GlaGoslav Publications

victor YerofeYev

GooD stalin

Good Stalin© 2012, Victor Yerofeyev

English translation © Scott D. Moss

© 2013, Glagoslav Publications, United Kingdom

Glagoslav Publications Ltd88-90 Hatton GardenEC1N 8PN London

United Kingdom

www.glagoslav.com

ISBN: 978-1-78267-111-4

This book is in copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted

in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser.

UNCORRECTED PROOF

Contents

4 Part 1

40 Part 2

114 Part 3

205 Part 4

274 Part 5

4

1

In the end, I killed my father. A single golden arrow on the dark-blue dial on the tower of Moscow University on

the Lenin Hills showed minus forty degrees Celsius. The cars weren’t able to start. Birds were scared to fly. The city froze like aspic with human stuffing. In the morning, having looked at myself in the oval mirror in the bathroom, I noticed that the hair on my temples turned gray overnight. I was approaching thirty-two. This was the coldest January of my life.

It’s true; my father is still living and even on his days off, until recently, has been playing tennis. Now, although having grown much older, regardless, he still mows the the summer-house lawn between the hydrangeas and rose bushes with the electric lawnmower , among the thicket of gooseberries, his favorite since childhood. He, as before, drives a car, stubbornly not wearing his glasses; the habit drives my mother crazy and horrifies pedestrians. Having retired to the second floor of his dacha study, the window, scraped by the branches of a tall oak tree; he sluggishly rubs his strong-willed chin and types something on the typewriter (maybe he’s writing a memoir), but all this is just details. I committed, if not a physical, then a political murder — this was real death according to the laws of my country.

•

Is it possible to consider parents as people? I always doubted this. Parents are undeveloped negatives. Of everyone who we meet in life, the least of all we know are our parents, namely because we don’t meet them, the initiative is originally seized by

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the “ancestors”: that is to say, they meet us. The umbilical cord is not severed — we are created from them exactly as much as they are impossible to understand. The collapse of knowledge is ensured. The rest is conjecture. We’re afraid to see their bodies and glance into their souls. So, for us they don’t turn into people, forever remaining a sequence of impressions, not knowing their beginning, by the unstable scarecrow-mirages.

They are untouchable essences. Our opinions of them are helpless, sucked out of one’s fingers, built on prejudices, persistent children's fears, the struggle of perfection against reality, proof of the improvable. But parents are also helpless as we evaluate them. Our mutual love doesn’t belong either to us or to them, but to instinct, which got lost in a mother’s womb, just like in the womb of civilization. In this instinct we energetically search for the bright human beginning, and we cannot but avenge the instinct for its blindness of our profound speculations. Love under the name of “fathers and sons” doesn’t have the common denominator of appreciation, but is full of endless offenses and misunderstandings, from which sadness will be born of late regret.

Parents are the buffer between us and death. Like great artists, they don’t have the right to age; our inevitable revolt against them is as much biological as morally irreproachable. Parents are the most intimate ones that we have. But when family intimacy grows to the scales of international scandal, which puts the family on the threshold of survival, as it happened in my house, you involuntarily begin to think, reminisce and analyze. I only now finally decided to write a book about this.

ANONYMOUS LETTERTo the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Comrade A.A. Gromyko.

CC: Austria. Vienna. Representation of the Soviet Union at the United Nations. To Ambassador V.I. Yerofeyev.

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Airmail, on the envelope — the names of three pilots: Heroes of the Soviet Union: P. Osipenko, V. Grizodubov, and M. Raskov. The 40th anniversary of the non-stop flight from Moscow to the Far East. Stamp # 31–1791840 (sent on January 31, 1979 at 6:40pm) Moscow, Post Office, Unit #9.

The second copy (to me) MOSCOW. 27–29 Gorky Street, Apt. 30. To: V. Yerofeyev.

Airmail, on the envelope — the Baikal Seal. From the series: contemporary animal fauna of the USSR. Stamp # 31–1791840. Moscow, Post Office, Unit #9.

The return address and last name shown on the envelope were false. The writing and punctuation of the anonymous author remain without changes.

Respected Comrade Minister!

It seems that from the local scandal, which is going on now in literary circles, and in some other institutes have to draw conclusions which concern the struggle of two social systems. Particularly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

To think only: in the family of our profound diplomat, having an irreproachable, ideological reputation, a true scum grew up, who writes obscene sexual-pathological short stories, and now released them, being the editor and one of the authors of the underground almanac, having a clear anti-Soviet track. And Victor Yerofeyev’s story, the plot of which unfolds in a public bathroom, which is understood as Russian society, in general, a precedent that never-before existed!

<…> And while there is an examination in literary circles, how a young man, not having one book of his own, got to be a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, shouldn’t one think about what strange ideas he picked up abroad, where he used to be, and now appears there often, because of the official position of his parents? We don’t think that he’d be directly recruited, but

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one thing is almost undoubted: the ideology of the enemy went straight to his head!

<…> There are a lot of conversations now that his parent’s connections will help this class dropout free himself from history, in which he, for now, behaves extremely impudently, without a hint of any kind of repentance. It would have been very regrettable, if the high parental authority put down this political matter, close to this rehearsed diversion, as they say

“put on the brakes”. Just the opposite, it is extremely important based on the example of this regrettable matter to conduct an educational action and within the confines of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in order that all others would contemplate what consequences parental liberal views and the absence of comprehensive vigilance to questions can lead… (The second page of the letter in both copies is missing).

