The Jungle Around Us by Anne Raeff

Author:Anne Raeff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2016-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

Isaac realized that he had been waiting for a snowstorm, that he thought somehow a snowstorm would make him realize that he really was in the Soviet Union, not just in a dusty library reading through the personal papers of minor intellectuals. He was sure that after it snowed he would call his relatives and they would invite him to their humble apartments, where they would drink plenty of vodka and eat good black bread and something special that they had waited in line for hours to acquire. They would talk about his parents and his grandparents. He would learn things about them that he had never known, and in the end, the children of his cousins and second cousins would don their new snowsuits and they would all walk back with him to his hotel in the snow.

It did snow, but instead of calling his relatives, he met Gita. Unbeknownst to him, the snow began as he sat in the windowless hall of the archives with his stacks of brittle paper and cardboard boxes. Instead of going directly back to the hotel and having his usual prolonged meal in the hotel restaurant, when he emerged from the archives and saw the snow, despite the growling in his stomach, he chose a walk over dinner. He walked without paying any attention to where he was going—turning abruptly onto small lanes when he felt moved to do so, walking in the middle of the large boulevards, which had become impassible to vehicles. Noisy groups of men invited him to join them for a drink. He wished them a joyous evening and continued on his way. Sometimes they ran after him, trying to convince him that there was nothing else he could possibly do that night that would be better than walking with them and drinking their vodka. “We have six bottles,” one group of men said. He smiled and thanked them again but kept on walking.

Every once in a while he passed another lone walker, and they smiled at each other and continued on their ways. When he had walked for almost two hours, he realized that he was cold, so he looked around for a place to have tea or a piece of bread and cheese. But he was in a residential district and there was nothing. Still, he did not turn around. He was not ready to return to the hotel. And then he saw the lights—not hundreds of lights like at the opera, but to him it seemed like hundreds of lights—illuminating the first story of a large, square building. He climbed the stairs to the building and pulled on the massive iron doors. They opened. He had not expected them to open, but since they had, he walked in. Inside there was music. He followed the music and came upon a large hall filled with tables, at which were sitting men and women in brown suits. Everyone was enshrouded in cigarette smoke. At the end of the hall on a small stage was a string quartet playing a waltz.

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