His speech became fast, temperamental and full of acrimony:
“You know what’ll bring on the end of Soviet rule? I’ll tell you. The end will come from vodka. Today, I figure, about sixty per cent of the workforce are soused by the time evening comes. And the numbers are climbing. There’ll come a day when everyone’ll be juiced to the gills, without exception. From the run-of-the mill private to the Minister of Defence. From the lowly labourer to the Minister of Heavy Industry. Everyone, except two or three women, children and, possibly, Jews. Which is clearly insufficient for building communism… And the whole merry-go-round will grind to a halt. The factories, the plants, the machine and tractor stations. And before you know it, we’ll be under a new Tatar-Mongol yoke. Only this time it’ll come from the West. Headed by Comrade Kissinger…”
Belyaev looked at his watch:
“I know you’re headed to Leningrad. My advice to you – don’t make noise. To put it politely – zip your trap. The organization may teach and teach, but then it may suddenly be fool enough to punish. And your dossier packs more punch than Goethe’s Faust. There’s enough on you for forty years… And remember, a criminal case is not like a pair of seamed trousers. A criminal case is stitched together in five minutes. Blink, and you’re on the front lines, building communism… So keep it down… And one more thing, about the boozing. Drink, but in moderation. Take a break now and then. And don’t get involved with that nut job Markov. Valera is a local, they won’t touch him. But your wife is in the West. Plus your opuses are in counter-revolutionary publications. And there are plenty of escapades to fill a dossier. If you don’t behave, things might take a bad turn… In short, drink with caution. And now, one for the road…”
We had another drink.
“You may leave.” The major switched to a more formal mode of address.
“Thank you,” I said.
Those were the only words I spoke in half an hour.
Belyaev grinned:
“The conversation was conducted on a high ideological and political level.”
At the door he added in a whisper:
“And one more thing, off the record, as they say. In your place, I’d bolt out of here while they’re letting people go. Reunite with the wife – and best regards… I myself have no chance. No one will let me out with my yokel’s mug… But you, that’s my advice. Think about it. This is just between us, strictly confidential…”
I shook his hand, nodded to the surly woman and stepped out into the sunlit street.
I walked and thought, “Madness has taken over the world. Madness is becoming the norm.” The norm brought on a sense of wonder…
I left the bicycle at the post office. I told them it was for Lyuda from Berezino. I climbed up the hill on foot. And finally, after waiting for an intercity bus, I left for Leningrad.
I fell asleep during the trip and woke up with a terrible headache…
Leningrad starts out gradually, with faded foliage, loud trams and gloomy brick buildings. In the morning light, the flickering neon letters are barely discernible. The faceless crowd cheers you up by its lack of interest.
Another minute and you are, once again, a city dweller. And only the sand in your shoes is a reminder of your summer in the country…
The headache stood in the way of my usual delight in the Leningrad clamour, the river breeze and clarity of the stone streets. The sidewalks alone, after the monotony of hills…
I got off the bus at Peace Square, hailed a cab, and fifteen minutes later I was home.
A laughing, unfamiliar woman in a sailor’s jersey opened the door:
“The Shakhnoviches sent you? You’ve come for the coffee percolator?”
“No,” I said.
“Is your last name Azarkh?”
“I’m Tanya’s husband,” I said…
Tanya came out, with a brown towel on her head. Our daughter appeared, pale, with frightened eyes:
“Oh, it’s Papa…”
Our home was filled with mysterious characters. I only recognized Lazarev, a musicologist, and the black-marketeer, Beluga.
The apartment was noisy. A bald stranger was on the phone. He kept repeating:
“That has no practical importance…”
Everyone, in turns, was trying to speak to Tanya. A thin-bearded old man was almost screaming:
“Gentlemen, I trust we are all among friends here? Then please allow me to dismiss a conspiracy. I must get a message to Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn…”
Then the old man articulated in a well-trained voice:
“I give permission to Solzhenitsyn to publish the unabridged version of my front-line poem ‘Lucy’. All monies due to me I donate to the Solzhenitsyn Foundation. My real name cannot be used under any circumstances. My pen name is Andrei Kolymsky!”
