Memoir of a Russian Punk

10

Eddie-baby and an already pretty sloshed Slavka the Gypsy are sitting in the little garden next to the Stakhanovite Club, smoking and talking and drinking a 0.8-liter "fire extinguisher" of the usual biomitsin, one left behind by Red Sanya, who was drinking with them but had to run off to see his woman, the hairdresser Dora.

"Hey, Eddie-baby," Slavka says, "you're a good guy, Eddie-baby. So tell me, what are you doing here?"

"Living," Eddie-baby answers. "The same as you, Slavka," he adds with a smirk.

"You're a fool, Eddie old buddy!" Slavka exclaims indignantly. "A fool!"

"Why am I supposed to be a fool?" Eddie-baby asks, unperturbed. If anybody else – somebody his own age, say – had called him a fool, he would have cut him with the bottle he's holding in his hand, but Slavka's an old guy and a hopeless case. The kids say he's even attracted to his own brother Yurka and that's why Yurka, a harmless technoid in glasses, recently beat up the drunken Slavka. He punched him. And the Gypsy does in fact have a dried-out little scab on his left cheek.

"What the fuck are you doing here in Saltovka with the punks? You're done for if you stay here!" the Gypsy continues in a distressed tone. "Listen to me, they'll send you off to prison, and they'll do it soon too. You're finished if you don't get out of here. And if you get sent away once, then with your character you'll get sent away again. You're reckless, like me -"

"What are you doing here yourself, Gypsy?" Eddie interrupts as he passes the bottle.

The Gypsy guzzles the wine, finally frees himself from the bottle, and says while quietly hiccupping,

"What are you looking at me for, Eddie old buddy? I'm already an old man. I'm a hopeless case, if you want to know. Everything's over for me, everything's behind me. I'm an alcoholic; all I have left is my dick. I sleep until three o'clock, and I have no desire to get up, because I'm afraid of going out; it's so cold here. Yurka and my mother go to the factory, and I get up with them and pretend that I'm planning to go out and look for a job, but when they leave after giving me a couple of rubles for the trolley, I go back to bed. I hate work. I hate iron and the people who bang it around. My hearing is delicate. I'm different; I'm not the same as these proletarian slaves. Look at my hands…"

Eddie-baby is silent and doesn't look at the Gypsy's hands. He knows what kind of hands Slavka has, since the latter has already shown them to him many times.

The Gypsy goes on: "Fucking winter! Where we live, Eddie-baby – you understand that it's the worst goddamn climate, the most fucked-up, shitty climate in the world. And why is that? Do you know why, Eddie old buddy?"

"Why?" Eddie asks.

"Because our Slav ancestors were fucking cowards, that's why. Did you know that in English 'Slav' and 'slave' are the same word, Eddie?"

"Really?" Eddie says, sincerely astonished. "It's true, it's true," the Gypsy insists. "Our ancestors had the souls of slaves, so instead of bravely conquering warm lands for themselves around the Mediterranean where lemons grow – did you realize, Eddie, that lemons grow there?" Slavka drawls, and suddenly switching to a sarcastic whisper, he continues – "they refused to fight and fled like cowards to this fucking snow, and now you and I are sitting on this fucking green Soviet bench, and it's snowing and it's cold, and all I have is this fucking raincoat. And it's Yurka's," he adds with a drunken chuckle. "Do you call that living?"

"Yes," Eddie agrees, "it's better in the tropics. Somewhere in Rio or Buenos Aires. Ciudad de nuestra senora de Buenos Aires," he says thoughtfully. "Do you know what that means, Slavka?"

"I do, old buddy," the Gypsy says. 'City of our lady of favorable winds.' The locals call it 'B'aires' for short."

Slavka knows everything. It's never boring with him, and you can learn a lot. He's witty too – when he isn't too drunk. Which is why Eddie is sitting here with him on the bench. Slavka reads constantly, even in English. Sticking out of his pocket right now is some foreign newspaper. Slavka studied at the university for two years before he was expelled.

"Get the fuck out of here, Eddie-baby, before it's too late. And don't hang around with the punks. They're going in just one direction – to prison. You're completely different from them," Slavka whines again, and grabbing Eddie-baby by the collar of his jacket, he forcefully pulls him close. "Look at me!" he demands drunkenly.

