Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia (5 page)

F

F
LUTE
(M
AGIC
).
The decor of the fall of the
IMPERIUM
included street musicians, felt hats at their feet anticipating the occasional crumpled ruble or some small change. M
ONK
was taken by surprise as he shot beams from his eyes to probe a Byzantine church’s multicolored cupolas at the far end of the canal for, at that very moment, the high notes of a flute made him turn his head.

I.
I panned rapidly over the bear cub exhibited in chains so that cruel children could be photographed with him, the Great Man on his pedestal, the stone fountain. Another warble from the flute. I finally located the musician who was clearly playing for his own delight, far from the public. I would leave him some money: for Bach, for the instrument’s sweet tones in the lower registers, for the excellent acoustics in the chosen spot. You see, at first I took this musician for a boy (there was another boy nearby, a Cossack’s overcoat on his shoulders), wearing a pair of jeans with holes at the knees and a long sweater. I understood my mistake when she raised her head to attack the next phrase.

I followed the melody with eyes closed, the original version of a tune I also knew in an adulterated rendition by the Swinger Singers
.

II.
A few months after finding myself surrounded by snow, when the imminence of nuclear war still troubled me more, much more, than the idea of giving K** a kiss, a friend gave me a recording of a group of Budapest virtuosi (
FLUTE
, clarinet, violin, and clavichord) playing Mozart. I had noted the name of that Austrian musician among the plans for “breaking through” I had sketched out during my last year
of school, long before going to study in Muscovy, when I was still a model student, extremely conscientious in my fulfillment of what was expected and not yet gone to hell in a handbasket . . . politically, that is, to finally say it outright.

With all the gravity of one embarking upon a rite of initiation, I drew the curtains in my room to create a penumbra that would be conducive to my listening. The first chords sounded. I followed the violin’s arabesques and the phrasing of the clarinet and before the end of the first movement was already fed up, unpleasantly surprised and disgusted by such irresponsible lightheartedness. The idea of
frivolity,
this
ENCYCLOPEDIA’S
central concept, had not yet been installed with all its nuances and implications in my mind, but the ensemble of sensations Mozart’s music aroused in me that day could only have been summed up by an allusion to
frivolity
in its most pejorative sense.

Preoccupied, I compared his music to Bach’s—which I knew better —and the latter came out far ahead for the weightiness of his themes, the monumentalism, the seriousness of his proximity to God. Years would go by before I, happy to be young, without a speck of dust on my conscience, would enjoy myself while listening to the “jewel tones” of Mozart’s music, a music that could justify my shameful inclination toward (SWISS)
CHOCOLATES
and Dutch cheese.

Bach and Mozart are names that may be impressive to some, but those who know what I’m talking about will not place the authenticity of this episode in doubt. For someone as concerned with transcendence as my former “I” was, and as my current internal “I” continues to be, Bach represents the fundamental framework of my musical appreciation, a phase that cannot be left behind, and as such continues to occupy the same place in my esteem. Only now, over him, or rather, surrounding him concentrically, Mozart has covered that primary skeleton with new and pink flesh, and today when I hear the works of the
German
Konzertmeister
I can readily discern the voids Mozart would later fill, the places where he would lighten the weight of the phrase to make it fly. Another aspect, no less important, is that in Bach no priority is given to the feeling of
lieder,
which the Austrian’s melodies convey. Perhaps the fact that the latter wrote fashionable operas plays a role in this, I don’t know. But Mozart’s melodies have all the charm and ease of a song. This is something that the Russian Чайковский (Tchaikovsky) learned better than anyone else from Mozart. In this, and insofar as timbre is concerned, my quasi-compatriot Pyotr Ilyich and the Austrian Amadeus seem to me to be akin, both equally
beloved by God.
As product of an era when the once minor genre of the song has displaced all others, I am perforce most grateful to these two splendid musicians for their happy union, so gratifying to my ears, of the trivial and the sublime.

III.
(Trapped within networks of reflections such as these, his vision enmeshed by that melody, Monk was henceforth prepared to see only L
INDAS
who were haloed by that celestial music.)

F
LUORIDE.
It took me years to ascend from the abyss of dreams into the superior levels of wakefulness. Before that, in the depths of my existence as a multipod amoeba, I had no ears for the death rattle of the cetaceans in bloody struggle against the flesh-eating orcas. I did not know that one or more public personalities had launched a proclamation that denounced my abyssal existence, I had no eyes for the gradations of the color blue and was incapable of distinguishing, among all the many oceans, the good one of free will.

But after my visit to the (C
HINESE
) P
ALACE
, I developed a new organ to help me navigate the clean, clear waters of a full life. I acquired a vision that could reveal in sharp focus the secret components of that state of freedom. Something like the heightened perceptions
of the hypochondriac who every morning lends an anguished ear to the arrhythmic beating of his own heart and discovers a new ache, a persistent sharp pain in the side . . . Still half asleep and in a bad mood, I jumped out of bed into an uncertain future in 198*. I went into the bathroom, chewed mechanically on the toothbrush, and was shaken by a sign of jubilation that shot through my nervous centers at lightning speed. My God! It was that magnificent toothpaste I’d bought the day before. I felt better and more confident, my mouth overflowing with foam. I stared straight into my own eyes in the mirror.

Spacodent
was the name of one of those
FLUORIDATED
toothpastes.

