Unexpected Guest

Îò àâòîðà: ïîñëåäóþùèé òåêñò - ïåðåñêàç ìîåé ïîâåñòè Íåæäàííûé Ãîñòü íà àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå. Ãëàâû ýòîé ïîâåñòè íà ðóññêîì ìîæíî íàéòè â ñïèñêå ïðîèçâåäåíèé. Ëþáèòåëÿì àíãëèéñêîãî æåëàþ ïðèÿòíîãî ÷òåíèÿ. Îñîáàÿ áëàãîäàðíîñòü îðãàíèçàòîðàì ïîðòàëà Ïðîçà.ðó çà îáåñïå÷åíèå è çàùèòó àâòîðñêèõ ïðàâ.


 
Unexpected Guest 
by Ditrikh Lipats 


Dedicated to:
Ray and Esther Semones













 Tick-tock around the clock—
those two are always going:
like day and night,
like black and white,
like love and hatred,
hand in hand together.
As a man is born to die,
the tick
is made to fly
away,
to let the tock
get on its
way.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…










Prologue
‘We’re strangers in the worlds’ — a little poem with that refrain has lingered in my consciousness for decades. My soul wants to put it on paper, to make it live, to let it go, but I hold back the reins; I don’t want to pin down the unknown. “A thought once uttered is untrue...” — as Nabokov translated the famous line, and what can one say against that notion? 
Thoughts of that kind haunt me along my endless ways “from sea to shining sea.” In the cab of my semi-truck I sit high — “I can see for miles” (famous lines, full of hidden meaning, keep popping into my ponderings). Riding above the never-ending highways, at times I feel as if I’m dissolving into landscapes and skies: skies blue or starry, veiled with clouds or framed by forests and mountains. 
“And Memory before my wakeful eyes / With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.” — another famous line, this time by Pushkin, surfaces to match my mood. 
Driving an eighteen-wheeler is my lifestyle: the lure of vistas, snowstorms, ice, the blazing asphalt of deserts, the dust of dirt roads — the never-ending thrill I’m addicted to. In that powerful motion, riding our planet that never returns to the exact point it has already passed, I feel as if I inhabit a fourth dimension where the past no longer exists, where everything happens here and now, where I can see every detail of the lives long gone. 

Part 1 
Rejoice, young man!..  
Chapter 1 
That day I took the wheel at two in the morning, pushed hard for home, and by noon I was there—seven hundred and eleven miles behind me. I could have taken my time, but when you’re finishing your week-long run, stopping for a nap hardly ever crosses your mind. My wife, my soul, was in Russia visiting her mother; at home, the only ones waiting were the parakeets in their cage and the flowerpots thirsting for water. Well—and my daughter, who by tradition drops by on Sundays for tea and a chat. 
I left my huge rig at the yard, climbed into my little girlish Jeep, swung by the Russian store, and when, at last, I tumbled into my apartment and dropped the bags on the floor, I felt how deeply tired I was. I traded a few words with my birds, opened their cage so they could wheel around the room, took a shower, and then a light knock sounded—my daughter had arrived. 
“Here you go,” she said, handing me the mail. One envelope was from the IRS—I wish I’d never seen those; the other wasn’t an envelope at all—just a postcard with a view of the Moscow Kremlin. An old card, yellowed, as if it had lain in some attic until a move brought it back into the light. On the reverse, beneath the blur of an official stamp, you could just make out somebody’s rushed, cocky scrawl: 
Hi Drr, can you imagine, I’m moving to you guys in the States for good. Never guessed, never planned it. Tried calling you, no answer—anyway, see you soon, I’m heading to Dallas. So “Íå áàëóé!” Don’t you misbehave! I still… 
There it broke off—the whole lower part of the card shaved away by some sorting machine that clearly wasn’t built for antiques. No ending, no signature, not even a return address. 
I sipped tea with my daughter, half-watched the TV, listened to her stories, and kept wondering who it was that was moving to Dallas for good. That exclamation—Don’t you misbehave! (“Ne baluy,” soft in sound but weighty in Russian)—pointed toward Baba Tanya, narrowing the mystery to maybe a dozen people. If I ruled out the girls who’d been at that long-forgotten party, that left, what, seven guys who might, by fate’s whim, have written such a thing. 
My daughter finished her tea, grabbed the rest of the “Skazka” cake, and left. 
I finally crashed into sleep. 
 
…bam, boom, bummm… The bass guitar and the dead thud of the drum worked their way straight into your liver. It was that special sound my friends and I had chased when we built our homemade speakers. While we were fussing with the boxes, we stuck a row of drivers inside an old aquarium. Somebody flipped on the tape deck and—oh, miracle—the room filled with the deep bass we’d been craving. We shoved the boxes aside, hoisted the contraption onto a tall wardrobe, and left it there. The speaker cones trembled up high, scratching our foolish souls with the low notes of a magical sound: …bam, boom, bummm… 
Need I say my lair became a venue for suspicious revels? Baba Tanya wasn’t part of our crowd; she lived next door on the landing. She must have been well past sixty, and always wore a kerchief and calico blouses with tiny flowers. My mother, who knew how to put anything and everything to use, unabashedly suggested that Baba Tanya help around the house, and soon the whole lot of our domestic chaos passed into the care of this quiet granny, who appeared like a shadow wherever I made disorder. My mother paid her something, I suppose, but it was clear she didn’t do it for the money—she helped for some reason I couldn’t yet name back then, a kind of simple “to him who asks of you, give.” 
 
 
Chapter 2 
I don’t remember what occasion set off such a spree that evening. Maybe we gathered simply because my parents were out—visiting someone, or at the theater. My tireless mom could dream up any activity at all. My father would sometimes try to object, but my mother carried such authority it never even occurred to anyone to contradict her. She ruled at work as well and submitted only to Party superiors. 
Only a floor lamp with a stained-glass shade and a scatter of multicolored “light-music” bulbs—rigged in that same aquarium—barely lit the drifting cigarette smoke. Sashok whispered some nonsense to Marinka in the couch corner; her happy eyes twinkled in the dark no worse than the bulbs. Alyosha dozed in the other corner—he’d had a nip too much, as always. The barking rock with its howls gave way to the quiet intro of the next Deep Purple song, and the girls, worn out from fast dancing, gratefully laid their hands on their cavaliers’ shoulders. Now the whole dance floor moved in a slow, loose sway. The overseas longhair (funny—I knew them all by name back then!) was pulling a long, keening wail, suffering through some kind of “Child in Time.” It bewitched, tickled the soul, drew you into something unknown, otherworldly. 
I wasn’t dancing then; I was talking with someone by the cracked open window, breathing frosty air. Lyuska tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “Come on, your granny’s crying.” 
“Your granny,” of course, meant Baba Tanya. I found her in the corridor by the door to our den, where the longhair’s crescendo was wailing at full force. The old woman’s look was unusual: she stood leaning against the wall, eyes on the floor, and big tears were rolling down her face. She held a handkerchief in her hand—fished out and forgotten. It was unusual to the point of a tremor. My tremor—because Baba Tanya was always even in her feelings, and her face showed nothing but a quiet smile. I shooed away the girls who had gathered and bent to the old woman. 
“What happened, Baba Tan’? Did someone offend you? We’ll deal with him right now! Don’t cry, Baba Tan’, what is it…?” 
“Oh no, nobody offended me. I just…” she said at last, dabbing her eyes, still hiccupping. The tears started again. The singer had reached the climax of his screech, and now Baba Tanya nearly burst into sobs. 
“What, you don’t like this music?” I ventured. “Shall I turn it off?” 
“No, let it play… Serves him right!” 
“Who’s ‘him’?” I didn’t get it. “What are you talking about, Baba Tan’?” 
“Why, the devil, down in hell. Hear how he’s yelling? Look how they’re pinching his tail! Against your will, you’ll cry… If only there were anyone to pity—but it’s pitiful, anyway.” She wiped her eyes again, this time properly dry, and then said sharply, “And you, Ne baluy!—don’t misbehave!” She said it to the devil, and, leaving me in perplexity, paced down the corridor, opened the front door, and went to her place. 
We laughed ourselves sick all that evening and kept spinning that same “Child in Time.” One of the guys even acted out the devil with his tail caught. “Ne baluy!” we shouted gleefully, poured, clinked, drank, and roared. 
 
 
Chapter 3 
I slept for an hour or so. Then I lay awake for a long time, listening to the ticking of the wall clock. 
Once, I built a house. Well—not with my own hands alone; many labored there. But the foreman’s duties, the finances, the organizing—that was all on me. I built it for myself. To grow old there and die in peace. I also put in no small amount of hands-on work. 
When the house on the lake shore was finished, I bought wall clocks. My wife gave me an earful: one chiming clock—our wedding gift—already stood on the mantel. But I wanted every room in this new house to tick and chime with living clocks. And that’s how it eventually turned out. For many years their multi-voice chimes gladdened my soul. 
And then it all collapsed. 
After a sordid story, unworthy even of telling, I ended up in a rental apartment—an Indian family downstairs, a Brazilian one above me. Of all the possessions I’d ever gathered, I took only what my ex had once scolded me for. Among those ill-fated items were the wall clocks, cheerfully swinging their pendulums, ticking away in the quiet. 
It turns out that after all those years in America, I hadn’t amassed a damn thing. At least the house went to my daughter and didn’t go to waste. 
But what could I brag about to some buddy from my youth, now bound so joyfully for a new life in Dallas? And who, exactly, was coming? I thought about whom I’d actually like to see—and realized… no one. 
Still, somebody was coming. And would arrive. 
Damn. 
 
 
Chapter 4 
Tick-tock… tick-tock… Why do I love that mechanical beat so much? In our old log house, built by my great-grandmother on the outskirts of Moscow, the Pavel Bure clock hung in the place of honor. Back then, the TV didn’t chatter all day long, and I suspect that measured ticking and noble chime are what I heard even in my mother’s womb. Surely it was to that very chime and ticking that I fell asleep as an infant. My crib stood right under the clock. There’s even a photo: I’m standing, gripping the rail; my mother is beside me—she is thirty five, that same authority is distinct in her gaze—and on the wall the clock, with pendulum right-swing, shows twenty to twelve. Daytime, of course—the whole room flooded with cheerful sun. 
So this tick-tock, tick-tock trails after me. Without it, life’s no fun. What will I say to this character? Why do I need any of it? 
I tried to focus on the lads, but the girls crowded my head. Oh, that Lyuska—my second, I think, school “love.” And not love at all, just unreachable temptation. Eighth grade, was it? I was a dolt. Bad friends had taught me: if you want to touch a girl’s breast, go up, cup it, and ask, “How much is the fabric?” Ha-ha, just a joke, of course, but I managed to try it. 
And then… (it was the middle of break, the hall full of kids). Lenka stood shocked—and so did I. I couldn’t tear my hands away from all that softness. A mute scene. An eternity passed before I mumbled, “H-how much is the fabric?” 
The reply was a heavy smack of a satchel on my head. Not from Lenka—she stayed frozen in a daze—but from her friend. The next blows peppered my back as I fled the enraged girls down the stairs. Laughter boomed all around. 
Strangely enough, that foolish occurence gave me the image of a kind of ladies’ man. Girls began to eye me, and I never lacked female attention after that. 
That emboldened me to stare at an upperclassman touching up her hair in the mirror by the cloakroom. Ash-haired “Barbie,” arms raised, fixed her coiffure with pins clutched between her lips. The brown school uniform didn’t spoil her a bit. The skirt, shortened to the limit, showed sculpted legs, a supple waist… Oh, my!—What clich;s… No, I’ll hold back. Descriptions will only spoil it. You know yourself what a charm a sixteen-year-old girl can be. 
I couldn’t imagine I’d be so close to all that beauty, that a year later she’d be my bosom friend—with whom it would never go beyond hugs and kisses. 
 
Chapter 5 
Back then, our senior-class girls had a suspicious passion for Moscow caf;s and bars. Dressed for a party, made up, they’d head downtown—to Gorky Street or Kalinin Avenue—slip into some place like Caf; Sever (“North”) or, if luck struck, Metelitsa (“Blizzard,” if translated straight; “Metla” in our youthful slang, which converted the word into “Witch Broom”), and if not, then at least the Continent. One of those lively girls was the daughter of my parents’ good friends; that’s how I got into their crowd. 
My folks were well-off; I always had some cash in my pockets, and despite my green age, the girls often took me along. Ludmila, or Lyuska, was one of the ringleaders there, but she’d hide behind me whenever some “wrong sort” came sniffing around. That’s how we grew close. We called it “going to Saloons.” 
On one such outing—I wasn’t there that time—Lyuska met a just-right guy, much older and far scarier than me or any of the rest who’d ogled her. 
Vanka the hippie looked terrifying. His curly hair and uncombed beard always carried something extra—hay, trash, who knows. He lived in a respectable building near Aeroport metro station with decent elderly parents, but he had the strange habit of sleeping who-knows-where: in an attic, a basement, or a kolkhoz haystack. His shaggy mane fell over a wild vest cut from a sheepskin coat. The lapels, splattered with blue and pink paint, looked as if sprayed on purpose. 
Vanka always wore real American jeans and real cowboy boots, which made all the girls swoon. I once asked why the boots; he bent down and pulled a folding straight razor from the boot top. His narrow, deep-set eyes looked murky, as if he were high; his long, almost horsey face was crowned by a beak of a nose. One glance—and you shuddered. 
Among Moscow hippies, Vanka was called John. He worked as a loader at a vegetable depot, and you could always find a couple of pickles in his coat pockets; he’d pull one out and crunch. Once, Ivan-Vanka-John stumbled into Lyuska’s place all bloody and drunk. I happened to be there. He’d gotten paid, drunk, and passed out on the wasteland near his depot. Someone tried to rob him. John fought them off but took a couple of cuts and a blow—probably brass knuckles—to the head. To avoid the cops, he slipped through back courtyards and, scaring her mother half to death, crashed on Lyuska’s bed without undressing. 
Lyuska fell for him head over heels and kept faith with him. No matter how much she and I hugged—even tipsy—she wouldn’t go further. Without seeing great sin in it, she’d neck and kiss not only me. But when some boy’s hand reached for that sharply jutting bust, she’d slap our paws smartly. “Ne baluy!” she’d cry in Baba Tanya’s voice. That ended the session. The rest belonged to Vanka-John, all at once and forever. 
The “tailed hippie” himself wasn’t terribly faithful; she caught him with women more than once. When she quarreled with him or was mad, he was Vanka; when she was proud, she admitted he was John. Both were hot-tempered, sharp-tongued; their spats often turned into fights. 
To us younger ones, Vanka-John didn’t just forgive us—he barely noticed us. We stared wide-eyed at that scarecrow who might sell us worn American pants for twenty-five rubles or simply gift a few records he’d taken from unfortunates like us. They’d haul Vanka in for a fifteen-day jail term, or even to the madhouse, and yet he’d always bob back to freedom. 
The grandmas, Lyuska’s neighbors, wondered when he’d finally be drafted—but Vanka was officially loony. His military card had article 7-b, so the army wasn’t in the cards. He really was off. Once, in the middle of a boozy party, he tried to jump from the tenth floor; three strong guys barely held him, while Lyuska screamed, “Why hold him—let him fly, the filthy scum, swamp creep!” Everyone burst out laughing, and Vanka called her a bug-eyed bitch. Yes, Lyuska’s big eyes bulged a little, but it didn’t spoil her. 
We laughed too, remembering a recent hike when Vanka nearly drowned. He vanished at night, and in the morning still no sign. Only by a dog’s nose was he found in a bog and roused to his deep annoyance. “You could’ve drowned, you parasite, bastard!” shouted Lyuska, pelting him with slaps. Vanka-John just blinked his murky eyes and yawned replies. He was soaked, slimy with muck, his nose swollen from gnat bites. How he slept in the reeds—God knows. Hence “swamp creep,” which had us all cracking up. 
They bickered long that evening, then secluded themselves in the bathroom, and came out perfectly happy. 
I watched that crazy romance for about three years, until I got smarter and tired of the soap opera. All that time I was Lyuska’s basin to pour her grievances into. 
 
 
Chapter 6 
To be fair, Lyuska wasn’t lost. Despite her merry schedule, right after school she got into a serious institute—MAI, aviation engineering, I think—and even finished. She did marry Vanka, but that was after my time. By then, I was married myself, and not much up to following their drama. Later, they divorced, of course. 
I divorced too. At that time, I was living at my mom’s. Once, at a bus stop, I found myself staring at a girl’s backside in white jeans. Somehow it looked familiar. It was—Lyuska’s. We hugged to the public’s delight and went to my place to chat. I served whatever scraps I had. As always, she swept everything off the plates and asked, “Got vodka?” No vodka. She finished the cookies: “Maybe wine?” No wine. The store was already closed. 
After we’d talked, she got ready to go. I walked her to the elevator, and there on the floor lay a small pouch, like a cosmetic bag. She picked it up, opened it… The bag was stuffed with homemade porn—the kind the deaf-mutes used to peddle in beer joints and train stations. Leafing through that black-and-white filth, she let out a cry of despair: 
“Then why on earth don’t you have vodka!” 
So it goes in my life—my guardian angel has always kept me from casual sex. That time, too: she stuffed the pouch into her tote, and I walked a thoroughly disappointed Lyuska back to the bus stop. 
Another couple of years passed, and I met her again at that same bus stop. I was with my second wife. Delicately, Lyuska only traded me a glance—carrying greeting, memory, and regret that she couldn’t chat with an old friend. Her beauty had faded; she stooped; her hair had thinned. Nothing was left of the once-beautiful “Barbie” girl. She looked very ordinary Chapter 7 
Of course, there was much more than I recall here. There was Lyuska’s poetess friend—five years older than me—who for some reason called me Pasha and kissed like she meant to devour me. I even remember the start of one of her poems: 
“Oh, my mom!—what a miss— 
No one gives me a kiss, 
No one’s here to warm up 
My cold bed with!” 
There was a blue, snowy evening and a fistfight at a tram stop with some workers who hated Vanka-the-hippie on sight; I had to step in for him. There was… oh, the things those ragged years held—a shame even to remember. 
Lord! What a nightmare! I even sat on the edge of my bed and gripped my gray head. What did Lyuska see in that Vanka? A smart girl—knew scores of poems by heart—we discussed so many movies; she read decent books—and then that clown, that scarecrow! If you looked closely, there was nothing in Vanka but cheap style. You don’t need a psychiatrist to diagnose it. 
Who loves to stand out in a crowd? Who craves constant attention? Who will pull a stunt just to be noticed? Who, in the middle of general merriment, actually tries to jump out a window? That’s right: a hysteric. In that Vanka there was nothing but endless passion melodrama. I don’t remember a single sensible conversation with him. 
Yet I do remember very decent guys who came to Lyuska with serious intentions. And what? Love is cruel—you’ll even love a goat. (A Russian proverb that rhymes funny in the original.) Maybe so… But it was clear you can’t build a family with such a one—hardly raise a healthy child. She gave him her best years, that’s for sure. 
Lord, what am I saying? Easy for me now—old and gray—to judge. But then? Didn’t I admire John-the-hippie myself at seventeen? Didn’t I envy his popularity? He could do what we ordinary boys not only wouldn’t dare—we wouldn’t even think of it. That’s what we admired. 
And what about me—was I any better? What occupied me then? Exactly: “Rejoice, young man, in thy youth…” You’ll answer for it. What a shame. 
 
Chapter 8 
Shame seized me down to the liver from another memory altogether. So many years have passed, and I still can’t forgive myself. No matter how much I’ve repented, my soul aches. 
I wronged a girl. Smart, worthy, with the most beautiful eyes I can still see to this day. I was in ninth grade. My sense of my own exceptionality was enormous. School meant nothing; my head was filled only with long-haired Westerners with their guitars and drums, Moscow bars, and Lyuska. 
Outwardly I was a sight: bell-bottoms forty centimeters wide at the hem; a three-meter red scarf with tassels; and not a jacket, not a coat—some half-frock cut like a fashionable blazer but sewn from black plush. It looked exactly like the jackets grannies wore to sell sunflower seeds, which drew heaps of jokes—but not mockery. I was tall, broad-shouldered, hair down past my shoulders, and wore a scowl. In truth I was a kind, smiling guy; the whole getup was camouflage rather than aggression. My friends knew my gentle nature, but they took care not to push me; I could flare. Once, their teasing went too far; I yanked a sturdy sapling from a snowbank and chased them, swinging it like a club. 
I barely tolerated school. I scraped by from D to C, waking up only in history and English, which I did quite well at. Thanks to my father. He’d grab me by the scruff when I was little, plop me beside him with one hand, and reach for a book with the other. English for the Little Ones. He’d open it in the middle and say, “Read.” I’d squeak that we hadn’t gotten that far yet, and he’d go on: you learn a language all at once. Read what you know, guess the rest. I had to sit and puzzle it through. My father was kind and funny but catching a cuff from him wasn’t hard either. So, of all the school subjects, English was the one I pulled off well. 
But it wasn’t only him. In those days, after school, we’d run to the Melodiya music store on Kalinin Avenue, or to GUM (State Universal Store), and hang around the music department, trying not to flash the record bag, waiting for some provincial simpleton willing to pay good money for a worn Beatles or Stones LP—or at least swap well. We pulled some tricks, sure—but all the take went to the same music, and to bars where we sat with girls. Every record that passed through us we dubbed; we sold cassettes; and we ran back to GUM or Melodiya, hoping something new would float in on the black market. I remember when real “bombs” would turn up there—Demis Roussos’s Souvenirs, McCartney’s Venus and Mars. People kept asking for them, ready to pay a small fortune, but copies were genuine rarities. We were crazy about the music, yet the Soviet authorities branded it “harmful propaganda,” and undercover KGB agents sniffed around, eager to catch us. 
You can imagine my joy, years later, sifting through crates at an American flea market where a disc that once cost a big man’s full salary went for fifty cents. With what pleasure I’d pull a Stormbringer or Jethro Tull from a stack. How the memories rose—how I wished my friends were beside me! All those records took a place of honor in that house on the lake; they’re gathering dust there to this day. But in the seventies our collections grew by crumbs, and our tape decks, clattering with hollow motors, gave us the feeling of being exceptional and blissed out. 
That forbidden music was a window into another world—the one that looked out from the pages of America magazine. My father somehow brought those glossy magazines home, and I devoured a world we otherwise saw only in films. That’s why I studied English: I knew—believed—that someday my dream would come true—and I’d fly there for good. 
I loved to drop into the little Foreign Literature shop. No way could I read big novels by Maugham or Dreiser; I bought them just to decorate my bookshelf. For reading I’d get cheap, shabby abridged editions. Those went down fine. I really wanted to excel at English. My father hauled back from his foreign trips heaps of detective and cowboy novels. He’d read and trade them. He and my older brother always had something new. What was easy for them was out of reach for me. I only dreamed of catching up—little by little understanding more and more. 
I had no other achievements to boast of. I strummed guitar like everyone, smoked, drank lousy port and cheap red like everyone, tried to read what everyone read, and in nothing else differed. Even in my secret heart I was like everyone. 
I was eaten then by longing for a girlfriend. Not exactly the kind you drop your pants with and collapse into bed—though I wouldn’t have turned that down either. No. My soul itself yearned for its second, feminine half. I was born, it seems, a lovebird-parrot, and I pined in the absence of a mate. I hid it carefully from my friends; on the sly, I probably lived only by that dream. And the Lord heard. I wasn’t thinking of Him then, but now I see I was given a chance. 
 
Chapter 9 
One gray winter day, while my pals—out of boredom—were teaching my budgie to swear, the phone rang. A girl asked for a certain Pyotr Stepanovich. We had no such person, but I didn’t want to let her go. I told her she’d be better off talking to me than some boring Pyotr Stepanovich. 
“Why boring?” she asked. “And how are you merrier?” 
So began our most hapless chat, during which she wanted to hang up more than once. But she didn’t. In my room, “Smoke on the Water” was thundering, and I realized that through my babble she was trying to catch that rare music. Music was my trump card. I could rattle off musicians’ names for hours, knew heaps of rumors and tall tales about the rock world, remembered every scrap from Rolling Stone that reached us as photocopies. All of this was new and forbidden-interesting to her. The only thing not interesting, perhaps, was me. She hadn’t planned to waste so much time, but at the end she asked if she could call tomorrow to hear the rest of my “lecture.” 
“Sure—as much as you like! Only tell me, stranger—what’s your name?” 
She snorted: “Oh, please. What do you need that for?” 
It seemed to me she was wiser and older than me—not in years, but in life. 
The next day I didn’t leave the phone. I prepared: picked the choicest tidbits, even tidied my room, brushed my teeth, washed my hair. I wanted to look cleaner, fresher; it felt like something was about to change, as if a new life would start to flow. But the phone stayed silent. Silent and silent. 
The day died. Only at dusk did the call come. I grabbed the receiver before it finished the first ring—but they asked for our neighbor across the landing, Aunt Valya, who worked at the produce stand. I had to fetch her. Aunt Valya was loudly indignant: some inspector suspected she’d poured a bucket of water into the cucumber bin to add weight. 
“Wet! Hell knows why they’re wet,” she boomed. “What do they want me to do—lick them dry?” 
She smacked the receiver down and shuffled off, muttering “plague.” By then it was already dark, and I realized my cherished call wouldn’t come that day—and maybe not tomorrow, not ever. I felt like howling with longing and couldn’t bear going back to the old boredom. 
 
 
Chapter 10 
She called. On the third day, when I’d stopped expecting. I knew at once it was her. Shyly, she said, “It’s me.” 
My puppy joy swept away the awkwardness, and in a minute our talk was running like a river. Which is to say, I was running like a river. I was always a chatterbox. A desperate D-student, the last among my friends to read thick books (I read them when everyone else already had), I was nonetheless gifted with the word. 
I remember once, at a holiday table, the adults started talking about Fellini, about Nights of Cabiria. That film was “no one under sixteen,” but of course we lads had snuck in. I said I’d seen it. The grown-ups fell silent, waiting for fun, and asked what I understood. Not long before, my older brother had been instructing me on how to tell good films from bad. So I launched in—plot development, tempo-rhythm, neorealism, Giulietta Masina. It ended with a toast to me, the fool—wishing I’d become a film critic or even a director. 
In short, patter was all I had—and I used it for all it was worth. 
So our talks flowed. I babbled; my interlocutor mostly listened. With half-amazement—where had I gotten all that? And why didn’t she know it? With distrust—was it all true? Better check. With caution—who is this, anyway, maybe it’s time to stop? 
She still wouldn’t give me her name, and it was impossible to tell what number she called from. Back then only the police could know. Anonymity gave her a sense of safety and control; she kept listening and, gradually relaxing, grew used to my presence. I could only guess where she lived, how old she was, what her name might be. 
At last, about a week later, she gave a name. Vika—Victoria—Victory. I suggested we meet; she flatly refused. 
 
 
Chapter 11 
Even so, I was on cloud nine. The main thing was achieved: she needed me. She called every day. Little by little, I learned she was in tenth grade—so a year older, which didn’t faze me. Back then, I knew perfectly well how older girls lived. That’s why I seemed so over-initiated to Vika. 
And she turned out not to be Vika at all but Tanya; that came much later, a month into our talks. By then, Tanya had figured out who I really was and realized she had nothing to fear. Still, she refused to meet, thinking we were fine as we were. 
My whole crew openly mocked my telephone romance, but I paid no mind. I was happy. I gradually formed an image of my Tanya and was delighted with it. I saw something out of America magazine: a neat haircut puffed at the crown; a small face with proper features; a petite figure, everything in its place; and the rest of that drivel—long legs, light step, the clack of heels. 
In short, what a first-class fool I was! 
Why demand from a person what we want to see in them? We are all God’s children. God doesn’t make trash, as smart Americans say. Tanya was right; I was not. She agreed to meet only when she realized she was truly in love with me. She didn’t care how I looked; she liked my soul. I, however, was itching to meet the one I’d imagined. I wanted to rub my pals’ noses in it, to bring a star into our gang. 
My star, won with suffering. 
Sufferer, my foot. 
 
