It was the end of March and still very cold, even though all the snow had melted during the February thaw. Without money they’d never reach Brazil, as the Plague, the son of a laundrywoman and the more practical of the two, quite sensibly explained to the stubbornly romantic Eddie-baby as they sat next to a fire burning in an old steel barrel. They wouldn’t even get as far as the Crimea, where Eddie-baby had proposed waiting until it got really warm before moving westward by compass in the direction of Odessa, where they would stow away on a ship going to Brazil. “Let’s go home,” the Plague had said.
Eddie-baby didn’t want to go home; he was ashamed to. Eddie-baby was a lot more stubborn than the Plague. The Plague set off without compass in search of a bus stop, while Eddie-baby stayed behind and spent the night stripped down to his undershirt beside a steaming boiler in the boiler room of a large apartment building. Mice or rats were rustling in the corners, and Eddie-baby stayed up all night. The next morning, as he was trying to steal a loaf of bread from a bakery, he was apprehended by the salesgirls and turned over to the militia.
18
Today’s Eddie-baby is standing in front of his building, No.22 First Cross Street, but he has no desire whatever to go home or to go to Auntie Marusya’s. And so, after gazing pensively for a while at Auntie Marusya’s lighted windows on the first floor, he decides to visit the benches under the lindens. Maybe some of the kids will be there, and maybe they can all have a drink and shoot the breeze. Therefore, zipping up his yellow jacket all the way to his throat and sticking his hands in his pockets and pressing The Soul Enchanted lent to him by Asya ever more tightly under his arm, Eddie-baby cheerfully sets off in the direction of Saltov Road, taking the asphalt path that leads past Kadik’s building. Not far from that building is a large, noxious public toilet, which Eddie-baby needs to visit. If all he had to do was “take a leak,” he would stand next to any wall (manners being unpretentious in Saltovka), but unfortunately he has to do a “big job,” as his parents would say, or “dump a load,” as Kadik might put it, or “take a shit,” as the crudest inhabitants of Saltovka would say. Because of its crudeness Eddie-baby is embarrassed even to say this last denomination of the daily physiological process out loud.
The toilet is a stone hut with two entrances, the men’s and the women’s, and it’s almost the only public toilet on this, “their” side of Saltov Road. Eddie-baby can’t stand going inside it, but since he now spends the better part of his time on the street (his father and mother recall with nostalgic longing, as for some lost paradise, the time when it was impossible to get him to go outside), it is an establishment that he is sometimes obliged to visit.
Pushing open the wooden door, Eddie-baby notes with horror that the whole toilet is flooded with a nasty mixture of water and urine, although across that liquid expanse some anonymous folk craftsmen have laid a makeshift bridge constructed of bricks brought from somewhere outside the building and leading to a raised wooden platform with three holes cut into it. Trying not to breathe the foul air, Eddie-baby balances his way along the bricks over the murky swill and, dropping his trousers, squats over one of the holes. Since he has to breathe from time to time, he becomes aware against his will that the toilet smells not only of urine and excrement but also of vomit. The corner of the wooden platform opposite him is in fact thickly covered with it. The vomit is an artificial red color; obviously the victim who left the contents of his stomach behind there had been celebrating the forty-first anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution by drinking nothing but cahors, or fortified red. Specialists and professionals (Eddie-baby is a professional) are of the opinion that up to fifty percent of Soviet fortified red wine actually consists of dye, and that it will eat away the stomach of any idiot foolish enough to drink it.
From a rusty nail on the toilet wall Eddie-baby tears a scrap of newspaper left by some decent soul of the kind that will always be with us, and… wipes himself with it, remembering with a grin the theory advanced by Slavka the Gypsy that the ink in newsprint is harmful to the asshole, and that continual wiping with newspapers can give you cancer of the rectum.
Today the toilet is so disgusting that Eddie-baby hurries to get out of it as fast as he can, but he makes an unforgivable mistake. Standing up to toss the paper into the hole, he inadvertently looks down and notices that the level of excrement under the platform is unusually high, that no more than ten or fifteen centimeters separates it from the platform, and that squirming around in it are pinkish white worms!