•

Perhaps, I am the freest man in Russia. In reality, this is an insignificant achievement; a special competition in this sphere isn’t observed. Everyone competes in other ways. I don’t know what to do with my freedom, but it was given to me like clairvoyance. Somehow it happened that I was left out of various ranks, regalia, confessions and premiums. I suppose that I got lucky. I have no bosses or underlings. I’m not dependent on cunts or the Red Army. I don’t give a shit about critics, fashion or fans. To be the freest man in the most ridiculous country — is hysterically funny. Serious people live in other countries, carrying the weight of responsibility, like full pails of water, but we have male and female peasants, militia, intelligentsia, collective farmers, political prisoners, retards, managers and other left-overs — funny, untranslatable into foreign languages. Funny people don’t need freedom.

What kind of genial ideas haven’t come to Russian’s minds — each one is genially funny. The Third Rome has been created, the

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fathers have been resurrected, they were building Communism. There’s nothing they wouldn’t have believed! In the tsar, white angels, Europe, America, Orthodoxy, the NKVD, rule of council, unification, commune, revolution, 10–ruble bank notes, national exclusivity — they believed in everything and everyone, except in themselves. But the funniest thing — was to call the Russian people toward self-knowledge, to bang the gong, to ring the small Buddhist bell:

“Arise, Brothers! Let’s Embrace one-another! Let’s drink!”The brothers will arise and definitely have a drink. You will

sit with the intelligentsia all night long, talking about God, death, women, the author’s song, fate — the veins will expand, conceptions multiply. The horizons expand in all directions: you are smoking with Byron, playing pool with Che Guevara. But in the morning you wake up — and there is no more intelligentsia. Bohemia is going out of style. Then — in big business, in television, in politics, toward oligarchs — you sit and get dumber. Or you end up with the youth in the disco: in the toilet you’ll find out about the cosmic wars of good and evil, the etymology of Japanese curse words, forty-four possibilities not to like top-models, the mythical abyss of Armageddon: you’ll dance the ethnic dance and at the same time.

Russian writers  — are also funny people. Some laugh through their tears, others — simply laugh. They freak out about morality in this funny country. But, like the Aztecs, they are bloodthirsty, have a penchant toward human sacrifice. They cut off the heads of women and enemies. Novels are filled with themes of funny fathers and funny children. Not only Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, but also the Silver Age in Petersburg of Andrei Bely, talked to death about this theme. The revolutionary-son and the reactionary-father. A book, bomb, terror. If my mother only knew, becoming sick from my childhood indifference toward the printed word, fostering a love of literature, that I will reflect on this theme in life, harming my whole family, she would have probably burned all the books in our family library.

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•In my mother’s letter to my father, sent from Vienna to Moscow, dated February 17, 1979:

My Dear Vov:

I’m already living for two weeks — tomorrow — without you. And it’s as if the whole time under the Scottish shower. First the cool water, then hot again…

I already wrote you, that I’m trying to occupy myself all the time, to the max, and to be with people, so as to get away from gnawing thoughts. But now, it seems, I exhausted all the possibilities of any meetings. And how many could there have been during our secluded life?

Now its pouring for the third day, either there is thick fog, which is unfavorable even for going out for a stroll in the street. <…>

How many times do I worry about you! What kind of relations do you have toward literary experiments? Victor acted like the last idiot, having put himself in front of punches in all directions, then, when he still didn’t do absolutely anything smart, as they say, he didn’t “become anyone”. What is this irresponsibility! He screwed up, ruined a lot in his life and for a long time.

But here you are! What do you have to do with it? Irreproachable service which spoiled your health and nerves. A  colossal responsibility. Your whole life is given to work. Evening sleeplessness until midnight, when others (lacking fastidiousness) drink vodka.

I must finish, for I can’t write anymore about it.<…>I’m sending you something.Socks — for Andryusha, the can of caviar for Olezhka.

Wine for the both of you. Kisses,Galya.

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•Like a wild animal, time sharply changes its place of habitation. In the dusty suitcases covered in crocodile skin, an expensive briefcase with a  ripped handle, boxes of the export vodka

“Stolichnaya” which store business cards of the deceased, invitations to parties for government officials who retired long ago, menus for lunches and dinners with non-existent people, newspapers with extra news (basically obituaries). Bureaucratic existentialism, yearning for immortality, thirst to leave a mark. My father was a junk dealer.

Mama: Why do you need this?My father never answers this question. In the main drawer

of his desk is an issue of Pravda: unprecedented in the history of journalists necrophilic apotheosis, rolled up in black lines of newsprint. The style of medical results concerning the leader’s death is so excellent, that one involuntarily thinks: all this is — literature.

