The Scholar. A handsome woman of twenty-eight ("Ye gods, I'll be running an old-age home next," moans Alyosha) in a well-tailored suit, she has come to Moscow from Sverdlovsk to obtain a black market copy of something by Freud. Any Freud, it hardly matters which, so long as it "you know . . . explains about sex." Scholarly ignorance and popular indifference in this field are a Russian plain of darkness. What are we to make of our chance meeting with this provincial belle of maverick interests?
"Actually, I'm not a sexologist yet; that's what I want to be. I'm a psychology student in Sverdlovsk University. But sex is so important, don't you think? I want to make it my life's study."
"In theory or practice?" Alyosha chimes in, wriggling his ears. "You know Lunacharsky's admonition about book learning estranged from the people's daily life."
"Oh, practice is valuable too. I never realized Lunacharsky was involved with it."
While Alyosha is searching for the telephone number of an old friend likely to own a prerevolutionary copy of Freud's treatise on dreams, she undresses, placing one finger in her mouth and another in her sex. . . . Two hours later, she asks for the names of other potential "fellow-students."
"I only have a couple of days left in Moscow, and I have to find a book by Avid [sic!] too."
The Volunteer. Again and again, she promises to return for "whatever you want" next week; but she simply can't let us "have it" tonight.
"No I won't stay over; I've already stayed too long. Where's my coat, I'm leaving this minute." She has something terribly important to attend to early tomorrow morning and must not be late.
"Eight o'clock on a Sunday morning?" Alyosha's inquiry is a polka of skepticism and cheery confidence that the new prize, a fornicator's dream of lewdly beckoning breasts and buttocks, is on the verge of abandoning her improbable excuse. His experience of ten thousand fibs and feints have honed a sixth sense about genuine and invented appointments. To help recruits keep
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the former, he will drive any distance in any weather; but he is correspondingly deft at dismantling spurious defenses.
"You're a Catholic then, my darling? Tomorrow's your holy confirmation? Nothing to worry about. We'll fix you up with a peccadillo for confession; everyone will feel finer for it." The incongruity of this—not one practicing Catholic in ten million girls her age—is lost on the amateur acrobat, who laughs because "confirmation" is something naughty boys do, and you can't call that "holy." With her lemon hair and tarty makeup, she seems unlikely not only to attend church but to have anything but monkey business planned for a Sunday morning.
But when she rises early and returns to last night's plea, Alyosha becomes convinced. Rushing with breakfast, he repairs the toilet for her use and cranks the Volga alive. Relieved at being sped toward her required address at last, she reveals the nature of her business. Today is election day and she's an agitprop volunteer for turning out the vote.
I jump on the chance to learn something about the infamous agitprop, terror's repellent henchman in my textbooks on totalitarianism. No, she replies thickly, of course she didn't offer to do it. As her wallpaper factory's newest hand, she was instructed to volunteer, told where to report. No, she couldn't say what the work would be. Something about ringing doorbells and reminding the Comrades of their socialist duty to vote. The candidate? What candidate? Oh, the one she'll be canvassing for. Well, what about him?
"Who is he for a start?"
"How am / supposed to know, they didn't tell me. Anyway, what difference does it make? . . . Shall I come back this afternoon?"
The Star. We spy her in a new record store, this winner of Cannes prizes and most internationally celebrated of Soviet actresses who, in Moscow, is as well known for her visits to mental hospitals and persistent nymphomania. A shrill mockery of herself in her immensely popular movies, she reviles us from the moment of entering the car.
"You want to fuck me? Okay, you can fuck me. All studs want to fuck me. But get out and hail a taxi. A decent one, a
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limousine. You cunt-lappers think I'm going to ride in this shit-heap?"
On television last month, my third viewing of the film that made her a public idol again moved me as deeply as the first and second. She played a girl of haunting purity who loses her lover to war. Now, en route to Alyosha's, she demands cigarettes and vodka—"Western fags, goddam it. And my own bottle."
"You can fiick me up my asshole, that's what you scum want. But bring me Stolichnaya, not coffin varnish, you cheap bastards."
His aplomb slightly frayed, Alyosha buys two bottles of the best vodka, serving them in the apartment on a tray with gleaming glasses. She shatters hers against the wall and drinks straight from her bottle. Glugging noisily, she lowers it to her other lips and inserts the neck, groaning with forced pleasure like a has-been diva. Later she snorts like a laughing record, vomits into the sink, curses us for palming off rotgut on her. Still retching, she demands champagne.
Smacking of a Hamburg cabaret, the sex has been so degraded that Alyosha and I need a tramp through the snow after she has sobered up enough to leave. Staggering from the Volga toward her entryway in an apartment building for Party and cultural big shots, she warns that she'll set the police on us for seducing her.
"You dirty bastards, I'll send you to a labor camp. You won't get away with trying those tricks on me."
Having met his match, Alyosha drives off like a bank robber on the getaway.
"I told you we take in too many movies," he mutters. "Makes us too starry-eyed to handle real life's challenges."
After a rest come two post-office file clerks wooed from an ice cream parlor on Saturday afternoon, who mention that they must testify at a trial on Monday. Alyosha too will be in court the day after tomorrow. Because his case seems a nasty one—the defendant and his Georgian friends apparently robbed as well as raped two Russian girls slow to submit to them—the parents have promised him a whopping six hundred rubles under the table. But such matters are far from our minds as, during
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leisurely preparations for a fete, we explore our guests' ungrudgingly presented charms. The table gradually acquires its customary clutter while the two eighteen-year-olds nibble on olives and toy with Alyosha's stuffed monkey.
"I'm not hungry," says Alia feebly, in response to the aroma of roasting meat.
"Got any good records?" asks Olya. "I know a boy who was in France and saw the Rolling Stones."
"The trial's early," muses Alia, returning to their Monday-morning devoir. "If it's over in a couple of hours like they said, will we have to go to work in the afternoon?"
Alyosha and I quickly gulp the rest of our beer in order to shout our double-take "Whoops!" together. Like news of a bounced check, it dawns on us simultaneously that our callers are none other than the rape victims he is due to meet across the courtroom two days hence. The fete must be canceled: even a hundred rubles is too much to sacrifice for the favors of two pleasant but wholly ordinary postal clerks—precisely the kind who might kiss and tell on the stand. Sleeping with the prosecution's principal witnesses on the eve of a trial could cause permanent disbarment.
Like a clown in sorrow, Alyosha gazes adoringly at his unattainable prizes who, still unsuspecting, are distributing herring morsels on large cuts of bread. Even my homily that all is not lost forever—after all, we can safely reinvite them after the trial a not unendurable forty-eight hours hence—does nothing to dispel the hammy pain from his eyes. Squeezing Alia on his one side and Olya on the other, he pronounces a melancholy discourse on modern life's killing pressures, wherein invidious business is "always" smothering pleasure.