I'd traveled back in time to the 1950s rather than a third of the way around the world. Moscow was not a modern city by American standards. In this major metropolis of the country deemed the greatest enemy of the Free World, there wasn't a skyscraper to be seen, the arterials were narrow and simple in design, like the kind you would find leading you to the Corn Museum in South Dakota.
Elena lived in a multi-storied concrete apartment complex similar to public housing in North Philadelphia. The entrance of the building stank of urine, as did the tiny, tiled elevator. Elena lived with her grandmother, introduced and known to me thereafter only as 'Babushka'. Tall, thin, wrinkled, green-gray eyes cloudy with cataracts, her face drawn up in lines of chronic physical discomfort, Babushka's kitchen was a hand-me-down from Alice Kramden, of the Honeymooners.
A sink. A stove. A refrigerator. But no cupboards or counters. A kitchen the size of an average American bathroom. I would sleep in Elena's modest bedroom. Elena would sleep on the living room sofa. It would be worth it to them; I was paying them an enormous sum to be housed, preferring to uplift one Russian family than spending money at the famous Metropol Hotel.
I arrived in Russia an independent woman, privileged beyond any prior realization of how precious and rare are the daily creature comforts we Americans have long taken for granted. I'd brought enough toilet paper to last the entire trip. Babushka wept. Spasiba bolshoi, she murmured over and over, tears streaming into her grooved cheeks, as I handed her packages of Lipton tea, two cans of Maxwell House coffee, and a five pound bag of sugar. Grocery stores in Moscow were empty, even if you had rubles to buy the daily necessities of life.
In contrast, at a literary party I attended later on with a Chilean attache, I grazed at a buffet table piled high unfamiliar delicacies, along with Buluga caviar and champagne. Andre also escorted me to the 30th birthday party of an African prince from Gabon who was studying at the university in Moscow alongside many other African students welcomed by the Communist government. The prince's party? Much more modest refreshments of goat stew, dirty rice, and roasted vegetables washed down with lots of vodka.