Then, all life was literature. On March 5th, 1953, people were divided between those who cried and those who were happy. But there was one person who didn’t notice that Stalin had died. Didn’t notice the mourning music playing on the radio, nor the red flags with the black ribbons, hung by caretakers on the streets. He lived in Moscow, directly in the city center, on 27/29 Gorky Street, near Mayakovsky Square, and his neighbors in the huge Stalinist building with the façade of stucco moulding, soundly constructed by German POWs, was the main Stalinist writer Fadeyev and wonderful artist/social-realist Laktionov, from whom, out of principle, my mother refused to order her portrait: she fell in love with the impressionists, but Laktionov had a damaged reputation at that time. So, my mother was left without a portrait, which could have been sold now for a large sum. Besides the impressionists, mother subsequently fell in love with Okudzhava’s songs and one day, Galina Fyodorovna, who chain-smoked “Yava” cigarettes, pulling them from a wrinkled soft-pack, ritually smoothing them before smoking, brought

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him to our house. And Okudzhava appeared, thin, young and — arrogant (but, perhaps, from shyness), drawn to the collection of records of Georges Brassens, with whom my father was personally acquainted, and it seemed to me then, as soon as Brassens started singing, Okudzhava forgot about us, but, when out of politeness, he remembered, the conversation around the table was about Stalin’s death, and mother said that on that day everyone cried because they didn’t understand, and Okudzhava said quietly:

OKUDZHAVA: That was the happiest day in my life.And it became extremely embarrassing.The person who didn’t notice Stalin’s death was five and-a-

half years old, but this fact doesn’t forgive him at all. Children lived, walked, sang and knew what was happening in the country. Moreover, this boy’s father worked in the Kremlin as Molotov’s aide and Stalin’s official translator in French. Or was I completely forgetful, but no matter how much I strain my memory, I don’t remember that mournful day. How is that possible?

I asked my parents this question for years. In the beginning I found out that my mother cried on that day along with her girlfriends. They all worked together at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and cried for two reasons. In the first place, they loved Stalin. Secondly, they were scared that without Stalin the country would collapse. My mother later admitted this.

MAMA: I am sorry that you cried, for Stalin was such a monster.

Concerning the second point, those friends were historically correct. Stalin died — the Soviet Union began to fall apart the very next day, the neighbor Fadeyev soon after that shot himself. And though, as many times as the country was embalmed, it continued to disintegrate and finally fell into putrid pieces.

And papa? Did papa cry?PAPA: I was too busy that day to cry.Bullshit! When papa didn’t want to talk about something,

he didn’t answer directly, but briefly and clearly. But, of course,

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he had to order the coffin, wreathes, hearse, buy up bundles of flowers all around the Soviet Union, such that there was nothing to put on the grave of the composer Prokofiev, who died at the same time as Stalin. Finally he and his comrades succeeded in getting a plot in the cemetery, and on the following days organized the funeral throng on Trubnaya, evacuated the dead who hadn’t reached their requiem service. And only recently did father admit this.

FATHER: I sighed with relief on that day.But is this the truth or simply time, like a wild animal,

having gone to another feeding ground, in these admissions?From Daniel Verne’s article in Le Monde of January 25th,

1979:

SOVIET WRITERS, NOT BEING DISSIDENTS, REFUSE THE CENSURE AND PUBLISH A MANUSCRIPT JOURNAL.

Moscow. A café at a Moscow alley. On Tuesday, January 23rd, a group of writers rented a hall, to present a new publication to a few Soviet friends, writers and artists. However, the café was closed on the appointed day. The day before, doctors decided that tomorrow will be “cleaning day” and that the café was desperate need of disinfection.

Five writers: Vasily Aksyonov, (whose works, such as Starry Ticket and Our Golden Piece of Iron were well-known in France); Andrei Bitov, Victor Yerofeyev, (critic and having the same last name of the author of Moscow-Petushki, Fazil Iskander (the writer from Abkhazia) and Yevgenii Popov (the young Siberian poet) published a journal without official permission, having refused to undergo any kind of censorship.

This collection, characterized by the authors themselves, according to the traditions of the 19th century, like an almanac, represents a huge folder in the format of four times A4. In it was more than 120 pages, which corresponds to a book of 700 pages. Twenty-three Soviet authors contributed to it <…>.

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The almanac was called Metropol, with three meanings of this word: metropolis, as in the capitol, metropolitan, as in the subway system (underground) and as in the famous hotel “Moscow”, since the authors are “looking for protection”<…>.

•

From an article by Daniel Vernet — in Le Monde — dated January 25, 1979:

DES ÉCRIVAINS SOVIÉTIQUES NON-DISSIDENTS REFUSENT LA CENSURE ET ÉDITENT UNE REVUE DACTYLOGRAPHIÉE

Moscou. — Un café dans une petite rue de Moscou. Un group d’écrivains a retenu la salle, mardi 23 janvier, pour présenter à quelques amis soviétiques, écrivains et artistes, une nouvelle publication. La jour prévu, pourtant, le café est fermé. La veille, des médecins ont décidé que le lendemain serait “jour sanitaire”, que le café avait absolument besoin d’être désinfecté de tout urgence.

