The Russians are still playing space games. A nice tOuch,
I thought, to ask the Americans to drop into or onto their space station next time they pass by. The sole Russian con- dition—that they should leave the place clean for the next set of visitors—was also appealing.
The last time I was in Moscow, which ad- mittedly is several years ago, the Russians weren't very good at seeing to it that the Edwardian splendours of their Savoy hotel's vast antimacassered bedrooms, suites and antique bathrooms were immaculately cleaned between guests. This, incidentally, was not because the hotel was pre-Revolution. The new skyscraper hotels were just as likely to be dirty, and rather more likely to be falling to bits. The best Moscow hotels were the three Czarist ones, the National, the Metropole and the Savoy.
The Russians are very odd : the new and the old are continually present without any obvious explanation. When their first new jet aircraft were introduced—beautiful sleek things, copied from the Cornet—they hung lace curtains at the windows and the entire interior reeked of cabbage water and mothballs and carbolic soap. I suspect that if and when the Americans land on the Russian space station, they will find there bits of lace and carbolic soap.
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