Memoir of a Russian Punk

22

What happened next was something that Eddie didn't expect at all, and even though it made him partly glad, it also put him on his guard. It turned out Svetka wasn't home. Nobody was.

Eddie-baby and Kadik sat for a while outside Svetka's building and waited for her with some of the neighborhood boys, who all knew Eddie well. She and Eddie had after all agreed that he would drop by around eight. But when the hands of Kadik's watch pointed to seven-thirty, they decided to go anyway in order to get to the Victory in time to sign up for the contest.

Leaving the bench in Svetka's yard, Eddie realized that he was alarmed but also relieved that he wouldn't have to disgrace himself in front of her, that he wouldn't have to explain that he hadn't gotten the money and thereby humiliate himself. Eddie-baby asked the kids from Svetka's building to tell her that he'd dropped by and that if she wanted to, she should come to Victory, since that's where he'd be. He didn't leave any explanation as to why he was going to Victory instead of to Sashka Plotnikov's. For some reason he was sure Svetka wouldn't be back by eight, as they had agreed, since it was already past seven-thirty. At the same time, however, he wasn't concerned about her. He knew she'd gone to Dnepropetrovsk with her mother and therefore nothing in particular could have happened to her. Their train was probably just running late because of the holiday. "If the train's more than an hour or an hour and a half late, that will work out pretty well," Eddie reasoned as he and Kadik took the crowded trolley to Victory.

Almost all the passengers got off the trolley at the Victory, and it continued on its way empty. Immediately on the other side of the tracks was a seething human broth, a thick, swaying mass that possessed its own internal currents, like every crowd, unconscious but clearly subject to some common law. Once Vitka Zhuk, the projectionist at the Victory, took Eddie with him high up onto the roof of the House of Culture and showed him the crowd from above. Looking down on it, Eddie was amazed by how much it resembled a treacherous river – in some places it seemed to swirl around shoals, while in others it seemed to bump up against them and flow powerfully off in one direction, only to stop suddenly and begin flowing in another. "Holy fuck!" was all Eddie could say then, although that evening he did try to write a poem about the crowd. In the poem too he compared the crowd to a river, but the poem didn't work out – Eddie himself didn't care for it.

"Hurry and sign up!" Kadik now says to Eddie, pulling him along. "Come on, come on!" he urges, and they move through the crowd toward the immense stairway that leads up to the first level of the building's terraced apron. The Victory is built like the Parthenon, although it's much bigger. On the apron are towering microphones, crates containing electrical equipment, the famous amplifiers Kadik is so delighted with, and a place for the band, which has just left the stage for a break. Somewhere in the depths of the Victory, Vitka Zhuk is playing records in the band's absence, at the moment a song called "The Black Sea," popular that year:

Whoever was born by the sea

Has fallen in love forever

With the white masts at rest

In the smoke of the maritime city

sings a saccharine voice from all the loudspeakers on the square. Here and there people in the crowd dance, while the rest buzz, yell, converse, and gather in little clusters.

Making their way onto the apron, Eddie-baby and Kadik slip under the rope surrounding the microphones and equipment and go up to a group of people crowded around a man in a black suit and bow tie – the master of ceremonies. Several Komsomol auxiliaries – well-fed youths with red armbands – had tried to stop them, but Kadik very impressively announced, "We're taking part in the poetry contest," and the Komsomol auxiliaries let them through to the master of ceremonies.

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" the insolent and persistent Kadik politely says to everyone, shamelessly pushing his way into the little group. "My friend, a very talented poet from Saltovka, would like to take part in your contest," Kadik says in a dignified tone, addressing the master of ceremonies.

"By all means!" the master of ceremonies answers without any particular pleasure but with professional courtesy. "Whose poems will you be reciting, young man?" he asks, addressing Eddie.

Eddie hardly has a chance to open his mouth before Kadik is answering for him: "His own, naturally. Whose poems would a poet recite, anyway?"

"His own. Very fine!" the master of ceremonies says, becoming more animated. "Ten people have already signed up, but most of them will be reciting the poems of well-known Soviet and Russian poets. Only" – and here the master of ceremonies looks at a piece of paper he's holding in his hand – "only four will be reciting their own poems. Last year there were a lot more," he notes absently, as if puzzled, as if not knowing how to explain the drop in the number of poets who will be reciting their own poems at the Victory this year.

"But aren't you having a contest for the best poems?" Kadik asks him.

"As a matter of fact, we did plan a tourney for poets," the master of ceremonies confirms, "but in view of the small number of participants, we have pretty much decided to have a contest just for poetry reciters -"

"Oh no, you have to have a contest for poets, just as you announced!" demands the indignant Kadik. "It was announced in the press that there would be a contest for poets," says the stern Kadik-Kolka, laying down the law.

Eddie has even forgotten his fear of the crowd, so completely delighted is he with his friend-impresario. That's how he said it – just like a responsible comrade: "It was announced in the press…"

"Well, we have five people now. It's not a lot, but I think it will be enough for a contest," the master of ceremonies says, making up his mind. "Four poets just wasn't enough," he justifies himself to Kadik.

"The public has come to hear a contest for poets," Kadik declares, waving his hand over the sea of people below them. "You can see how excited and full of anticipation they are," he adds.

The crowd really is excited, but Eddie-baby, Kadik, and the master of ceremonies know it couldn't be less interested in poetry. "It would watch the circus with the greatest of pleasure," Eddie-baby thinks with a grin. "It wants bread and spectacles, biomitsin and the circus. Roll out barrels of biomitsin for them and invite the regional circus to come with its bears, elephants, and clowns, and the crowd at the Victory will be the happiest crowd in the world. They'll remember it for years afterward."