Bottles huddled on the window sills. There were no visibly drunk people. Everyone here had something in common, even though they weren’t all Jews. Someone was gathering unknown signatures, waving a green notepad.
There was a row of suitcases in the kitchen. These were identical new suitcases with metal locks. They filled me with hopelessness…
A guitar lay on the bed…
Words like “visa and registration”, “HIAS”,* “Berlin flight” and “customs declaration” accented the conversation.
I felt like a total outsider. And was even glad when a strange woman sent me downstairs to get tea.
Before that, I had a drink and felt a little better. There are dozens of books written about the harmful effects of alcohol. And not even a single brochure on the benefits. Which seems a mistake…
Several hours had gone by. Tanya was packing a camera she’d left out. Masha was giving away pebbles from the Black Sea to remember her by.
A few times they came up to me. We exchanged some meaningless words:
“Don’t be sad, write… Everything will be fine…”
I knew that the nightmare would begin tomorrow. And then I had a thought – I’ll get all the leftover booze…
Masha said:
“We’ve got dollars. Want to see?”
I said:
“Sure.”
Then there was a discussion about some report on Israeli radio.
People came and went. Tanya wrote down addresses and instructions…
It wouldn’t be complete without a scandal. The bald guy got drunk and shouted:
“So you’re jumping off a sinking ship?”
Someone objected:
“So you’re saying that the ship is sinking? And this is coming from a party member?”
“I’m not a party member,” retorted the troublemaker. “I don’t like that they’re only letting out Jews!”
“Aren’t you a Jew?”
“I’m a Jew,” said the bald guy…
I waited for an appropriate moment and said:
“Tanya, when you’re in the States, find Carl Proffer.* He wanted to publish my book.”
“Should I tell him to do it?”
“Yes, and as quickly as possible. I’ve nothing to lose.”
“I’ll write you everything between the lines…”
Suddenly Lazarev announced that it was six o’clock. Time to go to the airport. We ordered several taxis and arrived there almost at the same time.
Tanya and Masha were whisked behind a barrier right away to fill out declarations. We strolled through the halls. Someone brought a bottle of vodka from home.
Beluga walked up to me and said:
“You’re being a good sport, not losing your spirits.”
I replied:
“That’d be all I need! I’ll just get married again and make a bunch of kids.”
Beluga shook his head with incredulity…
Tanya came to the barrier probably four times. She handed me things held back by customs. Including an amber necklace, my army photograph and a book by Gladilin,* signed by the author.
The fact that they removed my photograph made Misha Lazarev very angry. He said:
“What kind of antics are these? Where’s the justice?”
Beluga interjected:
“If there was justice, what would be the point in leaving?”
I found a moment and said to Tanya:
“What do you think, will we see each other again?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. Absolutely sure.”
“Then maybe I’ll believe that there is a God.”
“We’ll see each other again. There is a God…”
I wanted to believe her. I was ready to believe… But why should I have believed her now? After all, I didn’t believe her when she said that Alberto Moravia* was a good writer…
Then we climbed onto some sort of balcony. We saw Tanya and Masha get on a bus.
Time stopped. These few seconds felt like a line between past and future.
The bus started.
Now I could go home, without saying goodbye…
For eleven days I drank in a locked apartment. Three times I went downstairs for more booze. If anyone phoned, I said:
“I can’t talk.”
I lacked the resolve to unplug the phone. I’m forever waiting for something…
On the fourth day, the cops came. They knocked on the door early in the morning, even though there was a doorbell. Fortunately, the chain was on. A plastic visor gleamed through the crack in the door. I heard an assured and impatient hacking cough.
I did not fear the police. I simply couldn’t talk to the authorities. My appearance alone was enough… I asked:
“What’s going on? Show me a warrant… There is a law on search-and-seizures…”
The policeman said threateningly:
“A warrant’s not a problem.”
