I just stood in line, and quietly moved along to the counter. I heard the railroad man explain to someone, “I’m behind the bald guy. The Tsar’s behind me. And you come after the Tsar.”
The intellectual spoke to me. “Excuse me, do you know Sherdakov?”
“Sherdakov?”
“Aren’t you Dolmatov?”
“More or less.”
“Glad to see you. I still owe you a rouble. Remember, we were leaving the Sherdakov’s house together on Cosmonaut Day? And I asked you for a rouble for a taxi? Here.”
I had no pockets; I stuck the crumpled rouble note into my glove.
I actually did know Sherdakov – a specialist in Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, an assistant professor at the Theatre Institute. A habitué of the vodka bar. “Give him my best,” I said.
I saw Schlippenbach approaching. Galina followed, sighing.
By now I was almost at the counter. The crowd grew denser. I was squeezed in between the bum and the railroad man. The end of my scabbard was pushed against the intellectual’s hip.
Schlippenbach shouted, “I don’t see the scenario! Where’s the conflict? You’re supposed to antagonize the masses!”
The line grew wary: here was some busybody with a camera trying to get people riled up.
“Excuse me,” said the railroad man to Schlippenbach. “You’re jumping the line.”
“I’m on duty,” Schlippenbach replied, thinking fast.
“We all are,” mumbled someone in the crowd.
The dissatisfaction grew, the voices got more aggressive. “There’s all kinds of wise guys and jokers around here.” “They take your picture and then they use you as a bad example, like ‘Another Troublemaker’.” “We’re just getting a drink in a perfectly civilized way, and he comes here stirring shit.” “A bum like that should be locked away.”
The crowd’s energy was close to the bursting point. But Schlippenbach was angry himself.
“You’ve boozed Russia away, you vipers! You’ve lost the last remnants of your conscience! Up to your eyeballs in vodka from morning till night!”
“Yura, enough! Yura, don’t be an idiot, let’s go!” Galina tried to pull Schlippenbach away.
But he resisted. And then came my turn at the counter. I took the crumpled rouble out of my glove and asked, “How much should I get?”
Schlippenbach calmed down immediately. “Get me a large one, warmed up. And a small for Galina.”
Galina said, “I do not indulge in beer. But I’ll drink it with pleasure.”
There was little logic in her words.
Someone complained, but the bum explained to the disgruntled one, “No, the Tsar was in the queue, I saw him. And that fag with the camera is with him, so it’s OK, it’s legal!” The winos grumbled a bit more and quieted down.
Schlippenbach put the camera in his left hand and picked up his mug. “Let’s drink to the success of our film! True talent will always make its way.”
“My fool,” said Galina.
When we were backing out of the courtyard, Schlippenbach said: “Those people! Those are some people! I was even scared. It was just like — ”
“The battle of Poltava,” I finished for him.
It was hard changing in the van, so they brought me home, still in the emperor costume…
The next day, I ran into Schlippenbach at the cashier’s desk. He told me he wanted to get involved in human rights. So the film-making was over. The tsar costume lay around my house for two years. A neighbour’s boy took the sword. We polished the floor with the hat. Our extravagant friend Regina wore the waistcoat as a spring jacket. My wife made a skirt out of the velvet breeches. I brought the driving gauntlets along when I emigrated; I was sure I’d buy a car first thing.
I never did get round to it. Didn’t want to. I have to stand out somehow! Let all Forest Hills know me as “that crazy Dovlatov, the guy who has no car!”
Instead of an Afterword
THE SUITCASE IS ON THE KITCHEN TABLE: a rectangular plywood box, covered with green fabric, with rusted reinforcements on the corners.
My Soviet rags lie around it. The old-fashioned double-breasted suit with wide trouser cuffs. A poplin shirt the colour of a faded nasturtium. Low shoes shaped like a boat. A corduroy jacket still redolent of someone else’s tobacco. A winter hat of sealskin. Crêpe socks with an electric sheen. Gloves that are good if you need to cut a hungry Newfoundland hound’s hair. A belt with a heavy buckle, slightly bigger than the scar on my forehead…
So what had I acquired in all those years in my homeland? What had I earned? This pile of rubbish? A suitcase of memories?…
I’ve been living in America for ten years. I have jeans, sneakers, moccasins, camouflage T-shirts from the Banana Republic. Enough clothing.
But the voyage isn’t over. And at the end of my allotted time I will appear at another gate. And I will have a cheap American suitcase in my hand. And I will hear: “What have you brought with you?”
“Here,” I’ll say. “Take a look.”
And I’ll also say, “There’s a reason that every book, even one that isn’t very serious, is shaped like a suitcase.”
Notes
p. 3, But even like this… precious to me: From a 1914 poem ‘Greshit’ besstydno, neprobudno’ (‘To sin shamelessly, ceaselessly’) by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880 – 1921), a leading figure of the Symbolist movement.
p. 5, OVIR: The Russian Office of Visas and Registrations, which issued legal documents for those wishing either to enter or leave the Soviet Union.
p. 6, Rocky Marciano, Louis Armstrong, Joseph Brodsky, Gina Lollobrigida: Rocky Marciano (1923 – 69), Italian-American undefeated champion heavyweight boxer; Louis Armstrong (1901 – 71), famous American jazz musician; Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky (1940 – 96), Russian Nobel Prize-winning poet and close friend of Dovlatov; Gina Lollobrigida (b.1927), Italian actress mostly active in the 1950s and 60s.
p. 17, Karjalainen, perhaps: An unclear reference since Karjalainen is a common Finnish surname. One possibility is the children’s author Elina Karjalainen (1927 – 2006), who wrote a series of books about a teddy bear called Uppo-Nalle.
p. 18, Maybe Mantere: Again, the reference is unclear, but it may allude to the singer Eeki Mantere (1949 – 2007), a popular Finnish musician of the 1970s.
p. 23, the historian Nikolai Karamzin: Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766 – 1826), prominent conservative Russian historian and writer.
p. 23, Paul Robeson: Paul Robeson (1898 – 1976) was an African-American civil-rights activist, singer and actor who received the International Stalin Prize in 1952. His political leanings and outspokenness caused him tremendous problems in America.
p. 24, the famous artist Shemyakin: Mikhail Mikhailovich Shemyakin (b.1943), a painter who studied at the Repin Academy in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and, after frequent clashes with the KGB, left the Soviet Union in 1971.
p. 24, Yuri Gagarin, Mayakovsky, Fidel Castro: Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin (1934 – 68), Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, who received the most prestigious award in the USSR, “Hero of the Soviet Union”; Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893 – 1930), Russian Futurist poet and Soviet propagandist, often seen as the exemplar of Soviet art; Fidel Castro (b.1926), leader of the Cuban revolution and subsequently First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
p. 28, Lomonosov: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711 – 65), pioneering Russian grammarian, poet, scientist and founder of Moscow State University.