The Moscoviad (20 page)

“Alas, I’m afraid
I missed the beginning,” you answered vaguely, while fishing out of a Meissen
porcelain bowl a small crunchy cucumber. “What’s been happening?”

“You see, a great
congress of all patriotic forces met today,” Yezhevikin began explaining.
“Since the country is falling into the abyss, damn it, and we have all
splintered into little parties, groups, cells, movements. I did this one
yesterday,” he informed, following with a warm gaze one of the sarafan-clad
gals who floated by, splashing semi-sweet bubbly all around her.

“And what have you
arrived at?” you inquired, while reaching for another cucumber.

“Consolidation!”
said Yezhevikin triumphantly. “Now we’ll squash everyone! Listen, she’s got
such tits that you can’t put two arms around them!” And he showed his bear paws
as a proof that one couldn’t.

“No, my good
sirs!” the captain hit his plate with a fist. “No consolidations! With whom,
may I inquire? With this rabble? Anything but that, my good sirs! Spirituality,
spirituality, Orthodoxy, monarchy, spirituality, monarchy, Orthodoxy, rank-observance,
spirituality, reverence, Orthodoxy, voluptuousness, masturbation . . .”

He got slightly
confused, and so fell silent for a moment.

“Nikolai Palkin,”
he introduced himself, and produced from under the table the poetry collection
The Birch Undid Her Braid
.

“Thank you, I
already have a copy,” you assured him.

“And how do you
like it?” he pierced you with a true White Guard gaze.

“Spirituality!”
you answered. “Orthodoxy, monarchy, spirituality, populism, party spirit . . .
Autocracy, fraternity, tea ceremony . . .”

“Humble
mentality!” screamed the Cossack hat.

“Temple-building,”
added Captain Palkin, destroying with the disobedient fork a mound of some
elaborate salad which indeed resembled in its contours a pseudo-Byzantine
church building.

“Yes, it’s clear,
the temple must be rebuilt,” agreed Yezhevikin pensively. “So many of these
kikes around, along with various psychics, and also drug addicts, faggots,
lesbians . . . Necrophiliacs, zoophiliacs . . .”

“Graphomaniacs,”
you pitched in.

“Bikers, brokers,
wheeler-dealers,” mumbled the Cossack hat.

“They sell
pornography at every corner,” Palkin couldn’t hold back.

“And what do you
say, Father?” Yezhevikin turned to a massive priest who was drinking with
abandon a little to the side.

“It’s all
whoring,” answered the priest, the same one, by the way, whom you saw earlier
today at the beer hall on Fonvizin Street.

Yezhevikin leaned
towards you and, drooling actively into your ear (and far from arousing you),
said,

“Imagine, after
the third fuck I’m lying completely in a trance, and she tells me, ‘More!’ I
thought about it for a little while, then turned her around . . .”

“The root of all
our trouble, my good sirs, is that we have lost our Slavic unity, yes, my good
sirs,” summed up Nikolai Palkin in the meantime.

“. . . and when
I’m about to come,” Yezhevikin continued pestering your ear, “she tells me,
‘You know, from now on I’ll only do our guys!’ She’s a hard-currency bitch, has
been selling herself for dollars!”

“Isn’t she a
waitress?” you were a little surprised.

“No way!
Remember: all there broads in sarafans are hard currency whores. They were
rounded up to serve at today’s banquet in accordance with a special directive
of the Central Committee. They had to pay them with greenbacks, like for
regular work. But now we can party on!”

“What, is the
Central Committee in charge of hard currency prostitutes?”

“The Central
Committee is in charge of everything,” affirmed Yezhevikin convincingly. “Which
is why I don’t leave the party, brother! Although all this bolshevism for me,
like for you, or for him, is a big pain! You know where!”

“Shoot them all!”
roared Captain Nikolai Palkin and slid down under the table—right next to the
snuffling shorty in the Russian folk shirt.

“You bluffer!”
replied the Kuban Cossack and, grabbing an empty goblet, smashed it so hard
against the table that blood gushed from the palm of his hand.

