Mother Russia (9781590209028)

by Robert Littell

  “Everyone’s afraid,” comments the Druse.

  “You even?”

  The Druse smiles weakly. “I’m afraid that one day I’ll come face to face with someone who won’t be afraid. To continue: You were observed meeting on several occasions with the American journalist Graham Hull. What was talked about?”

  “The advances, touch wood, that have been made under scientific socialism,” Pravdin explains. “The inevitable victory of the working classes. Alienation. Vanguard of the proletariat. Withering away of the state. Surplus capital. And so forth and so on.”

  “What are Q-Tips? Classic comics? Red Army exercises? Instant matzos? What is a vaginal deodorant spray?”

  “Q-Tips are an idea whose time has come.” Pravdin launches into his pitch. Firing from the hip in short bursts, he explains each of the items on the Druse’s list. “Thesis: the male nostril, sniffing. Antithesis: the female organ, pungent. Synthesis: vaginal deodorant spray I” Leaning across the desk until his face is only centimeters from the Druse’s, he hisses: “Crazy is what I am!”

  “That possibility is being considered,” the Druse replies evenly. He takes another sheet of paper from the dossier, studies it as he lights a new cigarette. “Explain, if you can, the significance of the following: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes; I’ve seen the future and it needs work; Nothing worth knowing can be teached; To dine with the devil use a long spoon; Behind every fortune is a crime; Full conformity is possible only in the cemetery; The shortage shall be divided among the peasants; Publish and perish; So here it is at last, the Distinguished Thing; and last but by no means least, Chopping off heads is infectious—one today, another tomorrow and what will be left of the Party.” The Druse looks up, winks at Pravdin. “I believe we missed only one: you wrote something with a fingertip in the air. My operatives would have gotten it except for the fact that you weren’t working in Cyrillic.”

  “French was the language of the moment,” Pravdin informs him. “My thumb, not my finger, is what I used. Jesus, sauve Toi is what I wrote.”

  “Jesus, sauve Toi,” the Druse adds in longhand to his list. “Thank you. Would you now comment on the significance of these phrases.”

  “Graffiti is what they are,” Pravdin explains. “Steam is what I’m letting off. It’s this way: I was wounded in the war. Shrapnel in the neck. Pinched nerve. The ability to shrug is what I lost. Result: tensions build up in me. Frustrations that others shrug away in me poison the blood, pinch the bladder, constrict the solar plexus; When I pass gas it’s always half an octave lower than anyone else out of nervousness. The only way I can live normally is to work off my frustrations. So I scribble on walls, windows, the sky even.”

  “Graffiti is antisocialist,” the Druse informs him, “and out of place in a country that prides itself on progress. You do see that we are a land of progress, don’t you?”

  “A land of progress is what we definitely are,” Pravdin readily agrees. “With my own eyes I’ve witnessed it. Take for example Uzbekistan, where shepherds pitch their yurtas around a six horsepower transformer with leads into each tent to watch color TV on large screens. It’s enough to take your breath away.”

  “Just so,” the Druse agrees tonelessly.

  Pravdin scribbles a note, passes it to the Druse. It says: “When can I see you?” Out loud, he asks: “Why have I been brought here for interrogation?”

  “You were picked up at random when your number came up in our computer.”

  “My detention has nothing to do with … nothing?”

  “Absolutely routine,” the Druse assures him.

  “Manuscripts you’re not interested in?”

  “What manuscripts are you talking about?” the Druse inquires.

  “I’m writing a social history of the shrug,” Pravdin declares. “ The Shrug as Antithesis’ is its working title.”

  The Druse shrugs to indicate his lack of interest.

  “And I can go?” Pravdin whispers.

  The Druse passes Pravdin a note that says: “Sandunovsky Bath House at ten.” Out loud, he says: “You can go, yes.”

  Pravdin lifts his body off the seat as if it were bruised, backs toward the door, expecting at any moment the floor to give way beneath his sneakers, sending him spinning into some dark snakepit of a cell for twelve more years. To his astonishment the floor remains solidly beneath his feet. He reaches out and puts a hand on the knob and gingerly turns it, certain it will be locked. To his astonishment the door clicks open. He turns back to the Druse. “One question is what I have,” he says.

