The Moscoviad (19 page)

“What exactly?”

“Well, my death.
Are they going to push me there by force?”

“Don’t ask me
about such things.”

“Is this a
commercial secret?”

“No, this is a
universal secret. Only those who have experienced death can know what it looks
like.”

“I’m interested
in the technology.”

“Don’t be so
cruel. As you can see, it’s hard for me not only to speak, but even to think
about this.”

“Forgive me. I
was simply curious. I thought I had a right . . .”

“There, in your
coat pocket, is the tape with Mike Oldfield.”

“It would have
been better if you kept it. This is our music.”

Galya leaned
towards you, and you started kissing again. “This is what a farewell looks
like,” you thought. Out of the billions of women of this world at your
disposal, you have chosen precisely this one for the final scene. Something was
being taken away from you, von F. Not only life, finally. Everything else too.
Much more than simply life.

“When will they
finally calm down?” you shuddered, parting from her slightly salty lips. “When
will they devour me?”

“This is a
recording,” said Galya. “There’s no one there.”

“What do you
mean, no one? What are you saying?”

“Did you really
believe in this absurdity? You are so funny, so funny!” her eyes shone in the
semidarkness with living tears.

“What is all this
for then?” you rubbed fiercely your burning forehead.

“For the purity
of the experiment. You won’t understand anyway, it’s too complex, comprised of
many steps. At first they frighten you with the prospect of the unavoidable
horrifying death. A rare death. Then a couple of shots. And you become extremely
soft. Paralyzed. Ready to agree to anything. And always carry this horror in
your heart.”

She broke the two
colorless vials, smashing them against the floor. Then she stomped vigorously
on the syringes. You felt yourself getting covered with sweat, mercilessly,
unbearably and at a lightning speed.

“Here’s the key
from your cage,” she said. “Lock me from the outside. You have seven minutes
left. In seven minutes the group’s leader will wake up . . .”

“’Sashko’?”

“Perhaps
‘Sashko.’ He decided to take a half an hour nap while I do my job and the
injections start taking their effect. I will be lying down here, almost
unconscious. I will not even have to pretend. I’ll even be able to show them
the traces of your blows. You will lock me. Then you will go left down the
corridor. Remember: no matter how many turns or forks are there, always take a
left. Will you be able to remember?”

“And what then,
dearest?”

“There will be an
elevator. There’ll be a guard walking by it, but you must come up with
something, for this is your only option.”

“What, what can I
come up with, honey?”

“Something,
anything. This elevator with take you up.”

“Up where, my
love?”

“How do I know?
You’ll see!”

“I can’t run
fast,” you said, putting on the raincoat. “I don’t want to leave you. But I
must. When will we see each other again?”

“The guard by the
elevator is armed. We may never see each other again.”

“You have been to
kind to me,” you stroked her swollen cheek with your palm. “You are a true Russian
woman. The ones like you followed the Decembrists into Siberia. I will write
you letters from Ukraine. Or from the other world: it depends on the armed
guard. But you’ll see, I’ll be more careful than the forgetful alcoholic.”

“Go already . . .
If they find you here . . .”

But you don’t let
her finish, pressing her strongly against you. Then you grab your huge bag from
the floor and, accompanied by the non-stop squealing from the adjacent cage you
turn the key in the lock . . .

If
you, von F., understood everything
right and
remember it well, if you have not drunk away what remains of your brains and
have not gone nuts from the fever, you should now be taking left turns all the
time. And this means that you are moving along the corridors of a certain labyrinth
towards its mysterious center. This recalls the ancient Greek meander. But this
information, von F., is of no use to you: all the same you don’t know what it
is.

Is it polite, my
friends, is it noble, is it humane that in a minute that’s so tough for me,
when I have barely escaped a sure death, lost the woman I love, and am now
flying somewhere into the unknown, most likely in order to get a bullet into my
head, so, is it humane, my friends, to reproach me at this moment for drinking
or for not knowing ancient Greek realia? Let me at least get out of here—and
then you can ask me about anything in this world, for instance, what did the
shield of Achilles look like, and how many ships did the Greeks dispatch to
Troy, and what were their names. But now let me and all these Greeks just be
for the time being, since the plain-clothed guard is already visible at the far
end of the corridor, walking back and forth in front of the elevator doors. And
I must think something up so that he does not send me a bullet for the sake of
universal order, and I could even make use of this elevator. What a pity that
right now I don’t have by my side my poor sweet Astrid: she could overcome so
convincingly all the guards, doormen, officers, ticket-collectors and all such
scum of this world that blocks the free movement of humanity! Next to her I
only had to play a conceited foreign dummy who proudly refuses to understand
anything that is going on in the surrounding Sovietskiland. Now, clearly, I
won’t be able to pull that off. For I have bad luck with guards. I can’t even
get back into my own dormitory if I have forgotten my ID card.

