The Moscoviad

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Authors: Yuri Andrukhovych
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.”
    “And where did
you guys hide the body from yesterday?”
    “So far it is
still in my room. Tonight, after dark, I’ll drop it with all the other stuff
into the sewer . . .”
    “Did he really
want to snatch a case of vodka?”
    “He wanted to buy
it for thirty lenins a bottle, and I was selling it for thirty-five. We finally
agreed on thirty-three, and he also wanted to buy a case of beer. But he saw
that I was alone in my room . . . How could he know that I used to knock off
American guys bigger than him. He was drunk, stank of vodka. A big white sack .
. .”
    “For what is man
if not a grain of sand, and this world is nothing but suffering, and the
greatest gift it can give us is to take away our being . . .”
    “And so teaches
the Buddha, and so taught comrade Ho Chi Minh . . .”
    And after these
wise words the entire sleepless thuggish gang got off the bus. One of them was
saying they respected very much the big white brothers. As well as the little
black insects.
    The stop for 1st
Dmitrov Passage. Ahead is the wide, rain-covered perspective of Butyrskaya
Street. Behind is the Dmitrov Highway, but there is no point of going there
now, even though that’s where Hotel Molodyozhnaya is, at which hotel
Yezhevikin, according his own accounts, occasionally had the luck of ordering
to his room two girls at once, delegates from the Young Communist League
convention.
    Speaking of
which. Love, that is. It seems Galya has already returned from her research
trip. Should I drop by? What the hell for should I wander around this
water-drenched Moscow, being as I am under the influence and running a fever?
Having eaten nothing all morning except for a few fins of the dead fish from
the beer hall on Fonvizin Street? Of course you should call Galya. One of your
loves. The game of passions and fine psychological nuances. Sadomasochistic
études. Scenes from the lives of perverts. The dueling egoisms. The school of
new love. Ugh! . .
    The stop for the
trolley bus plant. The trolley bus garden. Not funny.
    So where are you
going, von F.? Don’t forget about your friends’ children, about Kyrylo, about
the word you gave.
    You see, my dear
pangs of conscience, the things are as follows. There exists a thousand ways to
get to the “Children’s World” store. For instance, without getting off this
bus, not rushing off anywhere, calmly trot along to the fucking Dzerzhinsky 9 monument and, squinting with your right eye at the architectural complex of the
KGB’s Lubyanka headquarters, descend into an underpass and emerge from it in
front of the “Children’s World.” One can use this option, especially since we
are now passing the stop for 46, Butyrskaya Street.
    But there also
exist many other, equally interesting options, my dear pangs of conscience,
gangs of conscience. For example. Get off now at the Savyolovo train station.
Phone Kyrylo and tell him I’m running late but will definitely make it to his
place. Then take the metro. Get on the Serpukhov line and take it all the way
to the Borovitskaya station, the one that’s right underneath the Kremlin. From
the Borovitskaya change to the Arbatskaya, but not of the Fili line, but of the
Arbat-Pokrov line, for there exist two different Arbatskaya stations, as well
as two different Smolenskaya stations, for which someone ought to get a good
spanking. But back in the thirties they hoped this would utterly confuse the
British intelligence.
    I see. But you
have already passed the Savyolovo train station, my dear. Oh well, go on. I
wonder how would you, drunken piece of crap, make it from the Arbatskaya
station of the Arbat-Pokrov line to the “Children’s World” store?
    Why very simply.
From the Arbatskaya I’d get out on the New Arbat, that is, on the avenue named
after that dumbass Kalinin and follow it to the October Concert Hall. Right
next to it, by the way, is the “Melodiya” music store, where I can at last pick
up my Mike Oldfield tape. And then I’d

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