39. Eddie Contemplates an International Trip
On New Year's day 12:01 AM, 1985, Eddie lies back on the tatami floor at home in Tokyo, in pentagin repose, running important ideas through his mind. Suddenly, International Trip!
Why a trip? he muses, giggling in his mind at a Marx Bros allusion.
It relates to the fact that 1980 saw an end to the Jimmy Carter high money rates and Eddie's bank adviser switched to silver bullion and in late 1984 Eddie cashed in and now he is a double-digit millionaire. Time to spend, he thinks. Not just because a surplus exists! Making an international trip just because you have surplus reminds of the stupid statement Too late to cancel my trip to Paris, I already saved up the money.
First to the Russian Far East to meet Boris, who in the last few years has communicated with Eddie on the information highway. As Ryo is a homebody, Eddie will travel alone. In his mind, he runs its scenario several times, sees no reasons not to do it, and so starts to build a plan, thinking, This trip will be an experiment in international travel by air that will develop my foreign trip principles.
A month later, boarding a train to cross Japan to the western take-off point, he is humming Hey Diddle Dee-Dee, a foreign trip for me.
40. How to Travel
First principle is travel light. All Eddie's travel stuff fits into one rolling cart that can be stored in the aircraft overhead. Most of it is reading - the 48-cent used books outside street stall got during trips to NYC Strand Bookshop.
He chooses summer for travel to benefit from weather.
Clothing starts with inexpensive, blue-cloth, gum-sole shoes because they are light-weight, have no front of foot obstruction and are neat looking as well as inexpensive. Socks are black and thin; Eddie has discovered that overheat promotes athlete’s feet
Eddie has a perfect pants/sports jacket he will wear on the trip: pants that are working-man, dark brown, machine-washable and hang-dry with deep diagonal side- and buttoned-over back-pockets and for the pants a dark blue corduroy jacket that does not stain obviously and with multiple inside pockets. He brings a couple of dark soft-collar shirts. His shirts front can be buttoned, down to a level of mid hips, to protect against urine soiling his pants. His dark, gold-hued Mona Lisa necktie is for formal use. On his head he wears a hard plastic, long-jutting front-visor cap to protect eyes from sun and head from trauma.
Looking in mirror he exclaims "Neat!" The clothing is not too summery and will keep him warm enough in the cooled aircraft and in climate-cool Russia. And he carries no replacement. If he needs anything further for clothing, he'll buy as he goes.
41. To Khabarovsk - Russian Far East
He boards train at Tokyo for a several-hour trip west across Japan's main island. In seat he settles back and puts a pentagin pill under tongue as train moves out of station.
An hour later his alarm buzzes and he starts reading Han Suyin. Her books are ideal Far East travel reads because they deal with her growing up in 1930's China. Eddie is particularly interested in her telling how she got stimulated to become a physician - living at age 11 all summer in the house of an Englishman. His library was only books of medicine. - And how she got to be a published writer - from a missionary midwife who ghost-wrote Han Suyin's first-draft, amateurish novel in 1942 and got it published as Destination Chungking because it was highly topical in America in the midst of World War 2, and sympathetic to China.
Niigata on the east coast along the Sea of Japan is the point to get off for the Russian Far East. Eddie is curious to check out Khabarovsk, which most outsiders don't know about, only hearing about the other city, Vladivostok, where the Amur River empties into the Sea of Japan. Higher up on the Amur, at its northern tip, Khabarovsk affords a look across the river to the People's Republic of China and it also is the helicoptering-off point for the Soviet Union's difficult war in Afghanistan that Eddie wishes to learn about.
Eddie boards an Aeroflot flight at Niigata and he sits by window, a bit scared because his study told that Russian airlines have a high risk of crash on takeoff. But this one makes it. The 5-hour flight is interesting. The Russian air attendants are all blonde and give very brusque service. No coffee, tea or me, Eddie thinks with a light laugh. The lunch is boxed with small sandwiches and cold cuts and the inevitable Russian chai, a brown tastless tea. Best of all is the halvah that goes with it. Afterward, Eddie sits back and puts a pentagin quarter pill under tongue and thinks good thoughts.
42. Touchdown after the 5-hour flight
Even its being mid June, a cool breeze ruffles Eddie's hair. The passengers all walk from the mid-field aircraft-landing to a low building with hammer & sickle over the large entrance. Inside, 2 uniformed young blonde women check passports. As Eddie's is being checked a chunky elderly man with fading-yellow-hair, an obviously high official, leans over and whispers to the passport checker, who immediately stamps an OK Xorosho on the visa. The older man reaches a right hand out and Eddie shakes it.
