bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 7–8
by Mary Taylor
I reached around the door and switched onds before entering my kitchen. That would give the cockroaches time to scuttle off the counter. I knew they were there. I just didn’t want to see them. The refrigerator was by the window, so once I had found my little pot I stood savouring its contents, while contemplating the dreary scene outside. In the dim light before dawn I could make out the broken packing cases strewn across the snow and the hunched figure of the guard half asleep in his sentry box. With my other pregnancies I had not experienced any particular cravings but with this, my fourth, I lusted for caviar. Luckily I was in Moscow, in Kutuzovsky Prospect to be exact, at a time when this was still an affordable commodity. And so I stood one December morning in what by any normal standards would have been called a slum, staring at the snow and supping caviar.
In the bad old days, known by some as “the golden age”, life in the Canadian Foreign Service was tougher but often more glamorous. Accommodation was at a premium, not only in European cities recovering from the devastation of war but also in new Asian capitals which had suddenly had greatness thrust upon them. Hospitals and medical services were sometimes reminiscent of Dickens and Foreign Service Directives had not yet been designed to mitigate such problems. So daily life was often very rough indeed. To compensate, however, there were some splendid moments, even for those who were relatively junior In a service with fewer and smaller missions operating in a world where those with money rarely had inhibitions about spending it, even quite humble officers, whether in their own right or representing their ambassadors, quite frequently found themselves mingling with the beautiful people. But it was the cockroaches with whom one lived day by day.
We had them in Paris, supposedly because we lived in a ground floor apartment near a grocery store; but I don’t remember them in Delhi. Perhaps that was because I rarely entered the small, hot kitchen where our food was cooked over a charcoal burner. What our house there did enjoy was plenty of flies in addition to the architectural distinction of having three rooms, only one of which had an outside window. Space was often limited, especially if one had several children. Two of our babies spent part of their infancy in cupboards — with window in Paris, without in Moscow. Ironically by the time most of us acquired more palatial accommodation our children had grown up and fled the coop.
Having children increased the complications of foreign service life and in my case this started from day one. I had planned to have my first baby in a charming little clinic near our home in New Delhi. But when I called to say labour was well advanced the answer came loud and clear “no room at the inn” ’. We were, as it happened, in the midst of floods and on the brink of a cholera epidemic. So I was despatched to what could be charitably described as an indifferent nursing home, one in fact from which my husband had been rescued earlier by his High Commissioner’s wife, Mrs. Reid, on the grounds that it was no fit place for a Canadian patient.
Andrew was born naturally, partly because there was no qualified anaesthetist, and spent the first days of his life cradled by an adoring ayah, who only stopped rocking him to spit betel juice on the stone floor. No doubt because of this he grew up with a remarkably happy disposition, and a good thing too. Later with a rusty nail sticking out of his foot I took him to the British doctor whose services we shared in Moscow. Known for this wry humour which was not always appreciated by the more nervous members of our little community, the good Dr. Sheehan took one look. “I suppose we’ll have to amputate,” he said. It was greatly to the credit of my nine year old that he instantly perceived this to be a joke.
Home leave at that time only applied to those in very demanding circumstances, such as my husband and Bill Bauer, who shared an hotel room in Hanoi. Elsewhere one had to fend as best one could. I remember my first trip to Brittany before we had saved up enough money to buy a car. My husband had to stay in town for a meeting — how well these matters were always arranged — so I set forth with a three year old and a one year old helped by a rather incompetent teen-aged au pair. The train had barely left the suburbs of Paris before the man opposite opened his first bottle of red wine. But it was not the behaviour of the passengers in this crowded second class compartment which made the journey so difficult but the refusal of my older child to use the toilet facilities. One look at the ground flying beneath and he refused to have anything to do with it. To my amazed admiration he held out without accident to the bitter end but virtue was not rewarded. No sooner had we reached the long awaited villa than he fell into a bed of nettles, a hazard he had not encountered in Canada.
