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Typical American Adventure

Part II

Who are you? Where are we? Where I am?

Moskvich even sighed with relief when he heard a man’s voice in the receiver.Suddenly it blows, suddenly does not twist, all of a sudden all this is just a normal male joke, or even better – a slight misunderstanding?

– Hello, – either he spoke, or sang a middle-aged, but pleasant courageous voice.

– Sorry, I’m calling about an announcement that was posted on the university campus. It must be a joke, sir? – The Muscovite waited a second, but did not hear an answer. – Misunderstanding, sir?

– It’s over, it’s over, [16] – a male voice spoke or sang sadly.

– Sorry, I would not call if your phone number had not fallen into the hands of a very dubious subject, and since this subject is largely a product of the imagination, then I, who also represents in a certain sense a certain imagination, consider myself so or otherwise responsible for the actions of this person, ”Moskvich blurted out in one breath and added, thinking:“ You don’t understand me, of course?

“I understand you perfectly, my friend,” said the invisible interlocutor.- Now you listen to me.

It is not known where the music appeared in the tube, and the voice was already singing as if on the stage:

Love and marriage,
Love and marriage,
Go together
Like a horse and carriage … [17]

Not without pleasure Moskvich listened to the end of this song, which he remembered from the fall of 1955, from those times when he was not a Muscovite, but a Leningrader, since that autumn, when the western cyclone blocked the Neva estuary and the water overflowed the banks of the sphinxes up to the chin, and he was just going to dance along Bolshoy Prospekt of the Petrograd side knee-deep in water, and whistled this song, and met a girl on the square of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and together they came to the medical institute, where they danced to this song, and all the dancers were wet to the knee, but dry above the knee – it was a glorious night!

“Thank you,” he said when the song ended.

“Please,” the same voice replied. “Now look, old man, is there a white open Mazaratti next to your telephone booth?”

He looked around. There was indeed a white open Mazaratti next to the phone booth, and a girl was driving. Yes, of course, the girl was driving there. It was the girl who was supposed to appear now according to the TAP law, and she appeared.

– Sit down, – said a voice in the receiver.

– Hey Maine, sit down! – said the girl.

The Mazaratti snorted, and in less than two minutes our Moskvich found himself in the night stream on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Some people in the City of Angels were apparently not afraid of road patrols. In particular, the maid on the mazaratti. Shifting from row to row, clipping the noses of evenly rolling average Americans, she did not touch the brakes or slow down past the seventy mph mark.

She held the steering wheel with only her left hand, while with her right hand meanwhile she was rolling some kind of hand-rolled cigarette on the seat, something like a “goat’s leg” with green tobacco.

– Maine, fire! She ordered shortly.

– Where are we going? – asked Moskvich, holding out a lighter.

– Man, are you groovy? – The girl, wrinkling her nose, blissfully inhaled.

– What is groovy? – Moskvich wondered. – What does this word mean?

“Doesn’t mean anything,” said the driver. – I’m just asking: you man – are you groovy or not groovy?

– Yes, I am groovy, – Moskvich nodded.

– Pull.

A slobbering roll-up cigarette got into his mouth.

– Where are we going? He repeated his first question.

– In Topanga Canyon …

The Muscovite felt some dizziness and, in connection with this dizziness, kind of put his hands on his hips in his chair.

– You girl! – he said in the suggested style. – Are you groovy?

The girl laughed and snatched the plane tree out of his mouth.

Santa Monica Freeway ended in a tunnel, and there the cars could hardly crawl, a “jam” formed, a traffic jam. It is difficult to say how they slipped through this clogged tunnel in one second – after all, not through the air! – but now they were rushing along the Pacific coast along the beaches whitening in the dark under the cliffs of the Palisades.

He did not have time to notice when and where they had an escort.Now three medieval knights on Honda motorcycles accompanied them: one raced in front, the second on the side, the third behind. Black, blued steel armor covered their bodies, and on their heads were helmets that looked like polished black balls. No faces are visible.

