Gelda had returned to Oktyabrinas side; each had an arm around the other s waist, and Oktyabrina was restraining tears. They were evidently waiting for the mans rage to spend itself, but he got a powerful second wind.
The skinny one s a menace, he shouted to the crowd. ‘Non compos mentis - or corporis. And the black dwarf encourages her - its an outrage. I'll get them both.'
Suddenly Gelda exploded in Oktyabrina’s defense. Since there was in fact no reasonable defense, she substituted a searing attack. I would have said she could not possibly
have bested the man, had I not known about her fits. A voice
in the crowd offered money on Gelda.
In short - for the struggle was brief and one-sided -Gelda s diatribe left the man stunned. He retreated awkwardly towards the door, where the two stranded ladies clutched at his overcoat. Gelda led Oktyabrina into a back room, ignoring the line at her booth, which had lengthened to some twenty people. One or two of them muttered mild curses, but the majority waited blankly until some higher force might intervene and provide them with service. This did not materialize during the ten minutes or so I remained in the shop.
A second week passed during which the job seemed a too-protracted joke. Oktyabrina confused Switzerland with Sweden, Romania with Bulgaria, Iran and Iraq. If these mistakes were explicable, others testified to passive gaps in her knowledge: what is the link between ‘Moslem’ and ‘mongoT? Marshal Zhukov was mistaken for Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s feared cultural overseer; and her failure to know Molotov caused another minor incident. Because Molotov has been an ‘unperson’ for ten years, a man whispered his name. Oktyabrina sang it out in her ‘working soprano’ to the hoots of half the crowd and growls of the other half.
She herself did not laugh - she seemed to have lost both the ability and desire. For her job was not a joke; it had become the crusade of her life.
She had more to overcome than the ordinary strains of a new job. They were aggravated by the pressure of the ubiquitous, clamorous throng, elbowing each other and screeching at her. Bred on the hard lessons of perpetual shortage, Russians break into an acquisitive fever as they cross the threshold of even a relatively peaceful store. Salesgirls at the front of the battle quickly become hardened or change their metier.
Finally there was the difficulty of mastering the ‘stock’. Books are a serious matter in this country, and the secondhand shops are patronized by extremely serious people.
Many make daily rounds of the dozen odd shops in central Moscow, hunting with heroic resolution for an old Proust thats been out of print for thirty years or a James Joyce in a Western language, one of possibly five copies in all Moscow because the novel isn t Soviet’ enough to have merited publication here. In other words, Oktyabrina had to cope with the most dedicated and knowledgeable corps of customers among Moscow’s hardened millions.
But she did cope; it was a triumph of will. And of brain -and, in a matter of speaking, brawn. For she prevailed only by enduring extreme drudgery and exhaustion. Mornings, she was in the shop with the cleaning women, an hour before opening time; evenings, she remained an hour after closing time, sorting, dusting and contemplating the titles of books. ‘A feeble brain gives no rest to the feet/ she said, eager to reduce her flutterings behind the counter. She copied whole trays from the master catalogue on slips of paper - authors on one side, titles on the other - and studied them, like a student learning Chinese. She read literary encyclopaedias and pestered Gelda for fists of important authors, schools, periods and fields of learning. 'Memorize, memorize, memorize/ she chanted. ‘A maiden s memory is like a cuckoo’s - and its time I stopped being both.
But*most of all, she learned by sheer concentration during her long hours in the shop. All her inventiveness and tenacity surged into the fight to fend off exhaustion and to remember . Had it come five years earlier, this drive alone might have made her an acceptable ballerina.
To speak of a salesgirl being respected in Moscow is misleading. But by the end of the month, Oktyabrina had a following. She recognized more and more steady customers and more and more authors, and began putting aside the volumes they’d requested. People liked her; she worked quickly; sales increased. Even the manager was pleased — and since the shop s sales plan was being overfulfilled, closed his eyes to Oktyabrina s occasional filching of a geography book for Vladimir’s dissertation.
In time the long stints exhausted her less. Although she didn’t quite believe it herself, she’d survived the test and become a working woman. She was making a ‘real contribution’ at last. But she’d grown thinner, paler and markedly more subdued.
In fact, she looked wasted. The Proletarian Look was no longer a costume: like so many of the working class, she was run down from too much work on too few vitamins, and had a nagging cold. It was now clear that by themselves, her features were entirely plain; it had been her dramatization of them, however outlandish, that had made her a personage - almost lifted her on to a higher plane. Unretouched, in the dull light of day, the peaked nose and thin mouth made her a provincial working girl, with the pinched look of English mill towns, despite the Slav accents of her cheeks. I never loved her more.
Oktyabrina had changed so much that when she came to lunch one Sunday, the sentry in my courtyard didn’t recognize her, and left his booth for a better look. I’d prepared a big meal of her favorite treats, but she ate without appetite. And praised Vladimir without enthusiasm, as if disgusted with her own talk of his ‘shaping her destiny’ with his ‘tuitional wisdom’.
Suddenly she pushed away her plate. ‘What’s the point of this nonsense,’ she whispered. ‘Why am I lying to you?’
‘What’s actually happening with you two?’
‘He keeps begging me to remember our beginning - to play chess with him like we used to. How can I tell him? What can I do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘First to tell you the facts of life. A salesgirl makes seventy-six rubles a month - a pair of shoes and two pairs of stockings. Vladimir makes two pairs of shoes. But it’s not the miserable scrounging that’s important.’
I waited for what was important. Of course, she said finally, she hadn’t expected anything uplifting from a bookshop, anything heroic from Vladimir. But both had turned
out to be so excruciatingly, hopelessly dreary .
Last week I finally realized that I must make him suffer to become a man. To sacrifice something for his passion. Then I saw how silly that was. Because it s vice-versa, you see: only real men ever suffer over real things. Anyway,
dear Zhoseph, I can t bear hurting him — so this is my last resort/
She unfolded a sheet of paper from her handbag and handed it to me. It was so carefully printed that I hardly recognized her hand.
Dear Vladimir’s Mother,
A million pardons for addressing you thus, but I don’t even know your name. Vladimir always calls you 'Mama’. My ignorance of your name is natural enough. But your not knowing my name is - I must say it - unhealthy. Not knowing even that I exist, that Vladik has had a female companion. How can I persuade you that Tm not hurt by this; the damage is to him.
Having lost my own mother - also a noble woman who died for her profession - I understand and respect his devotion to you. And you must surely be proud of him, who has perhaps the highest human virtue: never wanting to hurt anyone. I know that no outsider can advise two people about their own relationship. But, respected Lady, Vladimir needs to breathe. You must cut the apron strings. Boys of his age have a need to run a bit wild, even involve themselves occasionally in - well, sillv pleasures. And not-so-silly pleasures, although I am far from wanting to offend you. Vladimir is a sensitive person, and should spend more time with men to feel himself a man. And shouldn t he be allowed to lock the bathroom door without explanations?