The Moscoviad (11 page)

“Wow, he’s
fucking had a lot!” says, somewhat enviously, the lady in pee-stained
stockings, rocking slightly.

“And I also like
getting the carrot salad,” the fidgety guy appeals to you once again. “There
are so many vitamins in it! There is no food healthier than the carrot salad.
It is also good for your eyesight . . .”

You nod in
response. I’ll get it, my dear, I’ll get anything you say, only stop buzzing in
my ear. The line moves extremely slowly; frankly speaking, it doesn’t move at
all. First of all, there aren’t enough dishes. So they have stopped washing the
dirty ones as well. Second, only one boiler is working in the kitchen. Third,
the server is in a bad mood, perhaps she’s having her period. Fourth, as far as
she is concerned, they may all go to hell, including these fucking whores, the
cooks. Fifth, there is a shortage of food in the country, as a result of which
democracy is in danger and all hopes are placed on the aid from the developed
Western nations. They are waiting for this aid to arrive any minute now, and in
the meantime they make the last broth from the last bones in order to support
somehow the divine spark, the sacred gift of life in these drenched people. And
so several panhandlers disguised as refugees turn up by the table where the
exhausted visitor has fallen. One of them manages to be the first to grab the
unfinished salad and porridge. Others walk away disappointed, patrolling the
other tables for leftovers.

“Eat, my dear,
eat,” kindly says the ancient cleaning woman in a toothless lisp, wiping the
table in front of the quickest panhandler’s nose.

“Go to hell, old
witch,” he answers distrustfully, covering with his hands the porridge plate.

“In general they
cook rather well here,” continues his life-affirming monologue the damned
gourmand behind your back. “I remember when they had sausages here. If you put
two sausages in a bowl of hot broth, you’ll get very full . . .”

The line moves
slowly. The server has a fight with the cooks. Plates are smashing, the plates
which are in shortage. Broth is spilled. The cashier runs to find out what’s
going on. And what’s going on is that the empire is croaking. And the
humanitarian aid from the developed Western nations has been stolen long ago,
at the customs. So the caravan with meat and bread won’t arrive today; we have
to accept this humbly.

And while they
beat each other up with ladles in the kitchen, and the cashier runs around them
with a giant sharp knife, you study this line, these silly-looking sky-blue
columns, these paralytics in the corners, the sleeping martyr on the
windowsill, the Mongoloid soldiers in holiday uniforms that choke on dry rolls,
the gay guy in white pants who circles around them, a commune of anarchist
junkies with a two-year-old-child under the table, a small Gypsy encampment,
the disheveled writer and culturologist Vanya Cain who wandered in here to sell
the little poetry collection
The Birch
Undid Her Braid
, the male and female
panhandlers stalking for leftovers, the head of the Liberal-Democratic party,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who is finishing his boiled dry fruit compote, a few
Azeris, two or three Belarusians, a group of Armenians, a handful of Georgians,
a scattering of Kazakhs, a couple of Kyrgyzstanis, a few Moldovans, countless
Russians, a bunch of Tadjiks, a pleïade of the Turkmen, a smattering of Uzbeks,
and, naturally, plenty of Ukrainians. For according to the Cyrillic alphabet,
we come last in the Union. And in our socioeconomic importance, second after
Russia. By the way, our nightingale language ranks second in the world in its
melodiousness. Such was the judgment of the qualified experts at a contest that
took place in Geneva. The Russian language ranked a respectable thirty-fourth,
which it shared with Mongolian and Swahili.

The line moves
slowly, but it does move, as the kitchen conflict is temporarily extinguished.
The hotspot is liquidated for the time being. The peace talks will continue until
tomorrow.

The time for
choosing food arrives. An anemic cucumber salad, a slimy piece of cold chicken,
bread.

“Please don’t get
the hot cocoa,” the curly-haired guy pulls you by the sleeve. “It’s better to
have a glass of club soda for ten kopecks from the vending machine outside. And
the broth, the broth, don’t forget the broth . . .”