"Doctor Steinowitz, I am the Boris of Boris & Olga you communicate with on informational highway. Welcome to Khabarovsk." Boris leads a delighted Eddie, who loves to be greeted at a lonely airport, to an official-looking black Packard car and ushers him into the left side front seat and gets in right side driver's seat. "Your reservations at Parus Hotel - not Intourist but still one of our best." Boris speaks understandable English, but often leaves out the articles and gets tenses wrong and forgets plurals.
Eddie is expecting an old 19th Century Dacha out of a Tolstoy novel and on arrival his face registers surprise at the several-story luxury hotel above the Amur as it flows by its north shore. Boris, after parking car by hotel front and grabbing Eddie's light-weight travel cart, says "Parus is renovated, from old, good days."
After checking in and leaving Eddie in the room by saying, "Tomorrow helicopter to Kabul," Boris leaves and Eddie meditates on his great good lucking out at start of trip.
43. Nighting at the Parus
The room is 10 by 12 feet (c.3 by 4 m.), with wall to wall soothing deep green carpet that Eddie's slipper-feet sink into pleasantly, and it has double bed and 2 modern couches matching the rug. Also a chest of drawers and a desk with night lamp and on the wall is an air view of the Amur River delta near the city. Eddie goes into the bathroom and, curiously recalling his reading of Honeymoon in Siberia, turns on the bathtub faucet and sees brown Amur River water just as Olga saw 46 years before and he thinks, That's what I like - stability.
He takes a shower and goes back into main room in towel bathrobe, lies down on bed; then after a moment, puts a pentagin under tongue and thinks creative thoughts.
44. Kabul by Helicopter
The high security part of Khabarovsk Airport is where Boris takes Eddie, and Eddie sees it is filled with military helicopters. Boris leads him aboard a well-furnished helicopter with 2 officer-uniformed pilots and a group of soldiers in battle fatigues.
"They are bound for front in Afghanistan," Boris says in low voice and exchanges friendly greetings with the troops who obviously know he is high level.
The helicopter rises. It is Eddie's first helicopter ride and he hopes for the best.
As they settle down over a breakfast of hot borscht and blini (the blini below)
served by a pretty, uniformed-attendant, Boris, in his clipped English, fills Eddie in on the insider view of the Afghanistan War 1985
"Afghanistan is case where local communists are waging what you Americans call good fight. It is only Muslim country where communists have reached the people and gained control popularly. Probably because it never accept Islam. It was under Huns and similar pagan people and first get civilized conquered by Alexander Great. And he is still admired and many Afghans confuse him as our Russian Alexander Great."
"Oh, the one of War and Peace!" interjects Eddie.
Boris ignores the interjection, intent on his analysis. "Communist Afghans under President Najibullah end Sharia Law, and for first time women have rights and get educated and no more veils, concubines, polygamy. Of course, Mujahideen hate communism. And young, rich Saudi Arabian leader has tapped into Amerika money bag. He is Bin Laden, or by his friends Osama. Funded by CIA."
Boris stops and smiles. "I not bore you further, Eduard. Just this little. You can check on ground after arrive."
Then he remembers something. "Oh, one more. Your very stupid US President Carter - he call himself by child name Jimmy and mind childish. In 1976 he let Cold War propaganda guide policy and he put wheat embargo on our communist countries, incidentally bankrupting American farmer. What excuse? He say we communist suppressing freedom in Afghanistan! For Jimmy Carter, freedom mean Osama and Islamists, and oppression of women and stoning for adultery and all old medieval wrongs of religion." He smiles. "OK, now rest."
Eddie is happy for that. He rests head on cushion and puts a pentagin under his tongue.
45. Vladimir the KGB Man - On the Ground in Kabul
Out on the landing strip as they exit the helicopter, they are greeted by an age 30's round-face Russian who shakes Eddie's hand powerfully and nods like an insider to Boris, who explains. "It is Vladimir. He is good friend. "And" - he chuckles - "KGB."
Vladimir smiles and hands Eddie a business card
Vladimir V. Putin
First attache, Embassy Soviet Union in Kabul
Eddie thinks I just fell into a pot of jam. Wow! What a guy to meet in Kabul!
They get in another black Packard, this one with a powerfully built blond driver who Vladimir introduces as Comrade Valentin.
First they stop at a high school where Eddie sees boys and girls learning together in a room taught by a woman teacher and none of the females have face or head covers. "We make face and head cover in class against regulation," comments Vladimir.
