So it's impossible to object or to condemn. Therefore, we choose to see our friend's sex life as his own private business.
Or his fantasies. After all, nobody has stood over his bed with a flashlight.
But alas. His chatter is absolutely true.
By his own account, Joe is a comforter of women. He bangs them all; no one is turned away. (The friends' daughter called him herself. She said she would come to his car, told him to drive to the doorway of her building at 1:00 am and wait until her parents fell asleep. Then, in the car, she climbed right onto him. "What are you doing, child?" was all he said. And everything went smooth as butter. Either the girl was already experienced, or she had been watching porn and had decided to try everything herself. That's why she didn't squeal. We have to believe this. That's how it happened. Joe doesn't lie, he's too lazy.)
He's screwed everybody. Unhappy women passed his phone number from hand to hand. Often it was pregnant women with their caprices, or the mentally ill. He would go to the addresses they gave. Once, he returned to work and cheerfully told everyone that he had just fucked a pregnant woman while a cat wailed in the bathroom giving birth.
On the other hand, these were all new liaisons. Used channels could not be reopened. To put it simply, there was never a second time. He said himself that he "worked more with extremeties," and pointed to his tongue with a snigger.
The people he said this to laughed more or less naturally, but their hearts constricted.
How do you receive such information as, "Andryukha climbed on top of her and I worked from behind." How?
But he lays it all out like he's under oath, no matter where he is or who is there. He also shared the very private information that he takes naked Polaroids of all of his women, the kind that develop instantly. And almost none of them refuse, he says. Each takes the photo as a gift, and he carefully keeps the second copy in the camera and later puts it into an album. Does each one actually think that hers is the only copy, that it goes no further? Because that album is his main bait. A big reason women flock to him is to feast their eyes on those indecent pictures of their acquaintances; and they look through it with delight after their own fuck and photo shoot.
Maybe it was all because his father held a high position in this small college town. People might have expected that the son would provide protection, help for the future, etc., since the father held the strings to the distribution of apartments, defense of dissertations, personnel rolls and job assignments, trips abroad, funding... everything.
But this son—who gave himself the name of Joe—without, it may be assumed, ever considering why he got away with everything, nonetheless made use of his position and did as he wished in a virtually vanquished city.
The friends who heard his startling confessions in their own kitchen—they too in some way depended on the storyteller. That is the only possible conclusion. Indeed, they were an impoverished, intellectual family, whom he had helped. Perhaps he had also done some good turn for the ill-informed parents of that lively young girl.
And this family also had a young daughter, and might have feared the writing on the wall... but no.
They chuckled at his tales out of habit.
And yet it is absolutely certain that no idea of his father's omnipotence entered Joe's reckless head.
He lived completely on his own and didn't see his father for months at a time. The father went to Moscow on the weekends, and the son would settle for those same days in his bachelor apartment, a small dark lair with an enormous six-legged bed. There, in that apartment they, father and son, sultan and scion, had a so-called color organ, which Joe mastered and gave demonstrations on for everybody, roaring with laughter. Various colors lit up according to the major or minor key, or even the melody played. Joe invented a great deal himself, which came in useful later, after his arrest and deportation to the "zone." In the prison camp, he quickly fixed up a color organ for the convicts' disco.
To say that he was a modern Don Juan would be a stretch. In the first place, this all took place during Soviet times, and everything surrounding Joe's sexual acts was a rare novelty. All the equipment, a separate apartment, his own car, his father's indulgence.
It was a novelty also that Joe feared nothing, that he related his exploits himself, not even concealing his modest sexual abilities.
In other words, it was neither his personality nor his special qualities that drew women to his den. And certainly not love.
But the facts remain: Joe faced no obstacles, either from the powers that be, or from the female population.
They did not merely not refuse him, they called him themselves. They flocked to him. The whole town laughed.
Joe had all this success. Joe, carelessly dressed, always unwashed, with dirty shoes on crooked, worn-down heels, with machine oil always on his hands. Joe, smelling of sweat. Joe, who was always naked at home. (He wore swim trunks when he had guests he didn't know.) Joe, brilliant inventor for the everyday world, who had only to approach a broken machine for it to begin to work. (It would often continue to work only in his presence).
By the way, is it possible that Joe, in telling all to everyone so candidly—insistently even—is it possible that he was trying to atone for his sins immediately afterward by means of these public confessions?
This idea occurred to people only after his tragic death.
In any event, he only became a religious thinker when he was in prison, mathematically proving several unprovable things—more on that later.
Joe's male friends loved him because he could fix anything that didn't work, and also for his generosity in buying liquor for all, and for his constant readiness to receive guests who came with girls (excepting only those times when he would answer the phone with "I'm here with a buddy"). He was a party guy in those days. The only emancipated man in the system.
All around him, people lived their tense intellectual lives: the town was a research center after all. They read forbidden literature like heroes of the underground, organized philosophical debates in kitchens, made forbidden copies, like spies, of the works of forbidden philosophers: Berdyayev, Frank, Ilyin, and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov.
