Two weeks went by, and the foundry boss tried for two hours to persuade the "Slave" not to leave; but running into Eduard's stony determination, gave up and signed the form. Eduard got his severance pay, but there was no telegram from Mishka. "He must've been lying to me…?" Eduard wondered sadly. "Just making fun of me…" "The Slave" wanted a new, wild life; his childhood dream of becoming a great criminal had been so close to coming true, and now…
Three weeks after Mishka's departure someone knocked on the door of the Savyenko apartment. Eduard opened it. The frightened and guilty-looking Tolik Lysyenko stood at the door. "Let's go. I have to talk to you, Ed!" They went out by some vacant land. Tolik kept looking around the whole time. sitting down on a pile of warm bricks, Tolik told him his Odessa story.
In the beginning everything was fine. Thanks to a bribe, Mishka and Tolik managed to get set up in the safest possible place: a KGB sanatorium! They played tennis, got some sun, swam… Then a former girlfriend, an actress, betrayed Mishka. She ran into Mishka by accident on Deribosovskii Street, saw and called out to him, and agreed to a date. When Mishka showed up for the date, they arrested him. It turned out that the actress, knowing there was a big hunt for him, had gone around asking about Mishka that spring… Oh, women… The actress had some kind of grudge against Mishka – he'd dumped her or something, way back…
True to his tradition of swindling with style, Mishka, whom they should have transferred to Donyetsk, the scene of his crimes, to be tried and judged, bought for himself and his two guards a first-class cell, and passed the time getting drunk with them. The agents had no objection, since Mishka's money would have gone to the State anyway – that is to say, to nobody.
After a month Eduard was restless. Despite an acquaintance of many years, and an entirely truthful explanation by Tolik, he wondered why Tolik had not been arrested with Mishka. He considered the possibility that Tolik had betrayed Mishka. People betray each other all the time, and everyone has a dark side. Or maybe Mishka decided he didn't need them involved in his business.
But Mishka had not deserted, and even Vitka had not betrayed them. Mishka even managed to hide his Kharkov period from the trashes. It was only for his "business" dealings in the Donets Basin that he got nine years penal servitude. The name of Mikhail Issarov, the first man to have robbed the Soviet State in the area of credit fraud, may be found in Soviet textbooks on criminology. As for our hero, he, as you see, had been, for the second time (the first being the day in 1962 when his mother had persuaded him to go with her to celebrate Aunt Katya's birthday, and Kostya Bondarenko, Yurka Bembel, and Slavka "The Suvorovian," who had come to pick him up, couldn't find his building and went off on their errand without him) miraculously saved from prison.
Chapter 5
At any rate, Borka Churilov established his lifelong protege as bookseller. In store No. 41, which had branched off from The Poetry Shop. The boss, Liliya, was a mean little blonde, whom Anna christened "The Little Fascist." She accepted "the little boy" willingly. Only "little girls" worked in the store. Liliya, Flora and "The Zombie" in a scraggly fur coat.
Every morning he came in on the trolley from the Saltovka district. Every morning he would pick up his stock and take it to the place where, having put it on a folding table, he would sell it. After completing the transfer of the books, he would begin arranging them on the stand. At first, while they were still explaining things to him, he set up his stand on Sumskii Street, right at the very doors of Store No. 41. Afterwards, he operated in the foyer of the Komsomolskii Theatre and at other crowded spots.
The bookseller's profession has some similarities to that of street-hawkers or snack-vendors. The bookseller recieves a paltry salary, but has the right to keep a certain percentage of the take. The outstanding bookseller in Kharkov, at the time Eduard Savyenko joined the profession, was the former railwayman Igor Iosifovich Kovalchuk, who had sold, at one time or another, for all the bookstores in the city. Of course, neither at the beginning of his career as a bookseller nor at its end could Eduard Savyenko compare in productivity with Igor Iosifovich. They hired Igor Iosifovich when they needed to fulfil their quota. They offered him higher salaries or bribed him. Because Igor Iosifovich could sell any book. Usually he set up his several tables in the center of Tevelyev Square, like an Asian vendor, crying out to the sky, about his books, hawking his wares in a hoarse voice: "Look! A history of the most terrible crimes in Antiquity! The battle between black and white magic!" It was difficult for passers-by to withstand these lures. There were always crowds gathered around Igor Iosifovich's stand. The "Story of the Greatest Crimes in Antiquity" might turn out to be simply a volume from the textbook, "Treasury of World Literature," issued by the Academy of Sciences.
"Ed," as Anna called him before the adoption of the last name, "Limonov," was shy. He hunched timidly behind his book-covered display table. Sometimes there were two tables. Ed sat timidly and, for the most part, said nothing or smiled diffidently. Despite the straight-razor the bookseller often carried in his pocket, the bookseller of store No. 41 was not an agressive young man. Sometimes Liliya would send out, to reinforce him, "The Zombie" – a skinny being of the feminine variety, always wrapped in a shabby old fur coat. "The Zombie's" nose was always frozen, and its long tip was of a bluish color.
Eduard Savyenko didn't earn much money. To speak more precisely, he earned almost nothing. Yet the rapid pace of events managed, in October, November and December, to transform the half-criminal young worker into something else, something not quite clear – but at the very least, he entered, in those cold months, an entirely new social class. Imagine, reader, how difficult a process this is. Sometimes this sort of transformation requires several generations!
Every evening the bookseller hurried to get the stacks of books, and the tables, back to Store No. 41. Like a worker-bee hurrying back to the hive, like a bird to its nest, a jet to the airport. The bookseller hurried along – awaiting him was an appointment with the future, concealed in the alleys of Shevchenko Park, in the "automaticic snack-bar" on Sumskii Street, and in several Kharkov apartments. The future was hidden in the murky urban twilight, draped in rather old-fashioned clothes – symbolist, surrealist clothes. Though provincial, Kharkov, former capital of Ukraine, knew how to play cultural games.
There were many people around. Hundreds, at the very least. New, interesting people, unlike anyone else. In the little "storeroom" of Store No. 41 there were always lots of people sitting, avidly reading manuscripts. Poems, for the most part. The clean-shaven physicist Lyev, who had just returned from an expedition to Leningrad, brought back five or six examples of Brodskii's poem "Procession". An early poem, an imitation of Tsvetaeva, this poem lacked artistic integrity, but suited very well the socio-cultural stage which was occupied (better to say, at which will always be occupied) by Kharkov and the majority of the "Decadents," who tramped along the triangle formed by Bookstore No. 41, The Poetry Shop, and the Automatic. So the poem enjoyed an unusual popularity. People stood in line to read Brodskii, from the time the bookstore opened to the time it closed. One of these readers was the poet Motrich.
Looking back and placing Motrich's greatness in historical perspective, it is necessary to note that at that time, Motrich was not the genius his worshippers considered him in 1964; he was not even known as a poet by many people. If there was a spark of genius in him, it was unnoticed. Yet Vladimir Motrich – as the past master again reminds us of his "Hammer and Sickle" factory (later Eduard Savyenko suddenly remember remembered, that Boris Churilov took him to the furnace, where the "real poet" Motrich still worked in l963) was, beyond any doubt, a POET. An original POET, since a poet is not merely a certain number of verses, but a soul, an aura, a taut field of passion, a radiant personality. But Motrich worked at it, oh yes…