You and I (part 3)

The third and final part of Sinyavsky's story. You can read the original here.

"All I wanted, my friend, was a word alone.  You're a joker, that's for sure!  My wife loves to remind me about that evening.  We certainly a lot of fun!  How we laughed, how we laughed!  Now, be honest, did you really believe that old fool?  All she was supposed to do was roast the duck and see to the guests ... that's all.  Then you made that joke and I got it immediately.  "Right through you," he says, "I can see right through you!"  Ha ha ha!  Ah, yes!  Oh, you joker, you!  D'you want me to get down on my knees and beg?  I'm just joking, joking, don't get mad.  I'm just saying all this out of respect.  Maybe you're still offended by what I said, old boy?  Is it because of Lida?  Forgive an old, foolish lecher.  You have nothing to be sorry about, we'll be completely fine in the end.  Eat to your heart's content!  A simple affair, and who remembers this stuff, anyway?  You understand, I'm old enough to be the father of either one of you.  I'm just like Christopher Columbus, the first one there, that's all.  I beat Lobzikov and Polyansky to it.  But I'm sorry all the same.  An lascivious itch, nothing more.  We too had our hour of glory.  But I see that you're different, you have your principles.  "I can see right through you!"  What was all that about?  Let's be calm and understanding.  Now, do you want me to get down on my knees and beg for your forgiveness?  I'd only do it for you because I respect you so much.  Want me to?"

But you didn't manage to figure out what all of this meant.  Looking around hastily, you didn't see how Heinrich Ivanovich Graube, in his hat and with his briefcase in hand, fell to his knees on the ground.  His massive physiognomy, yellowing under the ambient light, was full of the sadness of a noble plea.

For a second you entertained the wild notion that Heinrich Ivanovich was actually afraid of you.  

Then you chased away your illusions.  You realized just in time what sublime strategy was contained in such a lowly pose.  From below, rising from the dirt, it was easier to take hold of a human soul.  From below you could be easily assaulted.  Falling on his knees before you gives him the advantage of being able at any time to grab you from behind your legs and topple you onto your back.

Therefore, not waiting any longer, you recoiled to the side and seeing Graube's brows arch in surprise, you smacked him in the face, but not in his brows, in his eyes.  You turned around in the street.  Heinrich Ivanovich was sitting on the snow, his thick briefcase lying flat in front of him.  Graube was covering half of his face with one hand, but the healthy half continued looking at you.

"Wait!  Don't go!  You're wrong, I assure you!" he said, sniffing and howling lightly.  "How could I be your rival?  You're worried for nothing.  You're younger than I am, make sure that you look after your health.  Lida's going to show up right now, just whistle and she'll come.  D'you want me to tell her that you haven't left for Yalta?  She'll come running.  Want me to?"

But you didn't take the bait.  You forgot about the sausage you wanted to buy, ran home at full speed, and locked the door. 

5

And that same evening Lida came to visit him.  She rang twice, but no one answered.  Through the mail slot a sliver of the foyer was visible, dim and littered with the dregs of second-rate housecleaning.  Two legs stood there at an angle; Lida recognized them by their boots and pants.  Everything else was beyond her ken.   

"It's me, Lida!  Open up, Nikolai Vasileevich!" Lida screamed happily through the mail slot.

To her surprise the legs she recognized did not budge.  They twitched almost unnoticeably but did not approach her.  Propriety dictated  that she ring again, which she did.

The heat rumbled and began circulating.  Downstairs on the first floor, a radio was playing.

"Nikolai Vasileevich, it's me, just me, Lida.  Why are you so silent?  Think I can't see you?  You're standing all the way over there in the corner, and you're still wearing those same wool-blend Czechoslovakian pants.  Come on, let me in for a minute."

The light went off the foyer, the thin strip of radiance extinguished.  Rattled and indecisive, Lida began pacing in a circle in front of the door.

"Are you embarrassed because you promised to marry me?  Please don't think that, that's not why I'm here.  I don't need to get married officially, I swear to you.  Why'd you turn off the light?  Nikolai Vasileevich!  In any case, I can still hear everything.  You're standing there and breathing out.  Aren't you ashamed of yourself!  Maybe you heard some things about me ... well, don't listen to anyone.  I haven't had anything with Lobzikov for four months now, nor with Polyansky.  When you took leave I ... I couldn't stop thinking about you.  I didn't even kiss anyone while you were gone, honest.  Nikolai Vasileevich, if you so choose, I will be yours and yours alone for the rest of our lives.  I will love you forever, just like a husband.  I'll even cook dinner for you if you'd like."

She pressed her eyes then her lips against the door.  Silence reigned in the apartment of Nikolai Vasileevich.  But from there – through the narrow crack in the door – came a warm somewhat rotting smell.

"Oh, sweetie pie, so you didn't want to pluck the rose?"  she whispered, blushing.  Then she caught one last whiff of the dark crack and went back home.

You only dared to stir once she had left, stretching your tense limbs.  You were hot and sweaty.  What childish behavior, jumping at the sound of the bell under the hot and oppressive light!  This negligence almost cost you your neck.  It was good at least that you remembered just in time and froze in place as if dead, as if you weren't there at all.

And what were you supposed to have done?  Let her in?  Showcase to everyone the very details of your personal life?  And with whom, precisely?  With that same woman – and now you knew the story in full – who was assigned to you by Graube?  Back then, in front of all the guests, when she evoked sweet love within you, and you were about to ... Run!  Run before it's too late!  Before she comes back, before she draws you to her under the guise of being your bride, obliged by her love to follow you everywhere you go.  And all because you had the misfortune of groping her a mere three centimeters above the usually accepted level.

You looked out the window, disappearing behind the door jamb and not turning on the light.  The path was cut off: Lida was keeping guard below.  She was not about to abandon you.  She paced in front of the house like a sentry.

Your feet in their overheated boots were now swollen in pain.  Your hand ached, your pinky having been injured by Graube's arched brows.  Worst of all was the unshakeable feeling, the repulsive, prickly feeling of your own skin.  You kept wincing and shaking your head, then ferociously wiped your cheeks and forehead with the palms of your hands.

... This wretched sight hurt my eyes – they were already extremely sore.  Matches seemed to have been placed between my eyelids like crosspieces, and both of my eyeballs were scratched and bloody.

