Word: vodka
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...Vodka & Violins. In a day and a night in Paris, Salinger had two meetings with Kharlamov (whom he soon began calling Mike)-in the Paris home of Cecil Lyon, minister of information in the U.S. Paris embassy, and in the grey-walled Soviet embassy on Rue de Grenelle. While Salinger puffed on cigars, the pair were served vodka and caviar, discussed press relationships and other communication channels between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Inevitably, the meetings gave rise to rumors that Salinger was negotiating about a Kennedy visit to Russia, but Salinger denied it "on a stack of Bibles...
Silhouetted against the Soviet embassy's big picture window overlooking the Rhine, Ambassador Andrei Smirnov wore a thoughtful look as he toyed with his vodka glass. Before him sat his West German guests-editors, members of the Bundestag, an official from the government press office. Moscow's new policy, pleaded Smirnov, is not meant as "bait," or as "mere propaganda." The "highest personality in the Soviet Union" (Nikita Khrushchev) is behind this idea: the Soviet Union and West Germany must "normalize" their relations. Russia is no longer disposed to deal only with the U.S., Britain and France...
Mikhail Zaitsev made a beautiful corpse. Propped in the coffin he had carved and painted himself, he wore his Sunday suit and an expression of noble serenity. Then, when the village photographer had finished taking his picture, Zaitsev leaped out and helped his neighbors down the generous supplies of vodka and cold cuts he had laid in for the wake. Next day, the neighbors mailed the funeral picture to his estranged wife in another village, explaining that Comrade Zaitsev had been electrocuted by a high-tension wire...
...Vodka & Cigarettes. Between Schnackenburg and Helmstedt, hundreds of work-corps youths are building the new wall. In some areas, the crews manage to seal off as much as six miles of the border a day. The fence weaves through the Hansel-and-Gretel-like Harz Mountain forests. Near Braunlage, I came upon two miserably wet East German guards standing alongside the brook that separates the two zones. From my side of the barbed wire, I offered them a cigarette and then a drink from a pocket flask. "Ja, bitte," they said, and I threw both cigarettes and flask across...
They puffed deeply on the cigarettes and pulled appreciatively on the vodka, then threw the cigarette pack and flask back and disappeared into the forest...