A drunk, especially a foreigner, especially a Russian, especially at night, is always a little concerned whether he will be able to find his way back to his hotel, and this concern gradually makes him sober.
In my room at the Gloria—rather chic by any standard (I was, after all, an honorary member of the American dele- gation)—there was a huge, lake-like mirror, dark and made almost velvet by thick reddish duckweed. It did not so much reflect as absorb what was happening in the room, and often, particularly in the dark, I seemed to myself like a naked perch slowly meandering in it, among the weeds, now submerging, now approaching the surface, now submerging again. This sensation was much stronger than the reality of the sessions, chatting with the delegates, attending press conferences, as though all these eventswere occurring somewhere in the background, at the bottom, knee-deep in silt. Perhaps this had to do with the naggingly hot weather,
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against which this lake was a subconscious refuge, since air conditioning at the Gloria was nonexistent. Anyhow, descending to the conference hall, or going out to the city, I had to make an effort, as though putting my eyesight manually into focus—as well as my mind, and ear, in order to tear my mind off that glass. Something like that happens with verses, pursuing you relentlessly although totally unrelated to the present moment—with your own or with someone else's, more often with someone else's; and with English even more frequently than Russian, especially with Auden's. The lines are just another kind of seaweed, and your memory is like a perch meandering among them. On the other hand, perhaps this impression could be explained by an unwitting narcissism, one's image acquiring in the mirror, thanks to the decaying amalgam, a shade of detachment, a certain extemporal savor; for the essence of any reflection is interest not so much in one's own person as in the very fact of viewing oneself from without. As for my Nordic distraction, all this was somewhat alien to her, and her interest in the mirror was briskly female and a touch pornographic: twisting her neck, she scrutinized the process or, rather, her enterprising self at it—in any case, not the weeds, or, moreover, the perch. To the left and to the right of the lake hung two color lithographs showing mango harvesting by half-dressed Negresses and a panoramic view of Cairo. Below mooned the gray of a broken TV set.
Among the delegates there were two remarkably scummy specimens: an old female stoolie from Bulgaria and a degenerate elderly literary critic from the DDR. She spoke English, he German and French, and as a result, on hearing them speechify, one (or at least I) had a most extraordinary sense of the soiling of civilization. It was particularly painful to listen to all this homeland-made drivel in English, since
English is somehow entirely unfit for this stuff—although, who knows, some hundred years ago one might have had the same reaction in Russian. I did not retain their names: she was sort of Rosa Khlebh-like, a major in the reserves, I guess: gray dress, poring over the files, thick spectacles, always on duty. He was even better, though: a critic with a clearance, more a windbag than a scribbler—with output at best something like "The Style of the Early Johannes Becher" (who penned that sonnet upon Stalin's seventieth birthday beginning with the words "I was awakened today by the sound of a thousand nightingales singing simultaneously . . ." Eine tausend Nachtigallen . . .). When I got up to mumble something on behalf of the Annamites, those two started booing, and the Deutsche Demokratische even inquired of the Presidium what country I represented. Then, apres voting on the Vietnamese matter, this shitface ambles toward me and starts something like "But we do not know their literature, and can you really read that language of theirs anyhow, and we are Europeans, after all, aren't we," and so on. To this I reply that Indochina's population is n times larger than that of the Demokratische and the non- Demokratische put together, so chances are it harbors some equivalents of Anna Seghers und Stefan Zweig. On the whole, though, this kind of act reminds one mostly of the Gypsies at a country fair, who corner you and, screwing your territorial imperative, dive straight into your muzzle, which is something you allow only to your ex, and not too often at that! Cause who spares anything from a distance? Those guys, too, grab you by the button, roll their r's as if this were Trocadero, and flash their Italian-framed glasses. The Continental crowd melts down on the spot, because it's polemics, mumbo-jumbo, a quote from either Feuerbach or Hegel, or some other bearded windbag, a shock of gray hair, and a total high from their own cadences and logic.
Afrostan goes in for that, too, even more so than the Europeans. There was a lot of it here—from Senegal, Cote d'lvoire, and I don't recall anymore where else. The polished ebony pates, portly frames, in super fabrics, loafers from Balenciaga, etc., with Parisian experience under their belts, because it's no life for the Left Bank gauchiste if she never had a revolutionary Negro from the Third World—and that's where their action was, since the local fellahs and Bedouins cut no ice with them, not to mention the Annamites. "Your colored brothers are suffering," I wail. "No," they answer, "we have already cut a deal with the Deutsche Demokra- tische, and Leopold Sedar Senghor himself told us not to." On the other hand, had this congress been held not in Rio but among pine trees and squirrels—who knows—maybe they would have cackled differently. Here, of course, everything was too familiar—palms and lianas, vociferous parrots. Perhaps the pale-face latitudes are a more suitable venue for such displays of guilt and compassion, late as these usually are. Or perhaps an underdog, once well fed, barks no differently from the top dog. Or, at any rate, craves a leash.
The lousiest were the moments when all this caused aches here and there, left of the sternum; in general, when something goes bust in an Englishless place, I feel most uncomfortable. As Auden used to say, Most of all I dread croaking at some big hotel to the consternation of the personnel. That's how, I suppose, it's going to happen nevertheless, and the papers will be left in awful disarray, but one does not think about this although one should. And one does not think about it not because one does not feel like thinking this way but because that thing—let's call it nonexistence, though a shorter noun could easily be found—does not want one to divulge its secrets, and scares one out of pondering them with its proximity. So even later, when, after getting scared and after getting over it, you think about this, you write nothing down anyway. Generally it is odd that the mind turns itself from an ally, which it should be at the moment of going bust, into a fifth column, reducing one's resistance, not that high to begin with. And one ponders not how to get out of this bind but contemplates, rather, one's own mind-painted scenes of the final macabre. I was lying on my back at the Gloria, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the nitro to take effect and for the appearance of my Nordic escort, who had only the beach on her mind. But at least I had finally gotten my way, and my Annamite section was approved, after which the teeny-weeny Vietnamese woman, tears in her eyes, thanked us on behalf of all her people, saying that should I ever go to Australia, whence, pooling pennies, they had sent her to Rio, I'd get a royal reception and be treated to kangaroo-ear stew. I bought myself nothing of Brazilian manufacture but ajar of talcum powder, because, roaming around the city, I had chafed tender tissue.