  “Only ask.”

  “Melor is not a name I’ve come across before. Russian it doesn’t sound. What is its origin, if it doesn’t offend you my asking?”

  “Melor,” said the Druse, “is an acronym for Marx, En-gels, Lenin, Organizers of Revolution.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The sidewalk vendor is down to

  his last wind-up Quixote …

  The sidewalk vendor is down to his last wind-up Quixote when Pravdin emerges into the thickening dusk, which is gathering over Moscow like the folds of a fire curtain. A sullen child with jutting ears silently pulls his reluctant mother toward the doll, which wheels on its horse and jerkily charges, lance level, a cardboard windmill.

  “Want, want,” whines the child, tugging at his mother’s miniskirt until it comes off her hip. “Want.”

  “How much?” the mother demands, annoyed at the vendor for putting temptation in her son’s way.

  “Four rubles,” the vendor replies.

  “Four rubles!” The woman is incredulous.

  “Want, want,” cries the boy.

  “Wanting is antisocialist,” Pravdin whispers in the woman’s ear. “Don Quixote also. Attention: those who are not with us are considered to be against us.” He shakes his head with exaggerated sadness. “Besides which, the windmill is who always wins.”

  “For you, three rubles fifty,” the vendor coaxes.

  “Want, want,” cries the child.

  The woman looks at Pravdin as if he has bad breath, spins on one stiletto heel and wobbles off, yanking the boy after her so suddenly that he is lifted clear off the earth and trails after her like the tail of a kite.

  The sidewalk vendor turns on Pravdin a look so mournful that he knows he is being hustled. He fishes from his change purse three rubles fifty, offers it to the vendor.

  “Four rubles,” the vendor begs.

  “Three fifty is what it was a minute ago,” complains Pravdin.

  “For you, four,” the vendor stands firm.

  Pravdin reluctantly counts out the change from his purse. The vendor accepts payment, verifies it. Pravdin, frustrated by his inability to shrug, stuffs the Don Quixote into his bulging briefcase, starts off in the direction of the Sandunovsky Bath House. Head angled into a gale that isn’t blowing, he crosses the cobblestones of Red Square, looks up to check his wristwatches against the great clock in the Kremlin tower, notices workmen draping from the Kremlin wall the first huge May Day banners, sees the minute hand of the great clock moving as if it is a second hand, sees the hour hand making the rounds as if it is a minute hand. Not at all dismayed, Pravdin turns his attention to a water truck making its way across the cobblestones directly toward a well-dressed men carrying a sack of avocados. Neither truck nor man veer. The truck escalates; its sprinkling system douses the cobblestones for five meters on either side. Pravdin, fearful the truck will turn on him, dances away from an attack not made. The man with the avocados retreats too—too late, too late. His feet disappear in a swell of water. Pravdin, still reeling from his session with the Druse, has the impression that the well-dressed man, avocados held high to keep them dry, is walking on water, and he stares at the scene as if it is an epiphany.

  “Epiphanies,” an inner voice warns him, “are antisocialist.”

  “Those who are not with us,” Pravdin mutters out loud, “are considered to be off their rockers.”

  “Talking to yourself,” Pr
avdin consoles himself, “has this advantage: conspiracy you can’t be accused of.”

  “My kingdom,” Pravdin moans, “for a shrug.”

  In frustration he scrawls in chalk across the inside of the Kremlin wall:

  Better fewer, but better

  (V. Lenin: Pravdin has a passion for quality control), dodges between some Scandinavian tourists staring up at the golden dome of an Orthodox church, zigs down several alleyways to make sure he isn’t being followed, continues at a more leisurely pace in the direction of the Sandunovsky Bath House.

