A Young Scoundrel

Chapter 3

"They're drinking, the scoundrels!"

Anna Moiseevna has appeared at the very moment when Dusya had refilled the young men's wineglasses. She is standing on the grass by the veranda, her bright eyes angry. Her robust body is covered by a crepe-de-chine dress. There are green, black and white flowers on Anna's body. She has a purse in her hand. Her graying hair is tied back in a tight chignon. Her turned-up nose gives her face a pert look.

"Ganna Miseyevna!" The idlers call out amiably. "Come over here and have some chicken kiev with us!"

"Scoundrels! Aren't you ashamed! Drinking vodka since early in the morning!" scolds Anna, but she goes around the edge of the veranda and up the staircase. A few representatives of the Proletariat, who have forced their way onto the veranda, stare inquisitively at the scene.

"You scoundrel! Deceiving Celia Yakovlevna, a poor Jewish woman, yet again! 'He went for some thread!' The simplehearted Celia Yakovlevna, child of another era – the angel who married my father… Celia Yakovlevna doesn't know what it is to lie! She trustingly believed that absurdity! 'For some thread, he went'!

"Fine – hit me! Give me a slap in the face!" The poet melodramatically turns his profile to his girlfriend and offers his cheek.

Gennadii Sergeevich becomes elegantly cordial.

"Pardon us, Ganna Moisyevna, for the love of God, and be kind enough to share this humble meal with us!" Genka takes Anna's hand and kisses it. Then, without releasing her hand, with his free hand he shifts the table and eases Anna into place at the table. Though she is still angry, she sits down.

"Dusya – please, set a place for Anna Moiseyevna… Anna Moiseyevna, it's my fault that your husband is here. Finding myself feeling somewhat lonely and depressed this morning, I deceitfully lured Ed away from his family, heedlessly seeking only personal and egotistical self-satisfaction…"

"The poor Jewish woman…" Anna Moiseyevna starts up her usual dramatic monologue, but provokes no reaction on the faces of Genka or the poet… "I ran right home… not a crumb in the house… 'Eduard went off to get some thread,' Mama announced, bewildered… 'He went off at nine o'clock, Mama!' I said, 'It's eleven o'clock – he went off drinking!' 'No… maybe he'll come back?' timidly suggested Celia Yakovlyevna, still believing in you…" Anna stared angrily at the poet. He bowed his head humbly, and Genka gestured to him with his eyes and his hands, "Just put up with it. Let her talk."

"You didn't even leave the poor Jewish woman a ruble for food, you scoundrel!" Anna continues, "Meanwhile, we've spent all of her pension. I don't have any money – you know perfectly well I don't get anything in advance… after the account showed a gigantic overdraft, Gennadii" – Anna appeals to Genka. Genka nods sympathetically. "There was some hope that the young scoundrel would finish Tsintsiper's pants today and get ten rubles for them, and Celia Yakovlyevna could go down to Blagovyeshchenskii market and get some food… But the young scoundrel ran off…"

"Ganna Miseyevna," says Genka quickly, while Anna gathers her strength for the next part of the monologue, "Be be good enough to accept from me a humble offering" – he takes a tenner from his wallet and pushes it toward Anna.

"We don't need your money, Gennadii Sergeyevich," proudly declares Anna, who nonetheless looks at the tenner with some interest.

"Take it, Ganna Miseyevna! After all, it was I who took Ed out into the countryside, away from Tsintsiper's pants! It follows that I should pay the forfeit."

"What?" Anna Moiseyevna stares questioningly at the poet. "Well, I'll take it… After all, we have nothing. Not so much as a crumb in the house."

"Don't you dare…" spits out the poet. He curses himself for neglecting to leave Celia Yakovlyevna at least five out of the fifteen rubles left. Now Anna has the right to lecture him on morality and call him a young scoundrel. Normally Anna's a little scared of her poet, although she's six years older than he is. And weighs perhaps twice as much as the poet.

"Take it! You'll use it somehow or other!" With the help of an agile motion, the tenner ends up in Anna Moiseyevna's hand, and, from there, disappears into her purse.

"Have a drink, Anna Moiseyevna, a little vodka!" Genka himself pours Anna a glass, out of the bottle of Stolichnaya Dusya left with them the last time. "Have a drink and forget your cares!"

Anna can no longer resist; she smiles. "Scoundrel, you've been drinking for three days! And never once thought of the poor Jewish woman, wasting away in a newspaper kiosk. You could at least have taken the time to invite the Jewish woman to the restaurant." Anna frowns and sips carefully at the vodka, unlike Genka and the poet.

