07

I’m on my way to Lenin, listening to the BBC on the way. All they talk about is my Slavka. I feel hurt. He could’ve talked it over with his father, couldn’t he? (By the way, General, you’re going to be demoted because of Slavka, or they’ll force you into retirement.) I look around, and see that Staroporokhov’s dead, except for the theoretical physicists who are coming up out of the underground, on their way home from work. But they’re not marching in step. We’ve all been forbidden to do that: We even signed a pledge—because when we go on a binge, marching in step might cause what’s called a “resonance,” and that could cause the roof to collapse, God forbid, if that were to happen over the detonator shop, or the place where they dry the deuterium. When I arrive at my post, I take a skeptical look at the memorable bench next to Ilyich. I’m sober, but I sway back and forth on purpose to lure the longhaired queer. I lie face down and cover my head with the side of my coat the way orphans do. My jacket stinks of the drunk-tank, the disinfecting bath, and jail—the inhuman government-issue-stench of my wretched life. I think: What have I done with my life? It’s cold, autumn leaves are falling from the branches, they nuzzle up to me like live birds (they’re cold too). I’m so far gone I’ve forgotten there’s plant life on earth (also birds, goats, cats, and dogs). Where the hell have I been living these past six months while working so hard at camouflaging? I’ve been living on a dead planet, and they’ve been issuing us rotgut alcohol before each shift. Lenin, too, stands above me, solitary, glimmering white.¹ He’s camouflaged too.

Beneath the coat of primer and the whitewash, there’s Stalin. That’s right. One of our sly dogs got a prize for that. You guessed it—that very same Teterin. He once stood up at a Politburo session and said, “Are you nuts? Why waste material on a new statue? It wouldn’t take long to make the head bald, cut back the nose, pull the forehead out wider, and then tack on a beard and mustache! Nothing to it! They both have stately bodies, they’re wearing overcoats with identical Party tunics. And on top of that, they’re pointing in the same direction—toward Communism. Why worry about it?” “Well, Teterin,” Kosygin says, “I’d take you on as my deputy, but I can see you’re way too smart. You’d sell me out, wouldn’t you, you bastard! Admit it, you’d sell me out!” And Teterin (he’s like that) says, “You bet I would,” and he’s been in my brigade ever since….

So I’m lying there next to Lenin. The most important thing, I tell myself, is not to drift off (I’m normally a sound sleeper). I turn over and look up at the sky. The vipers up there are awake too. They’re flying. I don’t worry so much at night—at least then you can see the filthy satellites, stuffed with their CIA devices. But during the day, it’s scary, really scary. We know they’re flying over, but we can’t see them. What can you say? We lag behind in cloud-seeding technology. We can’t see the satellites. The daytime shift is the hardest. In the daytime, I feel like I’m blind, totally blind. I try not to think about Slavka, or about Duska. Start thinking about them, and you can go nuts. Here, I’ve sacrificed my whole family, including that paralytic bitch of a mother-in-law, for the good of the cause. And for that I’ve been expelled from the party and fucked in the ass by an unidentified person of the male sex.

I roll back onto my stomach again, and then, suddenly…. Quiet, brother, quiet! I can hear footsteps. Rustling in the bushes. Someone’s trying to sneak up on me. So I wind my emergency cord more tightly around my wrist (like our famous spy, Sorge, with his potassium cyanide, I keep this cord with me at all times to hang myself in the event of exposure). And I’ve thought up a little trap, just like an engineer. I’ve made a big noose out of the cord and inserted it inside my pants, encircling my ass. The end of the cord is in my hand. As soon as he sticks it in, I’ll yank: “Ah-ha,” I’ll say, “gotcha, little snake!” I’ll drag him by his criminal penis straight to the KGB. That’s what I’ll do if he turns out to be a dissident Zionist. If he’s just a regular longhaired queer, a fucking Tchaikovsky, I’ll take him to the cops.

Sure, I’m making myself take the brunt of the blow here, but there’s no other way to catch this snake red-handed. Otherwise, he’ll just deny everything: “Yeah,” he’ll say, “I took his pants off. I thought he was about to shit in them. That’s how it is with these winos.” And that’ll be the end of it! He’ll have his alibi, and I’ll be left with nothing more than a prick’s ears. So, I wrap the cord more tightly around my fist, and all of a sudden I can feel a surge of energy flowing into me, that hypes me up, like a carefree young guy in a reconnaissance platoon at the front. I wait fearlessly. What will be, will be! The main thing is, don’t let him stick it in all the way. After all, I’m still hurting from the first time. I have to be ready to tighten the noose the moment his penis has penetrated just a centimeter or two—no more than that. To lure him on, I snore a little louder, mumble something, sniff, and drool.

“Tup-tup-tup”—steps coming closer. By the way, General, I listened to this bastard’s cautious movements with great interest, as if I were an outsider. After all, it wasn’t only me that this snake ruined the last time. Yet here he was: coming onto me a second time, even though a person can get fifteen years for that. Suddenly he fell silent. I got scared for some reason, and I’m thinking to myself: What would make a person rape winos who are sound asleep? What? Maybe he’s a freak? Maybe he has bad breath, so women won’t put out for him? But that couldn’t be it! Judging by the trauma I suffered last time, he was quite a stud and had what it takes to seduce some rich cafeteria manager or one of the attendants at the Sanduny Baths.² And how can it be that Staroporokhov lacks the social preconditions for alcoholism or paid-for-fucking (in other words, prostitution), and we have no unemployment, and our rats don’t eat babies like they do in the bankrupt city of New York, and we don’t have an oil crisis, a gas crisis, or a firewood crisis—yet longhaired queers are roaming the streets here as if we’re in Scandinavia? Could it be that Nature herself has started transforming guys into broads, and vice versa? Take that, Supreme Soviet!