Cinq écrivains: Vassili Axionov (dont les œuvres sont connues en France, telles que Billets pour les élolies ou Notre ferraille en or); Andrei Bitov, Viktor Erofeiev (critique et homonyme de l’auteur de Moscou sur vodka); Fasyl Iskander (écrivain installé en Abhazie) et Eugène Popov (jeune poète sibirien) ont publié une revue en dehors des circuits officiels, en refusant de se soumettre à une quelconque censure.<…>

Ce recueil, qualifié d’almanach par ses auteurs, selon la tradition russe du dix-neuvième siècle, se présent sous la forme d’un grand cahier de format quatre fois 21–29. Avec plus de cent vingts pages, il représent l’équivalent d’un livre de sept cent pages. Vingt-trois auteures soviétiques y sont publiés. <…>

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L’almanach s’intitule Métropole, aux trois sens du terme: métropole comme capitale, comme métropolitain (underground), et comme célèbre hôtel de Moscou, car les auteurs “cherchent un toit”. <…>

•

My father was the most brilliant Soviet diplomat of his time. He distinguished himself with a quick, technical mind, unbelievable ability to work, optimism, charm, real beauty, modesty. He loved to joke. His jokes were like games of the sun in the greenery of the trees. They stayed with me, not as words, but as a mood, in them was a special, warm microclimate, which also became the microclimate of my childhood. It seems to me sometimes that my yearning for the south, which, in relation to me, I find this unusual case in Bunin, in my recognition of the non-existent pyramid poplars and white acacias in the Russian North, which were my trees, my “learning” about Parisian plateaus, which were like matraces of the dear flora which are bound mainly to my father’s jokes.

My father was a decent person, able to act independently, freely with high administration, even in the Stalinist era, and in general, as opposed to many of his tin colleagues with protruding eyes of toadies, lackeys and “dumb-asses”, he liked to stand with his legs a bit apart, a little like the Americans do, in wide pants that were fashionable then, squinting a bit, — at least that’s what the daughter of the famous marshal tried to prove to me in a conversation. Maya Konyeva, who knew my father well in the beginning of the 1950s. By the way, I consider their color amateur photograph of those years, against the background of an open white ZIS limousine and Sochi oleander, with tennis rackets in their tanned hands, considered to be a model of sweet life under Stalin. I often got to hear such praise of my father from such varied people as the great physicist Pyotr Kapitsa (during lunch at his summer house on Nikolina Mountain), Rostropovich, Gilels, Yevtushenko.

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I couldn’t not be proud of my father. He didn’t bring back expensive gifts from abroad “up”, not forgetting the boss’s wives. He didn’t like the standard “diplomatic” speculation, buying expensive Western items overseas (cameras, tape recorders, Rolexes, record players) that haven’t reached the poor Soviet market, and their resale through the Moscow consignment stores for personal gain. According to his views — a committed Communist — “the Stalinist falcon” with steel eyes, taking direct participation in the development of the Soviet conception of the

“Cold War”, my father sincerely believed in the advantages of the Soviet system over capitalism, dreaming of world revolution.

•

I was born in September 1947. I had a happy Stalinist childhood. A clean, cloudless paradise. In this sense, I am ready to compete with suspiciously sporty Nabokov. I also was a baron’s son, only he — was aristocratic, though I was of the nomenclature. I was born into happiness. Many years passed before I found out about that. According to Russian beliefs, happy people are born in shirts. People who are lucky. Mama, apparently considered for a long time that I was born happy out of dumb luck. When she gave birth to me, she dreamed about Dostoyevsky, a rare visitor in her dreams.

DOSTOYEVSKY: So, are you happy?MAMA: Before this, I was only happy like that one time.

When the war ended, I celebrated victory in Tokyo. I worked in the Soviet Embassy in the section of the military attaché. The staff drank up all the reserves, first ordinary, and then rare wines. Before the end, two victorious diplomats had a fight over a woman.

DOSTOYEVSKY: That woman was you.MAMA: It’s immediately obvious that you are Dostoyevsky.Dostoyevsky frowned.DOSTOYEVSKY: You are his utopia.My mama pondered over the offered classic.

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•From my Moscow letter to my parents in Vienna, mistakenly dated the year before (as it often happened in January): 1/27/78 instead of 1/27/79. The intonation of the letter — lulling in its contents — “filial” a mixture of half-truths and truths. A cunning enough letter:

Dear mama and papa,

a possibility arose to write you a small letter, to tell you about what's going on. Olezhka  — the biggest optimist in our family — babbles more and more, amusingly pronounces words, almost not mixing them up now, makes elementary phrases and besides this, goes to kindergarten, where, it seems, he like it and from where he brings diverse knowledge, particularly musical (he walks around singing). Vescha, as before, has too much work, she looks skinny and transparent. I'm also in business. One of these projects is worth discussing in more detail. During the year, a few Moscow writers (Bitov, Aksyonov, Iskander and I among them) prepared a literary almanac, which consists of experimental prose and poetry. Recently we took it to the Writer’s Union and offered them to publish it. Our initiative was accepted — unexpectedly enough for us — with great suspicion, which quickly grew into a respectful scandal. We began to be dragged to the Writer’s Union for working on it; we were brainwashed; we became angry, stamped our feet. For the well-known names (in the almanac were Akhmadulina, Voznesensky, Vyssotsky and others) the scandal — with the reworking — became all-Moscow encompassing, the Western press and radio became involved and pandemonium ensued. An expanded secretariat of the Union gathered (nearly 70 members), at which such people as Gribachev. Y. Zhukov and others —

