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In Eastern Europe after World War II, the Communists denounced the practice as a "capitalist hangover," but they soon despaired of curing it. After Hungarian males, who have been known to feast on a pretty finger for seeming minutes in a diplomatic receiving line, Poland boasts the Iron Curtain's most insatiable hand kissers; Warsaw policemen routinely kiss policewomen's hands, and have even been known to buss a comely speeder after handing her a ticket. Italy's Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti is an accomplished finger-smoocher. As for Russia, tselovat ruku was outlawed by the Commissariat of Hygiene in 1924, but today it is considered so kulturny that an announcer who recently nuzzled a French actress' hand on Soviet television did not even raise Pravda's temperature.
Like Drops of Milk. Seasoned diplomatic hands give top honors to upper-crust Frenchmen and Italians. Manual training in both societies starts when a boy is four or so and emphasizes, as one social oracle puts it, that the kisser must be "natural and relaxed, never obsequious or stiff." Its sound, declared a Roman gallant, "should be like that of a drop of milk in milady's five o'clock tea."
Such a hand kiss requires split-second timing as well as aplomb, since the overeager busser may find that the hand he is aiming for has humiliatingly withdrawn in midswoop or, worse, insists too late that it is to be shaken rather than kissed. This is a nervous failing particularly common among American girls. If the lady is willing, the man correctly raises her hand halfway to his lips, though when greeting an older or distinguished woman he is expected to bow down to hand level, if he can make it. Charles de Gaulle, who stands 6 ft. 4 in. and would have to bend almost double to make contact correctly, understandably does not indulge. Konrad Adenauer, on the other hand, unbends so readily that he has committed the diplomatic faux baiser of hand kissing Mme. de Gaulle, whose fingers, according to French bussing protocol, should be kissproof. If the De Gaulles are France's most conspicuous abstainers, Premier Georges Pompidou on a receiving line resembles a one-man force de frappe.
In West Germany nowadays the practice is pursued so indefatigably that to Erica Pappritz, the Teutons' Emily Post, it looks as though "everyone is trying to catch up with all the hand kissing they missed for the past 20 years." West Germany's new industrialists and a newly prosperous, socially ambitious middle class are trying to raise their own status by emulating the Kultur of princely, pre-Hitler society.
Wet v. Dry. Most German hand kissers either belong to the "dry" Berlin school or else practice the "wet" Viennese method. In the Berlin Handkuss, which was perfected at the Hohenzollern court, the man bows briskly from the waist, clicks his heels and, pursing his lips fleetingly, brushes the air a millimeter over the woman's hand. By contrast, Vienna's wayward buss, usually delivered with closed eyes, is a wet smack that starts voraciously at the knuckles, may work its way up the wrist, and sometimes lasts up to four seconds.