Mikha was appointed as a traveling salesman.
The first trips didn’t take him very far afield. Stuffing his backpack with samizdat, he set out on the commuter train or the bus for a nearby station: Obninsk, Dubna, or Chernogolovka. He would meet other young research associates, hand over the literature, take the money in exchange, and return home on the same day.
Getting acquainted with them was strictly forbidden. Mikha introduced himself as Andrei, and the counteragent didn’t introduce himself at all. He usually said something like: “Alexander Ivanovich sent me.”
From the money he received, Mikha would get five honestly earned rubles each time. The money stung his hand a little.
Working in the boarding school for the deaf-mute had been so much better. It had satisfied in some ideal way everything Mikha needed and wanted—a modest but sufficient income; absolute pleasure and satisfaction from the creative, useful work he did; a rare feeling of being in just the right place, at just the right time. That work, and the money he earned, had never stung his hand!
* * *
After two months, Mikha admitted to Ilya that he wanted more meaningful work than merely delivering goods in a backpack to different addresses. He was well versed in the ins and outs of samizdat, and he considered himself to be entitled to something more creative …
“Fine, all right. I knew this was bound to happen.” Ilya looked somewhat dissatisfied, though he usually swelled with pleasure when he could solve other people’s problems. “Edik is the one you need. Edik! You know, the tall fellow,” Ilya said.
Mikha remembered. He had delivered some books to him. And he wasn’t someone you could easily forget. He was nearly six feet six, and had a pink baby face with nothing growing on it but thick, bushy eyebrows.
Ilya took Mikha to meet Edik. Edik lived with his mother and his wife, Zhenya, in a separate two-room apartment. Looking around, Mikha again grew enamored of someone else’s home, which didn’t resemble anything he had seen before. Edik’s mother was a specialist in Buddhism. The walls were covered with Eastern paintings and images, which were, as Edik explained to him, Buddhist icons. Edik’s wife was an archaeologist, and she had left traces of her profession in their home: three unprepossessing earthenware pots. The women were not home at the moment.
Edik published the samizdat magazine Gamayun. It consisted of twenty pages of onionskin paper, crudely stitched together between two pieces of blue cardboard. It was a literary and social-commentary journal that thus far existed as one copy of the first issue. Mikha grabbed the magazine and examined it from cover to cover.
“Interesting! But why Gamayun?” he said.
“Alkonost and Phoenix were already taken; I don’t like Sirin. Gamayun was just the thing.”
“Yet another bird from Slavic mythology?”
Edik explained:
“Sure. But this little bird is a great intellectual. It knows all the secrets of the universe. It also has the gift of prophecy. We initially thought we would call it The Historical Project. But we decided that was too dry. It’s an educational journal. With modern poetry, naturally.”
Mikha was more than ready to take part in the publication of a journal that would open the eyes and ears of the unenlightened.
Ilya left Mikha at Edik’s, and the new friends shared a dinner of grayish macaroni. After the macaroni they agreed fairly quickly that the magazine should concentrate on literary and social commentary, rather than political. That is, politics would be kept to a minimum. Edik was interested in historical prognostication, and the analysis of social trends, tastes, and preferences—sociological subjects, in other words.
“As far as literature goes, I am most interested in poetry and science fiction. Science fiction is able to generalize the processes under way in the world and offer interesting prognoses. Nowadays, Western science fiction functions as futurology, the philosophy of the future. I simply don’t have time to take it on, though. If you would answer for it, it would be fantastic.”
Mikha thought about it: he had never been exposed to any science fiction. He promised to keep it in mind.
Right on the spot they decided on the contents of the poetry section for the next issue. There would be a large selection of works by one poet, and one or two poems each by five to eight other writers. Mikha suggested Brodsky as the featured poet, and began murmuring rapturously:
“General! Our maps are crap. I pass.
The north is not here at all, but at the North Pole.
And the equator is broader than the side stripes on your trousers.
Because the front, General, is in the south.
At such a distance a walkie-talkie turns any command
Into boogie-woogie.”
“Who are you going to surprise with Brodsky? Listen, there are new poets, nearly unknown:
‘Memory is an armless equestrian statue
You gallop wildly, but
You have no arms
Today you shout loudly in the empty corridor
You flicker at the corridor’s end
It was evening and tea swirled aromatically
Ancient trees of steam grew out of the cups
In silence, each admired his life
And a girl in yellow admired it most of all…’”
“Yes, it’s really good. Who wrote it?”
“Who? A nobody. Young fellow from Kharkov. Came to Moscow not long ago. No one knows him. But in five years they will. Like everyone knows Brodsky now. I’m willing to bet on it. He’s the one we need to publish.”
“I’m not so sure. I think we should take Khvostenko,” Mikha said.
“I love Khvost, but what is he without his guitar? This other fellow will make a stronger impression…”
“What’s his name?”
“What does it matter? I’m telling you—everyone will know him in five years. And you want Khvostenko?” Edik was getting angry, and the good-natured Mikha began feeling uncomfortable.
“This is absurd! We haven’t even started working together, and we’re already quarreling.”
Edik laughed. “That’s what always happens. I’m constantly falling out with my friends. It’s just my character.”
“What idiots we are!” Mikha said. “Gorbanevskaya! Natalia Gorbanevskaya! She’s the one we need! She’d be ideal.” And, his voice full of pathos, he began to recite:
“It will not perish in our wake—
The dry grass smolders.
It will not perish in our wake—
The millstones are still.
In our wake not a step, not a sigh,
no blood, no blood-soaked sweat,
No blood-sealed debt,
will perish in our wake.
The fire runs through the grass,
The fire presses to the trees,
And for those reclining in the foliage
A day of reckoning will come…”
“Done! There can be no objections to Gorbanevskaya! We just have to ask her,” Edik said.
“But it’s samizdat! Why ask permission? We’ll take these three poems, addressed to Brodsky.”
With his passion for the literary classics—the poetic correspondence between Pushkin and Vyazemsky, or the epistolary exchange of Herzen and Turgenev, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, or Gogol and his chosen friends—he wanted to elaborate on the subject immediately.
“It would be good to find poems of Brodsky’s addressed to Gorbanevskaya, or, for example, poems of Gorbanevskaya addressed to someone else!”
“To Pushkin, for instance! Go ahead, commission her to do it!” Edik said sarcastically.
But Mikha was supremely serious.
“No, that’s not what I mean. You know, it’s a good idea to look for poems addressed to friends. A poetic conversation between fellow poets. This one, for instance: