deer, and a hunting license for locals costs three times less than for visitors.

But they did not go hunting from Charleston on the road leading east.

On the slopes of low hil s, the overcast sky scratched by the branches of bare trees. Due to the mountains, low sky, and the approaching darkness, even outside the city, there was no sense of spaciousness. The val ey felt cramped due to the highways, the railway where heavy freight trains rumbled, and the worker settlements with gray houses, where even advertising signs were somewhat gray and faded.

They turned off the highway onto a dirt road, running along the mountain slope until it reached a dead end. There, they left the car, walked to the building of the cleaning plant, and observed as shiny black pieces of coal

cascaded from brightly yel ow large dump trucks onto the conveyor belt, which fed them into open wagons.

The Americanist absorbed these images and details. He could never bring himself to use a camera, even though photos would have been invaluable for subsequent descriptions. His professional method consisted only of memorizing and jotting down the necessary details in a few words in his notebook. A journalist needs an overal picture, which involved office meetings with executives, with analysts who think in numbers and general categories. It was good if a couple of sharp, vivid phrases remained from them. An inspection of the place was also mandatory — it al ows the newspaper reader to vividly see where the action is taking place. And, final y, it would be good to place a specific person in the picture, without numbers and general reasoning, in a specific life situation — as a live il ustration. Like in movies. Long shot.

Close-up. And tracking — the camera moves the person's face closer to the viewer...

He lacked that close-up, an interview on the street — with a person from the street. Preferably unemployed. Although Ned Chilton's newspaper did not resemble the Americanist's, experienced reporter Steve understood him. But where to find the right person? In smal vil ages, people drove by them in cars, there was no one on the streets, and there were, in essence, no streets, just houses along the road. But you can't knock on the door. Cafeterias adorned with Coca-Cola signs, which had taken over these places, or grocery stores — food markets, remained.

Steve pul ed up to a food market on the way to the old mining town of Cabin Creek. By American standards, it was a smal grocery store, but it had a parking lot for customer cars. The parking lot, which could accommodate several dozen cars, was empty. There were only three or four old jalopies, as if written off from more prosperous places, in the parking lot. In one of them were people — two children and a woman in the back seat and a young bearded man in the front. Another bearded man, coming out of the food market and carrying a paper bag with groceries, got into this car. Steve gave the Americanist a questioning look and, receiving an approving nod, approached the guy. A shot in the dark. These were passers-by, and their words about life in West Virginia could not matter. Judging by the license plate, which the interview

hunters did not notice right away, these people and their words would have been useful in Pennsylvania.

No more people were in the parking lot, and the Americanist and Steve headed towards the entrance to the store. At that moment, an elderly man in a khaki shirt and khaki cotton pants came out of the store, but for some reason, he did not inspire the two reporters, and they let him go without talking to him.

Their free search was a common practice among journalists and television people worldwide and, in essence, absurd. To run into an unknown person, extract a few words from him about his life or opinion on a particular event, and immediately part ways with him, transmitting his words to a newspaper he wil never read. What prevails here —

traditional newspaper realism, requiring specific names and situations, or, on the contrary, surrealism in the style of the genius Salvador Dali?

On the other hand, can one demand more from the instantly created newspaper and its journalist-creator than they can give in their place and under the circumstances they propose? And the sensible realist reader takes what is given, understanding the limits of the newspaper and by no means necessarily considering it a complete and reliable reflection of the complex world. If anyone has il usions, it is most likely the journalist himself, engrossed in his Sisyphean work. He lives (and cannot help but live) under the il usion that the newspaper is an entire world and that he, as its creator, stands at its center.

Neither Steve nor the Americanist indulged in self-flagel ation when they entered the food market to find a West Virginian who, caught off guard, would candidly tel them about life in this God-forsaken land.

Like in any American self-service store, there were shelves with a fairly wide, mandatory selection of products. Shoppers, they observed by peeking between the shelves, were almost nonexistent.

The cashier could have helped, provided summary data: are there many people? What do they take — steaks, ground meat, or sometimes even canned dog food? How did unemployment affect the purchasing power of the county? But the cashier, typing on the cash register keys, packing groceries into paper bags, was absorbed in her work.

After careful consideration, they approached a young couple with a little boy. The three-year-old boy wiggled his legs, sitting in the shopping

cart pushed by his father, a lanky guy with a sickly face covered in reddish stubble. When they approached, the guy stopped the cart and looked at them with bewildered albino-like white and red eyes. Steve introduced the reporter from Moscow, from Russia. The naive and disheveled worker did not catch the hidden humor of the situation: a reporter from Russia traveled thousands and thousands of miles to reach a roadside food market near Cabin Creek and ask him a few questions. The wife, a pale, unremarkable woman in a jacket and pants, also didn't quite understand what was happening but moved closer, ready to help her husband. Only the boy didn't care. He enjoyed rol ing in the shopping cart, grabbing onto its nickel-plated weaving, and continued to chatter with his legs, looking up from the bottom at his stopped father and the two strangers who approached him.

"Yes, a miner," replied the ailing guy. "Yes, from around here. How are you? Don't you know?"

And together with his wife, almost word for word, they reported that he had been unemployed for four months. And that he had just been hired — for two months. Those four months of fear and confusion stil lingered with them, and they were already peering two months ahead, afraid of the future.

The guy's gaze was awkwardly troubled, and in it, the Americanist read: why pry into it? What good does it do me to answer your questions? Wouldn't it be better if you told me what wil happen next?

But he could not answer what would happen next with this young man, his wife, and son, happily kicking his legs in the cart, and he stopped the questioning. He, the journalist, stocked up on the necessary details. And then it was not about professionalism but purely human. In a human way, he did not want, and had no right to, probe into someone else's wounds. And the skinny hunchbacked Steve, although sent to help the Russian reporter, also did not want to probe into the wounds of his fel ow countryman in front of a person from another country and another world.

On the evening before the Americanist's departure from Charleston, Ned hosted a reception in his honor at a private club situated on a hil in a secluded part of the city. Yes, there is such an

expression - to throw a party, which means to organize a reception or celebration in his honor.

In Charleston, as in any self-respecting American city, there was a private club, and its members were not reporters like Steve, but prominent affluent citizens who paid annual dues. Together with Ned, the Americanist had already visited this club once on a summer Saturday when it was lively, crowded, festive, everyone knew each other and exchanged greetings. The veranda offered a beautiful view of green meadows, golf courses, and nearby mountains. Now, on a November evening, the spacious building with hal s, lounges, a bar, and a restaurant seemed empty, surrounded by darkness outside the windows.

However, Ned Chilton did everything to liven up the club and brighten the last evening. For the Moscow guest, he invited about a dozen of his friends and acquaintances. To start, there was a bar with a bartender and a ful range of drinks, including, of course, "Stolichnaya"

vodka, shrimp, sausages, cheese, and other snacks. (Without sparing expenses, Ned even ordered Russian caviar from New York, but flaws in American service caused it not to be delivered on time.) Then, downstairs in a separate room, he treated his guests to a delicious dinner, also including a Russian dish — cold borscht — adapted to American taste. After dinner, it was back to the bar for "after-dinner"

drinks, brandies, and liqueurs.

But the main treat from generous Ned was the cream of Charleston society. And for them, the cream, rarer than cold borscht, was a man from Moscow.

Ned himself, in a black furry blazer with a yachtsman's emblem on the breast pocket, deliberately kept a low profile, giving the spotlight to the honored guest. The Americanist stood among the gathering, and Charlestonians, one after another, approached him to greet, introduce themselves, and talk. Each one began with a question about how a man from Moscow happened to end up in Charleston.

"I worked as a correspondent in New York and Washington, and now I've come to the States for a while and decided to visit Charleston, where I've been several times," explained the Americanist to each person.

Before him stood a thirty-year-old young man with a soft, inviting smile under dark, thick mustaches — a lawyer who had just been

elected to Congress from one of the West Virginian electoral districts, representing the Democratic Party. He was already packing his bags to move to Washington by January, and now, even through a Muscovite, once a resident of Washington, he tried to imagine what his new life as a congressman in the capital would be like.

"I worked as a correspondent in New York and Washington..."

Even black people were found in Charleston. Here was one of them, tal and handsome, with gray in his black hair, getting acquainted with the Americanist — the president of the col ege in West Virginia, with four thousand students, twenty percent of whom were African American.

The col ege was established in the late fifties during the struggle against racial segregation. Its current president, original y from Texas, worked in Atlanta, Georgia, and final y made his way to Charleston.

"I worked as a correspondent..."

Ned, particularly emphasizing his close friend, introduced the Americanist to a broad-shouldered giant with a beautiful wife, coyly turning her face to showcase her sharp nose and beautiful teeth in a joyful smile. Ned mentioned that next summer, two couples, including him, would like to travel "by Siberian Express" across the entire Soviet Union. "It's the world's longest overland route, isn't it? How many days does it take? And how do you recommend, Steve, where is the best place to start — from Moscow and go to Nakhodka or board in Nakhodka and move from east to west?" The travel plan also included Western Europe and Japan, but they hadn't decided where to start yet.

"I worked..."