“And the broth,”
you tell the server obediently.

She scratches the
bottom of a large pot with the ladle. Hands you not quite half a bowlful.

“With an egg,”
prompts the fidgety guy.

“We have run out
of the broth, there’s no more,” announces the server gloatingly.

“How come no
more?” blinks the curly-haired guy.

“It fucking
croaked,” explains the witty young lady in stockings.

And while you are
paying by the cash register, slowly digging in all your pockets for change, the
fidgety lover of broths starts crying.

“But you said
that you did have the broth with an egg,” he turns to the cashier, whimpering.

“Then we did have
some,” the cashier is unmoved. “Why did you ask out of turn? Instead of asking,
you should have waited in line like all the other people . . . Fucking moron!”

This charming
Moscow habit of addressing strangers in the familiar fashion! This
manifestation of the universality, the all-humanity-embracing brotherly nature
of the Russian national spirit!

But the
curly-haired guy starts sniveling more loudly and you, unable to stand it any
longer, give him your half a bowl.

“There, have
yourself some broth. Just calm down and stop whining . . .”

And you quickly
move away with the plastic tray in your hands. And the fidgety guy doesn’t even
think of thanking you or refusing the offer. He has grabbed the plate as
something owed to him and immediately stopped whining indeed.

Noticing a free
space next to some clearly manic depressive guy who is melancholically sipping
hot cocoa from a glass, you park yourself there.

“Bon appetit,”
you tell him.

But he doesn’t
give you any answer, only a minute later pensively says somewhere to the side,
as if he weren’t addressing you,

“You’ve just
wished me bon appetit. But you did this insincerely, first of all because you
don’t care about me, and second, because you know very well how inappropriate
is this wishing in the context of such a place and such food. There are fewer
and fewer nicely brought up people among us. The traditional polite expressions
lose their meaning in Russia. You see, here they call the thing I’m drinking
‘hot cocoa.’ But is it really cocoa? This is viscose, glass, lead,
sand—anything but cocoa! . . .”

You silently
start your battle with the slimy chicken. The main thing is not to drag
yourself into arguments with madmen.

“The only person
with nice manners here is the old cleaning woman,” reports the depressive guy.
“She is one hundred and fifty years old. This is Countess Lidovskikh. She used
to dance waltzes with the late emperor Alexander the Second. Such powerful and high
culture!”

“And what about
the two following emperors?” you ask after all, while chewing on the chicken
sole.

“What do you have
in mind?”

“Did she dance
with the two emperors that came later, Alexander the Third and Nicholas the
Second? Did she have intimate relations with Rasputin? Did she become a sister
of mercy during World War I? Did she flee to Crimea to be under Wrangel’s
protection during the civil war? Was she persecuted by the Cheka, by the OGPU,
the NKVD, the MGB, the KGB? Did she dig trenches outside Moscow during the
summer and fall of 1941 when she turned one hundred? Did she participate in the
postwar rebuilding of the national economy, in the cultivation of virgin lands,
in the launch of the sputnik, in the XXII Congress of the CPSU? Did she suffer
moral losses during the years of stagnation? How did she meet the wind of
renewal and of pluralism in thought? . . .”

The depressive
guy pulls out of a reddish briefcase an opened bottle of the FGD, “fortified
grape drink.”

“I see that you
do understand certain things,” he winks at you conspiratorially. “Help
yourself.”

Unnoticeably to
others you put your lips to the FGD’s bottleneck. Take one, two, three, four
gulps. Out-of-this-world vile stuff! You gasp.

“I am glad that
the young people of today also know something about our history,” says the
depressive guy, coming to life. “About our heroic glorious history. If I may,”
and he too puts his lips to the bottleneck.

“For the history
could have been different,” he remarks after chasing the FGD with a few gulps
of viscose, glass, lead, sand—anything but cocoa.

“It could,” you
agree with him briskly. “But this one ain’t bad either!”

A few Gypsy
children appear in front of you, and you give them your slice of bread. They
leave angrily.

