curses and angry threats, and several good citizens left their places in the Lenin Mausoleum line to march to the site of the commotion and express their patriotism by spitting in the “sniveling traitors’ ” faces.
This is the account I put together after covering the story that morning. By afternoon, predictions were circulating that the young couple would be sentenced to five years in Siberia for ‘disturbing public order’. When Oktyabrina and Gelda arrived, I was in the mood that often paralyzes Russian intellectuals: black despair for themselves and their country, combined with searing anguish over the dictatorship’s remorseless injustices and people’s unconcern. On days like these, Russia is no more than a huge dungeon.
Gelda greeted me as if I’d last seen her six days ago rather than six months. Her features were unchanged, but it struck me for the first time that she had a considerable black moustache of her own. Her raincoat was an exact copy of Oktyabrina’s - or vice-versa; when she took it off to reveal a black high-necked sweater, the inspiration for Oktyabrina’s new costume became clear. Although I rarely talk of politics to Russians, the incident in Red Square had so depressed me that I turned up the radio to jam the apartment’s ‘ears’ and whispered the news to Gelda. She was unimpressed.
‘What did you expect from our Politburo pricks? A demonstration on Red Square yet; the kids can be happy
they weren’t beaten on the spot. At least they’ll be crucified for something they did!
Gelda then spoke of a friend who’d just been punished for something she hadn’t done. Last summer, the girl who’d translated Konrad Lorenz’s letters for her met a German tourist in a restaurant. Back in Hamburg, the German published an unflattering article about Brezhnev, about whom he’d never spoken to Gelda’s friend. She was summoned to an office, called a ‘stinking traitor and filthy whore’ and informed she would never work again as a teacher or translator. She now washed dishes in a cafeteria.
‘If I had a machine-gun/ said Gelda, remembering to whisper again, Td go to the Kremlin and shoot every one of them. In the balls, where they deserve/ She swallowed a pill. ‘On the other hand, what the hell for? Can anybody believe better bastards would replace them from the Russian masses?’
Oktyabrina hung tightly on her words; Gelda’s ripe language no longer made her flinch. The translator’s misfortune pained her, but she also seemed relieved: the rare talk of politics had smoothed our reunion, leaving questions about the past months unasked.
After a glass of tea, we all felt better. As always, politics were pushed to the back of our consciousness - to make life possible. Oktyabrina studied our tea leaves, and for good measure fetched a crystal ball - in the form of an empty prostokvasha jar from her carryall.
‘The spirits whisper to me/ she intoned. ‘No-stop deflecting my concentration. . . . The spirits want it known that dish-washers will become princesses - female of course. And that winter will end in February this year. . . . And they instruct dear Gelda and Zhoseph not to be dispirited. Because they are together again, and will grow to trust and love each other.’
Oktyabrina then inspected the apartment with proprietorial thoroughness, commenting on the women seduced on the davenport - by a notorious American heartbreaker - in her absence. Gelda talked of her new intellectual preoccupation. She’d moved on from Lorenz to Freud. But even with her unexcelled contacts among bibliophiles, she’d had great trouble securing a single volume of Freud’s papers published in Russian before the revolution.
When Oktyabrina took the tea glasses into the kitchen, Gelda spoke of her in the rudimentary Freudian terms with which she’d recently been acquainting herself. Oktyabrina’s inhibitions about men, she reasoned, surely lay deeper than in the trauma of that summer: somewhere in the pattern of her early childhood. ...
The trauma of that summer, she explained at my prompting, took place in a small seaside town called Alushta, just east of Yalta. Having exhausted her rubles, Oktyabrina was sleeping near the beach. As she lay there uneasily, a small boat approached from the sea and a large man in oilskins waded ashore. As luck had it, his torch quickly detected her. He was upon her in an instant, and since he’d been at sea for weeks, remained upon her for an hour. Oktyabrina’s screams died in the night; no one was near enough to hear. Since she was unwell at that time, it was a particularly brutal rape. . . .-
‘Do you believe that story?’ I asked.
‘Not literally. But something happened; she returned to Moscow in bad shape. Someone bruised her.’
‘You actually saw the wounds?’
‘I didn’t have to. She almost had a breakdown.’
Since then, Gelda - in the absence of Kostya and me from Moscow - had assumed the role of Oktyabrina’s guardian. During the first few days, Oktyabrina was in mild shock. Having recovered, she resolved to write a story about her ‘tragic adventure’. Weeks later, she burned the pages, all ten first drafts, because ‘it would be wrong to capitalize on misery’. In September, Gelda’s suggestion that Oktyabrina visit me was declined; Oktyabrina was already deep in her rejection of men. But Gelda felt that Oktyabrina’s real reason was fear of appearing disloyal to her.
The relationship between Gelda and Oktyabrina was not as one-sided as it had seemed at first. When Gelda was suffering a ‘fit’, she released the whole of her brutal resentment on Oktyabrina. Her insults and curses were restrained only by instincts developed during long years in communal apartments. She was merciless to Oktyabrina. Her curses were bad enough, but she also attacked Oktyabrina’s weakest spot. She called her a leech, a toady, a sponger, a sycophant, a parasite and a slut.
‘You’re as much use in this world as shit in an ice-hole,
You’re not whore enough to earn your bread from men. Not woman enough to have a man. So you lick my ass - the dirtier the better. I’m sick of it, do you understand? Disappear from my life, you cheap phoney - you corkscrew cunt.’
Oktyabrina bore everything, knowing Gelda’s need for catharsis. And indeed, this therapy worked better than Geida’s usual assortment of pills and compresses. Her fits lasted only a day or two, and when she emerged from them, she hugged Oktyabrina’s hips and stroked her hair. The hair was as close in shape and color to Gelda’s as Oktyabrina could make it, although the texture remained much finer despite the dye’s effects. The sight of the dwarfish, pitted woman with the papirosa in her teeth embracing the radiant girl with the imitative costume was as moving - and disturbing - as the recognition scene in Anastasia.
‘It’s better now?’ Oktyabrina would whisper.
‘It’s gone, Brinchka. You little idiot, why didn’t you run away?’
‘I’m starved , let’s go somewhere glorious.’
‘You must fly away somewhere: in this domain, angels come to no good.’
To celebrate, Gelda broke her usual diet in favor of a long heavy meal. They usually went to a restaurant called ‘Slavonic Bazaar’, which lies behind GUM in a region of important government offices. The Slavonic Bazaar used to be a ‘cafeteria’ for high-level Party officials, admitted only with passes. The food then was immeasurably better and cost much less than that of ordinary restaurants; caviar and steaks were always available, together with delicacies like fresh fruits and vegetables, even melon in January! Under ground passages linked the restaurant with nearby office buildings - according to rumor, even with the Kremlin -so that the Party oligarchs could avoid the twin inconveniences of mixing with The People and suffering a short walk in the cold.
After the government cafeteria had moved to more elabor-
ate quarters, and the Slavonic Bazaar was opened to the general public, its menu became as limited and expensive as any in the city - meaning very. But Gelda, both relieved and penitent after her fit, would merely short-change a few dozen customers on the afternoon of their fling, providing rubles to spare.