To give myself a breather and to lessen as much as possible the suffering caused by my vigilance, I tried to look the other way and chose the farthest alleys and side streets for my walk – Marina Roshcha, Bolshaya Olenya near Sokolniki – but none of this helped.  Wherever I went, on foot or by tram, the same angry eyes appeared before me, the same freckled fingers covered in red hair.

I knew that all of this could end rather badly.  When I couldn't take it any more, I hailed a taxi and drove to the scene of the events.

My plan was to lure Lida away from her post and in so doing, right the situation.  I was hoping to reduce the number of eyes which he had directed towards himself by force of imagination.  But there was another impetus: I wanted to get my mind off things.  I needed a third person to distract and protect me from my pursuer.

Lida was freezing in her selfless vigil under his dark windows.  Although we only knew one another, so to speak, by sight, her soft spots were no secret to me.  Striking up a conversation and inviting her out of the cold and into a nearby café would only take five minutes.  I called myself the first name that came to mind – Hippolytus, I believe – and she agreed.  Anyway, she had no other place to go.

While we were waiting for satsivi and shashliks, I paid her a few compliments to make her feel better.

"Why do you have a beard?" she asked flirtatiously.  "To look tougher?  It makes you look older.  And anyway, beards don't suit redheads."

"What are you talking about?!  A redhead, me?!" I shot back, horrified at her ability to inflict her taste on what she saw.

"Now wait a minute, you do have red hair!" said Lida, stubbornly.  "With a reddish tint.  You look a bit like a friend of mine..."

I saw no need to push the matter any further since it was dangerous for us all.  Yet I made no effort to hide my dislike of redheads.  Redheads always think that everyone's looking at them, and for that reason they're terribly high on themselves and trust no one.  But in fact no one pays redheads any attention, nor do they want to have anything to do with them.  

"On the other hand," Lida boasted, "they're the jealous type.  And sensitive.  And they understand the finer points of things."

Oh, I knew precisely where her thoughts were heading.  But it was all in vain.  At the same time as our lunch was being brought out, her red-haired hunk had progressed further in his destructive ingenuity.  Lying in the darkness with his face pressed in his pillow, he was trying with all his might to think about nothing.

"Di di di, la la la.  Di di di, la la la," he mumbled, concentrating.

Now he thought that by dumbing down his brain with obvious nonsense, he could save himself from his observers spying on him from within.  Apparently it wasn't enough to get the whole world up in arms against him; no, now he had taken note of my secret investigation and elected to battle me on the crossroads of his consciousness.  "Di di di, la la la," just try to break through this wall – it's a hopeless scenario.  What was the meaning of this dim-witted, talentless di-di-di-la-la-la-ing?

So, spilling the cognac, I said to Lida:

"Sing, Lidochka.  Sing, Lididiliya.  We won't think about any redheads, no redheads.  Don't pay any attention to redheads.  You'll feel better right away.  Eat the satsivi and shashlik.  Shashlik!  Shashlik! Satsivi!"

"Di di di, la la la!  Uncle!  Uncle!  Uncle!  Di di di, li di di!"

"Satsivi! Satsivi!  Eat, Lidochka, some shashlik.  Fatty, fatty, redheaded shashlik!  Shash or shish?  Lik?  Lik! Lik!  Satsivi!"

Yet however hard we tried, we couldn't distract each other nor fight off the tension drawing us closer to catastrophe.  For that same reason Lida was bothering both him and me.  Having warmed up after her third drink, she then said:

"I like you, Hippolytus.  You really do look like a friend of mine.  He also fed me when we were over at some friends' apartment.  The only thing I ask of you is please shave the beard.  I beg you, just do it for me.  Get your razor and shave it off!"

Upon hearing her proposal, I could hardly breathe.

"Shut up!" I screamed at her.  "Not a word more!  Not a word more about such sensitive subjects!  Do you hear me?!"

And at the same moment, I saw that he was raising his head.

You raised your head as if listening to our conversation, and you smiled.  You said to yourself: "Need to shave!"  And then you repeated aloud: "Need to shave! La la la!  Need to shave!"

And again you smiled, the second smile during all this time.

I was trembling.  I grabbed Lida by the hand and we ran out onto the street without finishing our cognac.  There, without  further ado, I professed my love to Lida.  I told her I was mad about her, passionately in love, and didn't even want to look at anyone else.  There was no one else I wanted to think about.  And for that reason today she was bound to belong to me – right now, here and now!

You got up and turned on the lights.  Your eyes squinted.

Lida said:

"But it's so cold here and there are so many people bustling about!  If you really want to, let's just go back to your place.  As long as you're not married, that is."

I dragged her through the streets while you were heating up water and looking for your razor and shaving brush.  I only had a few minutes left.  Our only recourse was to head into someone's entry stairwell.  At the top landing it wasn't quite as cold, and very unlikely that we'd be seen.

And what if we were seen?  What did I care?  I was preoccupied with my own problems.  It was I, I who shouldn't notice anyone!  Before it was too late I wanted to get out of this game – this game which could only end badly – but I had no other means of salvation on hand except Lida.

I kneeled before her.  One rule suddenly came to mind: "From below you could be easily assaulted.  Falling on his knees before you gives him the advantage of being able at any time to grab you from behind your legs and topple you onto your back."

And that's what happened.  Lida lovingly patted my bent head, and I seized her skinny legs with my arms and pinned her to the wall.  I didn't want to lay her down on the tiles because then she'd catch cold.

I was not shy about my intentions – I was sufficiently forthcoming, in fact.  At the end of it all, it wasn't for my benefit that I tried all this; it was because I had no alternative.

Of course it would have been better had you been here in my place.  But if there was something you lacked in life it would be openness.  Nevertheless, every man – even the most arrogant and secretive – is required willy-nilly to be relaxed in the embrace of a woman.  Perhaps even you would not push Lida away.  This might be useful and, who knows, maybe you'd even become a bit more trusting and be able to understand me better. 

But you preferred another path and now, having seized your razor in your prehensile, freckled paws, you led it across your cheeks, as if you were about to bring everything into order.  Knowing your pretenses, I made haste.  Better, much better to leave now, to plunge into my activities, so that you too, at last, could stop paying attention to me, stop being afraid, stop disappearing and harboring vengeful plans in the depths of your soul.

Lida exhaled loudly and, closing her eyes, stroked my hair:

"Kolya, Kolenka, Nikolai Vasileevich!  My redhead, o my beloved redhead!"  she sang out in every note.