A man with a mustache, a pipe, and a shrewd squint of his furry eyes held the position of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of West Virginia and immediately engaged in a debate about the concepts of an

"open" and "closed" society.

In addition, there was the familiar president of Charleston University, an old wise lawyer named Ned, whom the Americanist had met before, Don Marsh with his charming intel igent wife, and others. Of course, there were no union workers or the unemployed from the food market in Cabin Creek. Rabbi Kohler was also absent.

Thus, thanks to Ned, the Americanist expanded his understanding of the cross-section of Charleston society. Fueled by drinks at the bar, the society moved to a separate room with a dining table for lunch,

where Ned, not a fan of long speeches, spoke only a few words about the desirability of decent relations between Americans and Russians. He proposed a toast, saying these two words in Russian and explaining their meaning to the other guests. The Americanist responded with a toast of his own. They seated him between the beautiful wife of a giant and the suede-light-lilac wife of an industrialist. The former displayed her beautiful teeth in a smile, while the latter, fortified by drinks like her husband, shared her impressions of Moscow: people are warm but, for some reason, reluctant to talk to foreigners. The Supreme Court Justice, sitting across the table, echoed the talkative lady's theme of an "open"

and "closed" society...

In the morning, it was raining. The concierge cal ed a taxi upon request. The city turned gray from the rain, cars with Charleston residents rushing to work got wet in the rain, the river emitted a damp mist under the rain, and, gazing at this scene through the fogged-up car window, the Americanist bid farewel to Charleston. The inclement weather did not prevent the scheduled flight from arriving on time, disembarking and boarding passengers, and taking off from the smooth crest of the mountain. From that vantage point, Charleston unfolded in the val ey, immediately veiled by flying wisps of clouds. The golden-domed Capitol of the state legislature, where the state assembly convenes, emerged, along with the red-brick residence of Governor Jay Rockefel er, who had spent another eight mil ion dol ars on his reelection. The view also included the autumnal, gloomy Kanawha River, which flows into the Ohio River and eventual y into the Mississippi, much like how Charleston flows into the state of West Virginia and beyond—into the United States of America.

In the hourglass, the sand that measures the passage of time diminishes uniformly, at a constant rate. But have you ever noticed that the less sand remains in the inverted glass cone, the more swiftly it spirals into nothingness, being drawn into the vortex? It seems that not only the sand flows faster, but time itself spirals into a whirlpool when only a smal amount remains at the bottom. The same happens with life itself and the segments into which we, like portions of sand in an hourglass, divide our lives. Sometimes these segments are cal ed overseas assignments.

The Americanist was stil concerned about what new material to send to the newspaper, which demanded nothing and seemed to have forgotten his existence. He was stil working on correspondence, portraying people with benevolent and austere faces, dressed in black, as positive characters—Catholic bishops. They gathered at the Statler Hilton hotel in Washington, just steps away from the Soviet embassy, to discuss another version of their anathema against nuclear weapons.

New debates flared up about the pace of military budget growth (no one opposed its growth in principle). In Congress, inspired by the results of the midterm elections, the voices of critics of the administration sounded bolder. The Americanist wanted to blend these voices with the voice of the Catholic bishops, write and send another correspondence to Moscow about the rise of the anti-war movement.

Meanwhile, he calculated that he had already entered the last quarter of his one-and-a-half-month assignment. These were the remaining days, and, like sand at the bottom of an hourglass, they flowed faster, spiraling into a vortex. The departure date, set in the airline ticket from the beginning and also in the temporary residence permit issued by Inspector Hayes at Dorval Airport in Montreal, was Thursday of the week that would begin in a week, about to start.

Ahead was stil New York, the giant city, but in the consciousness counting the days, it seemed only a springboard for the jump home. The feeling of liberation grew light and joyful. In this mood, bidding farewel to the embassy and the Muscovites in Washington, who generously bestowed their hospitality and friendly participation, on a cloudy, rainy, yet beautiful late November noon, the Americanist left the Holiday Inn hotel and, on a Sunday, damp and deserted Wisconsin Avenue, set off for New York.

Actual y, it was only an hour's flight from Washington National Airport to New York, and the aircraft of Eastern Airlines, disregarding the bad weather, dutiful y shuttled between the two cities that day. However, he preferred another option—by car. Let's not forget that America is primarily about roads and cars, and our hero, although cal ed a traveler, this time did not truly experience either. For six years, he hadn't seen those familiar highways between Washington and New York. And he wanted to feel that concrete and land under the wheels and on both

sides of the wheels over its approximately four-hundred-kilometer stretch.

Dozens of times, behind the wheel, he covered al these American miles

on beltways, freeways, highways, turnpikes, and other expressways. Now, as a passenger, and moreover, one unaccustomed to the steering wheel, he was taken by a Muscovite working in New York, who had come to Washington for a few days.

Lively and cheerful, a talented person who keenly felt and expressed the tragicomedy of our foreign life, Volodya was in America on his third long business trip— a Soviet citizen in the position of an international official, holding a directorial position in the UN Secretariat.

In many respects, Volodya was a more knowledgeable Americanist than our Americanist and undoubtedly a more charming and witty storytel er and conversationalist. In general, if we ask the question about Americanists, it should be noted that one of them is chosen as the hero of our narrative for one simple reason—only his journey could be traced by the author from beginning to end, which, thankful y, is not far away.

The author apologizes to the reader for mentioning friends and comrades of the Americanist briefly and, in his defense, can say the fol owing: each of them, experienced individuals, has their own story about America, but no one, except the Americanist, gave the author the authority to tel the story on their behalf. The author is responsible for his own—briefly speaking, that is the principle the author fol ows, not encroaching on the copyrights of other Americanists and apologizing to the reader for not describing our people in America in detail...

So, on that gloomy November Sunday, the Americanist was extremely glad to see again the seemingly stern athlete with the skul of a thinker and his faithful friend Maya, and to sit behind them on the seat of the smal Plymouth, slightly crowding two young compatriots who worked under Volodya's leadership at the UN and were experiencing America for the first time; they were stil under the impression of their acquaintance with the capital.

From Washington to New York, it's approximately a five-hour drive if you strictly adhere to the speed limit, avoiding unpleasant encounters with traffic police. This limit al owed a maximum speed of only fifty-five miles, or eighty-eight kilometers per hour—motorists were restrained in the early seventies when it was deemed that these speeds, general y

meager for American cars and roads, efficiently saved fuel and sharply reduced the number of accidents and casualties. The roads between Washington and New York are not the best in America, worn out by intensive use, but they are stil high-quality American roads, with a median strip and at least two lanes in each direction. On such roads, a daredevil can easily reach New York in four hours, if suddenly there is no police "Ford" or "Chrysler" with a siren on the roof, and its occupant does not wave imperatively, ordering to pul over, stop, present a driver's license, and receive a formal notice of a court summons to pay a fine (which can be done without appearing in person, sending a check or money order to the court's address).

Volodya planned to reach New York by dusk, around five in the evening. With this intention, driving his Plymouth sharply and confidently, he emerged onto the Washington Beltway, then at the right place, fol owing the instructions of towering green signs over the road, he turned onto the powerful Federal 95, added to the old Baltimore highway, and merged into the rushing automotive herd, splashing water.

The rain was pouring and pouring. They sped along, raising a watery dust in the water trails of other cars, wiping the front windshield, enlightening inexperienced compatriots, chatting about this and that, and, of course, not taking their eyes off the road. The route was wel known. Up ahead was the long tunnel under the Chesapeake Bay in the Baltimore area, and before that—the first tol , for passage through the tunnel. The second tol on the Maryland highway named after John F.

Kennedy, then at the steep high bridge over the Delaware River, and further, the longest stretch of the journey, also a tol expressway-turnpike of the state of New Jersey, and after that, beyond Newark, New York itself was in line, where you emerge from underground, from the three-kilometer Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson.

Their schedule went awry on the first leg, on the approach to the tunnel under the Baltimore harbor. The familiar path was blocked. A warning electric arrow on the road sign, formed by the flashing light bulbs running to its tip, indicated the detour direction.

Now they couldn't get out of the traffic jams. Shiny metal humps of colorful and mismatched cars were in close proximity to each other, blocking the road, seemingly al the way to New York. They lost at least an hour at just the Baltimore tunnel, which couldn't process the endless

thousands of cars in time, sucking them in and spitting them out with its three huge quadrangular funnels.

It didn't get better after that. The rain didn't stop, here and there fog settled on the road. A line in front of the Delaware Bridge and another at the tol booths at the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike, and the longest line where this turnpike merged with a similar one from the state of Philadelphia, adding thousands more cars.

Sunday, as always, cleared the road of freight traffic, intimidatingly large trucks with wagon-like trailers. But this was no ordinary Sunday.

Rain, fog—and hundreds of thousands of people were returning home, to work after a four-day Thanksgiving holiday, when traditional y, while feasting on turkey at the festive table, they celebrate the family hearth and the first survivors among the pilgrims who landed on American soil.

Babylonian congestion reigned on the roads, and license plates of various colors testified to the affiliation of motorists to at least a dozen states in the Northwest and Midwest, New England, and the South.