“Mafia! – finally guessed Moskvich. – I’m in the hands of the mafia. Here it is, underground criminal America. On the first day I fell into the clutches of Cosa Nostra. However, why do they need me? Why does the mafia need a far from rich Moskvich, without special rights to American residence, with a flea on a leash? What if they still get killed? It will be stupid, rather stupid.And at the same time – to be in America and not be in the hands of the mafia? Pretty ridiculous too. Perhaps I was lucky – I am in the hands of the mafia! ”

It was dark and deserted in Topanga Canyon. The narrow asphalt road climbed higher and higher, twisting like a serpentine between the fences of unlit villas. Motorcyclists appeared and disappeared – imperceptibly. For some reason, the young driver became serious, did not look at Moskvich and did not answer questions.

And the speed, meanwhile, increased. Dizziness too.And on one of the unthinkable bends, Moskvich sang a short praise to his companion:

– Yu or you! Are you an angel or an angel? You, emerging from the city foam on a white mazaratti comb! If you are the goddess of love, then your hands are too tenacious! If you are an angel, then an angel of hell!

She didn’t even raise an eyebrow, but just grinned. A second later, Moskvich was able to assess the elasticity of the brakes of the famous sports car when they flew straight into the canopy of a small garage and stopped dead in their tracks.

He waited for his hands to be tied and a black bag put on his head, but he was simply invited to enter the house.

The doors opened, the noise of many voices, laughter, music together with a strip of bright light spilled into the dark canyon and imprinted on the basalt rock as the shadow of the owner.

The owner stood on the threshold: gray long hair up to his shoulders, beads of shark teeth on his chest, an embroidered shirt, jeans, an old slender owner.

– Some enchanted evening, – he said or sang in a baritone already familiar to Moskvich, – you may see a stranger across the crowded room … [18] Come in, buddy!

Moskvich was already knee-deep in the sea.He boldly entered the house, into the nest of the Californian mafia, and immediately joined the general conversation. The conversation, of course, was about Russian literature.

– Do you like the poetry of acmeists? – asked the Muscovite tall, thin, either a professor, or a gangster, or a gypsy. She asked, presenting him with a glass of martini and stirring it slightly in the glass with her magnificent long finger, supposedly with the aim of dissolving a beautiful, but, in all likelihood, far from harmless crystal.

– Yes, I like it. Of course I like it, – answered Moskvich, taking a glass.

– What wonderful fruits the “Silver Age” brought to the world! – said to the Muscovite an athletic gangster in professor glasses and a yellow shirt from the “Bears” club.

– Still, the “Silver Age”! Silver fruits! – agreed Moskvich, sipping a poisoned but tasty martini.

“You know, I used to work with diamonds, and now I’m an expert in the“ Silver Age ”,” said the dry, smiling mafioso, tapping each other with his fashionable Dutch shoes this season.

– Excuse me, gentlemen, but which of you fell on Westwood Boulevard at eleven thirty-five last night? – turned to the whole society Moskvich.

Like a plastic bomb exploded. All conversations died away instantly. Connoisseurs of the “Silver Age” recoiled from the newcomer. All the guests, and there were at least thirty of them in the hall, now silently looked at him. With a quiet creak, the door to the terrace began to open, behind which in the transparent blackness an abyss was guessed, and at the bottom, in the gorge, a snake-river gleamed like a mirror.

Moskvich did not read any particular expression in the glances directed at him, but nevertheless he understood that further questions were inappropriate.

Except for one question, which he asked:

– What will happen to me?

– It depends only on you, my friend, – the owner said softly and sang a little: – Come dance with me, came play with me … [19]

– Bye, eurybody! – Cheerfully (a kind of daredevil, they say!) Said Moskvich and walked to where his owner invited, to a small door, behind which, of course, a ladder could be guessed down.

“Bye,” they said goodbye to him “eurybody”. – Take care, [20] Moskvich!

“What a mockery, what sarcasm! – thought Moskvich. – I seem to be in the realm of Memoz’s “black humor” … “

Either green tobacco, or a crystal dissolved in a martini, but most likely, the very spirit of the American adventure that had already begun, really excited our Muscovite, this armchair rat, bookworm, man in a case, and a kind of youthful cowboy was now running through him in trickles. blood flow, through the lymphatic and nervous systems, and so changed that, perhaps, even the Moscow neighbors would not recognize: tie to the side, head disheveled, shoulders straightened, fists in pockets …

In a dungeon decorated with illuminated stained glass windows inspired by Salvator Dali, two were playing ping-pong.One, the most terrible, obviously won and ruthlessly attacked, the other, tanned, in white clothes, with eyes sparkling with living human misfortune, was beautifully and hopelessly losing.