No jealousy overcame me.  But I was still plagued by endless memories, that awkward proximity to you at that very moment when I had hoped to hide far, far away from you.  I approached you at breakneck speed and there I saw your eyes, widened in rage.  Back! Back!  Too late.  I entered your brain, your inflamed consciousness, and all your secrets which I had no desire to know now lay before me like an open book.

You jumped out of the chair.  All the witnesses to your evil deed were gathered around.  Aha!  Caught!  You waved to me, to Lida, to the whole world, with your ready blade.

"Stop!  Don't you dare!  What are you doing?!" 

I squinted.  And instantaneously, my long-lost feeling of calm returned to me.  It was dark and quiet.  I couldn't see you anymore.  You were no longer there. 

6

When I opened my eyes once more, Lida was putting on lipstick.  She was wiggling, shaking, straightening out her dress and fur coat.  A button jumped from her and fell down, step after step, down the stairs.  Lida went down after it and scooped it up.  Then she went down one more floor.

"Where are you off to, Lida?"  I asked, more out of politeness than genuine interest.  There was no reply:  Lida hurried off to her post which she had abandoned a hour before.  Looking out in that direction, I became convinced that she was running off in vain.  There was no one for her to guard.  Our mutual friend had collapsed under the table with his lathered cheeks and slit throat.  As he fell, he was somehow clever enough to smash the table lamp.  No light shone from his room.

I sat down on the step and waited for Lida to disappear.  But in the end she did not manage to hide from my eyes.  So I got up and, forsaking the rather hospitable entry stairwell, went through the city on my habitual rounds.

Everything was like it was before.  The snow was falling and it was the same in-between time of the day.  Two engineers – his former coworkers Lobzikov and Polyansky – were playing Chopin on the piano.  Four hundred women were giving birth, just like before, to four hundred children at the same time.  Vera Ivanovna was putting a eyebath on the blackened eye of Heinrich Ivanovich.  An auburn-haired girl was putting on pants.  A brunette was leaning over a sink, getting ready for a date with Nikolai Vasileevich, who, as usual, was running in a drunken stupor through the icy weather.  Nikolai Vasileevich's body lay in a locked room.  Lida, like a sentry, was walking back and forth underneath his windows.

I saw all this and couldn't but think of him.  I was a bit sad.

You left and I remained.  I'm not sorry about your death.  I'm only sorry I can't forget you.

You and I (part 2)

The second part of Sinyavsky's story. You can read the original here.

3

You never led a dissolute life.  In love you preferred listening to your conscience, not making empty promises and unsubstantiated vows; instead, you humbly paid your taxi fare, be it 25, or 30, or even 50 rubles in cash and harmlessly received in return your due compensation.  On the other hand, neither scandal nor court fees hounded you, and, although Polyansky kept saying that his wife cost him less than a prostitute, around 15 rubles a session, you concluded that, in such matters, it was better to overpay than wallow in regret for the rest of your life.

When monetary issues did arise, you were always able to survive easily for a month, even perhaps a year, without those sketching assistants and Ministry typists.  Were you to invite one of them to the movies, you wouldn't even bother to score a single grope above the knee.  With an honest women one never knows beforehand whether she will give in or not – and this insecurity always alarmed and weakened your spirit.  It was better just to say "No!" right off the bat and let both of you go your own way.

So when you leaned over towards Lida and immediately began wooing her, it was provoked by extreme necessity.  You parried Graube's first attack with dignity; nevertheless, you still felt the odds were in his favor.  For the attack would start again at a moment's notice and you had to forestall it no matter what happened.

This is how things were: an elderly man would come to visit, a serious man, even perhaps an academic. He would drain a few glasses, and, wouldn't you know it, he was already pocketing his host's good silver or reciting verse of rather lewd content, and sitting under the table with no desire of ever resurfacing.  We usually look down upon actions of this nature.  Yes, they'd banter and laugh: "What's your problem, Vasya, you scumbag," they'd say.  "Dragging the honor of the academy in the mud and trying to overshadow its great accomplishments?"  And yet, as they said this, they were still slapping each other on the shoulder and being merry and supportive.  Because it was immediately obvious that this fellow was not educated in the proper schools, and was, in the moral sense, as pure as Jesus Christ.  This was not the type of guy who would give away military secrets nor betray the homeland at a critical moment.  No, this fellow was above all suspicion and content with such status.

A similar lot provoked your envy.  You wooed her with the help of Lida the librarian, the only woman capable of salvaging your reputation.  Having discovered Lida next to you, only a meter away, you were inspired to scream:

"Lida, I love you!"

The private eyes looked at one another somewhat lost; but Lida, not believing her own ears, sat there motionless.  Her clavicle was twisted on her décolleté and sunken chest.  A sharply raised elbow now resembled a duck wing gnawed down to the bone.

"Lida, I love you!" you repeated more loudly, and grabbed her with your withered fingers above the knee.

"Not in front of everyone!"  Lida whispered and appreciatively stroked your hand, which was fondling her leg.  This was how your love began – in a game with death, in the eyes of your pursuers all knocked senseless by your unexpected temperament.  

You didn't hesitate to organize a riot.  You grabbed the best pieces of food from under the guests' noses, announcing "This is for you!" and demonstratively treating Lida to what you had snatched.  Then you piled up a food barricade around her and cycled through a gamut of tender diminutives:

"Lidochka!  Lidunchik!  Ledenchik!  Lidiastaya Lididil'ka-limousine!"

Screwing your eyes tight you saw that all this had made an impression.

"And we didn't know that you were such a rake," said the detective with the boxer-like appearance who had been transformed into Vera Ivanovna, forcing a laugh.  "We always thought you were more of the quiet type, modest, keeping your thoughts to yourself."

He was very embarrassed about his calculations and suspicions, but still maintained the outward appearance of the mistress of the house, the wife of Heinrich Ivanovich Graube at their anniversary.

"Now, now, Vera Ivanovna, you must be joking!" you then said to him with a bit of gusto.  "What do I have to hide?  And from whom?  No, I have nothing to hide and readily admit to you that I am a true Lothario, especially when I load up on drink."

In attestation of these words, you, wobbling like a wino, came right up to him and, fighting off your natural timidity, ever so carefully touched one brown- and orange-spotted hand that was pressed against his chest in bulging camouflage.  And so you knew: it was nothing more than a resin pillow, inflated with empty breath.  

