Europe Central by William Vollmann Page B

women are susceptible to me. My duties are as tedious as Leningrad’s dogs, snow, horses. I wander amidst the booksellers on Nevsky Prospect, making sure that all’s well with our Danube’s gates. Yezhov rings me up on the big black telephone: Send me more little ballerinas! That’s not my job, but I’ll do it. My job’s everything long and low.
    Have you been to the neutral countries? Not I. To me there are no neutral countries. That’s why listening to foreign broadcasts in Leningrad will soon be a capital offense.
    I turned in my report on Operation Magic Fire and went home. Yezhov’s ballerinas were already whispering to me about Operation Barbarossa, but Case White hadn’t even been opened yet; we still had infinite time. The future doesn’t exist until it happens.
    I live alone, and that’s by choice. My one desire is to aggravate the contradictions of capitalist culture.—Are you stupid enough to believe that?—What I really like to do is listen to the Red Orchestra. And whenever they tell me to, I’ll drive over to listen in at Akhmatova’s. I’ll bet that Lidiya Chukovskaya’s over there again tonight. No one’s ever caught them doing it, but I know they’re both lesbians. If it were up to me, they’d both be shot.
    The humble secretary on his throne of gold had shut the Danube’s gates. I know what I know, so I didn’t argue. The Red Orchestra said that the King would sign a treaty with us first, so he didn’t have to fight a two-front war. Well, that would be logical.
    The King could never get through. We were safe. You-know-who would reign forever on his throne of gold.
    3
    Pyotr Alexeev, with whom I sometimes do wet work, told me a funny one yesterday. It seems that a herd of kolkhozniks with fresh manure on their shoes get to Moscow; you know; they’re shock workers; they’ve won the prize! Think of them as Rodchenko’s robotlike abstract paper cutouts painted with dark oil and mounted on circular wooden bases. The guide explains that they are now in the world capital of progress, abundance, freedom, you name it. Eventually one of the farmers comes up timidly and says: Comrade Leader, yesterday I walked all over the city and didn’t see any of those things! The guide has just the right answer. He replies: You should spend less time walking around and more time reading newspapers!
    That’s what I tell myself. He’s shut the Danube’s gates, so all’s well. It doesn’t feel that way to me, but I should spend less time walking around and more time reading newspapers. Unfortunately, my job is to walk around.
    Tukhachevsky informs Comrade Stalin that the next war will be fought with tanks. Very good—let’s experiment with tanks in Spain. Straightaway sixty of our tanks get captured by the Condor Legion, mostly with the assistance of Moors to whom the Fascists paid five hundred pesetas each. To this provocation, Comrade Stalin has an answer: Shoot Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky should have spent more time reading the newspapers. Then he would have known that tanks will never be any threat. And the Condor Legion goosesteps forward.
    I lift the big black telephone. All the better to listen in, my dears! Chukovskaya is saying, in that peculiarly arch tone she adopts whenever she’s trying to impress Akhmatova: The streets are so wet and gloomy now . . .
    I’m thinking: Lidiya Korneeva, you don’t know the half of it!
    Akhmatova says: One might say that Leningrad is particularly suited to catastrophes . . .
    I’m thinking to myself: What horseshit! It offends me that such a person ever got published.
    Akhmatova’s running on: That cold river, those menacing sunsets, that operatic, terrifying moon . . .
    Chukovskaya whispers: The black water with yellow flecks of light . . .
    Under the black water’s where you deserve to be. That’s what I thought. Of course, nobody gives a shit about my opinions.
    4
    The Danube’s gates are safely frozen, just as the sleepwalker’s frozen with his