At the outset--as it is the custom in the United States--the host showed us around his house. The five of us were jammed in for quite a while on the second floor in the tiny bedrooms of his two sons. David, the eldest, a fair-haired, healthy looking youngster, had his little room in a state of complete disorder. The radio was roaring, the gay green parakeets were screaming. Some radio parts together with books, screwdrivers, tubes of glue, bookbinders and knives were heaped on the table. The little occupant, apparently ready to go to bed, was sitting on his bed without his shirt and was reading something. At the sight of strangers he felt bashful, grabbed his shirt, started putting it on and when his head eventually emerged through its collar, his face and his ears were flushed and his brow pearled with sweat. However, having dressed, he immediately regained his composure and, as though nothing had happened, stretched out his hand with earnest poise. David--he introduced himself. His younger brother, Mikey, had an artistic temperament. His table was all smeared with water-colors and pictures were hanging on the walls--fantastic tanks, ships, sinister profiles of Indians, noble-featured cowboys wearing hats of incredible dimensions. Mikey was evidently successful in this hobby of his and, after looking at his drawings, one could tell him without false flattery that he was an artist of the realist school and that many of his pictures were more accurate and perfect as to form than whatever is being exhibited by quite adult "uncles" at the opening of exhibitions of the so-called "new art." Mikey dressed, too, and we came down in a group to the living room where Gribatchov was having an argument with our American colleagues. The topic was familiar, I should even say a classical one--the freedom of the press. In the heat of the dispute the _NR_ publisher proposed to Gribatchov an exchange of articles on important international topics under reciprocal terms--once a week the editor of _The New Republic_ would publish an article in the _Literary Gazette_ presenting the American viewpoint on some specific problem and once a week a representative of the _Literary Gazette_ would give the Soviet point of view in an article in _The New Republic_. Apparently this idea seemed very attractive to our American colleague, and he was attacking Gribatchov with quite a lot of energy. I did not have a chance to hear the argument to its end. The fair-haired David, with whom I had become quite friendly, dragged me away to the next room. We conversed in the manner of cavemen, using dramatic gesticulations and incoherent sounds, and yet we somehow managed to understand each other. David even managed to convey that he had built that radio himself, and that he likes to listen to Russian music. In proof of this he even sang, with boyish diligence and with a broken juvenile "basso," a melody taken out of _Swan Lake_. However, he rendered it with a foxtrot rhythm.