I.
Frivolity
attacked the carbonic chains of the
IMPERIUM
with all the force reduction of
FLUORIDE
. The
IMPERIUM
, which had projected its considerable plantigrade weight into the distance of a perfect future, collapsed under the pressure of purebred dogs, the once impossible dream of Jaguar convertibles and soft Persian carpets, undermined by the new goal of a pleasant way of life that, over time, had managed to replace all its celestial objectives. It had been at least five years since anyone wore one of those awful striped neckties. That is: a profound antagonism had become apparent between the quietism of the Doctrine and the dizzying scandal of disposable diapers: between the search for a future kingdom of truth on this earth and the “general line” of the century, which was to consume the present and consider the future no more than a mental construct. The peoples held captive by the
IMPERIUM
peered out into the dark night, afloat on a warm sea awash in delightful detritus, to watch the illuminated ship that was the permanent carnival of the
OCCIDENT
coming toward them, and they heaved a collective, pensive sigh. “Yes, it’s in a state of decay, no doubt, but how good it smells!”

T
HELONIOUS
: To believe that the
IMPERIUM
fell for purely economic reasons is to commit the sin of pedestrian materialism and ignore the
teachings of Weber. I’ve meditated at length on the phenomenon of
hits
on the
RADIO
. For anyone not in on the secret, it turns out to be very difficult to assay the strength of a
hit,
its devastating effects. A song that is trivial—or musically impoverished, which amounts to the same thing—can come to have greater social resonance than a manifesto, but this influence is surreptitious, masked. The effect on the Doctrine is that of a stealth bomb that imperceptibly changes mentalities, distorting or adulterating our ineluctable responsibility to do something, become something, be useful. The influence of the
hit
is called “ideological deviation” or “ideological penetration.” A very apt name, for in reality what occurs is a kind of invasion by osmosis of the minds of people who want only to love, suffer, be successful, and live comfortably in a well-defined present moment between a yesterday and a tomorrow.

You might say there’s no reason why this should enter into any sort of contradiction with the Doctrine of the Distant Morrow. Nevertheless, the latter ideology is predicated on a kind of asceticism, a life whose every sphere is political, which, in the final analysis, does not deny the earthly delights (which are even encouraged, very timidly, by its ideologues) but places a single great objective ahead of them. Two or three
hits,
the latest style, the irresponsibility of youth, enter into open conflict with these postulates (giving rise to the so-called “ideological struggle”). Youth, breezy afternoons, a generous portion of some delicious frozen concoction (
VANILLA ICE
cream, for example), demand a here and now that is thrilling, exultant, danceable.

F
OREST, CONIFEROUS
(see:
BOSCAGE
).

G

G
REAT
G
ATSBY
, T
HE
.
In the bottomless sea of the
IMPERIUM’S
former capital, a few islets of prosperity had lowered their anchors: full-fledged
OCCIDENTAL
boutiques, red and fluorescent. In front of one such establishment a few curious passersby were pointing to dresses that were very lovely and very expensive (like the gowns of Catherine the Great in the Hermitage, also behind glass: crinolines whose taffeta silk was very old and very distant) and, good Lord, ties that cost $30, an entire month’s salary at current exchange rates, knotted at the collar of shirts made of printed silk—the last cry that year—which also seemed very old because they belonged to an inaccessible present. It looked like the window of a cabinet of wonders, P
ETER’S
Kuntzkamera: a mammoth tusk exhibited alongside a magnificent electric dishwasher.

I hadn’t told L
INDA
I planned to buy her a dress for that night’s dinner. She thought we were only stopping to admire the display. (Oh, yes, she’d seen leggings like these once before—
lycra
they call it—in a mail-order catalog!)

L
INDA
wanted to try on a dress that was very beautiful and very expensive, just to see how she looked. It suited her marvelously.

“It suits you marvelously. Have I mentioned that we’re having dinner at the Astoria tonight?”

At last L
INDA
understood the scope of my plan. She was speechless, then asked me uncertainly, “Do you think anyone might take it the wrong way, because I accepted your proposition so quickly? It’s a novel, isn’t it?”

“It’s silk, the very latest style, and it suits you marvelously.”

I.
The doorman at the Astoria shot me a frosty look. It was his job to find young ladies for the guests’ entertainment and he was annoyed at losing my business. As we crossed the lobby several men noticed the threadbare jeans worn by the beauty on my arm and the large prominently labeled bag that I carried, with our purchases inside, and thus were educated in how to win young lady friends for themselves. I followed L
INDA
along the carpeted hallway, entirely surrendering to the measured waltz of her hips, her backlit red hair.

In silence, L
INDA
studied the magnificent copies in oil, the 1905 furniture, the Art Nouveau chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

“Isn’t all this far too expensive just for a novel?”

“I’ve told you: I have ample funds at my disposition. I’ve been saving up for a long time and thinking about a redheaded girl like you. Look, I’ll show you the shirts I’ve bought, all made of silk. Or no, this will give you a better idea.”

We went over to the table where my open
laptop
lay.

“This computer cost me a great deal, and then there’s the
SCANNER
, too. You don’t know what a
SCANNER
is? It’s a device that allows you to introduce texts directly into your computer without having to key them in. Very convenient since I’ve brought along a whole library. I’ll show you how it works. Could you get that book down for me? The one I was leafing through this morning? Look here.”

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets, which held his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season: spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their
folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such, such beautiful shirts before.”

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

“It’s a new technology.”

“Yes, in a sense. You’re right. What more can I show you?”