“No illusions, eh?” He seemed to like this, but raised a hand to keep her from talking as one of the two telephones on his desk began ringing. While Timofeyev took the call, Florence let her eyes settle on different points around his office. A glass-fronted mahogany bookcase occupied one wall, and a large blue globe stood on a tripod in the corner. On a green blotter beside Timofeyev’s elbow, a tea glass in a filigree holder caught the morning sun arriving through the open curtain. Under her shoes the floor was polished to a high gloss. Everything about the balding, dapper Timofeyev seemed as elegant and polished as his office. He had calm, intelligent eyes, a long bony nose, and a neat, somewhat pointy beard. The look he was emulating might have been V. I. Lenin’s, but the person he actually resembled, Florence realized with a start, was Shakespeare. Above Timofeyev hung an enlarged portrait of Comrade Stalin, also seated and working at his desk. Florence compared the two mentally and found Stalin lacking. Timofeyev laid down the receiver and regarded her with sharp, tired eyes. “Your references allege you are sincere and reliable,” he remarked in an unconvinced, flattering way that made Florence glance down modestly. “What about your eyesight?”
“Pardon me?” She was still thinking about whether Timofeyev meant “reliable” professionally or politically.
“Do you wear glasses, Miss Fein?”
“I’ve never had the need.”
“Good. Then you can read this.” He slid across the desk a scrap that looked like a freshly printed dollar. “In the corner,” he said, pointing.
“This note is legal tender for all debts private and…”
“What kind of stupidity is this—‘legal tender’?”
“Here it says ‘redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve bank.’?”
“Is it some kind of word game? Paper money redeemable in…paper money! This is what they write above Mr. Washington’s head. An English economist called Keynes has convinced your government and half of Europe to float their currencies. But America wants it both ways, as usual: your treasury sets a new price for the dollar every day and then demands to know how much gold we have in reserve.” He pointed to a pile of envelopes on his desk. “You can write these excellent people and tell them politely that we await this information every morning as eagerly as they do. I assume you can type, Comrade Fein. Very good, then.”
The questions on the employment forms Grigory Grigorievich gave her started simply enough—“name,” “patronymic,” “date and place of birth,” “nationality” (she wrote “American”), “education,” “foreign languages”—before, like a sudden drop in the seafloor, they became utterly confusing.
“What should I say for ‘social origin’?” she asked Timofeyev. She hadn’t come from “peasants” or “workers” or “gentry” or “clergy.” Her father was an insurance man. Was that a trade or a speculation activity?
“Write ‘middle-class,’?” said Timofeyev impatiently, then frowned, thinking better of it. “Lower-middle-class.” But before she had the chance, he took the papers from her hand and told her it was better if he completed the questions on her behalf. “The important thing is not to cross anything out,” he explained mysteriously. In addition to her class origins, the State Bank seemed to be interested in Florence’s marital status, every place she had lived since birth, what political groups she had ever belonged to, whether anyone in her family had been to jail, her height, her hair color, and any distinguishing characteristics she had, such as moles, limps, or a low hairline. Had she not known better, she would have thought she was filling out her own criminal docket. Hearing her uncertain, complicated replies, Timofeyev stopped consulting with her altogether and wrote out his own answers.
“Place of residence.”
“I’m staying in a dormitory at the Foreign Languages Institute, on the condition that I start teaching there next week. But with this job, I thought I’d get another—”
“I’m sorry to tell you that Gosbank can’t provide you with housing. Approval for another room normally takes months. You can rent something in a communal flat.”
“You mean a speculation rental? I don’t want to do anything…improper.”
Timofeyev rolled his eyes. “Who teaches you foreigners this bunk? Open the papers; they’re full of advertisements. Price set by the square meter. Whatever else you work out with your host is your business. All right, don’t look so terrified. I’ll have my Klavdia Alekseyevna call around. Heaven knows, if they hear you talk, they’ll charge you more than your salary.”
Once the paperwork was completed, he walked with her out into the common hall. All around, bank clerks and bookkeepers were busy typing and blotting, clicking abacus beads with a speed she’d only seen in Chinese laundries. Timofeyev’s Shakespearean eyes twinkled in a benevolent mockery of her anxiousness. He put out his hand. “Welcome to Gosbank.”
For Florence there now began a time of such permanent motion, such epic hustle, that she could never recall afterward how many weeks had passed before the numberless obstacles of her days began at last to take the shape of a familiar routine. Eight A.M. found her running along Solyanka Street to catch the overcrowded trams rolling down to Kuznetsky Most. By nine she was at her desk, surrounded by ringing telephones and chattering typewriters. Once more she felt the reassuring proximity of the immense and inscrutable levers of Power. Her morning hours were spent reading through the world financial papers, keeping abreast of the prices of precious metals and making reports on their movements to Timofeyev. After lunch in the canteen with the other clerks, she ascended the marble steps back to Timofeyev’s tobacco-fragrant office and organized her boss’s correspondence with foreign treasuries and banks, then typed up his dictations in her good English—not so much translating the words themselves (simple enough with the aid of a financial dictionary) as transmogrifying his tone (Soviet, autocratic) into the more cheerful and paternalistic American style that Scoop Epstein had taught her while conducting business with Midwestern executives.