Ahead of me lay divorce, debt and literary failure… But here are these mysterious gypsies with bread… Two dark-skinned old women near the polyclinic… A damp day cooling off… Wine, a free minute, my homeland…
Through the general din I suddenly heard:
“This is Moscow! This is Moscow! You are listening to the Young Pioneers’ Dawn… At the microphone is the hirsute Yevstikheyev… His words sound like a commendable rebuff to the vultures from the Pentagon…”
I looked around. This mysterious speech was coming from the fellow in the green polo shirt. He was still facing the wall. Even from behind you could see how drunk he was. His back, covered with rippling locks, expressed some sort of aggressive impatience. He was almost yelling:
“And I say no! No to the overreaching imperialist beasts! No, echo the workers of the Ural paper mill… There is no happiness in life, my dear listeners! I say this to you as the last man standing of the 316th Rifle Division… Thus spoke Zarathustra…”
People in the restaurant began to listen. Although without real interest.
The guy raised his voice:
“What are you staring at, you schlubs? You want to behold the death of a private in the Guards of the Maykop Artillery Regiment, Viscount de Bragelonne?* Allow me to grant you that chance… Comrade Rappoport, bring in the prisoner!”
The other patrons reacted peaceably. Though “schlubs” was clearly meant for them.
Someone from the corner said indifferently:
“Valera’s a bit pickled…”
Valera rose energetically:
“The right to rest and recreation is guaranteed by the constitution… As in the finest houses of Paris and Brussels… Then why turn the sciences into a slave of theology? Live up to the agenda of the Twentieth Assembly of the Party! Listen to the Young Pioneers’ Dawn… Text brought to you by Gmyrya…”
“Who?” someone asked from the corner.
“Baron Kleinmichel, lovey!”
Even at just a quick glance at the fellow I felt a sense of alarm. On closer inspection, this feeling intensified.
Long-haired, ridiculous and scraggy, he gave the impression of someone feigning schizophrenia. But with the single-minded determination of being exposed as soon as possible.
He could have passed for a lunatic were it not for his triumphant smile and expression of common everyday tomfoolery. A cunning, shrewd insolence was detectable in his crazy monologues. In this stomach-churning mixture of newspaper headlines, slogans and unfamiliar quotations…
It all reminded me of a faulty loudspeaker. The man expressed himself sharply, spasmodically, with afflictive grandiloquence and a sort of dramatic vigour.
He was drunk, but even in that one felt some cunning.
I did not notice him come up. Only just now he sat there facing the wall. And suddenly he was looking over my shoulder:
“Let’s get acquainted – Valery Markov! Habitual transgressor of the public peace…”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “I heard.”
“I’ve been a guest at the big house. The diagnosis is chronic alcoholism!”
I tilted the bottle in friendship. A glass materialized miraculously in his hand.
“Much obliged,” he said. “I trust all this was bought at the price of moral degradation?”
“Quit it,” I said. “Let’s drink instead.”
In response I heard:
“I thank you and I accede, like Shepilov…”*
We finished the wine.
“Honey on the wounds,” asserted Markov.
“I have,” I said, “about four roubles. Beyond that, the outlook is foggy…”
“Money is not a problem!” exclaimed my drinking companion.
He jumped up and darted to his abandoned table. When he returned he was holding a crumpled black envelope for photo paper. A pile of money spilt onto the table. He winked and said:
“You can’t count diamonds in caves of stone!”
And further, with an unexpected shyness in his voice:
“It doesn’t look good with the pockets bulging…”
Markov patted his hips, in skin-tight jeans. His feet were shod in patent-leather concert slippers.
What a character, I thought.
Next thing I knew, he started sharing his problems with me:
“I make a lot… The minute I’m off a bender, I’m rolling in dough… One snapshot – and I got a rouble… One morning – and there’s three tenners in my pocket… By nightfall I’ve made a hundred… And zero financial control… What am I to do?… Drink… We’ve got ourselves the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly* here. A day of work followed by a week of drink… For some, vodka is a celebration. For me, it’s hard reality. It’s either the drunk tank or the militia – it’s pure dissidence… Needless to say, the wife’s not happy. We need a cow, she says… Or a child… Provided you don’t drink. But for now I’m abstaining. In the sense that I still drink…”
Markov stuffed the money back in the envelope. Two or three notes fell on the floor. He was too lazy to bend down. His aristocratic behaviour reminded me of Mikhail Ivanych.
We walked up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Agdam. I reached out to pay. My companion raised his voice:
“Hands off socialist Cuba!”
And proudly threw three roubles on the bar.
A Russian drunk is a fascinating creature. Even when he has money, he still prefers poison at a rouble forty. And he won’t take the change. I myself am the same…
We returned to the window. The restaurant had filled up. Someone even started to play the accordion.
“I recognize you, Mother Russia!” exclaimed Markov, and added, lowering his voice: “I hate it… I hate these Pskov buffoons! Beg your pardon, let’s have a drink first.”
We had a drink. It was becoming noisier. The accordion was piercing the air.
My new acquaintance was yelling excitedly:
“Just look at this progressive humanity! At these dumb faces! At these shadows of forgotten ancestors!… I live here like a ray of light in the kingdom of darkness… If only the American militarists would enslave us! Maybe then we’d live like people, of the Czech variety…”
He slammed his hand on the table:
“I want freedom! I want abstractionism with dodecacophony!… Let me tell you…”
He leant over and whispered hoarsely into my ear:
“I’ll tell you like a friend… I had an idea – to get the hell out of here, and go anywhere. Even to Southern Rhodesia. As far away from our backwater as possible… But how? Our borders are bolted! From morning till night they’re under the watchful eye of Karatsupa…* Go overseas as a sailor – but the local council won’t let me… Marry some foreign tourist? Some ancient Greek slut? And where am I going to find her? This one character said they were letting out the Jews. And I said to my wife: ‘Vera, it’s our Cape of Good Hope…’
“My wife is from the simple folk. She scoffed at me. ‘Your mug alone demands punitive action… They barely let your type into the movies and you want to go to Israel!’
“But I had a chat with this guy. He suggested I marry a Jew for a short while. That’s much simpler. Foreign tourists are few and far between, but Jews – they do come across once in a while. There’s one at the tourist centre. Named Natella. She looks Jewish, only she’s fond of a tipple…”
Markov lit up a cigarette, first ruining a few matches. I began to feel drunk. Agdam was spreading through my blood vessels. The shouts were merging into a measured, swelling din.
My drinking companion was no drunker than before. And his madness seemed to have abated a little.
Twice we went to the bar for more wine. Once some people took our seats. But Markov made a scene and they left.
He shouted at their backs:
“Hands off Vietnam and Cambodia! The border is locked! Karatsupa never sleeps! Persons of Jewish nationality excepted!”
Our table was covered in candy wrappers. We flicked our ashes into a dirty saucer.
Markov continued:
“I used to think I’d make for Turkey in a kayak. And I even bought a map. But they’ll sink me, the scum… So that’s over. My past and thoughts, as they say… Now I’m counting more on the Jews… One time Natella and I were drinking by the river. And I said to her, ‘Let’s get married, the two of us.’ And she said, ‘You’re so savage, so scary. The black earth is raging inside you,’ she said… In these parts, by the way, no one’s heard of black earth. But I didn’t say anything. Even squeezed her a bit. And she started screaming, ‘Let go of me!’ I guess… So I said, ‘This is how our Slavic ancestors lived…’ Anyway, it didn’t work… Maybe I should have asked her nicely? Should have said, ‘You’re a person of Jewish nationality. Help out a Russian dissident, regarding Israel…’”