Memoir of a Russian Punk

19

It has already started to get dark, and a half-rain, half-snow is falling – barely, but still falling. Eddie's in a foul mood. He has no idea what he'll tell Svetka when he sees her at eight. You could burn up with shame over this money business. What a bitch his mother is! They have the money, so what difference would it make to her to give him the 250 he needs? Everything would be all right then. And anyway, all the kids get money from their parents three times a year – on May Day, on New Year's, and for the October holidays. It's a tradition. The poorest workers give their teenage children money so they can be "like everybody else" and no worse than anybody else – so they can spend the holidays with their friends and drink and dance a bit to the radio or a record player. Eddie's father's an officer, and he makes twice as much as the workers, but Eddie still has to suffer because of their fucking principles.

Beginning to shiver, Eddie walks down Materialist Street, empty for the second day because of the holidays, and in spite of himself he starts to swear out loud. "We want you to grow up to be an honest man!" he says, aping his father. "I want you to be like your papa! He has never taken anything that belonged to anybody else, and he has never used his position for his own personal advantage," he mimics his mother.

"Jesus! I don't want to be like my papa!" Eddie yells, and then looks around. No, nobody's there. "So you want me to be an honest person, then?" he continues out loud. "Then give me the miserable money and don't make me break into a cafeteria and risk five years. Take Sashka Lyakovich. He doesn't steal because his mother and stepfather not only give him money but let him invite any friends he wants, including girls, and they even let the girls stay overnight if that's what Sashka wants. Now, those are good parents! And as a result Sashka isn't a punk! The goddamn whore!" Eddie swears, ending his tirade.

Eddie decides to go past Borka Churilov's windows again; maybe they're lit. Maybe Borka is back from Zhuravlyovka. Wrapped up in their coats, domino players are sitting under an awning at a wooden table in Borka's yard, by lamplight.

"It doesn't make any difference to those assholes whether it's raining or snowing," Eddie thinks scornfully, "as long as they can mindlessly slap their dominoes around. They come home from the factory, gobble something down, and then it's outside to play dominoes." The domino players play by lamplight until late at night. In Saltovka they can be found in all the yards, or at least wherever there are streetlights. Borka laughs at the domino players, and Eddie-baby holds them in contempt. He's in fact contemptuous of all workers, except for Borka. He knows that workers are the most uninteresting and backward people. Repatriated people are interesting. Asya is interesting. So is her family. Their neighbor Viktor Apollonovich, who was also repatriated, is interesting too, although he's probably crazy. Even in winter the bearded Viktor Apollonovich goes around the snowy streets of Saltovka wearing a frock coat, a bow tie, a bowler, and no overcoat – a specter from the tales of the brothers Grimm… "Even Katya Muravyov's interesting," Eddie thinks. According to Asya, Katya shot herself – she wanted to kill herself. True, she somehow shot herself in the leg, so that she's lame now, but at least she tried. Not the proletarians, though; people like that don't shoot themselves.

For some strange reason, Eddie's contempt does not extend to the occasionally employed punks. The punks find work for themselves only when they are pressured to by the militia, and then they only remain on the job for a little while, always looking for a way to get out of it. As a rule, the punks are more likely to work in the winter than in the summer. The hearts of the punks grow restless with the first rays of spring sunshine. "The weather says it's time to settle up!" as a Saltovka saying has it, and the punks all quit their factories in April.

"I'll never work!" the angry Eddie-baby whispers as he walks past the domino players. Turning the corner, he notes in desperation that Borka's windows are dark.

There's nothing for Eddie to do but go home and somehow try to squeeze the money out of his mother. Kadik is supposed to drop by at six. Maybe Kadik, who knows how to talk to Raisa Fyodorovna, can help Eddie induce her to give him something. However feebly, hope springs up in Eddie, and starting to shiver from a sudden sensation of dampness, he turns toward Saltov Road in the direction of his own building.