“Who throws away bread, if there’s nothing in the stores?” said Antonina Sergeevna, starting up in horror.
“The Mafia,” Perkhushkov said sternly. “The Mafia throws bread away.”
“My G-o-d…”
“Yes. And I can say this out loud to you, because you and I have nothing to fear, but for exposing this secret the Mafia killed all the police commissars, all the republic’s prosecutors, all the carabinieri, and now it’s holding the members of their families—including great aunts—hostage to unceasing terror. And the Mafia itself lives in luxurious palaces and cathedrals and laughs loudly.”
Perkhushkov was so upset by the sight of the luxurious palaces and cathedrals built with loathing by the simple oppressed medieval masses that he couldn’t even look at these odious edifices, which were barely perceptible through the smoke, and so covered his eyes with his hands; in fact, the entire Soviet delegation walked along with their eyes shut tight. A completely different, noble feeling seized him at the sight of the dilapidated hovels of simple Italians, and it was with particular warmth and tenderness that his eyes followed simple unemployed folk and the simple oppressed masses crawling by on crutches, and he even caught up with one of them and gave him a ruble with Lomonosov’s profile. If he ran into someone wealthier, Perkhushkov clenched his fists and ground his teeth in rage, and between his eyebrows a fierce fold appeared instantly, smoothing out for good only on the way home when the train switched wheels at the border in Chop. From the very beginning Perkhushkov was tormented by homesickness. He began pining and feeling uncomfortable while still waiting for his passport to be issued. Worse! As soon as the word “Italy” had been pronounced, Perkhushkov was pierced by such intolerable anguish that he flew out into the courtyard like a pterodactyl and embraced a birch tree planted recently during a voluntary labor day in such a death grip that he had to be torn off together with the leaves and bark: before parting he had wanted to at least drink his fill of birch sap. Sitting in the airplane he pined: he pressed greedily to the window and watched with swollen eyes as his homeland slipped back. When the airplane crossed the border, Perkhushkov felt as though he’d been pierced by a white-hot rod, he was overcome, stricken. He tore himself from his seat, knocking over the packets of sugar and salt, the plastic cup with mineral water, and the meat patty in tomato sauce—so beloved and familiar!—and dashed, sobbing, to the emergency exit to unclamp the locks. It was only with great difficulty that he was held back by two stewardesses, the flight engineer, and the second pilot, whose eyes were also swollen from tears and longing for our native buckwheat expanses. Similar attacks of nostalgia, ever more frequent, overwhelmed him in Italy as welclass="underline" at night he tossed about and bit his clenched, whitened fists; and during the day he sat in his room on the bed with a lackluster gaze, his head lowered, his arms limp as seaweed at his side, and continually muttered: “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” His comrades invited him to go to dilapidated theaters, drink disagreeable wine, ride in a leaky gondola—how could he? So it’s understandable that on encountering a compatriot—one of our guys, from Tver—Perkhushkov threw himself on the fellow and clutched him so powerfully that the guy suffocated in Perkhushkov’s embrace, in connection with which there was even a bit of unpleasantness about the corpse, an explanatory note had to be written to the institution which had sent the deceased to the capitalist country and a little fuss made about a pension for the widow and orphans, but that’s unimportant, what’s important is the agonizing patriotic feeling which seized Perkhushkov on his return: a feeling of pride in his homeland, her skies and other analogous spaces, her majestic achievements, broad step, steady stride, and high dairy yield.
“The homeland,” cried an agitated Perkhushkov, “oh, what could be dearer than the homeland in a world of Final Resolutions? Nothing! And indeed, how wise are the golden Final Resolutions with their piercing light, how timely and yet how unexpectedly they occur, with what profound heat they scorch our souls, even like unto a gleaming sword, double-edged, bilaterally sinuous, filled with untold radiance, indestructible, indivisible, invincible forever and ever more! And truly—how would we live without Resolutions, we, who are pitiful, white, naked, blind, and trembling, like the cold worms and legless water larvae? O, shall we be likened unto the transparent lice, who in dense ignorance and animal unbelief gnaw the green leaf; O, shall we be likened unto the simple insects, who throng unaware in a drop of well water? O, shall we be likened unto the undifferentiated amoebas thirsting and fearing the division of their very selves—and sinfully thirsting in vain, for nothing which divideth in itself will stand; O, how dark, empty, and fearful it would be for us without Resolutions, how timidly we crawl between the stony desert’s mountain outcrops, starting in fear at the least flutter or squeak, how pitifully we whine, stretching our hands, tentacles, metamerie segments, chewers, pincers, and cilia into the utter darkness, which giveth forth only cold and a fetid roar: enlighten us! O, enlighten us! And how dimly the chill, extinguished, previous Final Resolutions glimmer, as if coated with fog and rust, for they have lost their currency and topical interest, like a maid loseth the color of youth, like a rose—its springtime pollen…
“And behold, the hour chimeth, and it cannot be foreseen, a voice thundereth—and who would dare envision it? The heavens open wide and the shrouds are rent, and the hundred-eyed Beast, whose number is twelve, sort of all in purple and scarlet, revealeth himself in a terrible thunder, rolling his legs:
“—and a papakha hat of costly lamb’s wool is his miter, and his clothes are of wool, the finest spun and the color of evening mists;
“—and his breast and his loins are of rubies and purest unpolluted gold, his shroud is double-breasted, and in number his snaps equal the sands of the seas;
“—at his head lies the star Saryn, a corpse lieth at his feet; girdled is he with inexpressible crenulations;
“—and, raising high a horn, with a voice like the sound of the waters he thrice exclaimeth: Behold, behold, behold the Final Resolutions!
“And with uncompared strength, and sound equally beyond compare, the Beast unfoldeth the list of Final Resolutions, and their light, my compatriots—their light was like unto the explosion of a thousand suns, and seeing it, all gloom, foulness, and filth ran, hiding from the face of the earth, letting forth a stream of helpless maledictions.
“So, describe this, my friend, my young poet,” Perkhushkov asked Lyonechka, “describe it as a citizen, as a soldier, one of the ranks. And may this book be as sweet as honey on our tongues, in our belly let it be ever as bitter as the root of the wormwood of Kara Kum, as the medicinal resin of the Pamir caves, as the salt of the lakes of Elton and Baskunchak, may its effect be ever purifying as the Carlsbad salts.”
Perkhushkov peeled off Svetlana, stood up, and straightened his shirt, vest, army jacket, overcoat, cloak, parka, shroud, and black cape with an azure lining—he straightened everything that he had on or imagined he wore.
“And as far as the homeland is concerned,” he said from the threshold, piercing a terrified Judy with his forty eyes, “I’ve explained it. Whosoever abideth in it, he will abide. As for those who can’t—we’ll find the right abode for them.” And, narrowing some of his eyes, he flashed his spurs and left.