The Moscoviad by Yuri Andrukhovych

Author:Yuri Andrukhovych [Andrukhovych, Yuri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil
Published: 2008-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

Undoubtedly, a special government committee will launch an investigation of the reasons for the mysterious explosion at the “Snack Bar.” Undoubtedly, an announcement about this will be read out tonight by the stern anchorman of the nine o’clock news. But what does all of this matter to you, von F.? Your sweater is soaked through and through, and the shirt underneath it is soaked as well, and you are now standing, rocking like an agrammatical question mark, as a poet said, in front of the main entrance to the “Children’s World,” in front of the gates of this somewhat silly giant, born at the peak of the empire’s golden days, and you are no longer quite sure why you are standing there, why it is raining—and what does this “Children’s World” want from you, why does it torment your overloaded consciousness with the very fact of its existence, its presence at the center of Moscow, not far from the dark monument to Dzerzhinsky, who looks very much like Don Quixote.

It is almost six o’clock, and you, von F., still don’t know why you came here, and if you are going to struggle with this problem for another hour, there will no longer be any need to go anywhere, because everything in this world will close, and this way your burning problems will be solved—at least one of them. You are standing like a monument to yourself, a monument to the drunken thinker with a bag in his hand, and around you is a sea of people who even in this rain go on selling something: chewing gum, perfume, raincoats, shoes, porn, guns, drugs—right under the nose of Dzerzhinsky, who is going nuts and looks very much like Don Quixote; they walk around you and pull at your sleeves, these sincere simple people with mysterious and enlightened Russian souls.

Meanwhile you are performing a mental vertical dissection of your own self. This way, apparently, it is easier to concentrate and grasp the essence. So, at the very bottom you have beer. Some three to four liters of a cloudy yellow drink brewed specially for the proletariat. Above it a warm red layer of wine. There the mountain-forming processes begin, these are the depths of a volcano. Then comes the relatively narrow layer of vodka that stops somewhere in the middle of your esophagus. This is a very active stratum in the biological sense. At a certain moment it can become a catalyst for great tendencies for renewal. In fact, it is nothing else but explosives. Above the vodka, closer to your throat, lies the FGD, “fortified grape drink.” In the case of an eruption this is what your fountain will spew out first. It is smelly and dirty brown in color, like oil.

Such is, in its general features, the plan of your inner cavity. We’ll keep mum for the time about blood and the rest.

Now comes the turn for another pleasant discovery. It turns out that at the “Snack Bar” with the change you acquired a two-kopeck coin.

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