Mother Russia (15 page)

Walking as casually as his throbbing pulse will allow, Pravdin makes his way to the door in question, tries the knob, peeks in to see the Druse, Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, stretched out naked on a medical table under a sunlamp. His eyes are protected by small dark goggles; his tanned body, which has no hair that Pravdin can see (even around his organ), is covered with squirming bloodsuckers that an old myopic woman tends, murmuring to them in a language Pravdin doesn’t recognize, rubbing their spinal columns with the coarse tip of her forefinger until they are erect and bloated. Sitting on a stool behind the Druse’s head is Zosima, the Berber girl with the small blue flower tattooed on one cheek. (Pravdin could swear it was on her left side the last time he saw her; now it is on her right cheek.) She is reading in soft, rhythmic Arabic from a large book open in her lap, the epic Manas. Chuvash rolls his eyes slowly in the direction of the slightly open door, senses that Pravdin is there before he catches sight of him. “Salaam aleikum, brother.”

Pravdin is tempted to back away, to flee, but he reasons that a discussion with the Druse is an idea whose time has long since come. Pulling his toga tightly around him, he enters (on clenched toes; the marble floor is ice) as if he is stepping into a Greek tragedy. “
Shalom Aleichem
back to you,” he says, bowing awkwardly, deeply, hoping to hide the
awkwardness in the deepness, hoping to convey by the deepness an impression of irony.

“Can I offer you some bloodsuckers?” the Druse inquires politely. “A purge of blood every three days is said to increase stamina, cleanse the brain, stimulate the intuition, which is the essential element in social intercourse.”

Pravdin declines the offer with a brisk wave of his hand. “Thanks to you but no thanks to you,” he says. “Bloodsuckers are what I deal with all day.”

Chuvash says something in Azerbaijanian to the old woman; she switches off the sunlamp, plucks leeches from his body, drops them with soft splashes into a large jar three-quarters full of water. One by one they sink to the bottom. Zosima closes her book; the old woman caps the jar and the two of them slip from the room through a curtain that hides another door. The Druse motions Pravdin to Zosima’s seat but he stubbornly refuses to take it, instead circles slowly the table on which the Druse, goggleless, now sits in an un-flawed lotus position.

“What name, if it doesn’t upset your red corpuscle balance my posing the question, do I call you by?” Pravdin points at the Druse with his deformed thumb. “Who are you
is
what I’m asking?”

The Druse’s thumb and forefinger float slowly toward his face, settle over the eyelids, guide them down over his eyes, remain resting like weights on the lashes. His lips drift into a quizzical half smile. “I am Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, a male by sex, a Druse by religion. I believe, like all Druses, that the soul passes after death into new incarnations of greater perfection. I believe, like all Druses, there is one and only one God, indefinable, incomprehensible, ineffable, passionless, who has made Himself known to man by seventy successive incarnations, including the Jew, Jesus, but excluding Muhammed. I believe the most recent incarnation
was the sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, after whom I am called. I believe I am the sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, who disappeared in the year anno Domini 1021, reincarnated; I believe I am the seventy-first incarnation of God, come to open again to the faithful the door of mercy, come to conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, come to convince the world of the inevitability of the Faith, come to demand obedience to the seven commandments of Hamza, my vizier in my previous incarnation, the first and greatest of which requires truth in words—but only when Druse speaks to Druse.”

Pravdin sinks into Zosima’s chair. “And non-Druses?” he asks weakly. “What of us?”

Chuvash continues to give the impression he is reciting chapter and verse. “A Druse may say what he pleases to a non-Druse, so long as he, the Druse, doesn’t raise his voice, so long as he keeps the secrets of the Faith, so long as he abstains from wine and tobacco, so long as he wears no gold or silver.”

“You tripped up!” Pravdin points an accusing finger. “When you were Melor, you chain-smoked like a chimney. Explain away that if you can.”

Chuvash is unperturbed. “Druses have permission to conform outwardly to the faith of the unbelievers among whom they dwell.”

“Even the seventy-first incarnation of God?”

“Especially the seventy-first incarnation of God,” the Druse replies. “If God doesn’t conform, who will?”

“The Jew, Jesus, didn’t conform,” Pravdin notes sourly.