Within five hours, by the estimated arrival time in New York, the passengers of our Plymouth had barely covered half the distance and were forced to stop and have a snack at a roadside cafeteria, in front of which hundreds of cars were parked, and al the seats at the dining tables and counters were occupied, with newcomers waiting in line.

It was already dark, and the rain continued to fal in the beams of car headlights as they passed the branching highways in the Newark area. But directly before New York, another obstacle awaited them—an emergency traffic light with its flashing closed the road to the Lincoln Tunnel, which could not accommodate the stream of cars rushing into Manhattan, and directed the traffic to bypass the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson. New York was very close; the evening glow of its lights was already seeping through to the right beyond the rain curtain, but they had to comply, and the tired Volodya, staring intently into the darkness and further sinking his head into square shoulders, drove the Plymouth north, away from the city and its al uring glow.

He had poor visibility in the darkness. This became apparent in quite dramatic circumstances. At a routine intersection, hesitating in his decision, Volodya failed to notice a low and narrow concrete barrier emerging from the asphalt. When he realized it, it was already too late.

The car, at speed, col ided with the barrier, which ended up between its wheels. Metal ominously screeched against the concrete beneath the passengers' feet. The barrier was widening, and the car continued to move, risking being torn apart, with only a few centimeters separating fragile human bodies from the grip of metal and concrete. Fortunately, without losing composure, Volodya sharply applied the brakes and halted the car. The life-and-death encounter lasted a moment. From a distance, only the first exclamations were heard. The men were restrained in their choice of words, but the women maintained composure. The grinding noise ceased.

The Plymouth sat on the median barrier, its wheels lifted off the ground. On the right and left, cars rushed toward the George Washington Bridge, to New York, to Manhattan, dazzling them with their headlights, spraying water as if nothing had happened. Attempts to manual y lift the car off the barrier and rol it back were unsuccessful.

They found themselves in the midst of swift, merciless, and indifferent traffic. Metal ic bodies, capable of crushing a human body effortlessly, were heading straight toward them, staring their headlights through the rain as if to better and more ruthlessly il uminate the helpless figures of people. Only in the last moment, in the last tens of meters, the cars swerved to the left or right, maintaining the same indifferent speed, and sped past, fol owed by others.

Rain, darkness, the rustling of tires, swiftly passing metal ic monsters. And no phone to cal for emergency assistance, not even a way to cross the road.

The image of this cruel, indifferent movement first emerged in the early years of Amerikanist's stay in America. It was associated with the image of a dog hit on the highway. No one wil stop to remove the carcass, and not everyone has the time to go around it. Each person crushes the unfortunate, already lifeless creature. Everyone presses it into the highway with the wheels of their car—and speeds past, perhaps flinching and horrified. And now the body is flattened as if a steamrol er had been run over it back and forth, and it is no longer possible to tel whose body it is—whether it's a dog's or a deer's—and there's just a spot on the concrete highway, just a shadow of a humiliated being, and

as you fly over it, you briefly wonder: what number are you in line, a hurried and, in general, indifferent participant in this destruction?

Rescue came faster than they had anticipated. In less than half an hour, it arrived in the form of an agile orange tow truck adorned with blood-red warning lights on al sides. The truck, shielded by lights from oncoming cars, pul ed up next to the "Plymouth." A worker, a seasoned professional—his appearance immediately reassured them; for such trivial accidents, a play of imagination, he had dealt with at least a dozen on this damn Sunday. In America, they appreciate precision in business operations. There was no evasiveness or hesitation: "How much, boss?"

The rescuer named the price, not yet starting the job: fifty dol ars.

And—the money upfront.

In a quarter of an hour, using the winch, the mechanic lifted the

"Plymouth" off the treacherous barrier. Maneuvering amidst the oncoming traffic with its red lights flashing, he positioned it on the road, replaced the flat tire with a spare one. Shielding them, he al owed Volodya to gain speed and merge into the general flow. With a wave goodbye, he stayed on duty on the highway.

They entered Manhattan at ten in the evening. Something out of the ordinary had to happen, thought the Americanist now. In this city, the extraordinary became ordinary. Everything happened, and anything could be expected. Volodya, Maya, two companions just beginning to explore America, and the Americanist himself, reflecting on what had happened, saw it as if on a stage—under the rain and amid the two streams of fire-spreading cars. It was cruel and spectacular. The captivating cruel spectacle that characterized New York.

Volodya dropped him off near the "Esplanade" hotel on West End Avenue between Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Streets.

People are slaves to habits that reveal their past. The Americanist's former New York home, Schwab House, neighbored the

"Esplanade," and when coming to New York, he always tried to stay there. It was an old hotel with two-room suites and kitchens, mainly rented by families or frail old men and women. The inconvenience was the lack of direct phones—cal s were made through the downstairs switchboard, which wasn't always manned. But this inconvenience was

more than compensated for by the proximity to the newsroom, where Victor, a longtime good friend, now worked.

Pushing the revolving door, he entered the Esplanade's lobby.

Shushanna, an old acquaintance, was at the front desk, immediately recognizing him. She had gained weight but spoke English better now.

New York is a transient courtyard. Every third, and maybe even second, inhabitant came from somewhere else, not from the depths of the continent behind it but from the east or south, from across the ocean.

Shushanna came from Israel, and the hotel owner was from there too.

Downstairs, in the hal , meetings of old and young Orthodox Jews were sometimes held, easily identifiable by the patches of fur caps on the backs of their heads.

Victor had timely booked a room for him, and the Americanist confirmed that even in this old hotel, prices had tripled in the last ten years, at a minimum.

After unpacking and freshening up, he cal ed Victor and headed to Schwab House. At the entrance to the building, two doormen were shaking what seemed to be a little dog, lifting it by the hind legs. The little dog whimpered plaintively. The doormen greeted the Americanist as if he were a regular resident, as if they had seen him just a few hours ago. Even new doormen and elevator operators let him in without questions, as if an invisible magical seal of Schwab House's former resident stil lingered on him. While continuing to hold the whimpering dog upside down, the doormen, in their own way, explained that it had swal owed a bal , and they wanted to shake it out.

Where else, in which city, wil you immediately encounter a little dog that swal owed a bal and people who are shaking it out in such a strange way?

In the familiar apartment on the eighth floor, he and Victor were talking about Moscow and American news. Raya was setting the table for dinner. On the large TV screen, left by Vitaliy and standing in the same corner by the window, pictures and short energetic reports about recent crimes and various other incidents flickered. Outside, sirens of police and fire trucks wailed, rushing to their emergencies, promising new sensations for the TV screen. New York lived its usual bustling life.

The Americaphile took pleasure in reviving his New York habits.

After a late dinner, he headed to the corner of Seventy-Second Street and Broadway for a fresh copy of "The New York Times." The rain had stopped, and it was damp and chil y. The wet gray pavement tiles glistened familiarly under the streetlights. On the corner, he noticed a telephone booth with a hinged door that had to be struck with a fist or a boot to open. Two dark blue metal boxes, waist-high and with convex roofs, stood by the curb: one for general mail and the other exclusively for New York. Everything was in its place, cast-iron hydrant pedestals, a large wire trash basket, a post with metal signs indicating West End Avenue and Seventy-Third Street, and a traffic light where the words

"Don't Walk" brightly flashed in red and "Walk" in green. At this late hour, no one crossed the street near the Schwab House, and the fiery letters shone for him alone.

West End Avenue was about two hundred meters away from Broadway, where the nightlife was stil active. They could reach it by taking Seventy-Third Street. It was wel -lit with evening lights and had always been safe on this stretch—at least, in the six years of evening walks there, nothing had ever happened to him. However, it was stil considered a side street, and on its right side stood old smal houses with dangerous semi-basement exits where Puerto Ricans lived. He decided not to tempt fate; jokes with New York could be risky, and times had not changed for the better. He chose another path and quickly strode down West End Avenue: one block down to Seventy-Second, and then along Seventy-Second past the corner supermarket, a smal bookstore, a new ladies' dress salon, an old funeral home, and so on—towards Broadway. The deli store (now cal ed "deli") was stil open late at night, where he used to buy sunflower seeds thinking they would help him quit smoking. On the other side of Seventy-Second, the vegetable store was stil operating at the intersection with Broadway, and near the entrance to the old subway station, an old newsstand, as always, peeked out from behind a pile of freshly delivered newspapers on the counter. Broadway never slept; cars were driving by, regulars sat in il uminated bars, late pedestrians strol ed along the sidewalks, and the muffled rumbling of subway trains could be heard from underground.

At night, he had a dream. Silent men in business suits slipped through a door that silently opened before his eyes and took charge of his hotel room. Although he was plainly visible, they behaved as if they did not see him. In the dream, he struggled to say something to them, to protest, to convey that it was against the rules to enter his room in his presence. At the same time, he understood in the dream that protesting was dangerous, that by identifying himself, he would make them decide what to do with him. It was as if he would give them a reason and the right to remove him. In the dream, he had no doubt that the silent men were, of course, FBI agents, and the hotel room was his room at the

"Esplanade." In this way, it was somehow an inevitable part of his return to New York—as if nowhere else but in New York such a nightmare could appear on the very first night.

