Kostya kicked the door closed with a bare foot and led me quickly down the grimy corridor past the communal kitchen and rooms of other families to his own, a flyblown rectangle with just enough room to squeeze between the chest of drawers and the bed. The floor and shelves were crammed with a massive assortment of junk. There was a collection of rusted draftsman’s tools, broken bits and pieces of several television sets and large rag dolls, a blackened piano keyboard, and four or five ancient car batteries from the garage where he worked - the hopeful beginnings of his own car. Ail this was covered with a medley of pots, pans and empty bottles - and, in areas that hadn’t recently been touched, a thick layer of dust. The once emerald walls were spattered with several decades of curdled grease.
‘Hi, Zhoe buddy. You’re just in time for our daily bread.’
‘Hello yourself, Kostya. How’s it going?’
‘So-so. How the hell can it go?’ He tossed my coat on the bed and gave my shoulders a quick rub-down with his exsailor’s, -miner’s, -boxer’s hands. For some reason, he always pretended that I was approaching infirmity, although we were almost the same age. ‘You look cold,’ he said, casting about amidst the junk for a bottle that wasn’t yet empty. ‘A man of your age must keep his tank full. Keeps the mind clear and arteries open.’
Kostya handed me a large water glass and filled it to the brim with ‘fuel’, his code-word for vodka. For himself, he poured a clear liquid called spirit, a home-brew of ninety-
nine per cent alcohol obtained from a 'certain source’ on the nursing staff of a gynaecological hospital. It was murder to swallow.
'Chin-chin - to you and yours/
‘And to every one of us. Cheers/
He tossed down his glass in a gulp and broke into a John Garfield grin. 'Great stuff/ he winked. 'Heals cuts and bruises from the inside - it’s pure/
He slipped off his trousers and black turtleneck, revealing a worn pair of swimming-trunks. Kostya liked to be at home in his bathing suit during the winter months; it encouraged him to daydream, he said, of everything he’d been deprived of by history, geography and fate. Hands on his still muscular stomach, he surveyed his treasured room with distinct pleasure — one of the few in the city enjoyed by a bachelor alone. On a two-burner hotplate — he preferred not to use the communal kitchen - he was cooking a cauldron of his famous borscht.
‘Nu stranger,’ he said, warming himself in the steam of the soup. 'How is it you’re avoiding me? You’ll give me a complex - my labor productivity will suffer/
‘I’ve had to stay sober. You won’t know it, but there’s been lots of news lately. Work/
‘Rationalize the journalistic process and you’ll have it licked. Like Pravda : it’s a cinch to write a couple of weeks’ news in advance. Anyway you’re dying to telclass="underline" what is the latest from our planet?’
'Kosygin arrived in Berlin yesterday for a big ceremony. There’s some speculation about why Suslov went with him. It’s in preparation for the giant hundred and fiftieth year memorial for Karl Marx/
'Are you serious? Who’s Kosygin? Why should I know a character with a label like Marx? I’ve told you a hundred times - you Americans have your friends, we have ours/
He poured a second round of drinks and fetched a fat herring from the improvised refrigerator between his double windows. 'My home’s your home,’ he pronounced, skinning 14
the herring. ‘Humble apologies for the temporary disorder. Be a good guest and consume that little glass/
I handed him a packet of Gillettes from the Embassy commissary. Razor blades had disappeared from Moscow shops six weeks before, and he’d asked me, somewhat sheepishly, for something to shave with.
‘Comments will not be tolerated under this roof,’ he said with mock-irritation. ‘No ideological subversion from a pawn of the monopoly-capitalistic press. My dear fellow, it’s easy enough for you over there to make toiletries: you exploit the working class. Besides, who needs razor blades? The Soviet people scorn such invidious bourgeois enticements; we have sputniks. Soviet cosmonauts are dancing in space at a billion rubles a waltz - that thrills us deeply as we fondle our stubble. To hell with your imperialistic razor blades. Shut up.’
He examined the packet delightedly and cleared a place of honor on a steamer trunk.
‘Upon reflection, I might be persuaded to accept them,’ he said. ‘You Westerners invest so much ego in your industrial products - it’s my duty to avoid an international incident.’
‘Many thanks, I’m so relieved. They’ve run out of Tampax. Need anything else in a hurry?’
‘Not at the moment. Well yes, now that you mention it. I require some Italian sunglasses and a sky blue Cadillac. It would be an aesthetic incongruity to use Moscow’s public transport with a Gillette shave.’
The room was warming up. Kostya inhaled a Camel and closed his eyes, spinning out his pleasure.
‘Peace to one and all’ he sighed. ‘We’re a very peaceful people anyway, we hate to fight. You’ve noticed the absence of duels on the streets of our glorious capital? Yet another accomplishment of Communism. You have to drop a glove to start a duel, after all. So you stand in line for a couple of hours to buy a pair - and by that time nobody remembers why he was angry/
He sliced some dried mushrooms and tossed them into the soup together with spoonsful of sour cream. Then he threaded a tape of Ella Fitzgerald on his recorder and sang along with her, miming the lyrics he didn't understand.
'Appropriate appetite achieved/ I announced. 'No doubt there's a forceful reason why you didn’t go to work today?'
‘I happen to have an official chit,' he said with dignity. ‘Stamps, seals, everything.'
'Not the witness role again,' I asked. Whenever he saw a traffic accident, Kostya always dropped everything and dashed to it. This required his appearance in court as a witness, which afforded at least one day off work in return for his hour of testimony.
‘ Nyet , this time I’m on the critical sick list. Strange and terrible pains in my duodenal tract - can't you see?'
Kostya grinned again and explained in exquisite detail how five sfipped-in-the-bra rubles and a promise of a halfbox of Tampax had induced a pretty young doctor to 'fiberate' him for the day. ‘What the hell, we'll just have to steel ourselves and wait one labor day more to reach Communism. . . . Come to think of it, what's the rush?'
He gulped another swig of spirit and lay back on the sagging, unmade bed. ‘Anyway,' he added, ‘I have to stick around today to feed the kid.’
‘Who's the kid?’
‘Just a lassie who’s been visiting me.'
‘I see. I don't suppose she's over twenty-one?'
‘She's a vigintinerian, I think. Times are tough. Soon I'll be running an old-age home.'
‘So you've got another one.' Kostya had literally hundreds. Some days half a dozen ‘lassies' called on him between noon and midnight - he gave them two-hourly appointments. And he liked them young. He kept a clay jug under his chest-of-drawers into which they were all trained to pee. Serious trouble would descend if his neighbors in the apartment observed a procession of teenagers filing to the communal bathroom.
‘Not exactly. I mean she’s not on the first team. I’m just keeping an eye on her until she finds her feet.’
‘I can imagine. Who is she then? What’s her name?’
‘Oktyabrina, She’s a ballerina who came in from some provincial company to make her name. That’s all anyone knows about her. She turned up a few weeks ago, tired and hungry.’
‘Sounds right up your alley.’
‘There’s an exception to every rule, to borrow Lenin’s saying. You’ll understand when you see her. As a matter of fact, I was wondering.