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Eddie cries out in horror, and rushes away over the bricks and out of the disgusting cloaca, swearing at himself for having looked down. After putting at least fifty meters between himself and the loathsome, always lit building, he sighs with relief.
Eddie-baby is pleasantly surprised to find not only Cat and Lyova sitting on the benches under the lindens, but also Red Sanya, who after all isn’t supposed to be there.
Between Cat, Lyova, and Sanya are a half-liter of Stolichnaya and a white bowl containing some cucumbers and slices of roast meat. The bowl has obviously been brought by Cat and Lyova, whose building – No.5 – is nearby. Sanya’s building is closer to Eddie-baby’s.
“Hey, Ed!” the three mates shout with delight.
Eddie-baby doesn’t answer but just walks up to them, silently smiling. He knows that if he asks “What?” or says “Yes?” all three worthies will happily and gallantly shout back in unison, “Eat my dick for supper!” Eddie-baby isn’t offended by this – it’s a traditional, jocular flourish – but remembering it, he doesn’t answer.
To be fair, it should be said that the same thing holds for Cat, Lyova, and Sanya. Sanya might call out “Cat!” and if Cat forgets and answers “What?” he will invariably get the response “Suck my cock!” and a roar of laughter. It’s a friendly if coarse joke and nothing more.
“Sit down, Ed,” says Sanya. “Lyova, pour the boy a drink.”
Lyova pours Eddie-baby half a glass of vodka. Eddie drinks the cold, biting liquid, and after a respectable pause he says,
“Hey, Sanya, I thought you were going to Rezany’s.”
Only when he has spoken these words does Eddie-baby permit himself to reach out for a slice of meat and a cucumber. To be unhurried in the domain of drinking is a sign of superior skill.
It turns out that even though it’s only half past nine, Sanya has already managed to have a tremendous fight with Dora, his hairdresser girlfriend, and has told her to go fuck herself, slapped her face, and walked out of Tolya Rezany’s, slamming the door behind him (Tolya’s a butcher too, and Sanya and Dora usually spend their holidays at his place), which is why Sanya’s now sitting on a bench under the lindens. Where else can a young man from Saltovka go, where else can he take his grief and his troubles, and who else is there to console him and bring him good cheer, if not his loyal friends and a good glass of vodka?
“Fucking slut!” says Sanya in reference to his hairdresser, and chases his vodka with a cucumber. “And she acts like her cherry’s never been popped. Abanya told me a month ago that some dude from Zhuravlyovka by the name of Zhorka Bazhok was screwing her. I didn’t believe him then, but now I see he was right!”
“You ought to tell her to fuck off for good, Sanya,” Lyova says. “You can always find yourself another pussy, can’t you? All you have to do is whistle and a dozen will come running to old Red.”
“Just ask Svetka,” Eddie-baby chimes in, thinking of Sanya’s sister. “She has plenty of girlfriends; she’ll pick a good one out for you.”
“Why the fuck should I ask anybody?” Sanya objects, maybe a little offended. “All I have to do is walk into a dance and every cunt in the place is looking at me, waiting for me to take her out and fuck her. As far as my sister Svetka is concerned” – and here Sanya turns to Eddie – “she’s still pissing her bed, and her little friends are more your age, Ed. To me they’re just minors.”
Eddie-baby doesn’t say anything. He’s ashamed to
be a minor.
Crunching their cucumbers, the group falls into a melancholy silence. Now and again from the neighboring buildings comes the sound of a drunken song, or snatches of music, or a burst of laughter.
“Well, shall we get another bottle, then?” Cat breaks the silence, addressing Sanya.
“Why not?” Sanya agrees, and reaches into his pocket for some money. “Grocery Store No.7 is open till twelve tonight.”
“I’ve got some cash.” Cat stops Sanya. Cat’s a decent guy and earns very good money at his factory. Sanya, of course, earns a lot more as a butcher, and on top of that he’s always well supplied with meat, but he’s also pretty careless about how he spends his money. Cat wants to treat everybody now, which is his right, and so Sanya doesn’t object, and takes his hand out of the pocket of his beige Hungarian ratine overcoat.
Cat gets up from the bench, straightens his jacket – he and Lyova have come outside without their coats on – says, “All right, I’ll be back in a minute,” and leaves.
“Buy a couple of bottles of Zhiguli, if they have any,” Lyova calls after him as he walks away.
“Okay, fatso,” Cat replies without turning around.
19
After taking only a couple of steps, however, Cat stops and looks hard in the direction of the trolley stop.
“Hey, guys,” he announces, “there’s a trash coming! This way!”
“Let the fucker come,” Sanya says calmly. “We don’t owe him anything. There’s no more vodka left anyway. He’s wasting his time.”
His heavy boots thumping and his greatcoat unbuttoned, the militia officer comes running up to the benches. Eddie-baby knows him, as do the others. The trash Stepan Dubnyak, a man of nearly fifty, naturally cannot be a good person, but on the other hand, however tricky he may be, he’s still not a complete shit. If he ever puts any of the kids in for fifteen days, he always brings them a bottle in his pocket, even though drinking in jail is of course prohibited. Several times Stepan has managed to avoid taking Saltovka kids in when he ought to have arrested them, and so on. Stepan wants to live in peace with the local punks. Now that Sanya has moved from the Horse Market to the new food store on Materialist Street – the same one that Eddie-baby and Vovka the Boxer broke into once – Stepan’s wife buys her meat from him. He puts aside some nice pieces for her. Or at least that’s what he tells her. Sanya likes to have fun at his customers’ expense. One day on a bet, in Eddie-baby’s presence, he pulled out the thick red lining from somebody’s galoshes, hacked it up with a cleaver on his butcher block, smeared it with blood, and then sold it as a makeweight on somebody else’s order. The whole thing.
“What’s the matter, Styopa?” Sanya asks in a falsely sympathetic tone. “The dogs chasing you or something?”
“Give me a hand, boys!” Stepan blurts out, gasping for breath. “Some blackasses in the Twelfth Construction Battalion have mutinied. They got high on hashish, and now they’re coming up Materialist Street toward the Stakhanovite Club. They’re beating up everybody in their path, they’ve already raped a girl,… and now they’re coming here! They beat my partner Nikolai senseless – I had to leave him at the club…”
Judging by Stepan’s face, the business is serious. He looks scared, and he doesn’t scare easily.
“How many?” Cat asks. “The whole battalion?”
“There were about twenty,” Stepan says, breathing heavily, “but now there are ten or twelve. All Uzbeks. The ringleader’s a Russian, a sergeant. Apparently their relatives brought the hashish from Uzbekistan for the holiday. They’ve gone completely berserk, foaming at the mouth…”
“Why the fuck should we stick our necks out just to help the trashes?” Lyova growls. “I’ve served time, thanks to you, so count me out.”
“Are they armed?” Sanya asks Stepan, ignoring Lyova’s grumbling.
“No, thank God. They’ve taken their belts off and are swinging the buckles around. They’re beating up everybody regardless, even women and children. Help me out, boys. I’ll never forget it! There’s nobody at the station except the duty officers, and by the time they get help from the other precincts, who knows how many people those blackassed hoodlums will mutilate.”
“What about it?” Sanya asks, speaking mainly to Cat. “Shall we help the forces of the militia, the party, and the government in their struggle against the blackassed hoodlums?”
Looking at Sanya, Eddie-baby realizes that he needs to take out the rage he feels against Dora the hairdresser on somebody.
“What the hell have the party and the government got to do with it! They’re bashing your own girls. They just gang-raped a girl in the park!” Stepan shouts.
“If they catch mine, she’ll be glad,” Sanya laughs.
“Come on,” Cat agrees. “Let’s go!” He doesn’t ask Lyova, knowing he’ll come with them anyway.
They all run after Stepan across the trolley tracks and into the darkness – Stepan, and then Sanya, well built for all his twenty-two years, and then the powerful Cat, as heavy as the barbells he lifts, and then Lyova and Eddie-baby, although nobody asked him to come and he’s a bit scared.
At the poorly lit Stakhanovite Club (closed for the day), two frightened old doormen inform Stepan that the drugged, mutinous soldiers did not, as it turns out, head for the Stakhanovite Club as Stepan had expected, but have for some reason run on toward the practically deserted and uninhabited area over by Saburov’s Dacha. That area is bounded on one side by the fence that surrounds the Hammer and Sickle Factory and extends for several kilometers there, and on the other side by the Piston Factory, while through it and parallel to the factories on either side runs the trolley line that takes people to and from Saltovka.
Eddie-baby thinks it’s very possible that the soldiers have just gotten lost, since there is absolutely nothing for those nomads crazed by some Asiatic narcotic to do in that area. Beyond those two kilometers of wasteland, marshy in places and overgrown with several years of weeds, there are only more residential blocks, and beyond them the city. Perhaps that’s where the soldiers want to go?
“Where are your fucking auxiliaries today?” Sanya shouts to Stepan as they run along, their elbows working furiously, in pursuit of the savage nomads in the direction indicated by the doormen.
“They’re no goddamn use!” Stepan shouts back in despair. “None of them want to go out on patrol on a holiday.”
Breathing heavily, they all pound away for a while in silence along one of the fences flanking the open rectangle. Its numbered steel sections flash by – 2, 3, 5, 7,… 20, and more, as Eddie-baby counts them off to himself.
20
At the place where the fences on either side of the rectangle converge in a sharp angle and the narrow asphalt path abruptly turns toward the trolley line, they are met by flying stones and a terrible howling. It isn’t even a howling, more like a concerted roar – something on the order of a distorted “Hurra-a-a-h!” coming from invisible throats in the darkness.
“Goddamn!” Stepan curses angrily but impotently as he ducks the cobblestones, as heavy as cannonballs. His voice trembles, as if he were crying. “There’s no fucking way we’ll get them out of there! We’re the ones who have to pay just because those asshole workmen haven’t finished repaving the road.”
The fact is that the blackasses have taken refuge behind a natural barricade of cobblestones, about a meter and a half high, left there by road workers who are now probably off getting drunk somewhere, with no inkling of what is happening at their abandoned workplace.
Stepan, Sanya, Cat, and Lyova, and behind them Eddie-baby, are forced to beat a hasty retreat beyond the range of the heavy cobblestones and talk the situation over.
“We’ve got to hold them until the militia cars arrive,” Stepan says.
“No fucking way,” Sanya objects. “The main thing is to catch the sergeant, and then the rest will run for it.”
“Catch him, what do you mean catch him!” the militia officer sneers at
Sanya. “How are we going to do that? There are only four of us and at least ten of them.”
“Five of us,” Eddie-baby observes grimly and resolutely as he pushes his way into the circle, but nobody pays any attention to him.
“Why don’t you shoot them, you pussy?” Sanya asks Stepan. “What the fuck do you think they gave you a TT for? So you can catch crooks with your bare hands?”
“I can’t do that,” Stepan answers severely. “If I kill somebody and he’s not armed, and a soldier to boot, I’ll have to stand trial. I can’t use the gun.”
“You asshole!” Sanya says in a rage. “Shoot and they’ll shit all over themselves. We’ll all swear that it was in self-defense. If you don’t want to shoot because you’re afraid of killing them, then shoot at their legs.”
“I can’t do it!” Stepan cuts him off. “I can’t do it.”
“Well, give the cannon to me, then,” Sanya says, “and I’ll get the sergeant.”
“How can I entrust a militia pistol to you!” Stepan says, losing his temper. “Are you joking?”
“You asshole! You fucking asshole!” Sanya curses him.
Their argument is interrupted by an outburst of roaring and a hail of stones. This time the situation is a great deal more serious. The frenzied soldiers have come out from behind their barricade and are running toward them. Eddie-baby can see them for the first time. Only a few of them are in greatcoats, despite the November cold. Without belts, their uniform tunics hang on them like peasant shirts, and their open collars reveal their white undershirts, which emphasizes their swarthy oriental features. Wrapped around the right hand of each is a wide army-issue tunic belt with a heavy brass buckle. Anybody taking one of those buckles in the side or top of his head usually falls down unconscious. Fighting with belt buckles is normal army practice. The soldiers are now running straight at them, swinging their belts in the air.
Memoir of a Russian Punk Page 9
