Every Hunter Wants to Know by Mikhail Iossel

Author:Mikhail Iossel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Every Hunter Wants to Know: A Leningrad Life
ISBN: 9781938604881
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1991-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

We were sitting in my car, the twenty-two of us. I knew, sadly, that Veronica and Vitya wouldn’t come. The night was dark and hot.

We drank many jugs of young Moldavian wine from Kishinev. It was rosy, thick, and tangy. The journalist joined in our conversation, laughing at our jokes, slapping his knees. He tried hard. I asked Inna to sit next to him and keep his glass full, because no matter what he had in mind, he was safer being drunk. She said she didn’t like him.

“I don’t blame you, Inna,” I said.

We started dancing. He sat drunkenly, smiling condescendingly, kindly. Venya asked him if he knew any English. He nodded and began translating the lyrics of “Banotherun,” but the only words he could come up with were “if I ever get out of here” and “if we ever get out of here.”

“The tape’s very poor,” he said.

“Yeah, right! Let’s blame the tape for everything!” we said.

I told Inna to invite him to dance. She shrugged. Dancing makes a drinking person more drunk, I told her.

“Oh, all right!” She tugged at his sleeve. He got up and started dancing, staggering and stumbling, and then plopped down on his chair, out of breath.

“Oh, to be young again! I feel like I’m eighteen again!” He slapped Sasha K. on the back: “Hey, Jude! Let it be!” We laughed, and someone told him that he was old enough to be our father.

“Me?” He was shaken up. “If I’m old enough to be your father, then just about anyone could be your father! That Beatle on the tape could be your father!”

We laughed again.

I asked Venya how old Paul McCartney was. Venya didn’t know: maybe thirty-two, thirty-three.

“That’s how old I am—thirty-three!” my passenger exclaimed. Sasha told him to shut up. The idea of having Paul McCartney for our father was bizarre. In that case, we could be our own fathers.

The man’s lips quivered, and his face began to take on the stubborn, angry, gleeful expression of a teenager who had always been beaten and humiliated by his schoolmates. As I looked at him, it occurred to me that there was a ready explanation on his face for why he worked where he worked. “Inna!” I said. She put her hand on his shoulder and told him that we didn’t mean to hurt him, that we didn’t hate him.

“Yes you do!” he exclaimed, his lips still quivering. “Why do you hate me?”

“Because we don’t know you!” we said. “Who are you? What are you? Are you one of us? No, you’re one of them!”

I stood up and told them that he was a journalist.

“Journalists are scumbags!” Sasha K. said.

“Not all of them,” I said. “Some of them are honest.”

“What are you talking about?” the man said. He looked puzzled.

The car door slid open and the head conductor walked in. She was sober. She saw us drinking and told us to please continue. She had my diary in her hand, squeezing it hard. We fell silent.

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