Mother Russia Read Free

T. belches; his overcoat falls to the floor. Pravdin restores it to his shoulders. “The genre of silence!” the painter remarks. “I’ll bet you wish you’d said that.”
    “I will,” Pravdin promises.
    On their way out Friedemann T. consults his pocket calendar, reminds Pravdin about a midafternoon vernissage at the Artists’ Union and a dinner symposium of geologists at the Rossiya. “The geologists are serving chicken Kiev,” he reminds him, “and a decent Bulgarian wine.”
    “It is not possible,” Pravdin tells him regretfully. “Apartment hunting is what I am obliged to do.” He explains about the notice tacked to the tree.
    “They’re not going to tear down that beautiful building of yours?” Friedemann T. whistles. “Aesthetically speaking, that could qualify as a crime. There aren’t five like it left in central Moscow.”
    “After this one goes there won’t be but one; mine is the next to last,” Pravdin says wistfully. “A vacant apartment byany chance you don’t know of? My requirements are modest: sunlight, space, calm, privacy and discreet neighbors.”
    Friedemann T. shakes his head gloomily. “If I knew of such a place I would move in myself. Why don’t you approach the Druse?”
    “No, no, for small things I don’t like to bother him,” Pravdin insists.
    “Since when is an apartment a small thing?”
    “For the Druse,” Pravdin assures him, “it is.”
    Pravdin, twenty minutes early, is hoping to be the first on line; he is forty-first. He comforts himself by thinking of those ahead as potential clients.
    “How do I know these tickets are genuine?” demands a middle-aged woman wrapped in an enormous brown shawl.
    “How does she know these tickets are genuine?” Pravdin repeats innocently. “Yes or no? Under socialism, forgery is a state crime but hustling is a state necessity?”
    The woman laughs self-consciously. “I’ll take two,” she says and carefully counts out eight rubles from her wallet. Pravdin folds the money away in his change purse.
    Behind Pravdin two young men are playing chess on a pocket board. White advances his queen’s bishop to knight five. “If I say Schonberg,” he complains, “you say Webern; if I say chromatic equality is a built-in tenet of serialism, you opt for diatonic species.”
    “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Pravdin intrudes. “What a coincidence you speak of Schonberg. I happen to have on my very person some Deutsche Grammophon discs that arrived only last night from West Germany.”
    When Pravdin’s turn comes he finds himself face to face with the most expressionless human he has ever set eyes on in his life.

    “Next,” the woman says, glancing up from her incredibly organized desk at a wall electric clock that has no hour hand. Like Pravdin she is extremely thin; unlike Pravdin she is thin without being frail. “Next,” she repeats tonelessly, impatiently, tapping a front tooth with a fingernail.
    Pravdin hands her the form he has filled out, along with his Moscow residence permit (it cost a small fortune), his internal passport, a letter (forged) certifying he is a member in good standing of the Writers’ Union and therefore is entitled to twice the standard nine square meters of living space that is the inalienable right of every Soviet citizen, and a military certificate (the genuine article) indicating he suffers from an old war wound and therefore is entitled to live within a radius of a hundred meters of public transportation. Methodical in her movements the woman piles up the documents, begins with the internal passport, glances at the word Jew penned in alongside entry three (ethnic origin), pockets the two Bolshoi tickets Pravdin has discreetly placed in the military certificate.
    The interview, Pravdin senses, is off to a reasonable start. Touch wood.
    “What is the nature of your war wound?” the thin woman asks in a voice that conveys total lack of interest in the answer.
    “Shrapnel in the