Little Golden America

He suddenly took off his coat, pulled off his spectacles, flung them on the couch (later he looked for them in his pockets for about ten minutes), spread an automobile road map of America on his lap, and began to trace curious lines on it.

Right there before our eyes he was transformed from a wild eccentric into a businesslike American. We exchanged glances. Was this not perchance the ideal creature of whom we had dreamed? Was this not

the luxuriant hybrid which even Michurin and Burbank together could not have brought forth?

In the course of two hours we travelled over the map of America. What an exhilarating occupation that was!

For some time we discussed the advisability of driving into Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin. There you find at once two La Follettes, one a governor and one a senator, and it was possible to get letters of introduction to both of them. An enviable situation! Two Muscovites sit in New York and decide the question of a journey to Milwaukee. If they like, they'll go there; if not, they won't!

Old man Adams sat there, calm, clean, self-contained. No, he did not recommend that we go to the Pacific Ocean by the northern route through Salt Lake City, the city of the salt lake. By the time we arrived there, the mountain passes might be in snow.

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Mr. Adams. «This is very, very dangerous. It would be foolish to risk your lives. No, no, no! You ca

"But the Mormons?" we moaned.

"No, no! Mormons — that is very interesting. Yes, yes, Mormons are the same Americans as others. But snow — that is very dangerous!"

How delightful it was to talk of dangers, of mountain passes, of prairies! But even more delightful was it to calculate, pencil in hand, the extent to which an automobile was cheaper than going by railway, the number of gallons of petrol needed for a thousand miles, the cost of di

When our elated discussion passed into the stage of incomprehensible shouts, Mr. Adams suddenly jumped off the couch, caught his head in his hands, squinted in dumb desperation, and stood like that for a full minute.

We were frightened.

Without opening his eyes, Mr. Adams began to knead his head in his hands and to mutter:

«Gentlemen, everything is lost! You don't understand anything!"

And then what we did not understand became clear. Mr. Adams had come here with his wife and, having left her in their automobile, had run up to see us for just a second in order to ask us to his house for lunch. He had run in for just a second!

We raced down the corridor, frightening the old ladies who always populate American hotels. In the elevator Mr. Adams jumped with impatience, so eager was he to reach the protective wing of his wife.

Around the corner from Lexington Avenue, on Forty-eighth Street, in a neat but no longer new Chrysler sat a young lady who wore the same kind of protruding spectacles as did Mr. Adams.

«Becky!" groaned our new friend, stretching forth his fat little arms toward the Chrysler.

In the confusion his hat flew off and his round head glistened in the reflected light of New York's autumn sun.

"And where is the umbrella?" asked the lady, smiling wanly.

The sun went out on the head of Mr. Adams. He forgot the umbrella in our room, he forgot his wife in the street, the umbrella was upstairs. Under such circumstances occurred our meeting with Mrs. Rebecca Adams.

With bitterness we noticed that it was not Mr. Adams, but his wife, who took the wheel. We again exchanged glances.

"No, evidently this is not the hybrid we need. Our hybrid must know how to drive an automobile."

Mr. Adams regained his calm and normal state and talked about things as if nothing untoward had happened. On the entire trip to Central Park West, where his apartment was located, old man Adams assured us that the most important thing for us is our future travelling companion.

"No, no, no, you don't understand! This is very, very important!"

We became sad. We ourselves knew how important that was.

The door of the Adams's apartment was opened to us by a Negress to whose skirts clung a two-year-old girl. The little girl had a firmly moulded little body. She was a little Adams without spectacles.

She looked at her parents, and said in her thin little voice:

"Papa and Mamma."

Papa and Mamma groaned from sheer satisfaction and happiness.

We exchanged glances for the third time.

"Besides, he has a child! No, this is most decidedly not the hybrid!"

7 The Electric Chair

THE AMERICAN, Ernest Hemingway, author of the recently published Fiesta, which evoked much discussion in Soviet literary circles, happened to be in New York while we were there.

And another American writer, John Dos Passos, who is even better known among us and who provoked even more discussions in co

Incidentally, whenever mention was made some years ago of a soulless formalist, he was always understood to be some house manager by the name of Nezabudkin who had insulted an old lady for no good reason or who did not provide needed information on time. Nowadays no one thinks of house managers, and the words "a soulless formalist" do not fail to call forth in memory the figure of some writer or composer or of some other hairy votary of the Muses.

The round-headed, broad-nosed Dos Passos stutters a little. He begins every sentence with a laugh, but he ends it seriously. He looked at us benevolently and said:

"I am writing a new book. It is called Big Money. I wonder how it will fare. Every one of my succeeding books has had a smaller circulation than its predecessor: 42nd Parallelled a circulation of twenty thousand copies; 1919, fifteen thousand; this one will probably have ten thousand."

When we told Dos Passos that ten thousand copies of his 1919 disappeared from Soviet book counters in several hours, he replied:

"In your country people have been taught to read books, but with us here . . . Listen, we'll have to get together some time and have di

Hemingway came to New York for a week. His permanent home is at Key West, a small town at the extreme southern tip of Florida. He proved to be a large man with moustaches and a peeling sunburnt nose. He wore fla

We stood together, in the middle of one of the hotel rooms in which Hemingway lived, engaged in the usual American occupation. In our hands were high and wide glasses of highballs—whisky mixed with water. So far as we have been able to observe, everything in America begins with a drink. Even when we came on literary business to our publishers, Farrar and Rinehart, the gay, red-headed Mr. Farrar, publisher and poet, at once led us into their library. He had many books there, but also a large icebox. From that box the publisher took various bottles and cubes of ice, asked us whether we preferred Manhattan, Bacardi or Martini cocktails, and at once began to mix with such skill, as if he had never in his life published books, had never written verse, but had always worked as a barman. Americans enjoy mixing cocktails.