Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

New York itself thunders and gleams much more thoroughly than any storm. It is an excruciating city. It constantly rivets all attention to itself. It makes your eyes ache.

Yet it is impossible not to look upon it.

6.В Papa and Mamma

BEFORE DEPartING from Moscow we had collected numerous letters of introduction. It was explained to us that America was the land of letters of introduction. Without them you could not turn around.

Americans of our acquaintance whom we visited before departure at once and in silence sat down at their typewriters and began to pound out:

“Dear Sir: My friends, whom I commend to your attention…”

And so on and so forth.

“Regards to your wife”—and in brief all that is proper to write on such occasions. They knew beforehand what we had come for.

The correspondent of the New York Times, Walter Duranty, wrote with incredible speed, taking the cigarette out of his mouth only in order to swallow some Crimean Madeira.

We carried away from him a dozen letters. In farewell he told us:

“Go, go to America! It is much more interesting there now than here in your Russia. With you everything goes up.” He indicated with his hand the rising steps of a stairway. “With you here everything is clear. But with us everything is not yet clear. And no one knows what may happen.”

A colossal catch awaited us at Louis Fischer’s, a journalist well known in American left-wing circles. He spent at least half of his working day on us.

“You are threatened in America,” he said, “with the danger of finding yourself at once in radical and intellectual circles, getting lost there, seeing nothing, and returning home with the conviction that all Americans are very progressive and intellectual people. Yet it is far from the truth. You must see as many different kinds of people as possible. Try to see rich people, the unemployed, officials, farmers. Look for average people, because it is they who make up America.

”

He regarded us with his black and kindly eyes and wished us a happy and fruitful journey.

We were in the throes of greed. Although our suitcases were bulging with letters, it seemed to us that we did not have enough of them. We recalled that Eisenstein had at one time been in America, so we went to see him at Potylikha.

This famous cinema village is laid out on the picturesque shores of the Moskva River.