The Moscoviad (21 page)

And he
mercilessly dragged you, as he had just said, “right ahead.”

You have in front
of you a pair of female breasts, perfect in form and socialist in content,
enormous like watermelons. This has never happened to you before in your entire
life. Perhaps only on the covers of certain magazines. Or in movies which,
sadly, you neither directed nor scripted. Gigantic white mountains that freely
rise and fall right in front of your nose, and their owner breathes smoke into
your eyes. You understand that you should by now be taking care of this
treasure somehow, especially since in the neighboring niche the attacking
Yezhevikin is already producing from the object of his desire the oohs and aahs
that are quite unambiguous in content. But for some reason it’s not coming to
you. Is it the voice of your conscience perhaps? Or did the alcohol and the
fever simply do their deed and the only thing you are capable of now is to rub
with your wooden lifeless tongue the surface of the slightly bitter and hard
nipples? Is it perhaps the sense of your civic duty that doesn’t allow you to
forget yourself in a dissolute act, demanding instead that you abandon this
blessed flesh to run somewhere, wake someone up and scream in a crazy falsetto
so that half the world would hear, “Democracy is in danger!”?

It turns out it
is something far nastier. You simply feel nauseous, von F. And at any moment
you might paint on this gently rocking façade of a hotel courtesan a variegated
peacock tail, made of streaks that are, truth be told, somewhat unexpected in
their color combination. For you have inside you all the necessary
prerequisites for accomplishing this.

“Are you too
hot?” she whispers compassionately.

“I love you all
very much,” you reply to this.

“Would you like
me to rub you?”

“No, my sweet. It
will all come shortly . . .” you barely restrain a powerful internal spasm.

“I can turn with
my back to you,” she proposes.

“No, anything but
this,” you plead, since you have indeed gotten used to her breasts.

“If you can’t do
it, just say so!” she starts getting nervous.

“Bwah,” you tell
her in response.

“What?” she
doesn’t understand.

“Vveh,” you try
to prove your point.

“I’ll make you
hard now,” she promises and, having finished her cigarette, leans to you with
her lips.

“Weh,” you try to
warn her.

But she digs into
you and starts doing something unspeakable to your mouth, she pulls your soul
out of you, and along with it everything else, until you finally force yourself
away with both your hands, tear her head off yourself and, having grabbed from
the floor the suddenly heavier bag, you run the hell out of there, forgetting
about the pain in the knee.

And so again the
hall, a plethora of light, a kaleidoscope of faces and bodies, or more exactly,
snouts and hulks, and you shove someone away, and something knocks over, but
nothing can stop you, you try to force yourself into various doors—first,
second, third, and then you finally see the saving word “RESTROOM,” and burst
in there like a drunken anarchist storming the Winter Palace.

This isn’t a
toilet but, as it turns out, something rather like a theater dressing room,
with mounds of various rags and stage props. But in front of the enormous mirror
that takes the entire wall there is nevertheless a sink, and you finally pour
out of yourself this entire day, all its chemical elements along with organic
matter, all this Moscow. You erupt selflessly, irrepressibly and joyfully, and
in your convulsively-ecstatic movements you rather resemble a star jazz
saxophone player at the top of a stunning improvisation . . .

Then you turn
both faucets and wash yourself for a long time. Everything has suddenly become
so light and cozy, the way it hasn’t been for a very long time. From time to
time you glance at the mirror—the face gradually shifts from a distorted
grimace to a nice balanced expression, droplets of water flower victoriously on
it, and the skin returns to its usual color. And still it’s a rather unpleasant-looking
mug. All your national consciousness has retreated into your mustache. And
these bloodshot eyes! And this nose, usually quite small, likewise claims
something—it looks sharp and shining, enamoured with itself. You hit it with a
finger, so that it doesn’t give itself airs, and suddenly you hear from behind
a gentle old man’s voice,

“So, my dear, had
a little too much?”

A small quiet
grandpa sits in the corner and watches you sympathetically. Apparently he has
been there the entire time while you were puking.

“Have some club
soda, son, it really helps,” he says.

“Well, it seems
to be better now,” you sigh heavily.

“Or take a
spoonful of honey—that’ll take care of it right away . . .”

“Never mind, old
man, my endurance is high,” you try even flashing a smile.

“You must have
mixed vodka with the red, sweetie?”

“More than that,
father. All the colors of the rainbow,” you explain.

“You shouldn’t,
child. Have mercy on yourself.”

“Come on, man! We
only life once and suffer once . . .”

“Are you
suffering, poor thing?”

“Like everyone
else, father.”

“Say a
prayer—you’ll feel better.”

“Whom should I
pray to? Which God, father? So many of them appear above us, and each claims He
is the Only one, and each wants us to pray to Him. Some sort of multiply
contested rule in heavens. They can’t divide their spheres. And it all rains
down on us. The masters are fighting, and it’s the servants who get the
beating.”

With such old
people it’s better to speak in a figurative language. This convinces them
better.

“A lot of anger
boils inside you, my sweet.”

“It’s because I
wanted to live in agreement with everyone. And it turns out everyone has long
quarreled with everyone else. The world’s fate had been sealed long before I
was born: squabbles and wars. And who might you be, sir?”

“I’m just a
little man,” informs the old guy exhaustively.

“Oh, it was about
you that they had written the best works of world literature?”

“About me, dear,
about me.”

“Isn’t it hard
for you to live like this, with such a reputation? Everyone knows everything
about you . . .”

“And I pray to
God. And it helps . . .”

“And which one
are you praying to, the Russian bearded one, or perhaps the Indian six-armed
one?”

“The one behind
whom is the truth. Anyone can feel the truth instinctively.”