In the morning, slightly lifting the vertical American curtain made of dense paper and bending down, he looked out the window—a typical New York wel formed by the wal s of closely standing multi-story, smoke-stained brick buildings. In his window on the fourteenth floor, the curtains of the windows opposite, pul ed up, stared blindly. The short day was unfolding—rustling of tires, car honks, the same shril , as at night, wailing of sirens, and the indistinct voices of people rose to the heavens somewhere beyond the wal s of this silent wel , and there was a continuous hum, trembling, puffing, sighs, and exhalations of the city.

The wal s of the wel were uneven in height. Above the rooftops, clouds hung in the sky, and in the narrow gap between the Hudson piers, the Hudson tempted with piercingly cold autumn space and wil .

Various feelings were evoked in him by this city. There was only no indifference. New York elicited an attitude towards it as towards a living being. Understanding it was as difficult as understanding life.

In a benevolent mood, like a person settled in a familiar place before returning home, the Americaphile went down to the street and, before going to Victor's, decided to take a strol around Schwab House.

Typical y New York, that is, extraordinary, did not keep him waiting.

Turning from Riverside Drive onto Seventy-Third Street, he came face to face with a half-beast half-man. Of gigantic stature. With a face covered in soot or coal, he clearly slept on dirty sheets and had not had time to take care of himself in the morning. Inflamed eyes stared wild and gloomy at the Americaphile. The gaze excluded any contact with other

homo sapiens. It felt like contacts had long been disrupted and even torn, and the creature with gloomy-muscled eyes no longer insisted on its belonging to the higher biological species. With the shuffling and dilapidated gait of a goril a, in wide, broken moonwalker boots, the tramp walked towards the Hudson, where his place in the city jungle, his lair, might be.

Rejected. A living corpse. At the bottom. Definitions and images from the classics, familiar from school desks, come to life on the streets of New York. Picturesque. Theatrical-cruel. No, nothing invented by the greats. Al this exists and, therefore, was. Al of it is drawn from life. This gloomy man rose against life— or broke under its weight? Or rose—and broke?

Similar or different fates are hidden behind each of them under this common, beating word "loser," a loser? Yes, life knows no mercy; life is a cruel struggle, and on the streets of New York, it directly shows the final (and finished) products of this struggle.

New York always struck the Americaphile with its starkness, al -encompassing nature, and the coexistence of everything and everyone. Perhaps, nowhere else does a person feel so unpretentious, so lost, so free, and so abandoned, and for the same reason—here, nobody cares about him.

Once, late in the evening, he was returning to the "Esplanade" via Seventy-Second Street. In a smal restaurant cal ed "Copper Pit" with glass wal s extending onto the sidewalk, candlelight glimmered warmly on starched, crisp tablecloths. A bit further, on the side of the wide sidewalk closer to the curb, a pile of polyethylene, glistening black bags fil ed with garbage occupied half the space—a sign that the city garbage col ectors were on strike again. Leaning against the bags was a fairly decent single mattress—someone in this building, apparently, was updating furniture, throwing the old one directly onto the street. He took a few more steps, bypassing the heap of garbage bags, and behind their barricade, he noticed an inconspicuous discarded couch. On the couch was an elderly woman asleep. This was the comfort of the homeless—in the middle of the street, next to the inviting glow of candles flickering on the tables of the restaurant. Each to their own. Without a pil ow, lying in a

quite natural position, legs slightly hanging off the couch, the woman slept trustingly, clasping her purse to her chest.

The Americaphile froze at a distance, as if an invisible string fenced off, not al owing him to cross, the living space of this homeless woman under the dark and starless sky, which no one looks up at in New York, under the raspberry festive garlands already strung across the street in anticipation of a cheerful Christmas. What a scene! Everything is close, and how fantastical y everything comes together. This couch was probably placed on the sidewalk just a few hours ago. And they seemed to be waiting for each other and immediately found each other—an unwanted discarded item and an unwanted discarded person...

Oh, if only the eye possessed the property of modern miracle cameras and could capture everything it saw, showing it to others as photographs. The woman on the couch was preserved in a few lines on a sheet of paper. But what would others say about these lines, recorded in a thick notebook? How to introduce those who have never been there to the tragicomic, sadly majestic, and cruel spectacle of New York?

A sheet of paper wouldn't be enough; a screen is needed. It's not about describing, it's about shining, visibly showing this city—its New York.

But how to teach the cameraman to see and capture the New York street with your eyes, your brain, which has been working on understanding New York for a long time and in its own way?

Americaphile was used to fighting alone with a sheet of paper. There was no experience of col ective creativity, especial y in the unfamiliar art of cinematography.

However, who among the writers has not experienced the temptations of television these days? A col eague and old friend of Americaphile, who had made about a dozen films about America, convinced him to give it a try. Attempt it—no torture. Pots are not burned by the gods. Isn't this wisdom about the pots that gods don't burn the foundation of the conveyor and "mass culture"?

And so the time came to reveal one secret in Americaphile's journey, which he had hidden even from his editorial office; this time he went to America not only as a correspondent for his newspaper but also

as a novice documentary filmmaker. They kindly agreed to indulge his attempt. Employees of our television in New York received relevant instructions from their Moscow leadership. He was al owed to spend some amount of film and effort on his attempt—not to the detriment of the direct duties of the young film operator and the young energetic TV

correspondent.

They met, got acquainted, and worked out a plan in the New York apartment of the cinematographer Zhene and his wife Ira, in a house not far from Columbus Circle. Ira, a capable documentary director, helped Americaphile with friendly advice. Zhene loved his job, fearlessly went out into the streets of another city—and another world—and boldly filmed scenes of its life. Even in his posture, one could discern a physical y strong person who, in any circumstances, without flinching, held his substantial production tool in his hands. Andrei, a correspondent for GosTeleRadio in New York, drove wel and knew the city; he was ready to take them, conduct interviews, and help in every way.

The young people were eager for action; the worm of expressiveness also gnawed at them. They dreamed of a picture that would remain, not disappear like the latest news along with their television stories. Americaphile, for the first time, stepped onto the vast stage of New York not with a notebook but with a cameraman.

It was not easy to overcome oneself and debut on such a stage.

The unfortunate woman sleeping trustingly on the discarded couch was discovered at night, when the film cameras and Zhene were not around.

The sul en half-beast half-man in broken red-blue synthetic boots also disappeared unoccupied. Feather and consciousness lacked the visual vividness of a film camera, but it captured a broader natural flow of life.

From the images of New York, when it appeared on its streets next to Zhene, there were dazzles in the eyes, and he wanted both this and that.

Not everything can be captured, strict selection, sorting, and organization of chaos were required. At a minimum, experience was needed; at a maximum, the special talent of a person who, undeterred, creates in the midst of a street crowd.

"You must clearly decide what you want. Point with your finger—this, this, and this..."

So, delicately but insistently, his young assistants told him. But the street is not a writing desk, concentration did not come, and he hesitated

where to point his finger, and already understood that pointing was easier than shooting. The frames of their future film passed, flickered, disappeared in the stream of street life, which did not recognize second and third takes. Luck, only seemingly light-winged, could be—as at the writing desk—only the result of extreme work tension. And here there was a lack of time—both his own, as the last days of the business trip were passing, and someone else's, because he didn't feel entitled to dispose of it. Moreover, they needed not just days but daylight ones—since they were the shortest on the border between November and December and often rainy and gloomy.

And then at the beginning, there was a word, and the word was a script. In the evenings at the "Esplanade," Americaphile worked hastily on the outlines of the script, trying to move the matter forward with words.

The roaring hum and roar of planes landing and taking off every minute. Impressive angles of buildings of different airlines at John F.

Kennedy International Airport, buses and taxis grabbing passengers, insane road carousels inside the airport, immediately creating an image of intense movement, and green and blue road signs pointing towards, and final y, the exit to the Grand Central Parkway and again a powerful picture of movement: four clear rows of cars in one direction, four in the other. Noise and rustle—and simultaneously the concentrated working silence of the highway. Voices of radio presenters breaking into the car radio, rushing, as if fast voices of announcers and from there, from the car radio, having no direct relation to the road but linked to it, lively, jerky music. Like a metronome, it beats the rhythm and pace of New York traffic and New York itself.

This is the main task of entering the film—to create a visual and auditory representation of movement. Physical y, everything seems together, but mental y, each is on their own, in the metal ic micro-world of the car, separated from the rest. An image of an unusual y detached, self-sufficient, homemade, rigid speed conveying the alienation of people.

From the Triboro Bridge, the world's only skyscraper silhouette of Manhattan emerges and immediately disappears, as if sinking, fleetingly!

Swiftly! Like the iconic symbol of New York. Like its symbol.

And al this without an author's text, only to the music.

Also without text, to the music, is the procession of the grand New York, one after another, its great skyscrapers. Only architecture. Ideal y without people. Silent, gigantic, shining in the sun, washed by rain, the fruits of human labor. Old and new, shorter and tal er. The famous silhouette of the Empire State Building. The hundred-story twin towers of the World Trade Center. The concrete cliffs of the thirties in the Rockefel er Center. The Chase Manhattan Bank building in downtown.