– Seventeen – seven, eighteen – seven, nineteen – seven, twenty – seven, out! – echoingly and mockingly, like a raven, the most terrible was counting, and it was, as Moskvich immediately guessed, it was the most unfortunate product of the imagination – Memozov.

Of course, his appearance was changed: a leather jacket tightened the most impressive belly, Spanish starched lace propped up his cheeks oozing with stagnant raspberry juice – what, they say, a Flemish! – however, it was not at all a matter of appearance.A Muscovite would recognize Memozov even in the form of a Neanderthal, a Martian, even in the form of an Egyptian mummy. It was just another mockery, a mockery of the ideal – why this stupid ping-pong, may I ask?

Meanwhile, the loser, whether a lovely Roman or a Byzantine, gradually disappeared, as if fading away among the stained-glass windows. But, perhaps, it was she who fell that night on the Boulevard of the Western Forest, when he, Moskvich (now it is already quite clear), rushed to help ?!

In a rage, Moskvich grabbed a racket.Win! By all means! Get revenge! Get revenge and expose the scoundrel! Get rid of him once and for all!

– Ha ha ha! – Memozov laughed, twisting his black, obviously fake mustache. – Do not be angry, my poor Moskvich! Better defend yourself, my poor Moskvich!

Anger! Noise! Dizziness! Screams!

“Where are these screams, this laughter coming from? How much time has passed? Where I am?” – thought Moskvich and suddenly saw himself not in a dungeon, but on an open spacious veranda hanging in the night above the Topanga canyon.

In the corner of the site stood a small plane, similar in outline to the Sopwich apparatus, a fighter from the First World War. The owner of the house was busy with the airplane. His gray hair fluttered in the night wind. Half of the face was hidden by old-fashioned pilot’s goggles. He turned to Moskvich and waved him a huge leather mitten.

– Come fly with me, fly with me, [21] – he sang a little and added: – Help to roll out the device, buddy!

Together they rolled the car into the middle of the veranda.The motor was already squealing like a sewing machine. The owner offered Moskvich to take the passenger seat in front, and he sat down on the pilot’s seat in the back. Less than five minutes later, they were already hanging over the bottomless canyon and slowly gaining height, swinging their silvery wings goodbye.

The intellectual mafia quietly applauded the daredevils, staying on the veranda and shrinking in size.

– Where are we going, boss? – Moskvich asked bravely. It was just “on business” that I remembered the American word “boss”.

– From here to Eternity, [22] – was the answer.

“Humanity, I love you, humanity …”

Meanwhile, while the fictional Moskvich, together with the fictional Memozov, escaping from my control, develops his TAP – a typical American adventure – in the meantime, I continue my restrained story about my atypical, but quite real life in EL.

So, I became a professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles for two months.These are the miracles that happen in the modern world – without any dissertations, a frivolous writer may suddenly turn out to be a professor! A long corridor on the eleventh floor of Bunch Hall, signs on the doors of the offices: Professor Worts, Professor Harper, Professor Aksenov, Professor Shapiro …

The University of California is huge. It has nine branches, nine different campuses in different cities across the state. The headquarters and office of the President is located on the Berkeley campus, our UCLA is the second most important, but the first in size – more than forty thousand students.There are also branches in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Ana, Santa Cruz …

The UCLA Campus is bordered to the east by one of the nicest neighborhoods in town, Westwood. The great and famous Sunset Boulevard runs along the western edge of the campus. From the north, the gorgeous Beverly Hills rises, from the south – the gored Santa Monica.

On the corporate postcard we see the campus from a bird’s eye view: in the center there are old buildings of the pseudo-Hispanic-pseudo-Arab, namely the Californian style; along the periphery, modern buildings and among them our Bunch Hall, even closer to the boundaries of the building of numerous car parks, multi-storey parking for teachers and students; in the southwest corner there is a large sports center – an athletics stadium, two fields for baseball, lacrosse, football, an indoor basketball arena with large stands, a swimming pool and the so-called “ricriation center” – a kind of club for swimming, games and felting on the grass.

There is a wonderful collection of sculptures on the lawns in the central part of the campus. On my first university morning, when Professor Dean Worth, the chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages ​​and Literatures, was showing me around the campus, I saw a surprisingly familiar granite shape from afar. Is it really that famous “lying figure” of Henry Moore, presented thousands of times in different albums? A copy, of course?

– That’s it, Henry Moore, and, of course, the original. There are no copies here.

And next to the Moore granites, the bronze of Lipschitz towered in complete tranquility, the ceramic relief of Matisse was molded to the brickwork and many other magnificent things were basking under the Californian sky.

Now I accidentally used the word “calmness”, but after finishing the phrase to the end, I thought: is it really so accidental in relation to sculpture? I remembered my previous meetings with sculpture in different cities of the world, in churches and museums and in the workshops of Moscow. It was precisely the calmness of durable materials that descended on me during these meetings, and even if the sculpture expressed anger, I felt calm anger, joy – of course, calm joy, and even anxiety was for me in sculpture a calm, inspiring, tonic anxiety.

What’s the matter? Perhaps this comes from an instinctive distrust of one’s own material, to paper, ink and printing ink, and from reverence for these synonyms of strength and durability available to our imperfect consciousness, to marble, bronze, granite, in which the artist’s unsteady spirit is embodied? Are some considerations about the fundamental difference between prose and sculpture appropriate here as well? Indeed, from any of the most perfect prose, an artist can delete something and add something to it, whereas if it is possible to “delete” something from a sculpture, then nothing can be added or added to it, and therefore, a sculpture in in any case, at least half is perfection.

Welding, you say? However, welding is a different art.

So, meeting with the sculpture on the UCLA campus reassured me before meeting with American students, and I must admit I was worried. How do I start my so-called lectures? I thought. Okay, I told myself that first morning at university, I’ll start by talking about the relationship between prose and sculpture. I have never spoken to American students before and I don’t know what interests them. This topic will be interesting at least to myself.

Of course, I’ve already heard a lot about this huge university. I knew, for example, that the UCLA Bears were the undergraduate basketball and soccer champions. I also knew about the famous attack on the Plaza Hotel in the midst of anti-war demonstrations, when students of this university, ripping off their throats, chanted the scary limerick, which for a long time became the cry of all American peacemakers:

– LBJ! LBJ! Howe Meni Babis Did You Kill Today? [23]

Well, of course, I knew that people were also engaged in sciences here, and, by the way, they were doing very seriously.

And now, in the late spring of 1975, I see a motley crowd of Californian students with my own eyes. Outwardly, they have not changed from the rebels of the late sixties and early seventies. The same deliberately ragged jeans, sneakers, long hair hanging over the shoulders or pulled back into a ponytail or even braided into a braid; beards, mustache, soldier’s duffel bags, a whale bug, behind the shoulders, T-shirts with bold inscriptions, but …

But, as I notice, all these guys and girls are carrying books, lying on the grass with books, sitting in student cafes, on the steps of stairs and even in the stands of the stadium with open books.

… We enter the student club cafe with a young professor. She herself was quite recently a student. With a sigh of light, lightest, barely noticeable (for now!) Regret, she looks around the clean, beautifully painted walls of the club.

– In my time there was no living space on these walls: continuous slogans, appeals, threats, manifestos of socialists, anarchists, Maoists, Trotskyists, guevarists … Where did all this go? It’s even strange to look – outwardly the same people, but all of a sudden they became cramps …

In this slight bitterness, as you can see, there is already a nostalgia for the stormy five-year anniversary, sounded by heartbreaking rock music.

Rock music … The Americans did not know the Russian meaning of the word “rock”, and if they knew, perhaps it would add to this music not only thundering stones, swaying rocks, but also unexpected falls into silence, into soundlessness.

I think that unexpected discoveries can be made by bringing together phonetically close Russian and English words, as, for example, Anthony Burgess did, bringing together “good” and “horrorshow”. [24]

Let’s go back to the university walls. I saw the remains of old posters on them:

“We will not participate in your swine imperialist war!”

It should be said that, despite all the diversity of the political, philosophical and psychological spectrum, despite all sorts of leftist bends, dislocations, bruises, sprains and fractures, the young American intelligentsia of the late sixties – early seventies was bright, smart, sincere.

In their fierce Davidic battle against the Goliath establishment, the intelligentsia, perhaps for the first time in American history, gained confidence in their powers. Of course, we can say that the concept of “American intelligentsia” is extremely broad and contains a serious contradiction, for inevitably, in fulfilling its social functions, the intelligentsia merges with this most hated establishment, and therefore carries both Davidic and Goliath principles. but, perhaps, it is in the struggle of these principles that self-awareness is developed?

