Since women are not permitted into restaurants alone, Gelda and Oktyabrina would approach the most likely-looking men in the line outside the door. For the consideration of a carafe of vodka to be ordered to their table inside, they induced the men to play the role of their escorts. Once at the table, however, the girls spoke a kind of pig Latin which Gelda had learned in order to keep things from her mother and passed on to Oktyabrina.
This caused the men great puzzlement. It compounded the earlier riddle about who these two odd women were and why they seemed suddenly unapproachable after the promise of a sure thing. Sensing that the strange language was meant to mock them, the men often progressed to anger. This, of course, added to Oktyabrina's delight - a delight which was produced by literally every element of the evening. She adored the restaurant, with its name and former reputation. She adored an evening out in general, and in particular one with Gelda. Most of all, she adored the thought of clear sailing ahead with Gelda, until the next fit. From time to time, Oktyabrina would glance disdainfully at the men sharing their table, sharpening her Tm-a-million-times-better-off-without-men look until even provincial types took the point. Speaking straight Russian again, in a sexy tenor, she’d advise the men to beg the cook for more dill, since 'dill works wonders for masculine aggressions’.
Yet Oktyabrina’s campaign against men was in no way inspired or encouraged by Gelda. Gelda was occasionally amused, but usually tolerated or ignored it, certain that it was a passing phase. Moreover, she continued to keep her own eye peeled for men - with moustaches, of course. She was no more lesbian than the burly Russian men who kiss on 192
the lips at airports and railroad stations are homosexual, or the peasant soldier-boys who hold hands while strolling through the wonders of the big city. Oktyabrina did not live in Gelda's room; Gelda never asked her to, although a cot could have been squeezed beside the aquarium. Oktyabrina flitted from one rented cubicle to another, bargaining for a place to sleep when her 'contacts' informed her that someone had left Moscow on vacation or assignment.
Otherwise, Oktyabrina copied Gelda in every possible habit and gesture except for smoking, swearing and cracking her knuckles. And was almost totally dependent on her, financially as well as psychologically.
In return, Oktyabrina made the motions of cleaning Gelda's little room. This was not difficult after the 'Serbian smuggler' had removed most of the furnishings - and even before, since Gelda was as unfastidious in her domicile as her person. Oktyabrina washed Gelda's stockings and smalls together with her own. She kept the room in fresh flowers, bought at sacrificial greenhouse prices, and presented Gelda with occasional prizes, such as pairs of imported tights. And she took charge of procuring the fish food.
She took along a book for the lines at the pet shop, for she had embarked on a reading crusade, also in imitation of Gelda. It was usually one of Gelda's, for she wanted to read what 'her dear friend' did, and resented the idea of being spoon-fed ‘easy’ literature. But the crusade was not proving a success; she hardly read more than a chapter of any one book before starting the next. With all of this, she hadn’t forgotten her fascination for back copies of my magazines. I gave her a large stack that had accumulated in her absence and she in return - because she always liked to give things in return - gave me an outsized matrioshka : a wooden doll with a series of successively smaller ones inside. This one had ten.
'Take this, Zhoseph,' she said, 'as a companion for your desk. And may the symbolism improve your writing through an appreciation - however subconscious - of the infinite
humanity of women / But this was accompanied by a wink instead of tartness.
On Sunday mornings Gelda and Oktyabrina went to the so-called ‘pet market’, one of the city’s most colorful spectacles. ‘Market’ is somewhat misleading, for there is nothing organized about this one: pet-lovers simply gather in a large empty lot, and the Sunday crowd spills out into the adjoining streets, milling about the vendors. No permission, tax or even registration is required to sell pets, provided they are raised domestically and without an intention to ‘profiteer’. It is a last outpost of capitalism and the old Russian tradition of street markets, where people come more than simply to buy and sell, but for the sake of something to do and for the satisfaction of bargaining. Most of the sellers are middle-aged men in ragged clothing. They cradle their wares - a pot-pourri of mongrel puppies, kittens, hamsters, tortoises, canaries, parrots, snakes, monkeys, rabbits and an occasional baby fox - tenderly in their hands or under their threadbare jackets, since cages and leashes, when available, are wildly expensive. And, of course, the market offers a wide assortment of tropical fish, usually displayed in pickle or yoghurt jars. Their popularity seems incongruous at first: tropical fish in such a northern country? But many Russians cherish them as they do tropical plants, no doubt for the same reason.
The market is located in a nondescript area of nineteenth-century houses and slapdash prefabricated blocks, which Gelda and Oktyabrina reached by metro and streetcar. Gelda was one of the best known and most respected of the market regulars, combining wide experience in handling tropical fish with extensive academic knowledge of pets in general. She was a kind of Queen-of-the-Gypsies to the other regulars, mostly poor pensioners who peddled a fish or two from dawn to dusk in quest both of company for their lonely lives and of a few extra kopeks to buy jam for their bread. They treated Gelda as if she were a young belle who could have her pick of husbands, but was waiting for one of her 194
own standards.
Oktyabrina took to the market immediately. It was her kind of place; she was enchanted by the buying, selling, haggling and milling about. Gelda encouraged her to go her own way, and she quickly learned the market’s secrets. Soon she was swapping small items of clothing, cautiously peddled by traders along with the pets. The patrolling of the market by plain-clothesmen - who kept watch for this, as well as for pickpockets and 'speculators’ buying and reselling other people’s pets - predictably enhanced Oktyabrina’s enjoyment of the atmosphere. She told Gelda she sometimes wished that they could open their own little business together on the lot. Perhaps an antique booth or the tiniest tavern. Gelda could manage the business and do the accounts, while Oktyabrina swept up and waited on customers. ...
After the market, Gelda and Oktyabrina sometimes went to a nearby cathedral, entering towards the end of the long Sunday afternoon service. The massive structure had been scheduled for demolition in the anti-religious fervor of the late 1930s, but war intervened, saving it through the general confusion and shortage of dynamite. Now it offered one of the most elaboiate and moving services of the handful of Moscow churches still functioning as such. Neither Gelda nor Oktyabrina was in any way religious; their interest was in the choir’s brooding, pagan-sounding melodies, the shadowy candlelight, the incense and faintly ethereal, faintly sinister atmosphere transmitted by bearded priests and the ragged, gnarled old faithful. Gelda lectured Oktyabrina in Russian history, including the role of the church as oppressors who were subsequently oppressed - the inevitability of darkness producing darkness.
The pet market hardly existed except for Saturdays and Sundays; no more than a dozen hard-core enthusiasts were there during the week. But when one of Gelda’s fish died, Oktyabrina traveled there alone, and secretly, to replace it.
This was an act of compassion on her part; she wanted to
spare Gelda the sorrow of a loved one’s death. And Gelda responded in kind by pretending not to notice the replacement.