East of the West (15 page)

“Kopche,”
Gogo says. “You look like a pelargonium someone’s pissed on.”

That’s a pretty common expression, but still I laugh. We keep on walking and I remember how in our block of flats some neighbors would keep their pots of ficus, of pelargoniums, out on the stairway and how Gogo and I sometimes pissed in those pots. Eventually the neighbors took their burned plants in, never daring to put them on the stairs again. And then it strikes me that it wasn’t Gogo but some other boy whose name I can’t remember, in some other block of flats a long, long time ago.

“We should do that again,
kopche,”
I say.

“Do what again?” asks Gogo.

•

Here is my all-time favorite joke. No one ever laughs when I tell it. A circus. Almost end of the show. The announcer says, “And now, ladies and gents, please welcome the boy with phenomenal memory.” Drumroll. A little boy walks into the ring and for ten seconds stares bluntly into the front rows. Complete silence. Then the announcer says, “And now the boy with phenomenal memory will piss on the front two rows.” People start running and the announcer says, “No point in running, ladies and gents. There is no escape. The boy with phenomenal memory already has all of you memorized.”

•

“Drugarki i drugari
, dear comrades, please welcome the Amazing Rado!”

This is how my father introduces me to the crowd. For the past seven years, at least once a week. Nursing homes, neighborhood retiree clubs—of the retired engineer, retired welder, retired crane operator. There I am, in a room that smells of lavender spirit, in front of two rows of wheelchairs, trembling chins, dangling tubes, bags of urine, doing my mnemonic tricks to weak, Parkinsonian applause. And after that, my father begins his rounds among the rows, an empty three-liter jar in his hands. The label on the jar is peeled off almost completely and on the white space Father has scribbled boldly:
Amazing Rado’s Scholarship Fund
. But if you look closely, you’ll see a corner of the original label still standing and then you’ll know: this jar was once full of pickled cauliflower. On with his rounds Father goes, courting the poor old women, sweet-talking the poor old men. And sometimes, this week or the other, he manages to half fill the jar with wrinkled bills.

For seven years we’ve toured retiree clubs like these. We’ve read from the same old textbooks Father once found in the basement, beside the strings of dried, salted fish—history, chemistry, physics. I told him all of this once. I said, “In seven years a monkey will learn to recite the periodic table.”

“There is enough change in this country as it is,” Father said. “We have a good thing going. Why mess it up?”

And on he strolls between the rows, the jar in hand. He always goes for seconds, because sometimes people are too senile to remember whether they’ve dropped their share or not. I watch him from the side and wonder, is this the bright future he spoke of in the light of the candle? Is this the stellar potential he prophesized? And sometimes, this week or the other, I am convinced that in his mind we’re simply playing the cards we were once dealt, as best as we can. “Life has given us medlars,” Father sometimes says, “heaps, and heaps of tough, unripe medlars. We could sulk. We could cry. Or we could wait for the fruit to rot and turn it into marmalade.”

I wonder if you know what medlars are? If you’ve ever snuck into a cooperative orchard with rows and rows of the short trees, their branches heavy with fruit, filled your pockets, the bosom of your shirt, and then been chased by the orchard guard and shot at with pellets of salt, dropping brown medlars behind you as you ran, like a little scared goat? I wonder if you’ve eaten the fruit, sucked out the tart juice and munched on the pits, and then regretted it, because your gums feel swollen, your throat hurts, because the kid whose name you can’t remember got shot in the butt and then back home his father beat him for ruining his only good pair of pants?
Kopche
, I’m tired of waiting for the medlars to rot.

“I swear,
kopche,”
Gogo says, and holds me by the shoulder, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

•

We keep on marching, chanting. At one point someone gives me a blue balloon to hold. Its end is tied in a knot and frozen with the spit of whoever blew it up. Blue is now the democratic color. Gogo is waving a little paper flag. The sky above us has gone whiter, and any minute now there will be snow.

I see a black cross above the frozen branches of pussy willows, branches with yellow lashes still hanging like golden hair. I see a dome, a bloated belly with ashen skin. I see a bell tower. I see the Church of the Seven Apostles. The church with the cross we are about to steal. And on the square before that church and in the branches are people waving large blue flags. It seems that Gramps was right, that everyone is out, that there are more of us than the land can bear.

