A Young Scoundrel Read online

  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…"

  Chapter 4

  Eduard met Anna Moiseyevna Rubinshtein in the Autumn of l964. Borka Churilov introduced them. Eduard was 21, and had just quit the "Hammer and Sickle" factory, where he had worked with Borka in the foundry for a whole year and a half. A short-haired, sunburned, ____________________[mordatii] young worker, squinting to hide his extreme nearsightedness, looking for work, and his guardian angel, Borka, introduced him to the Poetry Shop, which needed a bookseller. In walked Anna Moiseyevna: beautiful, greyhaired at 27, scraping with her sharp metallic heels, inquisitively flashing her blue-violet eyes. And the bookselling job was instantly taken.

  It would be simple to explain their liason by saying that the young worker needed a Mama. But, in this case, primitive Freudianism cannot offer any explanation or critique of so self-reliant and self-willed a personality as that of Eduard Savyenko. And Anna Moiseyevna, an unstable, eccentric, volcanic woman, would never have been able to be that sort of Mama. Therefore, instead of a Freudian, a socio-psychological explanation suggests itself. To wit: Eduard Savyenko needed a milieu. And the people among whom Anna Moiseyevna lived suited him. By the age of 21, he had been a thief, a burglar, a foundry-worker, a high-rise fitter, a stevedore, a wanderer through the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Asia, sometimes beginning poems,then throwing away poems; yet he had never found himself. He didn't know who he was.

  At the foundry he was a good worker, and his portrait had appeared on the honor roll. He had six suits and three overcoats, and every Saturday he drank precisely eight hundred grams of cognac at the "Crystal" restaurant with his friends, young workers and girls. He was not, of course, acquainted with Genulik, son of the restaurant manager. The girls from the neighboring area, moulded from paraffin in the foundry forms, called our young hero "The Slave," for his inexplicable persistence and diligence in the heavy, terrible three-shift work of the foundry floor. His partner on the shift, the fiftyish slob Uncle Seryozha, who looked like a crab, considered Eduard a good fellow, though too fond of work, and called him "Endik." And then, one day,

  "Endik," to the utter surprise of Uncle Seryozha and the whole foundry team (he had already worked there ____________________) quit the division. He was bored. He'd had enough of it.

  The main reason, which was not known by many people, and which has remained little-known (actually, every event, except the most obvious ones, has a real, secret reason) was that in the spring of 1964 Eduard met Mikhail Issarov, already known to the criminal investigation divisions of the countries of the Soviet Union for his brilliant credit fraud schemes. An affable little Jew, who had flunked out of the Gornii Institute, and fled from the Don Basin, where he had worked for a few years as a mine-director, to Kharkov. Besides this, he had also worked as the main organizer of gangs of con-men. Mishka appeared in Kharkov with his partner, the only remaining members of a group of arrestees. Mishka had family in Kharkov – his mother, father, and brother Yurka – noble toilers already known to us at the "Hammer and Sickle" Factory. Standing by the bars of the cell, Yurka introduced Ed to his brother-in-crime. Ed liked Mishka. Mishka was small and cheerful, wore a moustache, and lived the life of a millionaire. For example, he used to fly from the Don Basin to Moscow every week to get his hair cut.

  Mishka had money. He needed two internal passports. For himself and his partner, Vitka. And our hero, remembering his criminal past, used his old connections to put Mishka in touch with his friends at the "Hammer and Sickle" dormitory. They "found" Mishka passports, 35 rubles each, stolen from other friends in the very same dormitory. Mishka stayed on in Kharkov and returned to credit scams. Every day, Mishka and Vitka left the Red Star Hotel on Sverdlov Street, which they shared with majors and captains, since it was a military hotel, and went out raiding the shops of Kharkov. With the stolen passports and certificates from their places of work, they "bought" on credit piles of gold watches, jewelry, expensive material for making suits and overcoats, and even televisions. All these blessings of civilization were acquired via swindle at less than one-quarter their price and resold on the black market. Mishka had invited Ed to dinner many times; one day, Ed, desiring to show his gratitude, introduced Mishka to the Asiatics from the Horse Market, who bought a good part of Mishka's goods. Another time, the inquisitive worker Savyenko, one week when he was on the third shift, helped the swindlers remove large quantities of jewelry, keeping watch while Mishka and Vitka worked.

  Even law-abiding people get nervou
s. What, then, can one expect of criminals, whose work involves so much anxiety? Soon Mishka and Vitka began quarreling and arguing. And split up for good. There was a fight at the Red Star Hotel, and at the time of the fight, the buddies split up the cloth and jewelry, summoning the terribly carefully noble Yurka, and the far less scrupulous worker Eduard.

