“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the poet Fish. “I’ve got a business proposition for you. Ever snorted horse tranquilizer?”
“I beg?”
“Horse tranquilizer. Just how long exactly have you been out of The City?”
Vladimir presumed he meant New York City and was shocked to remember that no matter what they did out here in Prava and Budapest and Cracow, The City—that long grid of blasted streets and no apologies—still remained the bull’s-eye of the galaxy. “Two months,” he said.
“It’s everywhere,” Fish said. “In all the clubs. You can’t be an artist in New York and not snort the horse. Trust me, I know.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s like a frontal lobotomy. It clears your head out when there’s gridlock. You think of nothing. And here’s the best part—it lasts only fifteen minutes per snort. After that you’re back to doing your thing. Some even report having a renewed sense of self. Of course, that’s mainly the prose writers. They’ll say anything.”
“Are there any side effects?” Vladimir asked.
“None. Let’s go out on the balcony. I’ll show you.”
“Let me think—”
“That’s precisely what you don’t want to do. Look, I’ve got this veterinarian near Lyon, he’s on the board of a major pharmaceutical there. We can corner the Eastern European market with your PravaInvest. And what’s a more likely distribution point than Prava?”
“Yes, well,” Vladimir said. “But is it legal?”
“Sure,” Fish said.
“Why not?” he added, seeing that the matter was not yet put to rest.
“Well, it helps if you own a horse,” he said finally. “I just bought a couple of sickly ones down in Kentucky. Come on already.” And he led him out of the room, as Morgan and Alexandra stared from their couch, alarmed at the strange spectacle of PravaInvest’s executive vice president following intently on the heels of a leprechaun.
The balcony overlooked the bus terminal, which, despite the majestic glint of the full moon, remained a tortured patchwork of cement and corrugated metal.
And then there were the buses:
From the West came the two-story, deluxe models with television screens flickering and air-conditioners tracing their green exhaust against the asphalt. These would disgorge streams of clean, young backpackers from Frankfurt, Brussels, and Turin, who immediately set to celebrating their newfound East Bloc freedom by showering each other with roadside Uneskos, flashing peace signs to the waiting cabbies.
From the East came the appropriately named IKARUS buses: terminally ill, their low, gray frames shuddering to the finish line; the doors opening slowly and obstinately to let out the tired families from Bratislava and Kosice, or the aging professionals from Sofia and Kishinev who held their briefcases close to their sparkling polyester suits as they made their way to the nearby metro station. And Vladimir could almost smell these briefcases, which, like his father’s, likely contained the leftovers of a meaty lunch packed for the road, leftovers that might now serve as dinner—Golden Prava was getting expensive for the average Bulgarian.
But Vladimir’s examination of this unhappy dichotomy, a dichotomy which was in some ways the story of his life, which brought on feelings of both elation and remorse—the elation of having a special, privileged knowledge of both East and West, the remorse of fitting finally into neither—was interrupted by the stinging, crystal-edged horse powder which the poet Fish administered to him nasally and then
not
much
happened.
Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. Something, of course, happened, even while Vladimir withdrew into the upper stories of his brain where the thin mountain air was not conducive to the cognitive process. The buses kept arriving and departing but now they were just buses (buses, you know, transport, point A to point B) and Fish rolling up and down the balcony naked, howling, and waving his tiny purple penis at the moon was just a young man with his purple penis, howling. Nothing much was happening in a big way. In fact, nonexistence was no longer so unfathomable (and how many times had he, as a morose child, shut his eyes and plugged his ears with cotton, trying to imagine The Void), but rather a fairly natural progression of this goofy happiness. The floating, bottomless joy of anesthesia.
And then the fifteen minutes were up and, like clockwork, Vladimir was noiselessly airlifted into his body; Fish was putting on his clothes.
Vladimir stood up. He sat down. He got up again. Anything for sensory experience. He sliced at his fingers with his business card for a bit, before presenting it to the poet. Very enjoyable. He was ready to plunge into the Tavlata.
“I’ll send you a starter kit with instructions,” Fish was saying. “And also some of my poetry.”