“Alas, grandpa,
truth is something extremely speculative. Everyone has one’s own. There’s even
a newspaper with this name, perhaps you’ve had a chance to read it?”
26

“There’s far, far
too much evil inside you, honey.”

“For I, dear sir,
in my not so long life have renounced, and betrayed, and committed adultery,
and felt angry, and drank myself senseless, and lied, and swore, and yielded to
temptation, and boasted, and . . . Perhaps the only thing I haven’t done is
kill.”

“You should go to
church, and pray to God. He forgives everything.”

“What sort of God
is this that for the sake of forgiveness forces you to go church? It’s a
gendarme, not a God! I can’t believe in a gendarme.”

“You learned
folks keep on inventing things,” the grandpa shook his head, grief-stricken.
“Only in order to slip out somehow! And in reality you have nothing but
spiritual laziness and deadening. Your soul doesn’t want to be saved! And your
hearts have become heavy because of the gluttony and drunkenness and of your
daily routine . . .”

“Perhaps you’re
telling the truth, old man,” you said after a short sorrowful pause. “Perhaps
tomorrow I shall start praying and going to church. Only I need to get out of
here somehow. Back up to the surface! For this is hell, father! Can’t you feel
it? And what are you doing here, so noble and wise?”

“We are
watchmen,” informed the old man.

“Aha, then you
must know how to get out of here. Tell me!”

“What do I know,
sweetheart? I am a little man. I only know that there,” he pointed towards the
hall, “is drunkenness and gluttony, and there,” he pointed to the other door,
to the left of the mirror, “the dead are holding counsel . . .”

“What sort of
dead, damn it?”

“You know.
Important ones. A sinposium of some kind.”

“A symposium of
the dead? That’s nice!”

“Strictly by
special pass, my dear. Would you like to go in and listen?”

“I don’t want to
go anywhere, father! I don’t even want to go to the dead! I’ve had enough for
today. I must somehow break out to freedom. Up there is rain, cars, women.
Streetlights, umbrellas. You see, grandpa, poets sometimes really need to take
a trip to the underworld—let’s say, for creative purposes. Some of them search
for their beloved. Orpheus, for example. Or Dante. But only temporarily. In
order to get back out later and start spouting something fantastic and moving
in sophisticated terza rima. I’ve had enough down here. I must sit down to
compose some terza rimas of my own.”

“As you wish,”
the old man shrugged his shoulders.

You both fell
silent for a minute or so.

And here I turned
again to the mirror, my friends, and saw there, in the mirror, my reflected
double grinning and winking at me. I felt my own face with my hand—nothing of
the kind, no grin, no winks. And that one, in the mirror, continues. Meaning, I
don’t have a choice, the day’s script isn’t over. The final shot has not rung
out yet. And I won’t be able to get away from it. So this day must be lived to
the end. It must be drunk to the last drop. Honestly and stoically.

In the midst of
the silence, water kept dropping from the faucet you hadn’t turned off tightly
enough.

“To hell with it!
I’ll listen to the dead! What does it look like, father?”

“The most
important ones are deliberating. How to live from now on.”

“For whom, the
dead ones?”

“No, for us, the
living. And it’s all clear without them, how to live: in a truly godly and
truly human way . . .”

“And is there a
lot of them there?”

“Whom?”

“Well, these, the
important ones, who are deciding everything?”

“There must be
about seven of them. That’s the very-very important ones. And even more of the
remaining—the lesser ones . . .”

“And how could
one come it?”

“One needs a
pass.”

“From whom,
grandpa? Perhaps from Satan, right?”

“No, why say such
a thing! A pass from the general. And a mask. Because everything is secret and
strict. God forbid they’d recognize each other! I think, if you don’ have a
pass, that’s all right. But do put a mask on.”

“And where would
I get one, old man?”

He got up from
his corner and slowly walked towards one of the closets with the props. Opened
one of them.

“Choose whichever
you like best!”

In the midst of
the countless masks—children’s, of famous characters, ritual ones—that filled
the closet, you felt lost at first. What to put on, damn it! This long-nosed
Venetian creature? Or perhaps an Easter bunny with fuzzy ears? Or a rat, to be
consistent and not deny one’s true essence? Or the mask of a Siberian shaman,
to dissolve at the right time in the waves of ecstasy? Or of a Buddhist monk?
Or the death mask of the poet Sergei Yesenin? Or this caricature of Hitler? Of
Brezhnev? The Queen of England? The pope? Ayatollah Khomeini?

No. Out of the
great, endless sea of masks you have chosen the old like the circus,
cosmopolitan and somehow faceless mask of a red-haired fool. A traditional
clamorous clown who walks around in baggy checkered pants with suspenders, and
sobs loudly when his back is beaten with a stick, gushing some two yards ahead
of him luxuriantly-comical and always topical streams of tears.

In the next
corridor, by the entrance to the CONFERENCE HALL (yes, conference hall!) you
stumbled upon a telephone. This was a wonderful opportunity to have a chat with
Kyrylo. To warn him about you possibly running late. And generally, to warn
everyone in this world about this subterranean danger. Let them do something up
above! Let them at least unite and walk out onto squares carrying banners! . .
.

But as you lifted
the receiver, it dawned upon you that this was a closed-circuit phone. It
didn’t even have a dial. In the meantime, someone’s extremely disciplined voice
rang out in the receiver,

“Attendant on
duty speaking.”

“How are things,
attendant?” with all the possible cocksuredness you roared in his ear.

“Everything is
fine, comrade . . . Who am I speaking with?”

“Fine, you say?”
you paused, just long enough to make the attendant feel very-very small, and
then, recalling the sweetly disturbing telephone games of the long passed
childhood, growled fiercely,