  Inside the entrance Pravdin counts out sixty kopecks, hands the change to an emaciated man sitting stiffly on a stool behind a high wooden counter. Pravdin senses that something is not quite right with the man, but it takes him several seconds of staring before he can put his finger on it: the ticket taker doesn’t appear to be breathing. Without any visible vital life signs except a tired mechanical muscular motion, he drops the kopecks into a compartmented drawer, tears off a ticket from a reel of tickets, rips it in half and deposits both halves in a cardboard box already brimming with torn tickets. Pravdin helps himself to a rough white sheet from a pile stacked on a chair, strips quickly in the change room warm with the smell of sweat and birch bark, drapes the sheet across his shoulder like a toga, tips the attendant to keep an eye on his briefcase and change purse, skips the ritual weighing-in, enters the steam room. Instantly the hot moist air burns his nostrils, stings his eyes. Blinking quickly, gasping for air, Pravdin almost collides with a man sucking on a piece of salted fish. Another man with “For Stalin and the Motherland” tattooed on his biceps dashes a bucketful of water onto the fire bricks. Steam hisses off them into the saturated air. Wooden benches lined with naked, coughing men gradually come into view—a landfall seen through steam! Pravdin peers through the clouds of swirling steam looking for circumcised penises, spots none, keeps his toga draped casually over his private parts as he takes a vacant place on the end of a bench.

  Next to him a pink-skinned man flails away at his back with a bouquet of leafy birch twigs, clears his throat several times, calls across the room in a commanding voice for someone to pour more water on the fire bricks, turns to Pravdin and out of the blue says: “Russia is a mysterious country, if you want my opinion.”

  “Give me a for instance,” demands Pravdin.

  “For instance,” the pink-skinned man obliges, “in all of Russia there is no place to get trousers cuffed, but millions upon millions of men are walking around with cuffs on their trousers.”

  “Cuffs,” Pravdin mumbles, “are a covenant between God and his chosen people.”

  “God is dead,” the pink-skinned man says gently.

  “Touch wood,” Pravdin replies, rapping his knuckles on the bench.

  The pink-skinned man leans toward Pravdin; his head emerges out of the steam, but not his body, causing Pravdin to imagine that the two are no longer connected, assuming they ever were. ‘Tell me the truth,” he asks Pravdin, “you don’t really like steam, do you?”

  “You read minds too,” he remarks sourly.

  The pink-skinned man retreats into the steam; his voice, mocking in tone, emerges as if filtered by some barely remembered grievance. ‘The mister you want to see also doesn’t like steam. You can not like steam together in a private room, the door of which is behind you and to your right”

  Walking as casually as his throbbing pulse will allow, Pravdin makes his way to the door in question, tries the knob, peeks in to see the Druse, Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, stretched out naked on a medical table under a sunlamp. His eyes are protected by small dark goggles; his tanned body, which has no hair that Pravdin can see (even around his organ), is covered with squirming bloodsuckers that an old myopic woman tends, murmuring to them in a language Pravdin doesn’t recognize, rubbing their spinal columns with the coarse tip of her forefinger until they are erect and bloated. Sitting on a stool behind the Druse’s head is Zosima, the Berber girl with the small blue flower tattooed on one cheek. (Pravdin could swear it was on her left side the last time he saw her; now it is on her right cheek.) She is reading in soft, rhythmic Arabic from a large book open in her lap, the epic Manas. Chuvash rolls his eyes slowly in the direction of the slightly open door, senses that Pravdin is there before he catches sight of him. “Salaam aleikum, brother.”

  Pravdin is tempted to back away, to flee, but he reasons that a discussion with the Druse is an idea whose time has long since come. Pulling his toga tightly around him, he enters (on clenched toes; the marble floor is ice) as if he is stepping into a Greek tragedy. “Shalom Aleichem back to you,” he says, bowing awkwardly, deeply, hoping to hide the awkwardness in the deepness, hoping to convey by the deepness an impression of irony.

  “Can I offer you some bloodsuckers?” the Druse inquires politely. “A purge of blood every three days is said to increase stamina, cleanse the brain, stimulate the intuition, which is the essential element in social intercourse.”

  Pravdin declines the offer with a brisk wave of his hand. “Thanks to you but no thanks to you,” he says. “Bloodsuckers are what I deal with all day.”

