The Monkey Link (22 page)

Ever more often I see death, and smile—

but now the bus opened and closed its doors again, and I never did get off, I was listening with my peripheral hearing to snatches of an odd conversation about some sort of Abaz—not Abkhaz
 
…
Again the Abaz, the Abazinians
 
…
I couldn’t understand.

And
HE
kept on wriggling and wriggling with impatience, cursing each stop, although by now he, too, was listening to the conversation, which had gradually begun to intrigue him. His blood boiled when he caught the thread, in the blend of Abkhazian and Russian: certain “Abuzinians,” hated by the storyteller, had attacked the village again and destroyed the crops
 
…
H
E
had always “loved the smoke of burnt stubble.”
{32}
His nostrils flared. Well, but that’s how it is. All these things are still a recent memory in this land: raids, fires, curved sabers, rustled herds, captive maidens
 
…

“Damned Abuzinians—I’ll shoot them all, every mother one!” I heard.

…
 
and
HE
kept on wriggling and wriggling with impatience, showing no mercy for my trousers.

Each detail crowds out another detail. We succeed in reporting one particular only by omitting another particular. An irreparable pity! The whole of literature could probably be described in terms of details struggling for their existence. In this battle the bearers of locks and curls, of swanlike necks and wasp waists, of pantalettes and crinolines, have long since perished on paper swords. No portrait, no clothing—the modern hero is not only “faceless” but also undressed and unshod. Not only featureless, but also pantless. The landscape, too, has been excised.

But it’s true! Not only the hero, not only the narrator’s dubious “I,” but also the author himself (not as a character in these lines, but as a person!) at the moment of the narrative (not when he’s immediately writing it down, but when it’s actually happening) is displaying himself without this “detail.” This detail is also property! It must be
acquired.
Existence in the transitional phase between capitalism and communism collides with this last circumstance. A pair of pants, to be sure, is the very last form of private property, which is why Lenin would have done better to seek his “separately considered country” somewhere in Africa. Russia isn’t Africa, but still, I was planning to go south, to our Black Sea subtropics (an imperial brag about climatic zones), and at almost forty-five years of age (a quarter-century of writing) I had no pants. This does not imply, by any means, that I had sold them for drink. Which, incidentally, is not so easy to do. In the good old days men drank away their last shirt, “down to the cross.” (That is, the cross, too, was thought of as clothing, and sometimes they even drank away the cross; I remember someone tried to palm off a brass one on Prince Myshkin
{33}
as silver.) But in our day, perhaps because shirts have become scarcer than pants, men have begun to drink away their last pair of pants instead of their shirt. I think the expression is more likely figurative (the image of the last pair of pants in Russian literature
 
…
 
). The image of one’s last pair of pants is quite unaesthetic—trying to sell them (which, incidentally, I’m trying to do), not to mention buying them (incidentally, someone will buy)—the expression is more likely figurative, like the expression “I have no choice,” which is always used at a moment when people are choosing from not one but two things, a moment when they do have a choice. So I did have pants on—I didn’t have
southern
pants. Although it was already autumn, the south should be warm, the velvet season; I hadn’t been there for a long time, and my expectations of the south were exaggerated. And lo, a beautiful lady, reluctantly outfitting me for the south, presented me with a pair of white trousers. The only insult to my masculine vanity was that her legs turned out to be longer (mine, it seems, are a bit short)—confirming that if she lived under
other
conditions (meaning the United States, most likely), she could have insured them, like Marlene Dietrich. But the zipper zipped, and I decided that they fitted me just right. I could say a lot more here about the lady (“You’ll regret it,” she told me in farewell, and indeed I do), but with this I end my striptease and take off the last pair of pants in Russian literature.

Or—put them on. My pants, by the way, were the real thing, even though white. That is, they were jeans. That is, Lees. I was especially proud (anyone who really knows will appreciate
 
…
 
) of that company’s logo, a tiny thing the size of a laundry tag, not the vulgar blob as big as your whole rear end. True, they were too white
 
…
A writer’s skill, as we were taught in school, is manifested chiefly in his choice of detail. Who can say whether these trousers are needed here?

