The Moscoviad (17 page)

“Ten years in
this shitty Moscow, but I haven’t forgotten my native tongue,” boasted
“Sashko.” “I head our committee’s cell of the Ukrainian language society. By
the way, I even wrote a poem recently! . . . How could I have forgotten?”

He reached with
his hand into the same pant pocket and produced from it a worn piece of paper.

“Listen to it,
Otto Wilhelmovych. It’s a philosophical poem, in the style of the old Japanese
stuff:

Along the yellow
lines of an autumnal leaf

I read a poem

About the first
buds of the spring . . .

Well, how do you
like it?” he asked excitedly, lighting his cigarette for an umpteenth time.

“It’s imitative,”
you made your judgment.

“And I wanted to
ask for your help in publishing it,” confessed “Sashko” disappointedly. “In a
literary journal, perhaps
Motherland
, or
Kyiv
. . .”

“Perhaps it would
work better at Spuyten Duyvil?” you asked.

“And you will
pull a few strings?” winked “Sashko.”

You winced and
fell silent.

He tried to light
up a new cigarette for a long time. Then he pensively quoted from someone,

“Oh native
tongue, what am I without you?”

“A piece of
shit,” you answered to him.

“I beg your
pardon?” “Sashko” didn’t understand.

“I meant that
without his native tongue no secret service man is worth anything.”

“Now, by calling
me a secret service man, you undoubtedly wanted to wound me as badly as
possible, to offend me deeply, to point me to my place or some such thing,”
“Sashko” suddenly got stern. “But don’t forget that you’ve been detained in the
zone of government communications, and this can be judged terrorism or an
attempted overthrow. Besides, as recently as a minute ago you called Moscow
‘shitty,’ which act fully falls under the article of the criminal code about
igniting interethnic hostility . . .”

“Wow,” you got a
bit outraged. “As far as I can remember, it was actually you who called Moscow
‘shitty,’ and even if I might agree to a certain extent with this
characterization of yours, I bear no responsibility for what you’ve said . . .
Still, we all are nothing but the echoes of the great Universal Bell, and no
word of ours is born on its own. By the way, who is there constantly rustling
about behind the wall?”

“I’m glad, Otto
Wilhelmovych, that you have finally posed this question. With particular joy I
hasten to inform you: behind the wall are two rats we have captured for
experiments. These are elite representatives of these underground monsters that
have been talked about so often lately. It will soon be a week since they were
last fed, and this must end in one of them devouring the other one. So think
about it . . .”

“I sense a
certain shade of threat in what you have conveyed,” you began. “I dare suppose
that the experiment with starved rats can be broadened, by expanding the number
of its participants to include one poet. And although the ignominious fortified
grape drink boils inside me, still I’d like to ask, what is demanded of me this
time?”

“Nothing at all,”
smiled “Sashko” blindingly, extinguishing with his foot the finally finished
cigarette. “We don’t want anything from you, Otto Wilhelmovych. We no longer
want anything. While you are probably hoping that we’ll face you with a choice,
with a moral decision, and you will then make your choice, and die a hero! No,
my dear! No choice! And no eternity for you. For what use can you be for us?
Except perhaps using you in an experiment, Mr. Unknown Skeleton . . .”

“Why don’t you
play my flute instead!” you declared, simultaneously sensing a dragoon regiment
of shivers marching down your spine.

“I understand
what you mean by flute, but I’m not offended,” “Sashko” lit up a new cigarette,
which immediately went out. “Still, you’d agree that this way you and I will
fulfil the sanitary function the world needs. For there is absolutely no sense
in a good-for-nothing like you existing in this world.”

“It only seems to
you that there isn’t!” you mumbled, offended.

