Chapter nineteen: a grand old-fashioned journey

“I’ve made a grand old-fashioned journey”: ST to AB, April 13, 1956, SSF.

There was much to do: ST, 1956 National Diary appointment book, YCAL, Box 3.

“the cruelest humorist”: “L’intransigeant,” Paris-presse, February 2, 1956, p. 7C, YCAL, Box 70.

“quiet Englishman”: ST to HS, February 17, 1956, AAA.

He was also thankful: ST to HS, February 18, 20, and 21, 1956, from Leningrad, AAA.

He was assigned a woman guide: Information from a second datebook for 1956 dedicated to ST’s diary of the Russian trip, YCAL, Box 3.

he insisted on seeing the Finland Station: Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1940). The Finland Railroad Station was the terminus for trains from Helsinki and Vyborg and was made famous when V. I. Lenin went through it on his return to Russia.

“three horses galloping”: ST to HS, Tuesday, February 21, 1956, AAA.

At this point, he didn’t care: He bought so many things that he had to find a Russian bank to cash $300 in travelers’ checks. ST, Russian datebook, February 20, 1956, YCAL, Box 3; ST to HS, February 23 and 27, 1956, and cable February 27, 1956, all AAA.

Everything in Moscow was “enormous”: Figure 49 in S:I, p. 51, shows vividly the vastness of the square and how it dwarfs the people in it.

Much of the rest of his three days: In his Russian datebook he wrote only the last names of the embassy people (Conant, Bohlen, White) or the reporters (Raymond of the New York Times, Levine of CBS, Schorr of the Chicago Tribune); YCAL, Box 3.

He liked his interpreter: His writing is unclear, and the name may have been Yonkin.

“Turkish verandas”: ST, diary, March 4, 5, and 6, 1956, YCAL, Box 3.

They went on to the Ivari Monastery: In his diary, ST mistakenly calls it the Samtavro Monastery.

the young historian: Later known as Priscilla Johnson MacMillan, who wrote about Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA, and other topics pertaining to modern Russia.

“sensitive and brutal faces”: Vladimir Maximov was the dissident author of Seven Days of Creation, A Train for Moscow, and the memoir of his adolescence, Adieu from Nowhere. He was sent to a mental hospital, exiled to Paris, and later permitted to return to Moscow.

Bohlen also arranged an interview: ST mistakenly gives the name as “Shugnov” in his diary, YCAL, Box 3. Voks was the official U.S.S.R. journal published by the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Highly propagandistic, it was so thoroughly reviled abroad that in 1958 it was discontinued, reorganized, and reissued under another name and with more objective content.

“whether [Averell] Harriman”: ST wrote this in a little notebook where he jotted things that struck his fancy, now YCAL, Box 95. According to PC, the contents of Box 95 were so important to ST that he kept them in his bedside table.

He stole the telephone directory: WMAA, p. 241.

“Thank you my darling”: In an interview, April 18, 2007, HS said, “This was one of my favorite stories about Saul.” In his 1956 datebook, ST gave the man’s remark as “My darling, I must go!”

“The smell of fear”: Jean Stein vanden Heuvel, “An Interview with Saul Steinberg,” typescript, YCAL, Box 38, eventually edited into the article published in Life.

“frozen snow, Bolshoi”: ST to AB, April 13, 1956, SSF.

“a trip for my nose”: WMAA, p. 241.

He worked from notes: These notes are in YCAL, Box 7, and appear to be companions to his YCAL sketchbooks 199–202b, 4860, 4869.

“Comments about buildings in USSR”: YCAL, Box 7.

“the best reporting”: Arthur Caylor, San Francisco News, September 29, 1956.

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