Editors’ Note:
There are, of course, some errors in Mr. Polevoy’s story. Many are due, as he notes, to the fact that parts of the conversation were conducted through dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds. Bill Seward, the youthful proprietor of Menemsha’s post office and store, for example, may not recognize himself as the ancient Mr. Zur, and the author of Cassandra Bobble, a fictional caricature of society columnists, will be surprised to see her creation re-emerge in Russian as Xandra Babel the neighbor’s girl reporter. More substantial, in the editor’s opinion, is his view that it was Mr. Gribatchov and not Mr. Harrison who doubted the practicality of an exchange of articles. And yet as many errors of detail and interpretation would no doubt be found were we to describe an evening spent in Mr. Polevoy’s villa outside Moscow. As far as the general tone of Mr. Polevoy’s account is concerned we cannot complain.
Mr. Polevoy, after all, is describing an evening in the home of an opponent of the political administration in power. Soviet readers learn that it is a comfortable place, lived in by a family substantially free from fear. The author refers in a mocking way to the shadow of John Foster Dulles and mentions the reluctance of the boys to take his $5 (the reason, lost in translation, was that they would not be publishing their paper in 1956). But just as Mr. Polevoy seems about to conclude with a political moral, he demolishes this traditional ending in favor of the truth. For the discussion which Mr. Polevoy describes ended with a whispered aside which the host found startling. “We will put you on the subscriber’s list to The Pioneer!” Mr. Polevoy had roared to the boys; then he drew their father aside: “That is, if it will not hurt you,” he whispered. The host laughed and explained that he and his sons were free citizens, able to read whatever they pleased and happy to receive literature from other lands. It seems gratifying to us that this small but memorable incident has found its way into the Soviet press.
Michael Straight