  Several days later Mishka invited Ed to a restaurant and, at the end of the meal, over cognac and cigars, invited Ed, in the tone of a gangster from a Western film, to work with him. Tapping the ashes from his cigar, Mishka withdrew from his pocket a carelessly crumpled bundle of twenty-five ruble notes, paying Ed off and simultaneously suggesting for Ed the prospects in his "work" in Odessa, Kiev and Simferopol.

  "And then, Ed, with all the loot (but we're going to specialize in jewelry, just jewelry, this time) we'll move on to the Caucasus and sell it all there. Here in Kharkov, we'd have to give the stuff away at half price to the Chuchmeks; there, we can sell it at full price. Well, Ed?"

  Reader, when you are twenty-one and someone offers you money and travel, how can you resist? Eduard, whose prospects consisted of boring work in a hot foundry, agreed to join Mishka.

  Mishka decided to go to Odessa at once. It would have been dangerous to stay in Kharkov, where Vitka and Mishka had been operating all summer. The occasion of the break between the partners, alas, was a genuinely dangerous occurrence in which our hero, as it happens, had a part. Mishka (he insisted that the head of the credit bureau of a big department store had realized the picture on his passport was fake, or maybe he just got nervous) ran out of the department store, knocking people down. After him ran Vitka and Eduard. But Mishka had left in the hands of the thieves' enemy his passport, with his photograph! Mishka wanted to get out of Kharkov in a hurry.

  Eduard was delighted with the prospect of changing his life and said he was willing to leave that very day.

  "No," Mishka said suddenly, "Settle accounts with your work. Write a statement of resignation today and keep working for the next two weeks. At least one of us ought to have an authentic internal passport. With registration and all the stamps on it.

  Eduard pouted, unsatisfied. "Listen to an older and more experienced comrade," Mishka said. "Never do anything illegal, if it's possible to do it by legal means…I'm going on ahead to Odessa, but I won't be "working" there. In two weeks you'll meet up with me. As soon as it's set up, I'll send you a telegram with my address in Odessa… By the way, you don't happen to know a good tough kid who'd be willing to come along with me… I'll pay, of course. He doesn't have to know anything about our business. I need a bodyguard."

  Oh, Mishka Issarov had style! Eduard found him a bodyguard; the robust athlete Tolik Lysyenko traveled to Odessa with Mishka that same evening. Eduard gave notice at work and began waiting…

  Two weeks went by, and the foundry boss tried for two hours to persuade the "Slave" not to leave; but running into Eduard's stony determination, gave up and signed the form. Eduard got his severance pay, but there was no telegram from Mishka. "He must've been lying to me…?" Eduard wondered sadly. "Just making fun of me…" "The Slave" wanted a new, wild life; his childhood dream of becoming a great criminal had been so close to coming true, and now…

  Three weeks after Mishka's departure someone knocked on the door of the Savyenko apartment. Eduard opened it. The frightened and guilty-looking Tolik Lysyenko stood at the door. "Let's go. I have to talk to you, Ed!" They went out by some vacant land. Tolik kept looking around the whole time. sitting down on a pile of warm bricks, Tolik told him his Odessa story.

  In the beginning everything was fine. Thanks to a bribe, Mishka and Tolik managed to get set up in the safest possible place: a KGB sanatorium! They played tennis, got some sun, swam… Then a former girlfriend, an actress, betrayed Mishka. She ran into Mishka by accident on Deribosovskii Street, saw and called out to him, and agreed to a date. When Mishka showed up for the date, they arrested him. It turned out that the actress, knowing there was a big hunt for him, had gone around asking about Mishka that spring… Oh, women… The actress had some kind of grudge against Mishka – he'd dumped her or something, way back…

  True to his tradition of swindling with style, Mishka, whom they should have transferred to Donyetsk, the scene of his crimes, to be tried and judged, bought for himself and his two guards a first-class cell, and passed the time getting drunk with them. The agents had no objection, since Mishka's money would have gone to the State anyway – that is to say, to nobody.

  After a month Eduard was restless. Despite an acquaintance of many years, and an entirely truthful explanation by Tolik, he wondered why Tolik had not been arrested with Mishka. He considered the possibility that Tolik had betrayed Mishka. People betray each other all the time, and everyone has a dark side. Or maybe Mishka decided he didn't need them involved in his business.

