Andropov's Cuckoo

“We know we can, darling”, said Suzume, “that’s why we want to take you with us this time. You are older now and more in control of yourself. We hope that you will find it a rewarding experience, as well as a fine holiday”.

They had checked their plans with Marina first, naturally, and she had presented the suggestion to her committee, but everyone had thought it a fantastic idea, not least because it gave them the chance of another convert to the cause, another potential university graduate asset, which the Central Committee had recommended that all cadres try to cultivate. Graduate students got good jobs and having an asset in a good job in a foreign country meant infiltrating that country’s power base, whether it be governmental or commercial. Both sectors had secrets that the Motherland could use in the struggle for International Socialism.

1967 was one of the years when the Mizukis had to pay for themselves, but they hadn’t expected the CPJ to pay for their daughter and it was still a cheap holiday anyway, because they only had to pay for the return flights to Seoul.

Marina met the party at the military airport in North Korea and flew back to Alma Ata with them, where there was a coach waiting to transport them on to their hotel. Yui found the whole business terribly exciting. In fact, she said that just being in Tokyo airport waiting for their flight was the most exciting thing she had ever experienced. Then she said the same about the flight, and the same about the taxi journey to the hotel and the same about actually having her own room in the hotel.

The exhilaration she felt when being smuggled over the border into North Korea was almost too much for her to bear, as was being treated like a VIP in a foreign country and the USSR of all places! Seeing the prolonged vision of joy on their daughter’s face made Hiroto and Suzume wish they had taken her with them before. As for Yui, she felt that the fifteen years of dreaming of living abroad had been justified. She was more determined than ever to leave Japan, but she didn’t think it prudent to tell her parents that just yet.

When they had all checked into their Kazakh hotel, Marina took Suzume’s hand, and said, one proud mother to another, “I have seen photos of Yui over the years, but they haven’t done her justice. She is a very beautiful girl and not unlike my own daughter”. She looked at her watch. “She’s helping out at a local crèche at the moment, but I’ll bring her with me this evening. I’m sure our daughters will become the best of friends. I’ll see you at seven, I have to dash, bye-bye for now”.

Natasha was looking forward to meeting her first foreigner, but Pyotr was rather less keen to have to go. He knew that one of the main slogans of the CPSU was ‘Workers of the World Unite!” and he did agree with that sentiment, but he had fought against the Japanese in Manchuria and many of his friends and comrades had been killed, some horrifically, as in any war and he didn’t want to let them down by fraternising with the former enemy. However, he realised the significance of his daughter meeting a new friend and so went to support her.

“It’s going to be pretty boring for me though, Marina, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have a language in common, do we?”

“No, Pyotr, but don’t worry, if you can think of anything interesting enough to say, your daughter or I will translate it for you”. She was trying to be funny, but the joke only hurt, making him feel even less like going.

“It’s all right, Dad, I’ll translate for you and just think, you’ll have four beautiful women to look at while Mum and I have only got two old men”.

That attempt at humour did make him smile, so he pulled his best jacket on and followed them downstairs to the taxi that would be waiting for Marina as a priviledge. At least the first night would not be too rigorous, he thought, because of all the travelling the visitors had endured, surely, they would want to get to bed early. The venue was a top restaurant in the city, which had been reserved by the Party for the evening. There was to be a formal four-course dinner and traditional music played by two groups, one Russian and one Kazakh.

Marina, her family, the twenty-three visitors and two top Party officials and their wives were seated at a long top table. Marina sat in the centre with her family to her right and the CPAA officials to her left. The Mizukis sat opposite them. Marina’s first job was to introduce her superiors to the visitors one by one, so she led them around the table and made the introductions.

Marina kept her welcome speech short because she had to give it first in Japanese and then in Russian for the sake of the one hundred-odd Party members seated at theirs and other tables in the room who didn’t speak a word of Japanese. A brief reply thanking their hosts was given by the CPJ chairman and a few other Russian officials said something, none of which was not translated. When the formalities were over, the meal began and people started to relax.