The American intelligentsia views the defeat in Vietnam as their own victory.

A tumultuous debate over corruption and political machinations preceded the calm of the spring of 1955. However, is the current calm so calm?

One morning I ran out of my little Claremonthotel on Tiverton Avenue and pointed my sneakers towards the university stadium.

Along the way, while running to campus, I can say that the hobby for semi-sports running, called “jogging”, is so widespread in America that it sometimes seemed to me that I was in Moscow, in Timiryazevsky Park.

On the central square of the campus, I saw a crowd of students, and then a girl in denim overalls intercepted me.

– Hi! – she said. – Sign this paper and run on.

In her hands fluttered a long sheet with a bold call at the top:

“CIA snitches out of the university!”

I must admit that it didn’t take long to beg me. I paid taxes here on an equal basis with everyone else, and therefore could not deny myself the pleasure of snitching the informers.

In the evening of the same day, I read in the university newspaper “Daily Bear” the tearful revelations of an already middle-aged agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, “infiltrated” back in 1968 into student “fraternity”.

This little episode in the life of Yu-C-L-A reflected a nationwide campaign against CIA abuses. Senator Church appeared on TV screens several times a week, heading the commission of inquiry.

The senator slowly and calmly talked about the work of his commission, about further revelations – about the CIA’s connection with the mafia, about conspiracies against foreign heads of state, about spying on the Americans, about the lack of control of this helluva lot of serious organization.

I have spoken about this affair with dozens of Americans in private homes, in bars, and in newspaper offices. Everywhere intellectuals were unanimous – the tsereushniki should be given a hand in order to discourage the taste for totalitarian manners. Intelligence and counterintelligence are one thing, the Americans said, every country needs them. Lack of control, a system of surveillance and snitching, an attempt to become a state within a state is another matter, it is dangerous for all citizens.

And just like the UCLA students of their petty informer, the country pulls out on the screens the stupid face of Butterfield, a big snitch who was “infiltrated” no less than the White House.

It sometimes occurred to me that the violent opposition of intellectuals to the establishment and impending totalitarianism reflects to some extent the traits of a national character, that freedom-loving pioneer spirit that, of course, still lives on in the American people. For these people, totalitarianism is a very broad concept, and they see its signs in many signs of their life, in such signs that do not seem to a foreigner at all to be any totalitarianism. For example, the so-called commercials, television advertising is totalitarianism.For example, the entertainment industry at Disneyland is totalitarianism. For example, smog in Downtown Los Angeles is also totalitarianism …

Well, are totalitarianism and the standard of living in a modern super-industrial society synonymous ?! O! Your question evokes impatient, almost carnivorous smiles, your interlocutors fidget slightly, settling down more comfortably in their chairs, lighting a cigarette, getting ready for the endless “discussion”.

– You see, this is an extremely complex and interesting problem …

Don’t feed the American intellectual with bread, but just let him discuss this topic, or some other, or the third, fourth, hundredth, and so a million!

How once the Russian intelligentsia argued in their closets – do you remember? – “let us in disputes of these sipnom, let the glasses with pale cider stand next to sieve bread and eggplant caviar” – and now the American “eggheads”, putting aside their “highballs” and “snacks”, work with their tongues until the morning, and in these disputes the freedom-loving spirit of their ancestors, pioneers, seethes, bubbles, gurgles.

You and I, reader, will return to the discussion of totalitarianism and the standard in another chapter, but now I would like to say that dialectical contradictions are encountered in America at every step, and how else could it be otherwise in such a great society …

For example, opponents of the prohibition of the arms trade refer to the freedom-loving pioneer spirit, to the self-defense right of every American, and the free sale of firearms leads to an increase in crime, and crime is organized into the mafia, and the mafia is intertwined with the CIA by its roots, this most sinister apparatus totalitarianism.

One way or another, among all these dialectical, as well as simply absurd contradictions over the past two decades, the American intelligentsia has grown and defined itself, and now among the usual literary and cinematic images, such as the “average American”, “cowboy”, “sheriff “And so on, there is also a person with a vague smile, in a careless suit, with greatly enlarged eyes behind the lenses, approximately the type that in old Russia the Black Hundreds used the term” skubent-sicilist-ablacat “.