  But Mishka had not deserted, and even Vitka had not betrayed them. Mishka even managed to hide his Kharkov period from the trashes. It was only for his "business" dealings in the Donets Basin that he got nine years penal servitude. The name of Mikhail Issarov, the first man to have robbed the Soviet State in the area of credit fraud, may be found in Soviet textbooks on criminology. As for our hero, he, as you see, had been, for the second time (the first being the day in 1962 when his mother had persuaded him to go with her to celebrate Aunt Katya's birthday, and Kostya Bondarenko, Yurka Bembel, and Slavka "The Suvorovian," who had come to pick him up, couldn't find his building and went off on their errand without him) miraculously saved from prison.

  Chapter 5

  At any rate, Borka Churilov established his lifelong protege as bookseller. In store No. 41, which had branched off from The Poetry Shop. The boss, Liliya, was a mean little blonde, whom Anna christened "The Little Fascist." She accepted "the little boy" willingly. Only "little girls" worked in the store. Liliya, Flora and "The Zombie" in a scraggly fur coat.

  Every morning he came in on the trolley from the Saltovka district. Every morning he would pick up his stock and take it to the place where, having put it on a folding table, he would sell it. After completing the transfer of the books, he would begin arranging them on the stand. At first, while they were still explaining things to him, he set up his stand on Sumskii Street, right at the very doors of Store No. 41. Afterwards, he operated in the foyer of the Komsomolskii Theatre and at other crowded spots.

  The bookseller's profession has some similarities to that of street-hawkers or snack-vendors. The bookseller recieves a paltry salary, but has the right to keep a certain percentage of the take. The outstanding bookseller in Kharkov, at the time Eduard Savyenko joined the profession, was the former railwayman Igor Iosifovich Kovalchuk, who had sold, at one time or another, for all the bookstores in the city. Of course, neither at the beginning of his career as a bookseller nor at its end could Eduard Savyenko compare in productivity with Igor Iosifovich. They hired Igor Iosifovich when they needed to fulfil their quota. They offered him higher salaries or bribed him. Because Igor Iosifovich could sell any book. Usually he set up his several tables in the center of Tevelyev Square, like an Asian vendor, crying out to the sky, about his books, hawking his wares in a hoarse voice: "Look! A history of the most terrible crimes in Antiquity! The battle between black and white magic!" It was difficult for passers-by to withstand these lures. There were always crowds gathered around Igor Iosifovich's stand. The "Story of the Greatest Crimes in Antiquity" might turn out to be simply a volume from the textbook, "Treasury of World Literature," issued by the Academy of Sciences.

  "Ed," as Anna called him before the adoption of the last name, "Limonov," was shy. He hunched timidly behind his book-covered display table. Sometimes there were two tables. Ed sat timidly and, for the most part, said nothing or smiled diffidently. Despite the straight-razor the bookseller often carried in his pocket, the bookseller of store No. 41 was not an agressive young man. Sometimes Liliya would send out, to reinforce him, "The Zombie" – a skinny being of the feminine variety, always wrapped
in a shabby old fur coat. "The Zombie's" nose was always frozen, and its long tip was of a bluish color.

  Eduard Savyenko didn't earn much money. To speak more precisely, he earned almost nothing. Yet the rapid pace of events managed, in October, November and December, to transform the half-criminal young worker into something else, something not quite clear – but at the very least, he entered, in those cold months, an entirely new social class. Imagine, reader, how difficult a process this is. Sometimes this sort of transformation requires several generations!

  Every evening the bookseller hurried to get the stacks of books, and the tables, back to Store No. 41. Like a worker-bee hurrying back to the hive, like a bird to its nest, a jet to the airport. The bookseller hurried along – awaiting him was an appointment with the future, concealed in the alleys of Shevchenko Park, in the "automaticic snack-bar" on Sumskii Street, and in several Kharkov apartments. The future was hidden in the murky urban twilight, draped in rather old-fashioned clothes – symbolist, surrealist clothes. Though provincial, Kharkov, former capital of Ukraine, knew how to play cultural games.

  There were many people around. Hundreds, at the very least. New, interesting people, unlike anyone else. In the little "storeroom" of Store No. 41 there were always lots of people sitting, avidly reading manuscripts. Poems, for the most part. The clean-shaven physicist Lyev, who had just returned from an expedition to Leningrad, brought back five or six examples of Brodskii's poem "Procession". An early poem, an imitation of Tsvetaeva, this poem lacked artistic integrity, but suited very well the socio-cultural stage which was occupied (better to say, at which will always be occupied) by Kharkov and the majority of the "Decadents," who tramped along the triangle formed by Bookstore No. 41, The Poetry Shop, and the Automatic. So the poem enjoyed an unusual popularity. People stood in line to read Brodskii, from the time the bookstore opened to the time it closed. One of these readers was the poet Motrich.