Chapter 12 
Years later, I understood that Tanya really was a star. I wouldn’t meet such clear-mindedness, restraint, and a firm sense of what can and cannot be done—what is good and what is bad—until forty years later, in my third wife, Galina. But at sixteen I simply couldn’t value it. I chased outer chic, a beautiful vessel—even if empty—and missed the true beauty of the soul, the flame shimmering inside the vessel. 
Tanya showed up in a flecked wool coat; her lush curls were topped with a blue hand-knit beret. It matched her blue eyes, but struck me then as simply wild. On her feet were plain little shoes my older girlfriends would have mocked to death, and from under her skirt ran the uneven seams of the cheapest tights. 
It was a sunny spring day; the snow was melting; sparrows chirped like mad. We walked around VDNKh (the All-Union Exhibition grounds)—and I, fool that I was, should have seen and valued this girl. She had everything: a proper face, a pretty nose with a bump, slightly full, well-drawn lips, fine brows, and eyes I would recall all my life. But no! I barely answered her talk. She was a bit excited and happy. She wasn’t in the least burdened by the company of a longhair in patched jeans and a silly plush jacket. For her the main thing was that we were together; she was ready to follow me to the world’s end. 
And I—just think!—was not exactly disappointed, but offended. 
Girls, don’t throw your treasures to dogs, and don’t cast pearls before swine. Otherwise they’ll turn and rend you. The Savior didn’t say that about girls—but it fits you too. Sisters, forgive us, idiots. It’s well known: at seventeen a boy has no sense. (A Russian proverb that even sounds comical in its bluntness.) 
So I thought, sitting alone, forty-five years later. The wall clock ticked evenly; outside, a hot Oklahoma day was burning out. I should have gotten up and gone somewhere to shake it off. I dressed, grabbed my bag, and headed to the gym. 
 
 
Chapter 13 
Who was it that was coming here to me? I wondered, sitting in a chaise under the magnolias. From the big pool came the voices of swimmers; soft music poured from speakers hidden in the bushes; from the water slide, kids—and even grown men—came whooshing down; and up in the blue sky big white clouds drifted and drifted. 
In my whole city there isn’t a better place to spend a summer evening. I’m no lover of pumping iron or pounding a treadmill. I’d rather swim quietly and then sit like this. 
Over the years, I became—not unsociable exactly, but unsociable personally, that’s for sure. That is, I’m ready to spend long hours talking only with my beloved wife. Schopenhauer was right to advise, when binding yourself in marriage, to consider whether you’re ready to talk with your partner for the rest of your life. That was my criterion in choosing my third fianc;e, and I didn’t miss. 
With any other interlocutor, I’m fine by phone or Skype, but best of all by email—there you can, for any reason, break off and be distracted. But if some guest barges in on me—especially one from those unbridled years—it’s torture. I don’t drink vodka; after surgery, half my stomach is gone, so I’m no eater; I can’t stand when table talk turns to singing and guitar strumming. 
Oh man… what the hell do I need all that for? 



Part Two
Don’t get upset!
Chapter 1
I was thirty-five when I came to Oklahoma. A different kind of invitation once brought me here. And the one who “never guessed, never ordered it up” is probably, like me now, sixty-two. Not such a gap between us. I’d dreamed for years of leaving the Soviet Union—even on a bicycle—while for him, apparently, everything just fell into place at once. Well, that happens too.
Maybe he’s got himself a local fianc;e? Then I won’t be too happy for him. I’ve met plenty of American guys aggrieved at local ladies for supposedly thinking of nothing but money. Many times they’ve pumped me about Russian girls—and what could I say? That some Russian girls love money even more than American ones? I couldn’t say that. And if he’s found a decent, conscientious woman—if something real is taking shape—what if I talk him out of it? Let him figure it out himself if he’s set on this course.
I have a good acquaintance. Back in Russia she decided to marry an American. Practical woman. So, not to make a mistake, she started a marriage agency. That’s a story in itself. Long story short, after much experience pairing Russian brides with foreign grooms, she told me bitterly:
“I had roughly five thousand women in my files, dreaming of marriage and a ticket here. I can tell you exactly: those who marry guys like you—working stiffs—usually use them and then dump them, keep running after life. They’re sure they’ll meet someone better here, richer. And the ones who marry rich men—first they mope, then they start haunting clubs and cheating on their husbands on the sly. Their girlfriends rat them out; then come the scandals and the lawsuits. I’ve seen enough.”
So yes—very likely he’s coming for a fianc;e. Although… maybe relatives? Unlikely. American uncles don’t just fall from the sky. And not at that age. People don’t make decisions that fast by then. If it’s “never guessed, never ordered,” then almost for sure—cherchez la femme.
I too, when I found myself alone in the back end of my fifties, considered American women. There are plenty of perfectly decent women among them. And no, money isn’t the only thing on their minds. I’ve seen very worthy “brides” among teachers and in church congregations. But you can’t sing The Blue Carriage Rolls and Rocks with one. She won’t laugh at a Russian joke. She won’t get our humor. She read different books in childhood; which is to say, she and I—an American and a Russian—stand on different whales.
If I were thirty years younger I might try to break in the fit; now I haven’t the strength for that. I tried to establish some contact with a few single ladies on dating sites, but I never got carried away by a single one. We had nothing to talk about. Endlessly: children, ex-husbands, relatives, restaurants, hamburgers, and the like. When I tried to talk in the good old Russian way “about life,” they’d politely listen—for five minutes. If only they’d known that was just the beginning of my long-form reflections.
In short, it grew clearer and clearer that if this friend of my youth really settled not so far away in Dallas, I’d again become a basin—this time for a man’s curses, resentments, and tears.
The thought made me shudder. I rose from the chaise, grabbed my towel, and headed to the locker room.
And there’s nothing you can do about it. I can’t abandon a person—much less a friend—in trouble. It didn’t even occur to me that things might go entirely differently—that this cheerful, energetic old-timer would take the bull by the horns and hurl himself, with a neophyte’s enthusiasm, into a new life.
Strange. I myself have never once regretted that the Lord brought me to this country. I can’t recall a single truly negative thought about reality here. Americans felt like old acquaintances, the very ones Nikolai Nosov described in Dunno in the Sun City. I chuckled recognizing all sorts of Engineer Rivets and other positive, well-fed shorties. They received me and my family very well. I landed here at once as at home—as if I’d come back after a long stint in jail. Yes, the story of my arrival is unique, but even other Russian immigrants had little to complain about—at least here in the Midwest, where the local folk are kind and helpful. It’s not even two hundred years since they themselves settled here.
And besides: what if the fianc;e is well-off and my friend is headed for a well-fed, merry life? What if, in her person—and in her purse—he acquires a good supplement to a modest pension? God grant it! Though, if that were so, he wouldn’t have sent me a dog-eared postcard. He probably wouldn’t have remembered me at all. The tone of those few lines is a cry for help. Searching for a straw to grab if needed. His friend—me—has lived here almost thirty years. He won’t let me go under.
I won’t. Looks like a test laid on me.
Chapter 2
“Tried to call…” Well yes—type my name into the internet and I pop up right away. There’s only one of me in the world. Not John Smith, not Ivan Ivanov.
Suddenly I remembered: the narrow entry hall of our little apartment near Riga. I’ve just come home. Ray steps out to meet me. I’m holding plane tickets for my whole family: me, my wife, our two small children. Tickets from Moscow to Chicago. I stare at the booklets and can’t believe my eyes.
“Everything in order?” Ray asks.
“Yes, got them without a problem. Put it all on my account. I’ll try to repay you as quickly as I can.”
Ray looks at me with a certain warmth. He barely hears me; he’s simply glad his efforts weren’t in vain. Finally he answers:
“I’m not keeping any account for you. Someday you’ll pass it on to someone else in need.”
A couple of weeks earlier, we’d appeared for the first time as a family at the U.S. Embassy in Riga, Latvia, with an invitation to study in the U.S. that Ray and Esther had arranged. Only a year before, Latvia had become a sovereign state, and a full U.S. embassy had opened in a country of just two and a half million—basically a fraction of Moscow’s population. We’d moved from Moscow to a quiet Latvian village about a year earlier, right before the August putsch. Getting an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow wasn’t simple at all. In Riga it was easier.
I stood before a young officer who examined the papers from my sponsors and from the college where I was to continue my education.
“So you’re going to the United States to get a Bachelor’s in Business Administration?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye.
“Exactly so, sir,” I said, trying to bury my Russian “R” as deep as possible.
“And how much will that cost? I mean for your sponsors?”
“The tuition itself comes to…”—I launched into calculations, which he methodically wrote down.
“Plus transportation, medical insurance, incidental expenses, unforeseen expenses…” he added. He drew a line, tapped on a calculator, and said, “Sixty-five thousand dollars. At minimum.”
The sum seemed so unbelievable I didn’t know what to say. But the fellow knew:
“For us to issue your student visa, your sponsors must provide proof of income. Come back when you have the required documents.”
The interview was over. We were back on a Riga boulevard. Snow pellets fell; a cold wind crept under our clothes. Instead of visas and a flight to America, we’d been handed a new problem: sixty-five thousand green dollars.
Am I dreaming? Could those overseas—Ray and Esther, who’d seen us only once, one winter evening in Moscow three years earlier—really be ready to guarantee such insane money, just to help us paupers get to America?
“Help us, Lord!” I appealed yet again to the Almighty, realizing that only His will could move anything in such an impossible matter.
Only later did I learn the sly requirement that young officer had set in our path. In effect, he was blocking the whole adventure. He knew that “proof of income” meant a tax return—a document no normal American would mail across the ocean to just anyone, since personal income here is traditionally kept private.
Chapter 3
Next morning I called Ray. Esther listened in on the extension.
“Got it. We’ll do this,” Ray said. “We’re going to Europe—to Switzerland—in a week. So, in ten days we can swing by you in Latvia. Book another interview”—he paused, no doubt checking the calendar—“and book me as well. I’ll speak to the consul myself. I’ll bring all the documents.”
“Right. Excellent. We’ll do that,” I said—still not grasping the miracle unfolding. Only later, after we’d settled in Tulsa and seen the plain life of this not-so-rich family, did the impossibility of the “coincidence” dawn on me. What was happening, in truth, was a miracle.
They didn’t have extra millions. Ray had studied for years, earned a Ph.D., and worked as a school principal. Then came a conflict. He quit and, unexpectedly, a small factory making chandeliers and lighting fixtures landed in his lap. A relative had run it into bankruptcy; it fell to Ray out of the blue. The factory was a drain—more burden than asset. They ought to have sold it off, but Ray and Esther decided to convert it into a store. Everyone they knew tried to talk them out of it.
Little by little the business survived and strengthened. The city grew; builders placed orders; Ray was buyer, salesclerk, loader, and delivery-van driver all in one. The thing took off. By the time we arrived in Tulsa, the shop was celebrating its twentieth anniversary—a well-established family enterprise with steady turnover and long-term partnerships.
For that jubilee, one partner gifted Ray and Esther a tour to Switzerland. Otherwise they’d never have gone. They hadn’t planned anything of the sort; their last “big trip” had been three years earlier—to Moscow—where they first met my family and me.
Call it coincidence? It might look that way. But there were too many coincidences stacked into one improbable story.
Chapter 4
“You want to go to America?” my aunt asked.
“What America?” I grumbled. “I’d be glad to get to Israel—and they won’t take me. ‘Show your birth certificate proving your mother is Jewish. Or your grandmother.’ And they won’t take a copy—only the original. Try riding up to them on a goat without that grandmother! I even filed an application for Argentina,” I finished in a martyr’s tone.
“And do you have money?” my aunt asked sternly, crushing my dream without mercy.
I had none. My aunt did.
During Perestroika a law on cooperatives came out, and my enterprising aunt and her partner managed to secure “cooperative” status for the small plant they managed. Her new husband—short of stature, with the posture of Napoleon and respectable gray hair—joined the effort. The three of them formed a tidy cooperative producing plastic grocery bags and similar trifles.
They even found a side job for me. I’d just lost all my clientele for jeans and skirts I’d learned to stitch no worse than store-bought. I still recall with a certain pride that my pieces were even stolen off the clotheslines at the student dorms. I charged twenty rubles for jeans, fifteen for a skirt.
That longtime side income collapsed along with old Soviet life. Small-time traders brought in loads of Chinese goods, and my former clients now shopped at Moscow flea markets. I wasn’t upset.
Chapter 5
On a clever friend’s advice, I recruited a group of university applicants who needed to pass the history entrance exam, and twice a week I told tenth-graders what I’d read in a schoolbook printed a hundred years ago for the imperial gymnasiums. Don’t think I was a sham, teaching what I hadn’t studied—not at all. That friend was a professor with serious experience, still known in narrow academic circles. In the far-off eighties he unblushingly predicted the end of Soviet power within five years. People laughed; they shied away. Understandable: back then only a madman or a provocateur would say such things.
I saw him as an original and listened with pleasure to his talks about historical development, which he based on the idea of civilization dissolving the periphery. Funny enough—years later I explained to American schoolkids the roots of the U.S.–Arab conflict by presenting America as a civilization that erodes the patriarchal foundations of the East. One Black student got so fired up he wanted to run and call the State Department to explain the true cause of the whole mess. I learned a lot from that brilliant historian.
He watched my progress and convinced me the best way to learn a subject was to teach it. Before he gave me the green light to post flyers for “USSR History Prep,” he made me memorize, in detail—with dates and linkages—the full genealogical tree of the Ruriks and the Romanovs. I must have drawn that sprawling chart a hundred times and could reproduce it from memory. Whenever I hit a snag in Russian history, I would unroll the needed branch in my mind and—sure enough—the picture of events rose before my eyes. I used that trick more than once on exams. With those simple facts I often gained a reputation for erudition I didn’t always deserve.
In short, after my coaching, the kids really did score top marks on their Moscow State entrance exams. They paid me five rubles an hour—quite decent for those days.
Chapter 6
But big money still wasn’t there. My aunt suggested I earn some at her cooperative. They’d taken an order for plastic sheaths for tool sets and needed people to sew them.
As it turned out, I undercut my aunt. The trick was that the semi-transparent, fibrous plastic had to be stitched with fishing line. The line wasn’t designed for it; it snapped often, so you had to sew slowly. Hence the piece rate: fifty kopecks apiece. After several hours of that tedium I hit on a small idea: drip a little machine oil where the thread passed between the two “plates.” The work flew. By week’s end I’d beaten the projected output tenfold. My aunt was delighted. Later she confessed she’d assumed I’d hired someone else to do such boring work. That would have suited her fine. But I was a good guy. Cheerfully chatting with another “seamstress,” I shared the secret of the drop of oil—and soon everyone’s work took off like an arrow. My hapless aunt missed the moment when her workers’ pay tripled.
“You spoiled my team,” she scolded me. “You come and go, but I have to work with these people. Where will I get that much money for them?”
Her silver-haired husband, with the posture of Napoleon, was present for the talk. He waited a beat and offered me—if I was so clever—the job of sales agent. But my aunt didn’t back him. Bitterly she said, “What, you want him killed?” That was the end of it. Those were rough times—already in full swing.
Chapter 7
There’s no telling all that happened to us in those Perestroika years. What didn’t I try my hand at? There was a highly entertaining stint when I worked as administrator of a small puppet theater. You can’t mention that in passing—it needs its own story. Another time.
My aesthetics-prone wife decided to try ceramics and signed up at a kids’ art studio in a housing-office basement. A month later the bearded instructor was leaving and recommended her for the opening. So into my wife’s care fell a life-threatening kiln, a cavernous basement space, and two dozen perpetually chattering children who happily spent their days in the studio. My wife sculpted from morning till night, watched firings, and whacked—with a stick—the perpetually burning-out element in the red-hot kiln to make it contact again.
Meanwhile I was at home with two small children. Plenty to do: I wrote stories and term papers for the Literature Institute, where I was a second-year correspondence student; stitched plastic bags; tutored university applicants—and when they left, I turned the same kitchen table into a ceramics corner. I got good at making funny clay piggy banks shaped like little sacks tied at the top with a cord. I stamped a dollar or pound sign on them. Moscow souvenir kiosks took them gladly.
From all this variety, even my kids’ heads were spinning. Once, while walking them, I heard my son solemnly informing a circle of grannies on a nearby bench:
“My dad is the smartest. He teaches everybody. And he sews sacks. From clay.”
The grannies stared at such a dad with awe. I snapped my book shut, grabbed the kids, and we hurried away before their brains started spinning too.
Chapter 8
And then, on top of everything else, came American tourists.
I had good friends to whom I owe much. They had no “Jewish-mother problem” and had been living in Oklahoma for about two years—by accident. They emigrated on Israeli visas, declared in Vienna that they wanted the U.S., then sat six months in Italy until a kind Jewish community stepped up and sponsored their flight and resettlement in far-off Tulsa.
A typical story of the time, you’ll say. Maybe. But every fate is unusual—especially immigrant fates.
Those friends used every chance to send parcels back to Moscow. Ray and Esther were among the travelers going with a group to far-off Russia to see what Perestroika was and whether Russians truly no longer threatened anyone with atomic bombs. Two tightly packed bags were entrusted to them, to be delivered in Moscow to whoever came to the hotel to fetch them. I spoke passable English, so I was assigned to retrieve the goodies.
I strode boldly to the main entrance of the Cosmos Hotel. I wasn’t some black marketer; I had business here. They were expecting me. Funny thing—only when some extreme situation pops up do I feel truly alive. Let thunder strike and lightning flash; let me wedge my giant rig into some narrow, unknown street; let a scuffle or outrage break out nearby—I’m all attention, collected, cold calculation. Maybe that’s why I’ve spent years roaming American roads: I crave thrills; I can’t live without adventure.
Chapter 9
The year was 1988. Soviet power still seemed solid. Any contact with foreigners was “not recommended.” Meetings with Americans even less so. And here I was, carrying letters and a parcel, my face split in a grin that shocked the KGB grunts lounging in doorways and the Cosmos Hotel lobby. I must have offended them by acting as if I didn’t even see them.
The moment I stepped into the lobby I spotted a little cluster of elderly American tourists who instantly recognized me and waved cheerfully. I made a beeline for them and burbled away in English they could barely understand. Their English was hardly clearer to me—so different—Okie, I later realized. The tailing spook didn’t understand a thing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the perplexity on his face—almost felt sorry for him: how would he report? Who was it? What did he say?
For some reason I focused on outfoxing him, leaving him in the dark, and so paid little attention to the Americans’ faces—smiles, questions, requests to repeat. Only on the third go did I realize two elderly couples were quite serious about inviting themselves to my home to see how ordinary Soviet people lived.
Esther—queenly, dressed in casual clothes—began speaking to me slowly, in clear, bookish English—like to a child—and like a child with his mother, I understood her at once. She even undertook to be my interpreter from “British” to Okie, and now things really moved. The other ladies tried to slow down too, but in truth I understood only one person without strain: Esther Semones.
“Of course! We’d be delighted! Come tomorrow even!” I cried, not yet imagining how I’d host them or with what I’d treat them. I wrote my full address in Esther’s travel notebook, we exchanged bows, and I stepped out into the Moscow frost.
Clutching the bulging bags of overseas goods, I bolted down the street, leaving the KGB boys looking like complete fools. They couldn’t exactly sprint after me. Now that would have been a scene! I hopped a trolleybus, jumped off at the next stop, ducked into an alley—doing my best to shake the tail. I delivered the bags at once to my friends’ mother, waiting at a “safe house.” She seriously asked whether I’d been followed. It was all very amusing; I chuckled for a long while on the way home.
Chapter 10
Years later I saw the video Ray and Esther’s companions showed me here in Oklahoma. There are my children in American grandmothers’ arms; my son telling some story; my daughter studying her new toy. And there I am with Ray. I’m explaining some family photo on the wall. Books, books on shelves—books everywhere.
Ray is saying something to me—hard to hear. He stands straight as always; his short gray stubble glints under the simple chandelier. I am very young. I pick my English words and help myself with gestures. How old was I? Barely thirty.
I note with satisfaction the order and cleanliness of the cramped apartment. I’d labored all day to spruce it up. I even washed the cat under the tail. And not for nothing—the other old lady sat the whole evening with my contented cat on her lap.
I remember, after making coffee, the horror of realizing there wasn’t a gram of sugar in the house. But then came the words: “No sugar, please,” and my heart eased completely. Everything went just fine.
As they were piling into the Zhiguli, the Russian-made car waiting outside (what a shaggy, fashionable hat the driver had!), my wife came hurrying home. The foreign company, already settled in the warmth, stirred and climbed back out into the snowy evening. Now they took turns greeting the mother of such charming children. Snow fell, unusually loud voices resounded, neighbors peered from their windows in puzzlement, my wife’s eyes sparkled. The driver smiled obsequiously and looked at me with open respect.
It was simply wonderful.
As a parting gesture, Ray—in no hurry to take his seat in the decked-out red “six”—took off his sport coat with football-button cufflinks and set it on my shoulders. I couldn’t refuse; I thanked him; we embraced.
Chapter 11
At home, finally breathing easy, I told my wife how it went. She couldn’t arrive earlier—you can’t leave a glowing kiln unattended. On the table lay little gifts, some chocolate, and similar trifles.
“What’s this? There’s something written,” I heard.
On one side of a bluish business card: Ray Paul Semones. Ph.D., Merchant.
On the other, in blue ballpoint:
I, Ray Semones, invite Ditrikh Lipats to take the position of salesman in my store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Pay by agreement. Housing for the whole family will be provided. This offer stands for one year.
“Well now…” was all I could say.
Chapter 12
A couple of months later we got a sad letter. Our friends described how hard Ray had tried to arrange a work visa for me—and how he’d been refused on the grounds that the salesman position could easily be filled by a local. To work in the States I had to be an irreplaceable specialist, and Ray had to request a far more specialized employee.
“Don’t get upset. We’ll figure out something else,” Ray told me on the phone.
The fairy tale crumbled before our eyes.
But still—it was good to hear his voice

