Memoir of a Russian Punk

23

Eddie is the second to perform. That's good, because by the fifth poet the audience will be tired out and start whistling and demanding music. The first poet, a muscular guy of about twenty-five, recites his poem about a boxer very badly. "He's probably a boxer himself," Kadik whispers. The poem in itself isn't that bad, although the poet is obviously imitating both Yevtushenko and Rozhdestvensky at the same time, which is fine, but nobody has taught the guy how to recite. He just mumbles into the microphone, when what he needs to do with a crowd like this is recite loudly and clearly.

"And he should stand a lot closer to the microphone," Eddie reasons, analyzing the mistakes of the boxer-poet. When the latter walks away from the microphone, the applause is pretty sparse. "He could have performed a lot better," Eddie decides. "Read well, his aggressive poem about a boxer who finally knocks out his opponent would unquestionably have pleased precisely this rowdy group of young people, which respects aggressive strength more than anything else. What a fool!" Eddie says in condescending pity of his own unsuccessful opponent.

The master of ceremonies comes over to Eddie.

"Would you like me to announce you as a Saltovka poet, Eduard?" he asks with a smile.

"Yes," Eddie answers.

"Of course," Kadik reiterates. Although Kadik doesn't like Saltovka, he does appreciate that all the Saltovka members of the audience will root for Eddie and the applause will be that much greater. What self-respecting patriot of Saltovka wouldn't clap for one of his own?

"And now I would like to present to you," the master of ceremonies says into the microphone in a hushed voice, "the youngest participant in our poetry contest… The Saltovkan poet, as he calls himself" – and here the master of ceremonies makes a significant and prolonged pause before shouting, "EDUARD SAVENKO!"

"Now, that's really professional," Eddie thinks with envy. "Whether you want to or not, you'll hear him." Even the part of the crowd that's farthest away, standing by the trolley stop hidden behind the last lamps, has now heard of the Saltovkan poet, and from all over the square comes the sound of encouraging applause. If Eddie and Kadik have counted accurately, there are thousands of people from Saltovka at the festival. Here and there are heard shouts of "Ed!" as people in the crowd start to recognize Eddie, who has now stepped up to the microphone, and then from the right-hand side of the square, from the place where the Saltovka punks have congregated, comes organized, noisy applause and more shouts of encouragement: "Ed! Ed!"

"Can you hear?" Eddie asks into the microphone in a loud, brash voice. His hands are trembling, his mouth is dry, but he knows that in a moment his stage fright will pass completely. Just as soon as he starts to recite.

"Yes! Yes!" come yells from the crowd.

"'Natasha,' do 'Natasha'!" A heartrending cry is suddenly heard. And from other places in the crowd come other voices in support of the first: "Do 'Natasha'!" It's obvious the kids have heard "Natasha" one of the many times he recited it at the beach.

Eddie wrote "Natasha" after spending Easter at Vitka Nemchenko's. Eddie hadn't actually intended to recite "Natasha" for the contest and therefore hadn't shown it to the master of ceremonies. But now, standing face to face with thousands of people, he thinks that maybe he will do "Natasha" after all – why not? His audiences have always liked it. Only he won't recite the last stanza about the punks, since the master of ceremonies and the auxiliaries might gang up on him and throw him off the stage. Smiling, Eddie almost asks into the microphone in a powerful but friendly way the first lines of the poem:

Who's that walking home,

Isn't it our friend Natasha?

Braids in ribbons down her back,

Dear, sweet Natasha!

The crowd has grown quiet and is listening to him now. Eddie sees that even the back rows have quieted down. They're all listening, unlike when the boxer recited. "You can hear the trolley and the shuffling of thousands of feet, but otherwise the whores are listening," Eddie thinks delightedly. He knows they won't listen to more than three poems before they start fidgeting, but while they're still quiet, he'll give them a first-class "Natasha" – like a national anthem. And he continues to recite clearly and forcefully:

The wind is fresh, and the lilacs

Are everywhere in bloom.

In a white dress on a sunny day

You've come out to take a walk…

After Eddie has chanted all twelve stanzas to them and is concluding with a repetition (except for the last two lines) of the first stanza as a refrain -

Who's that walking home,

Isn't it our friend Natasha?

Homeward with a majestic stride,

Dear Russian Natasha!

– the whole square erupts in a roar of applause, and Eddie realizes that whatever happens, however good the poems recited after him, the first prize is his. He therefore recites two more poems and despite the exclamations of "Bravo!" and "More! More!" walks away from the microphone.

"Great job!" the master of ceremonies says to him, for some reason taking a more familiar tone. "Great job! I'm sure the jury will give you first prize. Tell me, did you ever take a speech class or acting lessons?" he asks. "You handled yourself magnificently! And the poems were excellent," the master of ceremonies says, failing to remember that Eddie didn't show him "Natasha" beforehand. It's not for the victor to be judged. "Even though it's quite possible that 'Natasha' is an acrostic, that if you read the first or the last letters in the stanzas, you might come up with some rubbish or other," Eddie thinks with a laugh. "Maybe it says, 'Why don't you all get fucked in the mouth!'"

"Well, congratulations, old buddy!" shouts a happy Kadik, shaking Eddie by the shoulders. "You see how well everything works out if you just listen to old man Kadik? Today the best girls will be ours!" Kadik yelps in delight. "Go up to any one of them and take her! That is, if Svetka doesn't come to Victory," he adds, correcting himself.

The words of his friend bring Eddie back to reality and distract him from the greatest social triumph of his fifteen-year-old life. His intuition contributes a certain anxiety on its own. If he had felt that anxiety before his performance, he would have attributed it to stage fright, but now he begins to wonder if something hasn't happened to Svetka. "Maybe the train went off the tracks?" he thinks with horror, although he immediately pushes that thought out of his mind. "That's stupid – how often do trains get derailed? Svetka is about as likely to be hit by a falling brick. It's just stupid."