Now, in the spring of 1975, is a period of calm, but who knows what other hardships the American intelligentsia will have to go through? This type is dear to me, I love this person and therefore I do not want to be a pessimist, although, as the same American intellectuals say:

– A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.

I have already retired quite far from my quiet narration. I can attribute this to running on a tartan track among a dozen other “joggers”.Here’s another advantage of running – associative reflections, non-deterministic (whip me, zealots of spring water!), Associative, non-deterministic reflections, that is, reflection or meditation … …

Now you have to go back. JJ-JJ-junior, [25] a graduate student of Syracuse University, author of an unwritten dissertation “Urban landscape in the works of Aksenov” appeared at the stadium.He runs towards me, waving a long Russian beard, in a T-shirt with a Russian inscription: “Well, wait!” – at twenty-six years old, like some hundred-year-old marathon runner from the city of Torzhok.

We do two laps together and then JJ-J says:

– By the way, Vasya, are you going to lecture today? [26]

We quit running and go to drink hot drinks [27] from a vending machine and chew on “hot dogs.” We glance at the student notice boards. No, you cannot say that the campus is dying out.

“Brenda Lee, dead or alive, come to the library by five!”

“In connection with my departure to Africa, I am selling almost for nothing a car, a dog and a pair of worn boots.”

“June 5th Gay Pride Festival!”

“Concert of the rock group” Swollen belly “.

“Are you a Jew? Be proud and tall! ”

“Professor Delozano does not like his students!”

“Whoever helped me get up after the fall on Westwood Boulevard, please call 777-7777.”

A poem by an unknown genius appeared overnight on the concrete wall enclosing the construction site:

Humanity, I love you
that you carry the secret of life in your pants
and forget about it when you sit on a chair …
Humanity, I hate you!

Someday this wall will also be found in the geological strata of our planet. Someday everything will be found, even our pitiful petals of paper with funny bugs-letters. Someday everything will be found and deciphered: the Declaration of Human Rights, the Rules of Conduct in National Reserves, and these brilliant poems addressed to humanity, and the announcement of the person who fell on the boulevard … someday … to his next lecture.

And I remember my first lecture, if only it could be called a lecture.

Pergamon frieze, or Prose patches on an ancient sculpture

… What was I talking about then?

I remembered Museum Island in Berlin and the stunning bas-relief depicting the battle of the gods and giants.

How was it in reality? The giants gathered in the Phlegrean swamps, the whole company: Porphyrion and Ephialtes, Alcyoneus and Cletius, Nisyros, Polybotes and Enkelad, and Gration, and Hippolytus, and Otos, and Agrius, and Theon, and how many more were there, terrible?

They rebelled in slush, in bad weather, under a low pack of endless clouds that carried over them with evil omens.

… What else?

As there, in the distance, where just now there was no one, a huge man, like an oak, arose, and this was a god. Unbreakable and heavily armed, he stood with an incomprehensible smile … What is your name, God? Hephaestus? Apollo? Hermes? Hello punishing god!

… What else?

The giants wanted to take revenge on Zeus for his enormity, for wisdom, for arrogance, for his infinite seed, for the throne, for lightning, for all solar mythology and for their members, who did not know love.

Here the whole area of ​​the swamps was covered with a sparkling army.Golden goddesses and gods went to the giants in their rustling clothes, in the light ringing of swords, arrows and armor. A window was formed in the sky, and a powerful column of sunbeams fell on the swamp, as if illuminating the battlefield for the future sculptor.

… What else?

They moved in like waves. Their every step was, like a wave, elusive and, like a wave, unforgettable. The giants were ashamed of their snake-like legs, their hairs with traces of marsh nights, their swollen joints and rough muscles that looked like mossy stones.

“Oh, brothers,” said young Alcyoneus. – I have never even seen such a beautiful god as the one with the dogs. Look at the bulges on his chest. I have no idea what it is, but they drive me crazy!

The ringing flew over the swamp. Hercules let go of the bowstring, and an arrow, saturated with the poison of the Lernaean hydra, pierced the chest of the mighty, but naive Alcyoneus.

… What else?

The decapitated Zeus fights three giants. He does not have his left hand, and only a shoulder joint and a hand, squeezing the tail of dead lightning, are left of the right, but it was not the giants that inflicted this terrible damage on God.