"General Motors" on Fifth Avenue. "Gulf and Western." The New York Hilton Hotel. The old respectable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Sixth Avenue, lined with mini-skyscrapers of forty to fifty floors. And so on.

Suddenly, after the parade, the grandeur, the multicolored—old black-and-white frames from Chaplin's film "City Lights." The scene of unveiling the monument. They pul off the cover—under it on the pedestal, a sleeping tramp. He was the first to adapt the monument to the great man for his needs. He scratches his leg, stil asleep and unaware that a solemn crowd has gathered in front of the monument. It's funny. A policeman chases him, he runs away from him. Funny. Again color frames, again today. And in it, the monument long opened, forgotten, and invisible, like al New York monuments. The monument to the great Dante. The stern face of the poet. From the past, he looks at us, lowering his gaze to the sidewalk. What does he see? At his feet on a bench—a woman-tramp. In real life. With a polyethylene bag containing al her belongings. No, she's not funny at al . Lonely. One of many. The policeman sees her, but they are both tired of each other and don't chase after each other.

After the skyscraper parade, after the scene from Chaplin's film and the tramp near the bronze Dante—a common, unremarkable Manhattan street on the West Side. Not famous, just ordinary houses.

Ordinary crowd, ordinary pavement, ordinary flow of cars. As an image, as a semblance, as a reflection of ordinary New York.

A quiet splash of water. The rustle of wind in bare branches. A wide river. Desolate waterfront. Deserted. In the frame—the filmmaker.

Walking in sync.

"This is the left bank of the Hudson River. Over there, on the right bank, is the state of New Jersey. And here is the outskirts of the city, the city cal ed—New York.

A quiet spot, isn't it? Isn't this what they say—haven for poets, dreamers, lovers? During the season, fishermen gather by this fence, trying their luck. Throughout the year, running enthusiasts come to this smal stadium. There are many of them in New York.

And why is this green police car here? Why? The patrol is inspecting its area and came here just in case. As a warning: we see, we're here. After al , this is New York.

And why did we come here? Why did I choose this place to start my story about New York?

Where does a foreign country begin? At the airport, if you're here for one or two weeks. And from the home where you lived, if you lived abroad for several years. Here, two hundred meters away, beyond the Henry Hudson Parkway, there is one house. I lived there once for six years, working as a correspondent for my newspaper in New York. In this area, I adapted to this foreign, repel ing, yet enticing city.

And this place by the river is also fil ed with memories for me. Back then, there were fewer runners and tramps. And my children and the children of other Soviet correspondents, who lived in the same building, were smal , thinking that on these swings (frames of a playground with swings) they could fly up to the sky.

Now they have grown up, live in Moscow, and have their own children who swing on Moscow swings.

However, the fate of an international journalist stil brings me to this city, which has become familiar but has not become my own.

Here it is, this seventeen-story red-brick building occupying a whole block. Here are those windows on the eighth floor, from which I watched the Hudson and the white light for six years. Now a col eague, another correspondent from my newspaper, lives there. He reads thick American

newspapers,

watches

multi-channel

and

almost

round-the-clock television. Learns and reflects this country, America.

And in front of his windows flows a big river. And in the evenings, beautiful eternal sunsets glow beyond the river.

They built Schwab House shortly after the war, and it was said that at one time it was considered almost the largest residential building in

New York—six hundred and something apartments. Now, like an old man, it grows, one might say, into the ground, inconspicuous in the row of others, yielding primacy to the youth, to the flashy and expensive multi-storey residences of thirty, forty, or more floors that rose on other avenues and streets.

But when I land in New York, I am magnetical y drawn to this old house by the river.

The power of memories? Yes. And the power of the unspoken.

From here, from Schwab House, I wrote about the general—events, phenomena, problems. And the personal languished under the lid—and now it bursts out. How to make someone else feel this city if they haven't been here and probably won't be? I think, only like this—through myself and my personal experience...

They filmed the sync on the Hudson, choosing a sunny day. The young TV producers had never lived in Schwab House, and this place meant nothing to them. The Americanist, in his time, often walked along the waterfront to Seventy-Ninth Street, to the boathouse. By summer, dozens of white yachts, motorized, with masts and sails, would gather at the station. Some yacht owners even lived on the water in winter.

Andrey drove almost to the very shore in his car, passing through the arch under the highway. There was no passage there, but, seeing television equipment and press credentials, two policemen in a green patrol car let them through. Andrey was setting up synchronous sound recording. Evgeny was filming, hoisting the movie camera to his shoulder. A microphone was attached to the Americanist's jacket, and he stood, staring into the seemingly bottomless and unresponsive pupil of the lens, and at the sheet of paper he held in his outstretched hand, on which he had written his text in large letters. The TV viewer doesn't like when someone reads from a sheet, and they shouldn't see the paper; for them, the words should appear as if spontaneously, extemporaneously.

Oh, this is an entire art that the naive TV viewer doesn't suspect—delivering a prepared text as if it were impromptu, but in reality, it's from a hidden sheet. But the Americanist's debut was too late. He lacked theatricality and a smile, and, irritated, he grew gloomier with each new take. A broad, short figure. A thick, immobile face. And the wind plays not with a romantic mane but with sparse graying hair. Oop

seemed to look at himself from the outside. A dismal spectacle. He felt it from the glances of an American couple strol ing along the waterfront.

He didn't match their ideas of TV presenters.

Nevertheless, the art was great, commitments were made back in Moscow, and he didn't interrupt the experiment sanctioned from above.

It's important to get into the swing of things, he consoled himself. If the first pancake is lumpy, they don't take the skil et off the fire, and they don't overturn the pot with the dough into the sink. Any new business instil s new hopes, and he liked waiting for Evgeny and Andrey in the

"Esplanade" hotel in the mornings, rejoicing in the sun and lamenting the rain together, and working and traveling around New York with them, feeling the energy and curiosity of their generation. They continued shooting whenever the weather al owed.

They filmed the ordinary Broadway in the Seventies area, where residents had aged, and houses had worn down. The theatrical advertisements on Seventh Avenue, the loud and vulgar Forty-Second Street, a Greek sel ing Greek pastries, an Indian knife sharpener with his old-fashioned tool, drunks with blue faces on Bowery—captured with a hidden camera. They covered bohemians and students in Greenwich Vil age, a traffic jam on Sixth Avenue (Eugene partial y leaned out of the car to authentical y and natural y capture this ordinary New York scene), healthy builders in their helmets, overal s, and sturdy boots, black boys and girls near Martin Luther King School, where there was a monument to the great American with bronze words expressing his belief that humanity would not descend into the nuclear hel ish arms race...

They filmed homeless people lying on benches, steps of stairs, and directly on the sidewalks—during the day!—in the part of the West Side that the Americanist knew wel . They captured jogging enthusiasts skil ful y maneuvering through the street crowd, lanky black guys with some kind of articulated dance, extracting any rhythms from any two pieces of metal before the mesmerized pedestrians. There were also sedan chair carriers in formal frock coats and top hats, resembling statues atop the black old carriages in Central Park. And unceremonious taxi virtuosos, as wel as other virtuosos—truck drivers maneuvering trailer cars into narrow gaps in warehouses on narrow side streets. And peculiar, weathered Chinese old men at street stal s with similarly

peculiar weathered roots in Chinatown. And the flea market on Orchard Street, nicknamed Yashkin Street by our people. And the zoo in Central Park, where adults and children, with absent smiles, seem to exchange glances with polar bears and lions, with walruses in a round pool. They avoid looking at humans directly, and only goril as and orangutans glide past two-legged creatures on the other side of the cage with their dimly shining eyes, in which a faint and strange semblance of reason flickers.

And, of course, sturdy, ruddy policemen in winter dark blue busbies—from their boots to the forage cap, brass insignia on the broad chest, a thick belt pul ed over the buttocks by the weight of a Colt in an open holster, bundles of keys and handcuffs, and a baton, mechanical y rotated in the hand, and the overseer's gaze in the zoo.

And the Sunday, sunny crowd, brimming with the joy of life, on the broad ceremonial steps of the famous treasure trove of art—the Metropolitan Museum...

He wanted to present a gal ery of expressive living portraits of New Yorkers, release them al on the screen, and take his time, al owing the viewer to scrutinize their faces and, if possible, delve into their lives.

The higher the skyscrapers of New York, the more gigantic the bridges across its rivers, bays, and straits, the smal er becomes the figure of the person who built them. However, no modern gigantomania can negate the wise truth of the ancients: man is the measure of al things. What is his, the human's, essence? How does he forge his happiness? Together with others or against others? And what does he forge?

In the plans was also the prospect of the wealthy—Fifth Avenue with its deserted sidewalks and uniformed doormen in the entrances. But what can these closed-in urban fortresses of wealth say? The times of ostentatious luxury ended with kings and feudal lords. If wealth reveals itself, it does so in secluded places, in country estates; in the city, it disguises itself and hides to avoid taunting the people. For the Americanist, New York was the New York of colorful streets, the flood of people, the plebeians.

