If I poured myself some vodka, Rita would worry: “Drink the Moskovskaya. Borya says the Stolichnaya is better.”
Even the restrained Galina Pavlovna got into the act: “Smoke the Auroras. Borya likes the imported cigarettes.”
“So do I,” I said. “I like the imported cigarettes.”
“Typical snobbery,” Galina exclaimed.
All my brother had to do was say something inane for all the women to fall down in peals of laughter. For instance, he said, munching on a squash spread, “It looks like something that’s been eaten already.”
And they all laughed.
But when I began telling them that our typist had killed herself, they all cried, “Stop it!”
About two hours passed this way. I kept waiting for the women to get into a fight over my brother. It did not happen. On the contrary, they became friendlier and friendlier, like the wives of an elderly Muslim.
Borya told them gossip about movie stars. Sang prison songs. Drunk, he unbuttoned Galina Pavlovna’s blouse. I was so down by then that I opened yesterday’s paper.
Then Rita said, “I’m going to the airport. I have to meet our director. Sergei, escort me.”
A fine thing, I thought. Borya eats the sprats. Borya smokes the Jebels. Borya drinks the Stolichnaya. And I’m the one who has to accompany that old bag?
My brother said, “Go on. You’re just reading the paper anyway.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go. If I’m going to be humiliated, it might as well be all the way.”
I pulled on my ski cap and Rita donned a sheepskin jacket. We went down in the elevator and over to the taxi stand. It was getting dark. The snow had a blue tinge. Neon lights melted in the twilight.
We were first in the taxi line. Rita had said nothing during the entire walk, except for one sentence: “You dress like a tramp!”
I replied, “Nothing to worry about. Just imagine that I’m a plumber or mechanic. An aristocratic lady hurrying home escorted by an electrician. All as it should be.”
A taxi came. I reached for the door handle. Two big guys appeared out of nowhere. One said, “We’re in a rush, fuzz face!” and tried to push me aside. The other squeezed into the backseat.
That was too much. I’d had nothing but negative feedback all day, and this was out-and-out street obnoxiousness. All my suppressed anger erupted. I took out my humiliation on these men. It all came out – Raisa, the newspaper scum, the ugly ski cap, even my brother’s amorous success.
I took a swing, remembering the lessons of Sharafutdinov, the heavyweight champ. I took a swing and fell on my back.
I don’t remember what happened. Either it was slippery or my centre of gravity was too high… In any case, I fell. I saw the sky, enormous, pale and mysterious. So far away from my problems and disappointments. So pure.
I gazed at it in admiration until a shoe kicked me in the eye. And everything went dark…
I regained consciousness to the sound of police whistles. I was sitting up, leaning against a garbage can. To my right was a crowd of people. The left side of reality was covered in darkness.
Rita was explaining something to a police sergeant. She could have been taken for the wife of an executive. And I – for her personal chauffeur. So the policeman listened attentively.
I pushed my fists into the snow. Floundering, I tried to stand up. I swayed. Luckily, Rita ran over to me.
Then we were back in the elevator. My clothes were muddy. The ski cap was missing. My cheek was bleeding.
Rita had her arm around my waist. I tried to move away: this time I really was compromising her. But Rita held on to me and whispered, “Damn, you’re a handsome devil!”
The elevator, with a quiet groan, stopped at the top floor. We were back in the same room. My brother was kissing Galina Pavlovna. Sofa was tugging at his shirt, repeating, “Silly, she’s old enough to be your mother…”
Seeing me, my brother raised a terrible hue and cry. He even wanted to rush off and do something somewhere, but changed his mind and stayed. I was surrounded by the women.
Something strange was happening. When I was a normal man, they disdained me. Now, when I was practically an invalid, the women smothered me with their attentions. They were literally fighting for the right to treat my eye.
Rita was wiping my face with a wet cloth. Galina Pavlovna was untying my shoelaces. Sofa went further than the rest – she was unbuttoning my trousers.
My brother was trying to say something, to give advice, but they shut him up. Whenever he made a suggestion, the women reacted stormily.
“Shut up! Drink your stupid vodka! Eat your crummy canned food! We’ll manage without you!”
I waited for a pause, and finally got to tell about our typist’s suicide. This time I was heard with great interest. And Galina Pavlovna practically burst into tears.
“Look at that! Seryozha only has one eye! But with that one eye he sees so much more than other people do with two!”
After which Rita said, “I won’t go to the airport. We’re going to the emergency room. Borya will go meet our director.”
“I don’t know him,” my brother said.
“It doesn’t matter. Have him paged.”
“But I’m drunk.”
“What do you think, he’s going to arrive sober?” Rita and I went off to the emergency room on Gogol Street. The waiting room was filled with people with smashed-in faces. Some were groaning.
Rita, not waiting her turn, went to see the doctor. Her luxurious sheepskin jacket had the desired effect here, too. I heard her ask loudly, “Who do I see if my lover boy’s got his face punched in?”
They waved me in immediately.
I spent twenty minutes with the doctor. The doctor said I got off easy – there was no concussion, the eye was intact, and the bruise would go away in a week. Then he asked, “What did they hit you with – a brick?”