"Now you are a joker!" the detective cheeped in fear, jumping back in his seat – most likely because he didn't want to reveal every last lever of his costume's mechanism.  And you, teetering, made your way back to Lida and bit her lightly on the elbow just so she wouldn't be jealous.

"Not in front of everyone," she whispered in shame.  "We'd better step out for a minute if you keep insisting."

Heinrich Ivanovich turned green with longing from this interrupted provocation.  Now he would definitely pay his wedding party expenses himself.

"Oh, I am a wounded man!"  he exclaimed, turning to Lobzikov and Polyansky with hypocritical indignation in his voice.

They laughed soundlessly, rocking back and forth like metronomes.

"What an impassioned lad!  No, think about it now: what an impassioned lad!" the liberated boxer by the name of Vera Ivanovna prattled on.

And here another brilliant idea occurred to you: instigate a scandal and flee from everyone with Lida in the guise of unbridled emotion.  That's how it was.  Passion raged, the howls of ancestors were heard, and women were fought over along with some German fraud and Stefan Zweig.

This is the modus operandi of drunk people who seek ambition, you said waving your hands all over the room.

"Lidia, I am abducting you.  Let's get the hell out of here.  These people can carry on their conversations without me.  It'll be much easier for them to find fault with these governmental ducks when I'm not around.  What am I?  I am nothing, just completely loyal.  And you, Heinrich Ivanovich, I see right through you."

And you looked him directly in the eye with your own penetrating gaze as if it were he who was visiting you.

"Yes, yes, yes!  I see right through you!"

Lida obediently gathered her belongings, bag, and lipstick.  You helped her on with her coat made of goat hair, two thirds of it mangy.  You both left, slamming the door before Graube's empty-eyed physiognomy.  Graube, who was standing with his mouth agape, apparently lacking the authority to have you detained by force.

Thick snow was falling now.  It swallowed you and Lida in its noiseless crowds.  It seemed like there were thousands if not millions of paratroopers in snow-white parachutes flying down from the sky, invading the silent city in a full-out air raid.  Before they landed, some spun around nearby, choosing a softer spot to plop down.

The snowfall prevented you from discerning the enemy's manoeuvres.  The enemy who was so cunning as to follow you masked in that curtain of snow.  And you, in a black coat, were a good guide.  You only had one cover, and that was Lida.

Heinrich Ivanovich had undoubtedly set some grizzled experts on your tail so as to check on what you and she would do once you were by yourselves.  Heinrich Ivanovich's hunches were accurate enough so that he didn't take your shotgun romance for a given.  For that reason, as you walked on the streets with Lida, you continued to be repulsed by yourself and kept tripping like a drunkard, and even uttered assorted sentences and proposals, including a proposal for marriage, to Lida and anyone else who would listen.       

Lida clung trustingly to your side and talked to herself, looking at her feet and chirping in delight.

"Why couldn't I have met you a long time ago?  When I was seventeen, for example.  When I was just a girl but completely mature?"

But the two of you had neither a past nor a future together.  You took her the way she was, intoxicated and in love, with her ragged fur over her chest, which served nevertheless as rather comfortable protection for your face grown so thin from all your worries.  And as you spoke to her about love, you thought lustfully about that sweet moment when you would walk Lida home and then go back to your place, to your isolated apartment, and lie down with a light heart in your clean and unoccupied bed.

From time to time you would stop and spin Lida around in a sharp axis, a rapid movement, kissing her on the mouth and her blissfully covered cheeks.  And kissing her you would keep peering above her head, which was thrown back in attentiveness, at the murky distance behind you, where darkness and snow, snow and darkness melted in turn.

And they were watching you.  And although you couldn't quite make out the look in these eyes fixed on you from every corner, you wanted to proclaim proudly to the whole world:

"Go ahead and look, I'm not afraid!  You'll see that I have a lot to do; I love Lida and I'm not to blame for any of this." 

4

Four days he spent in my field of vision.  To him I must have seemed like a python whose cold-blooded stare deprived the rabbit of all sensation.  His notions of me were pure rubbish.  And even if he had taken these silly fantasies as the basis of fact, I didn't know which of us was holding the other by the leash: was I holding him or was he yanking on me?  We had both fallen captive, and the glazed looks that we exchanged couldn't be ripped asunder.  And although he didn't see me, beneath those whitish lashes throbbed such a nexus of fear and hatred towards me that I wanted to scream: "Stop or I'll swallow you!  All I need to do is slam my eyelids and you would tumble like a fly!"  This torture was really starting to wear me out.

"Fool!  Understand one thing: you live and breathe as long as I look at you.  After all, you are only you because I address you.  Only once you'd seen God did you become a human being.  Oh, you!"

He did not want to listen to my friendly attempts at persuasion.  And he had his reasons for everything.  For four straight days he got no sleep so as not to let himself be taken by surprise.  But at night he would lie on the couch in a state of military preparedness, with his jacket and pants on, now already quite creased, with his boots tightly laced up, and stare into the darkness.

And before his tense gaze there arose circles and spots of various colors.  To him they seemed to be eyes, without a nose or ears, just eyes.  They growled, stared, and prattled on, these brown, gray, light blue eyes; they flew around the room, batted their eyelids and settled on his chest when they got tired.  When he got up they would fly off above his head, occasionally blinking their spread wings.

He felt particular discomfort in the bathroom.  Compelled by his privates which he disliked and was embarrassed to display in public, he would hide behind a newspaper, grimace, whistle arias or, wanting to provoke me even more, fall into deep meditation, and all of this just had one goal: to draw my attention to his face and keep me there for a while.  As if all these stupidities interested me!

Owing to his nervous thoughts, all of which I see, his urine did not flow nor did the muscles of his rectum contract.  I felt bad for him as I saw the tortures he endured and tortured myself along with him out of indiscretion.

Ah, if only those blessed with a higher level of awareness of their guilt and obvious insignificance were to suffer on occasion from persecution mania!  No, it was more like he was being stopped by another ailment, what medicine terms mania grandiosa.  The universe had only one concern: to vex him.  And scampering out to the city in the early morning for bread and sausage, he unabashedly assumed everything he happened to see had something to do with him.

Moscow was teeming with impostors.  They pretended that they weren't looking his way (and, as it were, they were looking at him askance).  They convened in random meetings and lollygagged around the streets with absent expressions on their faces, but were somehow all dressed the same, both in shape and sporting dark cloth boots.  Others, in white mask-robes, had frozen expressions.  Not a single one of them bought anything.

But most repellant of all were the houses, those eye-like creatures with their innumerable windows...

"What a lovely coincidence!  Hello, hello!  You're here in Moscow?  You still haven't left?  And how's the ulcer?"

You turned around.  It was, of course, Heinrich Ivanovich who had touched you on the shoulder next to the gourmet store.  On the second day following the so-called "wedding anniversary," you had taken leave at the Ministry under the guise of having something wrong with your stomach.  Your colleagues were told that you had been sent to Yalta on a cure, but of course you spent your leave locked up in your apartment.  What joy then must this omnipresent Graube have experienced when he caught you red-handed somewhere between an ulcer and Yalta, just when you were popping out for some provisions!

While you searched for reasons for having delayed your departure, Heinrich Ivanovich unceremoniously seized you around the waist and dragged you off the sidewalk.  Five steps later and you were outside, and all signs pointed to a trap, falling somehow in balls of yellowed snow.  These had to have been approved by Graube.

"I get it!  I get it!  Cherchez la femme.  No questions there.  We've all had our share of adventure."

He was bouncing on every side of you, as if sniffing you before biting, and threatening you with his index finger.  All the while his round palm never relinquished his thick ministerial briefcase.     

You and I (part 1)

The first part of one of the most original Russian short stories of the twentieth century, the work of this writer.  You can read the original here.

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

                                                                                                                       Genesis 32:24

From the very beginning this story had a strange shade.  Under the pretext of celebrating his silver anniversary, Heinrich Ivanovich Graube invited four coworkers, including you, to his apartment, whereby he insisted so vehemently that you attend that your presence almost seemed to be the focal point of the gathering.

"I will be mortally offended if you don't come," he said with emphasis.  And then his eyes fell upon you, eyes like convex lenses.  In them lurked an icy, hypnotic glint.

Understanding that you shouldn't reveal your suspicions beforehand as he would guess them and take measures against you that you couldn't have imagined – wily, cunning measures – you politely agreed.  You even congratulated Graube on his fictitious anniversary.  Why he summoned you at all was still unclear, but your heart was seized by dark premonition.   

And, indeed, hardly had you entered his apartment when all the guests sprang out of their chairs – chairs they had almost melted into waiting for your appearance.  Two of your coworkers, Lobzikov and Polyansky, winked at each other gleefully.

"Here he is!"

"Time to get started!"

These words alone betrayed treacherous designs whose traces the host, Heinrich Ivanovich, had to cover up by motioning everyone to the dinner table.  But you made no indication that you knew the meaning of the menacing phrase, "time to get started!"  It was as if this phrase, blurted out by Graube's underlings, contained nothing suspicious, nothing more than an innocent anniversary plan to eat and drink for hours.

"Let us raise our glasses!" you exclaimed loudly and with all possible mirth.  "May this celebration be just the precursor to your golden anniversary!  Hurrah!"

All glasses were raised and clinked and you, taking stock of your surroundings, dashed your vodka under the table at that propitious moment when all eyes were closed and all throats were chugging away in honor of Heinrich Ivanovich Graube and his imaginary spouse.

Yes, the wife and hostess in this group was none other than an impostor; in fact, it was probably a man in drag.  He was painstakingly scrubbed, powdered, and made up to look like a lady who had been married for twenty-five years.  And this was precisely what explained the squeamish face made by Heinrich Ivanovich when, in a public display of familial affection, he kissed her – that is to say, him – on his protruding, muscular lips.  Oh, these people would take no prisoners to entangle you in their web and do you in!  

The bottles alone must have run about 280 rubles, not to mention the roasted duck, mushrooms, and sturgeon.  They probably also purchased a nut cake for dessert, various types of cookies, fruit candy – all for an evil end – for no less than twenty-two roubles.  And what about the butter, sugar, and bread?

In total they paid no less than eight hundred for everything.  Or ten thousand, if one includes the men in women's roles (Lobzikov and Polyansky's wives were probably also impostors), the toiletries needed, as well as the perfume – although they likely had their own underwear on – and perhaps even their colored, store-rack lace purchased for full semblance just in case they had to flirt.

And bank accounts were drained of the entire massive sum of almost fifteen thousand rubles only because of you.   Counting up these expenses in your head made you somewhat proud, but at the same time you remembered that if this was indeed the estimate and such finances were being exhausted, your situation was truly dire.

The guests were eating with great ambition, clanking their knives and forks together in some cryptic code akin to Morse's alphabet.  "Time to get started!  Time to get started!"  tapped out Polyansky impatiently – Polyansky who had not been fond of you for some time now because management, acting on higher orders, had given you a raise and not him, which was, as it were, perfectly justified.  

But Lobzikov, whose friendship with Polyansky was summed up by the aphorism, "two shoes make a pair and one hand washes the other," seized a huge piece of duck with both hands and bit into the side, hinting that this display of ferocity was analogous to what would happen to you.  Learning this bit of intelligence, the guests smacked their salty lips and cheerfully knocked their knives onto their plates, chanting: "It'll happen to you!  It'll happen to you!"  Yet Heinrich Ivanovich Graube, seated at the head of the conspirators, shook his head lightly and pensively put his shot glass – in which gleamed some untouched liquid – to his mouth.  Now you knew that it was supposed to take you another half-hour before you were drunk and unable to notice anything more.

Then Vera Ivanovna Graube – or I should say, a man dressed up as Vera Ivanovna – turned to you and very distinctly uttered the following words:

"Why is our humble friend not eating or drinking anything?"

This sentence was pronounced with the softest of girlish voices, as if he were in fact some kind of woman.  His virtuoso squeakiness must have cost him a lot of work and contradicted his makeup as a heavyweight boxer. 

"Ah!"  he said with feeling, almost ripping his vocal cords.  "You know, I got this duck at the Vagansky market.   Think you'll find decent food in a store nowadays?"

Upon hearing this rather provocative question, the guests stopped chewing and stared at you in eager anticipation of your response.  One word of sympathy and it would all be over.  Graube's ears – the technical term is helices – were hanging over the table, jutting out like headphones on both sides of his head, and his look was sniper-like and microscopic as he went over the features of your face.  Over and above all that, you suddenly had the feeling that someone invisible and omniscient was looking on at this moment (through the window, perhaps, or from the wall, or maybe even through the wall).  This someone was looking at you and everyone else sitting upright in front of their plates, just as if they had all gathered for a group picture.

