A snack of greasy cheburekhi sold from a booth. A quick stop at the Supreme Court of the Russian Republic: Alyosha must peruse a new directive, available to legal personnel but not to the public, in the revived campaign against state embezzlement. A longer call to a new enterprise equivalent to an advertising agency, where Alyosha is trying to get a secretary's job, through an acquaintance there, for an ex-girl. Then a visit to his own Juridical Consultation Office.
During the past few weeks, I've lost my apprehension about following him inside; this time, I have a good look while he collects his messages and confers with a colleague. For offices, the lawyers share nine toilet-sized cubicles in shifts throughout the day and evening. Each has a tiny desk and two chairs, one for the client; they all reek of urine because soused devotees of the beer hall next door piss nightly on the outside wall. For the thirty attorneys, two telephones are available in the corridor; in grave crises, a third, in the chairman's room, can also be used. Some clients dial literally all day without getting through, and energetic lawyers with urgent calls usually run a few hundred meters down the street, to the nearest pay phone.
How can they, who are among Moscow's best, work in such conditions? Reappearing in the corridor, Alyosha laughs. "Faith and dedication—we're a heroic lot. And inspired: Lenin's portrait in every room."
On the Bowery-like sidewalk outside the office, he briefly questions a witness about a forthcoming case. Then we're off on a considerable ride to a huge taxi garage in an industrial sector of the city. Alyosha scampers in and has word passed of his arrival to his current mechanic. When the towheaded youngster appears outside, we drive to a field of deep, wet snow several hundred
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yards behind the depot. Here, as if in battlefield emergency, a new shock absorber is to be installed. The cheerful lad is soon soaked through, but does the job quickly and well, happily accepting Alyosha's generous payment and obligatory bottle-of-vodka tip. Dropping him off, we're on our way again, and it occurs to me to ask why not do the repairs in the garage itself. Because if caught, he explains, the use of state premises to make a profit on stolen parts would compound the charge under the law. As it is, the mechanic's labor is "tolerably" illegal.
Setting ofT in our "brand-new conveyance," Alyosha swings the jalopy through side streets and shortcuts, pointing out historical curiosities as we pass: the site where the Mongols assembled their annual booty of virgins, the office building that collapsed during construction in the thirties, the execution of a dozen architects and engineers; the sagging house of a Tanya and prefabricated apartment of a Galya he drove home once and thought he'd forgotten. In this steppe of a city whose rambling mazes anger taxi drivers, he has an instinct for direction that derives from more than memory and knowledge; he loves Moscow with a curious proprietary solicitude. His favorite places are the few remaining haunts from the days when the streets were full of character: a beer bar, the least spoiled of the city's handful, jammed from door to counter with fierce and bedraggled types; a slop house of a restaurant on a river barge, frequented by bosses of minor speculation rings. An apartment in one of the Stalinesque skyscrapers where a game of poker can be joined at most times of the day and night.
Least of all, he likes the Sovietization that continues to blanch these remnants of local color, to smother the wheeling-dealing of urban life, to homogenize everything into a single stretch of prefabricated apartment blocks. And relentlessly rename tradition-laden streets: each new sign announcing the appearance of yet one more "Redproletarian," "Lenin," "Leninist," or "Marx" in place of a descriptive or old Slavic appellation is a personal wound.
"Splendid news: Kaluzhskaya Square becomes dear 'October.' Naturally, measures had to be taken: 'Kaluzhskaya' stood for something in the life of old Moscow, and had a comforting ring.
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Besides, millions of people knew where it was and didn't waste hours getting lost or trekking to one of the thirty other Octobers. Too pleasant, too convenient . . ."
On his personal count, eleven Moscow streets are now called "Leningrad," and he suspects he's missed a few. Like everyone else, he says, street-namers prefer a safe bet—that is, anything with Lenin in it—to risking Oak Tree Lane or something similarly untried. And every time we pass the famous open-air swimming pool a mile east of the Kremlin, a biting quip reminds me that before Lazar Kaganovich and Stalin stuffed it with dynamite, this was the site of the third largest church in Christendom, built to commemorate the victory over Napoleon. Only in the renaming of academies and institutes from "Stalin" to "Lenin" does he milk some satisfaction, for the former derives from "steel" while the latter, "appropriately," has the same root as the Russian word for "laziness."
Two more minor errands involving French swimming trunks and an old debt. Then a quick foray into a speciality food shop to inquire about grouse while we are waiting outside a metro station for Fantastic Natasha—who doesn't show up.
"Well lad?" he asks as the pallid street lamps go on.
"Let's take in a movie."
During the gung-ho film about Soviet counterespionage heroes he falls dead asleep, reviving as we emerge for a quick check on the sefioritas at the Central Post Office on Gorky Street; but on the way there, we notice we are almost out of gas. Instead, we go directly to an old section of town, full of log houses and trolley rails. One of the city's three gas stations that stay open evenings is located here, opposite a former monastery shorn of its bells.
It is only eleven-thirty, but apart from the station nothing is lit and nothing moves: we are immersed in the haunted village atmosphere I so love, with the moon casting long shadows on the snow and the wind's whine through electricity wires suggesting the old houses are deserted. The station itself is a decrepit affair with a single pump like that of an old Maine farm. It is also clean out of gas. This is announced, with gleeful spite, by its night manager, a powerful woman in boots and a greasy quilt jacket. Spitting her sunflower seeds almost in our faces, she
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grunts that the delivery to replenish her tanks may come by one o'clock—and, heh heh, may not.
Rather than wait, Alyosha decides to hail a passing truck and do his usual deal with its driver: a ruble for ten liters of the State's gas. The third truck stops and follows us into a dark side street, where Alyosha removes his trusty siphoning tube from its permanent place in the truck.
I have just read a Newsweek article warning against this very practice. ("Anyone who tries to siphon gasoline by sucking it through a single rubber tube is taking a tremendous risk. Four ounces, if swallowed, can be fatal, but even much smaller amounts can cause dangerous symptoms. If the siphoner should vomit after swallowing gasoline, he is likely to inhale some of it, and this can lead to chemical pneumonia, with a severe risk that the lungs will abruptly stop functioning due to the effect on the central nervous system. . . .") Although pleased by my plea for caution, Alyosha treats it like an alcoholic reminded that whiskey can impair clear thinking. He's done it a thousand times before, taken a thousand greater risks to maintain his life-style. And indeed, he completes the siphoning with such dispatch that the cheap, domestic gas causes only one grimace. Then he gives the country-boy driver a bonus of fifty kopeks for being so "alert." Both are happy to have done business so well.
When we emerge from the side street, the station's harsh light is shining upon two girls walking briskly past. Alyosha emits his parody of a war cry while speeding up for a closer look, but is cut short before deciding. "Allooo . . . , look who's here," cries the nearer one in gleeful surprise. An Erstwhile of three years ago, she is returning home with a girl friend after the circus, where both perform. Home is the peeling former monastery opposite the station, which is not the wartime billet it looks like in the midnight darkness but a dormitory for circus personnel.