“There isn’t,
Otto Wilhelmovych, I assure you, there isn’t! This existence is not justified
from any point of view, either theological, or teleological, or ecological, or
socially-patriotic. Let us take, for example, today, Saturday, as it has been
lived by you. It actually began with you conducting an illegal sex act in the
dormitory showers with a certain Tatnaketea, a citizen of the Malagasy
Republic. The poor girl still thinks she was visited by Ananmaalkhoa, the
spirit of fertility, gardening, and childbirth. Then you cynically went to get
yourself drunk on Fonvizin Street, where you delivered a nationalist and racist
speech, in which you blasphemously called for bloodshed in the name of the
purity of beer. Then you conducted a criminal assault on the residence of
Galina K., an employee of the Institute of Poisons and Non-Traditional Means of
Mortification that is subordinated to us . . .”

“Galya . . .” you
whispered barely audibly, completely shocked.

“Yes, Galya,”
confirmed “Sashko.” “The woman who was ready for everything for your sake.
However, you acted, as always, in a traitorous fashion. This is your style, von
F. You betrayed one woman with another one, betrayed this second with yet
another one, and so on. Today it was the same. In the case of Galina K. you
were most exited by the prospect of a hot bath. You treated so cruelly the poor
woman, an ethnic Russian by the way, and I judge this to be a manifestation of
your Ukrainian nationalism, just as I consider your rape of Tatnaketea, the
Malagasy woman poet, an act of racism . . .”

“She enjoyed what
we did,” you tried stopping this stream.

“Enjoyed it?”
“Sashko” again laughed heartily. “The blackness of your humor knows no limits.
Never mind, soon you will enjoy it too. Can you feel how excited are our rat
neighbors in anticipation of a Saturday night meal? But let’s continue the list
of your latest feats. This black list gradually turns into a true martyrologe.
From slogans and speeches you moved on to actions. For besides anything else
you are a direct accomplice to the terrorist act at the ‘Snack Bar’ on the
corner of the New and the Old Arbat Streets. As a consequence of your actions,
which led to an explosion whose causes are as yet unknown to us . . .”

“An F-1 grenade,”
you explained.

“. . . thank you,
so, as a consequence of your action perished the representatives of all the
nations and ethnic groups of the Soviet Union.”

“And then?” you
groaned.

“Sure! During the
day you telephoned several times the residence of a certain Kyrylo St. whom we
know as a pro-Banderite activist close to the Rukh-Hetman-Melnykite circles,
22
and who is now trying to launch a subversive dirty little newspaper. Then,
salivating at the thought of the shape of the legs of Kyrylo’s concubine, you
tried seducing her by proposing a date by the ‘Children’s World’ department
store.”

“I did not
propose a date to her,” you grimaced bitterly. “Your eavesdropping systems have
a suspicious ability to twist things and dress them up in lies.”

“This changes
little in your extremely unattractive moral appearance, von F., in your,
forgive my sincerity, immoral mug. But thank you for the information; I’ll give
a nice thrashing to the responsible person in the listening department (note:
listening, not eavesdropping); it’s not the first time that it turns out they
add some romantic crap on their own. There must be a fine fiction writer there,
like you, Otto Wilhelmovych!”

“Please continue
and don’t stray from the plot,” you asked.

“You know the
plot better than I do,” chuckled “Sashko,” taking an unbearably long time to
light up another cigarette. “With the purpose of conducting another terrorist
act, this time in the zone of government communications, you descended into the
auxiliary premises of the ‘Children’s World.’ Here another wonderful person
became the victim of your criminal inaction,” “Sashko’s” voice trembled a
little, “the father of twenty-two children, our longtime helper, an agent for
specially delicate errands, codename ‘Gypsy Baron.’”

“That’s the one
who drowned in shit?”

“Yes, that’s the
one. The president has already signed the decree posthumously conferring upon
him the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union,” announced “Sashko” in a
somewhat solemn tone.

“In that case let
your president take care of returning to me my plane ticket,” you joked
angrily.

“And who will
give the kids back their daddy?” asked “Sashko” sternly. “No, von F., a plane
ticket will no longer be of any use to you! Don’t even hope for it! . . . We
know how to punish! . . . We would have found you even in Mexico . . .”

“In Mehico,” you
corrected him.