Realizing that you had to say something or have your silence be interpreted as consent, as unlawful cooperation with the fun on hand, you looked, unblinking, at Graube's sculptured profile and screamed as clearly and distinctly as you could:

"No!" you said.  "Useless, it's all useless!  It is in vain that Vera Ivanovna undervalues the products of our urban and rural trade.  Duck, chicken and even goose – and even the most exotic and rarest of fowl, turkey – all is sold in appropriate quantity in all of our shops, where you can find as much as you want!"

A sigh of disappointment and somehow, at the same time, of relief spread through the room.  Graube blushed and said in full exertion of his neural apparatus:

"Fate – is a turkey; life – is a kopeck."

He was about to add something, something certainly just as nonsensical and ambiguous when Lobzikov began hissing through his chipped tooth.  This was their sign of retreat.  The guests averted their eyes – some towards their plates, others at the tablecloth – but that all-seeing and all-knowing eye which had been watching them ironically squinted at its ill-starred agents and, as if it weren't there at all, dissolved into a yellow spot the color of the yellow wallpaper.

2 

The snow fell; it fell on my eyelashes, on my hat, making it even fluffier, and on the roofs.  One was obliged to squint one's lids, and between them appeared toy-like snow houses.  Through them the street lamps were radiant, creating the pleasant effect so incident to the northern lights.  The light sated the sky then tumbled down and melted ever so slightly.  Suddenly my field of vision gave way to blind slush, and yellow tears mixed with genuine snow flowed from my eyes – on my nose, on the lights, on the roofs covered by that same snow and so akin to thatched huts.

Every time I suddenly remembered and wiped away the next tear with a mitten, nature assured me again that more snow would fall and would fall for much longer, perhaps for all of eternity.  It was that blessed hour of the day when no one quite knew what time it was because the sky, falling in bits of snow onto the ground, might very well pass for day due to its brightness and for night for the opposite reason.  Most likely it was an early winter morning stretching into evening.   I wanted to lie down, burrow my head in the snowdrift and fall asleep.  And I wanted the snow to keep falling to block the flow of time.    

I was enraptured by the weather.  If I had been a twelve-year-old boy like Zhenya rushing down Kirov street with Gagi skates under my arm, at home I would have expected a Christmas tree swathed in golden thread and a picture book version of  Verne's In Search of the Castaways.  A certain brunette provoked a foretaste of this secret in Nikolai Vasileevich, running in a drunken stupor through the frost, fully convinced that she would welcome him with open arms in a warm and cozy room.  She would take him in as she had twice before to their mutual satisfaction, and why would – he now thought – why would he slip up the third time around?  Now the cognac was already working its magic, and the brunette had much of this same mysteriousness.

So gradually, through the snowdrifts and the walls, including the spine of Nikolai Vasileevich made translucent by a flash of electric light and bent in incline towards the brunette, a panorama unfolded before me.

It was snowing.  A fat woman was brushing her teeth.  Another fat woman was cleaning a fish.  A third was cooking some meat.  Two engineers seated together at a piano were playing Chopin with all four hands.  In maternity wards, four hundred women were simultaneously giving birth. 

An old woman was dying.

A ten-kopeck coin fell under the bed.  Father, laughing, said: "Oh, Kolya, Kolya."  Nikolai Vasileevich raced through the freezing weather.  A brunette was rinsing herself off in a bathtub before a date.  An auburn-haired woman was putting on pants.  Three miles away her lover, also somehow Nikolai Vasileevich, crawled with his suitcase in his hand through an apartment spattered in blood.  

An old woman was dying – but not that one, another.

Oh my heavens, what were they doing, what were they up to!  Cooking oatmeal.  Firing a rifle, but missing.  Unscrewing a nut and crying.  Zhenya warmed his cheeks with his Gagi skates under his arm.  Windows were smashed to smithereens.  An auburn-haired woman was putting on pants.  A porter spat with loathing and said: "Here they are!  They've arrived!"

In a bathtub, prior to a date, he raced with his suitcase.  He unscrewed his cheeks from the rifle, and gave birth to the old woman, laughing:  "Here they are!  They've arrived!"  The brunette was dying.  Nikolai Vasileevich was dying.  Zhenya was dying and was born.  The auburn-haired woman was playing Chopin.  But another auburn-haired woman – about seventeen or so – was nevertheless putting on pants.

Sense and logic were embedded in the synchronicity of all these actions, each of which made no sense on its own.  They did not know who else was participating.  What is more, they didn't know what purpose the details in the picture could possibly have, the picture I created while looking at them.  They had no idea that every step they took was fixed and subject, at any given moment, to meticulous examination.

Admittedly, someone experienced a gnaw of conscience.  But sensing continually that I was watching them, staring at them, not averting my piercing and vigilant gaze for a second – this they could not imagine.  Perhaps they acted rather naturally in their mistaken ways, but they were myopic to a substantial degree.

Suddenly my eye slammed against an obstacle and stumbled backwards as if pushed.  It was a person whom one couldn't help but notice.  On the empty, snow-covered street he was drawing attention to himself by constantly looking every which way.  Even entering the apartment, surrounded by wine and hors-d'oeuvres, showing his gratitude to his hospitable host, he was still behaving like a criminal about to be caught and convicted.

No one threatened him, and I deemed it sound and sensible that he began to feel a premonition of my presence.  He probably caught sight of my piercing gaze and writhed beneath it, unaware that it contained a snag.  Yes, there was a snag to allotting power to people to whom that power did not belong.  He must have thought that someone was following him for personal reasons, and this person was I, while he must have thought it was they, and all of this amused me to no end.  I concentrated on him; I captured his brilliant plan in the colored blur of my pupil.  He was like a bacillum beneath a microscope, and I was examining him in every last cruel detail.  

He had red hair; his face was very white, gentle, impenetrable by the sun's rays; its only features were faded freckles which, however, also covered his hands, merging into phalanges and a dark thick rash.  He was dressed rather fashionably, in a freshly pressed suit, in a new necktie and clean socks, which given his age and bachelorhood indicated a certain hidden pride if not a fondness for women.

This last supposition, however, soon ceased to be of any import.  He did not react to any of the women sitting around the table, taking them to be men.  The exception was the librarian Lida, who was sitting on his right.  He knew her from the Ministry, where he would often sit in the library reading the journal Kunststoffe as well as detective novels in translation, and might have hoped that she was in fact none other than the librarian Lida and not an imaginary agent.

