Why does Viktor teach Ed French, and not Paul? The snobbish M. Curlers said that he will converse with Ed with pleasure, once he's learned the language with Viktor's help, but he cannot and will not teach the basics. Therefore Viktor teaches Ed French, for a little money. For half the normal price. Ed doesn't want to learn German. He already studied French in school and at the Culinary School where fate directed him in l961. (The Militia demanded that he establish a place of work, and he preferred writing out recipes for borsch and pie, plucking chickens and dismembering pigs, to being exiled 101 kilometers away from Kharkov. He was very promptly expelled for stealing chickens and non-attendance.) Why is Ed trying to revive his French, lost in the course of his vagabond life?* What the point of studying French? It's hard to say; maybe some vague future adventures on the surface of the globe. In the style of "The Adventurers": Alain Delon and Lino Venturi. Maybe he and Genka…
Nonetheless, Eduard understands quite well that his Magnificent pal Genka – his pride, his friend, in a sense his leader and guide – is a weakling… Of course, this weakness is not physical, but a weakness of character. Genka's desires, and even his fantasies, do not extend beyond sitting at the Tavern, a trip to the Monte Carlo, swimming in the river in winter, drinking bouts and petty hooliganism in all its attractive variants. It's a sweet life in Kharkov. The most dangerous of their undertakings was the attempt to get onto the transport aircraft, though it was not crowned with success. They got arrested. It's true that Genka, the haughty, sleek, elegant thoroughbred, passed himself and Eduard off as KGB – he dropped the names of some genuine bigwigs in the Kharkov KGB, and the airport security guards let them go, and even offered them cognac and a buffet. "What idiots!" laughed Genka and Ed in the taxi which was carrying them away from the gates of the Kharkov Airport.
"Hey, Ed! Ed, what, have you fallen asleep?" asks Anna Moiseyevna, waving her hand in front of his eyes. "Are you dreaming?"
"What did you see before you, dear poet?" eagerly asks the enthusiast, Viktorushka. He treats his pupil with a certain degree of irony, respecting Ed not for his poems but because Ed knows how to sew pants and can make money without leaving home. Few are those who believe in his poems. Everyone believes in pants. Pants are obvious. Ed can sew two pairs a day, or, if he works from early morning til late at night, he can even make three pair.
To be continued…