“The Jew, Jesus, finished his earthly mission nailed to a cross. I intend to conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, open again to the faithful the door of mercy, convince the world of the inevitability of the Faith, demand obedience to the seven commandments of—”

“Off your rocker is what you are,” Pravdin cuts him off. “Not one word of this is what I believe. But as a lady friend of mine says, that’s another story.” Pravdin leans forward, taps a finger on the Druse’s knee. “What I want to know—”

Chuvash interrupts with a gesture indicating the walls have ears.

“If ears are what the walls have,” cries Pravdin, “stuff them full of cotton is what a sane person would do, or better still pierce the inner ears with things they don’t want to hear and make them deaf. Who’s listening anyhow? Melor is listening is who’s listening. But who is Melor? The Druse, Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi, in another incarnation maybe? And what does this Marx-Engels-Lenin-Organizers-Revolution want with a Jewish hustler like me? Answer me that if you can. And why does Chuvash arrange for me an apartment in the last wooden house in central Moscow and Melor have me followed so he knows every word I scribble on a wall? Is Chuvash trying to encourage me to expose a literary fraud, and Melor trying to intimidate me so that I lay off? A sane person could be confused by all this. A crazy person too.”

“We are all of us,” the Druse explains patiently, “many people. I am just more open, or formal if you like, about it. Melor is one of the hats it suits me to wear to accomplish what I intend to accomplish, which is to open again to the faithful the door of mercy, conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, convince the world of the inevitability—”

“All this is what you’ve said already,” Pravdin interrupts impatiently. “Enough of this religious bla-bla-bla. Explain what’s what and who’s who.”

Chuvash slips from the table, takes a white silk sheet from the shelf beneath it, winds it around himself, moves the chair the old myopic woman used so that it faces Pravdin. “You have a right to an explanation, I am ready to concede you that,” he begins.

“Me too, I’m ready to concede me that,” Pravdin agrees dejectedly.

“As Chuvash, I brought the girl Nadezhda, the woman known as Mother Russia and you together in the last wooden house in central Moscow, and then dropped the manuscripts in your collective laps because I represent people in high places who want to ruin Honored Artist of the Soviet Union Frolov. Or to be more precise, they want to ruin one very important person on the Politburo who has protected Frolov against charges of plagiarism all these years. As Melor, I became aware that you were about to come into possession of manuscripts that could ruin Honored Artist of the Soviet Union Frolov, thereby compromising the position of his protector on the Politburo, who happens to be my client as well as my superior. I therefore took immediate steps to monitor your conversations, keep track of your activities, record the messages you wrote on various walls, any one of which could have been a coded signal to the agent who was providing you with the manuscripts.”

“But you are the agent who provided me with the manuscripts!”

“Just so,” the Druse agrees.

“Oy. How can you play two people at once is what I don’t understand,” Pravdin squeals, unable to control his voice. “Schizophrenic is what you have to be.”

The Druse is not amused. “It is difficult to grasp, I can see that, how one person can represent two constituencies that have conflicting interests. At heart, I suppose, it is a matter of self-discipline. It is very much like playing chess with yourself, which is something I do every evening after I meditate. First I am white, and I move the king’s pawn forward two spaces in order to develop my king’s bishop. Then I am black. I know white has opened with his king’s pawn because he intends to develop his king’s bishop, so I forestall
that by moving my queen’s pawn forward two spaces. Then I am white again, and I know that black has divined my intention to develop my king’s bishop, so I—”

“Playing like that you could go insane,” Pravdin explains. “Listening to you I could go insane.”

“It is every bit as difficult as it sounds,” the Druse concedes, “but I am convinced that with practice any normal person could do it. As Chuvash, for instance, I am absolutely sure that you are in full control of your faculties, which is to say, that you are perfectly sane. As Melor, on the other hand, I am beginning to have honest doubts on the matter.” Chuvash shrugs apologetically.

“That makes me the modern existential hero,” Pravdin mutters, “the man in the middle. What do I do now is the question I’m asking? Which voice do I listen to, Chuvash’s or Melor’s?”

“You listen to your own voice,” Chuvash suggests. “If you really are the modern existential hero, then you have absolute freedom of choice. Your problem is to find a rational criterion to serve as a basis for making this choice, a task you find difficult, if not impossible, because you are convinced in the utter absurdity of the world in which you function, and hence in the absurdity of making the effort to make a rational choice. Your problem is to rise above the absurdity and act, either as Chuvash tells you to or as Melor tells you to.”

