"The right one, muchacho. It's anomalous to live under capitalism without capital. . . . Besides, Rockefeller's pile can't change my style or, er, domicile. You're the new generation, you need the stake."
A voice in me gloats at the prospect of these crooked riches. When I return home—without Alyosha, prospects, even interests, fit only for nostalgia about this, my great adventure—I'll be alone. Different from everyone. This lump sum will be my compensation. I'll invest well and live the life of an Alyosha in New York. . . .
Yet the dream only increases my foreboding about the future. In my heart of hearts I know that something will go wrong—and anyway, how can we raise ten thousand rubles for a museum piece when we must sell some rag for tomorrow's food and drink? B.B. is sheer escapism—not even proper wishful thinking, for at bottom neither Alyosha nor I want to be rich. What we do want is to do something princely for one another; and to court danger together along the way. His riches and mine will be our only link when I'm home and he's here, a world apart. Meanwhile, we try to lift the conspiracy to this charitable objective.
AIyosha^227
"Take your time selling. Maybe a private collector instead of the auctions, that's where your judgment counts. . . . Remember, they count on panic and confession. If anything flubs, we stick to our stories."
"Right, and stay with those art books. It's hot air until you find the right goods. What about the museum right now?—No, better not be seen there together. . . ."
Provisions safely in the trunk, we proceed with a reduced agenda of Sunday errands. A stop at a dry cleaning outlet so that Alyosha will have his suit in the morning. An in-and-out visit to admire Volodya Z's new boxer pup.
But we skip the rest, and Alyosha is not going to attend his lecture about the highway code, a spiteful cop's punishment for crossing a lane line last week. For the sky has suddenly cleared to an early spring sun, and we drop everything in the usual rush to the great outdoors. Fresh air is at least as important as fresh cadres.
In our early weeks, when I was still making appearances at the library, Alyosha lamented the "pessimism" that kept me inside the somber building irrespective of whether the sun was shining. "It's a common-law crime to waste such an opportunity," he pleaded at the first sniff" of mildness. And I'd chuckle at this childish order of priorities, until I adopted his sense of values and began to cherish each bright hour like a personal gift.
"When the sun appears, heed the call of duty. To the countryside, quick!"
After our late start, we choose the nearest park reasonably free of Sunday crowds. There the sun is glinting in a million drops of melted snow. Despite the slush sloshing into Alyosha's shoes, we stroll for hours along rambling paths, talking about an Erstwhile chosen for a screen role and another whose indiscreet remarks to a Dutch journalist has landed her in an asylum; and about our plan to marry two sisters who work in the powerplant so that I can invite him—as my relative—to New York. Full of admiration for my "feat," Alyosha questions me about my wandering through Europe without guides or fixed routes on a college summer vacation. We have started toward the car when a shout rings out.
"Aksyonov! Hey, Aksyonov—my God, you're a sight!"
228^MOSCOW FAREWELL
A sight herself, the woman is chasing us like a goose on the run. Forty pounds and a quarter of a century ago, she was Alyosha's favorite for a winter. Now she's a grandmother: this —she exposes the bundled face of the infant in her arms—is her daughter's son. Did anyone suspect life would pass so fast?
"How wonderful to see you," Alyosha interjects. "Tanechka darling, you haven't changed a bit."
Beaming at his recognition, Tanya, which is indeed her name, says she's been following Alyosha's amatory progress by word of mouth, and warns she's considering a "refresher" visit herself Pleased with herself, she waddles her pram away.
The evening chill and our appetite for the market chicken make us eager for the apartment. But approaching the Volga, we notice a black car parked twenty yards behind: one of the KGB teams that follow us occasionally, in conformance with no pattern we can decipher. This pair is drowsy, no doubt because their heater is on full blast, and Alyosha simulates clumsiness to sound his horn while settling into the driver's seat.
"Hello darlings, it's the good guys—no, I mean the suspicious elements," he mimes to the beefy men. To me—between phrases of a patriotic song, anesthetizing the microphone—he whispers that if we leave unobserved, the apartment will be patrolled for a week.
"Our sleuths' dislike for being outsmarted contributes handsomely to the common interest. Learning to play dumber than them, the brains of the nation are sharpened."
When we stop to telephone Fawn Galya, he holds open the booth door with his foot, the more visible to make the exaggerated cooing and wooing expressions that demonstrate to the detectives he is surely talking to a girl, not enemy agents. Galya isn't home but her younger sister has answered. "What's that again?" gasps Alyosha, who senses his flattering banter is about to bear new fruit. "But maybe you feel sixteen, what's a year between old friends? Mistakes are made in birth certificates, you know. . . . What can we do, then, Natashinka? ril wait for you."
Watching him at work, knowing that when fifteen-year-old Natasha attains the age of consent next year, a hundred beloveds and a thousand errands from now, Alyosha will remember to call her, I think of his inimitable qualities. The impulsive generosity
AIyoshaX229
on borrowed rubles and self-parody that makes him a metaphor for humanity trekking its eternal route; the mascot nose and the slightly undersized physique—-which, despite everything, makes his philandering funny. "Mother Nature didn't want everything perfect," he sighs when contemplating his defects in the mirror. "Even the sun has spots."
I also question myself because I don't want to fool myself concerning him. Would I be as moved by his taking me in were it not that few Russians dare invite me even overnight? Is it his acceptance, in fact, that I'm grateful for—or through it, my open sesame to the back doors of Russian life? Would this friendship have happened, or Alyosha himself have been spawned, in another land, or only where gloom and fatalism weigh the air, giving us day after day to ourselves and our private pursuits? In other words, is Alexei Aksyonov a straightforward freak of nature or the kind that reveals more about ordinary life than a hundred average types?
Is it odd or logical that my best friend is Russian; that five thousand miles and a political eon from New York, I feel that I'm home? I wonder. And can't decide whether the cave-in of my plans explains my need for him as the personification of health and dynamism; or whether he prompted the academic collapse. He who makes me feel I'm watching a nature film about the miracle of creation and of life-energy.
Everything is jumbled together: his qualities, the ones in me that respond to protective openheartedness, the relationship of these personal questions to what Russia gives and takes. When I'm an old-timer looking back, I'll complete the equations. Meanwhile, with him near, I needn't worry about what I'm going to be or do. I know that when I'm blue, he will drop everything to be there outside the University gate. Never mind that his standard remedy of an afternoon fete is becoming less effective; he'll even endure a television documentary if mindless distraction is what I want. That if I ask him to make inquiries about some state secret tonight or to drive me to Siberia tomorrow, he'll fill up with gas and set off". (He's already made plans to microfilm certain Revolutionary legal brochures in a closed archive—the material, he insists, for a quick dissertation, which I must finish, even though I'll be icon-rich.) That when I
230^MOSCOW FAREWELL
perform some task, he'll make a great fuss over my ability to cope with Russian life: watching me complete a telephone call or fight my way to a spirits counter before closing, he beams with pride and affection—just as he laughs delightedly at my weakest witticism. Whatever else is incomplete about him, his central trait of unqualified, unconditional affection is what was missing from my modern education: the commitment not to what I do or know, but to me.