“One can’t choose
history,” for some reason proclaims the depressive guy.

“Which is why it
couldn’t have been different?” you agree with him.

“Would you like
some more?” the familiar bottle again peeks out of the briefcase.

“I don’t see any
reason. To refuse,” you quote one of your witty acquaintances.

And again pour
the vile “grape drink” into yourself.

“I cannot stop
being surprised by why everything happened in our history in this and not some
other way,” says the depressive guy after a pause that followed a sizeable gulp.

“Indeed,” you
nod, “there’s enough to be surprised by here! History could have gone
differently . . .”

“It could,”
agrees the depressive guy. “But it couldn’t have gone better.”

“History does not
know a conditional form,” you explain to him. “A subjunctive mood? Ferstehen?”

“Jawohl, mein
Führer!” answers the depressive guy, and both of you start laughing like crazy.

But at this point
two paramilitary guys on patrol appear inside the “Snack Bar.” They cross the
hall in a meaningful fashion, exchange a few phrases with the Gypsy encampment
in the corner, search a couple of anarchist junkies while they’re at it, and
then, noticing the sleeping guy on the windowsill, cheerfully approach him and
start clubbing at full force his powerless poisoned body. The black berets jump
on their irregularly shaped heads.

“Gestapo!” you
want to exclaim for the entire hall to hear, but the old depressive guy stuffs
your mouth with the bottle of the FGD.

“Don’t do foolish
things,” he hisses almost in a whisper. “You and I are here not for this . . .
With just one careless shout you can ruin the entire job . . .”

“Which job?” you
inquire, finishing the last drops of the FGD and wiping your mustache with your
sleeve.

“The job of
saving Russia,” answers the depressive guy in the same whisper.

“From whom?”

“It’s a secret,”
the depressive guy presses a finger against his lips. “Ferstehen?”

“Thanks, son,”
says old Countess Lidovskikh, taking from the table the empty bottle which you
left there carelessly.

You are dying to
bow deeply and kiss her hand, the old wrinkled hand of countess Lidovskikh, in
which she holds a stinky rug she uses to wipe tables. You barely restrain
yourself from doing this.

The paramilitary
guys keep on clubbing the sleeping guy on the windowsill; he must be dreaming
nice dreams because of this.

“Hey, he’s dead!”
you suddenly guess and see how gradually everyone at the “Snack Bar” comes to
realize this, even the paramilitary guys. They stop clubbing him and start
feeling for his pulse, trying to listen for his heartbeat, unbuttoning the no
less greasy shirt beneath the greasy jacket. An entire circle, tight and
curious, gathers around the dead guy.

“Yet one more is
gone from our ranks,” says the depressive guy solemnly. “One more Russian has
fallen victim to Bolshevism. Isn’t it too much, Messrs. Communists?” He grinds
his teeth as if he’s in hell. “But never mind, never mind. This blood will be
avenged too. This blood too. Innocent blood . . .”

And here you
notice him unearthing from his ancient briefcase an F-1 grenade and beginning
to fiddle with its ring, monotonously repeating, “And this blood. Innocent
blood.” You still manage to grab your bag from the windowsill and run to the
exit. You manage also to run some twenty yards towards the underpass. Already
from inside it you hear an incredibly powerful explosion—as if twenty
imperial-style snack bars blew to bits, forever launching into Moscow sky the
old maniacal terrorist, and the corpse in the greasy jacket, and the Gypsy
encampment with its carts and carriages, and the toothless countess Lidovskikh,
and everyone else, including the Azeris, the Belarusians, the Armenians, the
Georgians, the Kazakhs, the Kirghizstanis, the Moldovans, the Russians, the
Tadjiks, the Turkmen, the Uzbeks, and the Ukrainians . . .

You can’t choose
history. But it could have been different.

The previous time
I unfurled the panorama of my relationships with women for Your Royal Mercy.
Now about my relations with the KGB. I hope, Your Sky-Blueness, that You know
at least a little bit about this Institution. If not, you’d be able to form an
impression of sorts from my account below.