The Other Beard

Over the years, only one hairier man had shown up for the May Day festivities in Moscow. He was Karl Marx, whose visage scowled down from a thousand placards every time the comrades met on the atheists' Easter. But on May Day this year, Muscovites whistled, cheered and stamped their feet for that popular fellow, The Other Beard.

It was Fidel Castro all right, and when he was not on Russia's TV last week, his music was. From every loudspeaker came the raucous, rhythmic tunes of Sloppy Joe's in Havana; no matter that the songs were from Batista's day; to the Slavs, it all sounded pretty much the same. Hotel ballrooms shook with newly discovered mambas; Cuban students with bongo drums did their best to drown out the sound of the 21-gun salute in Red Square.

Charge It. Fidel loved every minute. At an official lunch in the Kremlin, he puffed happily at his cigar, blithely ignoring the unwritten rule against smoking in Khrushchev's presence. He could not miss a visit to the Moscow home of Anastas Mikoyan, his old pal from the October missile crisis in the Caribbean. There was also a duck hunt, a soccer game, and a variety show. And the swans fairly swooned when Fidel went backstage after a performance at the Bolshoi.

It was after a leisurely stroll through the wooded grounds of Khrushchev's dacha near Moscow that Nikita took Fidel on a shopping tour at the new Moskva department store. Fidel paused at the leather goods display, asked about a belt, but quickly confessed: "I forgot to bring my money." Cracked Khrushchev, who doles out $1,000,000 a day to keep Cuba's chaotic economy from collapsing entirely: "I can guarantee his credit."

Staying at Home. It is just possible that Castro bought a shirt and tie at the men's wear counter, for next day he suddenly emerged all dressed up for the official May Day march-past through Red Square. He even sported a blue beret, which seemed increasingly confining as, for five solid hours, under a warm spring sun, he stood at Khrushchev's side on the rampart over Lenin's tomb. It went on and on; 250,000 athletes, workers and schoolchildren paraded by. Only during the ten-minute parade of familiar military hardware, featuring medium-range (500 to 700 miles) missiles of the type Moscow had tried to put in Cuba, did Fidel look interested. U.S. Ambassador Foy D. Kohler missed the fun, remaining at home in Spaso House to watch on television; he was boycotting the event to make sure he would not have to listen to an anti-American diatribe--and in Castro's presence, to boot. As things turned out, Kohler had nothing to fear. Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky's "order-of-the-day" speech contained all the familiar taunts and accusations against "imperialists," but it was nothing to get terribly excited about. And Fidel himself had nothing at all to say.

How long Fidel Castro would remain in Russia was anybody's guess, for his Russian hosts were keeping his itinerary a secret. The Cuban embassy in Moscow dropped hints that he might stay as long as a month, including trips to major cities, factories and farms. It would be as long a grind for host as for guest, for the Kremlin was fast running out of novel ways to honor its Caribbean comrade. Already Soviet scientists had celebrated Fidel's arrival by orbiting their 16th unmanned satellite just for him, and the post office had run off a series of commemorative stamps. One series, in riotous black, white, blue and scarlet, pictured Castro astride a white charger, leading a column of troops. The other stamp, more to the point, showed a dockside crane unloading Soviet equipment from a ship in Havana harbor.

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