Part Three 
Where are you, my friends?..
Chapter 1
…The fairy tale fell apart right before my eyes. What fairy tales could there be!
It is written: “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”
Damn! So is it really true—everything that happens to us is already known to the Almighty? Predestined, and no matter how you struggle, you can’t change what’s appointed? Or does the Lord reserve the right to adjust our path as we awaken? I remember it exactly—I once cried out, not even thinking seriously about God yet: “Lord, help me get out of here!” And look what happened. But what if I hadn’t cried out? Hadn’t asked? Or maybe Solzhenitsyn was right, saying a miracle happens to the one who goes out to meet it? But then—who is behind the miracle? Who untangles the knots? Ask, and it will be given…
Maybe I’m just some lucky guy, but with me it always seemed to work. I can’t remember ever asking and getting nothing back. On the contrary—I got much more than I asked, much more than I deserved.
Chapter 2
From childhood I wanted to be a writer. No, not even “wanted.” I simply knew—I’d be a writer. Funny, isn’t it? I still make mistakes, but not writing—that’s impossible for me. And even here I got more than I’d ordered.
I remember passing the exams for the journalism faculty at Moscow State University. We were congratulated, gathered in a hall for orientation, and then a whisper ran across the presidium, some shuffling of papers, and they called a few names—mine among them. They sent us urgently to the dean’s office. It turned out that for some ridiculous reason they couldn’t admit us that year. But next year, for sure, we’d have “concessions.” I swore under my breath and left.
And the next year—I got into the Literary Institute, something I couldn’t even have dreamed of. The competition was thirty to one. Go on, try to get in!
Chapter 3
Same thing with leaving. I practically laid siege to the Israeli consulate—filling out forms, lining up invitations from overseas friends promising everything was set. The deal seemed in the bag. And then everything hit the wall over nationality. I didn’t have the right ancestors, and that was it. The days when they took almost anyone to the Promised Land had passed.
The only little door I watched people slip through into freedom—for me it was closed. And life around me grew more and more suffocating. It wasn’t just that store shelves were emptying or the rabble crawling into the streets—it was some strange force calling me away, and I had no strength to resist. Now I can say why I was running, but back then it felt like some motor started inside me. Leave. Anywhere. Argentina, New Zealand, whatever.
If it had only been me pushing against Soviet Russia! I remember one spring day a crowd had gathered at the Australian embassy; I barely squeezed close enough to hear what a pretty woman was saying in halting Russian from the fence. She said they had thousands of applications and needed time to review them. I didn’t wait for the end. I left. It was clear—nothing would come of it.
Chapter 4
And at the American embassy—the crowds! They even set up a big wooden box, like a mailbox, where anyone could drop in their questionnaire. At first the forms were handed out at a certain hour, but within a week some crooks organized the “deaf-mutes”—the same guys who used to peddle porn in dark alleys. Now the “deaf-mutes” hawked precious photocopied applications in the nearby lanes. Ten rubles apiece.
I remember filling mine out and walking to the box by the fence, ready to drop it in. Access was open, but around the box people strolled pretending not to notice it—obviously afraid of some hidden camera or some other nasty consequence. The box was crammed full to the top. Shoving the pile down, I still managed to squeeze my sheets in.
A pale-faced woman came up and asked me, worried:
“You just dropped it in like that? And what if someone pulls it out and reads it?”
“To hell with it!” I answered. “Let them read. Let them see how far they’ve driven people, that everyone’s running away from them.”
Chapter 5
I only mentioned that questionnaire to Ray in passing. I couldn’t have imagined how he’d react. A few years later he explained it to me, plain and simple:
“The Lord has blessed me abundantly. My daughters are fine, my mother doesn’t need anything. I saw you in Moscow, heard you say you want to live in the U.S., and I understood: I can help you.”
That’s how it was. They had four daughters, sixteen grandchildren. On birthdays and holidays their house was already packed with people—and on top of that they took us in. Not as outsiders; they took us in as family.
Well—Ray was an idealist, a dreamer. But there was also Esther: noble English blood, bearing like a queen. Another woman in her place might have said, “Are you out of your mind, old man? You’ve got your own crowd already, and you want to drag in some strangers too?” And she would have been right.
A friend of my friends, Tsilya from Zhytomyr, when she heard the story, only said:
“They got more luck than anyone needs!”
On some special human scale of fortune, it was true—we’d been marked above the limit. Some say fools get lucky; I keep saying, “Thank You, Lord!”
Chapter 6
So then—could it really be, just as Ray used to say, that I’m destined to help someone too? Money—no, I can’t help with money; I don’t have any to spare. But who knows how things may turn? Haven’t enough miracles already happened to me? Maybe the big matches are still ahead.
What was on my plan for today? A bachelor’s weekend. Cooking and canning the world’s best appetizer—eggplant with red pepper. I’ve got a little secret: a Mexican pepper hot enough to sting your eyes. You just need to know how to handle it.
I got myself together, told the parrots not to raise a fuss without me, and headed off for vegetables.
My little white Jeep nosed pleadingly at the green gates; the gate panel slid aside, and after glancing up and down the deserted street, I turned right.
It’s a good street I live on. Quiet, clean, lined with trees. The best thing—it’s wide. Sometimes I pull up here with my huge truck and park it right on this stretch. But that’s not the main thing. What seizes me on this street is a kind of serenity—a little window of calm. From the gate to the corner, scarcely a thousand feet, yet it feels like healing. It seems as if some tiny window in heaven opens above me and sends down: Everything will be all right.
I look upward, half expecting a cathedral-dome fresco—the Lord Himself with hosts of angels—but it’s just blue sky… or gray clouds… or stars shimmering faint through the city lights. Even when I was dying of that terrible sickness, it was on this street the same Everything will be all right! found me—and there was no fear. I didn’t even know then whether I’d be “all right” in that world or this one.
I was seriously dying of cancer, which hit so fast that in half a year I lost more than a hundred pounds, shrinking from a strapping man into a prison-camp skeleton. I kept promising myself to take a photo in the big mirror in my bathroom: a dried-up frame of bones and skin, wild eyes, a tube sticking out of my side. Like that silly song—the rubber hedgehog whistled through the hole in his side.
I put on a brave face, pretending I wasn’t dying at all, even forcing myself to drive to the store and buy groceries. My wise wife didn’t object; she understood. I’d sit in my Jeep, roll out the gates, and right at that spot recharge my confidence.
The nearness of death didn’t frighten me. On the contrary, it was almost interesting, watching the healthy, well-fed people who’d stay here to finish out their days. Me, I was going home. Yes—home. That’s how I saw it.
Once, long ago—almost forty years back—I spent a vacation in Sochi, the famous Soviet resort. Every day somebody arrived, somebody departed. The arriving flung themselves into a merry life: sea, excursions, drinking, dancing, embracing. Swept up by the cheerful wind. The heady days rolled by, and then the day of departure crept up like a thief. The vacationer grew pensive, satiated, already mentally returning to family and ordinary cares. Quietly he packed his bag, said goodbye, and set off for his train or plane. Was he afraid? Not at all. He knew where he was going back.
That’s how it was with me then. Watching life’s bustle, I knew where I was headed. Only my road led not into familiar everyday life, but into a far more interesting place. I was getting ready for an altogether different, bright world.
Chapter 7
And I would have gone. Back then it was simple—to go. Only one thing held me: a promise. Just a year and a half before I had married, and I had solemnly promised Galina we’d celebrate our silver wedding together—at least that. You’d think I had a respectable excuse: “Man proposes, God disposes. Sorry, darling, that’s how it turned out…” But no—I knew clearly: the Lord had not yet spoken His final Word over me. The blue heavens, the gray heavens, the faint stars all seemed hushed. The Judge had withdrawn to the deliberation room; the accused and the crowd sat waiting for the verdict.
At that time I kept remembering Kostya. The most amazing of us all, the most conscientious soul I’ve ever known.
Ah, where are you, Kostya? With what warmth I remember you. It’s Kostya I would really like to see again—but only the Kostya I knew in those far Soviet years. I have no idea what became of him. I lost all connection. Did he send that postcard? No, surely not. When he saw me off he said honestly: “Well then, good luck. Forgive me, I probably won’t be writing letters.”
I grinned: “Send telegrams then.”
Kostya absurdly reminded me of Falaley—yes, that fellow from Dostoevsky who danced the komarinsky and suffered under Foma Fomich. He had long velvet eyelashes and thick, nearly black hair—the envy of all the girls. His hair grew fast, and the girls freely combed it with their little combs. He didn’t mind, but suddenly he’d go to the barber and get it chopped nearly to a crew cut. The girls squealed, threatened to keep watch over him, shook fists at him. Kostya only smiled guiltily but stood his ground. As soon as his locks began to curl and gleam like a raven’s wing, he’d cut them again.
Long hair was in fashion, and not only the girls but even we tried to dissuade him. Apparently all that attention just made him uneasy. He never contradicted anyone, was accepted everywhere, and somehow loved by all. He could sit even with the roughest punks in some gully, listening to soulful guitar songs. He never sang, never strummed. And those hooligans, always ready to bash someone, didn’t chase him off. He was just one of the boys from the next yard.
For all his simplicity, he had a keen sense of humor. His easy smile or offhand remark could set everyone into gales of laughter over the simplest joke. And without him, somehow, it wasn’t the same.
Though Kostya was modest, there was nothing effeminate in him. Especially after the army. He served in the construction troops as a rigger. He later fondly recalled lying on sun-warmed concrete slabs, rising only when the crane boom glided across the sky. Then, as a model soldier, he’d “defend the Motherland” by guiding ropes and heavy hooks.
Construction soldiers earned almost nothing. They were treated like slaves.
Once a cable snapped and lashed a soldier across the face. They stitched up his chin and cheek, but the scar remained, giving kind-hearted Kostya a strangely bandit look.
Chapter 8
But Kostya was only one half of the inseparable pair in our crowd. The other half was Alyosha—same slight build, a freckled blond with an intelligent, almost judging look. They had been together since first grade. They moved into our outlying Degunino around sixth grade, but their love for old Moscow never left them.
Kostya drew well; Alyosha wrote pretty good poetry. Kostya was close to his sister and brother, being the eldest. Alyosha lived with his father and grandmother: his mother had left for another man when he was eight. His father called him in from the yard and said, “Your mother is leaving. Do you want to live with her, or stay with us?” The boy, still flushed from football, answered without hesitation: “I’ll stay with you!” That intolerance for betrayal Alyosha carried all his life.
I loved spending time with them. They accepted me gladly, though they remained a kind of self-contained duo. We were happiest when the three of us went fishing. After a long sleepless night on the packed overnight train, a quick shot and a bite, we’d get our gear together. I’d cast my shiny lure into the morning sky; it would fall into the dark peat water, and instead of perch or pike I’d haul up clumps of grass. My friends, with their bottom rods, smoked little cigarettes, happy even with a small ruffe destined to flavor the first fish soup.
Eventually I’d hook a foolish perch, my mood would lift, and we’d stubbornly stay on the shore until the climbing sun turned the river’s poetry into the prose of day. The wind hissed in the pine tops, the Volga surface no longer mirrored blue but wrinkled with leaden waves, and then the forest depths beckoned. Smoke curled thin above the fire, peace settled on my friends’ faces, that eternal longing for nature draining from their eyes.
I set my German folding camera on its tripod—six-by-nine, a war trophy—and caught them in black-and-white. The Zeiss lens showed every detail: rods leaning against a pine, a rubber boat on the sand, an aluminum bowl, other camping gear. My friends half-reclining on the pine needles, calmly gazing into the lens. Time of my life. That photo still lies among my others. I really did catch the right moment.
Chapter 9
Unlike me, Alyosha and Kostya worked solid jobs. Alyosha spent his days assembling vacuum cleaners; Kostya built cabinets and shelves in a custom-furniture shop. My easygoing ways they didn’t exactly respect. Both of them earned far more than I did.
After tenth grade Alyosha tried to enter a fancy institute for electronics engineers but failed the first time and went to work in a factory, where he soon made good money for those times. Kostya had finished trade school and learned radio assembly, but the urge for craft won out and he went into woodworking.
I sometimes asked Kostya to help set me up in new places, and each time his thoroughness amazed me. Shelves he made had not a single flaw; once he built a bunk bed for my kids out of parts of an old wardrobe so neatly we all marveled. I learned much from him and later managed on my own. When I built my house in Oklahoma, I regretted not having him beside me. Even if I’d found him, such a master wouldn’t have been free to call.
From Alyosha I had nothing to learn. A couple of times I visited his factory. I saw him standing by a long, thick bag, vacuum hoses sticking out both ends. He had to smear the ends with glue and fit on plastic nozzles—one type on one end, another on the other. With a partner they finished a bag in ten minutes. More bags were always ready, seemingly endless.
Whenever I dropped in, both workers were tipsy, both puffing Belomor cigarettes. One hose paid 3.7 kopecks, but per shift the earnings were decent. If the bosses wanted him to work weekends, besides overtime pay they brought him “fast puppies”—that is, pure alcohol. The literary nickname, borrowed from Gogol, Alyosha himself introduced into factory slang.
The workers valued him for brains and diligence. Once he “took a shot”—as he did daily—his shyness and gloom dropped, and he spun off funny poems that had everyone in stitches. Snippets I still remember (translated loosely, keeping rhyme and humor):
Let’s analyze this thing called love —
Its social sense, its meaning, above.
Does it bring goodness, or only harm?
What’s its path through ages long?
On to Greece and Rome we’d wander,
Renaissance, and I would ponder:
And that young loafer, Romeo?
Lord, the fool, it’s such a shame —
He could have studied, learned a trade,
Say, at a lathe, an honest name.
But no, he up and killed himself —
And not just he, but many more besides.
So waltzes, tangos, foxtrots fade,
Replaced by funeral tolls, worldwide.
And then about our modern days:
Remember that song — I forget who sang —
Of swans that flew, graceful and grand,
Till someone fired a rifle, bang!
Well, hunting season — makes good sense.
So why not praise the shooter then?
And that poor swan — hardly Gastello,
Not Pokryshkin either, truth be told.
He wasn’t even hit — the fellow
Could still have fluttered, young, not old.
Needless to say, Alyosha was popular among workers starved for laughter. Management prized him too, for always taking weekend shifts if bribed with booze. The factory was defense-related, and they even got him a draft deferral.
But after half a year of that drinking routine, Alyosha decided to cut it off and go serve the Motherland. Since he was listed as an electronics man, he spent two years monitoring signals from satellites, and near the end of service he was invited to a research ship, like the famous Vityaz. They even promised him a junior researcher post.
Back home, Alyosha grew a little beard that suited his clever face—he really did look like a young researcher. Didn’t stop us, though, from drinking nearly every day for any excuse. Alyosha kept waiting for the letter from that “special organization” where he’d operate unique equipment. Time passed, no letter. His money ran out, and the vacuum-cleaner factory gave every returnee a hundred rubles.
And so Alyosha, almost a junior researcher with his Hemingway beard, was back among the eager collective—smearing glue on hoses, fitting nozzles, joking, and taking “fast puppies” from the bosses.


 
Part Four 
Everything will change... 
Chapter 1 
Could it be Alyosha who wrote that postcard? By the style, maybe it was him. At times he was seized by such buoyant, high-spirited moods. He could flare up with some dream or scheme. And he never had a family. Or rather—I don’t believe he ever did. Every time family life among us collapsed, he only grew firmer in his bachelorhood. Many of our hasty marriages did collapse. 
I strolled along the vegetable row, picking through eggplants, staring at bins of onions, red and gold. Picked one up, sniffed, put it back. Wondered which carrots would be sweeter—the long, thin ones, or the short, fat ones? Or maybe the yellow kind? Cooking—especially for a zakuson, an appetizer—is a sacred ritual. The main thing is to tune in, to catch that special wave—and then a good angel descends, pushes you aside, and does everything himself. With your hands, of course. Thank God, that’s happened to me more than once. 
I remember once I wrote these lines: 
The crooning of the waves, 
That are so timid, whisper-soft, so light. 
The sunny morning, 
That makes us all forget the stormy night. 
Immersed sublimely in the tranquil bliss 
Of listlessness and rest, beneath the abyss of heavens 
Scarcely we recall the troubles of the past... 
And then I stopped. Total block. It started so well—and then cut off. 
I paced, muttered to myself, set it aside, forgot it. Remembered it later, more than once. Nothing. It just wouldn’t continue. And then, half a year later, I was being loaded somewhere in Texas—long, tedious wait—and happened across that file on my computer. I glanced at it, was about to yawn and forget, and suddenly—sleep flew off, my head rang, and my hands, as if on their own, began pounding the keys: 
…The troubles of the past — they’re gone. 
The days to come will multiply, grow vast. 
Abundant in events of nature—good and bad; 
Our life will go on… Or maybe I’m wrong, 
And life is not as long as we would like to think. 
So let us drink this cool refreshing wine of 
Crooning of the waves that are so strangely lit, 
This sparkling sunny morning. 
The poem came to me as a revelation. 
Chapter 2 
It had happened before. The first time such a spell came over me was back in Moscow. My first wife had gone on vacation—to Sochi. I stayed with my daughter—my first daughter, whom the Lord took at six years old. 
I remember it was late October: snow drifting outside, trams rattling, trolley poles scraping the snowy wires right beyond our second-floor window. Out there it was blizzard-sharp. Inside, the house was warm in that special autumn way, when the radiators finally come to life. My daughter was busy with toys; I was reading. 
And suddenly in my head there was a thin ringing, and I saw it clearly—the air around my armchair shimmered with a light, and someone, quite alive, seemed to say distinctly: “Everything will soon change; everything will be completely different.” 
I wasn’t planning any changes then. We had only just moved into our own apartment in Tushino. Behind the five-story houses ran the canal; a path led to a little bridge, then into a big park where I ran nearly every day. With my wife things were still fairly peaceful—youth, love. I didn’t want change. And yet—there it was. 
And sure enough, in half a year everything collapsed with a crash—as if only with me could things go like that. My father summed it up: 
“You’re enough to make a man shiver! What kind of hussar nonsense is this? Lucky you didn’t end up in jail.” 
Yeah. That’s how it was. But I won’t describe all the murk. Like in Mayakovsky’s children’s book about the bad boy: a black page and “…I don’t even want to put this in the book.” 
Funny thing—every time such changes came, they felt like a cleansing, freeing me from all the junk I’d piled up. You gather and drag things home—everything seems useful. And then—suddenly—gone. You’re running through life again like a monkey in the jungle, bare behind and all. 
After the first divorce I found myself with a new young wife in a grim communal apartment on Krasnaya Presnya. Right next door was a liquor store. At night drunks knocked on our window: “Sell us a bottle.” When I said no, they were puzzled: “How can you live here and not make use of it?” Our neighbor lived with an Azerbaijani boyfriend who spoke almost no Russian; when he chased her she locked herself in, and he raged in the hallway: “Nadya, open! I’ll cut you in half!” That became routine. Also—cockroaches. Lots of them. They crawled from the liquor store and settled with us. 
All this could have been a nightmare, but youth triumphed, and it didn’t seem so bad. There’s a verse, often credited to Omar Khayyam, that I like: 
Two men looked out from the same window. 
One saw rain and mud, 
The other—green leaves, 
Spring and a blue sky above. 
It sounds beautiful in Russian: 
 îäíî îêíî ñìîòðåëè äâîå. 
Îäèí óâèäåë äîæäü è ãðÿçü, 
Äðóãîé — ëèñòâû çåëåíîé âÿçü, 
Âåñíó è íåáî ãîëóáîå. 
Whoever wrote it, it’s how I am—I always see spring and a blue sky. Once I asked my mother, “Why are you always dissatisfied? Why am I always happy?” She answered without hesitation: “Because you’re an idiot.” 
Thank you, dear. 
 
Chapter 3 
That cramped little room in the communal apartment we managed to exchange for a two-room flat near Riga. It was the uneasy time of late Perestroika, when the Soviet Army was preparing to withdraw from Latvia. No official order yet, but Russian officers who’d settled there knew they’d soon be recalled. And who needed them back in Russia? 
Strengthened by talks with my historian friend, I understood the USSR was heading for a huge collapse—and the fall would be great. 
At the beginning of July 1991 we moved under Riga, to the quiet village of In;ukalns. In August—the putsch. Overnight we found ourselves in another country, already European. 
We returned to the same trade—ceramics. We quickly adapted to the laconic, understated Baltic style. We sold our simple wares in Riga art salons and hauled them to Moscow, which changed rapidly before our eyes. 
Latvia welcomed us. The school principal spotted us as decent newcomers and invited my wife to teach ceramics at the school. I became a teacher of English and Bible study. The latter I taught informally as an elective, but my talks were so popular that even teachers often sat in. Despite my Latvian roots, I knew almost no Latvian—but it didn’t matter. 
Nonsense that “Russians are disliked.” True, drunks at the liquor store weren’t loved, but decent people are valued everywhere. Soon the whole village greeted us. When I carefully spelled out in Latvian what I needed at the shop, the line listened kindly. 
And besides, there were blueberries and mushrooms in the woods, and Riga nearby—a truly European city that had charmed me since childhood. Museums, exhibitions, art salons with fascinating work. In short, we never regretted leaving Moscow. 
Life there went well. No language laws yet, our ceramics sold nicely, we made friends among the locals, and we met an interesting neighbor: a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist church. 
Edgar was a kind, understanding man—we became close. He came every Thursday, and we delved into Scripture for hours. He tried to win us to his faith; I found some of his reasoning odd, but the talks were useful to me. 
Edgar was sure death isn’t an instant ticket to Heaven or Hell. We simply lie in oblivion until the Second Coming; only then—when we are roused—do we meet Christ. I like that notion; let it be so for my friend Edgar. He rested in peace a few years after we left. 
 
Chapter 4 
It was a strange, tragic time for many. Packing up to return to Russia, the Soviet officers could bring very little. In secondhand bookshops entire collected works appeared, sold for pennies. For twelve volumes of Tolstoy they asked the price of a kilo of butter. Naturally, I built myself a splendid library. 
Books needed shelves. Nearby buzzed a sawmill. My neighbor, a former warrant officer, told me an old man named Arnis worked there who could sell me any boards, cut to size. Only—he wouldn’t deal with just anyone. If he didn’t like you, no way, no conversation. 
Arnis turned out to be a sturdy old man in a cap dusted with sawdust. He heard me out, frowned, and said simply, “Let’s go to your place. We’ll see.” 
He looked over the room I wanted to divide with a bookshelf and asked, “You’ll build it yourself?” 
“Yes.” 
“With what—nails?” 
“Dowels,” I said. 
He nodded, reassured. “Measure it properly. To the millimeter. Come to me tonight. Seven.” 
It was autumn; dark early. In all of In;ukalns at night, as I remember, only one bright light burned—the railway-station lamp. I found Arnis’s house with difficulty, a jumble of sheds. Inside—a lovingly built home. 
Arnis showed me parquet floors in every pattern, moldings, ceilings tiled in ways I’d never seen, doors carved and inlaid with stained glass. In one room he turned the music on, and the ceiling responded with the color-changing lights it was wired for. In the living room, with its fireplace built from boulders, a slab slid aside to reveal a clever home fountain. 
One annex was a full woodworking shop, with industrial machines, boards stacked neatly, jars of lacquer, tools hung on the walls. 
An hour later I pushed home a cart stacked with neatly cut whitewood boards. The moon shone gently, lighting my way. Years later, here in America, I would often recall that cold autumn night—so quiet, with only the whisper of rubber tires on the pavement and the scent of fallen leaves. The same moon still follows me across the United States: red and enormous on summer dawns, crisp and bright on winter nights, sometimes gentle and hazy, just as it was that autumn evening in Latvia. 
 
Chapter 5 
Life was good then, on my grandfather’s homeland. But the same motor that had driven us from Moscow wouldn’t quiet down. Latvia had much to praise. What amazed me most was the absence of “metropolis” and “province.” The country was small enough that discrimination by place simply didn’t exist. People lived as one family, wherever they wished. 
Still, something tightened my shoulders. I longed for more space. Once again the faraway called. 
It struck me—maybe we could go somewhere to work. We were in Europe now, after all. But where? 
I dialed a long-distance number to friends in America and asked if something could be arranged, even temporarily. They promised to think. Two days later they called back—they’d been to see Ray and Esther. Those two were glad about our changes and ready to help. Only, they said, I shouldn’t go alone, leaving my family. They offered to sponsor me to study in the U.S. 
But there was a condition: I had to pass the TOEFL exam, required of foreign students. 
It was so stunning that I immediately agreed and sent my warmest greetings to Ray and Esther. 
I’d taken many exams before. But this one—sheer nightmare. The test demanded not only household English but academic mastery. A student who passed was expected to fully follow lectures and never feel a language barrier. 
My homespun English was enough to read books and even teach in a village school, but nowhere near that level. I realized it the moment I got a couple of prep manuals. To pass, I’d need at least a thousand more words, solid grammar, and the ability to catch serious texts by ear. 
Three months. That was the time I had. 
Summer vacation started. At six a.m. I sat down with books until noon, when my head stopped working. Then headphones on—endless listening. At five p.m. CNN had an hour in English; I sat with my notebook, writing down every word I could catch in the announcer’s rapid speech. I looked them up, wrote each word forty times, made sentences. Twenty or thirty words a day. If I forgot, I started again. Every day. All summer. 
End of August—the exam. In Moscow. 
I went. 
I passed. 
 
Chapter 6 
And now, almost thirty years later, I walk here, in the middle of America itself, choosing vegetables for a zakuson. 
My eyes fell on bananas. I didn’t need bananas. But how I used to stare at them when I was sick—rolling these same aisles in an electric wheelchair. Bananas have potassium—something my body then lacked catastrophically. Like a pregnant woman craving chalk, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. 
With the potassium shortage, my left leg simply wouldn’t move. I had to swing it forward and it slapped the floor comically. People looked at me in wonder—where was this guy from? They asked if I needed help, but I plopped into my electric wheelchair and rolled along the aisles. 
I couldn’t eat anything then—and yet there I was, out shopping! How good it is to be healthy. Thank you, Lord! 
What was I talking about? Ah yes—Kostya and Alyosha. 
 
Chapter 7 
Kostya knew how to surprise. I remember once we were working on something and chatting. We weren’t drinking, that’s for sure. Suddenly my mother called: she’d fallen on the stairs, probably a bad sprain. Could I come? We’d get a taxi, go to the trauma clinic. 
Kostya didn’t have to come all the way across Moscow—I could have handled it alone. But he seemed almost afraid I might not take him with me. Of course we went together. 
On the way I tried to keep talking. I was used to my mother’s slips and bumps; they were nothing new. But Kostya grew more pensive with each stop, visibly wilting. At Kurskaya station he leaned his forehead against the glass of the carriage door and looked half-dead. 
Seeing my worry, he finally blurted out, “A bastard, that’s what I am! Your mother fell, maybe broke her leg, and I—I was even glad. Glad there was something good I could do. I thought only of myself…” 
That was Kostya. Where did it come from? 
Alyosha amazed me often too. One night he came by, all excited, telling me about the company he’d fallen in with the night before. Someone read poems, someone played violin; they talked of Americans and their “star” threats, even gloated. 
“They all seemed against Soviet power,” Alyosha concluded, puzzled. “I mean, I know you have all sorts of cockroaches in your head, but those people—they looked quite respectable.” 
For his ability to loosen up when under the fly—Russian slang for ‘tipsy’—and for his firmness of character, the bosses began promoting him. They admitted him into the Party. The Communist Party, of course—there was no other to imagine. 
When I heard this, my head seemed to sink into my shoulders. I remembered us on the shore of the Klyazma Reservoir, the beach at Troitsk: green grass underfoot, water dotted with distant steamers, deep blue sky, sun blazing. June. Alyosha just back from the army. We were discussing Remarque’s novels. Like fools, talking about missing that kind of test. We would’ve liked to try ourselves. 
And Alyosha suddenly said, seriously, “Give me one square meter of land and a rifle—I won’t retreat.” 
It chilled me. I knew—he wouldn’t. And not because the army had brainwashed him. That’s just who he was—my faithful-to-his-word friend. 
 
Chapter 8 
When Alyosha was seventeen he liked a girl from the next yard. I don’t know if they ever had moonlit walks—he didn’t say. I only know that once he saw her arm in arm with some guy, and that was it. Cut off. He never looked at another girl. Even after the army, he never fell for anyone. 
He seemed to regret he hadn’t had the chance to defend that “square meter of land.” Promises of loyalty—whether to a girl or to the Soviet Motherland—were no joke for him. He couldn’t comprehend betrayal. 
And then he joined the Party. Damn. Betting on a nearly dead horse. But to Alyosha that horse was still sound and strong. He was ready to seize the bridle and steer it wherever Lenin’s statues pointed with their outstretched hands. 
Back in ’79 the goals were clear; slogans everywhere: “To work, comrades, to work!” And there was no shortage of “fast puppies”—alcoholic bribes. 
We all loved old Moscow, often strolled its familiar streets, dropped into beer halls, filled up on Zhiguli beer and horse mackerel whose smell never washed off. We even stepped into open church doors—just to gawk. Once Alyosha became a Party man he stopped coming in with us. While Kostya and I studied the icons and endured suspicious glares from pious old ladies, Alyosha stood outside, smoking, faithful to Lenin’s legacy. 
I remember one March evening we sat on a bench waiting for a tram. The setting sun cast orange light between buildings, painted the trees. The air held damp thaw, feet froze in soaked shoes, the tram delayed. As usual we talked “about life.” 
“You’re lucky,” Alyosha said, instructive. “You’ve got a daughter.” 
“Big deal!” I barked back, though inwardly proud. “Anybody can do that. What’s a daughter?” 
“No, not anyone. Not everyone dares.” 
“What’s there to dare? Look how many daughters are running around.” 
“I mean marriage. Give me a child now, I’d gladly raise him. But marry? No. Don’t marry, my friend, don’t marry…” 
And Alyosha began quoting that famous monologue from Tolstoy, one I had heard from him many times before. Thank God, the tram finally came. 
 
Chapter 9 
Kostya had completely different problems with women. In his group there was a girl with a wonderfully sonorous name—Marietta Eduardovna Petrovskaya. Once he brought her to our crowd. Marietta Eduardovna turned out to be pleasant, attractive; next to her Kostya looked almost small. She seemed to enjoy our gatherings, though it was clear she was embarrassed chiefly by Kostya himself. 
And then, as it happened, Kostya started joking. From his stories we laughed no less than at a New Year’s Khazanov sketch. That time he spun it out like this: 
“…So I’m riding the bus, and in comes this decent man—maybe a teacher, maybe an accountant—briefcase in one hand and a garden hoe in the other. I look around—nobody’s surprised. Fine. At the next stop three more people get on. All with hoes. Then more, and more. And the strange thing—those without hoes get off, and everyone who gets on has a hoe. Not just gardeners either, but all sorts of people: old ladies, schoolkids, women… each with a hoe. Well, I ride along, get off, walk down a street, turn onto another, come out on the square with Lenin’s statue. And everyone I see—all with hoes. A fashion, maybe? In Moscow everyone’s got a briefcase, but here they all carry hoes. Then I see one guy without one. Just an idiot, right? And suddenly it hits me—I’m without a hoe too! Like being without pants, I just want to run and buy one right now…” 
We roared with laughter, and Kostya, a little embarrassed, went on: 
“So I think—where do you buy one? If everyone’s got one, there must be a deficit, like with our briefcases. Everyone’s got one, but in the store—none to be found.” 
We thought it couldn’t get any funnier, but the laughter grew, and Kostya, still puzzled, continued: 
“So I get home, still uneasy. Better get myself a hoe, just in case. Went to the hardware store. Rakes, shovels, even pitchforks—but no hoes. I ask the clerk. ‘Nope,’ she says, ‘the last one was taken yesterday.’” 
Had anyone else told such a tale, maybe we would have only smiled faintly, but in tipsy Kostya the real comedian revealed himself, and we laughed until we hurt. It must have been exactly this that put Marietta Eduardovna off. She never came back, and Kostya never mentioned her again. Things clearly hadn’t worked out. 
A pity she dismissed him. As far as I could see, there was no more suitable candidate for marriage. His father was a hopeless drunk, and because of that Kostya himself drank carefully. If he did get tipsy, he sat quietly; he never caused trouble. I remember once everyone had already gone home—past midnight—and his mother called, worried. “He’s not there? He was with you?” I reassured her as best I could: “Yes, he was here, but he left about two hours ago. Probably chatting with someone—he’ll be home soon.” In the morning I found Kostya peacefully snoring in a cozy armchair in the next room. 
That unnoticeable steadiness was one of his traits. But talents he had plenty. Not only was he an excellent carpenter—he was a gifted draftsman, almost a designer. In our notebooks he often sketched scenes from Nu, pogodi! with plots that never existed in the cartoons—and, what fascinated us even more, all kinds of futuristic automobiles. Such variety! 
“Look here, I’m telling you, these are the shapes cars will have in the future,” he’d say, showing me a neat little car scribbled in ballpoint on a scrap of wrapping paper. 
“Brilliant!” I’d exclaim. “You should study to be an auto designer—you’re a treasure trove of ideas!” 
“No,” Kostya would wave it off. “I don’t want to study. I just want it like this…” 
“What do you mean, like this?” 
“Well, why should I study? I see these cars as they are. I can draw as many as you want.” 
“But it’s not just drawing. You have to know strength of materials, technical specs,” I argued, amazed at such na;vet;. 
“Well,” Kostya would answer, dragging on his cigarette and squinting through the smoke, “That’s how I see it: I sit at the auto plant, smoke, sketch cars. If one looks good, they make it into a model.” 
“You’re crazy! Whole departments work on design. You think they’d just let you doodle?” 
“What are they designing? Soapboxes on wheels! Look at them!” 
“Maybe they can’t—the technology doesn’t allow it. They’d tell you: we can’t make this shape because of such and such.” 
“And I’d answer: Do it anyway. That’s what engineers are for!” 
What could I reply? But God is my witness—in the very future we now live in, I keep glancing at Corvettes and Lamborghinis, and with a smile I see the same lines and curves Kostya once doodled in our school notebooks. 
What my friends never had was vulgar ordinariness. Simplicity, yes. The tragedy of everyday life they couldn’t rise above, yes. But dreams? Oh yes. Dreams lived in them constantly. Not some grand plan stretching into the distance, but daily ones: get a bottle without trouble, wait for summer, go fishing. 
The present almost always looked gray and dull to them. Sometimes Kostya would drink the first fifty grams and suddenly an ordinary fellow would surface in him. Then he’d look at me suspiciously, with the hardness of a street tough: “You probably think I’m a fool, don’t you?” That was the moment to pour him another—and everything returned to normal. Back came the same Kostya we all knew: shy, humorous, loving everyone. 
 
