Memoir of a Russian Punk Read online

  And so it happened that during one of the New Year’s vacations they took them to the opera. If the thirteen-year-old Eddie-baby had had something else to do that day, he wouldn’t have gone. But there wasn’t anything interesting in the offing, and so he got ready for the opera, ironing his pencil-thin dark blue pants made from a pair of his father’s uniform trousers, although with the lighter blue MVD piping removed. Those pants kept their crease extremely well and were, moreover, the narrowest ones in school: sixteen centimeters wide. Eddie-baby was proud of them. Raisa Fyodorovna had no idea they were only sixteen centimeters; she thought they were twenty-four. Being an intelligent boy who had no wish to irritate his parents unnecessarily, Eddie-baby had altered the pants himself in three or four stages – gradually, in other words, so his parents would get used to the new width each time. It ought to be said to Eddies credit that although he had no skill with either needle or thread, he managed the task brilliantly. Raisa Fyodorovna discovered that the pants were just sixteen centimeters wide only later on, in February 1956, when she was told by Rachel, their classroom teacher, an old Jewish woman who had replaced the Armenian Valentina Pavlovna Nazarian in the fifth year.

  It wasn’t then that Eddie-baby called Rachel Israilovna Katz an old kike in the presence of the whole class; that came later. At the time in question, she and Eddie-baby still had quite decent relations. Eddie-baby had of course long since been deposed as chairman of the Pioneer council, but he was still the editor and principal artist of the classroom wall newspaper and was still more or less highly esteemed in the school scheme of things, even if by then, after his sensational attempt to run away from home in March 1954, which the whole school knew about, he was regarded as someone who was going nowhere and whose prospects were obviously dim.

  In any case, Eddie-baby allowed himself to be dragged across the entire city on two different trolley lines and then to be marched in a column along with the rest of the students to Rymarsky Street, where the Kharkov opera and ballet theater is located. Over one of his father’s white military shirts and a bow tie given to him on his birthday by Vitka Golovashov and a dark blue jacket a little darker than the famous pants (so that together they created the impression of a suit), Eddie-baby wore his new beige Czech topcoat in cloaklike fashion. His parents had purchased the coat for him on their own, never suspecting how their son would look in it. Eddie-baby was even then something of a dandy, and the trip on the two trolleys in the company of his variously but for the most part boorishly or childishly dressed fellow pupils annoyed him. He felt ashamed of many of them.

  Having sat through the first act with great difficulty, and knowing that even though three more acts remained (they were doing Sleeping Beauty, which Secondary School No.8 had already seen twice) it would be impossible to leave, since their oppressors had ordered that none of the pupils be given his coat from the cloakroom until the performance was over, Eddie-baby was in a rage. He stood irritably smoking with a group of other kids in the toilet, and they all swore and spat independently, and Eddie swore too in a paroxysm of helpless anger at the cretinism of the school authorities. It was then that Vovka Chumakov suggested that they get something to drink. Vovka was a second-year student also known as the “Plague,” who at the time was Eddie-baby’s best friend (it was in fact with Vovka that Eddie had tried to run away to Brazil in March of 1954).

  “We can get something to drink if we split the cost, but how will you get to the store?” Eddie-baby asked the Plague. “The bitches won’t let anybody leave. And Lyova the gym teacher and the senior Pioneer leader are standing by the doors…”

  “Easy,” grinned the Plague. “I’ll climb out. You see how big the transom window is. Only I don’t have any money.”

  Nobody had expected him to. The Plague was the poorest kid in their class. His mother took in washing, his father had been killed at the front, and there were even times when he didn’t have any lunch with him. But the Plague was respected in the school for his courage and also for his good looks – he had wavy chestnut hair and big green eyes. And he was a tall boy. At the time Eddie-baby had almost reached his present one meter seventy-four centimeters, but Vovka the Plague was even taller.

  The kids started rummaging in their jacket and coat pockets, pulling out coins and crumpled ruble notes. The Plague collected them all in his pocket, grinned, and climbed out the window.

  “Don’t cut out on us,” Vitka Golovashov said to him.