“I have fallen under the influence of John Donne,” he added, buttoning up his funky elfin tunic.
“SO, ARE YOU a good person?” Morgan asked.
It was five in the morning. After the party. An island in the middle of the Tavlata, connected to the Lesser Quarter by a single footbridge of uncertain origin; an isle that seemed all but abandoned by Prava’s vague municipal services; an overgrown jumble of mammoth trees and the little shrubs that clung to them the way baby elephants rub up against the feet of their mothers. They were sitting on the grass behind a tremendous oak with its boughs fully leafed despite the advance of autumn; this redoubtable old-timer welcomed in the passing seasons at his own discretion. On the other side of the footbridge, high above them, moonlight fell on the spindly buttresses of the castle’s cathedral, giving St. Stanislaus the appearance of a giant spider which had somehow scampered over the castle walls and settled in for the night.
The question was whether or not he was a good person.
“I have to preface this by saying I’m drunk,” he said.
“I’m drunk, too. Just tell the truth.”
The truth. How did it come to this? Just a minute ago he was kissing her alcohol-soaked mouth, feeling under her armpits for the wetness he loved, rubbing himself against her thigh, getting a voyeuristic excitement from the passing beam of his car’s headlights—devoted Jan was keeping an eye on them from the embankment.
“Speaking comparatively, I’m a better person than most I know.” This was a lie. He had only to think of Cohen to know he was lying. “All right, I’m not a great person per se, but I want to be a good person to you. I’ve been good to others in the past.”
What the hell kind of conversation was this? She was leaning against a rotting log next to some kind of sacrificial heap of used Fanta cans and condom wrappers; her hair was tangled with weeds; there was a lipstick smudge on the tiny, retroussé tip of her nose; and Vladimir’s dribble was hanging from her chin.
Was Vladimir a good person? No. But he mistreated others only because the world had mistreated him. Modern justice for the postmorality set.
“You want to be good to me,” she was saying, her voice surprisingly steady, even as she drunkenly tipped back and forth from the slightest breeze.
“Yes,” Vladimir said. “And I’d like to know you better. Unquestionably.”
“You really want to hear about what it was like to grow up in Cleveland? In a suburb? My family? Being the oldest child? The only girl? Um . . . Basketball camp? Can you fathom a girls’ basketball camp, Vladimir? In Medina County, Ohio? What’s more, do you even care? Do you want to know why sometimes I’d rather be out camping than in a café? How I hate reading other people’s poems just because I have to? And how I hate listening to people all the time like your friend Cohen when he starts going on about his damn Paris in the twenties?”
“Yes,” Vladimir said. “I want to know all of it. Absolutely.”
“Why?”
It wasn’t an easy question. There were no tangible answers. He would have to make something up.
While he was thinking, a brisk wind started and the clouds rolled northward, so that when he lifted his head straight up and ignored the fact that he
was at the very epicenter of the city, it was possible to imagine the island afloat and traveling south, navigating the twists and bends of the Tavlata until it finally emerged in the Adriatic Sea. A little more sailing then and they could beach their island ship on the shores of Corfu; frolic amid the rustle of tiny olive trees, the harmonies of the goldfinches. Anything to survive this interrogation.
“Look,” Vladimir said. “You hate it when Cohen starts talking Paris and the whole cult of the expatriate. But I have to say: There is something to it. The most beautiful three lines in literature that I’ve ever read are the very last lines of Tropic of Cancer. Now let me lay down the caveats first: By saying what I’m saying, I’m not sanctioning the misogynist, race-baiting Henry Miller as a human being, and continue to cast grave doubts on his abilities as a writer. I am only expressing my admiration for the last few lines of this particular novel . . . Anyway, Henry Miller is standing by the banks of the Seine, he’s been through just about every kind of poverty and humiliation possible. And he writes something like (and excuse me if I’m misquoting): ‘The sun is setting. I can feel this river flowing through me—its soil, its changing climate, its ancient past. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed.’ ”
He wiggled his hand in between her two warm palms. “I don’t know if I’m a good person or a bad person,” Vladimir said. “Perhaps it’s not possible to know. But right now I am the happiest man alive. This river—its soil, its climate, its ancient past—being with you at five in the morning in the middle of this river, in the middle of this city. It makes me feel—”
She pressed his own hand to his mouth. “Stop it,” she said. “If you don’t want to answer my question, then don’t. But it’s something I want you to think about. Oh, Vladimir! Listen to you! Not sanctioning some poor Henry Miller as a human being. I’m not even sure what you mean, but I know it’s not pretty . . .” She turned away from him, and he was left to stare into the stern little bun of her hair.