When evening fel and the shootings stopped, he walked the streets with a notepad, jotting down observations that could be useful for

the film. Or he sat in his room in front of the television. One of the tasks was to show New York in two contrasting tempos. To interrupt the street with its chaos and natural dishevelment with the display of news and advertisements—self-satisfied television men and women who, by their very appearance—and only by appearance—claim special, familiar relationships with life, destiny, and even history. Two tempos—natural, somewhat gloomy street tempo, and carefree, jaunty, cynical y casual tempo reflected in life on the TV screen. As accompaniment, as an indicator of the tempo—scrol ing electronic lines of round-the-clock news on the TV screen. And these same lines—as an interruption, as a transition from the private and personal to the general or impersonal.

Memories are magical glasses through which you look into the past. Everyone has their own eyes and their own glasses tailored to the eyes of a lived life. One person, through the magical glasses of their memories, sees their past with extraordinary clarity, while another would see nothing in them because in their memories—there is their life, and they look at it through their own set of magical glasses. There are memories of wars and revolutions, destruction and hunger, seismic-scale shocks, and the overal extreme tension of eras that are experienced by an entire generation, deeply engraved in consciousness, forming a col ective, historical memory. In this memory lies the experience of the people and society, acquired at the cost of heroic efforts and great sacrifices. Jointly lived experiences nourish the sense of national unity and influence the behavior and interaction of people even in their everyday lives.

In terms of memories, and sometimes common memory, an internationalist who has lived abroad for a long time is a special and somewhat deprived person. They cannot share the memories of their foreign years with their own people because their people lived at home, not abroad, and did not experience what happened abroad. And they cannot ful y share their memories with a foreign people among whom they lived because they were not a part of that people, and accordingly, they looked at what happened to them through the eyes of an outsider, even if an objective and benevolent one.

The Americanist wanted to show New York as he saw it to his compatriots who hadn't seen it. But how could he convey his memories,

moreover, life lessons learned from this city, through television images?

And who needs these lessons? Americans? Unlikely, because they are just the experiences of an outsider. His own people? Do they need lessons taken from someone else's life? In the end, what is it? Lost time? Sometimes it seemed to him that way—lost time that complicated his entire life, some foreign detours instead of his own paths. Yet, at times, he did not consider this time lost. On the contrary, he lived there for six years in his early forties, at a time when youth meets early maturity. Write off those years?

People part with their youth reluctantly and usual y belatedly. The Americanist left New York at around the age of forty, stil feeling young and vehemently denying the city that had harshly embittered him. Then strange things began to happen. The further he distanced himself from that period of his life, the more closely he examined it. It was perhaps a nostalgia for the departed youth. Along with it, it seemed to him that he left the best years of his life in that foreign city, or at least the most fulfil ing ones. That's why he was excited to see the skyscraper silhouette of Manhattan at night when he found himself in America and transited through New York at the beginning of our narrative.

Back in those New York years, he got into the rhythm of work and worked a lot, but without losing his youthful recklessness and the ability to have fun in a friendly circle. He didn't take himself too seriously, and that, for a while, helped him live. His friends among Soviet correspondents were ful of life and youthful selfless interest in it.

During his time in the American city on the Hudson, the Americanist achieved, so to speak, several personal records. First, he wrote a record number of articles for his newspaper, not shying away from smal notes because he didn't take himself too seriously and was as healthy as a bul . He went to bed no earlier than two or three in the morning, a practice dictated by work since he dictated his essays over the phone or sent them via telegraph late at night. Second, during that time, he spent a record amount of his life attending meetings, both daytime and nighttime, in councils (primarily in the Security Council), committees, and subcommittees of the United Nations, never succumbing to sleep. Third, he read and perused a record amount, for himself, of tons of newspapers, magazines, press releases, and teletype

sheets (but not books, as journalists often lack time for them). Fourth, he attended a record number of ral ies and demonstrations, as wel as visits to editorial offices, universities, Salvation Army shelters for the homeless, and advertising agencies that dazzled with the bril iance of the "society of abundance." He also spent a record amount of time watching television, back when it was stil black and white, focusing on the latest news (especial y in the evening, primarily on CBS with anchor Walter Cronkite, who has now retired — and entered history), while turning away from comedies, detective films, and entertainment shows due to a lack of time (a regrettable gap in his knowledge of America later on).

By the way, about time again. Time was always in short supply.

The Americanist never had time to comprehend what was happening to him. He didn't notice how he became a professional journalist—and an Americanist—in New York. However, in New York, he lacked time for New York. But do we have time in Moscow for Moscow? And is it possible to embrace the boundless?

In New York, he knew little about Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens but wandered extensively through Manhattan. He knew a lot there: the Upper West Side around Seventieth Street, Broadway from Eighty-Sixth to Forty-Second, Central Park, Midtown, Battery Park, and the southern tip of the island, 125th Street in Harlem, the road to Kennedy Airport, and the Bayvil e vil age by the bay, where he twice rented a summer house with his family. He knew al the newspaper kiosks on his stretch of Broadway and various odd characters, like the lady with a dog who walked her dog in such a way that the leash in her hand was always taut, helping to conceal the prosthesis on her left leg. He knew vendors, waiters, bartenders, and ordinary residents, even passersby who, remaining strangers, walked through his life for six years, just as he walked through theirs.

In the underground garages of New Babylon, black America and Africa dwel ed, starting their expansion of black workers across the ocean; in stal s, pizzerias, and other eateries, Asia and Southern Europe; among deliverymen, messengers, and couriers, the Caribbean and South America; in corporations, banks, and hotels, Western Europe.

In the complex process of communication among the diverse mil ions, everything was not just shared but also intermingled. Even in

gastronomic tastes, the whole world was present. The Americanist, experiencing the diversity of international menus for the first time, sometimes visited dozens and hundreds of restaurants and eateries of Italian, Chinese, French, Polynesian, Russian, German, Armenian, etc., cuisines. And American cuisine—with thick, juicy slices of steak and green salads. As a professional interest, he even visited Salvation Army kitchens, where the unfortunate ones dined, their eyes seeing, but their palate not discerning the gastronomic delights of New York.

Even at home in Schwab House, he was separated from his family by the round-the-clock correspondent duty. At any moment, he could leave, any day—depart, fol owing the so-cal ed note formalities, meaning informing Americans about his upcoming travels at least two days in advance. Ruthless in his youth, he didn't understand how hard his absences were for his wife. But she knew how to love, wait, endure, forgive, rejoice in her husband's joys, and not separate him from work and friends. She warmly welcomed guests, took her daughter to school and to the square in front of the house (children were not al owed to walk alone), and one night he took her to the other end of Manhattan. Four days later, he brought her back with a son—a rosy-cheeked, chubby baby who twitched in his sleep and clenched his fists when the piercing wail of police and fire sirens invaded his crib from the street. How could he find the way to childhood? Not everyone takes the Moscow–Sergach passenger train from Kazansky Station every evening. When they returned from Washington after the second business trip, the boy was eleven. Eight of those years were spent in America—more than half of his childhood. What would he remember, what does he remember now?

Youth does not pose such questions. And life does not always rush to answer, but it never forgets.

The foreign world turned out to be more complex than the preconceived ideas about it. Cruelty and alienation coexisted with power and dynamism. The multitude and diversity of everything—objects, people,

temperaments,

careers,

destinies—were

striking.

The

amplitudes of human passions, virtues, and vices were broader and more unexpected than previously imagined. The pros and cons of the social and economic structure dialectical y interwove, intertwined, and changed depending on circumstances and dosage, determined by the

class struggle, social strata, and individual personalities. Depending on the dosage, even snake venom possesses either lethal or healing properties.

The term "computer" wasn't yet commonplace, but there, electronics was widely integrated into daily life, the chains in stores were stil relatively stable and low, and new skyscrapers were growing like mushrooms on Sixth Avenue. "Beautiful y decaying" is a banal expression that the Americanist heard from Moscow residents astonished by New York and occasional y used himself, revealing internal embarrassment: it wasn't easy to neatly categorize American life. "Workers of capitalist fields," joked one of the Americanist's New York friends, and in this unexpected phrase, there was not only mockery of a newspaper cliché turned upside down but also the legitimate desire of a citizen of his homeland to see the world and life soberly: the ability of Americans to work struck, perhaps, the most. They worked hard—in the fields and factories, in their offices, sparing no effort, and were simply not tolerated by the ruthless mechanism of competition.

Neither the Americanist nor his col eagues could escape the heat treatment and tempering by New York. In the 1960s, the American decade of "storm and stress," they learned about class struggle and racial conflicts in a developed capitalist country not only from newspapers and books but also from life itself—a life that was tumultuous, rich in complexities and surprises. In a society of individualists, where personality is elevated above the col ective and the state, Americans fought not only individual y for their place in the sun but also together against the evils of the Vietnam War and racial inequality, in the name of brotherhood, solidarity, and justice. Before their eyes, a living American history unfolded, where both the masses and leaders played their roles, where there were heroes, selfless individuals proving that even one person in the field can lead thousands. They had to witness the development of the largest social movements of that time in everyday dynamics, as wel as the fleeting nature of the "youth revolution," on the anarchic flank of which, stirring the consciousness of the average citizen, the "counterculture" of the hippies quickly blossomed and faded.

