Lost and Found in Russia: Encounters in the Deep Heartland Read Online Free Page A

they found the event had fallen victim to the chaos. Hearing of their plight, Benya offered them a place on his cruise. “Did you hear last night’s concert? Night after night there are these amazing musicians playing! Last night was the greatest—this singer, she’s a sort of Russian Edith Piaf. I’ve never heard anything like her …”
    “So what do you make of this Benya?” the trumpeter went on.
    “He’s quite a character,” the trumpeter’s wife chipped in. “Every now and then he turns up in this white Mercedes, chauffeur-driven—”
    “With one hubcap missing,” added the trumpeter.
    “Is he on board now?” I asked.
    “Well, he was last night. You can tell when he’s coming. His girlfriend gets all dressed up. Then it’s party time! He’s quite a guy—climbs onto the car and dances on the hood, wearing these wild clothes—yellow shirt, red trousers, and green socks.”
    “D’you suppose he’s mafia?” the trumpeter’s wife asked, as we walked down toward the music. I let the question go. Whoever our host was, the costume made it all too clear that he was modeling himself on Babel’s king of thieves.
    The main deck was packed with people, listening to the music. Pale, plump, and dowdy, they looked reassuringly ordinary. A trombonist stepped forward and began a solo. He had the face and body of a clown. He played with an intensity that made even the babies in their sunhats stop and stare. Sleepy middle-aged men emerged from their cabins and their pudgy wives dropped their knitting.
    We were held in the skein of the music. The man’s playing was as effortless as breathing. It touched something in his listeners, transmuting the pain of living in the rubble of the great socialist experiment that had been inflicted on them, their fathers and grandfathers. He played to them of the happiness which no one could take away, the happiness of this moment in the sunshine, floating down the Volga. My own anxiety ebbed away, absurd.
    When the trombonist finished his solo I turned to leave and saw Benya threading through the crowd toward me, yellow eyes fixed on me, leering. He was wearing only the briefest of red trunks and a gold chain around his neck. I lost my head and dashed up the stairs, making for the cruise manager’s cabin. As I pounded on the door I heard Benya’s footsteps on the stairs. After an interminable wait the door opened: “Susan! What a lovely surprise!” Olga was standing in a large, light cabin lined in paneled, pale wood. I slipped inside and closed the door. The cabin was dotted with bouquets of dying red roses. Olga had company, two women friends.
    “Is everything all right?” Olga asked. “You look, well—flustered.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Come on now, don’t be so English. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” said a woman with a boyish face.
    “It’s nothing, really …” I could hardly say I was running away from our host.
    “Has someone been bothering you?”
    “No, no …”
    “I’ll deal with him,” said the boyish one.
    “No, no, please.”
    “Oh, I bet it’s Boris,” Olga said. “He was ogling her at lunch. He’s incorrigible.”
    “You mean the one with the straggly beard? So that’s not Benya?”
    The three women burst out laughing. They laughed extravagantly, holding on to one another. “Benya! She thought he was Benya!”
    “He’s not on the boat at all,” Olga explained kindly.
    “Well, what did I say about Boris?” the boyish one said triumphantly.
    “She’d better stay with us,” murmured the third woman. “It’s funny—Westerners can’t usually tell these things.”
    •  •  •
    Boris was Benya’s extrasensor , his healer and spiritual adviser, they explained. The boyish woman assured me fiercely that he “wouldn’t bother me again.” He did not. For the next two days she insisted on collecting me from my cabin and chaperoning me back again. I had no idea why I needed this protection. But I was grateful to