We crossed the street and found ourselves in a shashlik place. I had wanted to go to a milk bar, but my brother said, “A shashlik joint is the only place where a smashed face goes unnoticed.”
There weren’t many customers. Winter coats hung darkly on the coat rack. Pretty girls in lacy aprons ran around the room. The jukebox was blaring.
Rows of bottles glimmered by the bar at the entrance. Beyond that, on a platform, were the tables.
My brother immediately took an interest in the spirits.
I tried to stop him. “Remember what you said.”
“What did I say? I said we wouldn’t drink. In the sense of getting drunk. We don’t have to drink by the glassful. We’re cultured people. We’ll have a shot glass each just for the mood. If we don’t drink at all, it’ll be unnatural.”
And my brother ordered half a litre of Armenian cognac.
I said, “Give me my rouble. I’ll buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”
He grew angry.
“You’re so petty! I don’t have a rouble, it’s all tens. When I break a ten I’ll buy you a cistern of sunflower oil.”
As we took off our coats, my brother handed me the hat.
“It’s your turn, take it.”
We sat down at a corner table. I turned my right side to the room.
Everything that followed went by in a flash. From the shashlik place we went to the Astoria Hotel. From there, to see friends from the ice ballet. From their place, to the bar at the Journalists’ Union Club.
And everywhere my brother said, “If we stop now, it’ll be unnatural. We used to drink when we didn’t have money. It’d be stupid not to drink now, when we have it.”
Whenever we walked into a restaurant, Borya handed me his hat. When we went back out on the street, I would return the hat to him with thanks.
Then we went into the theatrical store on Ryleyev Street. He bought a rather ugly Pinocchio mask. I had spent an hour in that mask at the Yunost bar. By that time my eye had turned purple.
By evening my brother had developed an obsession. He wanted to fight. Rather, he wanted to find the bullies who had beaten me up the night before. Borya thought he could recognize them in a crowd.
“You haven’t even seen them,” I said.
“What do you think intuition is for then?”
He began pestering strangers. Luckily, everyone was afraid of him – until he picked on a Hercules near a clothing store. That one wasn’t frightened. He said, “I’ve never seen an alcoholic Jew before!”
My brother grew incredibly animated, as if he had been waiting all his life for someone to insult his national dignity. Especially since he wasn’t a Jew at all. It was I who was Jewish, to some degree. That’s how it was. A complicated family history. Too long to go into…
Incidentally, Borya’s wife, whose maiden name was Feinzimmer, liked to say, “Borya has drunk so much of my blood, he’s half Jewish now!”
I had never noticed any Caucasian patriotism in Borya before. But now he was even talking with a Georgian accent.
“I – a Jew? You mean, you think I’m a Jew?! You’re insulting me, my friend!”
They headed for an alleyway. I said, “Stop it. Leave the man alone. Let’s get out of here.”
But my brother was already turning the corner, shouting, “Don’t leave. If the police show up, give a whistle.”
I don’t know what happened in that alley. I only saw passers-by recoil.
My brother returned in a few moments. His lower lip was split. He held a brand-new sealskin hat in his hand. We quickly strode towards Vladimirskaya Square.
Borya caught his breath and said, “I punched him in the face. And he punched me in the face. His hat fell off. And my hat fell off. I looked and saw his hat was newer. I bent over and picked it up. And naturally, he picked up mine. I cursed him out. And he cursed me. And we went our separate ways. And I’m giving this hat to you. Take it.”
I said, “I’d rather you bought me a bottle of sunflower oil.”
“Naturally,” my brother said. “But first let’s have a drink. It’s necessary, as disinfection.”
And he stuck out his lower lip as proof.
I got home late that night. Lena didn’t even ask where I had been. She did ask, “Where’s the sunflower oil?”
I mumbled something unintelligible.
Her answer was, “Your friends are always drinking at your expense!”
“But at least,” I said, “I have a new sealskin hat.”
What else could I say?
From the bathroom, I heard her repeating, “My God, how will all this end? How will it all end?”
The Driving Gloves
I FIRST MET YURA SCHLIPPENBACH in Tauride Palace in Leningrad, at a conference of newspaper editors. I represented Turbobuilder, and Schlippenbach was there from a film-industry magazine called Close-Up.
Second Secretary of the Regional Party Committee Bolotnikov had the floor. At the end of his speech, he said, “We have model newspapers like Banner of Progress. We have average ones, like Admiralty, and bad ones, like Turbobuilder. And then we have Close-Up, which is in a class of its own – it is spectacular in its mediocrity and tedium…”
I hunched down a bit in my seat. Schlippenbach, on the contrary, proudly straightened up – apparently he felt like a persecuted dissident. Then he called out, “Lenin said that any criticism has to be substantiated!”
“Your paper, Yura, is beneath all criticism,” the secretary replied.
In the intermission, Schlippenbach stopped me and asked, “Excuse me, how tall are you?”
I wasn’t surprised; I was used to it. I knew I should expect the usual stupid exchange: “How tall are you?” “Six four.” “Too bad you don’t play basketball.” “I do play.” “That’s what I thought.”
“How tall are you?” Schlippenbach asked.
“Six four. Why?”
“You see, I’m doing an underground film. I want you to play the lead.”
“I can’t act.”
“That’s not important. You have the right look.”
We agreed to meet the next day.
I had known Schlippenbach from seeing him around the central newspaper offices. We had never met personally. He was a thin, edgy man with long, dirty hair.
He claimed that his Swedish ancestors are mentioned in historical documents. In addition, he carried a single volume of Pushkin verses in his carryall. ‘Poltava’ was bookmarked with a candy wrapper.
“Read,” Schlippenbach would say nervously. And without waiting for a reaction, he’d bark out:
“And soon the foe begins to yield.
The cannons roar: platoons are shaken,
Mingled, dismembered, crushed in mud:
The fiery Schlippenbach is taken,
And Rosen leaves the field of blood.”*
People were wary of him at the news headquarters. He was very bold. Perhaps the ardour inherited from the Swedish general was coming through. Schlippenbach refused to give up or give in. Once, when the old journalist Maryushin died, someone took up a collection for the funeral and approached Schlippenbach. He exclaimed, “I wouldn’t give a rouble for Maryushin alive. I certainly wouldn’t give a copeck for him dead. Let the KGB bury its informers.”
Meanwhile, Schlippenbach was constantly borrowing money from his co-workers, and he was reluctant about returning it. The list of creditors took pages in his notebook. When he was reminded of a debt, he would threaten, “You keep nagging me and I’ll cross you off my list!”
That evening after the meeting he called me twice, for no real reason. His offhand tone bespoke our closer relationship: you can call a friend for no reason. “I’m bored,” he complained. “And there’s nothing to drink. I’m lying here on the couch all alone, with my wife…” At the end of the conversation, he reminded me, “We’ll discuss everything tomorrow.”