The democratic leaders are standing on the church steps and one of them is shouting something in a megaphone. I can’t make out his words, except when he yells, “Whoever doesn’t jump is Red!” Around us everyone begins to hop.

“Are you red,
kopche?”
Gogo grunts. “Don’t be a Commie. Jump!”

I, too, start hopping, mostly to warm up. And suddenly it strikes me that Gogo’s grunting, this hungry, foreign sound is just the way he laughs.

I’m faint with jumping hunger. We elbow our way to one side of the church and stand by a window. The windows are on our level, which is good, but they’re fenced off with black gratings. I hold my face against the bars and try to peek inside. The glass is smoked and I see nothing except my own faint reflection.

We pull on the metal grating, there for decoration only, and it comes undone. Then Gogo retreats his fist into his sleeve and breaks the glass. Around us people watch, but no one cares enough to stop us. And soon the megaphone entices them to keep on jumping and jump they do.

“All right,
kopche,”
Gogo says. He crosses himself like someone who’s never really done it, from left to right. He sinks into the church and I follow.

It’s dark and cold and somehow very still inside. It’s like all voices from the square are only wind in a well. There is the howl of words, but not their gist. Words lose their meaning inside this church, and for a moment Gogo and I stand in the middle, stunned. The air is thick with the smell of candles, but there are none in the candelabra, none in the sand trays for the deceased; there is just wax, frozen down the brass holders, just frozen sand.

“It’s so quiet,” I say, and watch my breath float away in the gloom.

“Listen,” Gogo says. “Shhhhh,
kopche
, listen!” and then he belches out a ravenous burp.

“You slob,” I laugh.

Martyrs and virgins, cherubs and doves, watch us with pious boredom. To the side I see the archbishop’s throne—its intricate wood carvings, the four beasts of the revelation, the calf, the lion, the whole shebang—and above that throne, high up, expensive in the dark, two elbows long, the golden cross.

“HiBlack Trinitron, here I come,” Gogo says, and hops upon the armrests. He grabs the cross by the arms. He pulls and pushes. The cross gives out a tortured creak as Gogo lets his whole weight snap its base. It’s like when in school we got new hoops and didn’t rest until we snapped them all clean off the boards—for no good reason, really, just because we could, just out of spite.

They fall together to the ground. Gogo stands up, turns his head from side to side and cracks his neck. He blows the dust from the cross and the dust hangs around him momentarily in a halo, which the air draft scatters away. Holding the cross, Gogo is like a midwife who knows exactly how much the newborn weighs. “Well, I’ll be fucked,” he says. “This shit is made of wood.”

We examine the cross in the light of a window: the yellow paint, not even gold leaf, is flaking off and the wood underneath is black and porous like a femur sick with osteoporosis. There are woodworms here and there in the little pores, curled up to pass the winter cold.

“Now what?” I start to say, but Gogo has already flung the cross aside and is working to prop the box with donations open. But the box is empty. Even the petty change along some of the icons has been wiped clean.

“Fuck,
kopche
, this is the wrong church to rob,” Gogo says. He tries to wrap his arms around an icon of Bogoroditsa and her infant son. “You think we can carry this out?”

No, the icon is too big. We need something expensive, yet small enough to hide in our coats and carry through the crowd unnoticed. I say, “Right there, behind that wooden wall,” and lead him to the iconostasis. I run my hand along the painted faces, along the wooden gates. There is a padlock on the gates but, like the cross, this wood too is brittle. One kick is all it needs.

The sanctuary is darker, colder still. I recognize an altar covered in a thick, red cloth, and on it a golden candelabra, a golden cup, a golden tray. They weigh just right.

“Bog si, kopche,”
Gogo says, and kisses me on the head. “You’re a god!”

“Keep off, you fag,” I say. I’m starting to feel really good. My blood gets going. I tuck my shirt in, tighten my belt and stuff the cavity with the loot. The gold is so nicely cold against my skin, then warm.

“Look here,” Gogo says, and picks up a real golden cross. He kisses it. He rubs it in his sleeve and stows it in his jacket.

My eyes adjusted to the dark, I recognize a table in the corner, and on the table something long and bulky, wrapped in the same altar cloth.