Grisha! Hush! Hush! He’s moving again, I can hear him unzipping his fly as he walks toward me, the scum. He’s thought of everything! A zipper fly! No buttons! Zzzzhick! Believe me, brother, it was very strange to sense, all of a sudden, that he wanted me. Me—Fyodor Milashkin! For a second I grew weak, went soft all over, like a broad. That’s right! That’s how broads are when they put out for us: “I’ve gone all weak, darling, all soft, while you’re all ready to go! If you’re going to behave like that, I’m not going out with you anymore! You’re too fast and too rough!” I still can’t see him, even though I’ve opened my left eye just a bit…. Lenin is “glimmering white in the distance.” Now the guy’s right behind me, he’s taken the final step … I’m snoring … he’s breathing heavily too … Here it comes! Here it comes! I drive away my fear by vowing to myself that I will dedicate the elimination of this queer to the Sixtieth Anniversary of Soviet Power. I will! I will!

He pulls my coat over my head. He must be in a hurry. I’ve already loosened my belt on purpose beforehand, so it’s easy for him to pull my pants down and slide them off. I’m waiting, my heart’s about to stop, my ears are ringing, my blood pressure has shot up. I’m cold, a breeze makes its way freely over my body up to my shoulder blades, there’s a smell of Vaseline. That’s all for the best, I think to myself. If only I don’t start screaming too early. Come on, do it, you snake! … Ow, Grisha, brother of mine, Comrade Lieutenant General, ow! And at that moment I yank the cord, “Ah ha!” I roar. I can feel I’ve collared the penis right by the throat. I leap to my feet, and nearly faint away: All of a sudden I’m the one who’s facing jail, not him! Ten years, minimum, for me! Farewell, freedom, the end of my screwed-up life has arrived! The guy’s taken off, running, and his torn-off penis has been left dangling behind in its noose. Have you ever seen anything like that in wartime, General, or while you were invading Czechoslovakia? Disaster! Why the hell did I have to pull so hard? Why?

So, I take off after him, no time to think! I’m not running, I’m flying. “Stop!” I yell, “Hold on! Let’s settle this amicably!” He just keeps running, not looking back. I’m thinking, as I run: Maybe I should duck into an alley, drop his cock into a trash bin, or into the Pushka River, and then nobody’d ever be able to figure out who tore it off. It would be impossible to prove that I’d done it. “Stop! Stop!” I yell. I’m flying, and the penis is dragging along behind me, and I’m scared to look back. On the other hand, if you think about it: if they’re transplanting hearts, why not penises? Surgery is free in our country, and it’s the best in the world.

Suddenly, near the Dzerzhinsky statue, he stumbles and falls, and that’s when I come running up, all out of breath, and jump on top of him. He’s got the shakes, jerking from side to side like he’s having an epileptic fit or something. Sure enough, he is longhaired, and soft all over. I twist his arms, I turn him over … And, I’ll be fucked if it isn’t Duska! My Duska! It was her I was chasing! And she just cracks up, can’t stop laughing … Only now do I remember that time when I was lying on that little bench, asleep at my post, and I had the following dream.

It’s so dark I can’t see myself, I don’t know where I am. A stony path stretches away in front of me, shining in the moonlight, covered in dust, with potholes. In other words, it’s a highway. And I can hear the pounding of horses’ hooves in the distance, clanging, clattering, and grinding. Closer and closer it comes. How can you escape? It will crush you, close in on you, it will scatter you to all sides (although it still feels as if there is no me in this space). It’s rushing along! Flying! It’s a troika! Karl Marx is the shaft horse, Engels is the right-hand out-runner, and on the left is Lenin! Their hooves beat against the pavement, sending off sparks. Marx’s white mane flutters against his shoulders! He has taken the bit in his teeth, chest pushed proudly forward, head bent, rushing with all his might, exhaling fire and smoke from his nostrils, eyes goggling. The out-runners strain to keep up, bursting their harnesses. And Stalin, the driver, sits on the coachman’s seat of the old carriage in his full marshal’s uniform, pipe in his teeth, lashing all three horses with the reins: a whack to Marx, a whack to Engels, and then one to Lenin. The troika rushes on insanely. And all nations and states stand aside and let it pass.³ And there I am, a fleshless shadow in the pitch darkness! The troika gallops on, ever onward! Calamity! Trouble ahead! But at that moment, all of a sudden, my Duska runs out onto the stony path: “Whoa!” she shouts, grabs Marx by the bridle, and reins him in. Engels says, “Not fucking bad dialectics!” Lenin squints his Tatar eye, and Stalin is tossed right out of the cart into the ditch: “Whoa!”

Back when I dreamed this dream, I had awakened to hear, “From Lenin to the victim’s anus—eight meters, ten to the pavement. Forty to Marx-Engels.” That’s how it was then. But now Duska is lying beneath me, laughing, as she used to laugh, long, long ago, in the country, in the fields, when we were on vacation. She laughs, but I’m serious, I give you my word, I suddenly feel love and I’m unhappy that Duska’s wearing pants…. It’s all just like it was out in that field in the country when we were on vacation. How sweet it is to love your wife. What a sweetness all of a sudden (the only thing that can compare is Starka Vodka, Export Brand)!

“Fedya,” my Duska whispers, “Fedya … is it you, Fedya? Who did you give me up for? Love me, Fedya … I’ll die for you!” For me too, it’s as good as it was the first time! Go ahead, CIA, take your pictures, and put them on the president’s desk in the morning with a caption: “Sector 45: next to the Dzerzhinsky statue, Fedka Milashkin is fucking his beloved wife, Duska, his pale blue eye shut with pleasure.” That’s how good it was!