Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

On the counter glowed a gasoline flare with three bright wicks. We tried to guess what popcorn was made of.

“This is corn,” the vendor said unexpectedly in Ukrainian Russian. “Can’t you see? It’s ordinary corn. But where are you from that you speak Russian?” “From Moscow.” “No fooling?” “No.”

The popcorn vendor became quite excited and walked out of his booth. “Well, now, let’s see – are you here as delegates from the Soviet government,” he asked, “or did you come here to work, to perfect yourselves?”

We explained that we were merely travelling.

“I see, I see. Just taking a look at how things are going in our United States?”

We stood a long time at the glass booth, eating popcorn and listening to the vendor’s story, which was full of English words.

This man had come to the United States some thirty years ago from a small village in the government ofVolhynia. Now this little village is in Polish territory. At first he worked in mines, digging coal.

Then he was a labourer on a farm. Then workers were being hired for the locomotive works in Schenectady, so he went to work in the locomotive works.

“That’s how my life passed, like one day,” he said sadly. But now for six years he had been without work. He sold everything he had. He was evicted from his home.

“I have a Pole as my manager. We sell popcorn together.”

“Do you earn much?”

“Why, no, hardly enough for dinner. I’m starving. My clothes – you can see for yourself what they’re like.

I haven’t anything to wear for going out into the street.”

“Why don’t you go back to Volhynia?”

“It is even worse there. People write it’s very bad. But tell me how is it with you, in Russia? People say different things about you. I simply don’t know whom to believe and whom to disbelieve.”

We found out that this man who had left Russia in the dim past attentively follows everything that is said and written in Schenectady about his former homeland.

“Various lecturers come here,” he said, “and speak at the high school. Some are for the Soviet government, others are against it. And whoever speaks for theSoviet government, they write bad things about him, very bad. “For example, Colonel Cooper spoke well about theSoviet government, so they wrote about him that he sold out. Got two million for it. A millionaire farmer returned and praised the Soviet state farms.