The Moscoviad (4 page)

You wavered for a
little bit, but Ruslan’s confident, handsome smile and powerful build did their
job.

“OK, go,” you
decided.

“You’re the man,
boss, I saw it,” Ruslan’s face lit up.

He came up to the
window, opened it widely, and the freezing November air, saturated with the
smells of autumn rains, dead leaves, neglected cemeteries, Pushkin’s poems, in
other words, the smells of late fall, Moscow-style, flooded the room, so that
you started rubbing yourself and shivering from cold.

“OK, go now!” you
shouted.

Ruslan stood up
on the windowsill, waved to you, and made a big step into the night. You peered
out after him. He was already hanging on the fire escape to the right of your
window, as if he were a drunken circus performer testing the nerves of the
foolish public; another moment, and he planted his feet on the ladder.

“Hey, and how
will you get back?” you asked, suddenly coming to your senses.

“You still don’t
get it, boss? Through your window! I won’t be long—there and back again, like
an anti-tank missile . . .”

The ladder
uttered a metallic moan under his feet. He was rather agile for a drunk
climbing down. He didn’t play hooky back in the marines. But you kept cursing
everything in this world: the wandering girls with their ill-timed love, your
insomnia, and the young, alcoholism prone motherland defender, through whose
graces you’d have to wait by the window for some twenty minutes at the least.

The night, as it
has been already mentioned, was slimy and cold. Pro-imperial dogs barked out
their fierce discomfort in some faraway backyards. Time dragged slowly, and
you, having nothing to do, even got dressed and smoked a cigarette or two. On a
lower floor a squeaky female voice suddenly yelled out, “You fucking bastard!”
Then the ringing of broken glass, muffled blows, as if someone was hammering
nails into the wall with someone else’s head, and then a low male voice
informed, “You’re a fool, Zinka, can’t you see I love you!” Then everything
grew silent.

Finally you heard
again the moaning of the ladder. Ruslan was on his way back.

He covered one
floor after another, and somewhere between the fifth and the sixth floor he
stopped to take a breather. Looked up and saw you leaning out of the window.

“I’m already
here, boss,” he informed joyfully. “Sorry I took so long. Imagine, even the
taxi garage didn’t have any. The racket hit them today. Then I went to Volodya,
but his coffers were empty too. So I had to get some from the Vietnamese guy,
for twenty-five. That narrow-eyed bastard! I could kill him! But that’s all right,
now we’ll have some, Vanya . . .”

And he went up
the ladder. At the seventh floor he stopped, took another breather, adjusted
the bottle in his pocket to make sure it wouldn’t fall out. Then made a large
step from the ladder onto the windowsill. But last time it was much easier:
there was something to grab with your hands, something to hang on to. Now there
was just the wall in front of him and the slippery tin-plated windowsill
beneath his feet. You managed to stretch your hand out to him, but were unable
to hold on to his fingers that were slipping out. He lurched with his entire
body, and for a moment balanced above the abyss, like an angel preparing to
take off. Then there was his long echoing cry. And the fall from the seventh
floor. And death.

And you were
running about, waking someone, calling the ambulance and the cops—all of this
was already of no importance. All of this was like in a dream. Or like in a
banal melodramatic movie.

Oh Ruslan the
Magnificent, you were saying, how shall I mourn your loss, my brother?! You
were fearless, you were used to being first in everything, you had countless
hours of parachuting experience! All the girls who knew you loved you, and
those who didn’t prostrated themselves at your feet! You radiated light, oh Ruslan
the Handsome, and your muscles were magical! If I were gay I’d do anything to
sleep with you, my brother! What have you done, Ruslan the Victorious, to whom
you abandoned this fucked-up world, where there is such a shortage of perfect
creatures like you?!

Then you had all
kinds of interviews with various sleuths and bloodhounds who tried to clarify
the circumstances, smelled for things, sneezed, lifted their paws, made
attempts at civic censure. But that doesn’t matter.

