“In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.”
~Yakov Smirnoff
In the spring of 1986, a year into our marriage, CBS News offered me the job as their Tokyo correspondent. The original assignment was supposed to last two years, but somehow we just kept going around the globe – from Tokyo to Moscow, then to London and back to Tokyo for a second posting.
It meant giving up our San Francisco house and lifestyle, and the comfort of living in a country where we could speak the language and understand the culture. But Jan embraced it as if this was exactly what she signed up for, and when do we begin.
She had no doubts that we would be fine, would settle in and could figure out the rest as it came along. I said yes, based on her confidence and her sheer excitement for the unknown. I couldn't turn it down once Jan got excited. If she could make it work for both of us – and she was sure she could – the least I could do was agree and call the movers.
Jan loved Tokyo and its sense of the exotic East, but the next call to move on was not so good because Moscow was the capital of a culture she came to hate, despite that spirit of adventure. “The Russians feel sorry for themselves all the time.” It was said as much in sadness as simple observation. She believed strongly about creating good in your own life. I tried to gently remind her that we had a few more advantages than the average Russian.
“I don't know,” she insisted. “I think they just love being depressed.” She could never seem to comprehend why someone would choose “being depressed.” To her, life was about finding the good in each day and each experience, no matter how trying. But in Russia, people seemed on a centuries-long course of endless tragedy. It made for great, if agonizing, literature and extraordinary classical music. But the sense of gloom rubbed up against Jan's very nature. She believed that each person made their own happiness, and she believed that especially for the two of us. If we had chances to see or do new things, it was up to us to seize those moments and make them ours.
We had a kitchen large enough for an old wooden table and chairs suitable for breakfast and, on cold Russian winter nights, we would sit with a bowl of borscht and be happy for the warmth of the stove and the cooking. The rest of the rooms were big and simple … one for dining, another as a living room, and one large single bedroom. German prisoners of war had been used to construct the building, and it was solid, with some interior walls almost three feet thick.
Moscow was perfect for Jan's dinner-party organizing because most of us socialized in our homes. At that time the Soviet-era propagandists still touted Moscow as the glorious culmination of Communism. In fact, it was so inglorious that it had almost no functioning restaurants. By functioning, I mean the absolute bare minimum … clean and with safe, edible food. Instead, the food was badly, and sometimes barely, cooked. The cheese was dried and fly-stained because it had been left sitting out for hours, and the norm was service with a snarl. It was so bad that a business lunch would usually be a rendezvous at the American Embassy snack bar for a hamburger and a soda.
Case in point of how bad it was; one of the few hotels that catered only to foreigners had the city's only sushi restaurant, which was run by a Japanese company. But to be sure that the sushi was safe, we checked the schedule of the two Tokyo-to-Moscow flights each week and went to the restaurant the next day when the fish from Japan was fresh off the plane.
Another prime example of Moscow's culinary delights was the butcher's market around the corner from our apartment. Shoppers had to swat away the clouds of flies to get at the meat. Street vendors sold ice cream only in the worst of winter because they had no refrigeration, and the bitter cold was all that kept the ice cream frozen. Even so, we would not buy ice cream from them or any other dairy products from the grimy, dusty local stores that smelled of sour milk.
So we, as journalists, diplomats, and foreign business people, entertained in our apartments, where the food was safe despite the fact that our conversations were monitored by the KGB. Shopping was a trick, and Jan, true to her nature, mastered it quickly. To guarantee safe food, we had all our groceries shipped in from nearby Finland, using a store that, for years, had specialized in providing food and other necessities (toilet paper, new tires for the bureau cars, bath towels, diapers, ball point pens) to Moscow's foreigners like us.
Once a week Jan would take out pen and paper, go through their grocery catalog and prepare the food order, right down to meat and milk. About all we could trust to buy in Moscow was bread and sometimes cabbage for borscht when it was in season.