“Look, I like you,” she said suddenly. “I really do. You’re smart and sweet and clever, and I think you want to do right by people. You’ve really brought the community together with Cagliostro, you know. You’ve given a lot of people their first chance. But I feel that . . . in the long run . . . that you’ll never really let me into your life. I feel that after spending just one day with you. And I wonder if it’s because you think I’m just this idiot from Shaker Heights, or whether there’s something terrible you don’t want me to know.”
“I see,” Vladimir said. His mind was racing for an answer but there was little he could say that would make her believe him. Maybe, for the first time in a long time, it was best not to say anything.
On the bank opposite the castle, the first touches of dawn were setting light to the gold dome of the National Theater that flared above the black toes of Stalin’s Foot like a holy bunion; a tram full of early workers was crossing a nearby bridge with enough rumble to send tremors through their little isle. And just then the wind turned ugly, conspiring with Vladimir’s plan to wrap his arms around her. Her silk blouse provided poor traction for his embrace, but he could feel her, infinitely warm and solid and smelling of sweat and spent kisses. “Shh,” she whispered, guessing correctly that he was about to speak.
Why couldn’t she make this easy for him? Weren’t his lies and evasions valid enough? And yet, here she was, Morgan Jenson, a tender but unsettling prospect, reminding Vladimir of someone he used to be before Mr. Rybakov stumbled into his life with news of a world beyond Challah’s desperate grasp. A soft and unsurefooted Vladimir, whose mornings were crowned with a double-cured-spicy-soppressata-and-avocado sandwich. Mother’s Little Failure. The man on the run.
PART VI
THE TROUBLE
WITH MORGAN
26. THE LONG MARCH
HE HAD NEVER seen such strong legs.
A month had passed since Larry Litvak’s party, but those legs—firm white flesh mottled by young blue veins, each thigh a stanza of socialist realism—continued to thrill and beguile young Vladimir. Waking up in Morgan’s panelak apartment at an ungodly seven in the morning, Vladimir saw the aforementioned legs, thick, muscular, perhaps a bit unfeminine to his unenlightened eyes, and, what was the word, springy? She sprang out of bed on those legs, rushed to the bathroom where she scrubbed and rinsed and prepared herself for a long day’s work. These were legs that had been put to the toughest use from early age, and each day of basketball camp had only added to their agility and muscular heft. And now these legs, if the occasion ever warranted, could easily have piggybacked Vladimir across Mount Elbrus.
But instead of Mount Elbrus, the legs we have spoken of, firm like eggplants in a pair of denims and hiking boots, were soon put to use at a Stolovan national park, a basin of green between two rocky cliffs two hundred kilometers to the north of Prava. Surprisingly, the home-loving Vladimir was called upon to accompany her through this wilderness. He had had Jan drop them off at the mouth of the park, and then, with Morgan’s sturdy legs supporting a foldup tent tethered to her back, they crossed an interminable vista of underbrush-clogged forest, rills expanding into proper streams capped off with foamy waterfalls, a meadow, which served as the home to an unpredictable deerlike animal that peeked out of the tall grass with its dark liquid eyes. Finally, the sweating, grunting Vladimir, holding onto a walking stick with one hand and carrying a little sack of Chinese apples in the other, found himself on a granite ledge overlooking a minilake where fish, frogs, and dragonflies commuted to and from the various mossy shores. Vladimir breathed in the clean air, felt Kostya’s spirit smile approvingly from a nearby tree, and watched Morgan take off her tent-pack and begin to assemble the damn thing.