But he did not
even plan to grab the gun. He waved at you good-naturedly. And then uttered
something completely unexpected,

“Wow, Vladik,
it’s great that you’ve come by! Can you take over for me for a couple of
minutes while I go take a leak? . . . I’ve downed four beers, you see . . . The
bladder is about to explode . . .”

At first you
wanted to contradict him, saying, what sort of Vladik am I for you, you fucker,
I am a Ukrainian poet—but you understood just in time that this was your
salvation.

“Sure, go now,”
you told him.

And thought to
yourself, “Things are getting pretty bad if I am beginning to resemble a KGB
guy.”

And just after he
turned to go to the john, you pressed the elevator call button. The elevator
hummed dully, and then started moving—which was a mistake. He turned abruptly,
and the very moment when you jumped into the opened doors, he apparently got it
that you were really no Vladik, but perhaps a Ukrainian poet.

“Stop!” he
screamed, and you had to pull the first lever you saw in the elevator cabin.

The doors again
pulled together—unbearably slowly, and when they finally closed, he did shoot
at you a couple of times; fortunately, the doors turned out to be bulletproof.
Good tank armor from the days of “Everything for the front, everything for the
victory.” And fortunately, the elevator started moving. For some time you heard
the wailing of the siren, shouts, and running about the corridors. These sounds
were coming from above, and then finally died down. So, you went somewhere
other than where you should have. You went down, into the even deeper depths,
into hell itself, von F. So will you ever get out of it?

The elevator went
on forever, and you had the time to notice a pool of blood on the floor (here
too someone was disposed of), and also to read some graffiti scratched on the
walls, among which the following stood out in its wittiness: “YOU ALL ARE
FUCKING CUNTS. Father Makhno.”
23

At last the
elevator stopped. Undoubtedly, there had to be another guard on this side as
well. And if they are not complete cretins, they have naturally already
notified him of your expected arrival from above. So, stand back, doors are
opening!

The doors indeed
opened, and yet another plain-clothed guy’s face lit up in a smile upon seeing
you,

“So, Vladik,” he
started speaking, “did they get that bastard?”

“Pulverized him,”
you confirmed, pointing to the puddle on the floor.

The guard laughed
happily, letting you out of the elevator.

“What time will
you clock out?” you asked him, just to say something.

But you would
have better not done it, since he too suddenly noticed you were no Vladik.
Perhaps your question was somehow absurd, or something else had worked, say,
professional face-recognition skills. So he started shooting without warning,
almost point-blank, and you saw large red stains spreading over your light
grayish-brownish, newly washed (farewell, Galya) raincoat. You dropped down to
the floor and tried crawling somewhere with all the strength that remained in
you, leaving behind a red trail of sticky blood and spilling guts, and he kept
on shooting, yes, he kept on shooting, and you felt unbearable pain somewhere
below your gut, and then thought that this episode came out no good at all, so
you should start it again from the beginning, yes, the very beginning.

So, you were
again riding in the elevator, in a clean raincoat, preparing for the meeting
with the guard. At last the doors opened, and the familiar plain-clothed guy’s
face lit up in a smile upon seeing you inside the elevator.

“So, Vladik,” he
started speaking, “did they get that bastard?”

“Aha,” you
mumbled inarticulately and, trying not to ask him what time he was clocking
out, walked past him towards the corridor.

“And I will clock
out soon, at ten!” the happy guard shouted behind you.

But you walked
on, limping a bit, not looking back, having in front of you only a corridor
whose walls, covered with mirrors, it seemed, unhurriedly moved along with you.
In each mirror there was you, stumping. At the grand finale, the far end of the
corridor there were some unbelievable doors; you have never ever seen such
grandiose, heavy, massive doors in your entire life. These doors looked out of
this world. In front of such doors St. Peter could be strolling back and forth,
clanging with his keys. Instead there was another plain-clothed guy there who,
judging by his age and appearance, had at the very least the rank of a colonel.

“Hello, my
friend!” you greeted him, having come closer. “It’s me, Vladik!”

“You are no
fucking Vladik!” the colonel got offended. “It is now second week since Vladik
has been dispatched to plant mines in Karabakh. Anyway, you may go, I don’t
fucking care: I am retiring on Monday, and may this fucking shit go to hell! .
. .”

You didn’t even
think of thanking him, leaned with your shoulder against these impossible
doors, they yielded, and you . . .

