She had to pay ten American dollars for that ten-cent bar of chocolate. Her Communism melted slightly.
Ultimately, we solved the ruble problem. One morning a boy who had been loitering around the Astoria asked Grant, “Would you like me to take you through the city?”
Grant prudently inquired, “How much?” It appeared that the boy merely desired an opportunity to perfect his English; he had plenty of rubles, which he was glad to dispose of at the rate of fifty for a dollar. Russians could obtain none but the cheapest commodities on their tickets; if they wanted luxuries such as good shirts, leather or rubber boots, and other articles sold only at Torgsin, they were obliged to surrender some treasured gold piece or use foreign money.
With an ample supply of rubles I sent long, elaborate cables to Stuart to cheer him up. He must have thought an excessive maternal solicitude was getting the better of my economic judgment. But, as a matter of fact, one of twenty words was costing me less than twenty-five cents.
Dr. Nadina Kavanoky, who had been interested in birth control in the United States, had given me a letter to her father, Dr. Reinstein, once a dentist in Rochester, New York, now in Stalin’s close confidence. He came to see me about eleven-thirty one night, the Russian calling hour, and we talked until three in the morning. When he wanted to know my “impressions of Russia,” I said promptly, “It seems to me your policy of overcharging us is a mistake; for the sake of a few dollars you are creating ill will, just as the French have done. In our own Seminar we have twenty librarians and perhaps double that number of schoolteachers and students, many of whom have gone without other vacations to come here. They have a unique opportunity to influence people; everybody will ask them when they get back, ‘Did you like Russia?’ You are trying to build up a favorable public opinion abroad, and these people are the best mediums for that purpose. If they are pleased they will fight for you and break down prejudice.”
But he was not convinced, and, evoking the specter of the Tsarist debt to America, he replied, “We’ll bleed you, we’ll milk you, we’ll get every dollar out of you we can. America demands her pound of flesh and this is how we’ll pay you.”
The occasions for receiving “pleasant impressions” were offered by vigorous tours to points of interest. We were given a choice of hard buses or harder ones, all, in my experience, springless and clattering noisily over the cobble-paved streets. After a few bumps we usually hit the roof and came down with headaches. Our poor little guides had to screech with full lung power to be heard over the incessant rattling.
One morning when driving back from sight-seeing, the motor gasped and collapsed on a slight hill. Passengers volunteered helpful suggestions—“Put it in low. Put it in neutral. Push this. Pull that.”
The driver moved gears forward and backward and then looked around at us in perplexity, “I did, but it won’t work.” We waited and waited and waited and waited. Somebody ran a mile to telephone that we were stranded and needed another bus. Meanwhile, everything we wanted to see was closing, and we had already learned that whatever you missed in Russia was always the most worth while. In fact, it seemed they had visiting hours timed to end five minutes before you got there. Several other buses came along and stopped. Their drivers got out, poked their heads under the hood, began taking things apart, strewing bolts this way and nuts that. Then they, too, became discouraged, and, leaving increased confusion, climbed on their chariots again and went on.
Finally some bright young man discovered we were out of gas.