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” the Plague answered, turning around with one leg already through the transom window. “My coat’s still here.”

  They all started laughing. From one of the stalls, which until then had been closed, a bearded old man emerged and glanced fearfully at the unfamiliar young tribe while he straightened his suit. The tribe started whistling and stamping its feet, and Vitka Sitenko even stuck out two fingers, as if threatening to put out the old man’s eyes…

  The old man was gone in an instant.

  The theater bell rang, summoning the audience to return to the auditorium. Everybody who had chipped in on the bottle decided to remain in the toilet and wait for the Plague, since the store was right across from the theater. But Vitka Golovashov very reasonably suggested that since Lyova the gym teacher was aware of their habits, he would come to the toilet to check up on them. Vitka Golovashov is a bright lad, and so he proposed climbing up onto the toilet bowls and hiding out in the stalls, since Lyova would hardly come bursting in but would only look to see if there were any feet visible in the open space between the doors and the floor.

  And that’s what everybody did. True, there were only four stalls, and so Vitka Sitenko and Vitka Golovashov had to climb into one of them together, and they giggled and fidgeted in their stall. The other kids told them to shush, and then they were quiet.

  After the third bell, and as if Vitka had read his mind, Lyova came in. It was clear just from the sound of his footsteps that it was the sturdy, not very good former athlete grown soft as a teacher of physical education at an out-of-the-way school. The girls claimed that when he lifted them up onto the rings or the horizontal bar, Lyova tried to grab them by the breasts. Eddie-baby was contemptuous of Lyova and didn’t go to his classes, and Lyova for his part called Eddie-baby a peacock. Lyova remained in the toilet for a while, combing his hair or something by the mirror, probably covering up his bald spot with whatever was left, and then he went out.

  The kids immediately jumped down from the toilet bowls all together, just about at the same time that the Plague stuck his head through the transom window. Once he had caught sight of his friends, his head hovered in the transom window for a moment, merrily smirking, and then disappeared behind the cloudy windowpane, only to be replaced by his hands, which were holding four bottles of fortified rose. It turned out Vitka Golovashov had given him 25 rubles!

  When Eddie-baby and the Plague returned to their seats toward the end of the second act, they found them occupied. Sitting in Eddie-baby’s place was a beautiful adult girl oddly dressed in a long adult gown. Eddie-baby, though he had attended Secondary School No.8 ever since the first year, had never seen her before. Sitting in the Plague’s seat was another very attractive maiden, wearing a black taffeta dress with a white lace collar.

  “O-o-oh!” the Plague exclaimed with satisfaction. “While D’Artagnan and I were out for a stroll, our places were taken by the ladies… Who might you be, beautiful strangers?” the Plague asked flirtatiously; he knew he was a handsome boy.

  “Our classroom teacher told us to sit here,” the girl sitting in Eddie-baby’s seat said severely. That was when Eddie-baby noticed her accent.

  “Yes,” Eddie-baby said, “perhaps that’s true, but we too have to sit somewhere. And these are our seats.”

  “Go to the balcony, then. There are empty seats up there,” said the girl who was occupying the Plague’s seat.

  “But we don’t want to go to the balcony,” said the Plague, merry from the wine he had drunk. “We w
ant to sit in our own seats, the ones indicated on our tickets.” And the smirking Plague dug out of his pocket the crumpled bright blue ticket to the Lisenko Theater of Opera and Ballet.

  “We were told to sit here, we didn’t sit here by ourselves,” said the severe girl who was sitting in Eddie-baby’s seat. “And anyway, you’re men. A man must be a gentleman and yield to a lady.”

  “What I can suggest to you as a gentleman, milady,” the Plague said, now smiling at the girl in his seat and standing to his full height, “is that you sit on my lap.”

  The Plague had obviously started to take a liking to his opponent, and since they had been shushed up by the other kids, the two of them were now bending toward each other and whispering something and giggling.

  But Asya Vishnevsky, watching the prince senselessly hopping about on the stage, sat with a stern expression on her face and said nothing.