“savages” — threatened us for four hours. I don’t know how events will develop further, but, in my opinion, “they” simply lost their minds. I was also personally blamed (in the Union and the Institute). It’s so that our clean literary work wouldn't

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overgrow (thanks to the idiocy of a few zealous keepers of stagnation) into who-the-hell knows. I’m writing this to you in the hope that you relate to what’s happening with a sense of calm, understand my good intentions (and not only mine, but those of my friends as well). Unfortunately, apparently from the progression of the matter, the dark forces are winning, but if they go to extreme practical conclusions, the scandal from Moscow will become huge (what’s going on now is reminiscent of how eyewitnesses recall part of 1963). I don’t stop hoping that the matter will end more-or-less tolerably. In any case, don’t take any actions without consulting me. I understand that all this worries you, but don’t say anything — now it’s simply impossible. I feel alright, but I’ve rattled my nerves enough already. Andryushka and Veshcha, poor things, are also terribly worried… Thank you for the fishing pants … although there's no time for them now. I send my love, I’ll tell you about developments as soon as I can.

Veshcha also sends her love.Yours, Victor.

•

In postwar, half-hungry Moscow, grandma called mama at work with the enthusiastic report about my breakfast:

“Vityusha ate an entire can of black caviar!”My mother had an interesting job. She read things which no

one else was allowed to read, for which one could be executed. A modest chosen one, a young Goddess, co-participant in the secret of world creation in a skyscraper on Smolensky Square, she read American newspapers and magazines searching for slander of the Soviet Union and summarized it for the administration of the press department.

The Americans were acting ugly, slandered abundantly and disparaged the Russian people terribly. The Americans wrote that Russians had been on self-destruct mode, driving themselves to Siberian death camps, and that Stalin was the

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cruelest dictator in the world, a cannibal who had swallowed the Baltics, Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Kind Uncle Joe, the ally of the military coalition, no longer existed. Others, used to it, people who from such announcements could have diarrhea or be paralyzed, but from mama, the American slander disappeared like water from a duck's back. She understood that the Siberian building of Communism — this isn’t a death camp for you. She really did hate Americans, with the exception of Theodore Dreiser, whom she translated into Russian in her free time: she dreamed of being a translator. Mama knew that Americans have crooked, hairy legs, which they shave for effect. Pictures of a strange, foreign life were before her eyes every day. Winking, a camel offered her to smoke together with all of America. But, even so, more than America, she couldn’t stand my grandmother Anastasia Nikandrovna.

If the Americans made plans to land troops in Red Square, having scared Communists and white bears, then grandma already landed in Moscow and took over our apartment. She had her apartment on Mokhov Street, in a two-story building, attached to the Kalinin mansion museum, directly across from the arched entrance of the shallow Lenin Library Metro Station, with stove heating, the unique smell of Russian provincial widowhood, plumbing, but without sewage, (under the sink in the hall forever stood a bucket with muddy soapy water; I pissed in it), however we had a gas stove in the apartment, having moved the Marusya to the background, grandma became its queen. On it she fried sausage and boiled laundry in the gurgling zinc tank where it was possible, if one wanted, to boil a large child. She pulled out the buttoned, dripping laundry with huge wooden tongs, like gigantic rags of lobsters, rubbed them on a ribbed washboard, rinsed, dripping huge drops of sweat on them, hung them to dry in the kitchen on gray wooden clothespins with amazingly strong springs. Our kitchen would become a tent camp, where it was possible, to my childhood joy, to easily get lost looking for one another in vain for days. She

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heated heavy cast-iron irons to the ultimate redness; the bottoms of the irons glowed like mystical weapons of medieval torture, which she, having grabbed them with a rag, violently ironed my father’s suits, hissing and letting out hot steam from under the wet old sheet, with reddish burnt shapes, in its second life, having become an ironing rag. Sitting behind the “Macintosh” typewriter, I understand, how in my head, grandma's bath and laundry shop was transformed into stylish work. Grandma threw a tub of energy on me. I — am her grandson.

She ran around the kitchen, excited, burned, half-naked in a pink bra, complaining about her heart, after which she went either to wash in an unbearably hot bath, where the mirror cried from the heat, or in an ambulance to the hospital. Mama considered her to be a hypochondriac. When scandals flared, grandma slammed the doors hard — window panes flew out. My nanny, Marusya Pushkina, with the face of a rural maid outside of Volokolamka, eternally happy from life’s surprises, easily lied to me: these — are drafts. Mama lived under grandma’s occupation, would lock herself in the bathroom in the case of rifts, would swallow her tears, hunched over, but she didn’t have the strength to force grandma (papa’s protector) out of the apartment.

“Feed the child kasha,” — mama said quietly from the Soviet skyscraper, flipping through the Life magazine.

•

Papa shyly brought home from work from the Kremlin product distributor blue packages with the tastiest foods: crunchy milk sausage, thin “Doctor’s” sausages, boiled salted pork, salmon, smoked sturgeon, crabs.

