Why was I surprised to find such a variety of personalities here? The range may be no wider than elsewhere but it appears more diverse because I'd expected uniformity, as if the two hundred and fifty million would arrange themselves into the four or five categories of my textbooks; and, I think, also because the personalities seem larger than life: extravagant theatrical characters against the dull gray backdrop of the Russian mise-en-scene. Just as the bleached blonde hussy in a Moscow restaurant is the quintessence of bleached blonde hussies, the studious lad, the enthusiastic joiner and the soccer fan are all classics of their type.
Even the sprinkling of foreigners seems more interesting in this setting, their awareness of themselves heightened by the undercurrent of potential drama. A large, amiable Bulgarian student, for example, shakes my hand with splendid gravity whenever we pass in the corridor. He seems to feel we have something profound and risky in common, and although I don't know what, I somehow share in the assumption. Month by month, his smile broadens. What are we in together?
Naturally, the range of Russians is broader. There is misanthrope Igor, who had been in the Air Force until his MIG crashed ten years ago, mangling his splendid body. Miraculously, he was revivified and fitted with artificial limbs; but his spirit never recovered and his self-pitying bitterness casts a pall when he enters the common room. He had been a blond, blue-eyed fighter pilot, the elite of Soviet warriors, with all the money he needed and a new girl every week. Now he's a scarfaced cripple, unable to intrigue himself or anyone else. He drinks up his pension alone in his room, hardly pretending to study.
And Sergei Alexandrovich (no one calls him Seriozha or just Sergei), another older man (Soviet higher education institutes accept students to the age of thirty-five), who avoids Igor out of fear and detestation. Big and blubbery, Sergei Alexandrovich is the only obvious pederast I've seen in the University; but the official attitude to homosexuality makes him exceedingly careful.
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A graduate student in English literature, he lavishes his love where it is safe, on dead writers of a distant land. A distant era, too, for he's convinced the summit of English literature was reached by Dickens, and grieves over the language's subsequent debasement. Months ago, I fulfilled his request for a copy of Dictionary of American Slang, without which Russians can hardly decipher contemporary novels in English. But although he thanked me for the gift, he hates what it represents.
"Those dreadful words. So degrading, so unnecessary. And to use them in literature, whose function is to uplift. To compile a scholarly dictionary of them, ugh!"
He prefers memorizing Bleak House to reading anything of the last fifty years—Joyce, Waugh, Bellow, Mailer—for the first time. This will make him the perfect high-school teacher: for political reasons—his picture of rapacious English capital and a hungry working class—Dickens is the backbone of the Soviet curriculum. Odd that Sergei Alexandrovich's students will know as little of contemporary literature as the government wants, but for very different reasons.
Edward too wanted a Dictionary of American Slang, but not for academic reasons. Craving everything Western, he lets it be known when he's wearing Eminence underwear or a (somewhat soiled) Liberty foulard (the former was bought from a French student, the latter exchanged for an out-of-print Russian book) and tries to keep his tone casual when comparing the cut of Brooks Brothers to Savile Row. (The jewel of his wardrobe is a gray pin-striped suit only one size too large. Many tourists remove labels as a precaution, but this one was intact and his "dealer" imposed an onerous surcharge for it.) Edward's Western name and appearance—he's tall, slim and dressed like a neat prep school graduate—are sadly fitting. He's the most persistent and pathetic of the Russian hangers-on among the French, English and, especially, American students. Always in a Westerner's room, denigrating everything Russian; always offering clever comments on movie reviews—of movies that will never be shown in Russia—in back issues of newsmagazines he's managed to obtain and study; always laboring to be fluent in the latest trends and slang. (To be au courant with this season's trouser widths and Washington scandals is evidently not enough. Once
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he tried to engage me—"Like, what do you dig about it, man?"—in a discussion of gold stock futures.) Like a newly rich African entrepreneur after a grand European tour, he has rejected his own society's every value, even—or especially—Russian folk music and folk art, which enchant the angriest dissenter. Because he can never actually become one of us, his rich, white Western gods, his highest goal is to win hourly demonstrations of our acceptance. Like a Harvard freshman desperate to join a snobbish final club, he is at the heels of one or another foreigner every free moment of the day.
That he reports to the KGB is acknowledged even by a grunt of "no comment" from Viktor: otherwise, of course, he would not be allowed to devote his life to Western decadence. Soon after he began dropping in on me, Edward himself told me how he had been recruited. In recognition of his Young Communist organizing efforts years ago he was chosen for a student trip to Geneva. The morning before the never-in-his-wildest-dreams departure, his crisp new passport was delivered (he had never seen one before) and he was summoned to an interview. "You're a good chap," began a KGB officer briefed on Edward's weakness for "foreign" and "abroad." "We've heard you're planning a jaunt to Geneva. That's fine; travel is always beneficial. . . . You know, I think, that we can easily, er, postpone your journey. Someone else can be found to take your place. But I'm certain there will be no last-minute difficulties. Help us out with a little something, and I guarantee you'll stay on the list."
What was wanted of him, predictably, was to report on the behavior of the others in the group, including informers planted earlier. Given the afternoon to ponder, Edward became ill. It was the opposition of his unusually principled girl friend that tipped the balance, giving him the fortitude to decline. Crying in the officer's presence, he regretted the decision bitterly even as it sounded on his lips. His passport was taken from him before he completed his explanation.
Edward's self-pity dilated to greater size and weight with every memory of the injustice earned by his noble refusal. In the absence of any hope for travel, he became obsessed by Western possessions. This demoralization made him more promising to the KGB than if he had accepted their conditions for the Geneva
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trip—in which case he could have claimed he'd seen nothing worth reporting. When a second officer offered him a chance for redemption by "helping out" in the dormitory, fresh tears—this time, of relief, anticipation and self-reproach—accompanied his acceptance.
But now his sorrow for himself swelled yet faster: he was not just a victim, but simultaneously an informer—a pimp for pimps. It was not only Western things that had beguiled him all his youth, but also Western notions of privacy and individual dignity, from which his voluntary peonage had excluded him forever. To assuage his remorse, he took to cautioning foreigners about himself, cursing his weakness and pleading for understanding; mixing mea culpas with tortuous explanations. (It was Edward who, days after my arrival, motioned me into the corridor, away from the bugs, to give me my first whispered warning. "You're the new American? Beware. Your moves will be watched, every word recorded. Believe me, there's a microphone in your room; I've heard the recordings. I tell you this as a friend, someone who hates treachery.")
Sometimes the spectacle of his self-incrimination moves Westerners to soothe him with gifts of rock'n'roll records and James Bond paperbacks. Other times, the trinkets are an inducement for him to quit their rooms at last. Far from evil, Edward makes it as plain as anyone that only the accident of birth has given me the luxury of not having to be a hider or a liar. But his piteous attempts to win approval by confessing sins to the very people on whom he practices them are authentic Dostoyevskian self-destructiveness. Each admission sucks him deeper into the whirlpool of self-pity and self-loathing; lowered even further in the eyes of his masters and his quarry, he tries harder to please both. There is no escape, only the solace of new items of secondhand clothing, which, by compounding his debt, also fuel the dismal cycle. Ruined at twenty-four, he can only hope that the police retain him in this petty servitude and allow him to keep his loot. And, as his spirit descends, he can trade up: from a two-year-old London Fog to an almost-new Burberry.