Then submits to the logic of his own self-lampoon. "What the hell, some say you're only young once," he intones happily, freeing a hand to propose a toast. "Temptation's evil, it's our duty to fight it—in the form of filthy lucre, I mean. . . . Anyway, divide by two"—he pats each girl lovingly between her legs— "and it's a mere three hundred rubles each, si, muchacho?"
This is his way of saying that he wants to sacrifice the extraordinary fee for Alia and Olya's favors. The thought of this wild extravagance—six hundred rubles is a worker's income for
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half a year—transforms the otherwise ordinary fete into a luxurious revel and gives our companions an aura of exceptional allure, as if they were fabulously costly call girls. I know Alyosha has made the gesture partly to provide something extra for my weekend. Nothing—especially such outrageously expensive pleasure—is now for himself. All discoveries and disappointments, every tale told by every new girl, is nourishment for our friendship. And offerings to appease omniscient skuka, god of Overpowering Boredom.
We spend the weekend together in feasting and brief outings. Monday morning, we drive to the courthouse. Alia and Olya to report as required, Alyosha to disqualify himself from the case on the grounds—-which he must argue ardently to overcome the judge's so-whats?—that having dined at the adjoining table in the restaurant where the rape was planned, he felt personally involved.
By the somber light of Monday afternoon, Alyosha decides to sell the new samovar to pay off pressing debts for which the Georgian bonanza had been budgeted. But he has no regrets about the weekend, not even now that it's over.
On the Sunday when Agitprop Tanya is helping turn out the vote, Alyosha too performs his civic duty. To lose the taste from his mouth "before it spoils the Sabbath," he likes to vote early. In a school corridor near the apartment, he turns from the officials' table where he has been handed his premarked ballot and, in the same motion, drops it into the box without having given it a glance.
I leave quickly because I assume I'm not supposed to witness this spectacle and am afraid my expression might give me away. The very ordinariness of the ten-second ritual of totalitarian control makes it deadlier than I had expected, and Alyosha's smirk hides neither his humiliation nor disgust.
"An informed electorate makes its choice with dispatch and resolution," he says on the school steps. "Rest in Peace, the election results will be gratifying. And what else is new? Kovo ebat budyem?^''
Rest in Peace, our code for the propaganda's inane edge, comes from the story of the eulogist's farewell as his factory
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director is lowered into the ground: "Rest in Peace, dear Comrade; the plan will be fulfilled." A spoof on the standard description of Soviet leaders' firm final words to his "comrades-in-arms" about strengthening the Party's unshakable unity and raising productivity, it reminds us of Edik's influential father, and we call the prodigal son from a booth. He asks to meet us tomorrow. Alyosha often gets his pickups excused from work by obtaining a chit certifying they appeared as trial witnesses; now Edik needs this proof for a schoolteacher who missed two days of classes last week for a spree with him.
The clinic where an Erstwhile of Alyosha's supplies medical excuses from work if his favorite court secretaries are unavailable happens to be our next stop. It is part of a huge complex for oncology and internal medicine, but Alyosha doesn't reveal his business here and even says I'd better not come in with him.
"Happily, hombre. What's the attraction of a cancer clinic on Sunday?"
"Chief doctors are away, comrade nurses like to play. The heater's on, I'll be a minute."
But he is gone an hour, looks wan when he reappears—from a different building—and apologizes with uncharacteristic formality.
"You're not sick, seiior?" I quip.
"Sick of winter. Let's home it for a bit. I'll do soup."
A broth made from dried, wild mushrooms, it is my favorite. We have just started spooning when a knock sounds. I open it to a woman wearing a pasted smile and a dirty coat I seem to recognize. It is Aksyona, our disappeared railroad friend.
"I know. It took all my courage to face you. But I'll explain everything, may I come in?"
She finishes the leftovers together with the soup, explains nothing but asks to borrow twenty-five rubles. After sharp chastisement for stealing from individuals when there's a whole huge State around, Alyosha gives her thirteen in single bills. Aksyona takes a long bath, but perceiving no great demand for her favors, leaves with a promise to return "when I feel I can tell."
We stretch out together for a rest on the bed. Folders containing Alyosha's current cases crown piles of less important
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papers scattered everywhere, and as always, we talk in whispers because half our topics—exchanging dollars for rubles, my obtaining Pall Malls and a Sinyavsky book for acquaintances of Alyosha, the Palestine and girl situations—are taboo or illegal. These conspiracies are part of nature now. The strange peace I feel, despite the underlying dread, in succumbing to the limbo of being Tonto to his Lone Ranger is strongest on Sundays. Abandoning the last pretence of library work has been a relief. The possibility of my expulsion because of this or for some convenience to the authorities is all the more reason to spend my rationed hours here.
I flip on the radio to a selection of oh-so-Russian folk songs in a superpatriotic arrangement of a provincial choir. "Music to vote by," comments Alyosha dryly, threading the Ray Charles tape "for jamming" on this Election Day.
Our plan is to spend the rest of it enjoying the easier weather—wind tasting of oozing earth beneath the snow—with a walk in the countryside, but first Alyosha wants to consult a colleague about a truck driver he defended who was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter in a highway accident. Ordinarily resigned to miscarriages of justice, he is distressed for the doomed man, who was not only blameless but also accepted ruin by hanging judges without a word of protest. For months, Alyosha has been pursuing every avenue of appeal and pardon, all on his own initiative since the convict's wife cannot spare a kopek from the meager income she scratches together to support their children. The final hope lies with the Supreme Court, and since all previous rulings have ignored his mass of technical evidence, he wants advice—not to be trusted to the telephone—about whether to approach one of its members.
The aged lawyer welcomes us to his apartment. After the consultation, we drive to a peasant market, where Alyosha buys a chicken for today, lamb for tomorrow and, despite my protests, a handful of murderously expensive tomatoes. "Enough bravado. I know how fast Yanks run down without fresh vegetables and chewing gum." It is three o'clock and we haven't talked of women for the evening. A counter girl in a white smock—normally perfect prey—goes unnoticed.
We climb into the car, then out immediately because we
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haven't discussed B.B.—the icons. Keeping voices low and distance safe from aHen ears, we pace the old fence that conceals the eyesore of the market, apprehension making me excited yet weak. Estimating our wealth, plotting and double-checking our moves, we rehearse the entire operation, as we did yesterday and the day before.
". . . yeah, but real masterpieces, okay? . . . more fakes than informers . . ."
". . . knows monastery sources. He's a vodka priest; once defended him . . ."
"... still the one crucial step. Got to get into that diplomatic pouch ..."
". . . not more than three trips . . . something safer than a tourist; they've really started to check . . . fetch fifty thousand dollars—or pounds?—in London . . ."
I will smuggle Alyosha's cut back to Moscow—the more on the first go, the better chance of buying museum pieces for "reorder" and the greater our eventual wealth. But if I can't return, at least one of us will be rich.