I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [120]
Phone calls were possible occasionally, if you made your request days ahead, informing your Intourist handler. A time would be arranged, and perhaps a connection. You would sit in your hotel room and wait for the message, “Come down, your call is going through.” Then you would sit by the international phone booth in the lobby, possibly for hours, while a connection was made. Sometimes I would hear Carrie talking to me, but she couldn’t hear my answer. We speculated that they wanted to be informed of what people outside the country said, but didn’t want information about Russia going out.
Shaun hoped to visit the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church, the monastery of Zagorsk, their Vatican. It would be a paper bag opportunity, too. Zagorsk was some ninety kilometers outside of Moscow, and Shaun needed help to get there. For a week, he tried to persuade Valentine to take us. “There is no such place,” we were told at first. Then, “Oh yes, Zagorsk. It’s closed now.” Then, “Only open on certain days, but nobody goes there, only old women.” Then, “There may be a bus, but we don’t know.” Finally, somewhere around the third week of our stay in Moscow, Shaun purred, “Valentine, dear, we’ll pay for a taxi to take us there, wait while we tour the place, and then drive us all back,” and Valentine relented. “You must have your passports.” Soon, we were driving through the countryside. Valentine in front, next to the driver, and Shaun and I in the back, munching dried fruit. On either side of the road lay flat fields of mud, no walls, fences, or foliage. Against the gray sky, thick, muscular telephone wires curved from pole to pole, and every once in a while, you’d pass a hovel—a one-story shed. At a crossroad about forty kilometers out of town, we came to a concrete building with a radio tower, laden with antennae. A barrier lowered across the road, and a militiaman waved us down. Our taxi driver stopped the car and froze. Valentine turned pale and twitched. “Uh-oh,” came out of Shaun. The militiaman demanded something and there was an interlude of rapid Russian. The driver handed over some papers; Valentine fished out ID, then he turned around to us, and said, “Give him your passports!” The officer, taking everything, stalked away. Shaun leaned out of the car and shouted, “Nyet politico! Artistes! Artistes!” Valentine and the driver sat like stones, deaf to our questions. For twenty minutes. Then the militiaman returned, handed back our passports and ID papers, grunted a few words, and left. Valentine turned back to face us, his voice high-pitched. “It’s all right, it’s all right, he called Julia at the hotel, and she said let us go.” Shaun and I stared at each other. “Julia? The mouse who attended all the Intourist meetings without saying a word? Who sat in the corner of the dining room? She was the boss!”
Zagorsk is a walled complex of cupola-crowned churches. Fabulous. Outside among the churches stood a scattering of old women, black-garbed. And in the doorway of the biggest church sat one man without any teeth. A guardian. Inside were clusters of little old women paying court to various icons. In the dark, dingy gloom, lit with a few preciously hoarded candles and the occasional electric light bulb strung on a makeshift wire, the church’s every inch was layered with icons and murals. We left all our rubles as a donation, and Shaun did several paper bag cutaways. My favorite: he photographed me next to the guardian, sitting as if we were a couple at a flick, sharing a paper bag of popcorn.
Back at the hotel a few days later, Shaun stumbled in on Julia, holding a conference. “Daisy, I went down early for breakfast, and the doors to