The October Circle

by Robert Littell

  “I heard it,” Dancho replies evasively. “W’hat’s the difference where?”

  The Racer and the Flag Holder are staring at each other grimly. “Maybe it’s consultations,” the Racer suggests, but Elisabeta shakes her head:

  “They are not in the habit of consulting us; they inform us. Besides, some of our army people went along too. No, no. Something’s definitely up.” She fiddles with an earring. “There is a rumor making the rounds that the Soviet Politburo’s already voted seven to four to use force, with Kosygin, Suslov, Podgorny and Voronov on the dove side.”

  Elisabeta plucks an orange from the bowl in the middle of the table and begins peeling it. Her long, thin fingers work quickly, stripping back petals of skin, then tucking the ends under so that the final product looks like the bud of a large orange flower. She raises her eyes and silently offers the open orange to Mendeleyev — the offer is intended, and taken, as an expression of intimacy — but he shakes his head imperceptibly, and so she attacks it herself.

  After a while the Racer asks:

  “Is there more?”

  The Rabbit nods as she swallows a section of orange. “We put together a sheet of excerpts from Pravda for internal circulation. Believe it or not, they’re comparing the situation to Hungary in fifty-six.”

  “They’re priming the pump,” concludes Octobrina. “I warned you not to get your hopes up.”

  “It’s all a bluff,” asserts Mister Dancho. “Don’t you see that? In the end, Czechoslovakia isn’t that important to them.”

  “It’s important to us,” observes Octobrina, “and that makes it important to them.”

  “The wind will carry such ideas like seeds,” declares Popov, who is having difficulty following the conversation.

  “It’s important,” the Flag Holder insists. The cigarette bobbing on his lower lip is burning dangerously near the skin, but he doesn’t appear to notice it. “What’s happening now has nothing to do with Hungary. That was a crisis of Stalinism. This is a crisis of Leninism — the first in the history of the Movement. In the end, Dubek and his Czech comrades are challenging three things that Lenin superimposed on classical Marxism: democratic centralism, the monopoly of power of the Communist Party and the ideological dogmatism with which that power is exercised.”

  Lev suddenly becomes aware of the cigarette and plucks it from his mouth. “If the Czechs succeed, they will have redefined Communism — they will have created something called Socialist Humanism.” He hesitates, then continues almost in a whisper. “I share Octobrina’s fears about hope. After all these years — “

  “Why torture ourselves?” Octobrina cries.

  “Why torture ourselves?” the Flag Holder repeats. “And yet … and yet …”

  There is a long silence.

  “There’s another side to consider,” Octobrina says finally. “Changes like the ones Dubek is proposing tend to be open-ended. What if our Russian friends are right? What if Dubek doesn’t stop at some vague finish line called Socialist Humanism? What if he reforms himself right out of the bloc?”

  “ ‘The worst workers’ party,’ “ Popov quotes, “ ‘is better than none.’ “

  “Marx?” guesses Octobrina.

  “Engels?” guesses the Racer.

  “Not at all,” snaps Mister Dancho. “It’s Lenin.”

  Popov shakes his head and supplies the source. “Rosa Luxemburg,” he says, delighted to have stumped them. “Sssssssss.”

  “What if it does lead to a restoration of capitalism?” Octobrina insists. ‘What if?”

  “No adventure is without risks,” the Flag Holder tells her.

  “Risks are what the Russians won’t take,” Octobrina bursts out.

  “Why are you all so blind? They’ll crush the Czechs under their heels.”

  “It’s not that simple,” the Flag Holder observes. “If they use force, they’ll alienate every Communist in the world. Think how the French or the Italian Communists would respond to an invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Russians will be totally isolated.”

  “The Russians won’t dare to use force,” Mister Dancho assures Octobrina, “for fear the Czechs will fight.”

  Octobrina throws up her hands in frustration. “Oh, they’ll fight all right — to the last drop of ink!”

  “The Czechs don’t have to fight,” the Racer points out. “They only have to convince the Russians they intend to fight. Tito did that in forty-eight and it kept the Russians out.”

  “Tito convinced the Russians because he was ready to fight,” Octobrina reminds him.