“What?”

“According to the
new rules it should be pronounced ‘Mehico’ . . .”

“Same shit—in
Mexico or in Mehico, all the same you’re finished! A few days ago a new special
secret order has been signed—I tell you this since you won’t be able to tell
anyone about it anyway—so, a secret order about the use of the new generation
of rats to disperse unsanctioned gatherings, and also during the states of
emergency. Today we have at last received the permission to begin research
trials. You’ll be the first, von F.! You can feel proud. The agents ‘Cain,’
‘Beelzebub’ and ‘Zhirinovsky’ will receive special rewards. The agent ‘Gypsy
Baron,’ as I’ve mentioned, will be rewarded in a special ceremony. Just a
moment, my dears, just a moment!” he mumbled tenderly to something large and hairy
that whined ever more impatiently behind the wall.

“The only mistake
I’ve made,” you began in a tired voice, “was to believe in the possibility of
freedom. But freedom is but an illusion, as Andrukhovych has noted in one of
his poems! . . . Too bad . . .”

A lonely sound of
a violin came from somewhere. It became ever stronger, it formed an illogical
and piercing background, it disintegrated into other sounds, other
instruments—and soon it was an orchestra that exploded, it seemed, from above
the ceiling. Perhaps there, up above, was a theater, some special underground
theater, or maybe simply the Bolshoy, where a performance had just begun. Music
made everything weightier and deeper. You felt you should say something
eternal.

“I curse the
empire,” you uttered with the intonation of an Oriental prophet.

“You?! Having
served it so faithfully?” and “Sashko” laughed sardonically, or perhaps started
coughing from the too damp cigarette.

The solemn and
simultaneously irate sounds of the trombones and the French horns forced you to
reply heatedly and angrily,

“I have not
served it faithfully! Oh no, I am not guilty of it in the least! For not a
single one of them—imperial, horrendous sins—has nested in my soul or on my
body.”

“Sashko,” having
suddenly leaped from his chair and started pacing the cage jerkily, like a
wounded lion, attacked you in the no less passionate blank verse,

“Not guilty?
You’ve invented this nonsense in a rather handy fashion! So now your guilt is
to yourself alone? In other words, my sins are solely my business? And this
says you, a master of betrayal? You, who have signed betraying papers?” Above
his head a certain glow became visible. This could have been a nimbus, among
other things. “And what about the killed and beaten ones, the ones who perished
in the permafrost—the tens, and hundreds, millions of them?! You have signed
once—and you have killed your soul! . . .”

His words at
times drowned in, at times rang above the seething musical sea. The motif
played by the strings became ever more neurotic and demanding. Fortunately, a
solitary all-forgiving bassoon suddenly burst out of somewhere in the nether
regions of the composer’s master plan. This gave you a possibility to elevate
your spirit,

“I was but saving
life—’twas someone else’s, a single life, yet still—more precious than all
those abstract millions and thousands . . .”

“You? Saving?
Life? And someone else’s?” and again he laughed, fiercely, demonically, the
orchestra again struck mercilessly, the bassoon grew quiet, and the thunder of
percussion drowned out everything else. “You are only able to save your own
skin! You’ve always saved yourself, and everywhere! But not this time—you will
not sa-a-a-a-ave yourself!” the final phrase was rather successfully placed
into the musical background and sung in a wondrously juicy tenor.

“Oh well,” you
sighed. “And so it shall be. I loved this life, complete with all its
vileness—although this vileness did torment me so. But you will never kill the
whole of me—for after me remain my words, words, words . . . My words, words,
words . . . The rats are powerless at gnawing holes inside my words—wind
carries them like autumn leaves. So let them fly—and someone somewhere will one
day hear them. And you will never kill the whole of me—for in my heart there’s
something that’s immortal! . . .”

The orchestra’s
tempo grew. This was one entire Allegro non Molto, Presto Furioso or some such
thing. “Sashko” could no longer follow the musical phrases, abrupt and
decisive. He was only able to keep asking,