I Wonder as I Wander by Langston Hughes

Author:Langston Hughes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

MOSCOW ROMANCE

AT one of the Meyerhold’s rehearsals I met an actress, a sort of apprentice actress, playing bouncing country peasants, awkward maids, and other small bit parts verging toward comedy. She had a buxom body, a round smiling face, Slavic—not beautiful, not ugly—and was very healthy-looking. But she had a one-track mind. Without advance warning, Natasha simply came to my room in the New Moscow Hotel one night when I was out—and was in bed when I got back.

I had met her after my return from Central Asia. It was late when the rehearsal was over and not a droski, taxi, bus, or tramcar was in sight. The Moscow streets were silent and eerie white under the snow. I asked Natasha if she would like me to walk her home. She said, “Please.” So I did. She lived near the Chinese Wall of the Old City, across the river not far from my hotel. She was very talkative, spoke French well, and kept up a running conversation as our feet went crunch, crunch, crunch through the dry snow. Natasha was amusing, and flirtatious.

She said, “Take off your glove.” I did. She took off one of hers, and took my hand, and laughed. She said, “See your dark hand and my white one together—pretty, no? Comme c’est beaul”

“They’re different,” I said.

“Oh, I love the Negroes,” she cried in French, “and I have not known one before, only seen them in theater, in cinema. But I love the Negroes.”

At home in America, Negroes are immediately suspicious of persons who protest too much their love of colored people. But I knew she was not being condescending. Still I saw no need for her to stretch the point.

“Bien,” I said, “that’s nice of you. I love the Russians, too.”

She squeezed my hand, and that was about the end of it that evening. I said good night at her door, went down along the river and across the bridge to my hotel. But the very next time I went to Meyer-hold’s theater one afternoon when a new set of spirals and bridges were being built on the stage, there she was. Lloyd Patterson, the Negro artist of our movie group, had asked me to meet him there and watch how a constructivist set was put together. His wife, whom he had married while I was away in Asia, was with him. I introduced them to Natasha. This time when I took Natasha home, she asked me to come in and meet her husband. He was a quiet pince-nezed old gentleman about twice her age, half bald, scholarly and blanched, and somewhat absent-minded in manner.

“He works all the time,” Natasha said, “studies formulas, charts, I don’t know what.” It seemed he was attached to a scientific institute, and took his position very seriously. He seldom went out. He had but little interest in the arts, but he was pleasant enough that afternoon as the three of us had tea. There was a real old-fashioned brass samovar in the living room, but there was no fuel to heat it.

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