Armed with her list, Jan went up to the office for a session with the telex machine, basically a typewriter. It worked like a phone in that we could dial another telex anywhere in the world. These were the days before faxes, and in Moscow there were days when the phones could barely transmit a voice. The order was telexed off early in the week.
On Thursday, dozens of company drivers would head for the train station to pick up the boxes of imported groceries shipped in from Helsinki for their foreign bosses. If we were having people for dinner, the pre-planning was far more extensive. And if you forgot to order something, there was no place to run out to get it. It either came in from Finland on the once-a-week train shipment, or you did without, or you went sheepishly to a neighbor and borrowed what you forgot to order.
Inviting friends to our apartment fueled Jan's enthusiasm for cooking. Everyone, from our next-door neighbors coming for Saturday night dinner, to visiting dignitaries looking to connect with American journalists (and find an edible meal) were welcome at our table. Al Gore, then a Tennessee senator, was in Moscow on a trip investigating environmental issues, and a friend brought him around to our place for lunch. He confessed that he liked spicy food, which was also a huge favorite of Jan's.
She sliced some fresh Russian bread and pulled out a jar of what I considered to be insanely hot sauce, which was a kind of searing jelly concoction from a southern Soviet area. I thought the jelly might be strong enough to eat through the glass and certainly though the lining of the stomach. She knew it was a hit when the hot peppers made sweat pop out on Gore's forehead. They both had seconds.
Jan could just as easily plan and cook a formal dinner for twelve and loved the challenge. The rest of us would marvel at the result and, at the end of the evening we'd raise our glasses in a happy and noisy toast to Jan, the Chef.
Jan also brought her artistic touch to the flat, which was furnished. We could only bring clothes and a few paintings from Tokyo, so she picked out the most vibrant paintings, the ones with bright reds. And when we bought art work in Moscow to decorate, it was the same … splashes of color … as if the brightness of the flat inside could somehow neutralize Moscow's endless gray.
Our flat was bugged by the KGB, of course, and we had no choice but to live there since it was the company apartment assigned by the Soviet authorities. CBS News reporters and their families had lived there for decades. Each summer, the girls would come and spend two months with us, and we would befuddle the eavesdroppers by moving our bed into the dining room so the girls could have the bedroom.
And, within a night or two, we would hear the scraping, like a huge rat slowly creeping and crawling in the ceiling. “The idiots,” Jan would say, half-delighted with their lack of subtlety. They were, of course, moving the listening devices through the crawl space in the ceiling from the bedroom to the dining room where we had moved the bed in the summer so they could listen in on our pillow talk.
At the end of summer the girls left, and we moved back into the bedroom. “Here it comes,” Jan would say, all but laughing. And sure enough, the first or second night, we heard the scraping noises as they dragged the listening device from the dining room back to the bedroom. I can hear it, still. And when we talk about it, and when she remembers, it still makes her giggle.
Life could be tricky in Moscow, especially dealing with the authorities. We quickly learned that there were a lot of rules, mostly ignored, since the bureaucrats did what they wanted. Or sometimes, it seemed, they made up new rules, just for the occasion, and usually so they could say … nyet.
So we were nervous as we packed to leave Moscow for the next assignment in London. It meant direct dealings with the authorities, but Jan turned it into a total triumph. One of those dealings centered on getting our Soviet-era art out of Moscow, and it was one of her proudest moments. Each piece, including the few antiques we bought there, needed a special stamp from the Ministry of Culture approving it for export to make sure we weren't absconding with any state treasures. That meant a personal inspection visit from Ministry officials before anything could be packed.
Jan researched it well and had gift bags ready for the two women inspectors who showed up. The important gift was American-made Marlboro cigarettes, practically a currency of its own in the desperate poverty that was Moscow in those days. This was the era where the Soviets had so little in their lives that people would get in line sometimes not even knowing what the line was for; only that something might be available in a shop. Foreign goods were rare and, in some cases, dangerous to have.