"How in the world did you find us, Anna Moiseyevna?" Genka doesn't hide his pleasure and delight. He likes it when things happen. They've already gotten a bit bored, just the two of them making small talk; but now, voila, an unexpected appearance by Anna Moiseyevna.

"Genulik!" Anna looks at Genka with undisguised condescension. "Everybody knows that you and the young scoundrel are the only ones in the whole city with chocolate-colored suits with gold thread. First I went to the "Theater Club" and they told me they'd seen you this morning going down Sumsky street. I went to the "Lux," and you weren't there. You weren't at the "Three Musketeers," either. I ran around to all your hangouts, and at the "Automatic," Mark told me that the young scoundrel, accompanied by you, Gennadii Sergeevich, had gone down into Shyevchenko Park. 'Where would people like you go, at this time of the year, when Nature is unbelievably flourishing, and the chesnuts are ripe, and the smell of flowers fills the air, and the world is making love endlessly?' I asked myself. Anna Moiseyevna sighs. Elaborate oratory is her weakness. Very often she inserts in her speech verses by living or deceased poets. "'People like Genulik and the young scoundrel can only go to the "Tavern," and Dusya.' I said to myself, and came running here. Anna Moiseyevna has stopped, pleased with herself. "And here, if you please, I am. I'm not going to work!" She announces, after looking at her little watch."What's the point!" she exclaims, staring defiantly at her "husband." "I'll tell them I got sick."

"You could be the Sherlock Holmes of the KGB, Anna Moiseyevna," Genka says approvingly. "Yes indeed."

"Lyonka Ivanov says Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict. That in between cases, he snorted cocaine." observes the poet, after gulping some vodka.

"Lyonka Ivanov is a meshugginah," Anna declares authoritatively. "They even kicked him out of the Army for being a meshugginah."

"No way. Lyonka himself wanted to get out of the Army. When Lyonka came home on leave, already a sergeant, Viktorushka taught him what to do. The smartest thing is to pretend to be crazy. Viktor told Lyonka, and when Lyonka returned to his unit, he did exactly what Viktor suggested. At lunch time he went to the cafeteria, put a bowl of porridge on his head, stuck cutlets under his sergeant's epaulettes, and in this costume went running out of the dining hall… another time he went into the hall where the soldiers were watching a film and ripped the screen off the wall… but all just so he could get home; actually Lyonka's saner than me or Genka," Ed ends his apologia for Ivanov.

"Ed, I think Anna's right; Lyonchik Ivanov really is crazy." disagrees Genka. "Not dangerous, but pretty brainless. Have you noticed his expression?"

"Oh – then who's sane? Is Ganna Miseyevna sane?" Ed laughs scornfully.

"I tried to do away with myself once. But you, Ed – lots of times!" Anna almost shouts, leaping out of her chair. "It's true, I was classified as a Group One invalid by reason of craziness, but I was nineteen, and that son of a bitch, my first husband, had dumped me. When you were nineteen, you still believed in people!" Anna Moiseyevna, having lost her aggressive look, and aware of the goat heard, sits down.

"The hell with him, with Ivanov…" Genka says to them soothingly. Let's drink to you, Anna Moiseyevna, and to you, Eduard Venyaminovich, and to your union. May it be long and enduring!"

"To our cohabitation! To our unlicensed union!" laughs Anna. "To our situation! You know, Genulik, when the young scoundrel was already living with me in my room, but we were trying to make it look like we weren't living together… I would slam the door loudly at night, to deceive my poor Mama… so that when my Auntie Ginda suggested that we come visit her in a little room with two roommates, even that was an improvement in our material life. The intellectual Celia Yakovlyevna couldn't admit to the sister of her beloved deceased husband that her daughter was keeping in her room a boy six years younger than she, and sleeping with him. 'Akh, Ginda, we have such a situation at home!' that's all my Mama would say. How unlucky she's been in life. Papa Moise died of a heart attack, and her daughters have never found a decent life…"

"What? Her second daughter is married to the director of a factory. She lives in Kiev, right on the main street – on Kreshatik, in a big bourgeois apartment. People dream of a son-in-law like Teodor. The director of a factory…"

"My kid sister is in a good situation, ____________________]dazhe toshno]," agrees Anna Moiseyevna, taking a tidbit of cucumber, "but my niece, Styelka, is a whore. And she's sure to become an even bigger whore. Already she sleeps with any loser who comes along. Gyenulik, this long-legged Styekla keeps an eye out for every prick around, the kid had her first abortion at age 14! I only lost my virginity at 18…

Genka laughs. "Different times, different customs, Anna Moiseyevna!"

