Mother Russia (24 page)

United States of America Ministry of Tradea
,

Export Section

United States of America Embassy, Moscow

I had the misfortune several years ago to come into the possession of your adorable little automatic stitching machine, model number SW106. I say misfortune because although it makes sewing easier it takes something (I’m not sure what) away we had before we sewed on a Singer. But that’s another story. Very shortly, come to think of it, almost immediately after I acquired my Singer it started tearing the fabric when it was supposed to be stitching it which was a catastrophe as opposed to an annoyance because in those days though not so much any more fabric, especially French or Italian, was difficult if not impossible to come by and once come by treated as a treasure. So you will I hope understand that the tearing of the fabric was something I tried to stop immediately with zero results since there was nobody I could find who would admit to being familiar with a United States of America machine even though it was a pre cold, even pre world war model. Nobody that is until one night last year at of all places a wonderful mainly Bach concert I met a sewing machine repairman with honest if dirty fingernails who let slip he had worked on Singers before the war and batting my still sexy eyelashes I talked him into taking a peek at mine which is how I finally discovered that what I need is:

Shuttle race

Why I am writing you if you haven’t divined it already is in the expectation that you will supply to me the service aprés vente mentioned in your manual as your point forte (my instruction booklet is in French) for which I am taking the liberty of thanking you in advance
.

Yours most appreciatively
,

Volkova, Z. A
.

Post Scriptum: I have been criticized for the hopelessness with which I distribute parentheses which (aren’t they?) the building blocks of stream of consciousness, so I hereby offer you a handful which you can sprinkle on to taste
.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((( )))))))))))))))))))))))

25 March

My very dear (and presumably delightful) Mister Singer, Copies to: Soviet Ministry of Trade, Import Section

United States of America Ministry of Trade
,

Export Section

United States of America Embassy, Moscow

Soviet Foreign Ministry

United States of America Foreign Ministry

Ha! Good question. In my naiveté I assumed I could simply present my aging though still angular body at the door of the United States of America Embassy here and give to one of those prissily correct gray-suited assistant something-or-others rubles which he could then convert through some obscure bookkeeping process into dollars which could then be passed on to you. Well we all have (isn’t it so?) our illusions. My favorite to which I am forever faithful is that there is a logic or more precisely an order to the world when all of our senses Eve shout at us that the world or the little we know of it suffers from an essential lack of harmony, an ugly dissonance, a seductive vulgarity, almost as if the music of the spheres were a concerto for vacuum cleaner and orchestra with an occasional solo (do you at all see what I mean?) by one of your darling Singers. Enormous stretches of time and space conspire to rob life of its harmony and (as one thing leads more often than not to another) its meaning and dignity. I have a feeling which is threatening to become a theory that we must make great efforts to End dignity and meaning and let’s not forget harmony in the details of daily life, which is why I suggested in my first zinger dear Mister Singer that your darling little stitching machine takes something away from us in return for permitting us to sew more rapidly. Here you must
surely be asking yourself, then why on earth does she want to repair hers? to which I can only respond I am hooked on speed and have been ever since my father relented and took us for an excursion in his new horseless carriage at a time which now seems so very very long ago. But back to the crux which is (isn’t it?) how am I to pay you for the Shuttle Race? The precious young lady who shares the top floor of the next to last (and if what I hear is true, soon to be last) wooden house in central Moscow suggests that we barter. Do you recognize the word? I have already identified what I want from you so now you must identify what you want from me. My young lady friend has an idea you might like to have some old photographs of our Russian battlefields strewn with corpses but I told her that I suspected (correct me if I’m wrong) that you Americans are only interested in the dead when they are individually wrapped. Here we still cry at holocausts. But that’s another story. In any case I am quite prepared to barter with you or if you can figure out how payment can be arranged to pay you, as the price of four dollars and seventy-five cents plus mailing seems to me to be ridiculously reasonable. I am obliged to tell you that Volkova, Z.A. is a Misses and not a Dear Sir, which point I am emphasizing by adding to my signature the more or less nickname that certain white-coated führers have bestowed upon me. Trusting to hear from you I remain as always someone who understands the hopelessness of life, yet hopes she is wrong
.

