Overcome by a divination that the calling for which he had
Alyosha^205
been waiting had arrived, Alyosha began to sweat. He knew he must escape. The vision of himself sprinting to the Americans (somehow expanding on "the man I love . . . kiss me again, my darling . . . Pennsylvania, five, five thousand"—the sum and substance of his English vocabulary) repeated itself so vividly in his mind that his fingernails pierced the muddy potatoes. And remained there well after the Americans were led away to the entertainment.
Aware that he had cheated his destiny, he returned to the sacks the next morning as though on a voyage to his birthplace. The mistake of his citizenship could have been rectified; he should have shifted to the world suited to his reflexes and temperament, where he'd have devoted himself to something real.
"I was twenty-three then," Alyosha says quietly. "I had energy. Do you think I'd have made a go of it in the West?"
"How on earth did you expect to get out?" I play the straight man. "The GIs would have handed you straight back to your officers. They understood nothing. Anyway, they'd have had no choice."
Alyosha's expression reveals that he has always known this, and hoped not to. "Do you think I'd have made a life for myself in America? I always wanted to see the Rio Grande. ... I might have been able to do something in films."
"Mother Volga beats the Rio Grande, in case you still want to go romantic. No, I see you a bit further north in California. A playboy-producer of television trash—filthy rich and despicable. You virtuous types turn shamefully crass on exposure to real action."
Pleased at my image, Alyosha grins and takes a moment to contemplate himself driving a convertible in the Hollywood he knows by way of Hollywood. "Yeah—but over there you have to work. All those plush-office millionaires, and so pressurized, so nervous. It's true, isn't it, muchacho? You and I together, we've got more of what they're really scrambling for than the lot combined. . . . I'd have flopped in America: no ambition, no real drive."
I do not state the obvious: that Alyosha's enormous drive would surely have been channeled and he could not have helped but make something unusual of himself Nor do I say that I shall
206^MOSCOW FAREWELL
never visit anywhere beautiful or exciting in the West without thinking of him. Two years ago, his appHcation for a holiday tour on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast was rejected; now he's working on a scheme to visit Prague, but his friendship with me has probably killed forever all chances of any foreign travel. About a trip to America, we do not even fantasize.
"That's what I like about you, Yank," he drawls to dispel the melancholy. "The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew^ou were no millionaire. With an extra ten years you could pass for one of those Elbe GIs with . . . er, the common physiognomical touch."
He throws his arm around me and laughs the laugh of our friendship. He has driven me home during his narrative, parking outside the deserted University. We get out together and walk to the gate. But as always, we make our way back to the car, then stroll up and back around the iron fence, aimlessly turning over tomorrow's avowedly important plans. The real reason for not parting goes unmentioned.
Did the Army damage him? Surely this is too simple—like the notion that he is damaged at all. I, who know him best, understand that in his way he is righteous. Arm tight in arm, we continue to pace the fence's vast perimeter, totally alone except for shawl-swaddled watchkeepers at the gates, an autocratic sky and the silent University skyscraper. We are in step, and happier with ourselves than ever. If our relationship includes a homosexual element—the anonymous girls serving as a vehicle for our vicarious contact—I'm glad it is with him. I yearn to do something grand to repay his love—^no, to sustain it, for somehow I constantly fear that such generosity can't last. It's not enough to be the "Yank" who brings back lost illusions. If I could invite him for a visit to the West, I'd spend my last penny to show him the best. We'd go to the smartest "21" places, the kind for which I have no taste on my own. Acapulco, Capri, Cannes—anything he wanted would be his, and he, who makes a holiday of a walk along the Moscow River, would revel in it like the whole of a cruiser's crew on leave in Hong Kong. For one glorious month, I'd be the guide.
A haunting moon is rising over Lenin Hills, barely illuminating the dome of a disused church. In its wan light and my surge of tenderness for him, his shaggy head suddenly seems frail; more
Alyosha^207
than ever, I perceive the hide-and-seek child inside the clever operator. The unreality of my fantasy about giving him one dazzling fling squeezes my chest. I know that he senses my affection and sorrow. With comic grandiloquence, he is composing a courtly complaint about my recent snapshots of him in which his teeth appear bad and his nose "more protusile" than usual. From a satirical discourse on the ethical implications of "photographs don't lie" he moves to an exposition—simultaneously twitting his own vanity and Socialist Realism, while reminding me of my life's vastly greater opportunities—of the artist's duty to illuminate mankind's "progressive" nobility rather than irrelevant individual defects. Nonsense phrases— "the aesthetic prophylaxis of the creator's proboscis perception, in a society underpinning vigilant development"—are sprinkled among the pseudo-philosophical contemplation, and my inability to stifle belly laughter intensifies my heartache. Steaming like dry ice, the moon tries to burn brighter. A passing police car slows to inspect us. When we finally kiss good-bye, I like myself too for feeling what I do behind the previously taboo gesture.
"Amber teeth, lad, mean meat in the larder. It's an old Russian saying."
"For God's sake, don't take a detour on the way home. Amateur bards need sleep."
But having coaxed the engine back to life, he jumps out again and runs back to the gate for our nth rehearsal of tomorrow's rendezvous arrangements. Parting is such bumblingly protracted sorrow.
The tidal wave of depression that submerges me the next day is as strong as any before I met him. Only his exhortation extracts me from bed. Convinced at last that something is wrong with me, he parks the car where we happen to be: alongside Lubyanka.
"What's the point of feeling blue? What's there to be blue about? The sun's shining; you don't have to kill the day in the shadow of a bar—of justice, I mean. But Fm listening, go ahead."
How to tell him what troubles me? His problems—the Finnish front, everything symbolized by the dreaded yellow structure whose shadow darkens the car at this moment—are real; mine a
208^ MOSCOW FAREWELL
silly collection of New York neuroses. Lack of parental affection, ha ha? The breakdown of my career; loss of Anastasia? Blessed with everything denied to him, I can't explain the subconscious mess that lays me low at these times, nor that my life will never be rich the way he assumes. For all our closeness, we're sometimes strangers; but another lesson I learn now is that best friends need not be psychic twins.
Our long drive ends in a village whose single street is a cortege of battered trucks spewing noxious gases. During a stroll through the dreary village to escape the Volga's ears, Alyosha is talking about B.B., our code for the scheme that increasingly preoccupies him. Big Business. He will obtain some superb icons suitable for smuggling to the West; two or three will make us both rich.
It is a hazardous plan which can easily bring the KGB on us, but he's determined. If I'm discovered with the goods, I'm to say that I bought them from an unknown street pusher. If the smuggling succeeds but he is caught with the dollar profits, he'll concoct an explanation that avoids implicating me. No matter how strong the circumstantial evidence and pressure to confess, his trial experience tells him that conviction for conspiracy is unlikely if we stick, stick, stick to our stories. And although he might get ten years, they'd probably limit themselves to permanent expulsion for me.