. . . found
yourself in an enormous hall, as big as the Red Square, all lit up by countless
super-powerful chandeliers. In its spaciousness and in the number of people
present it could rival perhaps only the beer hall on Fonvizin Street which
already had its opportunity to surprise you this morning. The bright light hit
painfully at your feverish eyes which had gotten used to the dark. But you were
able to see that the entire hall was divided, as if into city blocks and
avenues, by huge tables, two hundred yards long at the very least, all of them
covered Chinese-style with silk tablecloths, and on them an endless amount of
museum-fancy silverware, crystal, china, stoneware too, and on them, on all
that silver-crystal-china-stoneware, there was so much food and drink that it
seemed we had returned to the prehistoric times of the fun-loving and forgetful
marshal. And all the present company, many thousands strong, was drinking,
partying, freaking out, guzzling, fraternizing, chomping, making speeches, some
were already singing, others puking—so no one seemed to have noticed your
arrival, no one, and is it possible to notice the arrival of a single human
being, useless and defenseless, say, on the Red Square? Das ist unmöglich, as
our neighbors the Germans would say.

Here and there
fancy high-chested girls in Russian folk costumes were running back and forth;
waitresses, apparently, since each had in her shapely hands a tray filled with
various goodies. On a primitively constructed podium in the center of the hall
some hundred and fifty balalaika players were doing their thing, and a
big-boned Mongolian-looking dame with a braid reaching down to her butt
screamed in a piercing unpleasant tone,

Once a girl went
out

into the cherry
orchard

carrying water
pails;

behind her a
young Cossack

led his trusted
horse

to the same old
well.

The walls of the
hall, or more exactly, the infernal boundaries of this underground plaza were
decorated with flags of only two kinds: red and black-yellow-and-white. These
two flags alternated in a noble, or rather, pedantic, fashion. Besides the
flags you also noticed an enormous deep-red banner, on which the black, yellow
and white lights periodically produced the inscription, “WHEN THE THREAT TO
EMPIRE IS BLUNT, WE CAN’T STAY ADRIFT IN A PUNT!” although a different rhyme
kept on hinting at itself.

For some time you
wandered through this space, taking a closer look at the tables and the public.

And I must tell
you, friends, that I belong to the type of introverted persons that few people
notice in a crowded place. There were many occasions when this worked against
me, especially at various sophisticated gatherings and drinking parties, in a
sizeable and largely unknown crowd. Sometimes I had to repeat “hello” or some
such thing three or four times, so that when my voice turned to screaming
someone at last would notice me with surprise and compassion. Consequently, I
usually wanted to find a spot somewhere by the wall and quietly have my fun,
that is, drink and smoke a lot. Later I found a pretty good remedy for this
problem: bringing with me a sparkling, striking lady of elongated forms, in
other words, as one of my poet friends calls them, “a slim-legged fury.” Everyone
rushed towards us, asking me about the latest news on the creative front and
the plans for the future, surrounding us with animated attention and giving us
a spot in the very center of the gathering.

But this time I
would not have been able to draw even a drop of attention towards me, even if I
had brought along a dozen slender and fully undressed tigresses—to such extent
was everyone present blinded by their euphoria, mixed with the food and drink.
For the Cause in the name of which they were getting plastered was far too
special, vitally necessary, and mortally important.

So you kept on
circulating in between the tables, recognizing here and there the mugs of some
Supreme Soviet deputies, writers, and other ideological bastards familiar from
the TV screens and newspaper pages. Some of them sipped cognac, others wolfed
down caviar by the spoonful, but all this did not provoke in you either a just
indignation or even envy. You were most interested in finding a way to get out
of here, to find yourself at long last on the surface of the possibly still
existing city of Moscow. For this insane day had to end sooner or later!

And when
suddenly, from behind one of the tables, as if from an airport runway, swiftly
rose the large and red mug of the Russian poet Yezhevikin, your classmate, and
when this mug, following an old-fashioned and not much liked by you custom
covered your cheeks with brotherly kisses, you were more glad than disgusted.
Breathing vodka and pork tenderloin, Yezhevikin shouted,

“And you too are
here, brother! I’m so glad you are one of us! I knew that Ukraine will be with
us! After all, we are Slavs, damn it!”

Unceremonious and
wide-chested Yezhevikin immediately pushed under the table some Orthodox shorty
whose head was resting in the mashed potatoes, and invited you to sit down at
the now cleared spot.

“Otto von F., my
friend, a West Ukrainian poet and a nice guy!” Yezhevikin introduced you to the
characters sitting nearby; one of them was apparently dressed in the uniform of
a captain of the Tsarist army, another wore a Kuban Cossack fur hat, and a few
others did not have any distinguishing traits besides wearing black shirts and
being extremely drunk.

Right in front of
you appeared a large Viennese crystal goblet filled to the brim with yellowish
lemon vodka.

“To the Kievan
Rus’!” shouted Yezhevikin, and some even broke into applause upon hearing such
a historically grounded toast.
24

You silently
counted all the preceding levels in your vertical dissection. If you are not
mistaken, the lemon vodka will have to comprise the sixth level. And knowing
yourself well, you remembered that when these levels come to be seven, you
invariably throw up and thus, perhaps, you’ll cleanse yourself.

“So, how do you
like today’s battle for Russia?” asked Yezhevikin after downing his vodka,
while finishing off with his fork a slightly burnt piece of pork butt.