Eventually, literature published abroad made its way to these readers, hitting every circle: everything from the most inoffensive (Becket, Joyce, and Kafka, for example, which were banned in the Soviet Union for no particular reason), to the most virulently anti-Soviet.
The town authorities knew absolutely everything about the escapades of the professor's son. However, infractions of a moral nature were overlooked in artistic, literary and (especially) scientific circles.
This was the party line, expressed once by Joseph Pock Mark1 in the words, "I have no other writers for you," when he was informed by his retainers that debauchery reigned among the workers of the pen. There really were no others; these ones had to be kept, and the words of the Kremlin leader laid for all time the foundation for the Soviet system of indulgence for sinners in the creative unions and scientific associations. One had only to adhere to the party line, and that was all. Everything else was quietly permitted.
For example, these engineers of human souls—as they were named by that same Joseph with the pitted face and withered arm—might be called (as witnesses) into the matter of the underground writers' bordello on Preobrazhensky Street, where young girls were lured; moreover, the way that affair came to light was outrageous: one of the treasurers of this children's brothel lodged a complaint that a certain union secretary hadn't paid his dues for half a year! Girls of twelve and fifteen were sent to penal colonies, the madame was given a six-month suspended sentence. Nothing happened to the writers.
Two young investigators from Rostov-on-Don who exposed the pedophilia affair (what's more, it involved the participation of an honored writer and took place in a vault at the edge of an old graveyard, no less) were forced to leave. They were transferred to Krasnodar.
A young prose writer who molested thirty-six boys (he led a l
iterary circle for the Pioneers) did get eight years. But he wasn't an important writer, he was small fry; also the parents raised a storm and filed complaints.
You can imagine what was said about academic society when the names of such geniuses as Dau were mentioned, whose wife, under the threat of the so-called fine' being withheld, was forced to make the beds for the stray women her husband brought home. (In revenge she used dirty linens.) Much was also known about artists. For instance, one lefty sculptor lived with a pair of little twins. Well, what of it? We have no others. Everything ran according to the rules established by Joe Pock Mark.
However, as the actors expressed it in the old days, with the passage of time, "the weight hit the floor." Joe slept with both the adult daughter and the young wife of a very influential official—that is, he behaved no worse than Khlestyakov,2 whom Gogol, however, did not give the opportunity to join with both the wife and daughter of the governor, although it's entirely inevitable in the final act.
Joe meticulously inserted the photograph of the wanton wife in his album and showed her just as she had flaunted herself for him to all who wished to see. The city was in ecstasy.
Just then, after giving herself to Joe and viewing the album in reward, the daughter of the official recognized her stepmother and triumphantly informed her mother. The wise divorcée, however, forbore to spreading rumors out of concern for her daughter's reputation and her own future.
(A few words here about the town itself: almost all of the streets bore the name of Lenin. They had been connected on the map in an outpouring of service to the ideal, and Lenin Street went wandering, flipping, diving, and winding sideways through every neighborhood. This was a gift from the authorities for the commemoration of our leader. Later, in some country settlements such as Peredelkino, near Moscow, they handled the name nicely. It's always a complicated business to change addresses and rename streets. Maps have to be corrected, new signs made, confusion managed in the post office.... There, instead of "Lenin Street," they modestly hung signs that read "Lena Street," as if in honor of some woman by that name.)
And so, Joe Juan, gallantly emerging every Friday evening from his Moscow-plated car on Lenin Street, walked the brink, defying circumstances with his very way of life.
He informed everyone of each latest conquest immediately and loudly, like a cock on a fence. It was one of his duties to serve society by means of the utmost openness before it.
And we must give our hero his due: the community raised no objections. Everyone accepted the goings-on as normal; nobody said a word to him about the poor child whom he picked up nightly at an address known to all, though she was the daughter of mutual friends.
What was going on? What was done, as they say, was done. The act of pedophilia had been completed and repeated. What's to do now—report it? Let the girl be sent to a penal colony? No and no again—it is for none to judge. Evil will come in this world, I will not be the means. I will not be an informant. Not I.
Thus, the city laughed (not the sea, as in Gorky).
However, the impatient official's daughter could not restrain herself. She carried the news of his new wife's unfaithfulness to her cuckolded father.
There instantly arose an urgent need for a search. That is, for a warrant. That is, for an arrest.
Up until now, the petty authorities had been meekly tolerant. They were all so-called milk brothers,'3 made kindred by Joe the Joker. They were forbidden to meddle with science; they were to ignore infractions. Don't hang out dirty linen, don't bring shame on all of us.
Joe was arrested a week after the investigation was launched. Grounds were produced in Moscow, in the laboratory he headed. Nothing was taken into account—neither the good work of the collective, nor the inventions which Joe had been trying to register, expending great and mostly useless efforts in the sluggish patent office.