  “But surely the Americans will intervene, or threaten to intervene, which will amount to the same thing,” the Racer suggests. “The Americans have democratic traditions — “

  “No, no, never,” Octobrina retorts.

  “Octobrina is right about the Americans,” the Flag Holder confesses. ‘We must understand that, in some respects, Czechoslovakia is more of a threat to America than Russia ever was. Up to now, the world has had to choose between Stalinism and Capitalism, and the Americans have had no real competition. But imagine if the world had a third choice — Marxist Humanism! No, no, the Americans are dead set against Dubek.”

  “Everybody says that Capitalism and Communism are moving toward each other,” the Racer observes. “In a sense, this confirms it.”

  “With our luck,” Dancho says, “they’ll pass each other and keep going, leaving us with two extremes.”

  Octobrina sighs and follows her own trend of thoughts:

  “Nothing moves us greatly, that’s the heart of the problem. We pay textbook attention to our lives. We treat our bowel-moving and our lovemaking as if they were punctuation. We embrace our children with parentheses. We package whatever bits and pieces of self-knowledge we come by, as I’m doing now, in corrugated metaphors.”

  “We hover like falcons,” the Flag Holder says quietly, staring into the stillness of his untouched cognac, “motionless on political currents, facing into the stream but not progressing against it; making slight adjustments in the angle of a wing; above all comfortable; above all apathetic.” He looks up. “Every now and then we narrow our beady eyes and swoop down, spittle streaking from our beaks, for a juicy intellectual kill.”

  “What an image,” Octobrina cries excitedly. “That would make an absolutely wonderful still life.”

  “Well, I think it’s not quite fair,” Mister Dancho starts to say, but Popov, in a world of his own, interrupts:

  “We cleanse our souls the way we clean our windows,” he recites, articulating each word as if he is composing, “with the curtains already hanging on them.” His voice peters out and he looks around and smiles foolishly.

  “Who said that?” Octobrina inquires.

  “I wasn’t quoting anybody. I said that.”

  “Oh, Atanas, it was very lovely,” Octobrina tells him.

  “We cleanse our souls,” Popov begins again. “Sssssssss.” He can’t remember the rest.

  “That’s all right,” Octobrina covers his hand with hers. “I remember that it was very lovely.”

  Later, while Stuka bends over the sideboard moistening his pencil point on the tip of his tongue and adding up the bill, Mister Dancho comes back to Dubek:

  “If he is as important as we think, Lev, then he must do everything to survive. No holds barred.”

  The Flag Holder considers that for a moment. “Perhaps” is all he says.

  Dancho is ready to let it drop, but the Racer presses Mendeleyev.

  “You say do everything to survive,” the Flag Holder says. “It seems to me that even Dubek — that especially Dubek — must draw the line somewhere. You must fight the demons without becoming the demons you fight. This is central to the struggles taking place in the world today. When you adopt the enemy’s tactics, or his weapons, or even his double-speak, even if you win, you lose — because you are the enemy. This was the error Lenin made.” A thought occurs to Mendeleyev. “Malraux once asked Nehru: ‘What has bee
n your most difficult task?’ And Nehru replied: ‘To make a just state with just means.’ “

  “You’re saying the ends don’t justify the means,” the Racer interjects, following the conversation intently.

  “I’m saying that ends and means are the same thing.”

  Stuka folds the check on a plate and places it on the table. Each member of the Circle calculates his share and puts the money on the plate; Dancho, gallant as always, insists on paying for Octobrina. The four dinners and wine and tea and the Flag Holder’s cognac come to fifteen leva. With one leva for Stuka, the total is sixteen.

  “My very dear ladies and gentlemen,” Octobrina announces, “we can’t change the world, but if we hurry we can still catch the last trolley.” It is ten to two, and the trolleys stop running at two.

  “I think I’ll meander over to Club Balkan,” Mister Dancho says casually. “How about it, Tacho?”

  On weekends the Hotel Balkan keeps an upstairs bar open until four, when the trolleys start running again. It is always full of foreign tourists and well-heeled Bulgarians. The prices are steep, but the liquor is imported.

  “Why not?” Tacho agrees amicably.

  The main dining room is empty except for two waiters clearing the last tables; they are required to set them for lunch before they are allowed to go home for the night. In the lobby, another waiter is talking into the wall telephone.