Hiroto surprised the Myrskiis by leaning over and speaking to Pyotr in halting Russian. Pyotr found it difficult to understand because of Hiroto’s heavy accent, but he tried and appreciated the effort Hiroto had made, and as the wine and vodka went down, he got used to the growling voice and communication got easier. Marina helped out more than she had suggested she would but less than she had expected to have to, mostly because the Mizukis had been studying Russian for the last twelve months without telling her, preferring to surprise her on their next visit.

The girls started by looking at each other and smiling quizzically at the awkward antics of their parents.

“Which languages do you speak, Yui?” asked Natasha.

“Russian, Japanese and English, any of them suits me fine, Natalya, whichever you like.”

They flitted between Japanese and Russian easily, throwing in a few English words here and there when it seemed stylish or appropriate to get a particular nuance across.

“You speak English with an American accent,” remarked Natasha.

“Yes, there are a lot of American soldiers and tourists in Japan and English-language television is nearly all American”.

“I have an English accent. We try to speak the way they do on the BBC World Service in my school, but it is difficult because we’re not supposed to listen to it at home. Our lecturers record programmes that are suitable and edit them, then they give them to us to practice with”.

“A kind of censorship, you mean? Do you have censorship here?”

“I suppose I do, but it is for our own good. The organs of the capitalist governments of the West are masters at propaganda, and they would entrap the gullible. Young minds, such as students’, are easily led, so they have to be protected. Don’t you agree?”

“My parents tell me not to believe everything I hear in the American and Japanese media as well, because they say that the Americans control what is said”.

“Yes, and I think that they are right too, Yui. You’re lucky that you have intelligent and caring parents who can protect you from the lies. Your parents and all Japanese have close contact with the Imperialists, so they are well placed to advise their children, but Soviet parents have not had that contact, so here, the state does that for us, but the result is roughly the same, or do you not follow the wishes of your parents?”

“Oh, I listen. I take everything I see or read with a spoonful of salt, don’t you worry…”

“Isn’t the expression ‘a pinch of salt’?” asked Natasha with a wry smile.

“Not where I live, Natalya, not where I live!” and they both started to laugh. Their mothers looked at their girls laughing behind their hands in the Oriental way and smiled at one another, pleased that they were getting along so well, so quickly.

The two families conversed easily for the rest of the evening and it was soon time to go their separate ways. The two girls hugged in the Russian custom, which felt strange, but nice to Yui and then bowed slightly after the Japanese tradition, which Natasha had learned at school.

When they arrived home, Natasha asked her mother what she had not dared to do in public. “May Yui sleep here in my room sometimes, Mum?”

“Certainly, I don’t see why not, if her parents agree”.

So, for the next six days and nights the girls were inseparable, sleeping three nights in Natasha’s room and three in Yui’s. On the first morning Natasha woke up in the hotel, she was very impressed by the amount of make-up that Yui and her mother had.

“This is so much better quality make-up than we have, Yui, and the range! How do you make up your mind, which one to put on? I envy you. I’m afraid we don’t have these brands here”.

Yui felt awkward so she just said, “Tash”, she had picked it up from Natalya’s father and liked it, “have you noticed how much alike we look?”

“Yes, I have. The major differences like hair, accent and posture could be dealt with, and with all this make-up we could easily hide our minor facial differences as well”.

“Shall we have some fun, Tash? We could impersonate one another and see whether our parents can tell us apart! What do you say?”

“Oh, I don’t know… I’m not cutting my hair like yours, sorry. No offense, but I like my long hair… it’s taken me eighteen years to get it like this. Why do Japanese girls cut their hair, Yui?”.

“No, you’re right, it is beautiful. I had to cut mine for school, but I’m going to start growing it when I start uni next month… I know, we could wear hats! Is there a store near here where we can buy some cheap hats or caps?”

“Sure! Alma Ata is famous for cheap hats”, she joked. So, they had their breakfast, dodged the organised trip to a war memorial that they hadn’t wanted to go on anyway and went shopping. They returned several hours later with bags of gear, but one thing had struck Yui and that was the lack of choice, as Natasha had said, although it was far worse than she had expected.