Chapter 10 
Vodka ruined Alyosha quickly. He stopped writing poetry. His speech grew clipped, awkward. His hair thinned; in his eyes gathered not only judgment but bitterness and despair. 
He took Perestroika’s upheavals hard, and the collapse of the USSR finished him. 
Once, at an ordinary get-together—nothing excessive, after maybe his third glass—Alyosha suddenly slid under the table and didn’t come back up. Of course we pushed chairs aside and crawled under. He was crouching, fingers plucking at the air, catching someone invisible. He was chasing devils—the devils that came to him after the smallest dose. The same devils that had lured him into the Communist Party, whose leaders turned out to be liars and thieves—devils, in truth. 
The Motherland he had sworn to no longer existed. Lenin’s ideas were mocked even on TV. But compromise, reshaping himself—Alyosha could not. He wasn’t made that way. 
He was the same Alyosha who, in the fourteenth century, would have stood with a knife pulled from his boot at Kulikovo Field against the Tatars; in the eighteenth, would have marched as a conscript in Peter the Great’s campaigns; in the early twentieth, would have sailed on the Varyag, refusing surrender; in the summer of 1941, would have gone into the attack when even the commanders had run. 
One of those faithful, true-to-his-word simple fellows—on whom Russia has always stood. 

 
Part 5 
Yorik the Antisemite 
Chapter 1 
The zakuson I made turned out splendidly. It was already getting dark when I ladled the vinegar-sharp, pepper-fragrant, bubbling vegetable temptation into sterilized jars. I grabbed them with metal tongs from the oven, set them on the stove beside the steaming cast-iron cauldron, fitted the wide funnel and—ladle by ladle—filled them with any gourmet’s dream. Then the lid on top—so it would keep, so that on some winter evening, with potatoes, and under… 
Oh. Something burned me. Not the boiling brine, but an understanding. 
IT WAS YORIK! 
Of course—Yorik, poor Yorick! Yorik-Someone-Got-Up-Earlier! Just like him to send such a postcard. What a trial from God. And you—don’t be proud, don’t despise your neighbor. But how do you love someone like that? 
Judge for yourselves. About three years earlier I was driving across Arizona, heading home in a great mood, listening to an audiobook, minding my own business. Suddenly—Skype: ding-bom, dzyyn-delyyn! I looked, and there on the avatar was a bespectacled face: Yorik. Well, Yorik it was—let’s chat. At first idle chit-chat, and five minutes later: 
“I’m studying German hard here,” he says. “So I can read Mein Kampf in the original.” 
Yorik’s father was Latvian or German; his mother was Jewish. And Yorik himself—half-cracked—couldn’t stand Jews, always railing against them, blaming them for everything. I’d argued with him many times, tried to reason with him. Years back he’d show up somewhere, stick out his hand and announce, “Yury Shiferblauer, not a Jew.” People would burst out laughing. It was like a painted clown barging in and saying, “I’m Vasya, not a clown.” Who was asking? Who would think, “Oh, a Jew showed up”? And so what if he had? It’s the person that matters. But him—straight to a fight. 
When I heard about his German study—about Hitler—my spirits sank. I told him bluntly: 
“You, Yorik, are not even an idiot, not even crazy—you’re just… forgive me, Lord… a plain fool.” 
As usual with Yorik, it nearly came to blows. He lived for argument. 
“Oh, so I’m a fool, huh?” he yelled. “Fine. You think I’m a fool, I think you’re a fool. Everyone has his own truth. Let’s talk then—fool to fool.” 
I should have cut him off. But the phrase tickled me. Not man to man—fool to fool. All right, let’s start a foolish conversation and see where it goes. 
Chapter 2 
He would probably trail me his whole life. I didn’t know it then, but it turned out I’d known him since we were seven. 
Here’s how it happened. My father worked at a medical research institute. They handed out tickets to the New Year’s children’s show at the Palace of Congresses. My grandma took me, and in the cloakroom she introduced me to a lady and a boy my age. “This is Yurik, your father’s colleague’s son. Stick together so you don’t get lost; we’ll meet you here after the performance.” Off they went. 
What was on stage I don’t really remember—only this: Yurik spoiled it for everyone. In the show Baba Yaga and Kikimora had stolen something, and to get it back the kids had to solve big math problems. Ded Moroz and Snegurochka scratched their heads and turned to the hall: “Help us, children, what is three hundred thirty-five plus seven hundred twenty-two?” 
Yurik beside me shot up like a spring. “One thousand fifty-seven!” he shouted—no second to think. Ded Moroz pretended not to hear. “All together now.” After a pause the whole hall in chorus: “One thousand fifty-seven!” “Thank you, children.” Next problem. Again—Yurik blurts it out instantly, and the hall follows. The shushing starts. 
We got our gift boxes; his mom and my grandma picked us up, and we parted ways. I didn’t remember him much. Ten years later my dad came home, cheerful: an old friend with his wife and son was coming to visit. “You know him, his name is Yura,” Dad said. “Remember, at the Palace of Congresses—you two were together.” So that’s how it was. 
Chapter 3 
By then I knew Yorik well—everybody at the konOk knew him (the black-market vinyl swap at the Melodiya shop on Kalinin Prospekt). We traded LPs there, sometimes sold them. 
At the time Moscow was hosting Hungarian Cultural Days, or something like that. The lines for records stretched halfway down Kalinin. I went to my mother: you’ve got connections, get us in—pull some strings. She couldn’t manage for everyone, but she wrangled us something. 
The director was Svoboda Alexandrovna Volodina. She looked at me hard but ordered the clerk to help. I walked out with a stack of foreign records—and here comes this curly-haired, bespectacled guy with a big nose. “Let me see what you’ve got,” he said. 
“Get lost,” I told him. “It’s Zykina and a folk choir.” But he wouldn’t back off—walked with me all the way down to the Garden Ring, even jumped into the Bukashka trolley with me (route “B,” the circle line around the Ring). “Bukashka” means “little bug” in Russian—the gentle name everyone used for those trolleys in those harsh years. 
Chapter 4 
So this four-eyes stuck to me like glue: scrawny, in an imported jacket. “You know these records are all pressed in Aprelevka, next to Moscow, right?” and so on. I wanted to peek at my haul myself, but he kept talking, bragging about his collection, suggesting trades. He pulled me into conversation. 
That’s how he came home with me. My buddies were waiting, eager to see what I’d hauled in, surprised I’d dragged along some Yurik too, but they didn’t pay him much attention. And so he stayed. 
Not a bad guy, actually. He didn’t hide that he’d latched onto me because of my pull. He jumped right into arguments about music—I don’t recall the topic, only how fiercely he argued, almost comically. But he had a fine collection, and he shared generously. That won us over. 
We had an Anton who also had a solid library but shared grudgingly. “If everyone has it, it’s not rare anymore,” he’d say. But Yurik—“Here, take it, copy all you want.” Pink Floyd, Uriah Heep, T. Rex—stuff we loved. He made Anton look stingy. 
Funny thing—I still didn’t realize this was the same Yurik from the children’s show. When he came over officially with his parents, I nearly laughed—and shivered a little. His father, Karl Ivanovich Shiferblauer, was a serious-looking doctor who had worked for years somewhere in Africa—Uganda, I think. An old university friend of my dad’s. 
Yurik said Karl Ivanovich had brought back loads of records from abroad, but—knowing his son—kept them locked up and allowed only a few to be copied. Among the treasures was an original double album of Jesus Christ Superstar. Karl Ivanovich wouldn’t let that one out—too risky. 
 
Chapter 5 
In the end Karl Ivanovich unlocked his safe. Moscow was already buzzing with that “religious heresy,” but it hadn’t yet reached us. I first heard it under the most unexpected circumstances. 
At that time my father often stayed home. He was on academic leave, writing his doctoral dissertation, and went into the institute only a couple of times a week. In the mornings he rattled his typewriter, then left for the Lenin Library and sat there until late. Baba Tanya always had tea and lunch ready—meals my father could easily forget. She respected him deeply for his scholarship. 
Once I turned on Channel Three, the educational channel. The program Doctor’s Screen was on, and there was my father giving a lecture. Baba Tanya sat spellbound, now and then glancing at me with a proud little nod, as if to say, “See what a smart father you have.” Just then the front door opened, and who should walk in but Alexander Andreevich himself. Baba Tanya’s jaw dropped; she nearly lost her speech. Father sat her down, told me to bring water. We barely managed to explain that it was a recording. 
From that day something quiet and trusting settled between Father and Baba Tanya. One afternoon I found them in the kitchen. She was talking; Father sat pale, listening—that particular pallor he wore only when teachers summoned him to complain about my latest mischief. He looked at me, then at the clock—they’d been there a long while. He pulled some bills from his pocket, handed them to me: “Nothing here for your ears. Go to the store, use your master’s eye.” 
That evening I asked what it had been about. He said only, “You make sure Baba Tanya never hears a rude word from you. Not one. You understand? If I hear otherwise, I’ll tear your hairy head off.” Only later did I piece it together. Back then I knew nothing of the Holodomor. It turned out Baba Tanya had lost her entire family and barely survived. 
Chapter 6 
A couple of days later Father brought home a reel of tape. “Put it on—let’s listen.” 
I was stunned. The box and reel were foreign-made, the spooling translucent in the light. Even more astonishing—he invited Baba Tanya to sit in the armchair. 
“This is about Jesus Christ,” he said. “Go ahead.” I pressed the button. 
My God! Our old tape recorder had never sounded so pure. And the music—what music! I suddenly realized this surpassed everything I had ever heard. 
Father sat unusually grave, brows faintly knit, staring past the window into the clouds. His English was strong; he’d often translated rock lyrics for us with an irritated, “I have no time for nonsense.” Here he listened spellbound. 
After a while Baba Tanya shifted, as if to rise—chores calling. Father stopped her with a gesture, and she stayed to the end. When Christ was scourged, tears rolled down her cheeks, and Father’s face turned to stone. I had never seen him like that. 
Chapter 7 
The tape was a gift from Karl Ivanovich. He’d copied it from the original LP on his Akai recorder. Father didn’t think twice about any “trouble” it might bring, and he didn’t mind us listening. We copied it over and over, and soon Jesus Christ Superstar was everyone’s treasure. For a month we listened to nothing else. 
Yorik was delighted. He never hoarded anything from anyone. 
And then it struck me… that was Yorik! The same boy who, in that evening’s skit, played the devil getting his tail pinched while we all shouted, “Ne baluy!” (Behave yourself!) Him exactly. 
At the time Yorik was hopelessly in love with Lyuska. The whole affair turned ridiculous. With Yorik, good intentions often turned into anecdotes. Helping someone move—if I carried a wardrobe with him up the stairs, I was lucky to survive the wardrobe—and Yorik falling on top of me. 
Once he showed up with a shiner, sulking. In the middle of the night he’d gone to stand in some line for a neighbor—“Dress properly; it’s solid people there.” Even “solid people” stood in lines for scarce goods. To make it work, Yorik had to pass himself off as the man’s son. Off he went—two in the morning, when “the metro’s closed and taxis don’t go,” as Vysotsky sang. 
In a dark alley some thug jumped him, stole his cash, stripped his nice jacket, and punched him in the eye. 
“Jew! Bastard! Kike!” hissed Yorik afterward, swearing the mugger had an Odessan accent and a hooked nose. We didn’t believe him—what dock rat from Odessa would be lurking in Moscow at night? Nonsense. 
Someone recalled the old joke about Abram who got up early, dressed in suit and tie, briefcase in hand. Sarah: “Abram, it’s four in the morning, where are you going?” “God gives to those who rise early.” Half an hour later he’s back, torn, beaten, briefcase gone. “What happened?!” “Sarah, you won’t believe it—someone got up earlier.” 
From then on: Yorik—Someone-Got-Up-Earlier. To laugh at his lost jacket and black eye was probably a sin, but these scrapes happened so often it was hard not to. Being around him was dangerous. I myself got into trouble with him. 
Chapter 8 
One Sunday I was lazing at home. Nothing to do, school tomorrow, gray day, nothing on TV. Yorik called: he had an appointment near Melodiya with some guy to trade something. “You’ve got Abbey Road, right? Could swap it for Grand Funk.” My Abbey Road had been hanging around long enough—why not. 
By the store it was deserted. Sundays the shop was closed; even the konOk regulars took a day off. Yorik and I shivered in the biting autumn wind, waited an extra half hour. Another fifteen minutes. The guy never showed. Instead, a swarthy fellow of about thirty, tall, in a denim suit—the fashion then—with a heavy wristwatch, sat beside us. Clearly not one of us. Strong Georgian accent. Said he’d come with his mother to buy furniture—did we have connections? 
Connections? That was Yorik’s specialty. He even knew “super-fixers.” He said he could introduce the guy. They got to talking, and I marveled at Yorik’s sudden expertise in furniture. The Georgian—Givi—asked what we had in the bag. Music didn’t interest him much, but friends had asked him to check. He glanced with little enthusiasm and then offered to buy the lot for four hundred rubles if they were “unplayed.” Fifty apiece—very good money, especially for a bundle. 
We agreed on the spot. Off we went to Metro Universitet, where he and his mother were renting. On the way we chatted; he seemed a good guy. He and Yorik even struck a deal: Yorik would help him find a well-kept Volga 24. If one turned up, Givi would come right back for it. Karl Ivanovich had just such a car, and I thought: could it be Yorik’s planning to sell his father’s? It would be just like him. 
From Universitet station we walked through neat courtyards lined with brick buildings. A prestigious area. We entered, went up to the sixth floor. Givi, now our “dear friend,” said, “My mother’s sick—better not disturb her. Wait here by the stairwell window. I’ll listen and come right back.” 
He climbed the last flight with our LPs, disappeared through the apartment door. We stayed, discussing how we’d spend those four hundred rubles, what trades we’d make. We waited half an hour. Grew restless. Went up ourselves. A corridor—doors to apartments. Only the corridor went on and on, into the next entrance. And there—an exit. To the street. We had no idea some buildings in Moscow were built like that. 
“Jew bastard, filthy kike!” Yorik raged. “What Georgian, my ass—he’s one of ours!” 
Here Yorik was dead wrong. There was nothing “ours” about Givi. He was pure Georgian—I’d seen plenty like him in Tbilisi. Even in the loss, Yorik’s ranting made me laugh. 
Chapter 9 
Today they’d say we got scammed. Back then the word wasn’t in use among us. 
From that day I treated Yorik’s “deals” with suspicious irony. Luck never seemed to be on his side. I preferred to keep my distance from his tireless enthusiasm. 
At that time he was hopelessly in love with Lyuska. Another story—what a story! Lyuska wasn’t hanging with us much; she was busy with Vanka and his endless troubles. 
Yorik spotted us together at Metla  (Fashionable caf; I mentioned earlier). Lyuska, sipping a cocktail, was complaining about her darling. One of our regular meetings—she liked to go out on my dime, and I enjoyed her company. 
Next day Yorik called. Strange conversation. He mumbled, stuttered, didn’t know how to begin. He had some sort of “intimate” problem. 
I burst out laughing—asked if he was color-blind, couldn’t he see there was nothing “blue” about me? But no, not that. 
Turns out he had a girl. They’d gotten as far as kissing in the stairwell. She, disappointed, told him he couldn’t kiss at all—that in everything like that he was just an idiot. 
So Yorik wanted “education in such matters.” 
“What!?” I laughed. “You expect me to educate you?” 
No, not me—he thought Lyuska could teach him. For a price, of course. I roared in guffau. 
I called Lyuska anyway. 
“Tell him to bring a bottle. I’ll teach him,” she said without hesitation. Then she paused: “Wait—is he gross?” 
“You’re asking me?” I laughed. “In my opinion—disgusting.” 
“Fine then—jeans. Wrangler. Thirty-three, thirty.” 
Chapter 10 
Yorik didn’t have the jeans, but he got a flirty denim skirt—zipper running down the back from top to bottom. It fit Lyuska’s hips like it had been waiting for her. And so the “lessons” began. Their relationship went further than expected. 
Of course, Lyuska remained loyal to her Vanka in the main, but she and Yorik became something like friends. I knew Lyuska: she wouldn’t waste time on Yorik for just a few free cocktails. There was something else. She clearly wanted something from him—something he could provide, but not easily. They were always whispering. I never dug into it, but it ended in a ridiculous scandal. 
At a party, Lyuska suddenly burst from the room where they’d gone, hair disheveled, face red, shouting: 
“I can’t, I can’t—enough already! What do you even think you’re doing? Nose like a potato, face like a tomato—and he dares!” 
It was so funny we all laughed ourselves sick. Yorik looked like a beaten parrot. Lyuska ran back to her Vanka, and I kept an eye on Yorik the rest of the night—afraid he might fling himself out the window from despair. 
When the guests had gone, Yorik muttered gloomily: 
“Bastard, kike!” 
“Who?” I asked. 
“Vanka. Who else?” 
“Are you nuts? What kind of Jew is Vanka?” 
“A real one. He’s circumcised.” 
“Oh, come on! What do I need those details for? Go home. At this rate, Jews must haunt your dreams. Soon they’ll haunt mine.” 
 
Chapter 11 
I don’t know what kind of sickness antisemitism is—but it is a sickness. In Yorik it crept, then galloped, until by the late eighties he’d become a dyed-in-the-wool Black Hundred caricature. Knowing my skeptical attitude, he spoke to me less and less—and anyway, he hardly had time. 
He gave speeches at rallies, joined “societies” and “unions,” wrote about Great Imperial Russia, even appeared on television. By then Karl Ivanovich had passed away—no one left to stop him. 
Dark-haired, big-nosed, he began to resemble the Khazanov parrot—only this one frightened people with his dark hatred, urging them to pack suitcases and buy tickets to Israel. Grotesque to watch. 
Peak antic: a crowded platzkart (open-berth) car, where he’d ended up because of some organizer’s error. Someone remarked that such a well-dressed gentleman ought to be in a compartment. Yorik shot back: 
“Jews only take compartment cars!” 
The carriage fell into uneasy silence. Head-scratching silence. I myself nearly lost my mind when he told me later. 
I asked, “What will you do if Jews really disappear from the world altogether?” 
Despite the times making his “topic” suddenly fashionable, he only had time to rush from city to city, speaking in clubs and parks with the support of local “patriots” and newly minted Cossacks. 
Yet he never forgot me. I was his barometer, perhaps—by my reaction he gauged how the “cultured” layer might receive his calls to chase some and “save” others. When I moved first to Latvia, then to America, my perspective became, to him, valuable. 
I periodically received “business emails” about the world conspiracy of bankers, Masonic plots, the global backstage—and requests for new Jewish jokes. That last part was hard; the theme barely existed in America. But knowing how Yorik could spoil an innocent Russian soul with his nonsense, I tried to steer him toward safer topics. 
So when he invited himself to visit me in Latvia “to discuss something lucrative,” I was actually glad. 
Chapter 11 
It was the summer of 1992. In our quiet little settlement people lived modestly. I remember there was only one foreign car in the whole area. Yorik showed up in a black BMW, wearing a gray imported suit, carrying an extra-long measuring tape in a case. Yes—a tape measure. He wanted to measure a plot of land he planned to lease for storing lumber shipped in from Russia. According to his plan, I was to become the watchman of that lumber. For the moment, the idea was that we’d go to the local council and finalize everything. Yorik had arranged it all in advance—except for my agreement and the council’s permission. The lumber, in his vision, would flow into Europe and bring fabulous profits. 
My plans were completely different. I was preparing for an exam and, with all my soul, already in America. And whenever I remembered that wardrobe we once hauled upstairs together—the one that fell on me—any desire to do business with Yorik shriveled. I explained my situation delicately and advised him to find a similar storage site closer to the port of Ventspils, from which everything flowed into Europe anyway. That evening we had a pretty good time reminiscing. For once he didn’t curse the Jews, and I thought: maybe not all is lost. He never mentioned my supposed watchman job again. He liked the idea that I was headed to the States, and he promised to make me his company’s representative there. I could see how the dream of honest business and millions of greenbacks lit him up. He even fantasized about building a global corporation with branches on every continent—something like Yorik Lumber, Inc. 
A couple of days later, when I wasn’t thinking about him at all, I saw Yorik again—or rather, I witnessed him in an unpleasant situation. Not far from our settlement ran a busy highway. At the fork of two roads there was a small place—call it a restaurant or a caf;—called Sen;te. There was also a decent shop there, something like a deli. In good weather you could stroll there through the edge of the pine forest; in bad weather, take the bus a couple of stops. 
It was around three in the afternoon. I had picked up some treats, and before heading home I decided to have a coffee at a little stand around the corner that sold cookies and such. They had tables and chairs set up, the wind sighing through the tops of the pines. A nice spot. At one of the tables sat a group of people. I glanced quickly, noting a tough-looking guy in a black leather jacket, two pretty girls, and another man in a decent suit, back to me. Only when I sat down with my coffee at the far end of the terrace did I realize the man was none other than Yorik. He hadn’t seen me. The girls giggled, hanging on his words, while the tough guy sat glumly, scanning the surroundings. 
Does he have a bodyguard now? I thought. But I quickly understood I was wrong. That “bodyguard,” catching something in Yorik’s words, suddenly stood, grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket as if to haul him off his chair. His face twisted bestially, his build athletic—I knew at once Yorik was about to get it, and I’d probably get dragged into it too. Poor Yorik clung desperately to the plastic chair, and the thug dragged him across the asphalt—chair and all. The spindly legs skittered and squeaked. The thug barked angry words at his victim. I set my cup down and was just about to step in when suddenly Yorik was released. The man even made a gesture as if straightening the lapels of Yorik’s jacket. That was the end of it. The girls lost their sparkle, Yorik fussed with his suit, and the thug, lighting a cigarette, still looked ready to kill. 
I left my coffee unfinished and slipped away. I didn’t want Yorik, glancing around, to realize I had witnessed his—well, what else can you call it?—humiliation. Clearly, working for Yorik Lumber, Inc. wasn’t going to be so simple. 
From then on I saw Yorik only on my computer screen. Sometimes I spoke with him on the phone. 
 