"'O, Lautrec, you will never reach the pedals!'" Anna suddenly recites. "'O Lautrec… ____________________/'" Anna falls silent, having forgotten the next line, as usual.

"Whose is that?" Genka asks respectfully. He considers Anna an intelligent and well-educated woman.

"Miloslavskii. From his early poems." mumbles Ed. "Yura poses, frenchifies, and nasalizes. He invokes the romantic underground life of the Parisian cafe and studio. Lautrec…"

"'Yet still I remembered how all these Magdalenes mended the cloak of the pockmarked Christ…" Glancing insolently at her "husband," Anna once again recites Miloslavskii. And, of course, she can't remember the last lines. "Three Bandits with Aphrodite by the Fire," she manages to force out, and then falls silent.

Anna's memory is stuffed with bits of poems, songs, which she heard some time, or clever phrases she read somewhere, from various philosophers and writers. From time to time Anna brings to light some fragment, line, verse or phrase, and inserts it in the appropriate part of her monologue. When they were just getting to know each other, in their youth on the outskirts of Kharkov, straight from the "Hammer and Sickle" shop section, Anna's erudition seemed the height of intellectual achievement. Now, Eduard, having become Limonov, laughs at Anna's "streams of consciousness." He uses her singsong intonation, imitating the pompous Romanticism with which, it seems to him, Anna recites poetry:

Give me a blue-blue woman

I'll trace a blue line along her spine

And I'll marry that bright blue line…

Ah, I don't need no blue girls to marry

I'll howl with the cats on roofs so starry…

"Shut up, scoundrelly Savyenko!" cries Anna. "Don't torture my friend Burich's verses! You're not mature enough to understand them yet!"

"A bad poet," rules Limonov remorselessly. "I, Genka, thought for a long time that Burich was a good poet, or at any rate an original one – and suddenly I happen to come across a book of poems by the Polish poet, Ruzhevich. And what do I see there, Genka?! Ah! What's it called? – Plagiarism! Especially when you consider that Burich and his wife are paid to translate Polish poets!"

"Burich is a great poet!" Anna's eyes rest, with nervous hatred, on her "husband." "Especially because they publish so little of Vova Burich."

"'Vova… '" snorts her "husband." "They say he's already as bald as a kneecap. Vagrich saw him in Moscow, your Vovik. A big fat slob. A bourgeois of literature.

"That's not true! Burich is very handsome. Curly-haired, like an Apollo. Bakh was probably mistaken; it wasn't Burich…"

"What do you mean, mistaken… It was him – Apollo, your husband's friend – a genius from Simferopol…"

"They were all so talented, Genka. Don't listen to the young scoundrel. Talented and exceptionally intelligent. They knew everything. They read all the time. They were better educated than you…

"Talent has nothing to do with education." Ed scowls.

Ed envies Anna's generation – her former husband, a television director; her husband's friends, who all moved to Moscow – the poet Burich, the film critic Myron Chernenko, the painter Brusilovskii. For Kharkov youth of Ed's age, for the bohemians and the decadents who got together several times a day at the "Automatic" to drink coffee, Moscow burns, as it did for Chekhov's three sisters, with a blinding, alluring light. Among Anna's contemporaries, the painter Brusilovskii is especially noteworthy. Vagrich Bakhchanyan speaks respectfully of Brusilovskii's work. Brusilovskii long ago started showing even in international exhibitions, and from time to time, reproductions of his works appear in Western publications. Anna's former husband is the least successful of them; he doesn't even live in Moscow, only Simferopol. Eduard very much wants to go to Moscow, so that he can join the previous generation – those about ten or fifteen years older. Join them, fight them, and hold tauntingly over Anna's head the name of her own Eduard Limonov.

The sun has suddenly peeked over the roof of the tavern, right above the table, and the wooden table, cleaned over and over, scratched, laid with tablecloth and snacks, nestling bottles of vodka and lemonade, the table is suddenly bathed in light. Very beautiful is their table, reader. A salad of red, blood-red Ukrainian tomatoes and tender green cucumbers, dripping with salted butter; the sun – many suns – refracted in the wineglasses and tumblers on the table.The dark burning hands of the poet, Anna's hands, her fingernails, as always coated with an unusual lilac polish, Gennadii's beautiful hand grasping the stem of a wineglass… the stone in Genka's cufflink, suddenly catching the sun, shines out a pure red light.

"Is that a real stone?" Anna takes Genka's hand. There is respect in her voice.

"Are you serious?" Genka laughs. "It's fake. But fashionable. I'd've pawned a real one long ago."

"Oh Genchik… you're going to break Sergey Sergeevich's heart."

"It's nothing, Anna. My Dad's got lots of money. And then too, he owes me something in this life…"