She had been dismayed by the bleak make-up counter in even the largest department store in such a big city. They had dark-red lipstick and light-red lipstick but it was really unpleasant, having tasted oily and smelled of fish. Then there was the nail varnish, they had pink or clear, but nothing else and Natasha had remarked how it wasn’t always possible to buy the clear variety ‘because the government had to prioritise the use of scarce resources’. The choice in the normal, local shops was even worse.

It hadn’t been much better in the valuta shops – the special shops that only traded using foreign currency, which it was illegal for Russians to hold. It had been the same with clothing.

“There are shortages again”, Natasha had explained apologetically, but Yui knew there and then that she didn’t want to live in a socialist or communist country. However, she was polite, sensible and sensitive enough not to express her opinions, even to her new best friend.

They spent all afternoon laughing a lot, dressing up and making themselves up into a hybrid of them both. When Mr. and Mrs. Mizuki came back from their trip, first they saw Natasha watching television in her disguise. ‘Hello”, she had said in her best imitation of Yui’s accent, but without turning around.

“New clothes, dear? And new make-up! You look very nice, Yui!” said her mother taking off her coat and hanging it up. “Doesn’t she father?”

Hiroto was just about to agree, when Yui came out of her bedroom.

“Doesn’t she what, Mum?”

At that point, Natasha had turned around and smiled and both parents had to do a double take, their mouths open in astonishment.

“Why that is just incredible! You two look like identical twins!” the girls moved close together, put their arms around each other’s shoulder and pulled the same smile they had practiced earlier in the dressing table mirror. Then they all started laughing.

“I couldn’t, can’t tell you apart. Even now that I know it… it’s uncanny. Perhaps I need stronger glasses”, said Hiroto, taking his spectacles off and staring at them, but it made no difference.

Natasha took off her imitation Carnaby-Street floppy cap and let her hair tumble down.

“Is that easier for you, Mr. Mizuki?”

“It could be a wig”, he joked smiling.

“We didn’t think of that, did we?” replied Yui looking at Natasha.

For the rest of the week, they amused people in their group by dressing in identical clothes and acting as twins. They even sang a duet of ‘Sisters’ in English at the farewell concert on the final night. It brought the house down.

Natasha applied for and received special permission to fly down to North Korea with her mother and the visitors and she too enjoyed the subterfuge, just as Yui had, which she had had no idea that her mother had been part of for the last few years.

As they hugged before Yui got onto the connecting coach back to the hotel, Natasha said, “That week went too quickly, Yui. You’ve got my address now, haven’t you? You will write? We can be pen-pals! We just have to keep in touch, now that we have found each other. I couldn’t bear to not see or speak to you again. I feel like I’ve found a long-lost sister. Good luck at uni”.

Natasha was far more emotional than Yui’s culture allowed her to be or to show anyway, but she did want to remain in contact with her new friend as well. “Our holiday has passed too quickly… and I know what you mean about sisters. It’s funny, neither of us has any brothers or sisters… It is nice to have found one now… I’ll write as soon as I get back to Tokyo!” she promised.

And she did too, and Natasha wrote straight back. Throughout the years, there was rarely a twenty-four hour period when there wasn’t a letter heading towards one of them from the other one, unless they were already in one another’s company.

In those days in the Soviet Union, wages were fairly similar whatever jobs workers did. What distinguished people was the amount of privilege they enjoyed, and Marina had a lot. When she announced her next ‘cultural mission’ to Japan, Natasha begged to be able to go with her. Marina didn’t have the money to pay for her daughter’s flight, but she managed to persuade the Party to pay for it eventually by convincing her superiors to endorse her request on the grounds that it would be useful training for Natasha in how to deal with the CPJ. She pointed out that if Natasha proved successful at negotiations with people in Japan, she could be used as a delegate to Communist Parties in those other countries, whose languages she spoke.

Permission finally came down and mother and daughter set off on an all-expenses-paid jolly to Tokyo. It was to become an annual event for Natasha, as it already was a bi-annual trip for her mother.