Chapter 12 
Bumm… bumm… bumm… — my wall clock kept chiming. Seven in the morning. I love writing in the small hours. 
Everything collapsed for Yorik in 1998, at the time of the default. He had borrowed heavily, invested recklessly, and in a single day lost everything. One of his shady creditors nearly enslaved him; he escaped only by giving up his luxury apartment. His wife left with the children, and he moved back in with his elderly mother. 
That’s when his old, burning hatred flared again — bankers, Masons, Jews — anyone he could blame. 
“Bastards,” he fumed. “They all switched to dollars ahead of time and didn’t warn me. Swine!” 
But by then the times had changed. Nobody marched much anymore. Antisemitic screeds were bad form. Yorik carried his venom in silence. 
I, meanwhile, was in Oklahoma, immersed in English. I taught at a school, listened to children’s slang, practiced with teachers, and at night delivered pizzas with a box of talking books in the passenger seat. 
The city library kept shelves of them — fat boxes full of cassettes. Most of the authors were strangers to me. Often the blurbs lied: the book turned out dull, obscene, or poorly recorded. To find two good ones I’d borrow seven or eight at once. 
Eventually I discovered a voice I understood best: George Guidall. He became my coach in listening comprehension. I must have heard a hundred books read by him; they were almost always worth the time. 
Driving my route, I’d rewind, record intricate passages on a second tape recorder, and later copy them out by hand, studying how they were built. 
By then I was already dreaming of being an American writer. Others had done it in English, not their native tongue. One of my novels had been published, another was in progress, when I came across a thick how-to titled 101 Ways to Sell Your Book. 
The message was blunt: readers want stories that take them to places they’ve never been, into lives they’ve never lived. Hold them in their chairs until the last line. Success belonged to entertainers — or, rarely, to provocateurs. That “poet more than a poet” type, so revered in Russia, didn’t count here at all. 
A harsh discovery: only half the books printed in America ever reach store shelves. Without roughly $150,000 in promotion, most die in a drawer. Those Stephen King stories of overnight success — rare exceptions. 
Ironically, even King helped me. His On Writing was practical, honest, full of sharp advice. I recommend it to anyone who writes. 
But in America, “what to do” and “how to live” were not burning questions. People already knew: work hard, help your neighbor, be decent. Maybe Tokarev went too far singing, “Here it’s indecent to be poor or sick,” but in general he wasn’t wrong. 
In Russia, though, What Is To Be Done? is eternal. And it was exactly that question Yorik and I ended up wrestling with in one absurd conversation. 
Chapter 13 
I would never have gotten into such a polemic if not for our pre-agreement to speak fool to fool. It turned out Yorik had become a member of some team of “advisors to the advisors of the president on youth upbringing,” and he was burning to put out ideas. From “advisor to an advisor” you could, in his vision, eventually climb to be an actual advisor. 
I myself had gone to such gatherings in the perestroika days. All sorts of clever people met on Tuesdays in an old mansion near Kirovskaya, drank tea from a giant samovar, and ate the tasty buns provided — sparingly — by Gorbachev’s administration. The buns weren’t many, so who got to advise was chosen carefully. My historian friend, however, was respected there and could bring an extra eater — meaning me. Aware of my shaky place, I tried not to touch the buns unless pressed to. 
You could hear interesting thoughts, and the advisors-to-advisors were a funny sight. Some were shaggy and bearded, like my historian friend; others looked official, treated the matter very seriously, and eyed the clever riff-raff in stretched sweaters with suspicion. Next to me often sat an elderly professor in a worn suit. I’d seen him before at my entrance exams to the journalism faculty. He probably didn’t remember me, but for some reason always sat beside me. He never spoke much, but listened attentively, sometimes whispering a comment. I tried to answer him smartly. 
Once, carried away by a report, he murmured, “Very interesting young man, but why is he in his underwear?” The presenter looked wild — sparse blond wisps, sneakers and faded sweatpants — topped by a loose thermal long-john whose buttons had been warped by the cleaners’ chemicals. He resembled Ivan Bezdomny from Master and Margarita after a midnight swim — but he spoke sound things. Much later, in America, I heard him on Echo of Moscow; in the nineties he became one of the most popular image-makers, prepping deputies for elections. 
It was into that fishless pond that half-mad Yorik — studying German to read Mein Kampf in the original — managed to pass as an “advisor to advisors.” I doubt the freshly minted consultants were of the same breed. Those bright, daring minds of my youth would never have advised today’s presidential advisors — they’d have said simply, “Stick to your own Constitution.” My shaggy historian friend now keeps his distance from the authorities, predicting in his articles things that make everyone shy away from him again. And really — does today’s Russian government need advisors? At most, “for the furniture.” As Simeon of Athos put it: “You want to recognize an ambitious man? He’s the one who never takes advice.” 
Chapter 14 
Yes… Mayakovsky once wrote, “I’d learn Russian just for the fact that Lenin spoke it.” I imagine many minds shuddered then too. Yorik would be capable of such polishing tricks. Without soap, as we say, if it suited him, he’d worm his way into any group of “sub-advisors.” 
Frankly, it amused me. 
“Do you understand what nonsense you’re dragging me into?” I protested. “Idiocy! Fine — the president has advisors. Call them first-rank. Naturally they have assistants — like your group. Call them second-rank. Even they consult others, which makes a third rank. Not so far from the top. If one of their suggestions is good, it could reach the president. But tell me: who are you, a second-rank advisor, planning to consult? Whom are you elevating to this honorary third rank? Me? You’re crazy, Yorik. It’s a circus! I’m not even a Russian citizen. I’m an American citizen, a potential enemy agent! Under Grandpa Stalin you’d already be in a black Maria. Found yourself a foreign consultant, did you? An Oklahoma redneck truck driver!” 
“Not crazy at all!” Yorik boiled. “Questions of patriotism are universal — no ideological divisions.” 
“‘When they start harping on patriotism, it means they’ve robbed the till.’ Do you know who said that?” 
“Who?… You just did.” 
“Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Nineteenth century. And honestly, I’m not surprised people trust you. ‘Beat the Jews, save Russia’ has always inspired fools.” 
So even our “fool-to-fool” talk failed. Yorik ranted about the “Russian Idea,” peppered me with citations from philosophers and Church Fathers, even tried to read me Hitler in his own translation. The national idea inspired him so much he was ready to fight for Holy Rus’ with anyone, not just “kikes.” He called himself an “unbaptized Orthodox,” which sounded like the old “un-Party communist” — the zealot type ready to denounce fellow Party members. 
I told him Orthodoxy is Christianity. For a Christian, the Savior is the meaning of life and the true Homeland. If Jesus is King of the Universe, and Christians are His faithful army, then every Orthodox should be a patriot of the whole Universe, not only Russia. 
It was useless. Yorik had called only to confirm his own ravings. He didn’t want my opinion. He called me a damn cosmopolitan; I called him a complete asshole — a mudak, if you like: someone who uses his balls instead of his brain. He sincerely wished me to go to hell along with all my Jews. That’s where we left it. 
And then — you won’t believe it — on the opposite side of the highway I caught a strange movement among the rushing trucks. Instinctively I hit the brakes and saw a white eighteen-wheeler jump the median in a cloud of dust. I pumped the brakes, fought the wheel, barely missing the truck in front of me, swerved onto the shoulder, and stopped a metre from the “Speed Limit 75” sign — at the edge of a ditch eager to swallow me. One heartbeat off, a little more weight — and I’d have been on my side, like the poor fellow who’d ploughed into the trailer ahead of me. 
I jumped out and ran to the driver, climbing dazed through what had been his windshield. Right away I saw he was Slavic, but so as not to embarrass him I addressed him in English. Yes, he was fine, unhurt. Then came a distant thunder — Russian curses spilling from his mouth. So he was fine indeed. 
Yorik had given me a scare on his way out. Tell me again curses don’t work! Some over-eager little devils must’ve mixed up the addresses and smacked another Russian-speaking trucker rolling under the Arizona sky. 
That was it for me. I decided never to talk with Yorik again. My phone number had changed by then, and I updated my Skype. From that time on, nothing. Until now — with this postcard. He’s back; the devil won’t rub off. 
Well… I’m a Christian. I’m supposed to forgive and love everyone: Yorik, Hitler, Judas. It’s not easy being a Christian. 
The next morning I dialed his Moscow number. A woman answered — his wife, unknown to me. She told me poor Yorik had died a year earlier, of fast-moving cancer. 
Well, well… the steep hills wore out the trotting horse. His own “ours” finished him off. Hatred ate away his thin flesh. I know how that happens. Yorik died, but the Lord spared me. For what? Probably so I could write about such a Yury Karlovich Schieferblauer. And write many other things besides. 
However — who on earth sent me the postcard? 

Part 6
Sashok the Flowerpot
Chapter 1
All right… Who else was at that party? Who else could have sent me that postcard? There was also Sashok. Sashok-Flowerpot.
That wasn’t what we called him back then—it was a nickname I gave him later. But it fit. Everything could be planted in him and would take root. Like with a skilled gardener: pebbles at the bottom, then sifted, fertilized soil, topped with a bit of dry moss. Into that—a seed or a cutting, and up would sprout exactly the right kind of healthy shoot. Then take it to the window. And once it grew strong enough, it could be planted outside, to become a fine, worthy plant—pride and reward for the gardener. A medal she deserves.
Aunt Zhenya looked like a girl herself. She had a slender figure, a delicate voice, she was cautious and well-mannered. I once came home laughing—someone had just told me a silly joke. My mother, curious, made me repeat it. She burst out laughing herself. Aunt Zhenya, on the contrary, pursed her lips, buried herself in a fashion magazine, and pretended to study some design. To her the joke was crude, unworthy of attention. What surprised her most was such frivolous joking between a serious Party woman and her rascal son.
Aunt Zhenya was responsible for the ideological climate of the Komsomol organization at a classified enterprise, where my mother was a Party committee member. She came to visit not just to talk sewing patterns, but to get instruction from an older comrade, a decorated war veteran, a seasoned propagandist. That was my mom. She edited the in-house newspaper of that large Pochtovyi Yashchik—“Mailbox,” as they called those closed facilities. She was often invited to seminars on how to conduct Party propaganda—or, put plainly, how best to lie. No—let me correct myself: neither my mom nor Aunt Zhenya thought of themselves as liars. They were fully convinced of the Party’s rightness, and led the masses toward that communist “far-off bright future,” which, for some reason, never got any closer. It didn’t trouble them. Their salaries were good, their husbands’ salaries too, their social standing a little elevated. Their apartments were spacious, fridges full, and their special connections gave them access to French fashion magazines and fat catalogs from Western firms.
That was as far as it went—God forbid more. They could admire foreign designs without being seduced. Both were ideologically stable and firmly sure that “ours is better.”

Chapter 2
Aunt Zhenya’s husband worked in some very secret design bureau and could only talk on abstract topics. You could see how much he enjoyed spending time with my father, who traveled abroad on organizational-medical matters that had nothing to do with secrecy. My father could talk for hours about Paris and Tokyo.
He did it differently than the official Travelers’ Club. When night fell, he would pull out a projector and boxes of slides, and on the big screen appeared foreign squares and streets, palm trees, oceans, white liners, and strangely free, well-fed, happy-looking people. Father gave the commentary, Aunt Zhenya’s husband asked questions, cracked decent jokes, and once muttered with frustration:
“Even in my coffin I’ll still be ‘non-travel’ for another five years!”

Chapter 3
They had a son, Sasha. I knew him since childhood too, but he only joined our circle in tenth grade. His parents were splitting up, and for a while he slipped out from under his mother’s watchful eye. That’s when a weed sprouted in him. That seedling cried out for freedom—Sashok lost interest in studies and went looking for bad company. In his own environment—he went to a serious specialized school—no such company was handy. So he attached himself to us.
He smoked his first cigarette on my balcony. Got drunk for the first time among us. Learned cards with us. Fooled around with Marinka with us. In short, he rolled in all the mud the little piglet-imp pushed his way.
Sashok had a round face, clear skin, almost girlishly rosy. His left eyebrow was topped with a tiny mole that pulled it slightly upward, giving him a mischievous look, as if plotting some prank. His dark hair—his mother always kept an eye on it, even in hard times—was clipped short, neat as a bowl cut. Even on hot days he wore suits and carried a briefcase. Sometimes a clarinet case too, when his mother believed he was dutifully attending the Conservatory’s music school. Imagine her surprise if she’d known that instead of blowing out scales he was sitting with us, puffing on cigarettes and playing cards.
Whenever he strayed out of her line of sight, his tie disappeared into the briefcase, buttons came undone, and—horror!—his collar was spread wide over the jacket lapels. That was when the piglet-imp gleamed in his eyes, and together they set off for adventures. Straight to our gang.

Chapter 4
Marinka, my classmate, often joined our company. She wouldn’t have come on her own, but she was a close friend of Irina, who later became my first wife. Irina hung around us nearly every evening.
Marinka was full-bosomed, with a nicely shaped waist but heavy below—not that it spoiled her much. Still, beside her mother—a sturdy woman with short, thick legs, her roomy shopping bag a constant attribute—it was better not to appear in public. Marinka, though, hadn’t inherited her mother’s build. I once saw her photo on Facebook: standing beneath palm trees with her silver-haired husband, both about fifty, cheerful and content. Time had added only one extra fullness to her body—her beautiful, still-youthful, forward-thrusting breasts.
It was those very breasts that Sashok, egged on by his imp, went for. But Marinka had more: a fine oval face, lightly lined girlish eyes, a neat nose, and lips plump and ripe as cherries. Her eyes shimmered, especially when something pleased her. And Sashok pleased her, no doubt. He charmed her the day he pulled out his clarinet and played along with a tune spilling from a tape recorder. Marinka melted. From then on, Sashok’s suit was always pressed against Marinka’s softness.
At school Marinka often got in trouble for reading novels under her desk. She devoured thick books—Alexander Grin, Dumas, really anything she could lay her hands on. If the teacher forced her to put the book away, she’d start whispering with her friends. That annoyed the teachers even more. What truly infuriated them, though, were her beautiful eyes. They often scolded her for them. All of them. Without agreement. We sometimes called her Krasivye glazki—Beautiful Eyes. She didn’t like it, chased us with her heavy books, and swatted us with them.
Teachers were calmer when those eyes were lowered to the desk. Marinka read nearly the entire school library, then the district library, and eventually moved on to mine—that is, my parents’. There she found more interesting novels. After Sagan and Fitzgerald, she often sat dreamy in class, gazing out the window, sighing languidly in mid-lesson, which made us boys laugh. She called us fools and pretended to get busy.
She had an older brother, rough but musical, who played the guitar and sang. He drank, however. Once, in a drunken brawl, he grabbed a knife and stabbed a friend—“under the boob,” as they put it. They laid the boy on a bed, thought he’d recover. He wheezed and wheezed—and died. I knew him well; we’d once sat at the same desk. His funeral was grand, the street blocked by the procession. Marinka’s brother went to prison for a long stretch. She wept for days, but youth heals fast. Soon she was gazing at the sky again, smiling mysteriously, flashing her lovely eyes.
That was the Marinka whom Sashok met.

Chapter 5
The pendulum of the clock swings on. Its endless tick-tock—unchanging, sublime, mystical… All this was some forty-five years ago, and yet I remember it so vividly! Could I have imagined then that the mighty USSR would collapse, that I would move to the far side of the world, that my children would speak another tongue and travel the globe as if it were nothing?
We often don’t even notice miracles, but one came when Ray and Esther Semones arrived in distant Latvia to meet personally with an officer of the U.S. Embassy. Two days later, after Ray stood calmly before the consul, visas were stamped into each of our passports.
Those were wondrous days. Ray asked my permission to say grace before every meal. We would join hands, bow our heads, and he would solemnly thank the Creator for all blessings granted to us, asking Him, in Jesus’ Name, to forgive our sins—known and unknown—and to receive us into His Kingdom when the time came. I translated his words for my wife and children. It was solemn and unusual. Each time, Ray’s eyes glistened.
We had many warm talks, looked through photos. Esther brought travel games; the children loved her at once. Edgar drove us everywhere in his Zhiguli. We strolled the old streets of Riga, wandered our settlement, where Ray and Esther greeted every passerby, surprising the quiet Latvians with their foreign speech.
When Ray and the children built a giant snowman, the Soviet army officers who lived in our building vanished mysteriously. The snowman still stood by the sandbox, carrot nose red, when we saw our guests off. A week later, we ourselves left for Moscow—and from there, to Chicago.

Chapter 6
And that too was long ago… Yet I still remember everything in the smallest detail.
Now, remembering Aunt Zhenya—Sashok’s mother—I realize she wasn’t really an “aunt” at all, but a graceful woman, a true beauty. Her walk was light, her waist slender, her posture proud. There was something divine in her appearance. Perhaps Eve herself was like that: the last, most perfect of God’s creations.
Under the spell of such women I even wrote a romance—not about one alone who had inspired me, but about several at once. And in those dreams Aunt Zhenya appeared among them.
 
I’m struck by her, yet dare not draw too near; 
Confused, I find I cannot bring myself to go. 
So much I’d say—yet words refuse to clear; 
My trembling tongue betrays the truth I know. 
I’d whisper, “Lady, noble, high and fair, 
I’ve met a thousand women on my way, 
But you alone—proud goddess—stole my care, 
And shook my soul and haunt me to this day. 
Now rest has fled; I burn with quiet pain; 
I never trusted love until you came. 
My thoughts return to you like summer rain; 
For one kind favor I would stake my name.” 
But no—confession would dissolve the spell; 
The goddess would descend to womanhood; 
And I, her casual acquaintance, would dwell 
In life bereft of that which once seemed good. 


Chapter 7
And yet, Aunt Zhenya did not remain for me just a distant acquaintance. I learned too much back then—everyday details, trivial nonsense—and much of it shattered the image I had of her. Her secretive husband left her for another woman.
I found it out by accident, listening to Pink Floyd at dusk while the moon rose outside my window. My mother came home with Aunt Zhenya, who poured out her grief so loudly I could hear it even through my headphones.
“I’m not a traitor, I’m not a traitor!” she sobbed.
Pressed by my mother—“communist to communist”—she admitted she had written a note to her KGB curator, mentioning her husband’s admiration for Japan and my father’s travel stories. He figured it out immediately, called her a traitor, packed his things, and left.
“But wasn’t I supposed to mention it?” she wept. “It’s my duty.”
My mother consoled her but also glowed with quiet satisfaction. “They had no right to expose you. You did everything correctly. And it’s good I know now—I’ll have to warn Shurka.”

Chapter 8
Even now, after so many years, I don’t know—should I pity Aunt Zhenya or condemn her? Just as a Christian must first love Christ, she had been raised to be loyal to the Party above all. Pavlik Morozov, who denounced his own father, was a hero back then. And she acted—“for the benefit of the Fatherland.”
Her parents, both high-ranking Party officials, had sheltered her from life’s troubles. Her father wisely held her back from overreaching; she became deputy secretary of the factory’s Komsomol committee, in charge of ideology. She lived and breathed it—meetings, cultural outings, notebooks of obligations, endless reports. She worked late into the night.
She kept a wary eye on “progressive workers” sneaking rugs from Poland or refrigerators from Finland. In such cases she would come to my mother, and together they would pore over fashion magazines, deciding what to do with the deviants.
My mother often held Aunt Zhenya up as an example, and lamented that her own son—that is, me—was growing into such a layabout. She also pointed to Sashok as proof: excelling in his special school, playing the clarinet… until the day she was crushed by what he did.

Chapter 9
But why do I keep saying: “Sashok did this, Sashok did that”? It was, after all, a rather banal story. The piglet-imp led them astray. Somewhere, somehow, Sashok and Marinka managed to “settle in,” and by the time of graduation exams, Marinka’s belly was round.
Sashok was proud—very proud—of his new status as a father-to-be. He begged Marinka to marry him, assuring her he’d earn plenty: he’d play saxophone in a restaurant, and money would never be a problem. And he wouldn’t drink at all. He stressed this last point as if it were the key to her happiness.
At first Marinka wept, but soon her pretty eyes sparkled again, and she even believed in such a life—if only a saxophone could be found. They discovered that in Ukraine they could marry at seventeen, and planned to go there right after graduation in June.
It all could have been sweet, had the parents blessed them. But that’s exactly where things hit a wall.

Chapter 10
Forget the saxophone! Once the parents found out, they united forces and didn’t just crush his dreams—they ground them to dust. They even took away his clarinet.
They declared that all his music lessons had never been meant to raise a lounge musician but only to “develop his personality harmoniously.”
Sashok was put under strict house arrest, guarded by his grandmother, a blockade survivor from Leningrad. And with Marinka, Aunt Zhenya—now catlike and steeled—had a short but brutal conversation. Afterward, the pregnant girl came home and poisoned herself.
Marinka’s mother found her on the floor, pills scattered around. Doctors barely pulled her back, but the baby could not be saved.
From that moment, Aunt Zhenya cut ties with my parents. And Sashok? His grandfather pulled strings, enrolling him in a military academy that trained translators. They put him in uniform, handed him to a stern sergeant, and set him to studying Korean and Chinese.
The bad soil choked with weeds was dumped from Sashok the Flowerpot without mercy, and new soil—sifted, fertilized, tightly packed—was pressed in. We never saw him again.
As for me, our gatherings were shut down, I was buried in textbooks, my long hair cut. I didn’t even argue. That story sobered us all. Childhood was over.

Chapter 11
Almost forty years later I unexpectedly met Sashok. In Canc;n, of all places, while vacationing with my ex-wife.
A Russian-speaking woman invited us to her table. A few minutes later her husband arrived—linen suit, straw hat, Havana cigar: Mayakovsky’s Mister Twister come alive. And then I saw the little mole over his eyebrow. It was Sashok the Flowerpot.
He was cautious at first, astonished that I was now an American. Only when he heard I lived in Oklahoma and drove trucks for cowboys and farmers did he relax.
Within half an hour he laid out his “trump cards”: property in the States, a house on the Italian coast, a Moscow apartment in an elite high-rise, an office in a Presnya business center. His son now ran things while he and his wife vacationed.
“And in your free time, you still play the saxophone,” I quipped. His wife’s arched eyebrows told me everything: that old soil had long since been dumped, covered over by oblivion.
When the tour guide called us to the bus, I hugged his bulk, kissed his wife’s hand, and we went our separate ways.
So one thing’s certain: Sashok the Flowerpot did not send me that battered postcard.





Part 7

On Those Nights… Uncle Vitya 

On those nights when stars are gently shining 
so merrily above the ancient city, 
I cannot sleep. 
I open wide my window for the stars 
to come and muse with me. 
The vintage towers gleam in city lights; 
the air is fresh and cold, the night is quiet. 
A secret spell I whisper, and the stars 
unhurriedly draw nearer; one of them 
alights upon my hand and shines—a diamond, 
aflame with steady, blue unearthly light. 
It tells me tales of distant, different places, and— 
stories of loving, dreamy souls 
the star has visited on other magic nights. 
Chapter 1
Go figure… you write something like this, and then it dogs you. Mark Twain kept playing with the theme of stars, putting all sorts of nonsense about them into his characters’ mouths. Clearly he himself was no little bit struck by “the starry sky above us,” like that famous philosopher. At times he compared the myriads of stars to “cemeteries in the sky.” He was an out-and-out unbeliever, and yet—go figure—it touched him too. Wondrous are Thy works, O Lord! That’s all you can say. 
And what are we if not stars? We shine in other people’s memory just the same—brightly and remarkably, if we were bright and remarkable; we shine softly if we were simply kind and modest; we’re unassuming and modest among the multitude if we left no special trace; indistinguishable and forgotten if we made all sorts of trouble and nothing good can be said about us. 