It seemed that radical changes were indeed unavoidable, as the forces of social protest were diverse and energetic. However, in the face of trials that shook it, American society demonstrated a peculiar resilience, and the ruling class (an ambiguous concept) showed its art of decisively repel ing dangerous attacks, separating radicals from moderates, smoothing sharp edges, expanding the limits of what was permissible (to the extent of tempting protesters with the permissiveness of the porn industry and the "sexual revolution"). Different factions of the ruling class and the two ruling parties, adapting and maneuvering, proved that they could adjust, take into account new trends, not shy away from problems, and act, sometimes yielding, sometimes resisting, relying on the expectation that the ferment would settle—there would be struggles and reevaluations, and people would come to their senses—that the attempts of rebels to turn America upside down would be countered by the law-abiding majority. That radicals would get stuck in the bourgeois realm of the "middle class," adhering to the main American religion—the religion of material wel -being and success (without understanding this bet on the "middle class," we won't comprehend the resilience of the American system).

Time cannot be put on autopilot. The future doesn't like it when people of the present day treat it carelessly. It's not enough to declare that the future belongs to us. In the name of the communist idea, one must work better than them, so that with our achievements, the entire structure of our life, and, most importantly, our person in solidarity with other people, we surpass their material achievements and their individual, separated by the instinct of ownership from other people. One must fearlessly face the changing life, look truth in the eye, and accurately assess where your country stands relative to other countries and other peoples. To these truths, simple and obvious, learned back in col ege, the Americanist returned during his years in New York, reinforcing them with the practice of observing another's life. Wel , they were acquired long before him. The wise say that the essence of truth cannot be separated from the process of comprehending it. And one who hasn't acquired it through their own toil, the work of their consciousness, possesses not the truth but mere banality.

In New York, he felt like a particle, affiliated with broad categories of politics. The term "fighter of the ideological front" would have been somewhat pathetic, and it suited him perfectly at that time. He was already beginning to understand the enveloping power of everyday life, determining the existence and worldview of the masses. However, at that time, he, in his carefree youth, was not burdened by the routine of life. He returned home without furniture and his own car, without fur coats and a summer cottage (words that had just entered common usage), with savings that were not enough for the major repairs needed for the run-down apartment he inherited. There, in New York, working for his newspaper, he exposed acquisitiveness in another world and believed that such exposure was incompatible with personal acquisitiveness. Apparently, he inherited from his proletarian grandfather the innate aversion to the early socialism, when there was a sacred hatred for the despised yel ow metal and the dream of putting it to use in the decoration of public restrooms...

In New York, there was an abundance of everything, and he returned from there with a multitude of impressions and a dream of putting them into a book, into books. The unspoken overwhelmed him, and he felt that this personal circumstance, namely the abundance of impressions accumulated across the ocean by one of the fighters on the ideological front, should be of public interest, should be taken into account in our overal ideological economy. But creating a book or books required more than just impressions; it required time.

He knew that American correspondents returning from Moscow, as part of capitalist benevolence—and concern for their common ideological fund—received scholarships from various foundations and universities, providing them with a year and a half to two years of free time. Summing up their experiences in the form of books, they could return to their newspapers, and some of them ended up as authors of sensational bestsel ers, working for the mil of their propaganda. How great it would be for us—in order to strengthen our ideological economy. Alas, when working on a non-newspaper reflection of their many years of impressions, Amerikanist and others like him could count on, at best, a month of creative leave with the goodwil of the chief editor, who was wil ing to overlook the stringent requirements of financial discipline. In

our planned economy, considering al kinds of resources, the main resource—human personality—was not always taken into account. The journalist's book did not fal under socialist forms of ownership. It fel into the category of subsidiary economy, which could only be pursued during non-working hours, akin to a private greenhouse, from which the early cucumbers and strawberries are taken to the col ective farm market.

"Creative mind mastered it—kil ed it," wrote Blok once about the artist's exploration of the material of life, the poet, the writer. Amerikanist never mastered the theme of New York, never "kil ed" it, and it continued to live and agitate his consciousness. He remained indebted to this city.

And the desire to repay the debt arose every time he found himself there.

They shot the second synchrony in Central Park. The low December sun had not yet risen above the fashionable hotels and residential buildings on the southern edge of the park, casting long shadows from them. A large lawn, where our TV crew arrived with their equipment, was fenced off by a temporary fence. The grass, scorched during the hot summer and trampled by basebal enthusiasts and pedestrians, was being restored. The guard let them onto the abundantly watered, resting meadow after checking their press credentials.

They chose a dry elevation and prepared for shooting. Everything was done quickly, with jokes, but then the camera in Zhenya's hands looked at Amerikanist again without jokes, with its cold, gleaming eye.

And again, he tried to appease it, forcing his face to smile.

"This is the large lawn of New York's Central Park. It's cal ed Sheep Meadow, although the locals probably won't remember when sheep last grazed here. Perhaps at the beginning of the last century.

There, to the north, unseen from here, are the Negro quarters—Harlem.

On the right, to the east—Fifth Avenue, where the rich live. On the southern edge of the park—also not poor houses and hotels.

From al sides, the city with its underworld and heavenly floors.

With hymns to human labor and curses of human greed. With mysteries and passions of someone else's life—it's not easy to decipher and reveal them. When you look at it, standing on this lawn, Pushkin's words come to mind: 'There, people in heaps behind the fence, don't breathe the morning coolness, nor the spring scent of meadows; they are ashamed

of love, they chase away thoughts, trade their wil , bow their heads in front of idols, and beg for money and chains...'

And here—a lawn and a whole park, cal ed Central. How did it miraculously survive, large and untouched, why was it spared in a city where other square meters of land cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dol ars?

Probably because a person cannot live without nature and poetry.

In the city, he turns wild, and here he tames a squirrel, and they are not afraid of people right in the heart of New York. Squirrels are safer here than people. At least, they don't leave from here with the onset of darkness.

Right now, it's deserted here. But there are days—and opi remember them for a long time—when people fil this spacious, free lawn to the brim..."

According to Amerikanist's plan, this was the final sync, fol owed by the conclusion of the film. The portrait gal ery of New Yorkers shown in the middle of the film turned into a human sea. Newsreel footage from recent days was used. Half a mil ion-strong anti-war demonstration was splashed on the screen—on the occasion of the opening of the special session of the UN on disarmament. A powerful human procession with banners and slogans flowed through the rivers of streets and merged into the sea of Central Park. On Sheep Meadow, the same one where they did their sync, a grand ral y was taking place. Over the sea of heads, banners fluttered, saying "No to the madness of the arms race!

No to the threat of nuclear war!"

These shots were accompanied by the text:

— You wouldn't recognize the meadow where you just saw me alone. We showed you a different—and divided—New York, vulgar and cruel spectacles on Broadway, and here different people are gathering, united by a common noble cause. During my years in New York, many thousands of Americans came here to demand civil rights for blacks, to protest against the Vietnam War. Many beautiful people adorned this nation. Here, I had the chance to hear the fiery speeches of such a great American as Martin Luther King and such a famous and noble pediatrician as Benjamin Spock.

This meadow did not suspect at that time that people coming here to relax would not leave it alone with their concerns, that they would come in even greater numbers and for a more important occasion. Opi were tired of the arms race, of the fear of war, of the monstrous thermonuclear bomb.

It wasn't sheep but people who gathered on Sheep Meadow. They didn't want to be sacrificial lambs, didn't believe in the wisdom of leaders who piled mountains of armaments to the sky. They wanted to live themselves and continue to live in their children and grandchildren, forging link by link an endless chain of humanity.

And this desire unites them with the sheep.

The medieval English poet John Donne has lines that the American Ernest Hemingway used as an epigraph to one of his novels.

"No man is an island. Every man is a piece of the continent," wrote John Donne. "And never ask for whom the bel tol s. It tol s for thee."

In our rocket-nuclear age, even continents have ceased to be islands, isolated and invulnerable. We and the Americans are very far from each other, but connected by one responsibility—for the future of humanity...

Embrace each other, mil ions! This was roughly the final message.

However, Amerikanist was afraid that excessive pathos would disrupt the tonality of his film. It should not end with pathos, but with a meaningful el ipsis, a tightening note, a distance that would include both the cal of the future and the echo of the past. To show at the end the Sunday empty New York, freed from movement and noise, revealed in its streets, beautiful and sad. To have the screen crossed thoughtful y by rare cars, to have an elegiac siren heard somewhere in the distance, which on weekdays wil wake up both the living and the dead. And for the Hudson River embankment to appear again:—the wind was sweeping autumn leaves on the stairs and rocking empty children's swings...

The last grains of sand were rapidly melting at the bottom of the hourglass, spiraling into a funnel.