It’s time for everyone to tasteHow tender and delicious are crabs! –

said one of the rare billboard advertisements of that time, which was located by the entrance of a quarter-garden, having two

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huge vases from the lords, with marble goats, grazing on grape leaves (now the Las Vegas flames of a casino shine there). For dessert, they were giving out halva to papa, for a ridiculous price, pale-pink fruit pastela, rum zefir covered in chocolate, “Clumsy Bear” candies, multi-colored Kievan candied fruits, Turkish delights, gingerbread cookies with honey and other sweets. Sometimes dark-red spots appeared on the packaging: this was a fresh cut of meat soaked in blood. The sharp smell of small dimpled cucumbers with the yellow center of a flower in full-blown winter with drawn from frost ferns window permeated the kitchen. The cookbook of Stalin’s era About Tasty and Healthy Food, with the elegant sepia photographs of plenty of food, sturgeon, suckling pigs, high-quality Georgian wines in our home didn’t seem insulting to humanity.

I was skinny and didn’t like to eat. In the struggle for my appetitie, grandma ran to torture me with cod liver oil. Her dream to turn me into a fat kid became reality one day, and we ran, catching the moment, to the photographer so as to be photographed, hugging one another, cheek-to-cheek. Privileges, tenderly, like smoke rising, covered all aspects of our lives: from the free yearly tailoring for papa of a new, fashionable suit from imported English cloth, from the store on the Kuznetsky Bridge, medical centers on Sivtsev Vrazhek, with carpeted hallways, extending palms in pots and kind doctors from children’s fairytales, a clean, guarded entrance, because Comrade Vlasik, the all-powerful head of Stalins’ police lived on our floor, the New Year’s tree in the Kremlin, smelling of Adzharian mandarins with expensive gifts, film-books for viwing scarce films, special expeditions for books (getting signatures for publication of collected works, volumes not available in regular bookstores), theater tickets for any performances, right down to a reservation for the Novodevichy Cemetery.

We went to live on Trudovaya Street, at a Soviet Ministry summer house outside of Moscow, in the summer, in the long black ZIM, similar to the sharp-toothed American cars at the

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end of the 1940s. There, in the immeasurable June twilight, having been overwhelmed by bicycles and bird cherries with a burp of fresh milk on sensual adult lips, I played chess on the wooden porch with Marusya Pushkin, whom Sasha, my father’s chauffeur in the black cap was courting.

•

A born winner (my parents named me in honor of the victory over Germany), I won the first chess party of my life at Marusya’s. The world was full of good things: flashlights, skyscrapers, metro stations, parks, with curved back, white benches, on one of which, in the winter in the Solovnini, despite the snowstorms, we continued our eternal tournament. The chess pieces, half-covered with snow up to their belt. I developed a chronic cough from the whooping cough; she, laughing easily, wiped her nose with a mitten with a hole in it. We were equal partners, “yawning” a lot, having confused “officers” and “kings”, and by character, both — wild.

It was difficult for me to learn to lose. I  threw horses and pawns at Marusya with tears in my eyes. Having made up, we pulled them out of the thawed snow together. Spring always came suddenly, having caught us on the way back to the metro, with streams, flower beds around the linden trees, with soaked boots, new, relieved by the sun, air. The family with servants, relatives, closest friends, mama’s girlfriends turned into a dependable clan. I lived in bliss.

•

From the article of the first secretary of the Moscow branch of the Union of Soviet Writers: Felix Kuznetsov. Confusion between Metropol and The Moscow Writer February 9, 1979:

<…> and the shame, which demands the appearance of a cover-up, in this collection of the most varied materials, more

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than one can imagine. Here literary tastelessness and helplessness in abundance are represented, backwardness and vulgarity, only lightly covered with a primer of eternal “absurdism” or a newly-appeared search for God. Practically all of the participants of the joint meeting of the Secretariat and Party Committee of Moscow’s writer’s organizations, where Metropol was discussed, spoke about the extremely low level of this collection.

And a paradoxical thing: strained conversations about the soul directly adjoining here with immoral dirtiness in which the beginning writer V. Yerofeyev is engaged, for example, in the story Edrena Fenya, whose hero contemplates inscriptions and images on walls of a men’s bathroom and then moves with the same goals into the women’s. And what about the title of the second story The Lower Orgasm of the Century! <…>

•

Every Russian wants to be tsar, but not everyone is successful. Russian tsars were always very democratic. My grandmother, Anastasia Nikandrovna, born in the Kostroma Region with the maiden name of Ruvimova, saw the last Russian tsar in St. Petersburg. He, without any bodyguards bought buttons on Nevsky in Gostiny Dvor. Apparently he lost buttons from his overcoat, didn’t ask anyone to buy them for him and went to buy them himself. Not to offend anyone, not out of spite. He didn’t want to show anyone that he was like the rest: he's standing and chosing buttons, so that's how it happened, and grandma remembered the tsar forever, and it was included in the modest ration of the best reminiscences in her life. If Nikolai II had not bought buttons in Gostiny Dvor, it’s possible that her life would have been much poorer in recollections, but here such an event happened.

“The tsar was indeed alone, without bodyguards?” I would ask her in my childhood, during those very years when it was better not to talk about the tsar at all.

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And she would answer, as if she’d not only seen how the tsar bought buttons in Gostiny Dvor, but as if she was close to the tsar, so close that one couldn’t get any closer.

“I didn’t notice anyone else.”“And no bodyguards?”“None.”“And his daughters weren’t around him?”“What kind of a man,” grandma would seem surprised “goes

into Gostiny Dvor to buy himself buttons with his daughters?”“Then maybe he was with his son?” I insisted, just like a child.“Wait,” she would tell me, “I’ll tell you exactly what happened.