A deep crack split Porphyrion’s thigh, pieces of marble fell off the giant’s buttocks, there is no hand and the tip of the nose, but it was not the gods that crippled him.

Instant by instant. Battle. Atrocities. Gesture after gesture: a blow with a spear, launching an arrow – everything comes into the world. Everything arises as if from the sea, and everything disappears, as in the sea, and remains only in the shaky memory of eyewitnesses and in the imagination of artists. It’s good that there is marble. Praise and paper.

They were enemies in the Phlegrean Marshes and became allies in Pergamum.They raised a marble wave and thus stopped before the onslaught of Time: rearing horses, grinning mouths, swollen muscles, flying hair, weapons … In Pergamum, in marble, gods and giants clashed against Kronus together.

… Well, what else?

Now, ladies and gentlemen, respected patronage, dear comrades, this is a battlefield. You can see that the bas-relief has suffered extensive damage over the centuries. Excuse me, here is the rest of the loin, a bunch of hair and a sword hilt … an empty doomed space … Any visitor can mentally attach his own person to the frieze.We offer prose patches if anyone needs them.

After finishing the “lecture” and shivering awkwardly under the American gaze, I could find nothing better than to ask:

– Any questions, comrades?

The audience’s amiable and quite friendly laugh showed that although they are not “comrades” at all, they fully understand my slip of the tongue. Then a question followed. A tall girl with the longest hair, with tremendous eyes, with the most delicate mouth stood up.

– So my friend and I had an argument, Mr. Aksenov.You are wearing pretty well tailored trousers. Are these trousers really made in Russia?

“Yes,” I answered firmly. – These trousers are sewn by my friend, a progressive tailor Igor, who lives in the Moscow district of Fili-Mazilovo, and he buys this checkered fabric in the Izmailovo shopping center.

The answer is complete. I see the poorly hidden delight of one of the arguing friends, the disappointment and displeasure of the other.

Humanity, I love you for the fact that
that you fly
kites into the sky,
and then look at them
as wonders of nature.
Humanity, I hate you.

A funny episode in the first lecture did not interfere with our studies. Still shining with my filial-Mazilov trousers, I began to acquaint the audience with the answers of our prose writers to my questionnaire “How does something arise out of nothing?”

The reader, of course, is primarily interested in the audience – its, say, average age, appearance, ethnic composition, how many American Russians were there …

There will be a special conversation about the Russians in these notes, now I will only say that a lot of them have passed before me, of different generations of emigration and of different ages.

Now about the age of my audience. For two or three classes, an old woman appeared in gray curls and hearing glasses. She usually sat in the front row and smiled a kind, albeit quite distracted, smile. Sometimes it seemed to me that she did not understand a word of my exercises. I thought it was some retired professor or the wife of a retired professor, but later it turned out that the old woman was an ordinary student. In American universities, it turns out, there is no age limit, and if in old age you are overcome by the whim of “taking a course” at the university – you are welcome! [28]

The presence of the old woman, as you know, significantly increased the average age of my audience, and it was not very low anyway.Professors and graduate students of the Department of Slavic Studies were regular listeners. The student body was fluid. It’s ridiculous to talk about compulsory attendance at lectures at American universities: after all, there is now a struggle to cancel grades. Students wander around the campus and choose lectures according to taste or mood, like performances on a playbill.

It was not only Slavists and philologists who came to me. One day a whole team of some cybernetics showed up. I don’t know what interested them in modern Soviet prose, whether they knew the language enough, but they spent two hours with smart faces, quietly and peacefully, changing only the coils in the tape recorder.Perhaps they connected me to some kind of computer? This thought seemed to me very funny then, and that day I tried extremely hard – to the computer.

Another time a young man with a dog came to a lecture. The dog was a collie male, very long-haired, clean and noble. Throughout the lecture, he calmly lay on the floor at the owner’s feet, but did not sleep, and kept his head high, looked at me, was silent and only two or three times yawned with restraint. Wonderful listener! At first I thought that this visit with the dog to my lecture was something special – either over-respect for a lecturer from Russia, or, on the contrary, shocking, but then I noticed dogs in other audiences and realized that this is the way it is here, that this is just a simple respect for an intelligent friend, a dog, nothing more.

As you can see, reader, in the American audience there are some oddities in comparison with our domestic, but these oddities are small, and basically people as people and in appearance are not particularly different from ours, only, of course, they wear American trousers.

