Oktyabrina cuddled herself beneath her layers of clothing and watched my reaction. T suppose you think sixteen’s shockingly early to become somebody’s mistress,’ she prompted.
‘Not really. Some girls are mature at sixteen - it depends.’
‘Not that I could help myself anyway. You could say I was raped in a way.’
‘You could, if you had to tell an abbreviated version/
‘Men are always so terribly demanding. The minute you don’t give them what they want, they start fighting and shooting. You’re not the violent type, are you, Zhoe?’
‘Not ordinarily. But with someone like you, you know ’
‘Well, what do you think’s better the first time - to be 42
absolutely forced that way by some terrible power involving life or death, or to surrender after a long and desperate courtship by a brooding type?’
‘You tell me - it’s your story, after all.’
‘I suppose that means you don’t believe me. You needn’t plaster that distrust all over your face, you know. It makes you look quite nasty.’
‘Oh I believe you completely. It’s just that something about Dubnikov doesn’t ring true. I suspect he was actually a bastard behind that Romeo fagade.’
This surprised Oktyabrina, but after a moment’s thought the idea seemed to appeal to her. She scooped up a mitten-full of snow and blew it slowly into the air. ‘As a matter of fact, you’re absolutely right - how on earth did you make him out? He was the most terrible philanderer. . . . Can you imagine? He preyed on girls even younger than me.’
‘And you parted after his trial on charges of corrupting minors - at which you testified in his defense as dictated by your noble instincts, but on the private understanding he’d never try to see you again.’
Oktyabrina threw her hands in the air. ‘That’s absolutely marvelous , Zhoe darling. I’m proud of you. You must write a forceful short story about it. It’s bound to set the world ablaze and make you rich. When I’m a famous ballerina, of course.’
We both broke out laughing, and Oktyabrina snuggled as close as she could to me through my overcoat.
‘You’re not angry with me, are you, Zhoe? I mean when I tell you certain things.’ Her voice was now very grave. ‘Maybe the reason I like men so much is because I grew up an orphan.’
‘Of course I’m not angry, Oktyabrina. But look here, you needn’t make up stories - not for me, anyway. I used to concoct them myself. But then you realize you don’t need them with people who like you. It’s one of the nicer things about growing older.’
I believed this when I said it; I even felt a wave of con-
tentment over having come this far in life and achieved this kind of understanding. But as I looked down at Oktyabrina, the opposite thought quickly intruded. One of the nicer things about being young, by contrast, was the ability to pretend that things are better than they are. It’s an expression of still uneroded optimism about yourself and human nature. I missed that now.
The best thing about Oktyabrina was the way she used her own pretense. Her imagination seemed to work at several layers above and below the surface of her tales.
Oktyabrina raised her mitten to my nose and applied a playful tweak. Her lips seemed to compress into a hint of a kiss.
‘What a beautiful oration ,’ she murmured. ‘Not making up stories with the people who like you. I’ve never even begun to think of life that way.’
‘On second thoughts, perhaps you shouldn’t take my word on things like this.
‘But do you really like me, Zhoe? Aren’t I too terribly young?’
‘No, you’re not too young. Nobody’s too young.’
She looked at me again with her innocent expression. ‘You’re a wonderful man - a kind of very special man, are you aware of that? And because you are - and if you really really like me - I’ll make a pact with you. From now on. we’ll tell each other absolutely everything. The whole truth, without fear or favor - OK?’
She sighed happily and rested her head on my shoulder. A one-legged man had sat down near me and was feeding a flock of pigeons with a loaf of fresh bread. We stayed on the bench enjoying the peace until the cold produced a sharp shiver in Oktyabrina.
When we left, she identified all the girls among the little bundles of fur and gave them extra candies.
‘It’s only fair,’ she explained. ‘Boys get all the advantages in life anyway.’
Despite the pact, weeks passed before I had pieced together even an outline of the ‘whole truth’ about Oktyabrina. She did not deliberately conceal the major headaches - where she lived, what she did - but simply dismissed them, as if talking about such things would be uncouth. The essential facts revealed themselves slowly, therefore, during ‘trial trysts’ on Gogol Boulevard and Petrovka.
From the orthodox Soviet standpoint, the most important was that she had no job. Nor, as her conversation made amply clear, any intention of seeking one. This was an outrage to socialist morality: ‘He Who Doth Not Work, Neither Shall He Eat’ is still the first commandment of Soviet citizenship. And not only of morality, but also law: new decrees had been enacted not long ago, giving lower courts authority to exile ‘parasites’, in the official language, to hard labor in Siberia. Since then a powerful campaign had been mounted to rid Moscow of parasites and hooligans.
Despite this, it was hard to picture her working at a real job, even if she’d wanted to. And even if permitted - which, under the circumstances, was highly improbable.
To get a proper job, she would have needed a valid labor book. And for the labor book, the prime prerequisite was a propiska : police permission, stamped in Russians’ identity papers, to five at a specified address in a specified city. There was extremely scant hope that she could ever procure one for Moscow; to move into the capital from anywhere else, a Russian must be officially invited, almost always for a skill vital to defense, research or other high-priority state requirements. An important position, in other words, can yield its own Moscow propiska. But without it, you can’t even apply for an ordinary job.
In short, Oktyabrina was caught up in one of the vicious circles that the Soviet bureaucracy forges, seemingly better than it does anything else. With the difference that this circle served a practical objective.
The conditions of life and supply of consumer goods are so much better in Moscow than in the provinces that if the
interdictions were lifted, half the Soviet Union’s rural popu-lation would be selling their cows and mattresses and riding, hitching or walking to the capital within a week. It was precisely to exclude people like Oktyabrina - even hardworking families eager for a better life - that the cumbersome rules 'closing’ Moscow were devised.
In time, I stopped reminding Oktyabrina about the danger of living as a kind of un-person. Thousands of drifters do manage to live almost permanently in the capital, simply by avoiding all contact with everything official -especially, of course, with the police.
Oktyabrina apparently managed as well as anyone, although she hadn’t been ‘underground’ long enough to learn the more sophisticated tricks. On the other hand, the simplicity of her life helped her avoid unwelcome encounters. Lessons and rehearsals occupied her three or four mornings a week, and the effort and cold so exhausted her that she rested at home, inventing outfits and sponge-bathing from an iron tub, during most of the afternoons.
The sponge-bath was both indispensable and adventurous. The water was heated on an encrusted, tum-of-the-century stove whenever the landlord left to play dominoes -out of doors! - with his pals in the courtyard of a nearby recreation center. The -sponge was a real one, one of Oktyabrina’s prized possessions - but she had to carry it with her when she went out. If she left it at home the landlord sniffed it for dampness, and denounced her until spittle formed on his lips because she had wasted his gas.