  “Hold on a second,” he shouts. Letting the telephone dangle, he blows his nose into an enormous handkerchief and inspects the results. Then he picks up the telephone. “Yellowish green. Yes. Yes. All right.” He hangs up and complains to nobody in particular, “My God, it’s really dreadful to have an intelligent wife.”

  On the far end of the lobby, on a long wall directly opposite the coatracks, hangs a floor-to-ceiling mirror in which you can see the rest of the lobby— the coatracks, the wall telephone, the door marked “Sitters” and another marked “Pointers,” and the heavy double door leading to the street. It is only when you stand directly in front of the mirror and don’t see yourself in it that you realize it is a painting of a mirror.

  It is a joke of long standing to line up before “the ultimate in Socialist realism,” as Octobrina likes to call it, on the way out of Krimm. Without a word they line up now. Mister Dancho tugs on his cuffs. Octobrina peers at her three-quarter profile and adjusts her shawl. Popov centers the knot of his tie. Elisabeta puts on a new layer of lipstick, then blots her lips on a piece of toilet paper. The Racer unbuttons the top button of his shirt and rearranges his shirt collar so that it overlaps the collar of his sport jacket.

  Only the Flag Holder doesn’t play the game. Instead, he stares into the mirror as if he has noticed, for the first time, the fact of his nonexistence.

  2

  MISTER DANCHO wants to use the back entrance to Hotel Balkan, which means going out of their way, but the Racer says nobody will bother them at this ungodly hour, so they make straight for the great revolving door with its corroded brass handles and gold-lettered “BALKAN” in English on the glass. The lettering reads “ ALKA ” on the panel the Racer pushes with his palms and “BAL AN” on Mister Dancho’s.

  The teen-age girls pounce as they step into the lobby.

  “Look, Mister Dancho,” they squeal, clustering around him like iron filings on a magnet.

  “Oh, do us a trick,” cries one, smacking away with open lips on a piece of gum.

  “The thing you did on television — the thing where you cut the rope and make it whole again.”

  “Do the bit where you — “

  “No tricks, no tricks,” Dancho calls good-naturedly, pushing through the group after the Racer, who has started up the stairs toward Club Balkan.

  A tall girl, bolder than the others, tugs at Dancho’s blazer. “An autograph then,” she demands, tilting her head coquettishly and batting false eyelashes, one of which is peeling away at the edge.

  Dancho turns back. “Open your shirt,” he instructs her. The girls giggle — until they see her reach for the first button.

  “Oh, Maya, don’t.”

  “Come away, Maya.”

  Maya unbuttons her shirt down to her waist, exposing full breasts sagging into a washed-out brassiere. Dancho uncaps a felt-tipped pen, grips her shoulder to hold her steady and scrawls “Dancho” on the swell of breast that spills over the brassiere.

  The girls stare after Dancho as he walks away. From the first landing, he glances back. The tall girl is buttoning her shirt as her friends pull her toward the revolving door. “Bitch,” Dancho hears one of them hiss at her. “How could you?”

  Dancho catches up with the Racer inside the threshold of Club Balkan.

  “You missed the fun,” he tells him, but the Racer makes no answer, and the two of them stand there for a moment to get their night vision. Gradually Club Balkan emerges from the darkness — a long, narrow room, dimly lit, with a bar down one side and small round Formica tables down the other. There is no decor, just four windowless walls. The bar is packed, three and four deep in places, with Japanese members of an export exhibition currently being held in one of the hotel’s banquet halls. The tables are taken up by foreign tourists and a sprinkling of Bulgarians.

  Mister Dancho strains for a glimpse of Katya at the tables nearest the door. Not finding her, he starts down the room between the bar and the tables. The Racer follows. Elbows jostle them where the crowd at the bar is the thickest. Snatches of conversation drift out of the darkness.

  “Couldn’t sleep — someone was building Communism with goddamn jackhammers across the street — “

  “Life shouldn’t be an open book — it should be a poem. Open or closed, it should be a poem.”

