Flashing his bare hands, Aron winked at Valentina: “You think he’s dropping me a hint?”
The man in front of Valentina turned to look at her. He had a stiff red pony-tail tied in a rubber band, his freckled face was laughing, his red moustache bristled cheerfully. “He thinks it’s a hint. It’s not a hint, it’s the riddle of life!”
Misha speared a gherkin on to a fork, then another, and laid them beside the succulent sandwich on a cardboard plate. “Here’s an extra pickle for you, Alik.” He turned to Valentina. “He says he’s an artist but I know he’s from the consumer rights department back home. They follow me even here. You want pastrami?”
Valentina nodded. Misha flashed his knife. The man with the red moustache sat down at a nearby table where another place had become free and took Valentina’s paper plate from her hands, putting it on the table and pushing a chair back for her with his foot. She sat down silently.
“You’re from Moscow?” he said.
She nodded.
“Been here long?”
“A month and a half.”
“I thought so, you haven’t the seasoned look yet.” His expression was direct and good-natured. “What do you do?”
“Babysitting, classes, you know.”
“Excellent!” he said. “You’ve found your feet quickly.”
Valentina pulled apart the two halves of her sandwich.
“No, no! What are you doing? No one eats like that! Americans won’t stand for it, it’s sacred! Just open your mouth wide and make sure you don’t spill the ketchup.” He bit neatly around the bulging edge of his sandwich. “Life’s very simple here. They don’t have many rules, but you have to know what they are.”
“Rules?” asked Valentina, obediently putting back the two halves of her sandwich.
“That’s the first one. The second is to smile.” He smiled at her with his mouth full of sandwich.
“And the third?”
“What’s your name?”
“Valentina.”
“Mm,” he murmured, “Valechka.”
“Valentina,” she corrected him. She had always hated the name Valechka, ever since childhood.
“Right, Valentina, maybe we don’t know each other that well yet, but never mind, I’ll tell you. The second Newtonian law formulates itself thus: smile, but cover your arse.”
Valentina laughed, and ketchup dripped onto her scarf.
“Then of course there’s the third,” Alik went on, wiping the ketchup off. “Start with the first two. These are the best sandwiches in America. That’s right, this eating-place is almost a hundred years old. Edgar Allan Poe came here—Jack London, O. Henry, they all bought sandwiches at this place for a dime. Americans don’t know these writers, by the way. Well, maybe they teach Poe in school. But if the owner here had read just one of them, he’d hang his portrait on the wall. That’s our American misfortune, our sandwiches are fine but there’s not enough culture. Although you can bet that the grandson of the first Katz graduated from Harvard—I don’t mean Adam but the first owner—and that his grandson studied in Paris at the Sorbonne and probably took part in the student revolution of 1968 …”
Valentina didn’t have the courage to ask which revolution he had in mind, but Alik put his sandwich down and went on: “The gherkins are pickled in the barrel, you don’t find ones like these anywhere else. They pickle them themselves. To be honest, I like them softer and more shrivelled, but they aren’t bad, at least they don’t use vinegar. This is a stunning city, it’s got everything. The city of cities, the Tower of Babel! But it’s worth it, my God it’s worth it!” He seemed not to be speaking to her, but arguing with someone who wasn’t there.
“But it’s so dirty and depressing and there are so many black people here,” Valentina said softly.
“You come from Russia, and you think America’s dirty? That’s a good one! And the black people, they’re New York’s finest decoration! You don’t like music? What’s America without music! And it’s black music, black music!” He was hurt and angry. “You know nothing at all about it, so you’d better shut up!”
They finished eating and went outside. At the door of the café he asked, “Where are you going?”
“To Washington Square, I’m doing classes there.”
“English?”
She nodded. “Advanced.”
“I’ll walk you there. I live just a few blocks away. Go up to Astor Place and turn the corner,” he waved an arm, “that’s where the punks hang out. They’re amazing, all in black leather and way-out metal. American punks have nothing in common with the English ones, and their music is something else too. Near the square is the old Ukrainian quarter—it’s not that interesting. Oh, and there’s an amazing Irish pub, a real one. They don’t even let women in. Well, they probably do now, but there are no ladies’ toilets, only urinals. This isn’t a city, it’s a huge living street theatre. For years I haven’t been able to tear myself away from it.”
They walked through the Bowery. He stopped her by one of the grey, gloomy buildings which seemed to fill this neighbourhood. “Look, that’s CBGB, the most important place for music in the world. In a hundred years people will hoard scraps of plaster from these walls in gold boxes. I mean it. A new culture is being born here. The Knitting Factory is the same. Geniuses play here every night.”
A skinny black boy in a pink-and-white coat jumped out of a peeling doorway. Alik greeted him.
“What did I tell you? That’s Booby the flute player. Every evening he plays with God. I’ve just been here buying tickets for his concert. My wife won’t come with me, she doesn’t like this kind of music. Would you come with me?”
“I can only manage Sundays,” Valentina replied. “Every other day I’m busy from eight in the morning until eleven at night.”
“I see, hard to get,” Alik grinned.
“Well, that’s how it is—I’m at work by nine, I finish at six, at seven I have classes, then next day I babysit my landlady’s granddaughter. At eleven I’m free, at twelve I go to sleep. Three hours later I wake up, and that’s it. I have this American insomnia, God knows what it is. At three in the morning I’m like one of those dolls that never falls over. I’ve tried going to bed later but it makes no difference, after three I can’t get back to sleep.”
“Well, there are no concerts at that time, but there are plenty of places where things go on till morning. It doesn’t matter when we go, three’s okay.”
Nina was a serious alcoholic by then and her needs were very simple. During the day she drank half a bottle of Russian vodka diluted with American juice, by one in the morning she was sleeping the sleep of the just. Alik would carry her from the armchair to the bedroom and would sleep beside her for a few hours. He was one of those people who don’t need much sleep, like Napoleon.
Alik’s affair with Valentina was conducted between the hours of three and eight. It didn’t start at once but gradually. Two months passed before he finally entered the basement room which Rachel had found for her in the house of one of her friends.
For the first two months he would visit twice a week at three in the morning. Stooping, he would whistle down to her dimly lit window. Ten minutes later she would hop out, pink and healthy in her black Gutsul shirt, and they would go to one of those night places which were rarely frequented by emigrés.
During one of the coldest nights of January, when the snow had lain on the ground for almost the whole week, they ended up at the fish market. Two steps from Wall Street teemed the most incredible life. Ships docked at the harbour from all over the world, and fishermen would hump their live, or, on this occasion, frozen wares on their backs, on carts and in baskets. The wide doors in the walls of the warehouses burst open to receive these marine riches. Two solidly built men bore on their shoulders a miraculous log of silver tuna, covered in a thin film of ice. On the stalls were arranged ordinary, unexceptional little mongrel fish, but the eye was drawn to the profusion of amazing sea monsters, with terrible eyes, claws and suckers. There were fish which seemed to consist entirely of mouths, and a large number of fantastic-looking shellfish, with their thin slivers of meat inside. There were snake-like animals with sweet faces that reminded one of mermaids; there were intermediate life-forms, part animal, part plant; and there was unambiguous seaweed, layered and trailing like vines. In the white light of the lamps the colours merged in a swirl of blue, red, green and pink. Some creatures still stirred, some had already stiffened.