The Moscow Summit : Reporter’s Notebook From Moscow : Marlin and Gennady Show a Rerun--and Gennady Gets Last Word

The Marlin and Gennady show, not exactly rib-tickling comedy but not bad, is back, playing on the Moscow boards this time.

At the Washington summit last December, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater and Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov took the podium together for the first time to brief the media about the meetings between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. They surprised everyone with their easy banter and friendly deference, and the mood has continued in Moscow.

When their first briefing began Sunday, Gerasimov, speaking in Russian, noticed that Fitzwater still had not managed to put his headphones on to hear the simultaneous translation in English.

“Are you listening?” the Soviet spokesman asked Fitzwater. “You see, he trusts me so much, he doesn’t get the translation. My colleague doesn’t even follow what I’m saying, he trusts me so much.”

On Monday, Fitzwater, forced to leave the briefing early to attend the official dinner at the Kremlin, told Gerasimov, “I will have to go and leave you, Gennady, to these wonderful folks.”

Gerasimov had no trouble on his own. Asked to explain why he was smiling less on Monday than on Sunday, the Soviet spokesman grinned. “I do not know how to measure smiles--by centimeters, inches,” he replied, “but today’s meeting was very successful, it was quite nice. It was good yesterday, and it has been no worse today.”

The Soviet spokesman could not resist a little dig at Reagan in Fitzwater’s absence:

“It is with a sense of satisfaction that we learned that President Reagan, who has not visited very often libraries, has read the full text of Gorbachev’s book ‘Perestroika’.”

In the end, Gerasimov used Fitzwater’s absence to nudge the session diplomatically towards an end. “I am alone, as you see, because Mr. Fitzwater has left us,” he said. “But I do not want you to hear only one side of the story. So two or three more questions, and we will have to bring this to a close.”

A word turned sour for President Reagan on Monday before he met with Soviet dissidents in his poignant show of sympathy for their plight. The slip did not weaken the drama of the event in any way, but journalists wondered if the President had been guilty of a bad joke.

Bantering with American reporters earlier in the day in the Kremlin, Reagan tried to explain why Soviet officials had not tried to stop the meeting with the dissidents.

“They did that for me so I’d feel at home,” he said.

Asked what that meant, Reagan replied, “Every once in a while I’m meeting with some rather disagreeable people at home.”

Was he saying that the dissidents were disagreeable people?

“I don’t mean that,” the President said, a pained look on his face. “You know what I mean.”

Deputy press secretary Fitzwater later told reporters that the President was joking about his relations with the Washington press corps, but no one seemed to get the joke.

While waiting for Nancy Reagan to arrive for lunch at his home in the writer’s colony of Peredelkino, south of Moscow, Soviet poet Andrei Voznesensky talked with American reporters about Russian poetry. He was inspired by the thought that the First Lady was nearby laying a wreath at the grave of the Soviet poet and novelist Boris Pasternak, a Nobel Prize winner rejected by the Soviet government during his lifetime but now honored and published.

“Russian poetry,” Voznesensky said, “tells the best things and gives an indication of the instincts of our nation. It is the poetry of religion. . . . You know, in America, you have the best computers in the whole world, and technology. But we have Russian poetry and something strange--the Slavic soul. You learn about this with poetry.”

At the state dinner Monday night in the 15th-Century Granovitaya Palace within the Kremlin walls, President Reagan presented Gorbachev with an unusual but meaningful gift, a print of the 32-year-old movie “Friendly Persuasion,” directed by William Wyler and starring Gary Cooper.

The President described it as “a film not as well known as some, but an American classic.”

“It takes place against the backdrop of our American epic, the Civil War,” Reagan said. “And because the family is of the Quaker religion, and renounces violence, each of its characters must, in his or her own way, face this war and the moral dilemma it poses. The film shows not just the tragedy of war, but the problems of pacifism, the nobility of patriotism, as well as the love of peace.”

While Gorbachev and his reformers have been cracking down on drinking (much to the dismay of Soviet imbibers) by restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages, there was no shortage of spirits at the state dinner. In releasing the dinner menu, the Tass news agency noted that the fare included Manavi Georgian, 1985, white wine, Muzani Georgian, 1985, red wine, as well as champagne, Sovetskoye Sparkling Brut and Yubileiny Armenian, 1977, brandy.

Times staff writer Robert C. Toth contributed to this article.