No spiritual energy was spent on preparations for the return journey. Victor selflessly bore the cross of a specific New York hospitality that extended to al acquaintances from the homeland—and even to acquaintances of acquaintances. He spared no time for his col eague

and, as a final touch, drove him across the George Washington Bridge to the shopping centers on the other side of the river in the state of New Jersey. In this state, unlike New York, there is no high tax on sold goods, so one can spend the al ocated dol ars more effectively. The recurring routine ending of each trip. In the tradition of mutual assistance, Rai also bore her cross, as did Amerikanist's wife when they lived in New York, like al our women living there now. Fol owing Rai's directions, Victor would turn to one shopping center or another, park the car in a parking lot the size of a stadium. Amerikanist would pul out the existing list compiled by each delegate, and kind-hearted Rai, studying it and matching needs with possibilities, calculated how to more ful y satisfy the requests and orders of Amerikanist's loved ones. Oh, the ugly, contemptible prose of life! How to bypass it for our diplomats, journalists, and even economists and trade workers sent abroad?!

Everything was seen through the prism of the imminent return home.

One Saturday evening, Amerikanist found himself on Broadway around the Seventieth Street, an area that felt almost like home, especial y on Broadway itself. The evening was unusual y warm for early December, and a dense crowd flowed along the sidewalks, slowing down at intersections and by shop windows, near street musicians, religious preachers, and sly young people playing three-card monte on an overturned tin barrel.

He came to Broadway to one of the massive old theaters to see the new movie "Alien," which had stirred sensational interest among adult and child audiences alike. Film critics cal ed it a masterpiece. A flying saucer landed in the woods near a smal American town. The residents discovered it, and the authorities and police decided to capture it. The aliens had to abort their expedition and leave in a hurry, but one of them got lost and stayed on Earth—a ugly and touching creature with the head of an intel igent reptile, a short torso, and long glowing fingers that had the magical ability to relieve pain. Under the skin of the large lizard, the alien's heart glowed, swel ing with red light and flickering, seemingly, with each beat. Children found and hid the frightened creature from adult people, who were ready, as always, to fulfil their cruel duty to eradicate anything foreign and alien, especial y

extraterrestrial. The children saw and loved the alien with a child's soul, not yet knowing the adult prohibitions, warming him with childlike affection for al living things. The children cal ed him E.T. (two letters from the English word "extraterrestrial").

A cute, sentimental, heart-wrenching film, and in the crowded Broadway cinema, both children and adults, munching on cornflakes from liter-sized polyethylene cups, laughed, were amused, and almost cried. The ending was happy. The children managed to save their E.T.

from the "government people," and he safely left Earth because the aliens, not leaving a comrade in trouble, came back for him. E.T. flew back to his home, and the only English word he learned to pronounce with a plaintive and poignant tone during his days on Earth was "home."

Home... Going home... A poignant nostalgia for home—and for the unity of al living beings—was felt in this film about an extraterrestrial creature. According to Amerikanist, it didn't quite reach the level of a masterpiece, but the colossal success of the film indicated that some secret chord had been struck among pragmatic yet sentimental Americans. It's hard for the alien on that land without which, outside of which, we cannot live. Every living creature longs for home. And if you love your home and your country, you must respect the love of other people (and even extraterrestrials) for their home, their country, their planet. In such intel igent and discerning love for one's own lies the pledge of planetary and interplanetary brotherhood. Essential y, this film preached "new thinking," which Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russel cal ed for shortly after the advent of nuclear weapons and which can only grow out of "old" humanistic thinking.

That's how Amerikanist understood "E.T.," and in his soul, waiting for the rendezvous with home, the pitiful and demanding cries of "home!"

uttered by the creature with intel igent bulging eyes and a glowing heart resonated. And the eve of departure arrived. There was one day and one night left, and the next noon, Victor would take Amerikanist to LaGuardia Airport, and New York's homes, roads, and residents would pass by for a final farewel .

Around ten in the morning, Amerikanist sat on the couch in the

"Esplanade" hotel room, and in front of him on the coffee table was the fresh issue of "The New York Times," and the television by the wal was quietly glowing—on one of the channels (this wasn't there before),

round-the-clock teletype texts of the latest news were running on the screen—in the city, the country, the world—and on the New York Stock Exchange. Our hero was engaged in his routine morning work, reviewing and sometimes underlining the places in the thick, approximately a hundred-page newspaper lying in front of him that might be useful for his subsequent work and for his newspaper. In addition to a bal point pen in his hands, he had a safety razor. With this tool, he cut out the most interesting messages, in his opinion, from the newspaper, preparing material for his Moscow archive.

From each business trip, newspaper and magazine clippings were taken home as documents of another stretch of time spent in America.

Considering the past experience of useless storage of paper trash, he imposed strict self-limitations: newspaper clippings were minimized, and from magazines and even books, he mercilessly tore out individual pages or chapters, discarding everything else. But even after strict cul ing, there usual y accumulated about fifty pounds of paper, which—he flew home by plane!—he took home and there subjected to decisive and irrevocable oblivion, although each time during the business trip, it seemed that without new clippings, it was impossible to work or even live. The soul of a journalist is enchanted and captivated by the present day. It enchants and captivates so much that each time a journalist forgets that tomorrow today wil become yesterday, that is, unnecessary for the newspaper.

Did his one-and-a-half-month business trip justify itself? This thought continued to disturb him, although the editorial office made no demands and expressed no grievances. His latest correspondence, written in the intervals between television shoots and pre-departure chores, was somewhat raw. Over the phone, he asked the department editor to delay it further, partly because events were unfolding. The House of Representatives rejected the "dense pack" or "compact basing" method for MX intercontinental missiles, based on the concept of "missile fratricide," and denied appropriations for the creation of these missiles until a different, more efficient method was devised. This indicated resistance in Congress to the developers of nuclear death with their monstrous fantasies.

The vote in the House elicited many reactions, upsetting conservatives and pleasing liberals, and it added another half-pound to

the weight of the newspaper clippings prepared by Amerikanist for his journey. In one way or another, it was good news, giving rise to another modest hope. From a political point of view, it concluded Amerikanist's business trip, and on the morning before departure, he sat in front of the newspaper with a safety razor in hand, preparing the freshest clippings for the road. In the corner, the television screen reflected the vast world.

The lines of teletype news silently scrol ed and disappeared, making way for other lines about different news. And suddenly, a short message burst in, stating that in the capital city of Washington, right at these fleeing moments along with the teletype lines, an interesting and unprecedented event was unfolding. More specifical y: an unknown man is threatening to explode the national monument—a obelisk dedicated to George Washington—and may actual y do so.

Amerikanist was startled by this news and pushed the newspaper away. Meanwhile, new lines were running on the television screen—in continuation of the disappeared ones. So, more concrete and detailed: somehow, an unknown man drove a van to the base of the monument, jumped out of it, and with no police in sight, declared his threat and that he had a thousand pounds of dynamite in the closed van as evidence that he was not joking. The offender took morning tourists—visitors to the monument—as hostages. He insisted that he wouldn't spare himself or the national shrine if his demands weren't met.

Demands...

Demands...

Demands...

Everyone

demands

something—increasingly with the help of dynamite. But this newfound saboteur wasn't demanding mil ions or freedom for terrorist comrades.

He demanded what mil ions of Americans and many elected officials there, under the Capitol dome, which was apparently clearly visible from the base of the obelisk at that moment, were engaged in—national debates on the threat of nuclear war, as wel as the prohibition of nuclear weapons... Otherwise... With a thousand pounds of dynamite, he threatened the national monument. Dynamite against thermonuclear!

The wedge—by the wedge. Purely American.

The lines about the new sensation in Washington disappeared from the television screen. Others, calmer messages appeared, but they no longer were read, perceived as an interlude in the unfinished story with dynamite near the Washington monument. They provided time to come to one's senses and think.

Each in its own way goes mad—not only a person but also an era.

The poor fel ow went crazy in a country where the president demanded—and achieved—superarmaments, military strategists sought common sense in "missile fratricide," and where dynamite was always at hand, just like television operators to broadcast the world about their madness.

The deranged era and the deranged individual saw each other in the mirror of a new sensation. Not by thought, but rather by a sense, a hunch, this crossed the mind of our Amerikanist, and he regretted that the latest news had not yet been cast into print and that he did not have a videocassette recorder to cut it from the television screen.

The towering, 270-foot granite obelisk in Washington, our people dubbed the Pencil. On the generously al ocated, unobstructed territory, it indeed protrudes like a slightly tapering pencil, sharpened at the top. At the top, there's an observation deck, and no other point in Washington provides such a view of the city and its Virginian surroundings from a bird's-eye perspective. An elevator ascends to the observation deck—for a fee—and those interested can count the eight hundred and ninety-eight steps on foot (America loves an accurate count). However, more steps are usual y descended, reading explanations along the way about which state's building materials were used in the construction of the monument. The Pencil is open to visitors every day except Christmas, starting at nine in the morning. The criminal with his dynamite appeared right at the beginning.

The event returned to the television screen in the "Esplanade"

hotel room. The police, as now silently emerging lines reported, were taking measures. They were armed with sniper rifles and prudent restraint. They sealed off the incident area, closed public access, but kept themselves at a distance, as the man, refusing to identify himself, circled near his van with a remote control device in hand and threatened to detonate explosives if the slightest danger to him arose. He also continued to insist on his demand…