Now – a questionnaire. A few days before my departure from Moscow, a happy idea occurred to me – to start up a questionnaire among my friends. It sounded like this:

“Each new work is a new reality, a new body in space.How does something arise out of nothing?

How does an “unidentified flying object” of new prose suddenly appear in a calm and empty atmosphere?

What usually pushes you to pen – a thought or an emotion?

What comes first: style, intonation or hero, concept, idea?

Do you agree with the fact that with a semantic impulse you have to collect what you choose from with a sensual beginning?

What is the measure of fact and fiction in your prose and how is your personal life experience transformed in it? ”

In a word, the questions concerned rather subtle substances.I again went to the trick, took what interested me myself, and it so happened that the psychology of the prose writer became the main subject of my lectures.

I was worried – would the Americans be interested in our professional reflections? It turned out – hit the mark! My listeners were carried away by the dispute that unfolded before them with the help of this questionnaire.

First of all, they were attracted by the diversity of opinions, the clash of different, sometimes polar points of view. Due to various prejudices (we all understand where they came from), Americans know only what hinders the development of our literature, but they do not always understand what inspires us and calls us not to abandon our efforts.

Our difficulties – due to also prejudice – are very often exaggerated. Once I read one of Trifonov’s stories at a lecture and, using his example, talked about intuitive prose, about the fact that the reader is called here as co-authors and becomes (with a certain effort, of course) a participant in a creative act, like listeners at a jazz concert. After reading one boy sadly said:

– What a pity that such a wonderful story cannot be published in the Soviet Union.

I had to show the book on which I read and the circulation of which was one hundred thousand copies.

The same story happened with my own ironic prose. Speaking about this genre, I read to the students some of Memozov’s misadventures from Literaturnaya Gazeta, and they, as it turned out, believed that this was “under-table literature.”

Even students of Russian studies, who are well versed in the literature of the 19th century and the avant-garde searches of the first quarter of the 20th, are very little acquainted with the present day of our living prose. The questionnaire also gave me the opportunity for information.

So, every day we understood each other better.I sometimes forgot that I was giving lectures somewhere twelve thousand kilometers away from home in front of some Americans, and offered to talk together, because I myself was extremely interested in the subject of the dispute “how does something arise out of nothing?” because it is impossible to find in this matter any scientific truths, nothing indisputable, and this is just wonderful, and the value of this whole matter consists only in wiggling the brains.

Here is an example of a monodiapolologist in the seventh auditorium of Bunchhall, the door of which was always open to the gallery, to the conventional air of the winter garden.

– When you say “out of nothing,” you must not mean sheer emptiness? Of course. Kataev is right – after all, emptiness does not exist, because the world is material. Do you remember that he quotes the inscription on the monument to Kant, which appeared immediately after the capture of Konigsberg: “Now you see, Kant, that the world is material.” However, it seems to me that Mr. Kataev’s spontaneous idealism shines through through thoughtful materialism … But why? After all, the artist’s fantasy is also reality. Fantasy, perhaps, is no less real than the rustle of foliage.Sorry, but this is a more mysterious phenomenon! More or less, isn’t it? Are you kidding, sir? Oh no, I sometimes believe that real phenomena around us, such as sunsets, river flows, stones, birds, sand, are no less mysterious than fantasy. It also mentions yu-ef-ow, [29] that is, “an unidentified flying object.” You know that there is a hypothesis according to which UFOs are signs or bodies that penetrate to us from another dimension. It seems to one talented poetess and no less talented prose writer that our works already exist in the world, and even without our participation.The artist only names the unnamed, he penetrates into another dimension and names previously invisible bodies, gives them shape, color and sound. He substitutes them for life, according to some. Literature is not always ethical. Sometimes she makes a fool and replaces life with herself. 19th century literature replaced the 19th century itself. Who agrees? I agree! I disagree, we disagree! I believe that art objects do not replace life, but become new bodies in it, that is, they decorate life and push its boundaries.

Alas, they lose some of their mystery, don’t they? Is it absolutely true, or is it the other way around – is it true? Perhaps named, they become even more mysterious? Who said that the objects we named are less mysterious than the unnamed ones? You call a small creature with long hair, a tail and round eyes, cat, we call this creature a cat, but is this furry creature less mysterious from the names? We (still, so far) are not able to penetrate to the end into the true essence of the subject – this is the main torment of art .

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