The ladies from the Ministry were not initially that friendly and had the grim heavy look that came from too many potatoes and loaves of bread, and too little meat, which was the typical Soviet diet washed down by the ever-present vodka. At first they were authoritative, bordering on rude, and in no mood to help us in any way. But Jan found something they, from such different upbringings and points of life, had in common … a shared passion for art. And these women, who were so unpleasant at first, soon warmed to Jan and her enthusiasm for beauty and its expression in paintings. We had some art books and Jan pulled several off the shelf, including my single favorite—a massive coffee table book of paintings by Edward Hopper. The women had never seen his works.
When I came home for dinner, I found all five-foot-two of Jan standing proud. She told me about the visit and said they had softened when she showed the women our art books, especially the collections of works by Hopper.
“Which,” I said, looking at the empty space in the shelf, “isn't there.”
“Nope. I gave it away.”
Now, this moment could have ended badly. “You gave it to them? My Hopper book?”
She smiled at me, rather self-satisfied, because she knew this story was going to end well. “Look,” she said, walking up to the first of our paintings. On the back, it had the stamp of approval for export. “See, here's another one.” She laughed. “I got everything approved!”
I didn't laugh right away. After all, I loved that Hopper book. But she reminded me that we could buy Hopper books by the bushel outside of Moscow, and that these women had never seen his paintings. Their awe at his talent, their discovery of his work, trumped our having a book that we could easily replace. To Jan, it wasn't even a question, but an instinct, to share. Of course they had to have that book.
We laughed about that story later. I saw it as part of her ability to sense and understand people, which was invaluable to our nomadic way of life.
And it got all the art to London, where we ended up living in a tiny apartment near the CBS Bureau in Knightsbridge, down the street from Harrods and a quick cab ride to theaters and great shows.
It was a neighborhood, urban and exciting, with art galleries, restaurants and architecture from the many eras of London's lifetime. Everything we lacked in Moscow, we had in London … wonderful theater, a myriad of restaurants, pubs for unwinding on a Friday night and, as an extra bonus, we could speak the language.
We could walk five minutes to the Victoria and Albert Museum, or head off in a different direction to watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, or wander over to Hyde Park to feed the swans.
These were hard, dangerous days for any CBS News reporter based in the London Bureau. Our coverage area was all of Europe and Africa, and occasional duty in the Mideast including trips to Iraq. It meant spending a lot of time away from Jan—much of it in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, and in other places like Somalia.
Jan knew the stories and the risks and while she didn't like that last kiss before I headed off for an airplane, she knew I wanted to cover the stories, and she wanted that for me. She swallowed her fear, smiled and hugged, and let me go.
There were plenty of dangerous places, but when I was there the worst was probably Bosnia. Sarajevo snarled with sniper fire and shuddered from artillery shells that were lobbed into the city on a daily basis. The Holiday Inn was home to visiting foreign reporters, and its one major drawback was that it was near the front lines, which ran through part of the city. That meant all the windows were shot out. We stayed in rooms on the back side where the sniper bullets usually couldn't reach us, but the mortar shells hitting around the hotel had blasted out the windows on the back side as well. Our news team traveled in armored cars and did stories on those who hadn't survived the day.
Sometimes people would die in ones and twos, sometimes in groups as mortar rounds dropped in, aiming for places like the central market where people gathered to buy what food they could find. No one in the city knew where the next shell would hit, and that was what made Jan perpetually frightened each hour I was in Bosnia and away from her.
Mortar rounds are insidious because they make no sound coming down. Tank rounds make a noise, a kind of whistling, which you hear before they hit. It gives you time to fall flat. It's a false sense of security, but you hang on to it. Since they are silent, there is no warning, no noise. One minute life is normal, then a blast and a second of shock. The mind is slow to grasp such instant chaos. The next sounds are the screams of the injured, or the gasps of the dying. There is something horrible about the screams, a guilty horror because they aren't yours.