The young people have come to the Victory to see each other, to drink together, to get into fights, to pass the time with their friends. Every district has its own place on the square. The half of the square to Eddie's right belongs to the kids from Tyurenka and Saltovka, to "our guys," as he puts it. The other half belongs to the kids from Plekhanovka, who share it as hosts with the kids from Zhuravlyovka. That doesn't mean that the kids from Tyurenka or Saltovka can't go over to the side belonging to the kids from Plekhanovka and Zhuravlyovka; certainly they can, but officially the gangs congregate on different sides of the square – that's how the territory is divided. Eddie-baby has no idea who divided it that way, but that's the way it has always been. It's a tradition that has been passed down from one generation to the next.

"I'd like to look at your poems before you recite them," the master of ceremonies says to Eddie. "Forgive me, young man, but what's your name?"

"Eduard Savenko," Eddie identifies himself with a certain reluctance. He doesn't like his last name and dreams of changing it when he grows up.

"All right then, Eduard," the master of ceremonies says, "I'd like to take a look at your work. Please don't be offended – that's the policy around here -"

"Censorship!" the insolent Kadik mockingly interjects. "Show him what you plan to recite, Eddie."

It's a good thing that Eddie has brought the notebook with him. He leafs through it now to find the poems he needs. This isn't the beach, after all; they won't let you recite poems about the militia and prison. What's required are poems about love. You can recite poems about love anywhere.

"Here's one," Eddie says, sticking his finger in the notebook. "And this one too," he indicates, turning the page. "And here's another one," he says, "just a short one," and he hands the notebook to the master of ceremonies, who immediately immerses himself in it. The master of ceremonies reads professionally and rapidly, and after a few minutes he gives the notebook back to Eddie.

"Very talented, young man," he says. "Very. I'm pleasantly impressed. The majority of people who recite here," he says, taking Eddie by the arm and leading him a little away from the others, "the majority of the poets here are, how shall I put it" – and he frowns – "are not very literate about poetry. And then too," the master of ceremonies adds condescendingly, "they lack spiritual culture… You understand what I mean?" he says, looking Eddie in the eye. "By the way, what do your parents do?" he asks.

"My father's an army officer, and my mother's a housewife," Eddie succinctly answers. Despite the compliment the master of ceremonies has bestowed on his poems, Eddie doesn't care for him. There's something unpleasant about him. "A cultured hireling," Eddie says to himself.

"That's what I thought, that's just what I thought!" the master of ceremonies chirps happily. "Your father's an officer. Officers are our Soviet middle class… Of course," he says, "it's all clear now…"

"And you, young man" – he turns to Kadik, who has come over to listen to what they are saying – "you're wrong about the censorship. I'm not engaging in censorship here. We don't have Stalinism in this country anymore, but we do have a huge audience out there" – and the master of ceremonies waves his hand over the square filled to the brim with people – "sometimes in the tens of thousands… No, we aren't censoring our poets; we're simply required to protect people from any possible hooliganism, any possible provocation. For example, you kids know what happened several months ago in Ukrainian Pravda, don't you?" he says, speaking to both of them now, to both Eddie and Kadik.

"No," they answer.

"A terrible provocation. And very clever, too!" The master of ceremonies smiles venomously. "A letter came to the editorial staff from Canada. In the letter a Canadian Ukrainian, a young man, wrote that he loved our country and that he was a worker, and he asked the staff to publish a poem in which he glorified the world's leading country of victorious socialism and spoke of his hatred for capitalism, which has condemned the workers to unemployment. They published the poem, but -" And here the voice of the master of ceremonies becomes a loud whisper. "Well, as a poet, Eduard, you must know what an acrostic is. Do you?" Eddie-baby nods. He knows what an acrostic is. "Well, then," the master of ceremonies announces triumphantly, "it was an acrostic! So that if you read only the first letters of each line, you got the infamous Ukrainian fascist cry: In Muskovite, Polack, and Jew, take your knife and stick it through.' So you see how it is, young people… And you say 'censorship,'" the master of ceremonies concludes, walking away from Eddie and Kadik with a smug expression on his face to announce the start of the poetry contest.

Even Kadik is dumbstruck. "Not too fucking bad!" he exclaims, laughing. "The editor was probably prosecuted."

Not that Kadik feels sorry for the editor or approves of the deceptively provocative actions of the Canadian poet, but like all the residents of Saltovka, for some reason he's glad whenever the authorities slip up. Especially since Ukrainian Pravda is viewed as a disgusting rag and is moreover in the Ukrainian language, which is considered provincial in Kharkov. Nobody wants to go to the Ukrainian schools, so now all the kids in the non-Ukrainian schools are being forced to study the Ukrainian language, even though the instruction is conducted in Russian. Eddie-baby has been studying Ukrainian since the second form and knows it very well, but where is he supposed to use it – in a village or something? And where is such a village to be found? Even in Old Saltov it's only the old people who still speak Ukrainian. The young people don't want to. In Kiev the intelligentsia use it just to show off. They stand on Kreshchatik and loudly "conversate in Ukrainian." You could just as easily show off by speaking English. "Asya, on the other hand, is a modest person who doesn't boast about her French, even though she speaks it better than any teacher of the language," Eddie thinks.

And there's no more boring subject in school than Ukrainian literature. The endless whining about "serfdom" – it makes your ears burn. There hasn't been any serfdom for a long, long time, but the whining remains.