"Cut it out, Gypsy…" Eddie-baby pushes him away in irritation.

"No, look me in the eyes!" the Gypsy insists. Eddie-baby looks him in the eyes.

Slavka smiles drunkenly. "In your eyes shines intelligence and a natural nobility!" he proclaims. "And it doesn't shine in all your Kadiks and Karpovs and Cats! And it never will!" Slavka yells.

"You're drunk as a pig," Eddie-baby says seriously. "You're starting to get boring."

"Maybe so," Slavka calmly agrees. "Maybe I am drunk."

"Oh," he says with a sudden sigh, "if only summer would come! I'll go to Vladivostok. I'm tired of it here with you people. Have you ever been to Vladivostok, Eddie old buddy?" he asks.

Eddie hasn't been to Vladivostok. He shakes his head no. His lips are occupied; he's sucking on the fire extinguisher.

"It's really nice in Vladivostok," Slavka says with pleasure. "The Pacific fishermen have piles of money. And so do the whalers," Slavka happily recalls. "Vladivostok is the home of the whaling fleet. When they come back to port after six months at sea, their pockets are crammed with money! Can you imagine, Eddie – their pockets! And it's no trouble at all getting between them and their money," Slavka adds slyly. "The sailor who's been starving for human contact at sea for six months really needs good conversation. That's the second thing, after sex. Come to Vladivostok with me, Eddie, all right? The two of us will make a good team. I'll pass myself off as a seaman, and you'll be my little brother."

"All right, let's go," Eddie-baby agrees, placing the empty fire extinguisher next to the bench. Eddie-baby is tidy.

"Imagine us sitting in a bar, Eddie – there's one on the hill there where the whalers go, and down below is the Golden Horn harbor, and moving over it are the lights of transoceanic liners… Can you imagine the picture, Eddie old man?" And interrupting Eddie, who is just on the point of replying, the Gypsy adds, "Did you know that the harbor in Vladivostok is named after the Golden Horn harbor in Istanbul, hm?"

Yes, Eddie-baby had heard about that. "Yes," he says, "how come?"

"Because, Eddie old buddy, it's shaped just like the harbor in Istanbul," Slavka says in the quietly didactic tones of a teacher. "In Istanbul, in Constantinople…," he bursts out singing all of a sudden, beating his palms on the bench to keep time. The Gypsy is sitting with his legs spread wide and is slapping his palms on the bench between his thighs. And then his gaze falls on one of those skinny thighs in its trouser leg, and he grabs it between his hands.

"Look how skinny I've gotten," he says, turning to Eddie. "In your fucking Kharkov, in your fucking Saltovka."

"It's yours too, isn't it, Slavka?" Eddie-baby observes. "And there's no goddamn way you've gotten skinny, since as far as I remember, you were always pretty scrawny. It's just the way you're built."

"I was born in Moscow, Eddie old buddy," Slavka says. "Remember that, in Moscow, and not in your lousy city. My father was a Polish aristocrat, the jasnowielmozny pan Zablodski," he says pompously. "True, my mother let me down; she's a Russian whore. Even her name is cheap: Ekaterina, Katerina… Katya…," Slavka says, emphasizing each stressed syllable. "Yurka takes after her, takes after her completely, whereas I take after my father…"

Eddie-baby laughs, and Slavka sighs again and then leans across Eddie-baby, who is sitting on the edge of the bench, and reaches for the bottle. As soon as he realizes that it's empty, he hurls it across the path at the latticed iron fence opposite them. The bottle breaks with an unpleasant crunch.

"What the fuck did you do that for?" Eddie-baby asks. "The trashes will come running now. They're all over the place; it's a holiday." "Trashes" in Saltov slang means "militia officers." A single militia officer is a "trash," and several of them are "trashes."

"Don't tell me how to live," Slavka retorts. "You're still too young to start teaching me. Live as long as I have, then you can teach me. Fuck the trashes and fuck you," he announces capriciously. He is obviously drunk.

"What an asshole you are!" Eddie-baby says. "You're an old guy and still an asshole." And Eddie-baby gets up from the bench and walks away.

Slavka doesn't want to be left alone, so he plods along after him.

"Wait up, Eddie old buddy," he mutters somewhere in the rear. "Wait up, where are you going?"

Eddie-baby quickens his pace and soon leaves Slavka behind.