The French embassy concentrated on Food — or at least the lack of those types to which we were accustomed — could also be a source of hardship. Most of the year in Moscow bananas were unobtainable, not to mention lettuce, avocados and celery, none of which could survive being transported in the unheated wagon cars which brought us goodies from Helsinki. Those returning from holiday usually had their hand baggage stuffed with delicacies. Since the cheese in Gastronom was almost inedible it was worth maintaining the French connection. In admirable Gallic style the French embassy concentrated on essentials and arranged for Air France to fly in cheese :very week. But on the other hand one enjoyed fruit in tropical posts, mangoes straight from the tree or little pink bananas, which made their counterparts sold in the West seem like poor relations. In the Europe of the 60s a strong Canadian dollar meant that even the great restaurants were affordable. For the first meal — alas only one of two – that I ate in the Grand Vefour, the prices were comparable to those of the old La Touraine in Ottawa. I didn’t initially realise that I was eating in one of France’s greatest restaurants.
The golden moments of diplomatic life often came with state visits such as that which Lester Pearson made to Paris in 1964. Despite my husband’s lowly position as a first secretary — and in the NATO delegation at that — we were invited to the reception given by De Gaulle in Pearson’s honour. It is not an evening I will forget. Although I had not splurged on a new dress I had engaged the services of a talented hairdresser, soon to float right out of my price range, to give me an extraordinary hairdo. The General greeted everyone with a few appropriate words, and as I bent my elaborately coiffed head to shake his hand I really did feel that I was in the presence of greatness. Then we wandered though the rooms of the Elysée, sipping champagne while the band played and admiring not so much the elegantly gowned ladies as the members of the academy in their green coats adorned with laurels.
On that splendid evening the music, as I remember, was no more than pleasant. But music can loom large in diplomatic life. A sufficient number of senior diplomats appear to be uninterested in it — one Canadian ambassador was reputedly only willing to attend a concert if assured that royalty would be present — that junior officers who express enthusiasm often reap rich rewards One lovely summer night in Moscow we listened to a concert given by the Britist ambassador’s daughter who was then a student of Rostropovitch. At the intermission we sipped drinks on the balcony and admired the golden domes of the Kremlir glimmering in the dusk just across the river. Years later after a diplomatic dinner we heard Rostropovitch perform with his hostess, a semi-professional pianist who happened to be the wife of the local American ambassador. Once out of the clutches of their agents and as a token of gratitude to their hosts a surprising number of great performers were beguiled into providing after dinner entertainment, rather like talented Victorians. Maureen Forrester was particularly generous in this respect.
But not all musical evenings were so happy. When the Winnipeg Ballet performed its prize-winning spoof of a ballet lesson in Leningrad, this was met with total incomprehension. In an effort to show that it was intended to be funny we three or four Canadians sitting in the stalls laughed out loud. But this attempt, not easy in a large theatre, was ill-received by the woman behind us for whom ballet was obviously sacred. “That’s very rude,” she scolded tapping my neighbour briskly on the shoulder. “The poor things are doing their best.” Cultural differences can make some concerts hard to enjoy unless one a dedicated musicologist. Few diploma attended more than once the performance of 8th century court music, to which th were regularly invited by the Japane Imperial Household.
In the 60s embassies were still small enough and official visits rare enough, particularly in a post like Moscow, that quite junior officers were present on many grand occasions. Nowadays one has to be a good deal higher up the totem pole to have such experiences. Life, if easier, is also duller. For ambassadors, however, the great moments still occur. Nothing will erase my memory of Jessye Norman, draped in the tricolor, belting out the Marseillaise in the Place de la Concorde to celebrate the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It may have looked corny on TV, as some of my possibly jealous friends assured me, but if you were actually there it was extraordinarily moving. As on the stage, timing is everything in diplomacy. Quite often I felt that ours was poor and we arrived just after or left just before some memorable event. But once at least we hit the jackpot. What perfect timing to be in Tokyo for the enthronement of the Emperor, the first such ceremony in 62 years. That too was an experience I shall not forget.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1997) — Fall 1997 // Automne 1997, pp. 7–8. Read the rest of this issue →