In Sarajevo one day, the producer, sound man, and I stood outside the TV station where we worked. Fifty yards away, a mortar round made a direct hit on a small plot of spring flowers. I couldn't help but wonder about the person who had planted the flowers. Had they been seeking some kind of normalcy that defied the murderous insanity around them? Screams emanated from an elderly lady with a shopping bag of hard-won food, and her cries of terror went up my spine as she lay sprawled on the ground. Nearby, a man who had been on a bicycle lay on the ground a few feet away. He did not scream.
But through it all in Sarajevo, there was a spirit of civilization that people would not surrender. They were caught in the daily crossfire of war where shells and bullets could hit anywhere at any time. Yet they acted with a defiance that left me amazed at their courage and their refusal to give up their dignity. Some dressed and went to work, even if it meant sitting in offices without jobs to do, or working in stores without goods to sell.
That was not true in another war zone, Mogadishu, Somalia. This was a city ravaged, where buildings were stripped and even the underground electrical wires were ripped out by the desperate who sold the metal for scrap.
Here there was no spirit of civilization. It was too hard just being alive at the end of the day. Much of the chaos came from crazy, dangerous renegades who ate a plant called “khat” all day long. By the time afternoon rolled around, its amphetamine-like euphoria affected the gunmen who, with a glassy-eyed look in their eyes, drove wildly in their “Mad Max” jeeps armed with huge .50-caliber machine guns. They shot at anything that moved and laughed as they did it. Everywhere we went, we drove in our own “Mad Max” jeeps and hired bodyguards, who chewed khat along with the rest. It didn't inspire confidence since these guys were supposedly on our side.
We went out one day to do a standup, which is the part of the story where the reporter talks directly into the camera. We decided we needed to do a retake, so the next day we told the bodyguards we were going back to the same place. They informed us that we most certainly were not and, with nervous voices, told us why. They heard that the faction controlling that area spotted us the day before and gunmen were about to take us out, but we suddenly left. Our bodyguards assured us that going back to the area would give them a second chance to kill us.
We opted for a different location.
Despite all this, Jan never once said don't go. “It's your job and I'm also a journalist and I understand, darling.” But her eyes always showed an almost primal relief when I came back through the door, especially after being gone two or three weeks or more.
She always sent her imaginary friend, a kind of elfin sprite, to watch over me. “He's on my shoulder,” she said with confidence. “But he's going with you, and he will watch over you.” One time as I was leaving she laughed about her protective spirit and I asked why. “He knows you're both going to Sarajevo,” she said giggling, “so he's wearing a uniform.”
Married friends told me that as the years together go by they can lose that spark, the energy that once made them irresistible to each other. That never happened to us. Maybe it was because my job and the stories I covered out of London changed and intensified our relationship. When I returned from a trip, I always called from the airport to tell her I was on the way home, on the way to her.
Whether we were in our flat in London or our apartment in Tokyo, she would hear the elevator coming and was often standing, pacing, waiting with the apartment door open … afraid that maybe I wasn't really coming back, that somehow she had gotten it wrong. “Darling!” she would say. “Is it really you?”
We would hold on to each other … hungry, desperate, eager. The apartment door would close behind us and sometimes our front hallway was as far as we got before we were tearing at each other, driven by equal parts relief and passion.
When it was over … when we could both breathe again … I sometimes felt foolhardy. I realized what I had in this life, how much better I felt being close to her, how I wanted to live forever so we could be together, yes, forever. I was sure we had so many adventures ahead.
Yet by accepting the assignments, by traveling to some of these places, I put myself at grave risk. People were shooting and killing each other, and they didn't much care if I or anyone else got in the way. I went, in large part, because I felt I would be okay. Journalists have this odd belief that it won't happen to them. And I had this other belief that Jan and I would never end. That we had forever.
What could possibly go wrong with the lucky couple, Darling and Darling?