Next they visit a mosque, and as they take off shoes in vestibule and put on slippers, guided by an old bearded man, Vlad explains it is now a museum to show the people how religion has oppressed them. Eddie notices exhibits that are not only contemptuous of Islam but, in various cases, of the other major religions.
Next, a free health clinic where mothers are getting prenatal care. "We give medicine free for everyone, any time," Vladimir says, and watches Eddie's reaction.
Next a bookstore, selling communist propaganda but also classic American Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. Eddie notices Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is a featured sale. Also Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. No Faulkner on sale, and Eddie guesses, Faulkner does not get the approval of the commissar of information because no attention to social issues.
At the market, Eddie notes the good prices of food.
Later they take lunch in a Cafe and conversation flows. and Eddie daringly asks "How is the war going?" Boris has already clued in Vladimir that Eddie is a fellow traveler, meaning a surface apolitical person who underneath is pro-communist. Even so, Vladimir frowns, pauses before speaking and then in his stilted English says; "Mr Eduard - if I may call your familiar name - I am going to be unusually frank because my comrade here " - he indicates Boris - "says you are what we few here call New People, or Futurist. The war not going good." He sips his tea and then. "We would win immediately if Amerika was not throwing billions of dollars - Yes I say billions - into helping the Mujahideen. They are training in Pakistan, recruiting in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Islamic countries." He scowls - "And even our so called Communist brother - who calls itself People's Republic - yes, even China, thanks to Capitalist Roader, Mr Deng, and his now dead mentor Mao Tse Tung, is allowing the Americans and their Islamist allies free going along Afghanistan's southeast border. Then there is this new face - Bin Laden I am sorry to say but he is Amerika's secret weapon - brilliant, rich, charismatic and a violently anticommunist Islamist."
Eddie interjects. "But I would think the USSR is so powerful they could crush even the insurgents despite US money, especially with the beautiful job you are doing with the civilian population?"
Vladimir makes a bitter scowl. "First, the locals too stupid. We are trying to give them what they want before they know they want but is very hard when you have this highly funded, highly sentimented opposition." He stops and considers.
"Then, and what I say now is not for passing on. The Soviet Union is in deep trouble. We had good leadership - even Stalin before his mind went. But when Kruschev was weakened by the Cuban Missile crisis, we got a corrupt apparatchik and now as result USSR is headed toward collapse," He pauses and looks over his shoulder; then: "I predict, in next decade. The US CIA is pouring more billions into our collapse."
Boris who has been silent now interjects. "Collapse of Soviet Union will be end of international balance between capitalism and communism. The balance start in 1930's and peak in 1945 when there is true chance enlightened capitalism of Roosevelt and communism of USSR might combine to bring Earth through danger we are now entered in. But hope is ended now. And when Soviet Union disappear, American capitalism go crazy with power."
Vladimir nods head adding, "Who are villains?" And rhetorically answers, "Mao Tse Tung and his capitalist road followers; they, nationalist bourgeosie masquerading as communists. And our corruption. I know the top leadership in today's USSR. To use Americanism, they stink. One young one, Gorbachev, I believe on CIA pay list. Then, see how CIA foments unhappiness in Moscow using Sakharov and other so called dissident. Ach, what can one do!"
Later, flying back to Kabul, Eddie makes notes of it all. Very useful for future planning, he thinks after putting a pentagin quartered pill under his tongue.
End of Section. To continue next, click 16.46: Frozen Chosen aka North Korea
Looking in mirror he exclaims "Neat!" The clothing is not too summery and will keep him warm enough in the cooled aircraft and in climate-cool Russia. And he carries no replacement. If he needs anything further for clothing, he'll buy as he goes.
41. To Khabarovsk - Russian Far East
He boards train at Tokyo for a several-hour trip west across Japan's main island. In seat he settles back and puts a pentagin pill under tongue as train moves out of station.
An hour later his alarm buzzes and he starts reading Han Suyin. Her books are ideal Far East travel reads because they deal with her growing up in 1930's China. Eddie is particularly interested in her telling how she got stimulated to become a physician - living at age 11 all summer in the house of an Englishman. His library was only books of medicine. - And how she got to be a published writer - from a missionary midwife who ghost-wrote Han Suyin's first-draft, amateurish novel in 1942 and got it published as Destination Chungking because it was highly topical in America in the midst of World War 2, and sympathetic to China.
Niigata on the east coast along the Sea of Japan is the point to get off for the Russian Far East. Eddie is curious to check out Khabarovsk, which most outsiders don't know about, only hearing about the other city, Vladivostok, where the Amur River empties into the Sea of Japan. Higher up on the Amur, at its northern tip, Khabarovsk affords a look across the river to the People's Republic of China and it also is the helicoptering-off point for the Soviet Union's difficult war in Afghanistan that Eddie wishes to learn about.