Lida was also a girl prone to daydreams, and couldn't resist anyone's advances due to her youth and kindness.  Two years ago she and Heinrich Ivanovich had had a brief affair and now, out of compassion, he had invited her to this family celebration.  She drank a lot in silence and with no interest in what was going on.

This did not escape the attention of my ward.  Having poured out a second glass of wine under the table, he turned to Lida and said for everyone to hear:

"Lida, I love you!"

The Talented Mr. Ripley (film)

Modern critics will be happy to tell you that the best works of literary (and, for that matter, cinematic) art are those which yield numerous interpretations.  For them, the wonderful thing about modernity's sad indecisiveness is that it parallels their own: nothing has any one meaning, thus stripping the critic of his responsibility to understand a work on its own terms.  You will find the most egregious offenders in this regard among those who read philosophy as if they were reading a novel, chopping and picking at whatever appeals to them to formulate their own theories that, upon closer inspection, turn out to distort and disrupt the original.  Does a poem by Cavafy have the same significance if read by a Greek or a Chinese speaker?  Certainly not; yet Cavafy possesses, as all good writers do, a certain frame of reference that might be simplified as his cultural context, but which in the final analysis is nothing more than his own moral structure.  Regardless of where his readers may hail from, Cavafy will ultimately be judged on his ability to delineate right from wrong and convince us that his particular delineation adds to our knowledge of this difference.  If nothing matters to him, it surely will not be worth a damn to us.  My mentioning Cavafy is not a coincidence, nor are any of the details pertinent to the plot of this film.

Our protagonist is a certain Thomas Ripley (Matt Damon), a moody, artistic youth who obviously has never had the opportunities of many other, far less talented coevals.  His surname might have something to do with this phenomenon whose founder died at the peak of his renown a few years before Highsmith's book was published; yet more important is his Christian name, which in Aramaic means "twin."  What we will witness, with the slow precision of a crime planned years in advance, is the twinning of paths, the old and familiar fable of the double: the first path will be the simple, straight road of guaranteed luxury; the second the sinuous struggle of a very intelligent but impoverished young man.  Ripley is playing the piano at a social function when he is approached by Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn),  a moneyed businessman who assumes quite logically that Ripley's Princeton jacket must mean he went to Princeton, and that if he went to Princeton, he must certainly know his famously wayward son, Dickie Greenleaf.  Ripley's response to Greenleaf's conversation sets the tone for the film: he lies, but doesn't simply agree to his mistake, he moves a step further and knowingly asks, "How is Dickie?"  Those three words grasp Greenleaf's weakness in its totality.  And the consummate businessman does what only very rich and arrogant people are accustomed to doing: he tries to purchase Ripley's services and dispatch him to bring his son back from Europe.  Most young men with an easy past and a bright future might find this assignment somewhat humbling; but most young men with an easy past and bright future also have the indelible tendency of never having enough money to satiate their whims.  This Ripley fellow, however, is different.  He is humbler, more sensitive and artistic, probably close to his money, a responsible youth who will go very far.  So when, from a distance, he sees Ripley embrace a girl outside the club and hand over his Princeton jacket, Greenleaf cannot imagine that the girl is not Ripley's significant other, or that the jacket and Princeton degree actually belong to her boyfriend.  Greenleaf sees only what he wants to see; we, the viewers, see the truth as well, as we will at every step of Ripley's journey.

It turns out that Dickie (Jude Law), being the smart boy he is, has made his way to Italy with a pretty young thing named Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow), and his plan is to have no plan at all.  Ripley tracks down the couple, ingratiates himself with the mistake provided by Dickie's father, and soon is sharing in the Byronic decadence that Dickie has so pathetically misidentified as the freedom of youth.  Yet it is on his way to Europe by ship that we first catch a glimpse of Ripley's real intentions.  Upon meeting a young woman named Meredith Logue (Cate Blanchett) – another bored rich person who doesn't quite feel guilty about her easy life as much as annoyed that she knows she should feel guilty – Ripley introduces himself as Dickie.  Should we nod our politically correct heads at his obvious envy of Dickie's privileges?  Should we snicker at the pun on "Tom and Dick," the original form of the catch-all expression, "Tom, Dick and Harry," which was incipiently a reference to two working-class youths from Bow and Whitechapel?  Should we understand Ripley's lie as an attempt to bed Meredith, who is rich and attractive and more than a little naïve?  Were this a more typical tale of the inequalities of postwar Europe and America exemplified by the ideological war of socialism and capitalism, the answers to these questions might all be yes.  But they are not yes.  We are not confronting rich and poor in an allegory of societal malfeasance and Tom Ripley couldn't care less about Meredith or any other woman.  The only person for Tom, you see, is Dickie Greenleaf.

For better or worse, the film runs through the permutations of understanding Ripley's motives with sufficient objectivity.  When Dickie asks what makes Ripley special ("everyone should have one talent") and Ripley replies that he is particularly skilled at "forging signatures, telling lies, and impersonating practically anyone," we are led to believe that Ripley is evil.  Until we realize, perhaps, that deception is a stereotypically feminine trait, and coyness and an unwillingness to give a straight answer the signs of the coquettish woman who will never directly express her desires.  When a loud, hedonistic boor by the name of Freddie Miles (Phillp Seymour Hoffman) comes racing into town, Ripley hasn't the slightest desire to join the jetset, make love to every woman he sees, or stumble about in the drunken bubble of irresponsibility that is the calling card of wealthy foreigners living the sweet life.  No, what he wants is for Freddie to get as far away as possible from Dickie.  Soon enough, Dickie's true character is revealed through not-so-clandestine arguments with the lovely daughter of a local shopowner, his utter lack of ability in anything useful, creative or smart, as well as Marge's running commentary:

The thing with Dickie is that ... when you've got his attention, you feel like you're the only person in the world... it's like the sun that shines on you and it's glorious.  And then he forgets you and it's very cold.