But
I
needed them!

I
see
them.

And I see them on
HIM
.

He has deflowered them.

Across his rear end there is already a spreading red stain from the mulberries he mashed on the bus (that’s why he was wiggling so impatiently!
 
…
 
), but he sees it not at all (and will not soon see it), what he sees is “the Black Sea there, the sand, the beach,” he sees nothing but palm trees—for him, this suffices for Rio de Janeiro.
{34}
He is standing on someone’s front steps, under one of those elegant pre-Revolutionary wrought-iron canopies, on a small, quiet, not-yet-awake street in the capital city, Sukhum, where the dust is still lazy in the shade, and “with elbow bent sharp” he is triumphantly blowing a green bottle. Actually, he’s drinking from it. And the bottle itself isn’t green, the liquid in it is green (I had never seen any like it
 
…
 
). He himself is drinking it for the first time, he has never before encountered such vodka, and right on the spot he has joyously christened it “Green Demon.” But actually, the vodka is labeled “Tarragon” and bears the color of the herb with which it is supposed to have been prepared. So here he is, joyfully drinking it, in the very first doorway after buying it, and the higher he tips his head back the bluer is the sky, the more golden the sun, the pinker the walls of the houses, the more delicate the tracery of the leaves, and at this moment, as he sees himself, he looks like the mulatto in white pants, even though deflowered
 
…
and not like the Young Pioneer bugler in the park (which is how
I
see him), in whose shade he is finishing the bottle, though no longer alone but with Daur, who has arrived in time. He and Daur caress pink Sukhum with their gaze. Palms—no shit!
 
…
Passing in front of them there’s even a donkey, or perhaps a policeman—the one carries a watermelon, the other munches a round flat bread, the one will flicker an ear, the other an eyebrow, and that’s all.

And you will hear no more about pants, for with this they are out of the story, as the Icelandic sagas say.

“You do as you like, but I’m not drinking any more,” I told
HIM
. He didn’t even wave me away, so great was his accumulated contempt for me.

In the end, I didn’t protest. I had tossed back so many with Pavel Petrovich, according to the methods of Privy Councillor Johann von Goethe (I use the terminology of the unforgettable Venichka),
{35}
without giving
HIM
even a drop, that it was time to take my leave.

So, more or less with clear conscience, I entrusted him to Million Tomatoes, and they trudged off “along the fair curls of day” (Daur Zantaria’s expression, from Esenin, I think).

If the facial features of the modern hero have been erased and his curls have fallen out, those of the fair day remain. Its clean tresses trailed in the Black Sea, within sight of the snow-white brow of the Hotel Abkhazia (designed, like the Hotel Adjaria in Batum, by Academician Shchusev
{36}
for a conference which Stalin had planned for the allied countries but which was held in neither place and which therefore received the name “Yalta Conference”). From here on, so that we won’t have such long parentheses, we’ll eavesdrop on their conversation at the Cafe Amra, which juts out into the Black Sea like a white breakwater, opposite the Hotel Abkhazia
 
…

“Well, and then it would have been the Sukhum Conference
 
…
 
”

“And Churchill and Roosevelt would have come to Sukhum .. ”

“And they would have sat like you and me
 
…
 
”

“And drunk coffee at the Amra
 
…
 
”

“The Amra didn’t exist then.”

“The Amra has always existed!”

“Churchill drank only Armenian cognac.”

“Since when?”

“They decided it right at the Yalta Conference. Every year, Stalin sent him a carload of the best Armenian cognac.”

“Sure, and cigars from Castro.”

“Listen, why talk like that! I know Castro didn’t exist then!” This retort indicates that there were no longer two of them but considerably more—more by at least one, the bartender from the bar next door, an Armenian named Serozh, who was resting up from the work that lay ahead of him.

“Castro didn’t exist, but cigars did.”

