THEN AND NOW: Lapierre with Pedrazzini taking pictures from the top of their car and (below) a more recent picture of the author

Russians at last! In their tens, in their hundreds. The huge station square suddenly looked like the exit to a stadium. We were swamped from all sides by a sea of faces flattening themselves against windows we had swiftly wound up. We were being scrutinized like exotic fish in the bottom of an aquarium. There was not a smile, not a gesture, only unutterable astonishment… One old man, who had stepped straight out of a Dostoyevsky novel, resolved to speak to us. In the absence of Slava who had gone off to buy cigarettes, our ability to communicate with him was obviously limited. In the end I realized it was the number of cylinders and the make of the car that interested him. Emboldened by this contact, a plump babushka, her head swathed in a floral scarf, asked us whether the car belong to us and how much it had cost. It was then that a spotty adolescent noticed on the wings the inscription in Russian. ‘FRENCH JOURNALISTS.’ Seeing this, an expression of happiness passed across his face.

‘The months, the days, the tides of the seas, eyes that weep, pass beneath the blue sky. The grass must grow and children must die, I know, oh God...’ he recited in French. ‘Do you know that poem by Victor Hugo,’ he asked in almost perfect French.

We were amazed. He poked his head into the car.

‘Do you have any French newspapers you could give me?’ he whispered...

We dug out an old copy of Paris-Match, wrapped it in a paper bag and passed it to him discreetly... We would never know the identity of that lad so enamoured of Victor Hugo in Minsk station square.

lll

Moscow ladies bathing! An orgy of pale flesh and spare tyres that amazed our wives. The potatoes, sausages, cabbage and black bread had taken their toll on the bodies sunbathing determinedly on the sand and shingle of that magnificent Russian Riviera. Here there were no bikinis like Saint-Tropez, only ample two pieces enveloping generous figures with difficulty, so Aliette and Annie’s swimwear made in France caused a sensation. On the beach at Gurzuff, enthusiastic women bathers offered their ear-rings and bracelets in exchange for bikini bottoms and tops they would never be able to wear because of their portliness.

lll

I stretched out next to a gentleman in a white straw hat. The man turned to me. We chatted in Russian. By then I knew enough vocabulary to count up to a million and conduct proper little interviews. I learned that he worked at the Ministry for Culture and that his holiday in Sotchi had cost him a whole month’s salary...

‘And you, who are you?’ he asked me.

‘I am a capitalist!’

The man laughed, tossed a pebble with a sort of amused disdain and said: ‘Niet!’

When I told him I was a journalist, he added: ‘Niet, a journalist is a not a capitalist!’

lll

Stepping over the bodies, picking my way between bellies and buttocks, I filled my eyes with the thousand spectacles of the Khrushchevian nomenclature on holiday. Suddenly, however, a young man in his underpants intercepted me and narrowly missed tipping me into the water and he tried to snatch my camera... A crowd promptly gathered and the stranger began to shower me with abuse. Like a trail of gunpowder, news of the incident ran the length of the beach and Slava, panic-stricken, came running. The man shouted that I was choosing to photograph only the ugliest people, that it was a disgrace, that he was only a simple Soviet citizen but that he could not tolerate that.

The crowd of bathers soon attracted the attention of a policeman. I feared the worst. But before even knowing the reasons for the altercation, the representative of law and order addressed the plaintiff in a tone that permitted no response: ‘This tovarich is a foreigner and our guest,’ he shouted at him putting a protective arm around me. ‘We should have the greatest respect for him!’

The boy blushed and stammered. Other onlookers blamed him harshly whilst smiling sympathetically at me as if to say: ‘Excuse our fellow countryman’s behaviour.’ A big bald fellow who spoke a little French even said clearly: ‘Monsieur, I beg you to do whatever you want!’

A young girl explained with a smile, half by gestures and half in Russian, that I should not conclude from my encounter with this fanatic that all Russians were hot-headed. I reassured her. Really these people pushed the spirit of hospitality to its highest limits. The infinitely kind reaction of all those holiday-makers came as a pleasant surprise. In France, in the event of a similar incident, would ours be as sound?