  Eddie-baby had never been a malicious boy, but he had always been very stubborn. And so, having decided to behave in a cultivated way, he went down to the orchestra seats, found his classroom teacher, Rachel, and taking care not to breathe his wine breath on her, told her that his and the Plagues seats had been taken by some girls from another class.

  On his way back to the dress circle with Rachel, since that’s where their seats were, he was already starting to feel ashamed of his action, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Rachel easily straightened the matter out and, not wishing to offend the girls, found them good seats of their own. But as they were leaving, Asya gave him a dirty look of such intensity that it even sobered Eddie-baby up. The Plague was also scornful of Eddie-baby and upset about what he had done. The Plague had already managed to become quite friendly with Olga and had learned from her that Asya (whose real name was Liza Vishnevsky, though her parents and friends called her Asya) had just come from France, that she and her family had been repatriated from there, that Asya was the most interesting and romantic girl Olga had ever met in her life, that she was her best friend, and that Olga was ready to sacrifice her life for her.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” the Plague said. “What the fuck for?” Eddie-baby himself didn’t know why. Just out of stubbornness, probably. He wanted to have things his own way. Eddie-baby had had things his own way his whole life.

  14

  Asya and Eddie-baby were reconciled within the month. In the first place, it turned out that they lived almost next door to each other – only a few buildings separated them. The buildings in Saltovka are arranged according to no particular system; there aren’t any yards between them, just bushes and trees. It’s obvious the architects who built the district were dreaming of a city of the future landscaped with forests of maples and groves of elderberries.

  Passing among the slender limbs of the maples and the low, dusty elderberry bushes, Eddie-baby had frequently seen a girl walking ahead of him or behind him, invariably wearing long dresses that reached to the ground, and velvet coats with hoods. Asya had two such coats – objects of envy to the other girls of Saltovka, and rather like Kadik’s alpine parka, although that was something that Eddie-baby would encounter only later on. Sometimes Asya was accompanied by her classmates, and sometimes she was alone. Eddie-baby finally summoned up his courage and said to her, “Hello, mademoiselle!” And she answered, “Hello, barbarian!”

  It was evening and a light snow was falling, and Eddie-baby walked with Asya around her building for a long time. They talked about books they had read – Asya was amazed at how well read Eddie-baby was; she hadn’t expected him to be – and then they talked about the Soul, about God, and about Love.

  Eddie-baby had already talked about the Soul, about God, and about Love with another girl, a beautiful girl who resembled an angel from a medieval picture – Veta Volin. That she looked like an angel was something that the senior Pioneer leader Sonya Alekseevna had told Eddie-baby, not something he had thought up by himself. But it was different with Veta Volin. Eddie-baby was desperately shy with her and finally made the decision to kiss her only a whole month after their first meeting. Asya, however, kissed him herself on that same snowy evening, and the snow fell on their faces and on their lips, so that their kisses were wet. They were both terribly cold after their three-hour conversation, and Eddie-baby very badly needed to visit the toilet. Asya’s and Eddie-baby’s lips were ever so cold, and Asya’s smelled slightly of tobacco – she was a heavy smoker…

  They never really fell in love – there wasn’t any romance – but they did become true friends. The reason there wasn’t any romance was because, as Asya said, Eddie-baby was first of all unfortunately a year younger than she was, and besides that, they both turned out to have very strong characters. “Two such strong people cannot be lovers,” Asya said. Asya was the first person to realize that Eddie-baby had a strong character.

  “How’s Svetka?” Asya asks, drinking a little wine and setting her glass down on the table. After that, she goes to the door and closes it. From the door she crosses to the window, opens the transom, and only then lights herself a cigarette. Her parents don’t smoke.

  “How is she? The same as she always is,” Eddie-baby answers, shrugging his shoulders. “She was recently seen at a dance at the Stakhanovite Club with Shurik.”

  Asya sighs. She sympathizes with Eddie-baby’s love for the capricious and impetuous Svetka, although she also believes that the daughter of a prostitute is no match for him. Everybody in Saltovka knows that Svetka’s mother sleeps with men for cash. But Asya bows down before love and takes an active advisory part in all the romantic affairs of her friends and girlfriends.