Eddie boards an Aeroflot flight at Niigata and he sits by window, a bit scared because his study told that Russian airlines have a high risk of crash on takeoff. But this one makes it. The 5-hour flight is interesting. The Russian air attendants are all blonde and give very brusque service. No coffee, tea or me, Eddie thinks with a light laugh. The lunch is boxed with small sandwiches and cold cuts and the inevitable Russian chai, a brown tastless tea. Best of all is the halvah that goes with it. Afterward, Eddie sits back and puts a pentagin quarter pill under tongue and thinks good thoughts.
42. Touchdown after the 5-hour flight
Even its being mid June, a cool breeze ruffles Eddie's hair. The passengers all walk from the mid-field aircraft-landing to a low building with hammer & sickle over the large entrance. Inside, 2 uniformed young blonde women check passports. As Eddie's is being checked a chunky elderly man with fading-yellow-hair, an obviously high official, leans over and whispers to the passport checker, who immediately stamps an OK Xorosho on the visa. The older man reaches a right hand out and Eddie shakes it.
"Doctor Steinowitz, I am the Boris of Boris & Olga you communicate with on informational highway. Welcome to Khabarovsk." Boris leads a delighted Eddie, who loves to be greeted at a lonely airport, to an official-looking black Packard car and ushers him into the left side front seat and gets in right side driver's seat. "Your reservations at Parus Hotel - not Intourist but still one of our best." Boris speaks understandable English, but often leaves out the articles and gets tenses wrong and forgets plurals.
Eddie is expecting an old 19th Century Dacha out of a Tolstoy novel and on arrival his face registers surprise at the several-story luxury hotel above the Amur as it flows by its north shore. Boris, after parking car by hotel front and grabbing Eddie's light-weight travel cart, says "Parus is renovated, from old, good days."
After checking in and leaving Eddie in the room by saying, "Tomorrow helicopter to Kabul," Boris leaves and Eddie meditates on his great good lucking out at start of trip.
43. Nighting at the Parus
The room is 10 by 12 feet (c.3 by 4 m.), with wall to wall soothing deep green carpet that Eddie's slipper-feet sink into pleasantly, and it has double bed and 2 modern couches matching the rug. Also a chest of drawers and a desk with night lamp and on the wall is an air view of the Amur River delta near the city. Eddie goes into the bathroom and, curiously recalling his reading of Honeymoon in Siberia, turns on the bathtub faucet and sees brown Amur River water just as Olga saw 46 years before and he thinks, That's what I like - stability.
He takes a shower and goes back into main room in towel bathrobe, lies down on bed; then after a moment, puts a pentagin under tongue and thinks creative thoughts.
44. Kabul by Helicopter
The high security part of Khabarovsk Airport is where Boris takes Eddie, and Eddie sees it is filled with military helicopters. Boris leads him aboard a well-furnished helicopter with 2 officer-uniformed pilots and a group of soldiers in battle fatigues.
"They are bound for front in Afghanistan," Boris says in low voice and exchanges friendly greetings with the troops who obviously know he is high level.
The helicopter rises. It is Eddie's first helicopter ride and he hopes for the best.
As they settle down over a breakfast of hot borscht and blini (the blini below)
served by a pretty, uniformed-attendant, Boris, in his clipped English, fills Eddie in on the insider view of the Afghanistan War 1985
"Afghanistan is case where local communists are waging what you Americans call good fight. It is only Muslim country where communists have reached the people and gained control popularly. Probably because it never accept Islam. It was under Huns and similar pagan people and first get civilized conquered by Alexander Great. And he is still admired and many Afghans confuse him as our Russian Alexander Great."
"Oh, the one of War and Peace!" interjects Eddie.
Boris ignores the interjection, intent on his analysis. "Communist Afghans under President Najibullah end Sharia Law, and for first time women have rights and get educated and no more veils, concubines, polygamy. Of course, Mujahideen hate communism. And young, rich Saudi Arabian leader has tapped into Amerika money bag. He is Bin Laden, or by his friends Osama. Funded by CIA."
Boris stops and smiles. "I not bore you further, Eduard. Just this little. You can check on ground after arrive."