When Natasha officially joined the university of Alma Ata fulltime in October 1967, she took Japanese Language, History and Culture as her main subject, but with English, French and German, and in September of the same year, Yui took Russian, English and Chinese. This meant that the Soviet state paid for Natasha to study in Japan for three months from January to April in her second and third years and the Japanese government paid for Yui to study in Russia in the summers of her second and third years as well.

They became as close as twins and even adopted identical mannerisms and ways of speech. Natasha had no problem imitating Yui’s Japanese accent and neither did Yui copying Natasha’s Russian, but they both spoke English differently – one English and the other American English. Natasha really didn’t like the American accent and refused to use it, although she could do it if she wanted to, but Yui, like nearly all those who learn an American accent first, found a true English accent next to impossible to acquire.

When they were together, and after that initial meeting that meant between two weeks and five months a year, they were inseparable behaving more like close twins than friends. In fact, they were so natural together that few people they met socially ever found out that they were not twins and they certainly never denied it, because, as they described their relationship to each other and their parents, they were soul-twins to their way of thinking.

1 5 YURI VLADIMIROVITCH ANDROPOV

Both girls passed their finals with the highest distinctions possible, what in the West might be described as ‘maxima cum laude’, and after a couple of weeks of celebration with their families, friends and fellow students, during which they could not be together, they were turned out into the real world to earn a living.

However, again Fate acted upon them in a similar manner. Yui was granted the post in the Ministry of Finance that her father’s bribe had bought for her subject to her results, and Natasha was allocated a teaching job at her old High School by the Department of Employment, until they could figure out how best to use her remarkable linguistic talents. Two months into her new job, Yui put in for two week’s holiday to go on the ‘August Kazakh Trip’. She would not have been granted it, but for the intervention of her parents, who could show that they ‘always went away in August’. Hiroto had also risen to a position of some considerable influence within his department.

“Oh, Tash, it’s so lovely to see you again! How are you keeping, darling?” she asked hugging her on the tarmac in the North Korean military airport. Hugging and kissing and calling her girlfriends ‘darling’ were affectations that she had learned at university.

“I’m fine, sister, and better still for seeing you, but you look sad, what is the matter?”

“I can’t tell you now, let’s just try to be happy. Have you got something to drink on that plane? I could murder a cold beer or glass of wine!” Natasha had also learned to drink beer at university, so they sat together on the plane, drank beer and caught up on one another’s lives until they touched down in Alma Ata.

That evening they spoke again. “You’re still sad, sister, why won’t you tell me about your problem? We never used to keep anything from each other”.

“It’s nothing, really… I’m just being stupid… and ungrateful and I hate myself for it… It’s my job, darling, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong as such. I’ve been doing the job for two months, as you know, but it already feels like two years without a break. Just imagine, my parents have been doing it for…” she was counting on her fingers, “I’m twenty-two, and my Dad was doing it before the War, so that’s… that’s at least thirty-two years and my Mum a little bit less. It is mind-numbingly boring, Tash! All we do all day is add figures, subtract figures, divide figures, multiply figures and then check figures. All bloody day!

“Can you imagine that? It’s driving me potty!”

“No, sister, I can’t, but then I have chosen languages, as did you, so why are you doing it?”

“It’s difficult to get a good job in Japan unless you know someone and my parents are in finance”.

“Yes, I see… can’t you transfer to a different department?”

“Yes, possibly, that is part of the plan, but first, I have to work in the Ministry of Finance for a year, I think Dad said. Then I can apply to the Foreign Office and eventually the Diplomatic Corps”.

“Well, that’s not so terrible, is it? You’ve already done two months, so you’ve only got ten months to go. Take courage, sister”.

“I suppose so, but after another ten months, I may not have enough of a brain left to impress the Foreign Office recruitment board with”.

Natasha laughed. “Your parents aren’t stupid and neither are you. You’ll make it, I know you will… Just keep your eyes on your goal and take one day at a time. This time next year it will all seem to have passed so quickly that you’ll wonder why you allowed it to upset you so much”.