“Quiet, you ass,”
Yezhevikin warned him calmly, being the undoubted leader of the company. “And
do you know Gorbachev’s real name?”

An irrepressible
desire to go to sleep or at least to lie down somewhere got hold of you once
again. In front of your eyes swam various mugs, pieces of pork, the Cossack’s
blood was slowly spreading between the plates.

“Yezheviking,”
you addressed him, your tongue disobeying you a little. “Pass me the mashed
potatoes! . . . But then, no, don’t. Listen to me, guys. It so happened that I
have known many people in this life. Countless! I have known the mentally ill
and the mentally sane. I have known oilmen and lumberjacks, Easter egg
painters, nighttime thieves, pimps, famous surgeons, demiurges, I have known
first-generation Beatlomaniacs, freemasons from the lodge ‘Immortality-4,’
identical twins, bikers, petty party functionaries, I have known hashish users
and the employees of grass-protecting institutions, I have known linotypists,
printers, and fashion models, I have known, most of all, women painters and
homemakers, and also concubines, I have even known a few hostages, but mostly I
have known the indigent. And also—I cannot hide it from you, I don’t dare hide
it—I have known prompters, police spies too, and Sufis. I have known the last
hippies and the first punks. I have been to the offices of the bigwigs, downed
vodka with syphilitics, shared the bed with AIDS patients. I have known a black
Ukrainian born in Jamaica, in general I have known Ukrainians most of all, but
also people of other nations. Indeed, I have even known a psychiatrist who was
writing a dissertation. I have known many. They are countless! A buddy of mine,
a jazz pianist, has recently become the head of the democratically elected city
council. At the meetings he turns on his Walkman, hiding in the presidium, and
compares himself to Havel. That’s too much, I tell you! But besides him, I also
know countless other people. I have been to the mountaintops and to the lower
depths, I have known all and lived through it all . . . In the days of
totalitarian regimes I was a proofreader, and now my erections are full proof.
Nothing can surprise me anymore, nothing can get to me . . . But I haven’t seen
before such extraordinary dumbasses as you, my friends! I am simply surprised
by you, you are too much for me! Really! Yezhevikin, I have had enough of the
present company! How could I get out of here, eh? . . .”

“Where?” asked
Yezhevikin dumbly.

“Home. Well, I
mean to the dorm.”

“Home?”
Yezhevikin laughed so hard he was shaking. “Our home is here. Here is our
subterranean heart. Here is Russia now, united and indivisible. And we will not
emerge from here until up there, above, our tanks squeeze the last shit out of
the last enemy. And then we will emerge into the light of the new Russia, the
old Russia, with shining icons and holy monarchic treasures in our hands . . .”

“Filthy convert,”
said the priest, studying the somewhat Semitic-looking nose of the bloodied
Kuban Cossack.

“So you won’t go
anywhere from here, brother,” assured Yezhevikin, pouring you another shot.

“And how long
will it last?” you did not give up.

“Not much more,”
reassured Yezhevikin. “The respective orders have already been issued. What
remains is to have them carried out.”

You downed
another shot and suddenly realized that this was yet another reason to get out
of here as fast as possible. But how? And where to?

“Wait for me
here, all right?” winked Yezhevikin conspiratorially and slipped out into the
wide spaces of the hall behind the sarafan-clad recent lover of his.

In the meantime
the lady on the podium finished another heart-breaking song and, accompanied by
unsteady applause, she was joined by some official-looking gentleman with a
large glittering tray in his hands. On the tray lay in all its beauty and glory
a roasted piglet with something very appetizing in its muzzle. Holding the tray
in front of him, the gentleman danced towards the microphone. The balalaika
players burst into a patriotic-sounding entrance tune, and the Mongol-looking
singer bowed deeply.

“Comrades!” began
the gentleman with the tray.

But this produced
noise and confusion in the hall, since a sizeable portion of the audience
wanted to be addressed as “gentlemen.”