Ripley, of course, being the sedulous listener that he is (all good impersonators are very good listeners), knows all this, but continues to hope that he will prove to be the exception.  And so, the first and most damning crime takes place one beautiful fall day in Sicily (November 7, we learn later from the police report) and Tom finally gets to become Dickie to everyone who didn't know him, exactly, as it were, halfway through the film.  It has taken him that long to find, catch, and replace Dickie, who did not share his interests or affection; and it will take the film's remainder to make sure that no one learns of the switch, that Dickie's foul temper and general lack of culture will make him an easy frame for other misdemeanors, and that even those who knew him would bow their heads in sullen acceptance of his world gone wrong.  But we viewers see the duel, as Meredith and Ripley attend this legendary opera featuring another tragic duel between friends, and we know what Tom Ripley wants: "to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody."  If only Dickie Greenleaf were somebody worth being.

The Invitation

There is a style no longer in circulation among our literary works because we no longer wish to merge with eternity.  We have come to entertain notions of a beyond as an unknowable consequence of very knowable processes, and the inevitable outcome of billions of years of inevitable outcomes.  In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat verbum all sounds very nice, but now we have moved past God – and sometimes it seems like He has returned the favor – and into the much more tenable field of hard science.  Our verbs (or words, as verba means both) bestowed upon us by a benevolent Creator who willed the universe into shape have been evicted from their cozy domiciles and replaced with volatile and complicated droids owing their allegiance solely to the latest whims of the latest wizards.  These wizards would advise me – if I ever bothered listening to them instead of just humming a happy tune whose melody I cannot quite explain – that our life is simply a collection of detail and we are simply collectors.  The best observers are those who leave no stone unturned, no star unnamed, no fossil uncarbondated, and no deity unblasphemed.  Come now, ignoramus, who could be smarter than we are?  After all, we've almost got everything figured out except where we came from and where we go, if anywhere.  All the intermediary steps, however, are as crystal clear as the ice on the planet billions of miles away that we can make out at times but which has to exist because, unlike our eyes, our machines are manmade and can be trusted to the ultimate degree.  When has our reason ever failed us?  Only, I suppose, all those centuries as conspiring sacerdotal agents blinded us, piling up lie after lie so that we remain enslaved to their evil and all-encompassing plan.   Yet we have finally broken free.  Now when we gaze upon nature's contours, all we see is a composite of data, molecules, light particles, atoms, quarks, and the potpourri and whatever other blandishments time has coaxed out of that endless and unswerving metal rod, evolution.  With this fact now happily proven, let us rejoice and examine this superb novel.    

The site of our novel's events is a place near the border of two large, powerful and mysterious countries.  One of them has since crumbled beneath the falsehoods of its imposed doctrines; the other, once party to those same doctrines, has growled and beaten its chest and moved on to the much more justifiable plan of unbridled capitalism, albeit with a few political restrictions.  And as is appropriate given the host country's dimensions, the titular invitation involves fifteen dignitaries from around our lonely planet, a motley assortment of men of power:  two preachers from Harlem, one of whom turns out to be an actor; another American who scribbles indignant notes as the speakers hold forth; a priest from the local church who serves as a sort of co-host; military representatives from more than one country; a Russian, "the Nero of cinema," now a naturalized subject of the British queen; and the ostensible master of ceremonies, a man "with the massive head of a mountain dweller."  What they talk about is, apart from the occasional aside, never expressed directly; instead, they are described in detail which the average reader will find intolerable.  Take, for example, the approach to the invitation site:

Now the procession of heavy cars preceded by the police car crossed through the town (and the town rose from the steppe, whose language was once Chinese, then Chinese transcribed in Latin characters, then Chinese transcribed into Cyrillic characters; where without counting a good twenty languages – languages of the sons of camel drivers, of Mongol horsemen, of inhabitants descended from those monstrous mountains, of caravaning Tartars, Afghans, Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks, ancient slaves, newly arrived peoples ... there was even, the interpreter said, a German colony – two official languages were now spoken, both in Cyrillic characters) which sixty years ago had been nothing more than a simple village (or maybe not even that: a stopover, a point at the end of the endless steppes and before the passage to those terrifying mountains) and which now had a population of almost one million people of all races.

Those races are then qualified, and followed by other links in a chain of qualifications which extends through many pages and an incredible range of sensory perceptions.  We are dealing with the repetitions and surfaces of a very particular brand of writing, one that came about and shook its readers shortly after the Second World War and which has lost some of its reputation by virtue of our readily shrinking attention spans.  True enough, without a brilliant architect behind its towers the nouveau roman can become a dreary exercise in concatenation; at its best, however, it is as close as literature can get to painting its own picture.  No image exists without the wealth of otherness in its vicinity; and no person can be an island unto himself without the tidal wave of sensation from the millions of other living beings breathing his air and distracting him from the solipsistic extremes to which, we are told, he is naturally prone.

As opposed to other proponents within the movement (with the notable exception of this recently deceased French writer, its greatest representative), Simon is much more cohesive and allegorical than one would first imagine.  Yes, his world is fractured along the aleatory whims of association, proximity and pure chance.  But from among these pieces he fashions an alternative reality that is richer than that of his contemporaries or, for that matter, the silly ramblings of so many modern writers who eschew plot in favor of an old shoebox of scattered observations that are neither interesting nor artistic.  On every page Simon's artistry prevents him from slipping into such easy victories of style.  His parenthetical commentary (the second word of the novel is already trapped within its bubble) often supersedes the plain text before and after it, and we come to see that it is the circumjacent detail that outranks the prime focus.  Even a funeral can seem fragmented along the numerous storylines that it obliges to intersect:

(... the bust of the new General Secretary now cut off by the parapet at the top of the cube of red marble at that place where, before him, so many old men were kept, surrounded by the highest dignitaries with, to his immediate left, looking at him, a man with a fur hat atop a pensive face, devastated, akin perhaps to an old and tired wolf (maybe not old exactly, just devastated; maybe not interested, just pensive), whereas the new General Secretary had his head uncovered, with his baldness, his surprisingly young almost doll-like features, scrutinized and evaluated by millions of men, women, diplomats, journalists, and creators of theories) ... and now, seated at the end of that table which so resembled the table of some dull administrative board of some joint stock company or perhaps didn't, or that of an international bank or perhaps not that of an international bank, with its tray waxed like a mirror, its glasses and bottles of mineral water, in that room of bare walls without a single portrait, neither of his predecessors nor of him.

There is so much to admire about this passage and countless others, all perfectly waxed and reflecting each and every other page like a perverse hall of mirrors.  Simon is read less than he should be precisely because we have grown allergic to longer paragraphs (such as the book-long masterpieces of this Austrian writer) and prefer our literature like our scotch: neat and plain.  But then again, the truth is rarely as neat or plain as we might hope.