So my rival is also weak! I'd like to greet him before hiding but my feet are still stuck in the rain-made mud. Anastasia's every movement is profoundly familiar, like the Dvorak Slavonic Dance my cerebral orchestra is now playing. I want to formulate something about her looks, but can only think to say that living
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with a man has burnished her splendor. She's an untouched-up Catherine Deneuve.
But I've been ideahzing her too long, deleting her sensuous-ness. The slight Asian protuberance of her mouth reminds me of her frankness in lovemaking: the unlipsticked lust. Blood is pumping away from my sodden stomach—-faster now, for her reaction to seeing me is flattered delight. But wouldn't you know, she converts it immediately to what-a-foolish-youth disapproval, expressed by pursing lips.
What a mistake to be half-hidden by a tree instead of in the open! She'll think I've been trying to peep through her windows—which I did once, climbing the old poplar as I'd seen children do afternoons; but not tonight. She approaches me as if I'm the courtyard naughty boy. I yearn to be imposing yet humble, to show my new worth and to press her hand to my forehead—a hundred things at the same time. The much-tortured alleycat scurries between us and toward the gate, distracting her from the declaration she's preparing for me. I long to hear my fate from the highborn princess, now advancing to strains of Scheherazade. The professor catches up with her, his expression revaling he knows who I am and is flustered. The poor fellow is quite willing for me to take his difficult ward for the night, but I have no such pretensions. Dearest Nastenka, I only came to drink in your beauty.
"Dearest Nastya, I didn't mean to drink. I only came ... to wish you well."
"For goodness sake, you don't even like it. You can't blame your tricks on alcohol."
What tricks? Does she know I still sometimes follow her in the metro?
The professor hesitates because he wants to invite me in, but Anastasia strides past and he mounts the stairs in her train. Her scent follows: a fairy's fragrance visiting the courtyard's earthy odors. And moonlit flaxen hair on black jersey, lingering on my optic nerves like a television dot when the set is switched off".
Sonorous quiet again. The moment was far too quick. I lie down on the bench favored by babysitting grandmothers. Wisps
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of cloud are still up there. The certainty of her rebuff cleansed my confusion; the only hurt now is that she's better than ever, more meant for me.
But it's time to move on. Roll off and take the first step. Leaves in the breeze above remind me of Moscow's huge advantages for living over New York. Green to see, air to breathe, no doormen to avoid.
I find another bench on the walk to Alyosha's. It's good to be on my way at last, but there's no need to rush. We'll have a midnight snack and listen to the Ray Charles. I forgot to tell him my news about my application for a Black Sea trip so we can spend some of the summer together on a beach before I leave forever. And I must remember to mention Chingiz, in case he can help.
He doesn't answer the bell. Strange—the car's in the courtyard and his lights are on. I play the new la-de-da, then the special, special ring only I know. A teen-age factory lass lives on the opposite side of the landing, together with her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts. She used to sneak across to the apartment for clothes-on copulation until her older brother came searching for her one day with murderous intent. Alyosha parried so well that the brother ended by inviting us to join a team stealing tar paper from his construction brigade.
But something's ominous about his not answering. Wait now: something's been off all day. Founding's out because of the neighbors. I sit down on the stairs, deciphering the random pattern of the concrete.
And I go queasy when I hear steps jerking their way to the door. Alyosha plastered? That's impossible no matter what he guzzles—and wrong, because the appeal of his dissipation is his always being in control of it, like mental breakdown depicted in art. I can be morbid sometimes, even in May.
He fumbles with the catch. I step back in horror. He's not only slobbering drunk but deranged, like a man with a family wiped out by fire. I'm not even certain he recognizes me—or cares.
Suddenly I remember the hospital this morning. The howling clues that have escaped me all day. He is sick.
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"I know it's that. For God's sake tell me, Alyoshinka. We'll face it together."
I am cold sober again, tasting vomit in my gullet. Something loathsome has attacked my friend. A deathly film blears the eyes of the symbol of life. He was waiting for me all these hours, drinking alone in his room.
I help him lie down, but he gets up again to look out of the window.
"Alyosha, buddy, speak to me. Modern medicine works."
He will not talk. But when he does, it is worse than I've imagined. He has intestinal cancer.
It has spread from his rectum to his duodenal tract. A young internist he knows socially and trusts more than the clinic doctors has told him, under pressure, that the malignancy looks fierce.
He opens another bottle. And I join him because he wants me to. I wish to God we could be closer now than ever, united in adversity, but we are too hopelessly drunk to be truly aware of each other. Like shapeless heaps, we grunt and bark.
We grope for each other and try to dance. I remember an odious joke the day after President Kennedy died. I was working nights as a copy boy in a radio station, and a slick news announcer appeared for his morning stint, this time to narrate a memorial documentary. He was the kind who never let you pass without a gag. "What will John-John get for Christmas this year?" he drawled. I waited; he timed the punchline. "A jack-in-the-box." And I laughed.
We want to walk. I think we try to go out doors. Alyosha suspects he left some rum in the car. Later we ransack the drawer with his old photographs. There are a few of him in Sukhumi during the war, posing on the beach in a white-belted bathing suit. He whimpers again.
Toward dawn, I doze off in the armchair. A movieola of vignettes mellows my sleep, and I'm troubled only by a peripheral awareness that I must wake up soon. I imagine that Alyosha will trick the hospital as he did his draft board; that he's the subject of a malicious police campaign; that these dreams are reality and the cancer is the dream.
The radio has been left on. In the far, far reaches, I hear the
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news. And I am no longer dreaming, but putting everything together. The answer is a Nixon plot. Why did that creep have to come here? Break into my life with his Big Government and Big Business? Do this to Alyosha?
Walking the friendly half-slums ofBattersea, I remembered roommate Viktor. He was all excited when I first told him I might spend the summer in London: the spy novel he was reading had a KGB captain musing that "the only people who can even try to outwit us are the Order of Jesuits and the English Intelligence Service."
I also caught glimpses of the crank I'd become. I conversed with half a dozen people during the seven weeks, each time mentioning Russia within minutes. Although my quick notification of my connection with the exotic land was intended to cast myself in a dashing light, a larger truth was that I felt incompetent to discuss anything else, even with myself The greengrocers were full of fat avocados. I couldn 't say, "Look at those nice avocados," but "In Moscow, we don't have avocados. We don't have string beans or even leeks." I remembered a man I knew in New York who'd written eleven books about other