I went to Gostiny Dvor to buy myself white lace gloves…”“Maybe it wasn’t the tsar, and it just seemed to you it was?”

It suddenly dawned on me. Even grandma became speechless. She gazed at me with

incomprehensible eyes, as if I stole the watch from her wrist. Then when she regained reason, she turned her back on me and didn’t talk the whole day.

The next day — it was at the dacha — I asked her:“And how did you figure out that it was the tsar? By his

epaulettes?”“The tsar didn’t have written that he is the tsar, on his

epaulettes” — grandma said enlighteningly. “So by his mustache, then?”“All men in Russia had mustaches then,” grandma answered,

“and besides that many had beards.”“Then by his walk?”“He didn’t walk anywhere, he stood and rolled buttons in

his hand.”“And everyone knew it, or just you?”“I didn’t see anyone else. Just him.”“And did you buy gloves far away from him? How many feet

were there between you?”“I didn’t buy them yet, I was only comparing prices.”“Were you next to him?”

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They sold buttons and gloves in the same department at Gostiny Dvor.”

“And he didn’t say anything to you? Couldn’t help you choose white lace gloves?”

“He was busy with his buttons.”“And how long did you stand next to one another in that

department, he with his buttons and you — with your white lace gloves?”

“Idiot,” grandma said, “Such questions aren’t asked.”And she didn’t talk to me again for the entire day and was

even quiet through dinner, although dinner was tasty because she prepared it well. She made pirogies with meat which were especially good. When she made meat pirogies, grandma became rosy-cheeked. She talked about the tsar with such rosy cheeks.

“And maybe the tsar was with his wife?” I asked her already that winter, in our apartment on Gorky Street.

“Don’t be so curious,” grandma said, “It’d be better if you prepared your lessons.”

“So why did you call me an idiot then?”“I didn’t call you that.”“No, you did.”“You’re fibbing.”“I’m not fibbing.”“He was alone,” said grandma, “He stood at the Gostiny

Dvor and picked out buttons for a really long time.”“And the tsarina?”“Only don’t tell anyone?”“I won’t.”“That I saw the tsar.”“Why?”“Promise?”“Yes.”“Absolutely no one?”“Even mama?”“Even mama.”

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“But I have to tell mama everything.”“But you don’t have to tell mama anything about the tsar.”“He’s more important than mama?”Grandma thought about it. She was my papa’s mother.

“Do you know that your papa wants to leave your mother?”“Where?”I imagined how papa leaves mama on the road through the

woods, covered in snow and I got very scared and cold for him. Since then, and even now when I buy buttons, especially

if it’s in Gostiny Dvor in Petersburg, I feel like a Russian tsar.

•

In the chaos of the post-war birth spike, I, apparently, got someone else’s fate. In the accompanying document, in the common traits explaining the matrix of my earthly existence, were given actions and occurrences for which I was decidedly unprepared. A black-golden panther with rabid energy took root in me, at that time there was a place a quiet trusting animal. I was sluggish. I couldn’t tie the laces on my shoes for hours; I didn’t learn how to do it correctly. My shoes always came untied, and it made women, who walked next to me, very angry. I hopped on one foot along the street, looking for something on which to put my untied shoe. At first they liked this, it was my distinguishing feature, they laughed at my clumsiness, but then these bitches became like Satan.

On the other hand, I was fast. I was a hurricane of desires, wiping up everything around me. This wild incongruity could be seen in my childhood photographs. A wild stare of black eyes, drilling the world so as to drill into it a totally new law, never-before heard of, belonging to a shy, stooping child with a tender, charming smile, appearing on cannibal lips. The huge holes of the nose are ready to breathe in the whole carpet of smells, takes off its grass cover, to steal the aroma of food and drink. This nose with trembling wings was especially aggressive and inhumane. A huge head, on which it was never possible

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to get the right size, neither cap, nor uniform hat of the Soviet schoolboys, of my protrusion, having the skull of a pre-historic ape, guessed, my classmates making fun of me by calling me

“ape”, was put on thin shoulders, and when I grabbed it with my thin hands (which also remained thin), was something from Munch’s painting The Scream.

•

From Kevin Clouse’ article THE SOVIET UNION IS HARASSING FOUNDERS OF THE NEW JOURNAL, International Herald Tribune, February 7, 1979:

Moscow (WP) — Soviet authorities have begun a campaign of harassment pursuit and threats to intimidate the founders of a new unofficial literary magazine that seeks to challenge state control of the arts.

The five editors of Metropol have upbraided by the Moscow Writer’s Union and several have been threatened with expulsion from the Union.

The State publishing watchdogs, in the two weeks since the journal was announced, have been withdrawing films, plays, novels and even magazines, containing articles by any of the editors from circulation. <…>

Vasily Aksyonov, one of the Soviet Union’s most popular writers and principal editor of Metropol, said that he has been accused of seeking notoriety in the West so he can emigrate more easily.