Volkova, Z. A
.

Mother Russia

Post Scriptum: How is it (I am curious, even eager, to know) that one can write a letter to a Mister Singer and receive a response to this very same letter from a Mister Prolnor? Naughty, naughty Mister Prolnor? who ever you are, didn’t
your mother teach you not to read other people’s mail? Here it is done all the time bien entendu. In the bad old days they used to take a certain pride in their work and reseal the letters professionally and it was hard to know if they had (as we suspected) been opened, but nowadays the bureaucratic rats who are responsible for incoming mail are rushed for time or lazy or amateurish or all of the above because they simply seal them up again with transparent tape. Still Mister Prolnor one expects more from the United States of America after all the advertising you’ve done about freedom of expression and that sort of thing. So I remain hopeful that my zingers to my dear and presumably delightful Mister Singer will elicit a response from the man of that very name
.

12 April

My dear (and to give you the benefit of the doubt, original) Mister Singer:

Copies to: Soviet Ministry of Trade, Import Section

United States of America Ministry of Trade
,

Export Section

United States of America Embassy, Moscow

Soviet Foreign Ministry

United States of America Foreign Ministry

Chief Editor
, The New York Times

Chief Editor
, Pravda

I am extremely touched (even, I’ll say it openly, teary) at your offer to waive payment of the four dollars and seventy-five cents not to mention mailing, but I would very much appreciate an additional burst of information on what kind of waiver it is you want me to sign and what exactly your advertisement about a satisfied client behind the Iron Curtain would say, because (and here is the sticking point) I’m not at all sure you will want to represent me as saying what I really think, which is that Singer ruined sewing. You surely understand (then again considering your moral isolation perhaps you don’t) that being published in any way shape or manner in the West is a sensitive (to say the least) affair here and even yours truly who has been certified has been grilled for what appeared between the lines when one of my zingers to Utile Leonid Ilyich turned up in your adorable New York Times. Do Americans read too between the lines? The funny thing about my letter appearing in the New York Times was that I never sent it to the New York Times. But that’s another story. I did send it to some (you’ll excuse the expression) newspapers here but they Bled it where they file all my letters, which is under P for poubelle. This (I’ll admit it) infuriates me, though if I had a grain of sense I’d pull my foxes more tightly around the very neck once kissed by (do you recognize the name?) S. Yesenin the night before he slashed his milk-white wrist, and take comfort from the company I keep. Face it, Dostoyevsky was also not published and today isn’t all published. Dear passionate Yesenin was considered (before he slashed his beautiful wrist) a counter revolutionary and God knows what after. Mayakovsky was written off as a political hooligan. It required twenty or thirty years for us to get back our lovely Bunin and dear cryptic Bulgakov and beloved (though not by everyone) Platonov. Mendelstam and Voloshiri and Gumilev and Klyuev and Zamyatin and Remizov will (God willing) be returned to us some day, but if they must wait for publication so should I, except when it comes right down to it wait is what I can’t, which is why I keep shooting off my zingers as if they were tracer bullets. As for the import license, I really have no idea how one goes about getting such a thing since generally speaking that kind of operation requires a working (if that’s the word I’m looking for) knowledge of the bureaucracy which I, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) have so far avoided. But all is not by any means lost. There is a new roomer in our attic with pale nails who looks as if he knows his way around, and I will see if he can help. He has an interesting face too, an unholy combination of worldliness and naiveté, almost a kind of sane zaniness. Something happens to a person’s face after the age of twenty for which he is (don’t you agree?) responsible. But that’s another story. The (new as we have taken to calling him) attic has big plans of his own to develop a kind of cotton-tipped toothpick designed to replace the key as the principal ear cleaner. The reason I pass this tidbit on to you is that if the Q-Tip (as he calls it) isn’t already licensed in the United States of America you will want to look into it I can’t agree by the way with you when you suggest that the world has no existence except in terms of the objects we perceive in it because if what you say is (which I don’t for an instant believe) true, nothing would have an existence except in its being perceived and the world (it follows, doesn’t it?) would dissolve into an anarchy of individual perceptions. But from my point of view, which is to say from the second floor of the now last wooden house in central Moscow (since the next to last is being torn down), there is a curious order that runs through our perceptions, almost (and here I sense you shuddering) as if there is an underlying order to the universe, which takes me right back to the illusion I spoke about in my previous letter. Anxious to hear from you, I remain someone who regrets that time isn’t a straight line but rather a circle or more properly a cycle made up of anniversaries and birthdays and occasions manqué which keep rolling around again to tease us with what might have been
.