“Hello, creation!” he shouted, spitting onto a lily pad that bobbed along indifferently. Despite nature’s dictatorial regime, its cult of greenness, he had found himself enjoying their two-hour hike, the way the landscape trembled before him, animals scampering, tree branches giving way, and now came the real payoff—a rare chance to be completely alone with his new friend in a queer and beautiful place.
It was about time. They had barely spent one daylight hour together in the weeks following Larry’s fête. Just as Vladimir had suspected, Morgan worked as an English teacher. She held a ten-hour-a-day job imparting the language to a mostly proletarian audience in the suburbs, aspirants to Prava’s burgeoning service industry who wanted to say, “Here is a clean bath towel,” and “Would you like me to call the police now, sir?”
Teaching English was the standard job for those Americans in Prava who didn’t have full parental backing, and Morgan went about it in her own methodic way—responsibility über alles—ignoring all of Vladimir’s attempts to get her to play hooky and spend the day running around with him. Vladimir was sure that all of her male students were in love with her and had asked her out many times for coffee and drinks in the quick-fire, automatic way of European men trying to seduce American women. He was also sure that she would immediately turn red enough to make all but the most incorrigible lotharios reconsider their attack and would say in her slow, tutorial way: “I have boy friend.”
HE WATCHED HER dig her heels into the dry autumn soil and then start to hoist the tent canvas over a pair of sticks. Her legs were never as beautiful to Vladimir as when they were folded over her great big bottom, the way they were at present. He felt the stirrings of excitement and pressed a palm against his groin, when he was distracted by that thing with feathers: bird.
“Hawk!” Vladimir cried as the predator circled overhead, its terrifying beak pointed at his person.
Morgan was banging another stick into the ground with a rock. She wiped her forehead and breathed hot breath down her shirt. “A partridge,” she said. “Why don’t you help me set this up? You don’t like to exert yourself very much, do you? You’re sort of a . . . I don’t know how to describe you . . . A chewer of cud.”
“I’m a capital loss,” Vladimir confirmed. A chewer of cud. That wa
s clever! She was catching on. The Crowd was working its magic.
He held the tent’s canvas in place, while she worked the rocks and sticks. He watched over her with quiet admiration, trying to picture a brown-haired girl, pretty but not the prettiest in her sixth grade, squashing mosquitoes against her forehead on a back porch; at her feet, a partly deflated rubber toy lying on its side, a dinosaur from a television cartoon; waterlogged cards on the patio table, slimy to the touch, their reds and yellows running together, a diamond knave without a head; upstairs in the master bedroom the last tremors of an inconsequential fight between Mother and Father about some instance of jealousy, a petty humiliation, or perhaps just the boredom of this particular life with its summer hot dogs, pennant championships, lake effect winds, November democracy, the raising of three children with strong springy legs and big hands that reached out to touch and comfort, that hoisted fat little bodies up elm trees to frighten squirrels out of nests, offered up basketballs to the permanently gray skies, pitched tent stakes into the ground . . .
Here Vladimir stopped. What did he know? What could he know of her childhood? It was poor luck, a sun-blinded stork that had plucked him down at the Birthing House on Tchaikovsky Prospekt and not the famed Cleveland Clinic. Ach, the old questions of the beta immigrant: How did one go about changing one’s warbling tongue, one’s half-destroyed parents, the very stink of one’s body? Or, more personally: how did he, Vladimir, end up here, a third-rate criminal in the middle of a crisp European forest, watching a tent going up lakeside, a tough, handsome, and yet entirely unremarkable woman silently building a temporary home for the both of them?
“Are you getting tired?” he asked her with what he thought was real affection, holding on to the canvas with one hand and reaching down to pat her damp hair with the other. She was fussing with a tent pole, a hook, and another implement, and he was touched by the sight of a body more plausible than his, the body of a woman who approached the earth on equal terms; all of her—feet, biceps, kneecaps, spinal column—all of her serving a purpose, whether hopping three trams to the far reaches of Prava, miming down the price of a root vegetable at the Gypsy market, or hacking her way through straw-colored foliage.
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook Page 28