Chapter 2
I reread what I’ve already written and realize I can’t do without one more character—the one who lit up my youth like the brightest star, though he has nothing to do with that “postcard.” The one who burned brighter than many—my Uncle Vitya. And why shouldn’t he belong here? Kostya and Alyosha—binary stars. Likewise, Yorick and Sashok perfectly go together. My old man, to whom so much space is given in my recollections, is the spitting image of a “tick,” which clearly calls for some “tock.” In the simple American booklets on how to write stories, such a pair is called a Mirror. Okay. So a reflection has been found for my dad’s image: without this reflection you can’t understand where I came from, what formed me. 
Chapter 3
I remember a photo in the magazine Sovetskoe Foto: a jolly company of men over the holes in the ice. In the middle, a jokester-photographer in a sheepskin coat with a FED camera in his hands. And the fishermen’s hands are busy—sandwiches and little glasses in them. With tea, say… They laugh at the quips, rejoice in the frosty day, the sunshine, and the decent bite: there by the holes, little piles of perch already crusted with frost lie on the ice. And the glorious caption: “Could you ever rest like this at home?” 
How can you not smile, not rejoice for the men who slipped away from their wives on the first commuter train in a cold winter night? If you look closely, in fishing—as in any amateur tourism—there was something not allowed, anti-Soviet. Working stiffs, ordinary folks, slipped away from watchful oversight; they spent indeterminate time in indeterminate places among like-minded fellows they themselves had chosen—no way to sprinkle in informers among them. You could have slapped a ban on such a thing, but fishing is sacred. It’s like breathing—you can’t forbid it. 
What? Did you recall the gentle quiver of the little spring tip above the ice-hole? Or of the float on quiet water? And do you remember the first fish you ever caught? My first crucian carp I caught on a small pond in Kuskovo, in the southeast of Moscow. I, seven years old, got so excited I ruined everyone else’s fishing that quiet June evening with my shouting. “Take that little devil away, he’s scared off all the fish,” the men hissed, recasting their lines farther. No use. I couldn’t be calmed down. At home I couldn’t settle for a long time either: I kept remembering the trembling of the rod in my hands. My hands, well washed by my mother, still smelled in that special fishy way. The crucian was transferred from the bag to a jar. The next morning my father and I took him back and released him into his native pond. Don’t get caught again. 
Chapter 4
Back then it was as if I woke up. Suddenly my little world expanded. It turned out you could fish not only in Kuskovo, but also in Kuzminki, and in Kosino on the White and Black lakes, and even on Simonovka, where I hadn’t been before. And how many new friends suddenly appeared, among whom I was the youngest! Ah… I could just keep describing those outings for bullheads and crucians—so many stories there were! 
The grown men equipped themselves for fishing in earnest. We looked enviously at their very long three-section rods, set on special pegs stuck right at the water’s edge. Some had three of them, splayed out like a fan. Their floats were Styrofoam, expensive, long and sensitive—not like the store-bought plastic ones, dingy brown-gray with a little white tip. The men sat on folding stools, and when we timidly came up and asked, “So, uncle… are they biting?” they would barely grumble something in reply without even looking at us kids. Our rods were made of twigs; we couldn’t really cast the diligently spit-slicked worm on the hook far out to deeper water. The men really did haul out hefty golden crucians from time to time; then everything around came to life—we refreshed our worms, stared at our cheap floats, but all we got were little bug-eyed gobies grazing right at the water’s edge. 
Chapter 5
And such a fellow—only far more colorful and lucky in fishing, and in other things too—my very own uncle, Uncle Vitya, soon appeared for me. In fact, he’d always been nearby. He was the husband of my mother’s sister, and he didn’t much let me into his affairs after, at the age of four, I grabbed the very hot chrome exhaust pipe of his motorcycle with my little palms. I burned myself badly and set everyone in a panic. 
Uncle Vitya didn’t just have a folding fisherman’s stool—he had a whole motorboat, which he built himself in his apartment, and which they later hauled out the window with a crane; they even had to knock out the frame, because no matter how they tilted the boat it wouldn’t quite fit through the opening. The whole courtyard, packed with gawkers, let out a collective “ah!” when at last, freed from the tight hole, she swayed free on the crane cables, flashed her white-and-green sides in the bright sun, charmed everyone with her graceful lines, and settled smoothly onto felt-padded stands in the bed of a truck. Everyone looked at the boat and at my uncle with admiration—what a stunt he pulled! What a beauty he turned out! 
Chapter 6
I spent all my youth catching perch and pike from that boat. How beautifully she ran under oars, how dashingly she flew under motor! And how pleasant it was for me to fly behind her on water skis, bouncing over the waves fanning out! Thank You, Lord, for sending me such an uncle. 
He drew attention immediately wherever he appeared. Seemed tall, yet not really tall. Seemed Georgian—black hair and brows, and a long nose—but no, not Georgian. Seemed a bit tipsy, but only the tiniest bit. And once he started joking—people nearly fell over laughing. Remember that character in Vysotsky’s little song “Comrades Scientists, Docents and Candidates”? The line: “So here’s the plan: we take the bus to Skhodnya, and from there at a trot—no groaning!” That’s my Uncle Vitya to a T. The same drive, the same grip and leadership. And all this on top of the authority of a ground-attack pilot who went through the whole war with a chestful of decorations. They say he was put forward for the title of Hero, but it didn’t work out somehow. It’s a murky story; I don’t know it exactly. Even without the Hero’s star, our Uncle Vitya was dear and beloved by all. 
Chapter 7
“Mind you don’t tell Aunt Ira,” he’d warn, slipping a quarter-liter into his pocket. I didn’t need teaching. What’s a dinner for such an uncle without a little vodka? That’s for good cheer. Whether thanks to those quarter-liters or his native optimism, good cheer rarely left our Uncle Vitya. He had no sons—two daughters, nephews—but… he would sneak a drink only in my presence. Was I like a son to him? I can’t say. But among all the youngsters around him, I was the only one who might catch it—get a licking. 
Not far from Vodniki station, five minutes away, there were illegally built covered boat sheds. No—shacks. A kind of riverside Shanghai, where men fussed over their craft, touched up the paint, tinkered with their perpetually ailing boat motors, and got ready for the technical inspections. There, in the company of Uncle Vitya and his friends, I spent long days, helping with small things, running out to the road with an empty can for gasoline that passing truckers would drain from their tanks—seven kopecks a liter. Golden times. 
We were preparing the boat for a long journey, through all the locks of the Moscow–Volga Canal, to Novo-Okatovo, where every year we vacationed the whole summer with a merry company of relatives and friends. Under the pines, on a broad side channel—count it as the whole summer. There were mushrooms and berries, and badminton till we were dripping, and—most important—fishing. 
On top of everything, Uncle Vitya was an experienced taiga hand. When he was younger, he went out every year with the geologists into the field. He told many stories about the Siberian taiga; clearly he missed those places and times. He had a favorite, much-traveled rucksack, and a jacket—storm-parka—just as sun-bleached and rain-soaked. It amazed me how well he oriented himself on the water and in the woods. Once, on a dark, rainy night, he brought the boat exactly to a quiet overnight spot on a steep bank. How he made it out in that blackness—God knows. 
Chpter 8
“It’s biting!…” he whispers to me. More than fifty years have passed, and I see that morning distinctly. The motor is cut; the boat, by inertia, has come exactly to a bend in the reeds and gone still. Quietly we drop the anchors and cast. It’s barely dawning. A wisp of fog lingers in the underbrush. The water is still; the floats stretch on it, gazing at their reflection. Is it biting? Did it just seem so to him? The tip of the float is stuck like a stake—doesn’t twitch. “Tench…” whispers my uncle. “Don’t rush…” I’m not about to. Tench!—I’d never even dreamed of catching a tench. I don’t touch the rod; I wait for orders. Suddenly the float lifts a little and, as if dancing, slides a bit to the side. “Wait!…” a command-whisper. “Now—strike, gently…” The float dives sharply; I manage to strike, and there it is—springy, stubborn resistance; the fine line cuts the dark water—ah, let it not get away! “Bring it in steadily, don’t tear it.” My uncle is calm; the landing net is in his hand. What a beauty it was—a deep bronze tench, nearly a kilo. 
I’d have talked my way out of it—oh, how I didn’t want to crawl out of my sleep! It wasn’t even four yet, and Uncle Vitya was already hauling me out of the tent by the leg. I wanted to kick him off and burrow back into the pillow. But… I felt sorry for him. Just last night by the fire he’d been calling me a blockhead, a loafer, a bungler, and a rotten stump. Said he’d never in his life take me fishing again, nor even to the Volga at all. In the morning, it seems, he realized he’d overdid it with all that scolding, so he dragged me to the dawn bite. It was the vodka. No one knew how exactly it would get to him. Often, and more often, when he drank he fell into excellent spirits: joked, told anecdotes, sang along with us at the night fire. But sometimes he’d close up, shut down, then latch onto some trifle and—off it went—everyone caught it from him. Me especially. What had I done then? God knows. Knocked over a basin of blueberries, it seems. 
Chapter 9
He scolded himself in vain. I wasn’t offended. In those days everybody scolded me, except maybe my old man. He’d just spread his hands and say, “You leave me flabbergasted!” The adults’ scolding was like the wind in the pine crowns: they sway and rustle and rain down cones, but below there’s peace and quiet—only the shadows of the branches run over the soft golden needle carpet. How good it was to lie down then and doze off in such an afternoon… And with the grownups it was just as good: shout all you like—names don’t stick. And growing up, “coming to my senses,” no matter how much they urged me—didn’t appeal to me at all. 
Another such afternoon hour. Wandering along the shoreline brush, I come to a backwater overgrown with sedge. Goodness! How many perch there are! They drift in little schools, get into short skirmishes. I hurry for my rod, pull a jar of worms from the waterside moss. The perch are still there, haven’t gone. I set the float down almost to the sinker, bait a worm. There’s the first one. I cast again—what do you know, another. Third, fourth. All big—three hundred grams each. Are you complete fools or what? An hour later I’m back with a stringer full of perch. I set up on the bank to clean them. Uncle Vitya, sober, comes up. Looks appraisingly. “Tomorrow we’ll take you with us to the fairway,” he says. “Don’t oversleep.” As if I would. What fishing! The big bream they bring back from there! 
The next day, though, the weather worsens. The sky is sullen; the broad channel is flecked with whitecaps. The fairway is postponed. I never did go there with the men. 
Chapter 10
Here I am casting a spinner from that very beauty of a motorboat. I’m not allowed to start the motor without adults. I row. I stop at a good spot, drop anchor, and cast toward the reeds. Work the lure the way Uncle Vitya taught me. I wait for a pike. I’d read that a spinning fisherman lands one fish in two hundred seventy casts. And I cast. No bite. I heave up the anchor to move on. But what’s this? The rope comes easy—here’s the end of it. Holy smokes! The anchor’s come untied! Now I’ll catch it! Just as I am, in clothes, I jump into the water. You can barely touch bottom here; there’s a slope where the anchor was. I dive. Once, twice. I can’t feel anything on the silty bottom. I gulp more air, dive deep. Found it. I haul it up, my dear. Seventeen rubles, after all! But it’s not about the rubles. What a bungler! Thank God the wind is pushing the boat toward shore. Bottom appears under my feet. Happy, I catch up to her, my dear, lay the heavy anchor on the plywood bottom. I didn’t tell my uncle. I’d have surely caught it then, and how. Not for the anchor—for diving. Would you look at that—rotten stump! And I did hook a pike later that day. Not bad. 
Chapter 11
Even so, my uncle got to me. I took offense at him. Here’s how it was.  
It took us three days to make our way from Vodniki to our camp. In two boats now. I was delirious from the monotony of the banks, the engine noise, the bright sun. We’d chattered ourselves silly in the locks, bounced ourselves silly on the waves. We arrived. 
Naturally, as soon as we caught our breath and set up the tents, my uncles got ready to go to Brykino. To Ivan the Tractor Driver, who kept over the winter in his attic the things it wasn’t worth dragging back to Moscow every time. I just waved a hand—go wherever you like. I’ll loaf here under the pines. 
The noise of their departing motor turned into a mosquito whine. Then vanished altogether. Silence. A marvelous evening. Not a breeze. The sun is setting behind the island. How tasty tea is with smoke, from the campfire! How good it is here! Thank You, Lord, for this abode!—that last bit I add fifty years later. 
But what’s this? It smells of alien smoke. And what’s crackling in the forest? My goodness! Between the trunks, in the distance, where night has already settled under the trees—flames. And what flames! 
I grabbed two buckets and ran there, trembling all over. The dry carpet of needles under the pines was burning. It blazed. It spread. Back then I didn’t know this about myself—if there’s a fight, a chase, I don’t get flustered. On the contrary, that’s when I really start living. Good thing it was burning near the water. I run along the shallows to where I can scoop full buckets, fill them and—back to the flames. I pour around the perimeter. Again and again I run, scoop, run again, pour. Good thing I had heavy boots on my feet. Wet—they don’t let the heat through. I’m all in smoke and soot, coughing, wiping my eyes—and again. Onto the litter, onto the pine trunks where the bark had already caught. I run, scoop, pour… That’s it—no more fire visible. Only acrid smoke creeps deeper into the woods. The river gleams through the trunks. The sun has set, the sky has gone dark, and I keep running like I’m wound up. I tremble, cough, scoop, run, pour… 
Chapter 12
My uncles got back only after midnight. Pretty sloshed. In the morning, they went to have a look. “Burned well,” they said. What lay behind that was embarrassment: we shouldn’t have left a fifteen-year-old here alone. But who knew?… 
They remembered later. When we’d set the tents the day before, a herdsman appeared with his herd. He saw us, spat in frustration, and drove his cows through the forest to another watering place. He probably lit a cigarette in his vexation. And then didn’t stub out the butt. 
“You need a haircut,” said Uncle Vitya to me, as if seeing me for the first time. Oh sure! As if I’d let them hack off my locks! But there was something else at work. Not about the locks. My uncle seemed to want to do something good for me, was moved, wanted somehow to show his affection, and I balked. He found a way! I hemmed and hawed, pointed to my other uncle—let him be first, I’ll see how it turns out. But no such luck. It turned out my Uncle Vitya was esteemed as a first-rate barber—he’d sometimes cut his whole squadron—and the uncles really had given him their heads more than once. I didn’t buy it; I kept putting it off—some other time, not today! 
And truly, soon there was no time for me. Our whole merry company arrived by riverboat; the tent camp expanded, filled with cheerful noise; we started going out for berries and mushrooms; I was seemingly forgotten—but not so fast. The topic resurfaced, and how! My cousin arrived, freshly, fashionably shorn at the Arbat salon Charodeika (“The Sorceress”), and now everyone set to persuading me. Said our Uncle Vitya would do no worse. And he himself walked around as if offended at me. Wouldn’t even look in my direction. 
In the end I trusted him. I was simply sick of the coaxing. Come what may, I thought. 
Chapter 13
At first my haircut drew quite a few onlookers. Then they all drifted off. It grew quiet. Only the snip of scissors and the snorting of an experienced barber—he was undoubtedly manipulating above my head without the least doubt—reached my ears; and at last the sheet that had been restricting my movements fell away. Uncle Vitya inspected his work with satisfaction. I ran my hand over my head. My heart sank. The mirror had gone missing. The prudent spectators had swiped it. 
“Come again in half a year,” said Uncle Vitya, wiping his scissors with a soft velvet cloth. 
That’s it… Childhood was over. On unsteady legs I went to the tools and took a shovel. Not—to whack Uncle Vitya with it, though he deserved it—but to dig a garbage pit, as I had promised in the morning. There, in the pit, I could finally not hold back the tears running from my eyes. 
I dug with fury. An hour already. Voices sounded around. Life was settling back in. No one came near me. The square pit was first up to my knees, then my waist, then my shoulders… And I kept digging and digging, tossing the sandy soil up. Then it got damp under my feet. Then water appeared. I looked up and realized I could no longer climb out by myself. Well, to hell with it, I thought. Where would I climb to? Life was over… 
“Viktor, go! Some soldier of yours in the well is about to drown!” came my aunt’s voice. 
It turned out to be a fine well. Afterwards everyone thanked me, averting their eyes. People somehow kept quiet about the haircut—as if nothing had happened. No one “found” a mirror. 
Chapter 14
That sad story took an unexpected turn. It turned out to be fateful. That year they barely shoved me out of eighth grade with a report card full of Cs. The teachers said warm good-byes to me in unison and breathed easier. The road to ninth grade was closed. I was supposed to continue at a GPTU—a vocational school—as a plumber, as my schoolmarms advised. 
Yeah, right! Go to blazes, all of you. I wanted back to my class, to my girls—Katya, Natasha, Tanya, my bosom friends—without whom, what kind of life is it? And friends, of course. The principal would never have taken me back—but someone, in my soul, distinctly prompted: “Go. Show yourself.” 
I went straight to the principal’s office. The secretary wasn’t there; no one to stop me. I knocked lightly and went in. Our headmistress sat at her desk. “Good day, I want to study in your ninth grade,” I said. She looked at me in surprise. It hadn’t occurred to me she wouldn’t recognize me. Over the summer I’d grown even taller, broadened in the shoulders. Before her stood a perfectly decent, tanned, short-haired, cultured-looking handsome young man who would, no doubt, breathe new life into her new ninth grade. Only—who did he remind her of?… 
So on September first I found myself again among my friends and girls, who now wouldn’t take their eyes off me. 
It’s biting!… I thought then. 
Yes… Uncle Vitya, you did me a good turn. One of those girls later became my first woman. My first wife. Had you not shorn me like a soldier, everything would have turned out entirely differently. Would you look at that—God’s ways… 
Chapter 15
Why are you going on about Uncle Vitya?—I hear an indignant reader. —You also had a father. Wasn’t he a fisherman? Why not tell about him? 
A fisherman… We’re all fishermen, one way or another. We look for the catch, we cast the line. We wait… When you send out r;sum;s to employers, when you unobtrusively show your abilities to the bosses hoping for a promotion, when you simply go visiting and dress a bit better so they’ll notice, appreciate you—“they meet you by your clothes”—aren’t you doing the very same thing? You wait—will it bite or not? And you rejoice when it bites, when they swallow your bait. Then you can pull your prey in and get some gain from it. And women—why, they’re even greater fishermen than we men. Their baits, from cosmetics to all sorts of other things, are beyond counting—and the rarest woman is not a fisherman. 
Thinking of my father, I wonder—was he a fisherman at all? Did he seek advantage in someone? Did he bait anyone on purpose? Probably—in some things—yes. My communication with Father was altogether different. Another universe. Long bike rides. When I got older—on foot. Easier to talk that way. When I’d grown up to his height, Father started talking to me as to an adult—that is, he started forgetting I was, in fact, still a kid. He told me about the complicated relationships in his institute, about the intrigues woven in the scholarly world, about how mediocrity hates genius. He’d give examples from the biographies of Newton and Mozart; he could confirm his thoughts with a Fichte or a Hegel; he’d say that Schopenhauer, for all his wise ideas, was at times simply ridiculous—and prove why; and if you asked him why your throat hurts during a cold, down upon me would come a lecture nearly an hour long. So with my father, things went otherwise. 
Father was born in ’23. In early ’42 he was drafted. He served as a radio operator. Twice he was encircled; for months he slept in the snows. He was under artillery barrages more than once. He said that in the war he felt very vividly that his late grandmother Varvara protected him from death. He brought back fewer orders and medals than Uncle Vitya, but still an impressive number. Of soldiers born in ’23 only two percent returned from the war. Forty-nine men like him stayed in the earth, and he survived. To give me life? Try to parse the Lord’s will! 
When I raised too much hell or got into stupid scrapes, Father threatened to take me to his clinic, walk me through the wards of the gravely ill so that I would finally come to my senses. He never did get around to it. He should have. 
I came to value my time with Father much later, but in my school years Uncle Vitya and a couple other uncles were much easier for me to understand. I often sat with their company, listened to their simple conversations—they seemed to me like boys just like me, only grown. They were like older brothers, and with them everything was clearer, simpler. 
Chapter 16
Here is Uncle Vitya’s strong hand grabbing me by the collar as I tumble overboard into the dark water, hauling me back. With his other hand he pushes off with an oar from the wall of the lock, green with slime, and at the same time curses someone in the neighboring boat for a wrong move. The moment is fierce. Above us looms the high dark-brown stern of the barge ahead; the lock walls tower—the strip of blue sky above is narrow. A gigantic iron float clatters on its vertical rail, the one we’ve tied our boat to. On our other side another boat is tied, and a third beyond that. That’s how small motorboats were allowed to pass through the locks on the Moscow–Volga Canal. Only watch that you don’t get crunched against the lock walls, don’t get flipped by the wake from the monster ahead. Someone bumped us and I flew into the water. For several days afterward a belated fear shook me from that nightmare, and Uncle Vitya never even mentioned it. 
Here we are with him in the village store. The three-sixty-two vodka is gone; only the four-twelve is left, and my uncle’s stash is only four rubles. He persuades the saleswoman: “Give me the bottle, I’ll knock it back right now, and I’ll give you back the empty. That’s exactly twelve kopecks.” Did he persuade her? What do you think? 
Here he is laughing merrily, really bursting, slapping his knees. I, standing waist-deep in water, have caught a decent pike on the spinner and am carrying it on the line so everyone can see what I landed. The pike contrived to give me such a slap on the cheek with her tail that I went head over heels, and the pike, no fool, slipped the hook and swam off. That one he reminded me of often later, and always chuckled. 
And here the girls have organized a little Olympics, and tipsy Uncle Vitya desperately wants to get all the gold medals made of round chocolate in foil on bright ribbons. He runs, jumps, and argues about results no worse than us kids. He makes them redo events and often gets his way. In all those competitions he’s spitting-image of the Wolf from Nu, pogodi!—even his belly is just like that. And when he stands on the podium made of an upside-down bucket—well, he’s simply a champion. We all sing an anthem. Satisfied, Uncle Vitya hops off the podium and, waving the medals, performs a few pas of the folk dance “Ya u mamy Grunya.” 
And here’s the farewell evening. Tomorrow we all set off—we have to get back to school. We decide to build a farewell bonfire. I head into the little pine stand for deadfall and already see my uncle there. He’s chosen a big enough dead pine with a rich, already lifeless crown and is chopping it at the base with an axe. “Now we haul it,” he says when it falls heavily to the ground. “What, whole? It’s heavy as sin!” “Grab it, Pioneer! Don’t be shy!” We drag the pine to a sandy spit and set it upright in the sand. So that’s what he had in mind. What a scale! All day we drag smaller pines and stack them in a cone. What we get is a gigantic pile of tinder. In the evening, with pioneer songs and rituals (only the bugle is missing), Uncle Vitya, with the help of half a liter of gasoline, lights for us such a fire to the very heavens that in the village of Brykino, Tractor Driver Ivan rings the iron bar on the fire shield, summons the locals. They row out into the broad water in a sprawling skiff and can only spit in vexation when they make out the prank of the visiting scapegrace Viktor. 
We know nothing of it. We sing, “Flare up, campfires, O blue nights!” 
Chapter 17
Uncle Vitya ended his life as merrily and brightly as he lived. On a snowy evening, he and friends, tipsy, spilled out of the club after a New Year’s party. A bus pulling toward the metro had just arrived. Everyone ran, and he ran. Probably egging the others on, maybe with a brigand’s jaunty whistle—he could do that. Everyone made it. He… didn’t. He didn’t notice a car darting across his path. 
At the funeral, some comrade-in-arms gave a speech. He told a lot—how our Uncle Vitya all through the war, at times in impossible conditions, in flatly unflyable weather, bombed the enemy. German flak shot at him, enemy planes chased him, his comrades died one after another, and he kept bombing, bombing… 
Bombed… About that our Uncle Vitya never spoke. If about the war—then about the guardhouse, about American aerated chocolate, about… Only not about death, not about bombing. 
Only once did his face change; he became not himself. He quietly said, as if to himself: “There—that altitude.” He was standing then by the window of our new eighth-floor apartment, looking down. I understood then that he was speaking of the war, of his combat sorties in the Il-2 ground-attack plane. 
Chapter 18
That’s how he remained with me—forever alive. Yes. Forever alive. With God there are no dead; with Him all are alive. That’s how Scripture reads. 
“Bungler! Blockhead! Rotten stump!”—I scold myself in my uncle’s voice whenever I manage to mess something up in life. Then I cross myself and ask the Heavenly Father: 
If the Kingdom of Heaven is not allotted to those who did not accept Christ, then care, O Lord, for Your stray son Viktor. It isn’t his fault he didn’t think of You in life. It is said, “In My Father’s house are many mansions.” Assign him, O Lord, a quiet dwelling, a paradise, where beneath the bottomless heavens there is boundless taiga and wide rivers, motorboats and good friends. Where in the quiet backwaters and on the broad reaches perch and pike abound. Where in the village store the three-sixty-two vodka never runs out, and at the dawn and dusk bites it’s very much biting indeed. 
Yes… if we are to speak of the departed as stars in the night sky, then what I ended up with was not only a “tick-tock,” as I intended at the beginning of my tale about Uncle Vitya, but a whole Belt of Orion—where a third star lit up: our unforgettable Baba Tanya. 
 



Baba Tanya
Chapter 1
Beautiful Aunt Zhenya and her travel-banned husband are long gone. So are Sashok’s moderately influential grandfather and his grandmother, the seasoned instructor from a Moscow district Party committee. Gone too are my mother and my dad, gone is Ray, and—in a very special way—gone, or rather departed, is Baba Tanya. I’ll come back to that memory. And Yorik—he’s gone as well. Pity Yorik? What did he live for? To study Mein Kampf? To hate? At least he left children behind.
Elder Zosima, in Dostoevsky, advised that when you have nothing in particular to pray for, say, “Lord, be merciful to all souls who in this very moment stand before You.” So that’s how I ask: “Be merciful also to Yorik, Lord!” And to all of us, Lord, be merciful!
It is not, in fact, a simple question—whether we should pray for the dead. Is there any point? Imagine the shock for a man who prospered in this world, who never even thought of accepting Christ—suddenly to awaken on the other side and realize, at last, that God really is. What dismay for someone used to honor and respect to find himself among the rejected! The gate is shut—you’re not admitted to the Kingdom of Heaven. And truth be told, not many are admitted. Among the decent-looking, respectable ones, only a handful—the rest are simpletons, half-fools, the riffraff you never noticed in life. And you, the one carried with speeches and wreaths and even a rattling gun salute, are suddenly met by fiends uniformed like Red Army soldiers in budyonovka helmets with three-line rifles, lined up six at a time and driven into some frozen hell to fell timber with an axe or haul ore in a wheelbarrow…
But I’m only imagining. How could I know what’s there? I’m mortal like everyone else. I do try, loving God, not to sin—but I succeed poorly. None of us are sinless.

Chapter 2
“What do you mean, no one is sinless?” my mother once protested when I tried to explain something to her. “What do you mean nobody without sin? I am without sin.” And she was certain of it. For every unseemly act she had an excuse; she recognized no guilt in herself. Or maybe she only pretended?
So it seems to me she left this life without accepting Christ. Although how can I know what revelations may have visited her at the very last minute? I was in America, long estranged from her, and she was buried without me. Another of my sins.
What became of my mother on that other side—I cannot sense. Nor do I feel any connection with my grandmother, nor with her brother, whom I knew well, nor with other kin and acquaintances who were worldly people, not honoring God in the least.
But my dad—and Ray—visited me in dreams. And I know they are all right.
My father came to me quite recently. You know those computer programs that take a photo of an elderly person and spit out a portrait of him as a handsome youth, as if he had tasted a rejuvenating apple? Brows thick and black, face fresh and young, eyes sparkling, mustache sharp. With women everything taut and touched up too. In short—a dashing fellow! That was exactly how my dad appeared in my dream. Beside him I looked the old man, while he seemed thirty-five at most—trim, springy, vigorous. He looked at me and my household strangely, as if he had dropped in by chance on his former world and already knew everything here, glancing at us with a shade of pity: well, what can you do, you’ll have to live it out here yet. But in his mind he was already there, in his new reality. I embraced him joyfully—he was alive, warm, his shoulders muscular, full of strength…
Ah… it was a good dream.
Ray too appeared, not long after his passing. He drove up to our Tulsa house in his Dodge Caravan, opened the rear door, rummaged and pulled out some boxes for us. My wife and children poured outside, and he looked at us, smiling, squinting in the bright day, the sun glinting on his short gray brush-cut. It was clear he missed us, but he was not sad—as if he knew that ahead of us all lay endless eternity.
But the most shattering, soul-awakening impression came from my encounter with my departed daughter.

Chapter 3
Masha lived with her mother, my first wife, in Zelenograd outside Moscow. On weekends I often took Masha into my new family. We already had Danila, just a year old, and six-year-old Masha delighted in fussing over her baby brother. Three years had passed since my divorce; things had settled somehow, life rolling along quietly.
We lived on the edge of Moscow, in a rented, spacious flat with a big balcony. Everything seemed fine.
And then suddenly—as they say here in America, out of the blue—early one Saturday morning, when I was about to go fetch Masha, the doorbell rang. There stood my ex-wife with her father. I was stunned. “Hi,” I said in surprise. I expected nothing of the kind. And my ex said:
“Masha is dead.”
I remember how everything around me lurched; my knees buckled. I staggered into the kitchen and sank onto the little couch. My mind worked sluggishly; everything blurred. Only later did I learn what had happened.
On a bright March day the daycare nannies were getting the children ready to go outside. They dressed half the group and let the tots out first so they wouldn’t overheat while they finished with the rest. The children, giddy with sun and spring, scattered every which way. Masha ran to the slide. She climbed, sat down, pushed off—and the string of her hood caught on a damned nail sticking out of the guardrail, yanked tight.
And Masha was gone.

Chapter 4
When my ex-wife and her father left, the same dazzling March day spread outside. I couldn’t sit at home. I called a friend, and together we set out on a long walk through the spring fields, glittering with snow under an impossibly blue sky, along the Canal, from Levoberezhnaya to Vodniki. I still couldn’t believe it; I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t comprehend. I simply didn’t accept that my child was gone. I couldn’t accept that Masha’s life had ended just like that, through some tragic accident.
Çäåñü ëåãêèé âåòåð äàâíèõ ñíîâ,
Èëü âèäåííûõ èëè ïðîæèòûõ,
Çäåñü áåëèçíà áûëûõ ñíåãîâ
Íåáåñ ãîëóáèçíîé îìûòûõ.
Çäåñü áóäóò îáðàçû ñìåíÿòü
Ïîëóíàìåê íà ðàññóæäåíèå
Çäåñü áóäóò âîëüíî ëèøü ëåòàòü
Ïðîæèòûõ æèçíåé ïðèâèäåíüÿ...
It sounds very good, melancholic in Russian. So I didn’t even try to reach the same rhythm and magic in English. Just line by line for you:
Here is a light wind of ancient dreams,
Either seen or once lived through,
Here lies the whiteness of long-gone snows,
Bathed in heaven’s blue.
Here images will shift and fade
Half-hints into reflection,
Here only will freely drift
The phantoms of lived lives…
That’s what I wrote years later, under the impression of that day. It was as if I realized once and for all that there is no death. It felt as though someone whispered to me: “The heavens do not make mistakes. It had to be this way.”
But what heavens? Who sits there, ruling over life so harshly? What is the point of all this anyway—life, the blueness of the sky, the sparkling of snow, “the bustle of cities and the streams of cars”? Why come here at all, bear all this burden, if you’re ruled only by accident, the collision of stupid circumstances? If joy is snatched away and grief crashes down on you, merciless—what good is life then?
I simply could not believe that my daughter was gone. My very being refused to accept it.

Chapter 5
Then came the funeral, under a gray, joyless sky, and Masha was taken away from all who stood grieving. I kissed my daughter’s ice-cold forehead and said to her in silence, “Mashenka, I know you hear me. You’re not in this dead little body. Come with me.”
And truly, she went with me then.
After that I was overcome by a strange, overwhelming sense of closeness with my child. I began to watch my speech. Even at work I could no longer stay in places where men cursed, smoked, or behaved obscenely. My child was with me now, always—my six-year-old daughter. She played and leapt across the tops of file cabinets, weightless, while I sat at my desk. She frolicked around me, ran across rooftops kicking snow down with her little foot, testing her new essence as I walked through the streets. She would quietly catch up to me, a gentle angel, when I was about to enter the subway, and stand beside me, holding my hand while the train rumbled through the dark tunnels.
It was all like a delirium. It both was and wasn’t. But such is our reality—perception is stronger than truth. If we feel something, then it is.
If it had been only me, I could have told myself: you’ve lost your mind, forget it. But my new wife also felt Masha’s presence as soon as I returned home. Masha would rush to Danila, who stopped fussing and began to smile for no reason at all. She filled our little apartment with bright, restless joy, and sat with us at dinner. It felt as if Someone Else was present with us those evenings—someone Great and Eternal.
Little by little we grew used to this visitation. And then, gradually, it began to fade. Masha grew more interested in her own distant wanderings, as though new, unknown horizons were opening to her. She seemed to mature in a special way—a thoughtfulness no longer childlike came into her. It drew her toward that faraway realm, closed to us.
And then—yes, just as they say—on the fortieth day after her departure from this earth, she seemed to answer some call. She bid us farewell, smiling in a special way with the corners of her eyes and lips, with a look full of support and love. She waved to us, already from afar—and went away forever.

Chapter 6
It was as if the heavens opened to me. Suddenly I clearly realized that everything—the past, the future, the present, Masha’s short life and her departure, the distant stars and the humming refrigerator in my kitchen, the depths of the oceans and the blood driven by my heart—all of it is one whole, indivisible, not even eternal, simply existent. In this world there are no losses or gains, only the common whole, whose name is…
And here I stumbled. I couldn’t finish the thought, and I began searching for an explanation.
I didn’t have to look long. I told all this to a kindly woman known for her interest in mystical things. Without hesitation she handed me a book by Ramacharaka, The Inner Teaching of the Philosophies and Religions of India. Everything I had been feeling was set out there—nicely written, neatly explained. Embarrassing to admit now, but back then all that Eastern esoterica calmed me and swept me away. For about a year, photocopied occult treatises were my favorite pastime.
And then—like a bucket of cold water—I came to my senses. I was already about to join some group, essentially a sect, when bitter disappointment in its leader hit me and drove me away from the whole company.
The yoga authorities described in those books had sternly warned: all such acquired abilities—astral flight, healing by biofield, deflecting negative energies and so on—must never be used for personal gain. I had liked that. But then the vulgar crash came. The leader told us how, during a court case with her ex-husband, she had tried to “aim an astral tube” at the judge, willing him toward the decision she wanted—but the “wooden blockhead,” as she called him, didn’t respond. Her disciples sympathized passionately, but I realized then this was not my crowd. I stopped showing up.
As for yoga itself, I wasn’t disillusioned. But no matter how many asanas I twisted myself into, no matter how long I stood on my head, no matter how hard I strained on the mat—peace in the soul never came. Something was missing.