What did they arrest him for? On a ludicrous charge. All in all, that technical bungler had signed documents for the disposal of old equipment but hadn't destroyed anything. In the first place, Joe was too lazy for such dull business as sledge-hammering last year's data monitors, burned out radio tubes, and unused measuring devices. In the second place, he saved almost everything, like a slovenly housekeeper. It might come in useful in the future—and at that time, there wasn't a spare nail to be bought for love or money. This was a period of massive shortages. Joe even acquired, at his own expense, transistors from people selling them outside the Pioneer store. (This was later declared to be purchasing stolen goods, and he got two additional years for it.)
The city underwent a wave of searches. They claimed to be after forbidden literature, but they were actually looking for those Polaroids. They wanted to remove and destroy the town's disgrace.
Joe was sentenced to seven years' hard labor in the camps with permission to write two letters a month. In one year of prison he suffered beatings, rapes and interrogations that lasted from sunset to dawn. Apparently, he was forced to name everyone who read forbidden' literature—and who wouldn't speak, if the consequence of refusing was to be thrown to the homosexuals? Strangely enough, however, mass arrests did not follow. None of the locals were touched; they let the whole thing blow over. The town authorities didn't want a loud political scandal that would attract a pack of low-ranking KGB officials, eager to earn their stars.
Joe was given one indulgence: he spent some time in the hospital with a suspected heart attack and two broken ribs.
The doctors did not confirm the diagnosis, and he was returned to his cell.
There, he proved the existence of God logically and mathematically. That was his scientific work. Hoping for nothing, he sent it out in one of his letters.
His short new life began there, in prison: the life of a rigorous religious ascetic and martyr.
And for all of the time allotted him, he loved only one woman, his little Juliet.
After seven years, when his term was about to end, she joined a convent.
Translation by Lise Brody
Notes for Joe Juan
1. Stalin
2. Main character in Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General.
3. Suckled at the same breast.
Grandmother, Wasps, Watermelon
Zahar Prilepin
Grandmother was eating a watermelon.
It was a marvelous August treat.
Our large, loving family was digging potatoes. I remember to this day the cheerful sound the potatoes made as they struck the bottom of the pail. The pails had holes in them and couldn't be used to fetch water. Their only remaining use was the most important one: carrying potatoes over to the potbellied sacks that stood at the very edge of the garden.
The potatoes made a dry gurgling sound as they poured quietly into the sacks. A dusty, damp smell came from the sacks. They'd been crumpled up in the shed for a whole year.
The bags were also torn, but not a lot; sometimes a small, light-hearted potato would poke itself out of the thin tear on the side. When the bag was picked up, it would jump out onto the ground and burrow into the soft black earth, and nobody would ever give it another thought.
It was a sunny day, but the sunlight was already full of August and its slow, honeyed leave-taking.
I kept catching myself thinking I wanted to stand and look at the round sun for a long time, as if we were parting before a long, happy voyage. I probably just didn't feel like working.
I thought a bit, then said that digging potatoes wasn't really man's work, but nobody agreed with me. My mother, my aunt, my sisters, and even the neighbor woman who'd stopped by to help opposed me.
Only my grandmother took my side.
"Of course not!" she said. "When did men ever poke around in the ground? This is woman's work. Go and lie on the grass while we dig. You're carrying those sacks over there, you'll strain yourself."
My grandmother said all this with her unvarying sweet irony, but all the women began yelling anyway, waving their hands in the air and vying with each othe
r to say it was precisely the men who should be digging in the ground, since there was nowhere else they could be put to use.
The others, the grown men, meanwhile, weren't working. Grandpa was tinkering with some scythes in the courtyard, peening and honing them. My father had gone to the market and was apparently in no hurry to get back. My godfather—my father's brother—was lounging near the tractor.
He'd tried to start the tractor in the morning but had done something that made it stall out for good.
Our neighbor, Orkhan, a refugee from the South who drove a tractor for a living, happened to come by an hour later.
He was a good man and never understood when someone was joking with him.
My godfather viewed him very kindly and helped him out of a spot when he could. Except, whenever he had the chance, he tried to have a little fun with Orkhan.
"Hello, Orkhan," Godfather hailed as Orkhan passed by.
"Hello," said Orkhan drily, anticipating as always some kind of shenanigans from my godfather.
Godfather was the picture of unusual busyness, and donned a serious, anxious face.
"Listen," he said hurriedly. "The women are in a rush, and I still have to feed the pigs. Can you get the tractor started, Orkhan? Just get it going, and I'll be right back."
Orkhan didn't have time to answer before Godfather scampered away in his reckless slippers to the courtyard. Everyone except Orkhan noticed that, after circling around the yard, Godfather crept over to the window in the shed where the manure was tossed out.
After some hesitation, and despite the ridiculous request—why couldn't his cheerful neighbor get his own tractor started?—Orkhan slid into the tractor. A minute later, the tractor roared, coughed, and then fell silent again.
Life Stories Page 20