Mr. Aksyonov, who has made several official trips to Western countries in recent years and whose stories have been officially translated into English, said he has no intention of emigrating. <…>

•

I am standing in front of a black wooden pole. It’s summer. Feuds. I’m not sure how old I am. Straight, short bangs and

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a completely short bowl cut head. It’s possible there’s a white hat on it, but I’m not sure. I’m sure of something else: there is an iron tablet nailed into the pole. On it — a skull and cross bones. It’s crossed out by a broken red arrow. I’m standing in front of this pole in holy fear. It seems to me that if I touch this wooden pole, I’ll be killed. I don’t know if this is true, but I have a premonition that it is. Every subsequent life’s impression is overlapped and crossed out by this arrow. I came into life through the horror of death. Death woke me up. My first life’s impression — was the wild fear of death. It made me what I am. I didn’t get over the shock. When I see a skull and cross bones, the marks of electricians, I shudder, as if I am reminded about the sense of my life.

Tall pines, and goats are wandering around. They, to a lesser degree are personal property than cows, which are practically not permitted. Death and goats on an idyllic field. I want to pet the goats, I am scared to because of their horns, several of which were sawn off. I rip out some grass, and hand it to the goats. They bleat and shit small balls. I feed the goats grass. Goats — are the first animals to appear in my life. The goat’s song — is my childhood genre. I stretch out my hand so as to touch the pole and pull it back. I’m playing with death. The horror of death covers everything. Then everything gets dark. But that summer consciousness wakes up once again and again concerns death.

We’re driving in papa’s chocolate “Victory” along the highway. There are fields around us. There is a sudden thunderstorm. A horrible hissing sound, — and an awful explosion of thunder. Lighting strikes an electric pole right near the car. The base of the pole turned into a flaming palm. Sparks fly in every direction. Death organizes an exhibition stronger than I ever saw before either in the theater or in the movies. I got an assignment and now I have to deal with it. The God-thunderer, whoever he might be, poked me with his finger.

The God-thunderer created order in my life. This was my first order. Later I often got lost, went in a circle of chance,

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but death became my life’s guiding light, it beats to its own rhythm, and I finally heard it. The powerful mechanism of the fear of death, instilled in me from birth, worked. I don’t have any relationship to this mechanism — it’s my personal matrix. I didn’t know of either the icon lamp or icon. My parents didn’t christen me. Grandma didn’t secretly take me to church. In the Soviet Union, death was considered not to exist. Death — was desertion. Marxist philosophy bypassed death, having pinched its nose. Corpse treatment was ugly, like deserters. Undertaking was conducted worse than ever. For many years after the revolution neglected corpses stank around the cemetery. Dogs, having become wild, including fine hounds and Borzoi ate them. Then the quick way of disposal of corpses started during life — cremation. We grew up in the country of musical boxes of the crematories. Only alcoholics became gravediggers. I had to deal with death on my own, without mediators. The absence of priests close by turned me into a maniac of death.

•

When my face was lit up by holiday fireworks, when papa’s chauffeur Sasha (who talked Marusya Pushkina into living with him, promising to marry, but proved to be a scoundrel, because in life, not our own, he was married) brought a New Year’s tree into our apartment; and we began decorating it, standing on a chair and striving to get to the top, so as to hang a red star there, on the branches — balls and fish, and on the bottom to put my first childhood god with the rosy, Russian snub-nosed face coachman, I felt that this was a short break. The Frost-God was cut out of world mythology by crude scissors and left alone, until the pine needles fell off, for two weeks, until the old-style New Year, but even this small shard of world pantheon warmed me with its gifts. He spoke about the secret of the world, he was my ally.

Early on the morning of January 1st, when my parents were still asleep, I jumped out of bed, which was then in my parents’

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bedroom near the window with the hot battery of central heating, and ran into the dining room which smelled of pine needles, so I could crawl under the tree. Santa Clause with the coachman’s face was surrounded by gifts.

Because of the overheating of the batteries, I often dreamed of black people’s demonstrations. My young life, wrapped in the arms of death, was cured by holidays and gifts. Life consists of holiday and gifts; everything else — is misunderstanding. Life consists of distractions from death. I wasn’t told about the morals of misfortune, slavery, cowardice. I didn’t suffer from the humiliations of the communal apartment. My spontaneous morale consisted of endless trust in the world, complete openness to it. I was that most open soul, who was born in order to become the dancing god.

I don’t understand how its possible to work the entire day, year after year for an idiotic salary, with a short break for lunch, screaming from the bosses and gloomy rudeness from the staff. I can guess why one has to work, but I don’t know — why? But then I didn’t know from early childhood that there are two kinds of gifts. There are gift-dreams, which you mustn’t even think about, and if you do, then only before bed. For example, a railroad with whole collection of cars, bridges and rails. Such gifts assure introduction into adult life, they turn around and direct one on the correct path all one’s life. And here mama comes up to you from behind, and you don’t even notice how she comes up, you’re completely absorbed in the gift, and she pats you on your head. This is the moment of complete happiness.

And there are gifts of “leave me alone”. They’re bought without paying attention, out of necessity, and a strange energy comes out of them, they smell like cooked macaroni. So, some kind of game with chips or a “fake” fire engine with a ladder on strings. You sit in front of such gifts and you pity yourself and your parents. Don’t look like it, force yourself to be happy, hug mama, but think to yourself: “why are you like that? I understand everything.”