  “They have them at ZUM, right next to the grocery counter with the imported mushrooms. West German. Smooth, aren’t they? Here, feel — “

  “Workers are shits — they can be bought off for an extra wet dream a week. Look at what happened in Paris — “

  “The worst is having to listen to things you can’t stand from someone with bad breath. Did you — “

  “ — shortcoming of governments is that they balance conflicting interests instead of determining where the rights of the matter lay.”

  In the twilight the Racer bumps into a journalist he knows. “Dobr veer, Marko — what do you hear?”

  Marko flings an arm over the Racer’s shoulder and draws him aside. “My editor just decided he’d better spend his budget before the end of the year if he wanted to get more money next year, right? So he gathered us together today and asked who spoke English. The lady who raised her hand gets to go to London, England, for a month! Who speaks French? A horse’s ass is off to Paris, France! Who speaks Spanish? Ha! I speak Spanish! I’m off to Madrid, Spain, next week! Say” — Marko hesitates — “how’s that race of yours shaping up? I’m toying with the idea of maybe putting some money on your boys. What do you think?”

  Tacho considers the matter. “What I think is: the man who bets on a bicycle race will never profit from his mistake.”

  “Funny,” Marko says dryly. “Very funny.”

  Further on a man and a woman scrape back their chairs and start for the door. The third man at the table looks up from his cognac. “Sa/ui,” he calls, waving Mister Dancho and Tacho toward the free places.

  “Salut, salut. Kak ste?” Dancho says vaguely. Suddenly he recognizes the man: he is the film director known as “Poleon” after Napoleon because of his dictatorial manner on the set. “Ah, you, Poleon, I couldn’t make you out in this cave.” Dancho slides into a seat. “Found an apartment yet?”

  Poleon has divorced his wife but is still living with her because neither one of them has been able to find an apartment. “Still looking,” he mutters sourly. “Only thing worse than living with a wife, take it from someone who knows, is living with an ex-wife. If you get wind of something, please god let me know. I’m going out of my mind. It’s been eight months now. I’d sell my grandmother for an apartment.”<
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  Dancho laughs appreciatively and summons the waiter with a wave of his hand. “Three cognacs. And none of your Pliska three-star dry rot. It corrodes the stomach lining. Imported, you understand?”

  “How long have you been back?” Poleon asks conversationally. He is a heavy man gone to seed, and what hair he has left falls in long, pasted-down strands across his freckled scalp.

  “Just got in,” Mister Dancho replies, his eyes scanning the room for a sign of Katya. “I played in London, England.” Mustering what enthusiasm he can, he proceeds to tell Poleon about the embassy reception and the lapel buttons.

  The waiter sets three cognacs on the table, and places a cash register receipt face up on a small dish.

  “What are you up to these days?” the Racer asks. Poleon has had a huge success with a film entitled I.D. The picture won some sort of award at the Berlin Film Festival, and actually ran for ten days in a New York art theater after the New York Times called the Bulgarian director “half poet, half magician.” Since then Poleon has done two other films, but neither one has been released by the censors.

  Poleon takes another sip of cognac and laughs dryly. ‘Tm in the most delicate stage of film making, which is to say I’m negotiating with your friend and mine, the censor. He has certain ideas about which camera angles or shreds of dialogue or gestures contribute to the building of Socialism. I on the other hand have certain ideas about which camera angles or shreds of dialogue or gestures contribute to the creation of an artistic entity commonly referred to as a motion picture. We project the rough cut again and again, we sip mineral water because his section chief is too cheap to authorize vodka, and we bargain. Oh how we bargain. I agree to cut a close-up of the hero’s eyes and he in return agrees to leave in a particular inflection that gives to the dialogue a shade of meaning not apparent when it was passed by the scenario censor eight months ago. We’ve been at it every morning for three weeks now.”

  “What do you save the afternoons for?” Mister Dancho asks jokingly, but Poleon takes the question seriously.

  “My afternoons are taken up with a different censor. We go over, scene by scene, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word, syllable by syllable, the scenario for my next film. He has certain ideas about what will contribute to the building of Socialism. Et cetera. Et cetera. I once calculated I spend three fifths of my professional time with the censors and two fifths actually working at my metier.” Poleon glances at his watch. “Another good hour till the trolleys start — might as well.” And he signals the waiter for a refill. “Jesus, I hope to god it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”