Then he remembers something. "Oh, one more. Your very stupid US President Carter - he call himself by child name Jimmy and mind childish. In 1976 he let Cold War propaganda guide policy and he put wheat embargo on our communist countries, incidentally bankrupting American farmer. What excuse? He say we communist suppressing freedom in Afghanistan! For Jimmy Carter, freedom mean Osama and Islamists, and oppression of women and stoning for adultery and all old medieval wrongs of religion." He smiles. "OK, now rest."
Eddie is happy for that. He rests head on cushion and puts a pentagin under his tongue.
45. Vladimir the KGB Man - On the Ground in Kabul
Out on the landing strip as they exit the helicopter, they are greeted by an age 30's round-face Russian who shakes Eddie's hand powerfully and nods like an insider to Boris, who explains. "It is Vladimir. He is good friend. "And" - he chuckles - "KGB."
Vladimir smiles and hands Eddie a business card
Vladimir V. Putin
First attache, Embassy Soviet Union in Kabul
Eddie thinks I just fell into a pot of jam. Wow! What a guy to meet in Kabul!
They get in another black Packard, this one with a powerfully built blond driver who Vladimir introduces as Comrade Valentin.
First they stop at a high school where Eddie sees boys and girls learning together in a room taught by a woman teacher and none of the females have face or head covers. "We make face and head cover in class against regulation," comments Vladimir.
Next they visit a mosque, and as they take off shoes in vestibule and put on slippers, guided by an old bearded man, Vlad explains it is now a museum to show the people how religion has oppressed them. Eddie notices exhibits that are not only contemptuous of Islam but, in various cases, of the other major religions.
Next, a free health clinic where mothers are getting prenatal care. "We give medicine free for everyone, any time," Vladimir says, and watches Eddie's reaction.
Next a bookstore, selling communist propaganda but also classic American Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. Eddie notices Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is a featured sale. Also Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. No Faulkner on sale, and Eddie guesses, Faulkner does not get the approval of the commissar of information because no attention to social issues.
At the market, Eddie notes the good prices of food.
Later they take lunch in a Cafe and conversation flows. and Eddie daringly asks "How is the war going?" Boris has already clued in Vladimir that Eddie is a fellow traveler, meaning a surface apolitical person who underneath is pro-communist. Even so, Vladimir frowns, pauses before speaking and then in his stilted English says; "Mr Eduard - if I may call your familiar name - I am going to be unusually frank because my comrade here " - he indicates Boris - "says you are what we few here call New People, or Futurist. The war not going good." He sips his tea and then. "We would win immediately if Amerika was not throwing billions of dollars - Yes I say billions - into helping the Mujahideen. They are training in Pakistan, recruiting in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Islamic countries." He scowls - "And even our so called Communist brother - who calls itself People's Republic - yes, even China, thanks to Capitalist Roader, Mr Deng, and his now dead mentor Mao Tse Tung, is allowing the Americans and their Islamist allies free going along Afghanistan's southeast border. Then there is this new face - Bin Laden I am sorry to say but he is Amerika's secret weapon - brilliant, rich, charismatic and a violently anticommunist Islamist."
Eddie interjects. "But I would think the USSR is so powerful they could crush even the insurgents despite US money, especially with the beautiful job you are doing with the civilian population?"
Vladimir makes a bitter scowl. "First, the locals too stupid. We are trying to give them what they want before they know they want but is very hard when you have this highly funded, highly sentimented opposition." He stops and considers.
"Then, and what I say now is not for passing on. The Soviet Union is in deep trouble. We had good leadership - even Stalin before his mind went. But when Kruschev was weakened by the Cuban Missile crisis, we got a corrupt apparatchik and now as result USSR is headed toward collapse," He pauses and looks over his shoulder; then: "I predict, in next decade. The US CIA is pouring more billions into our collapse."
Boris who has been silent now interjects. "Collapse of Soviet Union will be end of international balance between capitalism and communism. The balance start in 1930's and peak in 1945 when there is true chance enlightened capitalism of Roosevelt and communism of USSR might combine to bring Earth through danger we are now entered in. But hope is ended now. And when Soviet Union disappear, American capitalism go crazy with power."
Vladimir nods head adding, "Who are villains?" And rhetorically answers, "Mao Tse Tung and his capitalist road followers; they, nationalist bourgeosie masquerading as communists. And our corruption. I know the top leadership in today's USSR. To use Americanism, they stink. One young one, Gorbachev, I believe on CIA pay list. Then, see how CIA foments unhappiness in Moscow using Sakharov and other so called dissident. Ach, what can one do!"
Later, flying back to Kabul, Eddie makes notes of it all. Very useful for future planning, he thinks after putting a pentagin quartered pill under his tongue.
End of Section. To continue next, click 16.46: Frozen Chosen aka North Korea
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