  “Perhaps I ought to punch his face in?” Eddie-baby asks thoughtfully.

  “That would be silly,” Asya objects. “How do you know, maybe there isn’t anything between them. Can’t they just go dancing somewhere together? And anyway, why the idiotic habit of settling everything with your fists?… After all, he’s your friend too…”

  “What do you mean, my friend!” Eddie answers, frowning in annoyance. “It was Svetka who introduced us. He’s her friend…”

  “All right,” Asya says, “look at the problem from a different angle. Considering it logically -”

  “Wait a minute” – Eddie-baby stops her – “how can you consider things logically with Svetka? When we were celebrating May Day, the first time we were together, it was very logical from her point of view to run off to the pond to drown herself. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that the pond is a long way off, so that you’d lose all desire to drown yourself by the time you got there… She’s crazy!”

  “Eddie!” Asya interrupts him. “You’re the last person to say anything like that. Even your own friends think you’re crazy, or didn’t you realize that?” Asya says, becoming agitated and waving her cigarette around.

  “They do?” Eddie-baby asks incredulously.

  “Of course, I don’t think so myself,” Asya says, “otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here in my home. I think you are a sensitive boy and very fine, whereas almost all your friends are crude working-class guys and girls who don’t understand what you’re like. But you’re a nice one too! It’s your own fault Svetka ran away from you to drown herself. What did you expect when you showed her your knife and said you’d cut her if she betrayed you?”

  “She was dancing with Tolik Lyashenko. And for too long,” Eddie-baby points out in confusion. “It seemed to me she was pressing close to him. And later on, when we were all playing spin the bottle, the kids laughed in a disgusting way when Svetka went into the other room with him to kiss, and they were gone for a long time… And anyway, I didn’t want to cut her, I just wanted to scare her a little.”

  “Very nice!” Asya says indignantly. “If I were her, I’d never speak to you again. But she probably loves you, since she came back to you after that.”

  “Do you think so?” Eddie-baby asks with hope in his voice.

  “Of course!” Asya replies. “Although, as you know, I don’t
feel that your relationship with her has much of a future. You’re completely different from her, she’s not the right kind of girl for you.”

  Eddie-baby is silent.

  “I think I understand you,” Asya continues. “You and I are kindred spirits -”

  A bell rings in the hallway. Asya leaves and comes back with a girl wearing a chestnut coat. The girl has short black hair and is leaning slightly on a walking stick. Clenched between her teeth is a pungent White Sea Canal Russian cigarette.

  “Allow me to introduce you,” Asya says. “This is my friend Katya Muravyov. She was repatriated too. Katya writes poetry, like you. It’s her heritage. Her ancestor was the famous Decembrist Muravyov-Apostol, who was executed and who also wrote poetry.”

  “Hi.” The girl tersely greets Eddie-baby while firmly shaking his hand. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”

  “Katya lives in Moscow, but she’s visiting me,” Asya tells Eddie.

  “Pleased to meet you. Eduard,” Eddie introduces himself.

  “Is that really your name?” the short-haired girl asks impudently, deftly moving the cigarette to the other corner of her mouth. With her tongue. Eddie-baby knows how it’s done…

  “It really is,” Eddie-baby answers unequivocally.

  “Well, I’ve got to be going,” Eddie-baby announces. It seems to him that the girls would rather be alone. “Don’t forget you promised me a Romain Rolland book… The Soul?” Eddie-baby says uncertainly.

  “The Soul Enchanted,” Asya answers. “Well, of course, take it, only it’s about a woman. It’s really more of a woman’s book. Are you sure you want it?”

  “Give it to me,” Eddie-baby decides. He enjoyed Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe, and this book is probably a good one too.

  15

  It’s already dark outside and no longer snowing, and the snow that has fallen is melting on the ground. Here and there out of the Saltovka darkness – it’s always dark in Saltovka, since breaking streetlights is a peculiar sport of minors; Eddie-baby remembers with a grin the slingshot Kostya once gave him – slowly walking couples emerge, or whole groups of people loaded down with satchels containing whatever they’re drinking and snacking on, people who have come to visit and celebrate the October holidays.