“Yes, but that’s part of the problem… You see, it’s not only that, sis,” she said automatically picking up on Natasha’s term and dropping ‘darling’, “I don’t want to be in Japan. What we have now is all I’ve ever known, but it doesn’t feel like my country… I don’t know how to describe it, but there is too much ‘West’ in Japan. The ‘mix’ doesn’t feel right yet… I don’t have anything against the West, in fact I wouldn’t mind living there – the UK, Canada or the United States – but our hybrid is just a, a, a nothing! It’s not Asian and it’s not American, it’s OK, I suppose, but it’s false… and I hate it.

“You’ve been there often enough, what do you think of it?”

They had known each other well for four years since their first meeting, and could be honest with each other.

“I wouldn’t want to live there either, sister. If I am to speak honestly, I think that the Americans have raped your culture as well as your women. They have acted like the cuckoo and are trying to replace your culture with their own. The resulting hybrid is not a happy one, as you suggest. They openly exploit the workers of your country or they do it covertly using the greedy co-operation of your corrupt ancient ruling class of wealthy, old-guard, imperialist families.

“All in all, yours is a sad, corrupt facsimile of America, except that the citizens don’t receive the benefits that Americans get from their economy. The way I see it, your country is nothing but an aircraft carrier for them to defend their stolen interests in Asia, a land where they do not belong”.

“Yes, well, that’s roughly what I think too, but I am not under the illusion that I’ll be able to change it, so I’d just rather get out and live in a rich country, make a lot of money and live my life as I want to”.

“The temptation is great, sister, I know that, but it is greater for you than for me. I believe in the class struggle, and that the workers will eventually win, because we are in the majority and rich people cannot be rich without us. If we do not produce, they cannot sell, and we gain the upper hand”.

“Yes, Tash, I agree, but I can’t wait that long, I just want to enjoy a good life now. If it wasn’t for my parents, I’d have buggered off already! I really would, but I know how much it would hurt them… and I would miss them as well”.

“I would hate to see you disappear into the West too, sister, because I cannot follow you there at the moment. However, never say never, Comrade Brezhnev is opening new doors with the West all the time, so who knows what will happen in the future”.

“If I had a good job in the West, Tash, I’d pay for your flights and everything. You’d never have to worry about anything like that”.

“Thank you, I know you would”, she replied covering her hand from across the table. “I just wish there was something I could do to help you, sister”.

“There is, you could take my place at work! You could live with me and we could do a month on and a month off, the job pays well enough, and if not, well, the other one could work as a translator”, she replied joking.

The following morning, Natasha told her mother about what had happened in her life the day before as she had done every day since she was a child.

“You have been to the den of American capitalist thuggery, where she lives, Natasha, but you have been shielded from it. Unfortunately, Yui is not. She is like a French goose being force-fed American propaganda in the form of nonsensical daytime television soap operas and relentless advertising, which is intended to turn the brains of working-class citizens into useless, non-thinking mush.

“This strategy usually works very well. The capitalist pigs have perfected their art to a high degree, but Yui has intelligent parents who have given her the ability to see through the smokescreen of International Capital. You have only encountered it in passing, so to speak, but Yui has to live in it like a fish in polluted water. Did you like what you saw when you were in Japan?”

“I will admit that I did like the wider choice of goods and services… and the cinema over there… I prefer it to ours”.

“Perhaps, but we have been the subject of organised International embargoes! It is a capitalist ploy to sow unrest among the Soviet people. They have been trying it in various ways for fifty years, but our resolve to succeed is too strong for them. Anyway, the choice, as you call it, is only an illusion. You go into a Western supermarket to buy shampoo and you are confronted with a hundred different brands and types, but most of it is made in the same factories for different clients who stick their own labels on the containers and try to persuade you it is better than the others with advertising.

“In reality, it is not better, it is the same. Sometimes, the advertising and the packaging cost more than what’s in the bottle and the consumer is made to pay for that without knowing it. They should be forced to say where it was made on the label.