“What if Melor decides to put the screws on? What if?”

“Chuvash will know about it beforehand, will warn you, will do his best to protect you.”

“Who will win this tug-of-war is what I want to know, white or black?”

“It doesn’t matter who wins,” Chuvash says. “The only thing that counts is to play.”

Pravdin shakes his head in confusion, blows his nose into a corner of his toga, moves (flat-footed; the marble floor
is still ice but his mind is elsewhere) toward the door. “It is only fair telling you,” he informs Melor, who stares after him with an appraising eye, “that the microphone in the table leg is what I found the day I moved into the attic.”

Melor accepts this with a nod. “The microphone you found,” he tells Pravdin, “was the one you were supposed to find so you wouldn’t look for others.”

Pravdin passes through the steam, skips the ritual weighing-out, dresses quickly with his back to the room to hide his covenant with a God in whom he doesn’t believe, retrieves his briefcase from the attendant, removes the change purse from the briefcase, checks to make sure the money is all there, finds in the coin compartment an entrance pass to the Writers’ Congress that starts the next day. “Chuvash,” he tries to figure it out, “had this put here, which means that Melor knows I have it, which means that Chuvash knows that Melor knows I have it. Oy”—his palm slaps against his high forehead in exasperation—“insanity may be an idea whose time has come. Touch wood.” And his knuckles rap without conviction against the wooden bench.

Sequences flicker before Pravdin’s eyes like frames from an old Eisenstein. Eyeglasses shatter; the baby carriage hurtles down the steps. Pravdin has always been curious who was in that carriage. Now he knows! One moment he is outside the carriage watching it careen out of control with its tenor-stricken baby cargo. The next he
is inside the carriage
, curled up in a fetal position, sucking desperately on his deformed thumb, feeling the bouncing wheels jar his bruised spine, hearing the pitch of the panicky screams rise and fall as he streaks past the source of the sound. Oy, his tiny palm slaps against his tiny forehead, it’s me inside. Baby Robespierre pulls back on his erect joy stick as the carriage picks up speed;
it soars into the sky, wheeling in a great arc over Moscow. Comfortably airborne, he grips the side of the carriage and peers over the edge, feels the wind fill his bonnet, sees far below huge crowds funneling into Red Square for the May Day parade. On a whim he begins to fart a stream of smoke and skywrites over Red Square:

Waak, waak, Honored Artist of
the Soviet Union Frolov is a plagiarist

Instantly Melor’s voice crackles over the radio: “What language
is
that, Jewish?” he demands. “Jewish is right,” Baby Robespierre explains. “It’s an old Talmudic saying that means, it’s me who will watch the bosses.” He burps diabolically into the microphone, freezes in fear when dozens of balls of cotton begin bursting around the carriage. The seventy-first burst explodes just underneath and rocks the carriage; flames spurt from the sides and it starts to spiral toward the ground which, impatient for the crash, rushes up to meet it.

“Aiiiiiiiii!” screams Pravdin, bolting upright in bed, sweaty and weak and wide awake. Nadezhda, looking around wildly, bolts upright too, absorbs what’s happening, presses her palm to his wet forehead, eases him back on the pillow, stroking all the while his forehead and, as he calms down and breathes more regularly, his penis, which slowly becomes erect.

Their lovemaking is a triumph of sex over tenor. Gradually the shattered eyeglasses, the carriage hurtling down the steps, the bursts of cotton, the ground spiraling up to meet him, lose their narrative thread; Pravdin clings to the broken images as if they are buoys, but Nadezhda descends on his erection with silent lips, draws it slowly into her mouth, strokes it with a tongue as roughly caressing as a cat’s. Pravdin relinquishes the dream, lets it slip through his fingers, moans, tries to pull free when he feels himself coming off—too late, too late. Nadezhda locks him in her with her hand
and accepts his flow, which seems to originate from some center so deep inside him he has never conceded its existence.

“Aiiiiiiii,” Pravdin stifles a cry in the pillow as she sucks the last drops from him—a pleasure so close to pain he thinks he will go crazy if she stops or if she doesn’t