Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

cities, the mushrooming of apartment houses, the easing of the restrictions of Stalin’s day⁠—or at least the beginning of it.

He actually hadn’t expected peasant clad, half-starved Russians furtively shooting glances at their neighbors for fear of the secret police. Nor a black bread and cabbage diet. Nor long lines of the politically suspect being hauled off to Siberia. But on the other hand he was unprepared for the prosperity he did find.

Not that this was any paradise, worker’s or otherwise. But it still came as a mild surprise. Henry Kuran couldn’t remember so far back that he hadn’t had his daily dose of anti-Russianism. Not unless it was for the brief respite during the Second World War when for a couple of years the Red Army had been composed of heroes and Stalin had overnight become benevolent old Uncle Joe.

There weren’t as many cars on the streets as in American cities, but there were more than he had expected nor were they 1955 model Packards. So far as he could see, they were approximately the same cars as were being turned out in Western Europe.

Public transportation, he admitted, was superior to that found in the Western capitals. Obviously, it would have to be, without automobiles, buses, streetcars and subways would have to carry the brunt of traffic. However, it was the spotless efficiency of public transportation that set him back.

The shops were still short of the pinnacles touched by Western capitals. They weren’t empty of goods, luxury goods as well as necessities, but they weren’t overflowing with the endless quantities, the hundred-shadings of quality and fashion that you expected in the States.

But what struck nearest to him was the fact that the people in the streets were not broken-spirited depressed, humorless drudges. In fact, why not admit it, they looked about the same as people in the streets anywhere else. Some laughed, some looked troubled. Children ran and played. Lovers held hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Some reeled under an overload of vodka. Some hurried along, business bent. Some dawdled, window-shopped, or strolled along for the air. Some read books or newspapers as they shuffled, radar directed, and unconscious of the world about them.

They were only a day and half in Leningrad. They saw the Hermitage, comparable to the Louvre and far and above any art museum in America. They saw the famous subway⁠—which deserved its fame. They were ushered through a couple of square miles of the Elektrosile electrical equipment works, claimed ostentatiously by them guide to be the largest in the world. They ate in restaurants as good as any Hank Kuran had been able to afford at home and stayed one night at the Astoria Hotel.

At least, Hank had the satisfaction of grumbling about the plumbing.

Paco and Loo, the only single bachelors on the tour besides himself, were again quartered with him at the Astoria.

Paco said, “My friend, there I agree with you completely. America has the best plumbing in the world. And the most.”

Hank was pulling off his shoes after an arch-breaking day of sightseeing. “Well, I’m glad I’ve finally found some field where it’s agreeable that the West is superior to the Russkies.”

Loo was stretched out on his bed, in stocking feet, gazing at the ceiling which towered at least fifteen feet above him. He said “In the town where I was born, there were three bathrooms, one in the home of the missionary, one in the home of the commissioner, and one in my father’s palace.” He looked up at Hank. “Or is my country considered part of the Western World?”

Paco laughed. “Come to think of it, I doubt if one third the rural homes of Argentina have bathrooms. Hank, my friend, I am afraid Loo is right. You use the word West too broadly. All the capitalist world is not so advanced as the United States. You have been very lucky, you Yankees.”

Hank sank into one of the huge, Victorian era armchairs. “Luck has nothing to do with it. America is rich because private enterprise works.”

“Of course,” Paco pursued humorously, “the fact that your country floats on a sea of oil, has some of the richest forest land in the world, is blessed with some of the greatest mineral deposits anywhere and millions of acres of unbelievably fertile land has nothing to do with it.”

“I get your point,” Hank said. “The United States was handed the wealth of the world on a platter. But that’s only part of it.”

“Yes,” Loo agreed. “Also to be considered is the fact that for more than a hundred years you have never had a serious war, serious, that is, in that your land was not invaded, your industries destroyed.”

“That’s to our credit. We’re a peace loving people.”

Loo laughed abruptly. “You should tell that to the American Indians.”

Hank scowled over at him. “What’d you mean by that Loo? That has all the elements of a nasty crack.”

“Or tell it to the Mexicans. Isn’t that where you got your whole Southwest?”

Hank looked from Loo to Paco and back.

Paco brought out cigarettes and tossed one to each of the others. “Aren’t these long Russian cigarettes the end? I heard somebody say that by the time the smoke got through all the filter, you’d lost the habit.” He looked over at Hank. “Easy my friend, easy. On a trip like this it would be impossible not to continually be comparing East and West, dwelling continually on politics, the pros and cons of both sides. All of us are continually assimilating what we hear and see. Among other things, I note that on the newsstands there are no publications from western lands. Why? Because still, after fifty years, our Communist bureaucracy dare not allow its people to read what they will. I note, too, that the shops on 25th October Avenue are not all directed toward the Russian man on the street, unless he is paid unbelievably more than we have heard. Sable coats? Jewelery? Luxurious furniture? I begin to