Adaptations spun by Moscow University students of literature, glum lieutenants from Warsaw, and elderly intellectuals of all sorts gave these classic stories a new life. As they passed through thugs, the stories were born yet again. Thus, in a surreal cultural-linguistic leap, Kent became a verb, skentovatsya, to “bekent,” to form a friendship, which in this setting describes forming a criminal association. On second thought, the word “conkent,” had it existed, would convey the meaning with greater precision.
At the colony, Kent met Tarzan (Vladimir Andreyevich Rozhnov, born October 29, 1936).
Tarzan was freed two months before Kent and awaited him outside the zone. Though neither of the young men would have characterized himself as a homosexual, they did make rooster, wherein the stronger, more massive Tarzan invariably assumed the superior position.
Both youths lost their parents early in life. Kent’s father, a tankist, was killed in the Battle of Kursk, and his mother died of typhus during evacuation. Tarzan’s father, an infantry lieutenant, was killed during the first weeks of the war, and his mother went from one set of hands to another.
Officially classified as individuals without a fixed address, Kent and Tarzan risk being picked up at any moment and taken back to the camps, this time as adults, for violation of residency requirements. Malakhovka has given them something of a refuge, thanks to a fortuitous meeting with another former young convict, whose mother had married a militia lieutenant. Bekenting the militia is the best bekenting of all.
The young men broke into a dacha that, judging by a large painting and a multitude of photographs on the walls, belonged to a violinist, and for the first time in their lives, they enjoyed something that could be described as domestic bliss.
Neither Kent nor Tarzan read newspapers, but they know enough to fear that an individual with an exaggerated nose (the term is nosatyy, the nosed one) might use a syringe of his own design to deliver a malignant injection. They know that Jews sit on sacks of money and use diamonds in secret prayer rituals. More than anything, they sense the fear of the nosed ones, and after years in camps and colonies for young criminals, they know that fear begets weakness and weakness opportunity.
If the nosed ones aren’t yet outside the law, they soon will be.
* * *
Lewis realizes that their encounter is imminent.
The first punch to his face will smudge the makeup and reveal the color of his skin. Gunfire — an uncommon event on Russia’s streets — will ultimately bring attention to Levinson and Kogan.
He will have to take one punch and fall facedown, letting the thugs kick his prostrate body. Lewis’s objective is a decisive, spectacular, humiliating defeat. He will play a coward, and maybe that will give the thugs enough satisfaction that they will go easier on his back.
“Ey, ty, bratishka, postoy,” shouts Tarzan. Hey, you, brother, wait.
Lewis turns around, flashing the men a buttery smile.
“A kto mene zovyot?” he asks with an exaggerated Yiddish accent. And who calls?
He will play Yid. He’ll give them uvular r’s, with e’s replacing ya’s, with questions that answer questions (and why not?), with phrases that begin with prepositions, and with inflections that soar. He’ll give them a nar. A fool. He’ll give them Tevye, Menakhem-Mendel, Benjamin III. He’ll give them a caricature of caricatures.
He would do Senderl, too, but he doesn’t have a dress. A critic might object that all the rogues listed above have their endearing qualities. Endearing to some audiences, Lewis would respond. To him, these characters are only slightly more appealing than Comrade Jim.
“Zakurit’ est’?” asks one of the thugs. Do you have a smoke?
“Prostite mene, ya ne kuryu,” says Lewis with a solicitous smile, in butchered Russian. Forgive me, but I don’t smoke.
“Kent, look, a Yid!”
“Ya takoy zhe Sovetsky grazhdanin kak vy,” says Lewis proudly. I am a Soviet citizen, just like you.
“Khuy ty. A nu goni den’gu!” says Kent. Hand over the money, dickhead.
“Take it! Take it, comrade. Just don’t beat me!” whines Lewis.
With a shaking hand, Lewis hands Kent the money — ninety rubles and some change.
“A nu Tarzanchik, vrezh yemu,” says Kent, who in some situations couldn’t help sounding effeminate. Slam him.
Lewis is wide open. When it comes, the slam of Tarzan’s fist is as halfhearted as the MGB soldier’s knock on Levinson’s door.
“Govno! Maratsya ne khochetsya,” says Tarzan, spitting through his teeth and kicking Lewis in the ribs. Shit! Don’t want to step in it.
“Same here, asshole,” whispers Lewis as his hand fondles the handle of Lieutenant Sadykov’s pistol.
7
Lewis doesn’t look his best when he walks through the door of Kogan’s dacha. The fist has smudged the white makeup on his face, and a chunk of ice Lewis used to minimize the swelling returned half of his face to its original color.
As he walks in, Lewis notices a small spetsovka overcoat and a small military hat on the bentwood Thonet coatrack.
The tone of conversation he hears is different from what he has come to expect from Levinson and Kogan: it’s clear, with just a bit more projection. Lewis steps back outside and, with a handful of snow, removes what’s left of his white face.
There is a young lady at the dacha.
“Kima Yefimovna, this is my friend Friederich Robertovich Lewis,” says Kogan.
For an instant, Lewis gets the impression that Kima looks at him with a volatile combination of bashfulness and interest. Lewis believes that while all women instantly pass judgment on men they meet, Russian women are more likely to act on their initial impulses.
Of course, men of forty and older are known to misread the looks they get from younger women. Lewis reminds himself that the girl is probably not longing for old men like himself (he is forty-two). This has to be doubly true for even older men like Levinson and Kogan.
Something about Kima seems to conjure images of a Young Communist from wartime propaganda, a selfless heroine who spits in the faces of the Nazis. He can imagine her saying something like “You can kill me now, but others will come to avenge me,” or perhaps “Long live Stalin!” She seems constricted, cold, irresistible.
Lewis bows like a Chekhovian fool.
“Pleasure to meet you…”
Kima’s eyes — emerald, hardened with a drop of cobalt — reduce him to babbling idiocy. Colors this intense should be used lightly, and, mercifully, the shape of Kima’s eyes is more Asian than Slavic. Her patronymic — Yefimovna — is likely Jewish, though.
Clearly, the bow and the officious greeting make the girl uncomfortable. That is just fine, Lewis reminds himself. She is too young. Besides, his own life changed irrevocably the moment he stepped into the blood of Lieutenant Sadykov.
“Kima Yefimovna is the finest source of local news,” Kogan continues obliviously. “She lives in the railroad barracks and works in bottle redemption. All the news reaches her first.”
The bottle redemption station is an odd place for Kogan to find friends.
These are dungeons where drunks bring their glassware. That crowd is motivated by simple incentives: redeem the bottle you bought the night before and get enough change for the first beer of the morning. Decent people show up in such places every now and then, usually days before payday, when money runs short, carrying milk bottles and wide-mouthed jars, determined to avoid conversations with fellow customers and to emerge with a pocketful of change.