Why do you lock
the front doors, you wanted to ask in response. Why should a young artistic
being, an ex-marine, risk his life in your fucking country for a bottle of
vodka? Why are you so saturated with the stink of unfreedom? Why do you leave
so little freedom that it is enough only for the fall from the seventh floor?
Why are you now grabbing me with such gusto, as if I were the only one guilty
in his death, as if you want me to atone for my sins by jumping at long last
from that very window?

But these
questions just hung in the air. For the bloodhounds themselves, to whom you
could address these questions, today were no longer able to give an answer. The
empire was changing its snakeskin, was reconsidering the habitual totalitarian
assumptions; it discussed, imitated a change of laws and of the rules of daily
life, it improvised on the topic of the hierarchy of values. The empire toyed
with freedom, thinking that this way it could preserve itself through renewal.
But it wasn’t worth changing the skin. This was the only skin it had. Now,
having crawled out if its skin, the old bitch is in the throes of agony.

At last everyone
let you be. You proved your right to be guilty. The bloodhounds barked from a
safe distance and powerlessly clanged their fake teeth.

About three
months later, on a late winter evening, you were typing something at your desk,
when from there, from the outside, something knocked on the window. It can’t be
a snowball, you thought, nor can it be a stone, for who could throw a snowball,
a stone, or a lump of earth to the height of the seventh floor? But when the
fire escape uttered the familiar metallic moan, you suddenly had a sickening
feeling. You came to the window and drew open the curtains. Ruslan was outside
the window.

“Vanya,” he said
with his lips. “Would you let me in?”

He was almost the
same as the other time, only pallid yellow in color, with black circles under
his eyes, and a thin red stream coming from the mouth and disappearing
somewhere down his chin.

You opened the
window.

“On all the
floors the windows are sealed, yours is the only one that isn’t,” he informed,
sitting down on the windowsill.

“Aren’t you
cold?” you asked. “It’s winter now.”

“I am not cold. I
feel nothing,” was the answer.

“And generally,
how is it over there?”

“You’ll learn
some day. Everything is not the way you guys imagine it.”

“You’ve preserved
well.”

“Thanks. They
taught me how to fall in the marines.”

“Why have you
come back?”

“The familiar
place draws me back. Familiar smells. You. I thought about you.”

“Thanks. By the
way, my name isn’t Vanya.”

“I know, Vanya.”

“It ended up
being a rather foolish death, don’t you think?”

Ruslan gestured
with his hand.

“It didn’t change
anything in this world. My father is a famous film director. They gave him a
big prize.”

“Would you like
some vodka?”

“Thanks, I don’t
drink.”

“Sorry, I forgot
. . .”

“That’s all
right. Today I’ll fly to Simferopol. That’s where my girlfriend is. In the
morning she’ll think she dreamt of me.”

“Want my winter
jacket? I have another one.”

“Stop it, boss! I
don’t feel the winter. It’s all the same to me. You can’t even imagine to what
an extent everything can be the same.”

But it was
getting cold in the room, and he understood this.

“I won’t keep
you. Be well. Some day, perhaps, we’ll meet again.”

“Sure. Although I
didn’t believe you guys existed . . .”

“Existed?” he
shook his head. “Who knows. You see, you were the last one I saw when I was
still alive. You remained forever in my eyes. Your reflection. If you look
closely into my eyes, you’ll see your reflection. I thought you’d be able to
catch my hand . . .”

“I’m sorry, old
man . . .”

“That’s all
right. This had to happen. It’s a shame though that it looked so lame:
scattered brains, pieces of ribs, thighbone sticking out through the guts . . .
But I’m not the first one, nor am I the last. And that’s the main thing. Close
the window, Vanya . . .”

He made a
graceful, weightless step to the side and stepped onto the ladder.

“Close the
window,” he repeated.

You did as he
told and even drew the curtains.

