"Do you want your cucumbers pickled, boys?"
"Of course, Dusya, pickled. And a couple of bottles of cold lemonade. To wash them down with."
"I'll pour you a little decanter of vodka, shall I?" Dusya glances at Genadii's face.
"No thank you. It would be warm. Bring us two wineglasses and put a bottle on ice, please, Dusya."
The waitress leaves the veranda.
"Wonderful – eh, Ed?" Gena's fond gaze is directed toward the pond. Directly across the pond is the peacocks' aviary. Far away, among the cages, looms the huge bulk of an elephant. A draft suddenly wafts to the veranda the smell of dung and the nauseous smell of some musky beast. "Magnificent!" – And Gennadii's handsome face beams with tranquil delight. This is what he wants from life: a beautiful view, cold vodka, chatting with a friend. Even women are second-rate to Genadii. It's been a year since the beautiful Nonna, whom everybody thought he loved, appeared in his life, but even Nonna couldn't drag him away from his drinking sprees in the company of the "SS," from his trips to a restaurant called the Monte-Carlo, from strolling down Sumskii Street with Ed, from the pleasures of wasting time. Ed Limonov looks with pleasure at his strange friend. Genka seems to have absolutely no ambition. He himself has admitted more than once that he doesn't want to be a poet, like Motrich and Ed, or a painter, like Bakhchanyan. "You'll paint and write poems; I'll bask in your success!"laughs Genka. Celia Yakovlyevna and Anna consider Genadii to be Ed's evil genius – they think he makes Ed squander money on drink, and takes him away from Anna. But this view of theirs is explained, actually, by jealousy. It's true, of course, that now and then Ed spends, with Genka, the money they've made sewing pants. Not often. But he doesn't go out drinking with Genka all the time. In any case, the miserly sums – ten, twenty rubles – he spends with Genka don't compare to the amounts squandered by Genka. And that phrase, "squandered on drink" somehow doesn't capture the Magnificent Genadii Sergeevich's style. The last time they went carousing at the Monte-Carlo – an out-of-town restaurant in Pesochin, watering hole for the high officials and KGB elite of Kharkov – Genka went first in one taxi, showing the way, and Ed followed in another taxi, and behind him came another taxi, empty, which Genka hired solely for the style of it, to make up a a cavalcade. In his youth, Sergei Sergeevich had been a regular at the Monte-Carlo – until his stomach ulcer. Gennadii inherited the place from his father. The staff knows Genadii Sergeevich well, and always gives him the best table. Until he met Genka, Ed had only read of "best tables" in books. At the Monte-Carlo, the chickens wander around right outside the window of the best table, and you can pick the one you want and they'll make chicken tabak from it. The paradox of the Monte-Carlo consists of the fact that the truck drivers eat in the big room, right next to a big highway. But at the best tables, it's the good life…
Auntie Dusya brings them their snacks, vodka, lemonade and, for each of them, a sizzling-hot frying pan full of fried eggs. Genka gazes with pleasure at the heavily-laden table. With one hand he raises the wine-glass of vodka, and with the other his glass of lemonade. "Come on, Ed! – Let's drink to this magnificent August day, and to the animals of our beloved Zoo!"
"Right!" agrees Ed, and they gulp down the burning vodka. And instantly start drinking the lemonade. And grab the pickled cucumbers and eat the fried eggs, burning themselves…
"Well, Ed, did you get a good scolding from Celia Yakovlyevna yesterday?" Genka has decided to take a break for a smoke, disengaging himself for the purpose from what's left of his eggs.
"I swear to God, I'm fucked if I can remember!" laughs the poet. "I remember getting out of a taxi, and grabbing the doorknob, and then… it all goes blank, I can't remember a thing. What time was it, anyway? Two o'clock?"
"What do you mean, two? It was still early. You passed out early last night. But Fima and I carried on drinking at the airport.
"No way I passed out." The poet is offended. "I hadn't slept at all the night before, I was writing til dawn. Of course you're going to be tired after a whole night without sleep. You yourself threw up yesterday."
"I throw up a lot." agrees Gyenka calmly. "That's how the Romans did it. They'd throw up, then come back and drink some more."
"That Celia Yakovlyevna caught me right at the door. 'And where are you going,' she says, 'Eduard?'"
"And what did you say to her, Eduard Venyaminovich?"
"Out for some thread, Celia Yakovlyevna, I'm going to the store.' With my shoes in my hands. I wanted to get out without being heard."
"For some thread!" guffaws Genka. "Limonov went out to buy some thread!"
"Naturally Celia didn't believe me. But how is an intellectual woman going to argue with her Russian son-in-law? 'Then how come you've got your shoes in your hand, you drunk, if you're going for some thread? It's not a criminal activity, going for thread… '"
"She'd be ashamed to catch you in a lie. That's what comes of culture and education. A Russian mother-in-law would storm through the whole building, tear your sleeve off, dragging you back inside. It's a good thing you're living with a Jewish family… and Anna?"
"Yesterday Anna slept – and snored. She just opened her eyes and said, 'You got drunk with Genka again, you damned alcoholic!' and went back to sleep. And today I slept, once she went out."
"You need to get Anna some kind of gift." Genka frowns. "Ed, heading toward us are the first representatives of the goat-herd, who have already completed their morning excursion to the Zoo."
A family is coming to the "Tavern." Two children – boys of around ten – dressed, in spite of the heat, in blue wool thermal pants. The pants are too long; the cuffs, dragging on the ground, are gray with dust. The mother is powerfully built, surprisingly old for a mother with children of this age. Her hands and feet stick out awkwardly from her too-tight, too-short, white-and-blue polka-dotted dress. The father – who undoubtedly works in one of the many factories in Kharkov – is wearing a fake-silk yellow shirt and black trousers, sandals over bare feet, and carries in his hand a string bag. and in it something covered with torn-up and, for some reason, wet newspaper.
The morose children are the first up the steps. The mother after them. Having helped them climb onto the veranda, the father puts his foot on the first step. Genka stands up and sraightening his tie, assumes a stern look: "Comrades, comrades, entry prohibited! The restaurant is closed to the public today. Today is the All-Soviet-Union Convention of Bengal-Tiger trainers. Entry restricted to those with letters of invitation!"
The family leaves silently and submissively, dragging their string bag behind them. Ed even begins to pity the goat-herd family. "Why'd you do that to them?" he asks his friend. "Hell, they'd've drunk their lemonade, taken some sandwiches, and gone…"
"There's always noise from the goat-herd, Ed. Did you direct your attention to the children? Like little old men. Can you imagine how they would have gobbled, chomped?"
"You can't get rid of all of them… Now somebody else will show up."
"Dusya, please place on all the tables on our side of the restaurant a "Reserved" sign."
"Oh, Genochka, we don't have any signs like that!" whines Dusya. From beneath her feet, a big green grasshopper suddenly leaps, landing on the next table. This is the countryside; what do they know about signs? There's not even a toilet; visitors run to the ravine.
"In that case, write 'Reserved' on some pieces of paper, and put them on each table. Of course, your labor will be compensated."
Dusya goes off to obey her orders. Her obedience is explained not only by the fact that Genka passes her a five-ruble or ten-ruble note as she leaves, but by the fact that the little Zoo restaurant belongs to the restaurant network of his Papa, Sergei Sergeevich, and in this network Papa is Tsar, Papa is God. True, Papa has sternly forbidden Gennadii to abuse his official position to get better treatment, but the power-hungry Genka can't resist the temptation to "abuse" it. Power – that's what Genka loves, Ed suddenly realizes. Power is Genka's ambition. Genka wants to brandish enormous power.