‘But what difference is there between a member of the intelligentsia and an intellectual?’
‘There’s a very big difference,’ he replied. ‘I can only try to explain it allegorically. Do you understand what that means?’
I nodded.
‘When you were still very little, there were a hundred thousand people living in this city who were paid for kissing the ass of a loathsome red dragon - which you probably don’t even remember . . .’
I shook my head. Once in my young days I really had seen a red dragon, but I’d already forgotten what it looked like - the only thing I could remember was my own fear. It was unlikely that Pavel Ivanovich had that incident in mind.
‘Of course, those hundred thousand people hated the dragon, and they dreamed of being ruled by the green toad who fought against the dragon. So, anyway, they came to an arrangement with the toad, poisoned the dragon with lipstick that they got from the CIA and started living a new life.’
‘But what have the intell -’
‘Wait,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘At first they thought that under the toad they would be doing exactly the same as before, only they’d get ten times as much money for it. But it turned out that instead of a hundred thousand ass-kissers there was only a demand for three professionals working in three eight-hour shifts to give the toad a never-ending royal blowjob. And which of the hundred thousand those three would be, would be decided by an open competition, in which candidates would not only have to demonstrate their advanced professional skills, but also the ability to smile optimistically with the corners of their mouths while they were at work . . .’
‘I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread.’
‘Well, this is the thread. Those hundred thousand people were called the intelligentsia. And those three are called intellectuals.’
I have one quirk that is rather hard to explain. I can’t stand it when anyone uses the word blowjob in my presence - outside the context of work, at least. I don’t know why, but it just drives me wild. And in addition, Pavel Ivanovich’s explanation seemed like such a crude, boorish hint at my own profession that I even forgot about the additional fee I’d been planning to ask for.
‘Are you talking about a blowjob so that I can understand? On the basis of my experience of life?’
‘Of course not, my dear,’ he said patronizingly. ‘I explain things in those terms because then I start to understand the point myself. And the point here is not your experience of life, but mine . . .’
The next time he started reading a magazine during his flogging. That was insulting enough. But when he started prodding the article with his finger and muttering, ‘Why don’t you just keep your mouth shut, you bastard,’ I began to get annoyed and interrupted the procedure, that is, I planted the suggestion of a pause in his mind.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Tell me, are we doing a flagellation here, or is this a library day?’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said, ‘this interview’s outrageous. It’s absolutely incredible!’
He slapped his fingers down on the magazine.
‘I’ve got nothing against detective novels, but I can’t stand it when the people who write them start explaining how we ought to arrange things in Russia.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just like some underage prostitute who’s been given a lift by a long-distance truck driver so she can give him a blowjob suddenly stops work, looks up and starts giving him instructions about how to flush the carburettor in a frost.’
Pavel Ivanovich clearly didn’t understand just how insulting that sounds in a conversation with a sex worker. But I became aware of my upsurge of rage before it overwhelmed me, so that my soul was immediately flooded with a calm joy.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked in a perfectly natural voice. ‘Maybe she’s serviced so many truckers that she’s picked up all the subtle points and now she really can teach him how to flush his carburettor.’
‘Darling, I pity the kind of truck drivers who need to take advice from an underage blowjob provider. They won’t get very far.’
‘An underage blowjob provider’ - that was what he said. Why, what a . . . I caught another outburst of fury in the very instant it began, and stopped the anger before it could manifest itself.
This was great. It was like jumping on to a surfboard during a storm and coasting along over the waves of destructive emotions that can’t even touch you. If only it had always been like this, I thought, so many people would have lived longer lives . . . I did-n’t argue with Pavel Ivanovich about the substance of what he said. It’s best if we foxes who follow the Supreme Tao don’t have any opinions of our own on such matters. But one thing was clear: Pavel Ivanovich was an invaluable exercise machine for training the spirit.
Unfortunately, I realized too late that the load was too heavy for me. The first time I lost control it didn’t lead to any injuries. I was driven wild by a phrase about Nabokov (not to mention the fact that he had a photocopy of an article entitled ‘The appearance of the hairdresser to the waiters: the phenomenon of Nabokov in American culture’ lying on his desk).
I had loved Nabokov since the 1930s, ever since I used to get hold of his Paris texts from highly placed clients in the NKVD. What a breath of fresh air those typed pages were in Stalin’s gloomy capital! I remember I was particularly struck by one place in the ‘Paris Poem’, which I didn’t come across until after the war:
Life is irreversible -
It will be staged in a new theatre,
In a different way, with different actors.
But the ultimate happiness
Is to fold its magic carpet
And make the ornament of the present
Match the pattern of the past . . .
Vladimir Vladimirovich wrote that about us foxes. That’s exactly what we do, constantly folding the carpet. We watch the endless performance played out by bustling human actors who behave as if they were the first people ever to perform on the stage. They all die off with incredible speed, and their place is taken by the new intake, who begin playing out the same old parts with the same old pomposity.
Of course, the scenery keeps changing, sometimes far too much. But the play itself hasn’t changed for a long, long time. And since we can remember more exalted times, we are constantly tormented by a yearning for lost beauty and meaning, so those words touched many strings at once . . . And by the way, that carpet from ‘Paris Poem’ was later inherited by Humbert Humbert:
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
I know what make it is. It was woven in Paris on a summer day sometime around 1938, under gigantic white clouds frozen in the azure heavens, and it travelled to America in a roll . . . It took all the abomination of the Second World War, all the monstrosity of the choices that it dictated, for that carpet to be hung up in Humbert’s reception room . . . and then this scholar of the humanities blurts out:
‘Happiness, my darling, is such a contradictory thing. Dostoevsky questioned whether it was permissible if it was paid for by a child’s tear. But Nabokov, on the other hand, doubted whether happiness could ever be possible without it.’