“A shoe,” I said.
“A real clodhopper, I’ll bet,” the doctor commented. And added, “When will we learn to manufacture elegant shoes in the Soviet Union?”
So basically it wasn’t too bad. The only loss was my ski cap.
I got home at around one in the morning. Lena said drily, “Congratulations.”
I told her about my day. Her response was, “Fantastic things always happen to you…”
Early the next morning my brother called. I was in a lousy mood. I didn’t feel like going to the office. I didn’t have any money. My future was murky.
And besides, there was something heraldic about my face. The left side was dark. The bruise shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow. The thought of going out into the street was horrible.
But my brother said, “I have something important I need you for. We have to perform a financial transaction. I’m buying a colour TV on credit, then selling it for cash to this guy. I’m losing about fifty roubles on the deal, but I’m getting over three hundred to pay back in instalments over a year’s time. Got it?”
“Not quite.”
“It’s all very simple. I get the three hundred like a loan. I pay off my minor creditors. Get out of my financial dead end. Get my second wind. And the debt for the television I pay off slowly and steadily over the year. See? Speaking philosophically, one big debt is better than a hundred small ones. Borrowing for a year is more respectable than begging with a promise to pay it back the day after tomorrow. And besides, it’s more noble to be in debt to the state than to borrow from friends.”
“You’ve convinced me,” I said. “But what do I have to do with it?”
“You have to come with me.”
“That’s all I need!”
“I need you. You have a more practical mind. You’ll make sure I don’t blow the money.”
“But my face is all bashed in.”
“Big deal! Who cares about that? I’ll bring you a pair of sunglasses.”
“It’s February.”
“Doesn’t matter. You could have flown in from Abyssinia. And anyway, people don’t know why your face is bashed in. What if you were defending a lady’s honour?”
“That’s what happened, more or less.”
“All the more reason…”
I got ready to go out. I told my wife that I was going to the clinic. Lena said, “Here’s a rouble, buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”
I met my brother on Konyushennaya Square. He was wearing a worn sealskin hat. He took a pair of sunglasses from his pocket. I said, “The glasses won’t help. Give me the hat instead.”
“But the hat’s supposed to help?”
“At least my ears won’t freeze.”
“That’s true. We’ll take turns wearing it.”
We went to the trolleybus stop. My brother said, “Let’s take a taxi. If we arrive by trolley, it’ll be unnatural. Our pockets are bursting with money now, so to speak. Do you have a rouble?”
“I do. But I have to buy a bottle of sunflower oil.”
“I’m telling you, we’ll have money. If you want, I’ll buy you a
bucket
of sunflower oil.”
“A bucket’s too much. But if you would return the rouble.”
“Consider that lousy rouble already in your pocket…”
My brother flagged down a car. We went to Gostiny Dvor,* into the audio department. Borya disappeared behind the counter, looking for some guy named Mishan. As he left, he handed me the hat.
“It’s your turn. Put it on.”
I waited around twenty minutes for him, examining radios and television sets. I held the hat in my hand. I had the feeling that everyone was interested in my left eye. If a pretty woman appeared, I turned my right side to her.
My brother, agitated and joyous, appeared for a second. He said, “Everything’s going fine. I’ve signed the credit papers. The buyer just showed up. They’ll give him the TV in a minute. Wait here…”
I waited. I moved from the audio department to the children’s section. I recognized the salesman as my former classmate Lyova Girshovich. Lyova began examining my eye.
“What’d they hit you with?”
I thought, “Everybody’s interested in what they hit me with.” I wished just one person would want to know why.
“A shoe,” I said.
“Were you sleeping on the pavement or something?”
“And why not?”
Lyova told me a wild tale. They’d discovered major embezzlement at a toy factory. Wind-up bears, tanks and walking excavators were disappearing in enormous quantities. The police worked on the case for a year, without any success.
Quite recently the crime was solved. Two workmen at the factory had dug a short tunnel, leading from the plant to Kotovsky Street. The workers took the toys, wound them up, and set them down. And then the bears, tanks and excavators went off on their own. In an endless flow, they left the factory.
At that moment I saw my brother through the glass partition. I went over to him.
Borya had changed visibly. There was something aristocratic in his manner now, a satiety and an indolent lordliness. In a wan, capricious voice he said, “Where did you disappear to?”
I thought, “So that’s how money changes us. Even if it’s someone else’s.”
We went out on the street. My brother slapped his pocket.
“Let’s go out and eat!”
“You said you had to pay off your debts.”
“Yes, I said I had to pay off my debts. But I didn’t say we had to starve. We have three hundred twenty roubles and sixty-four copecks. If we don’t eat, it will be unnatural. Drinking isn’t obligatory. We won’t drink.” Then he added, “Have you warmed up? Give me my hat.”
Along the way, my brother began daydreaming.
“We’ll order something crunchy. Have you noticed how I like crunchy things?”
“Yes,” I said. “Like Stolichnaya vodka.”
Borya chided me. “Don’t be a cynic. Vodka is sacred.” Sorrowfully he added, “You have to treat things like that seriously…”
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.