“Listen, why be a pest! Would you rather they’d had the Yalta Conference in Batumi?!”

An excuse to find out what kind of cigar Churchill had smoked—after his requisite glass of Armenian cognac—presented itself then and there. He had long been attracting our notice, this man. All but wearing a cork helmet, he was feeding the seagulls and still nursing the same cup of coffee, with an eloquently silent escort; as we had conjectured, he did prove to be an Englishman. We immediately translated our question into language he would understand: with the help of the word “Chercheell,” we poured him a little more cognac and puffed grandly on his Marlboro as if it were a cigar. He still didn’t catch on.

“You Russians are strange people,” he said after the third glass. “You love Thatcher, you love Chahchill
 
…
You’re strange people.”

We “Russians”—two Abkhaz, two Mingrelians, one Armenian, and one Greek, not counting me—almost felt slightly insulted, either on Russia’s behalf or because he had known Russian all along. We ordered another coffee.

Not by nationalities but by our coffees were we divided! Two medium-strong, two weak, one
sade
with sugar, two sultans, one double-sweet, and one plain no sugar, one for Marxen, one for me
 
…
The Englishman was ecstatic, with good reason. This was a ritual! In the first place, without waiting in line: natives, the right of the habitué, close acquaintanceship with the coffee chef. The people in line, out-of-town visitors, say nothing, act timid, don’t object (if they don’t object, it means they’re from out of town). “Meess, are you here for a long visit? Haff you seen the dolphins yet?” The accent is intentional, people in Sukhum have little accent; the accent is for romance, to inspire fear and respect. A week’s growth of beard (which will come into style only many years later in the West); a gold chain; a carelessly tucked-in white shirt, unbuttoned to expose a cross buried in fur; sleeves rolled up as if by chance, below the elbow; a muscular, careless hand, perhaps with a thick gold ring
 
…
“Ovik, six more, be so kind: two extra-strong, one medium, two weak, one regular!” The peculiar chic of the coffee chef is to ignore the order but fill it promptly and unerringly, keeping it straight, which coffee for whom. The peculiar chic of the man placing the order is to have affection in his voice and severity on his face, and not to dither when paying, so that he proffers a crumpled note with disdain for the money but not for the coffee or the coffee chef
 
…
After executing this ballet, the man who has ordered is not immediately liberated from his mask. But then, after listening with downcast eyes and modest pride as he is toasted, he is liberated after all and joins the conversation
 
…
“He might be reckoned as Jewish, but he might not, either.” “If it’s through the mother, he should be. Jews reckon nationality through the mother.”

“Well, but through the father it’s obvious. If you’re a Rabinovich everyone knows you’re Jewish, even if your mother’s Russian.”

“That way they get more Jews. Through both sides. Clever people.”

“Yes, unlike the Abkhaz. We just get fewer. If it’s through the father you’re Georgian. And if it’s through the mother you’re Georgian.”

“Damn Lavrenty!
{37}
How many we might have been
 
…
 
”

“What do you think?” They put the question point-blank to the silent escort.

“Are you speaking to me?”

“Was Jesus a Jew or not?”

“I do scientific, ah, research. This isn’t my problem.”

“Then what is?”

“I study monkeys.”

“And you?” This was to me.

“Listen, why pester everyone? What are you, Jewish or something?”

“I’m not Jewish, I’m Greek. But anyway?”

“Who among us has not been a Jew at least once?” Who said this? Surely not
HE
?

“It seems to me,” I said, treading cautiously, “you can reckon the Son of God by His Father, but not by nationality.”

“And you, Serozh?”

“Me? I’m Armenian.”

“I’m Ainglish,” said the Englishman. “None of you know what a third-category city is!”

The Englishman was just in from Voronezh, and Voronezh,
{38}
to be specific, was a third-category city
 
…
But how easy it was to talk about Jews here! Everyone here was in a minority.

But together we already formed rather a large crowd, once more to burst out onto the embankment in the genial mood of masters of life.