“Anyway, the choice in Soviet outlets is improving, but ours is real choice. Soap made in the Urals, Uzbekistan, the Ukraine or here is manufactured to radically different formulas, not just one or two as in the West. Comrade Brezhnev, who has righted many of the excesses of Stalin and Khrushchev, is making remarkable progress in improving our standard of living, is he not?”

“Yes, mother, he is. It is better than even only a few years ago”.

“There you are then, that is proof that we, the people of the glorious Soviet Union, even as we stand alone in the world, can succeed against the hundreds of other countries that have yet to shake off the yoke of capitalism”.

“Yes, mother, I know, you are preaching to the converted”.

“I am not preaching, Natasha! That is what the clergy lackeys of capital do. Comrade Brezhnev has pointed out the error of Stalin in re-allowing the priests to infect our ideology”.

“Yes, Mum, I know. May I go to my room now to study?”

“Yes, of course, I have to get ready to go out now anyway”.

“Oh, one last thing, Mum. You’ll never guess what Yui suggested… she said that I should take her place… you know, go into work for her! That would be a laugh, wouldn’t it? She was only joking, of course, but imagine that, me working for the Japanese Ministry of Finance. She’s so down, but she can still make jokes. See you later, Mum, have a lovely day!”

“You too, Natasha. I will see you for tea, won’t I?”

“Yes, Mum, I’ll have Yui with me”.

A few hours later, when Marina was enjoying a cup of coffee and a cake alone between lectures at a local factory, Natasha’s words came back to her and wheels started to move within her mind. At first, the possibility was too enormous to grasp, but the idea would not leave her alone. It distracted her all afternoon. She was glad when her last lecture was over and she could retire to her office at the AACPHQ. She left instructions with her secretary that she was not to be disturbed.

Such a move was bold, and not without risk, but the rewards would be tremendous. It would guarantee her leadership of the AACP and may even gain her a commendation from the Central Committee itself, which would ensure that the right people had at least heard of her name. She ran over the practicalities, but she had no doubt that her daughter could pull it off. However, first Natasha would have to agree to make the sacrifice for the love of the Motherland and, dare she admit it, for the love of her mother?

She was a good girl though, she reasoned, Natasha would see the sense of the proposition, but she would have to discuss it with the committee first and make certain that everyone in the top ranks of the AACP knew that it was her idea. She wrote her outline proposals on a sheet of paper, stamped the date on it and got her secretary to confirm the date with her signature, then sealed it in an envelope and put that in the safe. After a few deep breaths, she went down the corridor to the chairman’s office, asked his secretary if he was free and knocked the door.

“It is an unbelievable opportunity, Comrade Marina. I will readily admit that I am completely flabbergasted. I have never dealt with a situation that has the potential to be so momentous. Are you completely sure of your facts?”

“Yes, comrade, absolutely positive. You have seen the two girls yourself many times, do you not think they could pull it off?”

“Their likeness is quite uncanny for two unrelated girls from different countries, I agree. They are like two peas in a pod, but under the pressure of Yui’s peers at work? That is not the same. It is a tricky one… Do you have Yui’s consent to do this?”

“No, comrade, at the moment this is just speculation from a chance comment made by the girl Yui to my daughter. I wanted to consult you before taking it any further, Comrade Chairman”.

“Yes, I see, that was wise of you. This matter has such huge potential, we must proceed with caution. How long has the girl left here?”

“Six nights, comrade”.

“All right, leave it with me. Well done, Comrade Marina, I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I can”.

Marina left the office knowing that she had done the right thing, but wishing that she could have taken it over her old leader’s head, as he would now want a share of the glory, despite the fact that it was too big an issue for him to handle. Perhaps it was time for another good, old-fashioned purge, she thought, so long as it didn’t affect people on her status level.

All her senses told her that this was the boost to her career that she needed and she was determined not to let it slip between her fingers, no matter what.

When authorisation to proceed with the initial enquiries came back a few days later, the CPJ visit was almost over, but Marina took her daughter aside.

“Do you remember what you told me about Yui being so bored with her job that she suggested a switch?”