The first thing we did was visit Mama’s childhood friend. She has a big apartment in the center of town, with long hallways, tall ceilings, and windows facing a dark well of a courtyard. Irina Nikolayevna and her son live in that apartment as if it were a fortress. I think they try not to go out more than necessary. The son is a talented physicist, a professor, who works mostly at home and goes to his institute only a few times a week. So they wander around the apartment like ghosts, going to sleep at dawn and getting up at noon. They spend hours drinking tea in the kitchen. They look out at the courtyard with great curiosity: who went by, with whom, when. They need some impressions from the world around them. The son spends most of his time in his study reading. He has a marvelous library. Artyom isn’t so old, but he has no plans to marry. He’s stopped all communications with women—too many problems. ‘'You have to get dressed up, leave the house; it’s cold outside. And then you have to figure out where to go, how to amuse the lady. I don’t even answer the phone anymore. I’m tired of fighting off pushy women,” Artyom explained.
I can understand the ladies. He’s good-looking, well educated, a good conversationalist, and a professor to boot—the perfect bridegroom. But he’s a hopeless case; he won’t marry. And he’s turned to religion of late. He goes to church twice a day, reads religious philosophy, and observes all the fasts and Lenten days.
We spent about two hours at their place until I felt the need to go outside, to see light and hear the city noises. Mama and I walked in the street and wondered why their lives had taken such a strange turn. We decided that Irina Nikolayevna was much to blame. She has an abnormal, morbid love for her
son. She wants to possess him, not share him, and she’s the one who told him that he didn’t need women, that they bring nothing but trouble. She is afraid that if Artyom married, he would pay less attention to her. Well, I’m not going to judge them, but it’s sad to see a young, brilliant man letting life pass him by. Perhaps, though, he’s happy in his own world. At least Soviet reality barely touches him.
The next day I went to see some bohemian friends of my artist friends in Moscow. I got there around one o’clock, and they were just getting up. Volodya was combing his long hair in front of the mirror; then he made a ponytail and put a dangling earring in one ear. His girl friend, Tanya, came out of the bathroom to say hello. There were sketches scattered all over the place. You couldn’t even see the floor. There were also pages of an avant-garde novel that Volodya has been writing for several years. Rare books, primarily on philosophy, stood on the shelves.
We went into the kitchen to have breakfast. I had bought fresh rolls on the way, and Volodya and Tanya were thrilled; they had nothing but oatmeal and herb tea in the house. Volodya made the hot cereal with great expertise. It was obviously their main sustenance. The kitchen was a mess; I tried not to look around. A friend of Volodya’s, who works at Leningrad University, dropped by. Volodya plumped the pot of oatmeal on the dirty oilcloth, put out my rolls, and the party began. I must say that the herbal tea was delicious, but the oatmeal was not very appetizing. There was a grayish film on top which worried the friend. Volodya kept pushing it aside with a spoon and insisting that it was perfectly edible. The oatmeal was all anyone talked about for the first ten minutes. Then the show started. The boys
told me about their merry lives and grandiose plans. Petersburg was in a renaissance, they maintained. It was a time of complete freedom. Everything was bubbling and boiling. It was time for the young to take power and establish complete intellectual and creative freedom.
‘‘For starters we will separate Vasilyevsky Island and turn it into something like the Crimea. Of course, there will be no Soviet power there, and we’ll keep away from politics. We’ll get the best people. We’ll write books, paint, amuse ourselves a bit, and live the way we want,” Volodya told me, greedily eating my rolls. Tanya was very quiet. I think she was still half asleep. Soon the conversational euphoria got to me. The boys were so excited about their plans. I began offering my ideas for the new life and asked them to reserve a place for me on the island.
“Of course,” Volodya assured me. “You’re part of our crowd, even if you are from Moscow.” We decided to celebrate our new alliance. Volodya ran down to the cafe on the first floor and returned with a portion of whipped cream. The waitresses know him well and give him credit. But he’s had too much debt there lately, and he could get only one portion. We divided it up fairly and ate it. Two hours passed without my noticing. I didn’t want to go back to real life. As I stood in the doorway, a few more people showed up, and I was introduced as a Moscow candidate for the free Vasilyevsky Island. I went outside, but for some reason I didn’t feel the wind of freedom blowing. I thought about how lucky these sweet and lazy young people were because even in Brezhnev’s day, when there were so many informers around, talk like theirs could have landed them in
prison. Now you can say whatever you want. We’ve been talking and talking for several years, yet so little has changed.
I felt very sad about three days into my visit. Every corner of Leningrad used to be magical for me. The names alone enchanted me: Liteyny, Fontanka, Taurida Gardens, Nevsky. What happened? Had I changed, gotten old? I walked around the city, looking at the crumbling buildings no one was restoring, and recalled the wonderful days I had spent in this city. I never did figure it out—why Leningrad had become alien for me, why the people seemed strange. For the first time in my life I left Leningrad without regrets. On the contrary, I was fleeing without a backward look.
JUNE 6. Everything is fun in Moscow, gallows humor, of course. Lots of people feel terrible, and they’re trying to cheer themselves up. We have a gloomy friend whose life is not the happiest. He’s almost completely without work, is divorced, and doesn’t like the Soviet system. Vsevolod is a wise and subtle man, but extremely unenterprising. Maybe life made him that way because he saw there was no point in trying. He calls sometimes and complains about his life, making me incredibly depressed, and then suddenly his voice gets a lift in it, and he reels off a series of slightly improper jingles:
A star fell from heaven right into my lover’s pants.
It could blow everything up in there, as long as there’s no war.
Vsevolod enjoys this a lot and forgets his troubles.
The old lady didn’t suffer long in the high voltage wires. Her charred body was found in the bushes.
Grandpa found a grenade in the bushes.
He went to the party committee with it.
He lobbed it into the window.
Grandpa is old, he doesn’t care.
He likes jokes about Soviet life, involving Pioneers (like Boy Scouts) and October kids (Cub Scouts).
Stars, ribbons, shoes in a row.
The trolley ran over an October kids’ squad.
Children played Gestapo in the cellar,
And tortured Potapov the plumber to death.
He has an inexhaustible supply, and he tells me new ones every time I see him.
A widow strolled in the leafy park with a Pioneer.
The widow felt sorry for the Pioneer and gave in to him.
This is followed by another quatrain, and at the end there comes an explanation of why she slept with the lad:
Because in our country today everyone is young In our glorious Soviet land.
I have the feeling that he writes them with his pals at work. Vsevolod is a translator of a rare language that is not popular in Moscow now. The Communist movement in that country has collapsed, and the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, which he used to translate, are not in demand. There are lots of people like Vsevolod at his job because the net of our propaganda is very wide, and more countries keep falling out. In expectation of better times the translators are kept on and paid salaries. So they wander from room to room and amuse themselves as best they can since they have to put in the time. I think it’s wonderful that they are keeping the oral folk arts alive.