It is possible that the chauffeurs of Moscow are very rich and happy people, but they are necessary, since it is difficult for a foreigner to get a driver’s license. One correspondent took his examination for a license, but he failed on the question, “What does not belong on an automobile?” He could think of many things that did not belong on an automobile and finally picked one, but he was wrong. The proper answer was “mud.”

That evening we saw the American picture Rhapsody in Blue at the Embassy. We had seen it before, but this version of it was much more amusing, because the reels got mixed up, and the picture opened with everybody dead; gradually they came to life, until at the end of the picture George Gershwin was a little boy. We liked it much better this way.

Capa constantly used the window of our hotel as a place from which to photograph people in the street. And he lurked behind the curtains with a long lens on his camera, taking portraits of people walking through the rain, and of people shopping at the little place across the street. And he and the man in the repair shop across the street continued their duel of snapping at each other with their cameras.

Neither of us had heard from home for a long time. Letters did not come through, and we decided we would try to telephone New York. This was very difficult, and we finally gave it up. One can telephone New York only if money is deposited to the Russian account in New York, in dollars. This would require that we telegraph someone in New York, say exactly the time we wanted to telephone, and exactly how long we wanted to talk. The cost of this would be computed and the dollars deposited in New York, at which time our telephone call could be put in from Moscow. But since this would take about a week or ten days to accomplish, we decided the simplest thing was just to continue to write letters, and to hope eventually to receive some.

When letters finally did begin to arrive, we found that airmail from New York to Moscow takes from ten days to three weeks. We do not know why it takes so long, for New York to Stockholm is two days, and the rest of the time is from Stockholm to Moscow. This delay of delivery adds to the foreigner’s sense of being cut off, of being all alone.

We had begun to brood a little bit, for we had been a week in Moscow and our permits to leave the city had not come through. We thought we might spend the summer waiting for them when suddenly they materialized, and our plan was under way.

Sweet Joe Newman gave us a cocktail party that lasted far into the night. Our plan was to leave at dawn for Kiev. The cocktail party picked up our spirits, and the spirits of about fifty other people.