(In my longing for Anastasia, I will question him about his time with her, and he will single out her delight in language as the icing of her appeal. Telling The Seagull's Masha to "Close the window, tebe naduyet,'" one of the characters made an unintentional double entendre that could mean "you'll be knocked up" as well as "there's a draft on you." When in the whole of the Moscow Art Theater only they two laughed out loud, he knew he had to keep pursuing her.)
Having plopped prone after orgasm—which he can no longer reach easily, even when trying hard so that he can comply with his house rule, "Leave Naught Unfinished," and set out for an overdue appointment—he drags himself up again because he has remembered a final task. Donning a Finnish sheepskin jacket, one of the last surviving mementos of his gay blade days, over
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bare chest and underpants, he trudges into the 2 a.m. cold to drain his car radiator. Unable to find antifreeze for almost a month, unwilling to use alcohol because it would corrode the already suppurative hoses—replacement rubber is even harder to procure than antifreeze—he has been saddled with this before-bed imposition every night throughout the hardest part of the winter. It is a little touch of symbolism: little can be taken for granted here; nothing comes easy.
Ten years ago, he was a celebrity in Moscow's embryonic jet set of jazz musicians, beautiful women and car-owners: the several hundred hip personages who knew each other by sight or reputation, and whom certain doormen motioned to the head of the line, unbolting their portals. Although remarkably few for a city of this size, the sources of their status were, mutatis mutandis, those of the Chelsea set or swinging East Side. Good looks, rich parents, a collection of Beatles records, connections to the givers of good parties and to tipsters about where to find French perfume; it was often enough just to stand out, as Alyosha did most strikingly, in appearance, energy or savoir faire from Moscow's lackluster majority. The spice of every party and spinner of tomorrow-we-die illusions, he was beckoned to the tables of theatrical producers, underground icon suppliers and generals' sons. He also had his own supply of black market money for which, in addition to his vivacity, he was welcomed as a big spender in Moscow and on the Black Sea. And he was a dandy, dressing from socks to overcoats in then staggeringly expensive Western garments.
Even before his source of big wealth dried up, he began to retire from cafe society and operate as a loner. As his taste in women shifted from starlets to shopgirls, he tired of the pursuit of chic—sometimes more strident here, in proportion to the greater snob value of Italian boots—and grew increasingly fond of evenings with his anonymous brood. Still hailed on his occasional public flings to "in" places such as the Club for Cinema Personnel, he drifted to a simpler life, not bothering to replace his worn custom-made suits. Everything is homemade and makeshift, the freer to be of empty obligations.
For exercise he sometimes swims in the outdoor pool near the Kremlin or visits a banya for an hour of steam and birch besoms.
AlyoshaXl39
But netless badminton, improvised during a picnic in four feet of snow, is more his style. Once a month, a massive cleanup puts his apartment into a kind of order. Car-owning friends call him for advice about valve troubles and bribable mechanics. He also works occasionally as a volunteer legal counsel for a financial watchdog commission: possible "insurance," in the form of testimony to his "Soviet probity" in case he is one day prosecuted for his manifestly un-Soviet way of life.
His car deserves a separate annalist. No time can be spared for the major overhaul each part cries out for; the goal is to get it going today, which calls for a unique blend of knowledge, patience and touch. The twelve-year-old Volga with the hand-made clutch, ceiling lined with dress material and riding characteristics of a surplus tank has not a single original moving part. It hauls literally everything: last week, a new bathtub from a warehouse to his apartment. (A hole had been punched in the old one at a party.) Alyosha's driving on icy back streets—and in accordance with Moscow's unilluminated road signs and tomes of rules— matches the native "Yankee ingenuity" of his make-do repairs. Even after consuming great quantities of vodka, his reflexes remain keen enough to negotiate vicious potholes on dim streets without sharp swerving, and to fool policemen who stop drivers at random, arresting all who betray the slightest sign of drink. When he zooms into side streets to check whether a KGB car is tailing us, it is always just casually enough not to betray the maneuver.
With all this to cope with, his sexual quest, which seems fueled by an independent source of energy, illustrates the old adage about only busy men having time to take on something new. Keeping eyes peeled for comely faces is an unshakable habit, as is the procedure of "registering" for later enjoyment discoveries who will not accompany him on the spot. The vagaries of communication here—many girls without home telephones who can be reached only at work, others who have moved or make mistakes in giving their new addresses—require care in recording "coordinates." Alyosha performs this job with characteristically swift, and distinctly un-Russian, attention to detail, jotting down names, telephone numbers, addresses and—with girls who have troublesome husbands or parents—third-party contacts. In two
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weeks, a pocket notebook is filled from cover to cover with such information in a neatly compressed hand, supplemented by three-word descriptions of each subject, lest he forget—although this is rare; his memory of a thousand look-alike Natashas is phenomenal—as well as sketches of cabins and houses and, where needed, coded doorbell rings, nasty neighbors to avoid in communal apartments and diagrams of lanes too small for mention on the Moscow map.
To help with identification, the "cadres" are entered with nicknames. Compared to its richness of idiom, Russian is disproportionately hard up for contemporary common names: of ten teen-aged girls, seven are Galya, Natasha, Tanya or Svet-lana. For us, therefore, there is "King-size" as well as "Angry-brother," "Cheeky-tits" and "Everest" Natasha; while "Efficient," "Toenails," "Two-at-once," and "Lickety-split" distinguish one Alia from the others. (All hell broke loose one evening—the rare exception to the rule of good fellowship in Alyosha's brood—when "Commissar" and "Left-wing" Galyas met on the same bed.)
Yet the life of these crammed notebooks is as limited as that of top-secret code sheets. When a new one is well started, the previous edition is casually discarded. Passing a trash basket, Alyosha will let drop a little black book without breaking stride and briskly walk on.