He left right away. And I returned to my bottles. Any one of which held a miracle.
Twenty minutes passed. Something made me look out the window. A police squad was marching across the yard. I think there were ten of them.
I heard their heavy footsteps on the stairway. Then they rang the doorbell, impatiently and insistently.
I ignored them.
What could they do? Break down an old Petersburg door? Everyone from Rubenstein Street would come running to the noise…
The policemen milled around outside the door for about an hour. One of them shouted through the keyhole:
“Provide an explanation according to the following articles of the Criminal Code: operating a brothel, parasitism, insubordination…”
There were so many articles, I decided not to think about it.
The policemen wouldn’t leave. One of them proved to be a good psychologist. He knocked on the door and yelled:
“May I ask you for a glass of cold water?”
Apparently he was counting on my compassion. Or the magical power of the absurd.
I ignored them.
Finally, the cops slipped a piece of paper under the door and left. I saw how they crossed the yard. This time I counted them. Six visors beamed in the sun.
The piece of paper turned out to be a summons, which I examined for maybe three minutes. At the bottom it stated: “Attendance is mandatory.” The investigator’s name was missing. As was the name of the case file in connection with which I was being summoned. It didn’t even say who I was: a witness, defendant or victim. And it didn’t give a room number. Only a time and date.
I knew that a summons like this was invalid. Igor Yefimov put me wise to that. And I threw it in the garbage…
After that, the policemen showed up about four more times. And I always found out about it in advance. Smirnov, the alcoholic, warned me.
Gena Smirnov was a journalist down on his luck. He lived in the building across from mine. For days on end, he drank chartreuse by the window. And kept his eye out on the street, out of curiosity.
I lived deep inside the courtyard, on the fifth floor, without a lift. Our entrance was about a hundred yards from the gate.
If a police squad showed up in our yard, Smirnov would push aside the bottle and call me. He would articulate just the one single phrase:
“The bitches are coming!”
After which I would once more inspect the bolts and retreat to the kitchen. As far away from the front door as possible.
As the unit pulled away, I would peek out from behind the curtain. In the distant window opposite, Smirnov paced. He would salute me with his bottle…
On the eleventh day I began having hallucinations. These weren’t demons, these were your garden-variety cats. White and grey. Several of them.
Then I got caught in a downpour of little worms. Red spots appeared on my stomach. The skin on the palms of my hands started to peel.
The booze ran out. The money ran out. I didn’t have the strength to go anywhere or do anything.
What was left for me to do? Get into bed, pull the covers over my head and wait. Sooner or later all this had to end. My heart is strong. After all, it had seen me through a hundred benders.
The motor is good. Too bad the brakes are missing. I stop only when I hit a ditch.
I pulled the covers over my head and lay still. Mysterious slimy things swarmed around my feet. Faint little bells jingled in the gloom.
Numbers and letters marched in formation over my blanket. From time to time they formed short sentences. One time I read:
“Only death is final!”
Not such a silly thought, if you think about it.
At this moment, the phone rang. I knew who it was right away. I knew it was Tanya. I just knew and that’s all.
I lifted the receiver. Out of the chaos came Tanya’s calm voice:
“Hi! We’re in Austria. Everything’s fine… Were you drinking?”
I got angry:
“Who do you take me for?”
“We were met at the airport. There are a lot of friends here. Everyone sends their regards.”
I was standing barefoot by the phone without saying anything. A radiogram roared outside the window. There was a reflection of an old coat in the mirror.
I only asked:
“Will we see each other again?”
“Yes… If you love us…”
I didn’t even ask where. It didn’t matter. In heaven, perhaps. Because heaven is just that, a meeting place and nothing more. A general holding cell where you can meet your loved ones…
Suddenly I saw the world as a whole. Everything was happening at the same time. Everything was unfolding before my eyes…
My wife said:
“Yes, if you love us…”
“What does love have to do with it?” I asked.
And added:
“Love is for the young. It is for soldiers and athletes… Things are much more complicated here. It’s beyond love. It’s fate…”
Then something clicked and there was silence.