Chapter 7
One bright March day I gathered myself and went to church—the one at Vagankovo Cemetery. A year had passed since Masha’s death, and I wanted to do something for her. The church was only a ten-minute walk from my place.
Inside it was crowded and hazy with the light smoke of burning incense. I felt a bit lost and didn’t really understand what was going on around me. At first I found myself at the tail of a line and followed it to see what they were giving out. A stern priest, in a gold-embroidered vestment and tall hat, was serving communion. I had no idea what that was, or how to behave.
I was a journalist—used to chatting casually with people in authority. And this priest looked like authority. So I spoke to him, thinking such a simple matter he could easily handle while talking to me.
But suddenly he drew his brows together, shot me a glare, and barked, “Here, no questions are asked!”
I recoiled in shock. I had blundered in at the wrong moment. I stepped aside and looked around. It really was solemn, pleasant, beautiful. Something made me want simply to stand there, as though I’d come home. Sunlight streamed through the windows beneath the dome and played on the gold of the icons. A saint looked down from the wall with what seemed like sympathy.
A little man all in black—cap on his head, a beard, intelligent eyes—stood nearby, murmuring prayers and crossing himself. I was about to address him when, somewhere across the church, singing began. He hurried off, picking up the chant mid-step. I decided to wait. That was the sort of man I needed—the one with kind, intelligent eyes, not angry ones.
Following him, I found myself before three coffins. A funeral service was underway. It didn’t trouble me at all—rather, it felt perfectly fitting. As if without the dead the place would not be right. My head swam. It all seemed like a dream—and my whole life in that moment seemed like an illusion. I expected someone to shake me awake at any second and pull me away from this singing, this gleam through the shimmering haze.
Then I saw him again—the little man in black—walking back toward me. His aria was finished; he was returning to his corner, to the same icon. He glanced at me and said quietly, “Forgive me, I saw you wanted to ask something?”
“Yes, of course.” He took me by the elbow and led me aside, where an old woman dozed on a stone bench. Then began a long conversation in which I did most of the talking and he listened attentively—sometimes nodding in agreement, sometimes pondering, sometimes doubtful.
I told him how I had led Masha away from the coffin, how I had felt her presence, what my wife had experienced, and what Indian yogis said about all this—yogis, yogis, yogis…

Chapter 8
From time to time my listener excused himself, hurrying away to chant or recite something. I waited patiently, trying to recall what else I hadn’t yet poured out. Then he returned, and my lecture on Eastern mysticism resumed—right there in the middle of an Orthodox church.
I even forgot why I had come. But he seemed to know, and he let me spill out all my muddled contents.
Gradually the church emptied. The dead were carried away, space opened up, the communion line dissolved. The air grew brighter, fresher, as if a door had been opened and the March breeze, with a touch of spring moisture, had flown in to see what was happening.
At last I fell silent. The little bearded man straightened his narrow shoulders and spoke:
“All you’ve said is your most precious personal experience. Reincarnation, flights in meditation, nirvana—it’s all beautiful, even alluring. But look closely, my friend, you’ll notice one thing: all that Eastern wisdom has empty heavens.”
Those two words—empty heavens—hit me like a hammer. I wanted to argue, as always, but I had nothing to answer. I suddenly realized he was right.
He continued:
“I’ll point you to one place in Scripture that will explain much. John 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
At that moment something shifted around me. As if I had heard the very thing I had come for. My eyes even darkened.
When I came to, the darkness hadn’t cleared. The sunlight was blocked by the figure of that very same chief priest who had barked me away from communion. His voice thundered at my companion:
“What the devil is this? An interesting conversation? You forget yourself, deacon! Do you know before whom you stand? You stand before your priest!”
I wanted to step in, to explain why I had come—but there was no chance. I got it too, and hard. Two more men appeared with “usher” armbands. The air turned cold, uncomfortable. I hurried out.
That was how I got kicked out of an Orthodox church. And not for the last time did I get tangled up with the Orthodox.

Chapter 9
Those words—“the Only Begotten Son” and “God so loved”—I had heard before. When I was way younger. From Baba Tanya. Only then they flew right past me. Seeds scattered on rocky soil, blown away by the winds that roared in my head in those days, or pecked up by greedy birds that cawed: grab it, grab it, take from life everything you can. Life is given only once—what could be more important than yourself? Me! Me! Me!
And it seemed right, natural. Who else would take care of you if not yourself? Everything that unlettered Baba Tanya said just whistled like some bizarre tune and drifted off into the wide heavens.
Truth be told, none of that wisdom was really aimed at me anyway. Back then I was buried in textbooks, cramming for university entrance exams, aiming for the history faculty. Outside the window stretched a beautiful green summer—bright days, long warm evenings when I longed to toss aside all that paper drudgery and take off on my beloved bike. But I couldn’t afford to slack off. If I failed the exams, the army awaited—and I had no desire at all to end up there. So I stuck to the books.
My only breaks were visits from my friends. By then we no longer drank or played cards. Smoking—even out on the balcony—was strictly forbidden by my father. My parents had anticipated the anti-alcohol campaign. Now there was always a dish of candies and cookies on the kitchen table, and Baba Tanya was instructed to serve tea to everyone who dropped in. My father, half-joking, explained: tea is not vodka—you can’t drink much of it. But drink enough tea, and you won’t go out for vodka. He turned out to be right. I noted with surprise how, after a long tea session in our kitchen, Alyosha and Kostya no longer went for a bottle, but stayed sober.

Chapter 10
Marinka often stopped by too. At our place she had only one faithful friend left: my mother’s bookcase, which seemed to understand everything about life.
She would sit for hours on the little folding ladder that doubled as a chair, flipping through pages, reading deeply. She was so quiet I sometimes forgot she was there at all. Baba Tanya—who worried terribly about all that had happened to Marinka—would draw her off to the kitchen and try to reason with her. I joined their tea sessions, continuing with my textbook, half-listening to their conversation.
According to Baba Tanya, a woman’s first and greatest love must be Jesus Christ. After Him—far down—there should be no one else. On earth, the second love is her husband. If the husband is a believer, peace and harmony reign in the family. Happiness.
“And what is happiness?” Marinka would lift her sad eyes.
“Happiness…” Baba Tanya would falter for a moment, then answer. “Well, happiness is simple. It’s when you want nothing else at all. When you have everything, and you are content.”
For Baba Tanya, a God-fearing husband was exactly that “nothing else you could ever want.” Blessings, in her view, flowed down from heaven onto the husband. The husband in the family had to be king, priest, and judge—the one answerable to God for everything. Such a man would allow neither drunkenness nor frivolity.
“And where would I ever find one of those?” Marinka grew even sadder.
Then I too would set aside my book and look at Baba Tanya with the same question. In the Soviet reality of the seventies, such a thing really did seem a rarity.
“Ask the Lord,” Baba Tanya would say with conviction. “He will send you a good fellow. You’ll know your true one with your heart. Pray for him, and those goods will show up in him. The Lord is merciful. He will yet send you your happiness.”
Marinka, somewhat calmed, would leave. She read through the books she’d borrowed, brought them back in two or three days, spent more hours by the bookcase, and once again Baba Tanya sat her down for tea. I joined them too.

Chapter 11
One day Kostya and Alyosha showed up together. Baba Tanya bustled about, tending to our sober little company. My friends had just returned from a fishing trip. Out on the Volga it had been calm, windless; in the backwaters they had caught perch and pike, the clouds reflected in the water, and the sunsets had been magnificent.
“In the Kingdom of Heaven it’s even more beautiful,” Baba Tanya murmured quietly, almost to herself, pouring hot water into Kostya’s teacup.
“Maybe it is,” Alyosha smirked, “but we won’t see it. As the saying goes—we’d love to get into heaven, but our sins won’t let us.”
“Then don’t sin,” Baba Tanya said, looking at him with something like surprise. “Don’t fool around, ne baluy. And you’ll see, He’ll let you in. The Lord is merciful. He forgives us all.”
“There is no God, Baba Tanya,” Alyosha declared defiantly. “It’s all just opium for the people, to keep simple minds distracted.”
“Eh…” Baba Tanya sighed, full of sorrow. “Don’t be so quick to deny Him. Live a little longer. The Lord will come to you too—like an Unexpected Guest. You’ll repent yet. You’ll beg to come under His wing.”
“And end up in heaven,” Kostya finished, with irony and, beneath it, a kind of childlike longing.
“No, the one who’ll end up in heaven is our Baba Tanya,” Alyosha joked. “Say a prayer for us there, Baba Tanya. Don’t forget us sinners.”
“But how could I be in heaven if you were suffering?” she said, almost startled, as if realizing something all at once. She sank heavily onto a stool. Her face suddenly went pale. She finished the thought softly, as though speaking to herself: “What kind of life would that be for me?”
I realized at once that something was wrong—her heart had seized, or something like that.
“Baba Tanya, wait, breathe deeper. I’ll get you some Corvalol,” I fussed, rummaging through the medicine drawer until I found the little bottle.
“Who knows how to give this?”
“I do,” Marinka stood up. “You drip it into water.”
“No…” Baba Tanya raised her elbow, as if pushing it all away, listening to something within herself. “What I need…” Her face went strikingly pale, as though she had lost weight in an instant. “What I need… is to go home. Help me, Marina…”

Chapter 12
It was clear now—something was really wrong with Baba Tanya. Marinka and Kostya carefully guided her through the little hallway. As soon as they opened the front door and stepped outside, Alyosha and I ran to the phone and dialed 03. The dispatcher answered and said an ambulance would come.
Marinka laid Baba Tanya not on the big bed with its green spread but on the low ottoman by the window, beneath the icons with their flickering lamp. She tucked a plump pillow under her head. We opened the window to let fresh air in. Baba Tanya seemed a little better. Color returned to her cheeks, her eyes calmed, and she even smiled apologetically, as though embarrassed by the commotion.
The doctor arrived—an older, bald man. We told him what had happened. He measured her blood pressure, listened at her chest with a stethoscope, and grunted: “Looks like a heart attack. We’ll need specialists, a cardiac team. Leave her as she is. Don’t let her get up.” Then he left for his car.
But Baba Tanya had no thought of getting up. She lay there quietly, smiling faintly, for no clear reason.
“You should call your father,” Alyosha said to me.
“Right!” I dashed to my place and grabbed the phone. His secretary answered, said he was somewhere in the lab and she’d try to find him. While I waited, Marinka came in, tearful, and through her sobs said, “Baba Tanya… she’s gone.” She clung to me, sobbing uncontrollably. I didn’t know whether to comfort her or to run there myself. Tears poured down my own cheeks.

Chapter 13
The ambulance arrived; the doctor stepped out and went back into Baba Tanya’s apartment. Marinka and I followed. Kostya sat pale and hollow-eyed at the foot of the bed where Baba Tanya lay with that same faint smile on her face.
The doctor approached, took her hand, held it a moment, then let go. It fell lifelessly.
“You, young man,” he said to Alyosha, “go down and tell the driver to call it off. No specialists needed. And you,” he looked at Kostya, “close her eyes. You’re the grandson, I suppose…”
Kostya didn’t say he was not a grandson; he rose silently and awkwardly brushed his hand down Baba Tanya’s face.
The doctor sat at the table filling out papers. I stood in the middle of the room, holding Marinka as she wept into my shoulder, unable to believe this was real. Just minutes ago she had been pouring us tea, scolding Alyosha, speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven—and now this. She had left with a smile on her lips, as if simply gone home. As if she hadn’t been afraid at all. And what now, without Baba Tanya? Suddenly I felt so small, so orphaned, that I nearly broke down myself.

Chapter 14
My father couldn’t get through on the phone—the receiver had been left off the hook. He left work early, as though he’d sensed trouble. He came, stood beside Baba Tanya, and said sternly to me, “You’ll take the body to the morgue.”
I staggered at the thought. I pictured myself on bus route 194 with Baba Tanya’s corpse as baggage. I began to wonder who I could ask to help. But Father went on:
“I’ll call my institute. They’ll send a car. You’ll go along, see her there. We can’t leave her here. There’s nobody to wash her, to prepare her. They’ll do it properly. Where’s her funeral bundle? Marina, check the wardrobe.”
Marinka, who still hadn’t left, opened the old wardrobe and found, sure enough, on the top shelf a bundle of clean linen.
“Oh…” she said. “There’s money here too.”
“Take it,” Father said. “Consider it her inheritance to you. I’ll cover the expenses.”
Marinka began to protest, but he cut her off: “Take it. Don’t argue.”

Chapter 15
An hour later a green UAZ arrived. Two men lifted Baba Tanya onto a stretcher, covered her with a sheet, strapped her down, and heaved the stretcher into the narrow elevator. I ran down the stairs. Frightened old women from the building—women who’d never been close to her, only exchanged greetings—tried to wail a little, but the men didn’t pause. They slid the stretcher into the back of the truck. One of them shoved me forward: “Get in.”
There was no room in the cab, so I climbed into the back, edging along beside Baba Tanya’s body to the little bench by the window that separated us from the driver. The UAZ jolted along; the stretcher swayed. Had she been alive, she would have been terribly uncomfortable. I no longer cried. I stared ahead through the window, between the two men’s heads, thinking about the fragility of life as best I could.
Father took charge of things in those days. He sent me to the funeral bureau, and to the church to arrange the service. “Go on, go,” he said gently but firmly. “Baba Tanya looked after you for years—now you owe her a debt.” At the time my frightened young soul balked; I resisted. But now I’m deeply grateful. My father was a wise man.

Chapter 16
The memorial meal fell to my mother to organize. Feasts of every kind—birthdays, weddings, funerals—were her element. She simply took Baba Tanya’s old notebook of phone numbers and called everyone who answered, informing them of the neighbor’s death. Those whose voices she liked were invited to the funeral.
Mother didn’t make strict distinctions between denominations, and a minor awkwardness at the service was quietly smoothed over by tactful mourners. It turned out Baba Tanya had been not only a faithful Orthodox parishioner but also a regular at an Evangelical Baptist gathering. As one old woman explained, “She went to the Orthodox to pray, and to the Baptists to hear about Christ.”
A relative appeared too—a niece, I think, from Vladimir—who looked after Baba Tanya’s belongings, which my mother was glad to be spared. Everyone thanked my parents for their care. I was told to take them as an example.
I visited Baba Tanya’s grave only once, on the anniversary of her passing. Kostya and Marinka tended it for many years.
I don’t know what has become of that grave now. I only know this: if ever there were truly holy souls on this earth, they were like our Baba Tanya.