“Compatriots!”
the speaker immediately found a way out, being apparently a great virtuoso of
orchestrating unifying momentum. “Today truly all of us gathered in this hall!
It was not easy for us to come here, but we all came! For we finally understood
the sacred truth, truly understood and came to an agreement that our country
must be saved. It must be saved, our country!”

“Be saved, it
must, our country!” joined in someone from the audience.

“No Batu-khan,
Napoleon, or Mazepa ever plundered our truly holy land, our land that is truly
holy, ever truly plundered our land, like today’s . . .” the speaker wrinkled
his sweaty forehead, imitating a pained, tense search for the right, murderous
designation, and not having found it, wrapped up, “like those of today!”

He seemed to have
found the historical parallel inspiring. He kept on speaking with increasing
heat and fire, punctuating his words with invisible exclamation marks, like
some charred telegraph poles along the Vladimir-Siberian highway.
25

“So let us be the
true descendants of the truly holy ancestors of ours! Our hearts breathe the
spirit of St. George the Victorious! We must twist off the heads of the
infidels! Glory to those who gather our lands together! For Russia is wherever
we are! And we are everywhere! We all are her! And this her is everything! We
won’t give her away! We will show them all! A thing or two!”

Upon these words
he plucked a suggestive-looking root vegetable from the piglet’s mouth and
proudly and menacingly rose it above his head while trying to balance the
apparently quite heavy tray in the other hand.

The vegetable
produced a storm of applause. It radiated something—some sacred force, the
bellicose state substance of Holy Russia, the spirit of Ivan Kalita, Peter the
First, and perhaps also Marshal Akhromeyev. The storm died down only after the
speaker placed the sacred root back into the jaws of the sacrificial piglet.

“Friends!” he
continued, somewhat lowering his tone. “Our art is great and noble. It is truly
pure, truly sacred. The whole world trembles when faced with our song! It
trembles and cries, fears and hates, suffers and loves. But its hopes are in
vain. Truly—Russia won’t forget her song! Her sacred song! You won’t see it
happen!”

The speaker
threatened with his fist from under the tray some transatlantic opponents who
didn’t like Russian songs. And then elegantly concluded,

“And thus allow
me to welcome on behalf of all of you at this our truly sacred assembly
Russia’s great singer, our mother and sister, our unbounded soul, our
incomparable and holy Marfa Sukina, the true artist of our people, and
following the sacred ancient custom to present her with this roasted swan! . .
.”

“Why swan?! What
swan?!” you wanted to scream, von F., but all the same they wouldn’t have heard
you, as unanimous applause rose to the subterranean ceiling. Marfa Sukina, her
face all smiles, accepted the gilded tray and bowed with it. The balalaika
players burst into something fiery and dashing.

“Shoot them all!”
roared the captain from under the table.

The Kuban convert
sobbed, smearing blood all over the salad bowls.

But here the
animated Yezhevikin returned and informed you,

“Yes! I’ve
arranged it! I’m going to do her now. There, by the entrance, beneath the
mausoleum, are a couple of free niches . . . They are rather tight, but I think
I can do it with her legs on my shoulders. And I’ve arranged it for you too,
brother. She’ll bring her friend Svetka. Her tits aren’t any smaller than those
of mine, perhaps even bigger . . . I never forget about my brothers!”

He rubbed his
hands energetically.

“Let’s down a
shot and then onwards!”

The roasted
piglet, having taken off from the tray’s runway, circled above the hall, in
between the super-powerful chandeliers, and generated wild enthusiasm. A few
among the present tried shooting it down with a bottle. Marfa Sukina,
surrounded by the balalaikas, sang whiningly about felt boots. The flying
piglet indeed somehow resembled a swan. Although at times it seemed to you this
was a two-headed eagle—so great was the radiance generated by this sad roasted
creature.

This time
Yezhevikin poured some dark-colored herbal bitter. You managed to finish it,
down it, extinguish it. In one gulp. But then remembered that this was now the
seventh level.

“The main thing,
remember,” Yezhevikin was giving the final instructions, raising you from the
table and placing your bag’s handles in your hands, “the main thing, remember:
they have nothing on under the sarafans! . . . Got it? So you can go right
ahead!”