I know immediately what this is. I call for Gogo and we stand by the bundled corpse, the mummy of a saint, a holy relic. Its face seems almost alive, unnaturally well preserved. “It’s considered a blessing to kiss the relic,” I say. “Come on,
kopche
. Give it some tongue.”

“You’re sick, you know that?” Gogo says. He looks disgustedly at the corpse, and then peers around. He finds two large nylon bags at the bottom of the table and rummages through what’s inside.

I wonder what this old man did to deserve such high esteem: sainthood and a cloak upon a table in a church. I lean forward and sniff his cheeks. A saint should smell like frankincense and myrrh. This saint smells nothing like that. But what the hell? We sure could use some luck.

“Wait,
kopche
, this isn’t right,” Gogo says, still going through the bags.

I kiss the wrinkled cheek, dry, very cold.

And then a sigh escapes the saint, a low, long moan, and with his opened mouth the stench of rotten meat.

We stumble back. The things we’ve stolen rattle in our coats. “My fucking heart will stop,” I say. I try to shake this off; a horde of woodworms, wet and wriggly, roll down my back. I wipe my lips on my sleeve and keep on wiping.

“This is no saint, you all-knowing shit,” Gogo says, and takes some clothes out of one bag: a T-shirt, long white underpants, a wool sweater. “Look at this,” he says, and goes through the other. A round loaf of bread, a demijohn of wine, a jar of boiled wheat. “This is just like the stuff my mom brought the priest to bless for Brother.”

We sneak up closer to the groaning saint. His mouth closes and opens, his eyes turn to us. Tarry, bulging eyes. That’s all he is, this old cocoon, a pair of eyes that watch first Gogo, then me.

I say, “Old man …” but I don’t know what else to say.

“Hey, Grandpa,” Gogo calls and snaps his fingers. “Shhh,
alo
. Look at me. What’s your name? You been here long?”

The eyes blink, the mouth opens, closes, opens again. The stench is too much.

“How did you like your kiss?” Gogo says, and looks at me. “Lover boy,” he says.

I take the demijohn and gulp up a few strong gulps of wine. I rinse, wipe my lips, repeat.

I say, “They brought him here so the priest would bless him. So he would be cured. Then they ran away. Isn’t that right, Grandpa? They left you behind?”

Gogo takes the demijohn and drinks. We watch the cocooned man.

If that was me, I think, I’d lose my mind. Just lying like a grub in that cloak, and only my eyes moving, and my mouth. I wonder if this old man knows he was left behind to die? Does he begrudge those who left him? Does he remember anything at all? I hope, for his sake, he has no memory left—of who he is, of where he lies. I hope he is the opposite of me.

Gogo lights up and tells me to watch this shit. He holds the cigarette to the old man’s lips and lets him take a drag. Smoke gushes out of the old man’s nose, his eyes fill up, he coughs.

“You were a smoker, weren’t you, Grandpa?” Gogo says. “That’s what did you in.” He takes the round loaf from the towel and tries to break off a chunk against his knee. “Is this a loaf or a stone? Jesus Christ.” He bites off a morsel and spits it in his hand. He holds it to the old man’s lips and the old man sucks on it until the morsel turns to mash. Then the old man sucks on Gogo’s fingers. “This is so vile,
kopche,”
Gogo says, and wipes his fingers in his coat.

“That’s enough,” I say. “You hear me, Gogo. Enough of that.”

But Gogo breaks off another piece. “Who is my hungry saint?” he says. “Are you my hungry little saint?” Then he brings the demijohn to the old man’s lips but doesn’t touch them. He pours wine from a distance. The old man drinks; the wine runs red down the creases of his wrinkled neck.

“Look at yourself, Grandpa,” Gogo says at last, happy with himself. “Some saint you are,” and starts with his grunting laugh.

I don’t know what to make of this.

I touch the cloak. “God damn it,
kopche
, he’s soaking wet.”

“He’ll be all right.”

“The hell he will.”

“Well, change him up, then, wunderkind.”

And then it strikes me: this is exactly what I need to do. I peel back the edge of the cloak to unwrap the man. “Oh, Christ.”

“Sweet Jesus, cover him up. That is some pungent shit.”

I take a few more gulps and I can feel the contours of my esophagus and stomach, scorched, as the wine flows through. I lay the clothes from the bag out on the table—the underpants, trousers, socks, the knitted sweater.