Mother Russia

Post Scriptum: It is reassuring, even (dare I say it?) comforting, to be once again in direct contact with the Mister Singer to whom I originally wrote. I do hope you weren’t too hard on dear Mister Prolnor for intercepting your letters. Do send my best, bordering on cordial, greetings to him whoever and wherever he is. I wonder if it would be imposing upon your fabled generosity to ask you in your next letter (assuming there is a next letter), to describe in great detail inasmuch as it fascinates me, your fingernails
.

20 April

My dear (though I’m beginning to have second thoughts about original) Mister Singer
,

Copies to: Soviet Ministry of Trade, Import Section

United States of America Ministry of Trade
,

Export Section

United States of America Embassy, Moscow

Soviet Foreign Ministry

United States of America Foreign Ministry

Chief Editor, The New York Times

Chief Editor, Pravda

Chief Editor, Newsweek magazine

Chief Editor, Time magazine

Chief Editor, L’Express

E. Kennedy

I am honestly sorry to hear about your nail being pinched in the elevator door. Is it the kind of thing where you can sue the building, or are you the building? Soak the bruised nail in brine and wear a piece of malachite so it won’t happen again, though the malachite must be given, never bought, for it to be at all effective. The rest of your nails sound conventional enough, though the way you clip them indicates you have an identity problem (maybe even a crisis) which is par for the course in an industrial society where we more often than not lose a sense of who we are and tend (if I have it light) to see ourselves as others see us, which is why we are all of us so different depending on whom we are with. As for your kind comments, they were generous and I appreciate them, really I do. I am embarrassed to admit I’m not at all sure if I’m an existentialist because I don’t really remember what existentialism is. Funny as this sounds I learned it a dozen times if I learned it once, but each time I forget what I learned so that all I remember is that I understood it once but I can’t for the life of me remember what I understood. I am an observer (there you are right on target) but only in the sense that your (I believe she was a fellow American) A. Toklas was an observer which is to say she liked a view but she liked to sit with her back turned to it Here it is the only way to look at things and stay sane. Chez vous I suspect it is the same. But back to the business at hand, yes I would be willing to sign your waiver and I don’t see who will be hurt if you tell the world you have a client in Moscow, though I would be careful if I were you and even if I weren’t about using the phrase Iron Curtain because it would offend a great many people (myself included) who see more lack of difference than difference between what’s on either side of this curtain. I’m not sure I understand why you are running into problems with the export license since it is hard for me to imagine that anybody in his or her right mind (assuming as I do that there are still people around who are in their right mind) would consider the Shuttle Race vital to the security of the United States of America. Perhaps I’m missing something here but do you manufacture anything other than sewing machines? Is the Shuttle Race interchangeable with some crucial piece of machinery on one of your phallic missiles or (what do they call them?) oh yes, jeeps? I must admit I have not actually taken time to look into the problem of acquiring an import license on this end, mainly because I have been terribly preoccupied with the activities of the attic with the pale nails I told you about who is trying (as a favor to me really) to show up as a plagiarist one of our well-known authors who shall for the moment remain nameless, though if the attic succeeds you will surely be reading about it in your darling New York Times. I promise though to take up the matter of the import license and to write to you as soon as I have any word. Until then I remain someone who greatly resents the fact that any vanguard feels it has the right to substitute its revolutionary consciousness for the consciousness (revolutionary or not) of the masses, of which I am a member
.