At night some
sort of life was going on around the dorm. At times you heard screams, scuffle,
someone getting beaten up. At times the fire escape suddenly moaned in the
familiar way. You tensely listened to these approaching sounds. Fourth, fifth,
sixth floor. Will it reach the seventh? I am not here, you repeated. I am not
here. And pulled the blanket over your head. You weren’t there.

There you have
it, von F., you fool, this is what happens when you go to the shower room and
forget that you shouldn’t leave your room’s door unlocked! Now they are sitting
at your place, all three of them, smoking royally, chatting, gaggling. The mugs
are swollen, but the mood is fine. Your closest friends. Last night you sat drinking
together till one-thirty in the morning. Eight five-ounce brandies bought at
the greengrocers, two bottles of “Salyut” bubbly, then two Polish “Polonaises”
won in a game of pool from some fool from Novosibirsk at the Central House of
Writers. The finale took place already at the dorm. Surgical alcohol from the
strategic supplies. At first you guys cut it with “Pepsi,” and the result was
reminiscent of armagnac. When the “Pepsi” ran out, came the turn of the
domestic sweet carbonated stuff by the name of “Sayany,” but you prudently
excused yourself from this joyride. And probably did the right thing.

Undoubtedly, they
are now suffering in torment, but do not repent; on the contrary, they desire
beer and circuses. And where can one find beer and spectacular circuses? And
you can find them at the beer hall on Fonvizin Street, so named after the
classic Russian playwright. And you, by the way, have not yet visited the
place. And today you still have this chance—and tomorrow it will be too late.

This is what they
are like, your brethren in spirit, that is, in spirits.

Yura Golitsyn, a
forty-year-old poet, a graduate of the university and of the prison, although
he looked into the eyehole not from the side of the cell, but from that of the
hallway. He wasn’t a warden, a “dog,” and didn’t beat anyone in the kidneys; on
the contrary, he was an educator, but still couldn’t take it after a while,
grew a beard and resigned. Now he writes rather sarcastic verse, for instance,
“Reflections in a Cooperative Restroom.” In appearance he resembles Ivan
Turgenev, but as a beginner, and much classier than the real one.

Number two.
Arnold Horobets, southern Ukraine, russophone population, a playwright from the
sixties generation, popular with the ladies, and only with them, a professional
actor, a drunk, a fool, a card player, a guy with his soul on his sleeve, a
smartass, a drunk once again, a fox, a true friend, a jokester, a dancer, a
mug-puncher, a cook, a carnivore, a sweet tooth, played Julius Caesar in the
theatre and still recites his monologues at a certain stage of drunkenness,
diluting them with Latin words, swear words, and quotes from Party documents.
Often falls asleep dressed and completely exhausted, but wakes up before anyone
else.

The third is, of
course, Roytman, but not the one who works at the Russian (ha!) Service of
Radio Liberty. He’s Jewish. He’ll be the last Jew to leave this land, but one
day he will leave it. For Czernowitz is not the same as before, and nor is
Odessa. He has luxuriant, graying hair; in his eyes you can see the reflections
of all the generations from Adam to Christ. His poetry reminds you of shtetl
summers: it is full of grass, old stones and sweet dust. It is full of small
barbershops and cemeteries overgrown with forgetting. It is a violin solo.
Yesterday he got sick already after the alcohol cut with “Sayany.”

“Oh, you’ve
already washed yourself clean, dahling?” greets your arrival in your own room
Turgenev-Golitsyn.

“And even twice,”
you answer, but they wouldn’t get it.

Your bed still
isn’t made, and so you sit down on it, randomly as it were. And all this
because when you went to have your sheets changed, they gave you a sheet on
which, judging by all the signs, someone took someone else’s virginity. And the
stain can’t come out in the wash. So it’s better to cover it to avoid
unnecessary noises on this topic.

“It would be nice
to have some breakfast,” you say just in case.

“And I’ve been
saying the same,” picks up Julius Caesar. “Yesterday we made plans for the
Fonvizin?”