"You could be the Sherlock Holmes of the KGB, Anna Moiseyevna," Genka says approvingly. "Yes indeed."
"Lyonka Ivanov says Sherlock Holmes was a cocaine addict. That in between cases, he snorted cocaine." observes the poet, after gulping some vodka.
"Lyonka Ivanov is a meshugginah," Anna declares authoritatively. "They even kicked him out of the Army for being a meshugginah."
"No way. Lyonka himself wanted to get out of the Army. When Lyonka came home on leave, already a sergeant, Viktorushka taught him what to do. The smartest thing is to pretend to be crazy. Viktor told Lyonka, and when Lyonka returned to his unit, he did exactly what Viktor suggested. At lunch time he went to the cafeteria, put a bowl of porridge on his head, stuck cutlets under his sergeant's epaulettes, and in this costume went running out of the dining hall… another time he went into the hall where the soldiers were watching a film and ripped the screen off the wall… but all just so he could get home; actually Lyonka's saner than me or Genka," Ed ends his apologia for Ivanov.
"Ed, I think Anna's right; Lyonchik Ivanov really is crazy." disagrees Genka. "Not dangerous, but pretty brainless. Have you noticed his expression?"
"Oh – then who's sane? Is Ganna Miseyevna sane?" Ed laughs scornfully.
"I tried to do away with myself once. But you, Ed – lots of times!" Anna almost shouts, leaping out of her chair. "It's true, I was classified as a Group One invalid by reason of craziness, but I was nineteen, and that son of a bitch, my first husband, had dumped me. When you were nineteen, you still believed in people!" Anna Moiseyevna, having lost her aggressive look, and aware of the goat heard, sits down.
"The hell with him, with Ivanov…" Genka says to them soothingly. Let's drink to you, Anna Moiseyevna, and to you, Eduard Venyaminovich, and to your union. May it be long and enduring!"
"To our cohabitation! To our unlicensed union!" laughs Anna. "To our situation! You know, Genulik, when the young scoundrel was already living with me in my room, but we were trying to make it look like we weren't living together… I would slam the door loudly at night, to deceive my poor Mama… so that when my Auntie Ginda suggested that we come visit her in a little room with two roommates, even that was an improvement in our material life. The intellectual Celia Yakovlyevna couldn't admit to the sister of her beloved deceased husband that her daughter was keeping in her room a boy six years younger than she, and sleeping with him. 'Akh, Ginda, we have such a situation at home!' that's all my Mama would say. How unlucky she's been in life. Papa Moise died of a heart attack, and her daughters have never found a decent life…"
"What? Her second daughter is married to the director of a factory. She lives in Kiev, right on the main street – on Kreshatik, in a big bourgeois apartment. People dream of a son-in-law like Teodor. The director of a factory…"
"My kid sister is in a good situation, ____________________]dazhe toshno]," agrees Anna Moiseyevna, taking a tidbit of cucumber, "but my niece, Styelka, is a whore. And she's sure to become an even bigger whore. Already she sleeps with any loser who comes along. Gyenulik, this long-legged Styekla keeps an eye out for every prick around, the kid had her first abortion at age 14! I only lost my virginity at 18…
Genka laughs. "Different times, different customs, Anna Moiseyevna!"
"'O, Lautrec, you will never reach the pedals!'" Anna suddenly recites. "'O Lautrec… ____________________/'" Anna falls silent, having forgotten the next line, as usual.
"Whose is that?" Genka asks respectfully. He considers Anna an intelligent and well-educated woman.
"Miloslavskii. From his early poems." mumbles Ed. "Yura poses, frenchifies, and nasalizes. He invokes the romantic underground life of the Parisian cafe and studio. Lautrec…"
"'Yet still I remembered how all these Magdalenes mended the cloak of the pockmarked Christ…" Glancing insolently at her "husband," Anna once again recites Miloslavskii. And, of course, she can't remember the last lines. "Three Bandits with Aphrodite by the Fire," she manages to force out, and then falls silent.
Anna's memory is stuffed with bits of poems, songs, which she heard some time, or clever phrases she read somewhere, from various philosophers and writers. From time to time Anna brings to light some fragment, line, verse or phrase, and inserts it in the appropriate part of her monologue. When they were just getting to know each other, in their youth on the outskirts of Kharkov, straight from the "Hammer and Sickle" shop section, Anna's erudition seemed the height of intellectual achievement. Now, Eduard, having become Limonov, laughs at Anna's "streams of consciousness." He uses her singsong intonation, imitating the pompous Romanticism with which, it seems to him, Anna recites poetry:
Give me a blue-blue woman
I'll trace a blue line along her spine
And I'll marry that bright blue line…
Ah, I don't need no blue girls to marry
I'll howl with the cats on roofs so starry…
"Shut up, scoundrelly Savyenko!" cries Anna. "Don't torture my friend Burich's verses! You're not mature enough to understand them yet!"
"A bad poet," rules Limonov remorselessly. "I, Genka, thought for a long time that Burich was a good poet, or at any rate an original one – and suddenly I happen to come across a book of poems by the Polish poet, Ruzhevich. And what do I see there, Genka?! Ah! What's it called? – Plagiarism! Especially when you consider that Burich and his wife are paid to translate Polish poets!"
"Burich is a great poet!" Anna's eyes rest, with nervous hatred, on her "husband." "Especially because they publish so little of Vova Burich."
"'Vova… '" snorts her "husband." "They say he's already as bald as a kneecap. Vagrich saw him in Moscow, your Vovik. A big fat slob. A bourgeois of literature.
"That's not true! Burich is very handsome. Curly-haired, like an Apollo. Bakh was probably mistaken; it wasn't Burich…"
"What do you mean, mistaken… It was him – Apollo, your husband's friend – a genius from Simferopol…"
"They were all so talented, Genka. Don't listen to the young scoundrel. Talented and exceptionally intelligent. They knew everything. They read all the time. They were better educated than you…
"Talent has nothing to do with education." Ed scowls.
Ed envies Anna's generation – her former husband, a television director; her husband's friends, who all moved to Moscow – the poet Burich, the film critic Myron Chernenko, the painter Brusilovskii. For Kharkov youth of Ed's age, for the bohemians and the decadents who got together several times a day at the "Automatic" to drink coffee, Moscow burns, as it did for Chekhov's three sisters, with a blinding, alluring light. Among Anna's contemporaries, the painter Brusilovskii is especially noteworthy. Vagrich Bakhchanyan speaks respectfully of Brusilovskii's work. Brusilovskii long ago started showing even in international exhibitions, and from time to time, reproductions of his works appear in Western publications. Anna's former husband is the least successful of them; he doesn't even live in Moscow, only Simferopol. Eduard very much wants to go to Moscow, so that he can join the previous generation – those about ten or fifteen years older. Join them, fight them, and hold tauntingly over Anna's head the name of her own Eduard Limonov.
The sun has suddenly peeked over the roof of the tavern, right above the table, and the wooden table, cleaned over and over, scratched, laid with tablecloth and snacks, nestling bottles of vodka and lemonade, the table is suddenly bathed in light. Very beautiful is their table, reader. A salad of red, blood-red Ukrainian tomatoes and tender green cucumbers, dripping with salted butter; the sun – many suns – refracted in the wineglasses and tumblers on the table.The dark burning hands of the poet, Anna's hands, her fingernails, as always coated with an unusual lilac polish, Gennadii's beautiful hand grasping the stem of a wineglass… the stone in Genka's cufflink, suddenly catching the sun, shines out a pure red light.