  Chuvash says something in Azerbaijanian to the old woman; she switches off the sunlamp, plucks leeches from his body, drops them with soft splashes into a large jar three-quarters full of water. One by one they sink to the bottom. Zosima closes her book; the old woman caps the jar and the two of them slip from the room through a curtain that hides another door. The Druse motions Pravdin to Zosima’s seat but he stubbornly refuses to take it, instead circles slowly the table on which the Druse, goggleless, now sits in an un-flawed lotus position.

  “What name, if it doesn’t upset your red corpuscle balance my posing the question, do I call you by?” Pravdin points at the Druse with his deformed thumb. “Who are you is what I’m asking?”

  The Druse’s thumb and forefinger float slowly toward his face, settle over the eyelids, guide them down over his eyes, remain resting like weights on the lashes. His lips drift into a quizzical half smile. “I am Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, a male by sex, a Druse by religion. I believe, like all Druses, that the soul passes after death into new incarnations of greater perfection. I believe, like all Druses, there is one and only one God, indefinable, incomprehensible, ineffable, passionless, who has made Himself known to man by seventy successive incarnations, including the Jew, Jesus, but excluding Muhammed. I believe the most recent incarnation was the sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, after whom I am called. I believe I am the sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, who disappeared in the year anno Domini 1021, reincarnated; I believe I am the seventy-first incarnation of God, come to open again to the faithful the door of mercy, come to conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, come to convince the world of the inevitability of the Faith, come to demand obedience to the seven commandments of Hamza, my vizier in my previous incarnation, the first and greatest of which requires truth in words—but only when Druse speaks to Druse.”

  Pravdin sinks into Zosima’s chair. “And non-Druses?” he asks weakly. “What of us?”

  Chuvash continues to give the impression he is reciting chapter and verse. “A Druse may say what he pleases to a non-Druse, so long as he, the Druse, doesn’t raise his voice, so long as he keeps the secrets of the Faith, so long as he abstains from wine and tobacco, so long as he wears no gold or silver.”

  “You tripped up!” Pravdin points an accusing finger. “When you were Melor, you chain-smoked like a chimney. Explain away that if you can.”

  Chuvash is unperturbed. “Druses have permission to conform outwardly to the faith of the unbelievers among whom they dwell.”

  “Even the seventy-first incarnation of God?”

  “Especially the seventy-first incarnation of God,” the Druse replies. “If God doesn’t conform, who will?”

  “The Jew, Jesus, didn’t conform,” Pravdin notes sourly.

  “The Jew, Jesus, finished his earthly mission nailed to a cross. I intend to conquer Mecc
a and Jerusalem, open again to the faithful the door of mercy, convince the world of the inevitability of the Faith, demand obedience to the seven commandments of—”

  “Off your rocker is what you are,” Pravdin cuts him off. “Not one word of this is what I believe. But as a lady friend of mine says, that’s another story.” Pravdin leans forward, taps a finger on the Druse’s knee. “What I want to know—”

  Chuvash interrupts with a gesture indicating the walls have ears.

  “If ears are what the walls have,” cries Pravdin, “stuff them full of cotton is what a sane person would do, or better still pierce the inner ears with things they don’t want to hear and make them deaf. Who’s listening anyhow? Melor is listening is who’s listening. But who is Melor? The Druse, Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, in another incarnation maybe? And what does this Marx-Engels-Lenin-Organizers-Revolution want with a Jewish hustler like me? Answer me that if you can. And why does Chuvash arrange for me an apartment in the last wooden house in central Moscow and Melor have me followed so he knows every word I scribble on a wall? Is Chuvash trying to encourage me to expose a literary fraud, and Melor trying to intimidate me so that I lay off? A sane person could be confused by all this. A crazy person too.”

  “We are all of us,” the Druse explains patiently, “many people. I am just more open, or formal if you like, about it. Melor is one of the hats it suits me to wear to accomplish what I intend to accomplish, which is to open again to the faithful the door of mercy, conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, convince the world of the inevitability—”

  “All this is what you’ve said already,” Pravdin interrupts impatiently. “Enough of this religious bla-bla-bla. Explain what’s what and who’s who.”

  Chuvash slips from the table, takes a white silk sheet from the shelf beneath it, winds it around himself, moves the chair the old myopic woman used so that it faces Pravdin. “You have a right to an explanation, I am ready to concede you that,” he begins.