Part 8 

Lil’ka-Lilith and Jesus Behind My Shoulder
Chapter 1
Ah, the road! Why do I climb into the cab of my many-ton truck every Monday? Why can’t I just sit at home? What pulls me out toward the vast plains, the deserts, the mountains? Or maybe it’s just that no Russian can resist a fast ride. The engine rumbles awake after its rest, warms, and I cross myself with a short plea: “Send me, Heavenly Father, a safe trip; let my roads be straight and free of mishaps; let the nights be calm; let me meet neither rogue nor angry cop; and keep me attentive and wise behind this very wheel!”
And—hey! Off we go. My rig rolls out and roars down the wide highway toward the faraway vistas.
And with it my tale takes flight. I can’t hold the reins of this plot anymore; the boundless expanse of the novel runs off toward the horizon and lifts me into the heavens themselves. It’s no longer just a story. My story ends here. It isn’t even a novel now—an unrestrained song bursts out. No, a poem! Sail, my little skiff, on the will of the waves—as Pushkin once said. Sail, dissolve like a white dove into the blue expanse of the skies, my story! Roll, my truck, over the smooth road all the way to the ocean, even to the farthest stars!
There—black children wave joyfully from the roadside, and sharing their delight I pull the plaited leather cord; the booming roar of my locomotive horn echoes across the land. The children laugh, my soul rejoices, and even heaven itself rejoices with us.
No, I can’t keep hold of the reins of this plot. I meant to write about a couple of other fellows from that party, but it turns out—there’s nothing to write. “…in youth he was young, at twenty both dandy and bold, at thirty advantageously wed… of whom they said for a whole century: N.N., a fine man.” Pushkin again. And what can you add to that? And what does it matter, anyway, who sent me that postcard? The unexpected guest I began this story about turned out—quite literally—to be the Real Unexpected Guest. Whoever comes my way—let them come. I’ll welcome anyone, help anyone. After all—they helped me, and how!
Chapter 2
There, in the lake house, on the mantel, in a frame, stands a small photo. Four of us: me—thin, in that same sporty half-coat Ray gave me, worn out from the road but happy; my wife—tiny, chestnut-haired, in a white jacket, always beautiful; and our son of seven and daughter of five—stunned by the long flight, but with eyes full of curiosity. We’re all carrying some kind of bundle, just out of the plane in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the very heart of America. Probably only I fully understand what is happening. Only I, in that moment, thank God for the fulfillment of a dream. The others are too overwhelmed. We’re met by joyful people calling out “Welcome!” Flashes blind our eyes as cameras click. Ray tells how he almost missed his plane to Chicago, where he rushed to meet us coming from Moscow. Some cheerful, smiling women chat with my wife; to my surprise I see her answering—and they understand her! How? She hardly knows any English. Someone leads me to the conveyor belt, and I fish out a couple of shabby suitcases—the very ones Ray and Esther left us in Latvia. They’re light, almost empty. Just some clothes. We’d been told not to drag junk along, that everything was ready for us here. And so, we hadn’t.
The vast asphalt of night roads, glittering with lights. The Dodge Caravan speeds us along. Ray at the wheel, Esther beside him, the rest of us behind. Some others ride with us—excited, talkative. A turn, and we stop.
A house.
Spacious.
Big.
The living room alone could swallow our whole two-room flat we left behind in the Latvian woods.
Here, all is different, thoughts are different,
Here, you forget what you’ve left behind,
Here, there’s no room for empty doubting,
Here, the path is clear, the way defined.
Çäåñü âñå íå òàê, çäåñü ìûñëèøü ïî-äðóãîìó,
Çäåñü çàáûâàåøü, ÷òî îñòàâèë ïîçàäè,
Çäåñü ìåñòà íåò ñîìíåíèþ ïóñòîìó,
Çäåñü ÿñåí ïóòü, êîòîðûì ïðåäñòîèò èäòè.
In the garage waited a handsome Mercury Zephyr, as big as a Volga-24—but I had no license yet, didn’t even know how to drive it. Ray had thought of that too. Propped against the garage wall—an elegant bicycle. A week later, I rode it off to college.
Chapter 3
I could go on describing those first months of our new life. But the kaleidoscope of memory turns, throws up the uninvited—and suddenly I’m back in that far-off 1984, on the quiet bank of a Volga backwater. I sit on a log beside Kostya, pondering his words: “Once you’ve promised to marry…”
Ah, Lilechka—child of hell. Not Lilechka at all, but Lilith herself! Only Kostya doesn’t know it; he loves her with all his soul—life without her is no life for him.
To dodge the subject, I say the dawn is breaking, time to reel in the lines. I pick up my spinning rod, resting against a pine, and walk farther along the sandy shore toward the grassy shallows where perch splash and play—where Kostya’s blind-Romeo talk can’t reach me. Let him fly with his Lilechka in his dreams. As for me—she was already sitting here (I jerk a thumb over my shoulder), and I didn’t know where to put her or what to do with that whole stupid story.
Where did she come from, that she-devil? I only learned her real name later, by chance. She was a temptation to us all—especially to Kostya. The righteous one.
All right—I'll tell it in order. So many years have passed, and still I shiver when I recall her. And me—I was guilty too, for getting tangled in it. Tangled in what? My own fault wasn’t so great. God spared me. But still—oh, how close it was…
Chapter 4
She showed up under Kostya’s arm as if out of nowhere. Yes—just like that. He had gone to some village near Ryazan to help someone—fix a fence, chop firewood; I forget. That’s Kostya: whenever someone’s in need, he’s there. It was an old woman, the grandmother of one of Kostya’s army buddies. The friend was off in the north, so the granny was on her own. Kostya did the work, and the granny liked him right away. A neighbor came over to help—brought vodka and snacks. All his fingers were blue with tattoos, little rings inked in. After the work they sat down at the table. The vodka ran out; they went to the village store for more… Then Kostya’s lights went out.
He woke in the morning on a bed—with a naked girl on his arm. And such a pretty one too, batting her eyelashes at him. Kostya lay still, hardly breathing, afraid to scare away the vision. She kissed him—and how! Who wouldn’t reel from that? He didn’t know that the ex-con neighbor had whispered to her: “Kostya’s from Moscow; he has his own two-room flat.” And Kostya—he hadn’t prayed that night: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And so the she-fiend slipped under his blanket and into his sin. That’s why, good people, you cross yourselves at night and stay on guard—it is written: the devil roams like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
I only learned later about that setup. But Kostya stayed the fool—fell in love like a stone in water.
I should have warned him right away—maybe he’d have gotten free. But how do you tell a friend such a thing? I kept putting it off. And maybe… maybe I myself… I couldn’t steal another man’s girl, but I didn’t reject her outright either, as if I cherished my own chance. Wanted to get used to it somehow. The demons kept whispering: don’t be a fool—you’ll regret it later. Pfah!
Chapter 5
A doll, damn it… There was something artificial about Lilechka. Put her in a department-store hall—she could pass for a mannequin, no problem. Not a Barbie—Barbie’s tall and slim. She was more like those East-German dolls you could sometimes buy in the “Leipzig” store on the outskirts of Moscow, if you got lucky. Cute, a little plump, nicely shaped. Any outfit looked like it had been made for her. Her head seemed almost childlike, a little too big at first glance—but no, look closer and it was just right. Even the way her hair fell on her cheek—exactly like on a doll. Eyelashes, lips, a slightly upturned nose.
Me, fool that I was, I let my eyes linger on all that—and she noticed. Even gave me a quick wink in return. I didn’t respond. What business of mine? She was Kostya’s girl, and I was married. The last, however, didn’t bother her in the least.
From the very moment Kostya brought her over, she’d figured out who my parents were. Sure, Kostya was a decent catch: by some family-exchange quirk he’d lucked into a two-room apartment. Not bad for Moscow. But the place was almost empty, and Kostya was a simple soul—a man without silver, happy with nothing. Drink, joke, enjoy life, love everybody. A complete fool in the best sense.
But here… here was different. Clearly prosperous, cultured people, shelves of books—not just money-grubbing traders. And she—she scanned it all in an instant and fixed her dark eyes on me. Just for a second, not to spook me.
Chapter 6
It was summer. My wife and daughter were at the dacha. I had quit one job and was waiting to start another, so I was usually at home during the day. Outside, poplar fluff drifted, birches rustled, and I felt restless. Couldn’t go fishing—could get a phone call any moment. Nothing much to do. I longed to dive into the lively newspaper life again, but they kept dragging it out, checking and re-checking things in the First Department—the KGB guys. Waiting—nothing worse.
That morning Irina suddenly came home from the dacha. Someone had offered her a fancy sundress, and she’d rushed back to try it on. The new dress suited her perfectly. Irina twirled in front of the mirror, turned this way and that, stood on tiptoe to check the sandals, did a little dance. She decided to go through her other outfits. Everything fit, everything looked good on her. The whole fashion show ended in a merry, stormy spousal union right in the middle of the day. Well—why not? We were young.
Chapter 7
Catching her breath, Irina rushed back to her commuter train, and I decided to head to GUM, the department store, to buy a chemical set for developing slides. I had already pocketed my metro pass, laced my shoes—when suddenly the doorbell rang.
There stood Lilechka. In a gray raincoat. I was surprised—the day was sunny—but then the coat opened, and I almost collapsed. Underneath—nothing but a young woman’s naked body wrapped in some kind of tempting silk harness. I didn’t even know such things existed then. Maybe I’d glimpsed something like it once in Playboy. Her face was painted, and she’d done something to her lips that… made me want to dress them in panties.
I was knee-deep in film development—not in the mood for extra naked girls. But if it hadn’t been for my recent closeness with my wife—who knows? This time too, the Lord spared me from sin. I fled my own apartment in shame, chased by the mocking laughter of demons I can still hear through the years, shuddering to this very day.
Chapter 8
Kostya… quiet, quiet—but what a mess he could bring. Evil spirits piled onto him back then, and I was left to clean it up. Maybe it’s true—they target the righteous. With Lilechka, he glowed with happiness; yet he grew thoughtful too. Sometimes he’d stare at the floor, and you’d never guess he’d been joking a minute earlier.
Once he sat at my place and pulled a book from the shelf. We listened to some music.
“Here it says,” he began, “‘And God saw that it was good.’”
What on earth is he reading? I leaned over. It looked like an ordinary book.
“Well? So what?” I asked.
“So… how did God know what was good or bad if man wasn’t even created yet? Nobody had done anything. No good, no bad yet.”
“And?”
“And! We know what’s good, what’s bad. So it wasn’t us who came up with it. God already knew from the start. He came, so to speak, from where it was already known. And if we know too—what’s good and bad—doesn’t that mean we’re like God? Animals only know they’re hungry. Or to run so they don’t get eaten.”
I stared at Kostya, trying to make sense of it. His point was that ethics existed even before the world began—defining good and evil.
“Well…?” I still didn’t know how to answer.
“Well, what?!” He stared at me, eyes bright with discovery. “Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. They bit into it—and realized they were naked. Right? Animals still don’t care they’re naked. But they knew.”
“And?” I still wasn’t catching on.
“And! They were kicked out of paradise so they wouldn’t eat from the Tree of Life and Death too and become like gods. Isn’t that right?”
“Well… I don’t know exactly.”
“Not well, but exactly. So if you know good from evil, and you’re immortal, then you are a god. And if they say in Christ we inherit eternal life, then doesn’t that mean—?”
“Mean what, Kostya?”
“Mean that if you believe in the raising of Lazarus, like… like Raskolnikov did, then you become godlike? If you believe in resurrection, you believe in Christ, and if you believe in Christ, you inherit eternal life, and then you’re… god?”
“Kostya, you’ll boil my brains. So what? You, a god? Give me a break.”
“That’s what it comes to. So—if you promised to marry, then marry.”
“Here we go again! Always back to that. Fine, marry if you must. But who do you want to marry?”
Chapter 9
He looked at me in shock, as if he couldn’t believe I’d said it. I asked because I knew Lilechka was fine as she was. She kept Kostya in reserve for a rainy day; her ambitions were far higher.
Kostya didn’t know I was in touch with her behind his back—we talked on the phone. Once I tossed into our conversation the line about finding a worthy groom, “…and a kingdom to go with it,” and she just snorted: “What do I need some kingdom for? I could swallow the universe and not choke.”
It didn’t sound like a joke. It was as if a door to some black vacuum opened—and it pulled me in. More than once, in conversations with Lilechka, I felt sheer terror. I think that’s why I talked to her at all—to touch that dark boundlessness. As if demons circled around that doll-like girl, ready to snatch me the moment I gave in.
Chapter 10
Bit by bit she trained me to come when called. In a soft little voice, she’d whisper into the phone: “Don’t be afraid, silly, I don’t bite. Just say the word—everything will be yours.” In those days I was on her leash. Once a claw caught hold, the whole bird was doomed. I’d have needed a tractor to pull me out of that bog. Lilechka didn’t hurry; she devoured me bone by bone, savoring, licking her lips. “You,” she said, “are honest. You’re interesting. To make love with you is like seducing a true monk. You’ll come anyway; there’s nowhere for you to hide.”
At last I screwed up my courage and told her, “Back off. Don’t call me anymore.”
She just chuckled. “Want me to tell Kostik we’re sleeping together? He’ll forgive us—he’s kind. He’ll suffer a little; it’ll even do him good. He’s going to marry me anyway. Imagine the life he’ll have then.”
“Then I’ve no choice but to strangle you,” I groaned.
“Could you?” she asked, suddenly curious. “Could you stab someone? With a knife. Or garrote them—say, with a jump rope?”
That was over the line. Lucifer himself could have been her brother. I suddenly realized how powerless I was before her. My head rang. She took pity, though:
“All right, don’t piss yourself. Let’s do this. Find me a promising guy from a rich family, present me properly, and then run off in all directions. Let your Kostik remain a blissful little jerk. And remember: you’ve never had one like me—and you never will. Come on over. We’ll make a mess. In Kostik’s bed.”
And she laughed—horribly.
Chapter 11
What was I supposed to do with all that?! The viper was getting back at me for bolting that time. She’d come over with Kostya those same days—gazing into his eyes, combing her fingers through his hair, purring. You couldn’t believe that just an hour earlier she’d offered to put antlers on my poor friend. Even her voice changed—no rasp, no devilish growl. All tenderness and devotion. Pfah! Filth.
I wanted to run it by Alyosha, but he was off on a long work trip to Kazan. I reached him there, but he was so drunk I just waved it off. No help to be had.
She dodged marriage neatly, too. Kostya was fully used to her by then; he wanted to be married in church. Lilechka said she wasn’t baptized. To have a church wedding she’d first have to be baptized, become Orthodox—and that’s a serious step: requires faith, which, alas… she didn’t have yet. “Don’t rush me, darling, let me prepare… it’s all ahead of us. You won’t leave me, will you?” She looked at him so plaintively he was ready to swear by his mother. And the moment Kostya went out the door—ding!—she’d be calling me.
Chapter 12
I ran for it anyway. Oh, how I wanted to “make a mess” with a doll like that—she haunted my nights and wouldn’t let me sleep—but I couldn’t hurt Kostya. Just couldn’t. If it had been someone else—Sashok or Yorik—maybe I’d have risked it. But Kostya was more than a friend. I spat on waiting for the new job’s phone call, hopped on my bicycle, and rode to the dacha to my wife and daughter. A hundred kilometers of road beat all the gibberish out of me, and that evening, tired but happy, I collapsed into bed with my lawful spouse. I was very pleased with myself.
Beware, righteous husbands! There’s always a Lilechka nearby. Legions of devils swarm around us, and the closer we get to recognizing the Truth, the harder they try to shove us off the path. They’ll come as carnal temptation, or as a chance to steal, or to profit off your neighbor—know this: they want to load you with sin and destroy you. Had Kostya not gotten drunk with that ex-con who slipped Lilechka into his bed, the door wouldn’t have opened to the demons. And now Higher forces had to step in—untangle it and deliver us from the Evil One.
Chapter 13
Lilechka also had some other life we didn’t know about. She didn’t work anywhere, and sometimes disappeared—sometimes for a few days, sometimes a week. She explained that she had to show her face at some office where she just signed the payroll. Someone else worked under her name and drew the salary. As for her, she wasn’t strapped for cash; she joked she’d gotten an inheritance. And truly, as we said back then, she was well packaged. Kostya didn’t press for details, and we, his friends, had even less business poking our noses in. Still—it looked suspicious. What did the girl live on? God knows.
She also explained her absences as visits to her mother—in that same village where Kostya had fixed the fence. Kostya believed her, but once, taking a day off, he went there himself. Didn’t find her. The mother was home, but she eyed him with suspicion—what did he show up for uninvited? No Lyalya. She was here, and then she wasn’t. She’ll be here when she’s here. Maybe today. Kostya couldn’t make heads or tails of it; it was clear the old witch was hiding something. She wouldn’t give up her daughter, wouldn’t even invite him in for a cup of tea from the road—just get lost, that’s all. Those muddy, squinting eyes—one on him, the other scouting the yard. Some mother-in-law, huh.
Another fellow might have thought: the bride’s tucked behind those walls with someone she won’t hand over—but that wouldn’t occur to Kostya. Crestfallen, he went back to the station and sat there all day, watching each commuter train to see if Lilechka would hop off. Only late in the evening, hungry and completely dejected, did he head home.
“I don’t even know what to think,” he complained to me. And I didn’t want to think about it at all. As for me—let her fall through the earth. And I prayed in my heart: “Deliver us, Lord, from this devilry.”
Chapter 14
I should’ve stayed close to Kostya in those days, kept an eye on him—but I dodged him. Avoided conversations. Lilechka came back and, apparently, gave him a thrashing. She knew how to keep him in hand. She called me too, asking if I’d put him up to it.
Looks like they’d had a big row. Then Kostya vanished—just up and disappeared. It happened suddenly. He called to say he’d drop by—needed to talk. “Fine, come,” I said. Where could he go? At some point I had to open his eyes. “Grab some bread on the way,” I added. “A loaf of white and half a loaf of black. I’m home with my daughter—don’t want to go out.” The child was a bit sick; we’d brought her back from the dacha.
An hour passed—no Kostya. Two—still no Kostya. Dusk fell. Strange: if Kostya promised to bring bread, he’d break himself but do it. Something had happened. And yet, I was secretly relieved it turned out that way. The Lord spared me a hard conversation. Fine. Let it dry out and fall off by itself.
Two days later his brother called. Turns out Kostya had gone off somewhere without telling a soul. We all waited for him to show up, but days passed as if he’d fallen into water. After a week the police put him on the missing list. It was all very strange. He’d never have put people through that—least of all his adored one. At first, Lilechka darted about, looking for him. She called me—Where did you put him? Did you hide him from me?
I’ll admit, there was something satisfying in that. At last she sensed in me a force that could oppose her.
“What do you want with him? What do you want at all?” I snapped back. She answered without any shame:
“In general? I want EVERYTHING. And from your Kostik, that little fool, I wanted a residence permit. Then I’d have quietly worn him down—and brought my real boyfriend to live with me. That was just for starters.”
“Ugh, how primitive! You might at least pretend to be embarrassed.”
“Why play coy with such a fool? And why should I, by nature, be embarrassed? That’s over—I’ve got livelier schemes spinning. Say hi to Kostik. I’m flying out. And you—wait for me, and I’ll be back—” She burst into a devil’s cackle, and I swear it felt like a whole pack of demons screamed after her, “Only wait hard!”
Chapter 15
That was the last I ever heard from her, because after that she—thank God!—disappeared for good. Flew off, no doubt, on a broomstick. And when Kostya finally turned up, what began was no longer devilry but sheer criminal matter.
But let me take it in order.
I tormented myself for those two weeks he was gone. I blamed myself for his—how could it be otherwise?—death. After all, I could have prevented it and didn’t. I thought only of myself, of my peace of mind, and of Lilechka’s charms. Damn… Now my buddy was lying somewhere, cold. And there was no one left to whom I could confess.
Alyosha came back from Kazan, blinking with eyes red from drinking. He said he’d call his mother—she worked somewhere in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and might be able to push something through her bosses. We sat together for hours, racking our brains about what we could do. We even wanted to drive out to that village, find Lilechka, give her a proper grilling—but we couldn’t even remember clearly what village it was, where exactly… Ryazan province is a big place. And she’d be sitting there waiting for us? Yeah, right…
Chapter 16
I had already begun to resign myself to the idea that Kostya was gone forever when, about a week later, there suddenly came a knock at my door. I opened it. On the landing, avoiding my eyes, stood living Kostya, holding out a white loaf and half a loaf of black bread. He tried at once to dash down the stairs, but I grabbed him by the sleeve and hauled him inside. My heart was jumping with joy, but Kostya was gloomy and tight-lipped. I couldn’t get a word out of him. I only forced him to call his mother and made him promise to go home immediately. After he left, I was literally hopping with happiness.
Kostya was alive; Lilechka had vanished somewhere—thank God it was all over, without my fall.
But the rejoicing came too soon.
The very next morning three men barged into Kostya’s apartment, and one of them landed a heavy blow to his forehead. He came to on the floor and saw two younger guys rifling through his belongings, tossing books around, making a mess. Another, older man sat in a chair across from him, studying him. The man asked where Liliya was and other questions that bewildered Kostya. They yanked him up by the collar, gave him another punch, but the older man stopped the youngsters, said the kid wasn’t in on it, and they all left—leaving Kostya in confusion and disorder. It was clear that Lilechka had done something, and now these thugs would be watching Kostya’s moves, hoping he would lead them to her. But he had no idea where she was or what in the world had happened.
Chapter 17
We found out what had happened through Alyosha’s mother. Turns out Lilechka wasn’t Lilechka at all, but Valentina Ivanovna Kotova, released from prison a year earlier after serving time for apartment thefts—part of some gang, practically a cat burglar. After her release she hadn’t given up her bad habits and had joined a band of extortionists. She was the bait. That gang was under surveillance; the authorities were preparing to take them down, but suddenly their hideout near Ryazan burned down, and inside were found the bodies of the gang leader, one Pyotr Kuzmich—nicknamed “Stilyi,” the Cold One—and his mother—both shot. Now this Valentina Ivanovna—our “Lilechka”—was declared wanted nationwide, suspected of double murder. No trace of money or valuables was found in the burned house.
“Who killed the old woman, nicked the hat too,” Alyosha recalled, quoting a line from Shaw’s Pygmalion. He had never liked Lilechka.
The investigators questioned Kostya for a long time. He didn’t tell us the details, but evidently they too believed he was “not in the loop,” and they left him alone. Alyosha and I were summoned by subpoenas to the prosecutor’s office. The investigator asked me a few simple questions, wrote down my answers, had me sign, and let me go. Of course, I said nothing about my phone conversations with Lilechka—because they would only have muddied the waters. It was clear we would never see her again, and that was the best ending I could have hoped for.
I burned to shake Kostya and find out what had really happened—why a man so loyal and reliable could vanish for two weeks, ditch his beloved fianc;e, and not think of family or friends. Where had he been, and what had he been thinking with that shaggy head of his? But Kostya was… wrung out. As if that dark void behind Lilechka had sucked him dry. Nothing interested him. Evidently his workplace did value him, because his absence was smoothed over; they signed those days off against his future vocation.
Chapter 18
Life somehow settled back into its groove. I was busy at the paper, quarreled with my wife over trifles, fussed over my daughter. Alyosha drank steadily. A police “Wanted” poster with Lilechka’s photo—barely recognizable, probably from an earlier case—hung at the station. Most likely the bandits were after her too, but they never showed themselves again.
Kostya lived alone in his empty apartment, went to work, never called me. I didn’t pester him. I knew that sooner or later he’d come to his senses and tell me everything himself.
Summer ended, autumn passed, November snow began to swirl through the streets. In the evenings I sat at home, clattering on my typewriter, glancing at the aquarium—especially pleasant, those little tropics in the dark pre-winter nights.
Chapter 19
One day it struck me—today was Kostya’s birthday. Usually we’d gather in his tiny kitchen on that day. Drink a little, smoke, talk… just quietly, the three of us.
I called him. He was glad. I could tell—a weight had lifted from him a little. Kostya said, “Hey… come over, if you can.”
I didn’t bother correcting his “come over” as I usually did. I said I’d be there in an hour. Asked if I should bring a bottle.
“No. Don’t. I don’t drink anymore. At all.”
That was something new. Kostya was always at least a little buzzed—especially on his birthday. I almost asked whether I should pick up Alyosha, but realized that sober Alyosha was no company at all.
Kostya’s place was spotless, which surprised me. His mother sometimes stopped by to sweep, but when Lilechka had been around there’d always been that easy “married clutter”—as if the hosts had just gotten up and weren’t expecting guests. Now even the corners looked neat, as if the owner had just finished a thorough cleaning. I noticed there wasn’t even a trace of tobacco smell.
“You smoke on the stairs now?” I asked after congratulating him.
“I don’t smoke. Don’t play cards either. I’m a boring man now.”
“How’s that?” I was honestly surprised. So much had happened in Kostya’s life—he’d had all kinds of thoughts—but his cigarette and his half glass, he never forgot. “Then how are we supposed to celebrate?” I wondered.
“Mom brought a pie, there’s tea. Tell me this—Los Angeles, is it a good city?”
Chapter 20
I was relieved. Kostya was all right. If he was asking questions like that—whether I stood or fell over—it meant his mind was still working.
“What’s good about it? The city’s divided between gangs, people can’t live in peace; it’s got the highest crime rate in the U.S., and by number of bank robberies it’s the leader. That’s what they said on TV. What’s it to you anyway?”
“Eh… I have to go there.”
“Kostya!” I even threw up my hands. “So do I, but who’s going to let us in, saying nothing of letting us out of here? Did you forget where we live?”
“I’m getting an invitation. A visit.”
Well now! Life was getting back on track. Kostya was settling into his usual rails. I was genuinely glad, and only for form’s sake asked:
“What, you found a grandmother there or something? Maybe you’re from a family of ;migr; counts you forgot to mention in your papers?”
“I’ve got no relatives there. It’s from some woman. I don’t even know her.”
I sensed that behind all this fantasy lay the explanation of where he’d been those two weeks, and I didn’t want to discourage him by pointing out how impossible such a trip abroad was. I sat down at his kitchen table, watched him fill the kettle, strike a match, light the burner, and I didn’t press. And here in the kitchen, too, everything was clean and proper—even the windows looked freshly washed.
“Who got this place so tidy? Your mom? Amazing… you can’t even spit, it’d be a shame.”
“Me,” Kostya answered simply.
“And since when?” I marveled.
“After Lila, I wanted to clean everything. And then I just kept it up. I like living clean.”
“Clean, as in without devilry? You need a priest to sprinkle holy water for that,” I joked clumsily. But Kostya answered seriously:
“Mom invited a priest. He did what was needed.”
“Kostya, what nonsense is this? What happened here? What priest?”
“Well, you see, when I came back… the apartment turned bad somehow. Mom and I were sitting one evening, watching TV, when suddenly we heard something like a cat jumping in the kitchen. From the windowsill onto a stool—heavy-like… then from the stool to the floor. What cat? I don’t have a cat. Did the neighbor’s run in? We went and looked. Nothing. Then again—like a cat prowling. Then it got worse. I’d go to bed, and dream of little devils hauling some stone out of a swamp. Straining, dragging it, then I’d see myself asleep. They’d heave, and drop that stone onto my chest—wham! I’d wake from the pain, couldn’t breathe. And really, something heavy was lying on me. I barely shoved it off and jumped out of bed, gasping for air, ribs feeling like they were broken… And other things. All sorts of things…”
Here we go… Kostya was back, and with him all life’s “special effects.” I thought, and asked:
“So what then? The priest sprinkled holy water, and it stopped? Or are the cats still jumping at night?”
“I don’t know if it was the priest, or me praying myself, the way Baba Tanya taught us.”
“How did she teach us? When?” I asked, surprised.
“Don’t you remember? ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, protect me from every evil, from the spirits of wickedness in high places, from sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment…’ You really don’t remember?” He looked at me like at a failing student.
Baba Tanya, it’s true, said all sorts of things—fun to listen to, but I never thought to memorize them. And this one—can you imagine!—was rattling it off word for word.
“All right, Baba Tanya. Better tell me where you were those two weeks, and what you ate there that gave you such hallucinations. And what’s the ‘Enemies’ City of Los Angeles’ got to do with it?”
Chapter 21
“I… I was in Zagorsk. With some folks there…” Kostya began after a pause. “Well, this man I knew—Uncle Misha, we worked together, he was our foreman. He saw me at the train station. And… well, that’s how it happened.”
“When was that? Which station?”
“At Yaroslavsky. That time I left Lila.”
Left, huh—left his own apartment, no less. Then again, I’d done the same—bolted from her myself.
“So why did you leave? You couldn’t live without her. What went wrong?” Since Kostya had started talking, I had to press him. Otherwise he’d drift into some murky faraway again and clam up.
“You see, I kept wanting to talk with her… to figure out how she saw all of it, what we had. Looked like we were together, but it was all nonsense somehow. She’d suddenly disappear, not even say a word to me. Leave a note: ‘Be back soon, don’t worry,’ and vanish for days. And where she’d been, what she did—she wouldn’t say. Just laughed. ‘You’re the only one for me,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t be jealous. And don’t ask anything.’ And I’d ask her—‘What if we get married? You’ll still disappear like that, without a word?’ ‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,’ she’d laugh, and still push me toward that business, to the bed, I mean. And… it just didn’t feel right.”
“What? Didn’t feel right?” I didn’t get it.
“Well… I mean, it wasn’t right. When a husband and wife—it’s one thing. But like this? Without knowing what comes next? What’s the point?”
“Kostya, you’re strange. Anyone else would call it happiness—having a girl like that sleep with him and not demand anything. And you come up with this?”
“Yeah, I know. Only… without love, what is it? She didn’t even need me. Lied all the time. I could see it. And the money… she always had plenty of money. From where?… So I split. Didn’t even know where I was going. I’m standing at the station, looking at the train schedules, thinking which train would take me farther away, and Uncle Misha spots me. Calls out. Invites me to stay with him in Zagorsk. He’d moved there with his wife when he retired. They had a house on the outskirts; they rented out their Moscow apartment. So I stayed with them…”
Chapter 22
Kostya fell silent, clearly ready to drift off into his “far aways” again, but I caught him and asked quickly:
“And you sat there for two weeks? Didn’t even call your mother? What, did you go on a bender with Uncle Misha?”
“Mother wouldn’t have understood. She’d have told me you can’t miss work, and all the rest… But something was driving me out of the house. Out of Moscow. Uncle Misha—he’d always looked after me, taught me… He understood right away. Said, ‘You won’t be left without work, don’t worry.’ And they don’t drink. At all.” Kostya frowned, as if disapproving of me. “They’re different. They’re believers. Only they don’t go to church. Not any church. They have gatherings. That’s what they call it. But that’s not the point. They didn’t preach at me. They have a daughter, you see, who lives in Los Angeles. Got married. Writes that everything is fine, but they’re not so sure. She invites them to visit, but their health isn’t that good anymore. They gave me a whole stack of her letters. To read. And I read them.”
“You spent two weeks just reading letters?”
“Well, yeah. Reading. And I didn’t want to go back to Lila. I can’t live like that, never knowing what’s going on. And her ideas… She’d say a man and a woman should be equals. Freedom, she thought, was the main thing. ‘If you fool around, that’s your business, but if I find out, you’re done.’ And she’d laugh. Which meant she’d allow herself the same. Then why live together? I told her—husband and wife are like one, they complete each other. She says, ‘You’re old-fashioned.’ But in those letters—this Dasha, their daughter—she writes about her husband, always about her husband. And more than that—it felt like another planet. You read and read, and it’s like you’re seeing something real but can’t believe it. And those old folks, too… Well, they asked me to go there, to see for myself…”
“Kostya, who’s going to let you into America? What are you, a famous journalist? A diplomat?”
“She’ll send me an invitation. The old folks say I’ll get in.”
“And what, they’ve got no one else to send but you? You’re just a bum off the station bench. Where’d they get such faith in you?”
“I don’t know. Uncle Misha explained it all, asked me, ‘Will you go?’ I said I’d never been there, so yeah, I’d go.”
“As if you’d ever been!”—I burst out laughing. “Kostya, you’re unbelievable, with your old folks. What naivet;! ‘She’ll send an invitation!’ Kostya, you’re truly blessed. They built a cathedral for Basil the Blessed—now wait, they’ll put one up for Konstantin the Blessed. We had Constantine the Great—now we’ll have Kostya the Blessed. He’s going to America! To Los Angeles itself! Though… with you, nothing would surprise me. God’s grace really has descended on you!”
Chapter 23
I was still chuckling when suddenly Kostya shut down, went quiet, and said softly:
“I… I saw Christ. Grace really did descend on me.”
“What?! Are you trying to finish me off tonight? When did you see Him? Where?”
“There. On the cement blocks.”
Ba-ba-ba-BAM!!!—the famous Beethoven line thundered in my head. I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
“How’s that? On cement blocks…” I asked, realizing that now, for sure, I was about to hear a story.
Chapter 24
“There, you see,” Kostya went on, “their house stood right at the edge, and behind it—some kind of factory. Well, the factory decided to put up a wall, and it ended up right behind their house, outside the window of the room where I was staying. A gray wall. Dull. Very close. I kept staring at it while I read those letters. I’d read something about palm-lined streets, then look out the window and imagine it. Dasha described it so well you could practically see it all.
“And then, once…”—Kostya broke off, gathering himself as if deciding whether to go on. He stayed silent a little longer, then spoke, gazing into the darkness outside the window.
“Baba Tanya… Remember when you went with Alyoshka to call your father, and Marina had stepped into the kitchen? I was alone with Baba Tanya. Suddenly she lifted herself a little, looked past me somewhere, and raised her hand, like this…” Kostya lifted his hand slightly, as if to greet someone. “I asked her, ‘What is it, Baba Tanya, do you need something?’ But she kept staring into the corner, her eyes shining, and she whispered—at first I didn’t even understand, only later—she said: ‘I see Christ… There… He’s coming…’
“I sat frozen, afraid to turn around. Then she sank back onto her pillow. Marina came in, gave her something, but Baba Tanya didn’t answer anymore. That moment—I went half-crazy. Told no one. But I kept remembering it.
“And later, sitting there staring at that wall, staring and staring—suddenly my head rang, the wall seemed to glow, and someone whispered to me, I heard it clearly, firmly: ‘Look.’
“So I looked. And there was a road. And along that road a man was walking. I knew instantly—it was Christ. I started trembling. I could only look at His feet. I didn’t dare lift my eyes to His face. He came closer and closer—the road was dusty, the wind bending the grass, but He walked barefoot, and no dirt clung to His feet. He was right there beside me, and still I only stared down at His feet. He lingered a moment near me and… then it was all gone.”
Chapter 25
“Yes…” I drew the word out after a silence. “Grace really did descend on you. Too bad you didn’t lift your eyes, didn’t see His face.”
“And why would I?” Kostya asked.
“What do you mean, why? You missed such a chance! Where else would you meet Him?”
“He’s right here.”
“Who?” I asked, stunned.
“Christ,” Kostya said simply.
“Where?”
“Right behind you.” He spoke so seriously that I suddenly thought: well, this is it for me.
Shivers ran down my spine. I turned around in dread—and saw on the wall, behind me… a portrait of Lyuska’s Vanka. At least, that’s what it looked like at first: hair to the shoulders, a mustache, a beard… Only the eyes weren’t dull or crazed like Vanka the hippie’s, but kind, attentive, looking straight at you. Not a photo—no—but a photocopy of some drawing.
“Come on, Kostya! For a moment there I thought I was about to see Christ alive with you. What a joke!”
Chapter 26
Yes… Tic-tock, round the clock… It was long ago. I should have been carried away with Kostya then, should have seen Christ behind my shoulder, recognized the Father guiding me through life, begged the Holy Spirit for faith—but no… My time hadn’t come yet.
Kostya had a little New Testament, full of notes from that same Dasha who now lived in Los Angeles, but I treated that book the way I’d treat a dream dictionary or a palmistry manual—curious, nothing more. Kostya read with care the places she’d marked; I glanced at them too. One verse was underlined in red, three exclamation marks in the margin: “…the veil was torn in two.”
“What’s this about?” I asked, and Kostya, with fervor, repeated what Uncle Misha had once explained to him: that Christ, taking upon Himself the sin of the world, reconciled man with God; that the Temple, where once God dwelt in the Holy of Holies, was no longer needed; that now God had come to dwell in every heart; that each person is himself a temple.
It all sounded sweet, even touching, but I asked:
“So what, does this mean I should see God in every man? Don’t scold anyone, don’t shove anyone, even if he steps on my foot in the tram?”
Kostya, with love and heat, explained the basics of love for one’s neighbor. “Just imagine,” he said, “you’re walking down the street, or buying something in a shop, or doing your work—try to picture what Christ would do, what He’d say if He were in your place. If everyone thought that way, can you imagine what life would be like?”
Chapter 27
It was good listening to Kostya. I looked at him with a smile, rejoiced for my friend who had found such a simple solution to everything, and thought to myself: let him. It’s better than drinking every day.
But I didn’t take it in. To me, it seemed a refuge for fools, far too primitive for my “developed” mind. A sly devil whispered in my ear that all this faith in some God was only for the half-crazed and losers. As for me, all roads lay open; I expected a merry life full of joys and achievements. I believed I’d succeed in everything, become secure, even famous—that I’d manage it all myself, without any “higher blessing.”
Had I looked closer, listened to what the Savior was saying—maybe my life would have gone differently. Maybe I wouldn’t have divorced my first wife; maybe I would have drawn her too to Christ. Maybe our little daughter would still be alive. But no—I had much yet to stumble through, many mistakes to make, a near brush with death in terrible illness, before I could see the demons confusing me and drive them away.
And by the way—you might laugh—but even now, if a gloomy mood comes over me, or I bristle at someone, even a cop on the road, I catch myself and say aloud: “Go on, go on, demons and fiends, get out! There’s plenty of air under skies—scatter where the Apostle sent you, leave people be, stop ruining lives! Get away from me, in Christ’s Name!” And it works. The smile returns, the soul sings, I open the window, let the wind in and cry into the sky: “Thank You, Lord, thank You, Heavenly Father, for everything!”
And along the highway my truck rolls on.
The road smooth, the lines bright, the wide-open space calling, the way ahead stretching far. Didn’t the Savior say: “He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life…”? So what’s there for me, a Christian, to doubt? The earthly roads are long, the world is beautiful: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” And Heaven, Baba Tanya told us on the day she died, is lovelier still.
Hop in, my reader, since you’ve come this far through my tale—no, my song, my poem. Take the airline seat in my truck’s cab beside me; it’s made for you. Buckle in; I’ll give you a ride to places you’ve never been. Am I not a long-haul driver? “Heel to the pedal, I’ve mounted my swift, and forward I fly…” That was how I once began a poem about a bicycle. And now—this miracle machine: enormous, smart, powerful, fast.
See that snowy summit, far off in the blue sky? I’ll hit the afterburner now and—whoosh! The g-force presses you into your seat. Hold tight! The snowy peak is our earthly springboard, and beyond…
And here we are... Beyond. Look in the mirror: the Earth, now an orange, a nut, a pea… shrinking still, until it’s gone in the sea of stars. If we are, as Kostya reasoned, gods—then why should we not wander through our Father’s dominion and look upon His Creation? Faster! What’s the speed of light to us? The Holy Spirit Himself propels us! Galaxies, quasars, pulsars flying past… Just a bit more… Here it is! We’ve arrived.
What’s that? Darkness ahead? No stars, no nebulae?
Yes—that’s how it is. Just space-time… tick-tock, tick-tock… resolving into the long Pink Floyd final accord. And then, banking hard—look now!
This vast sphere, glittering with myriads of stars, hanging in the abyss—this is our Home, given to us by the Great Creator, our loving Heavenly Father. He is unfathomable, so great He holds the universe in His palm, and yet so near He lives within our hearts. He is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. He is that very Unexpected Guest, who comes to each of us with the knock of His Son Jesus, reaching our hearts, calling us into eternal life. And if you, man, believe in the raising of Lazarus, if you cry out like Thomas the Apostle, “My Lord and my God!”—then your birth was not in vain, your earthly life has been fulfilled, and you are admitted to inherit eternal life.
The End.













Brief Glossary (first mentions are glossed in the text)
zakuson — hearty appetizer meant “to go under” drinks.
konkA — colloquial: black-market vinyl swap at Melodiya.
Bukashka — Moscow’s circle trolley “B” around the Garden Ring.
platzkart — open-berth rail car (no private compartments).