Now I would have to go to sleep in an empty and stuffy room…
– June 1983
New York
Afterword
“POLITICAL WORK OUGHT TO BE CONCRETE”: this is one of the rousing Soviet mottos recalled in Sergei Dovlatov’s novel, The Zone. Ironically, it is also what is said about good writing, and can one think of a more concrete contemporary writer than Dovlatov? Sentences compacted to aphoristic ingots: “One is born either poor or rich. Money has almost nothing to do with it.” Paradox, sharp wit, and swift one-liners: “Boris sober and Boris drunk are such different people, they’ve never even met.” Or: “What could I say to him? What do you say to a guard who uses after-shave only internally?” Fierce, precise snapshots, illuminated by absurdist flashes: “Cars streamed past us like submarines holding each other’s tails.” Dialogue almost Waugh-like in its tart comedy:
“You’ve just forgotten. The rudeness, the lies.”
“If people are rude in Moscow, at least it’s in Russian.”
“That’s the horrible part.”
And people, things, clothes, memories, stories – all seized and made instantly vivid:
Indistinct memories
came to him.
…A square in winter, tall rectangular buildings. A few school-boys surround Vova Mashbits, the class telltale. Vova’s expression is frightened, he wears a foolish hat, woollen drawers… Koka Dementiyev tears a grey sack out of his hand. Shakes a pair of galoshes out onto the snow. After which, faint with laughter, he urinates into the sack. The schoolboys grab Vova, hold him by the shoulders, shove his head into the darkened sack. The boy stops trying to break loose. It’s not actually painful…
Reading Dovlatov is a joyous, thrilling, usually hilarious experience, in large part because he has such a talent for making stories so concrete: he collects vignettes, loud portraits, bitter jokes, comic tales, absurd episodes, black anecdotes, and then delights in bringing them out of the ether of hearsay or memory and giving them new life in print. He captures, and he frees: his work bursts with this captured, freed life. There is the prisoner Makeyev, in The Zone, who climbs onto the roof of the prison camp to watch the woman he has fallen in love with, a schoolteacher named Isolda Shchukina. [119] He is unable to make out her features or even her age. He knows only that she wears two dresses, a green one and a brown one: “Early in the morning, Makeyev would crawl onto the roof of the barracks. After some time, there would be a thunderous announcement: ‘Brown!’ This meant that Isolda had gone out to visit the toilet facilities.” [119] There is the story, from The Suitcase, of the Lenin statue that went wrong. People gather for the unveiling of the new monument; a band plays, speeches are given. And as a drum rolls, the cloth is lifted – to reveal Lenin in familiar pose, his right arm pointing “the way to the future” and his left in the pocket of his open coat. The music stops, and suddenly someone laughs. “A minute later, the whole crowd was laughing… What had happened? The poor sculptor had given Lenin two caps, one on the leader’s head, the other one clutched in his fist.” [24] In the same book, Dovlatov remembers being asked to play Old Grandfather Frost in a New Year’s show for a school. He is promised three days off and fifteen rubles. On stage, he appears in a beard, a white hat, and bearing a basket of gifts. “Hello, dear children! Do you recognize me?” And the yelled reply comes from the front rows: “Lenin! Lenin!” [115]
There are the sparkling sketches, in A Foreign Woman, of Russian émigrés in New York – like Fima Druker, a famous bibliophile when he lived in Leningrad, now running a publishing company called Russian Book, which struggles to survive in America, and which is eventually renamed Invisible Book (apparently now specializing in erotica); or Zaretsky, a journalist notorious in the Soviet Union for his “voluminous” work published in samizdat, Sex Under Totalitarianism, “which claimed that ninety per cent of Soviet women were frigid.” [8] At one point in the novel, Zaretsky attempts to do some sex research on the novel’s heroine, an émigré named Marusya Tatarovich: one of his questions involves asking her if she lost her virginity “before or after the Hungarian events.” [48]
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