Sergey
Kuznetsov
A Tin Can
No
one really remembers where my brother got hold of the tin can. At one point
there were some cookies in it--god knows what they were called--the paint on
the can was chipping, so all that could be seen was a bird's taloned foot and
the word “America”.
All
his life my brother put different kinds of knick-knacks in it. Picture cards from chewing gum packages that
looked like comics, a ticket for "Bambi" in some movie club, a hat
made of chicken feathers--a New-Year gift, a ticket for a film starring Dean
Reed, a thin volume of the Golden Bug
(a book published before he was born), another two-volume set by the same
author with gold on black binding, a Levi’s label, a button from a Lee jacket,
the song, "On the rivers of Babylon", an article from Literaturnaia Gazeta about the film Warriors, the noise of jammers on Voice of
America, a Sears catalog brought by someone's parents, the booklet Part of Speech[1]
bought by our parents, a '73 Playboy
taken from a female classmate (to whom he never did make love), a videocassette of the movie Terminator, a poster of Sylvester Stallone
from an underground crossing in the subway, Love
Machine by Jacqueline Susan, the essay, "Shtatniki"[2]
by Vassily Aksyonov from the magazine of humor and satire Krokodil, a Russian-American flag in honor
of Perestroika
and a top-level summit, The Maltese Falcon
in the series "The Detective Novel and Politics", drunken tears at
the first farewell party for a would-be emigre, the taste of a hamburger from
the McDonald's on Pushkin street, V
by Thomas Pynchon, the first email address with the dot-edu ending, Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag, a piece of
paper with the address on Morton Street[3],
the word "hyper-reality", Pulp
Fiction, Netscape, Pegasus, Outlook Express, a visitor's visa in a
passport, a Greyhound ticket from Washington to New York, the scurrying of
squirrels among fall leaves, a receipt for custom duties (honestly paid at
Sheremetevo-2), application for a grant, a J-1 visa, a house with a fireplace
and a back porch, the quick shimmering of squirrels in the green grass, CNN on
all channels two days in a row, the television shut off for the next nine
months, car insurance, insurance for the whole family, the stubs from a first
checkbook, the cry of a newborn daughter, a blue passport, the Grand Canyon,
the desert of Nevada, Death Valley, Florida beaches, hurried sex on a hotel bed
with an English-speaking girl, several business cards, tears of parting, a
return ticket.
After
his return to Moscow, my brother re-evaluated his treasures. At the very
bottom, beneath the Disney cartoons and the serial Lassie, he found things that did not belong to him: canned
meat from the "land-lease project", the film George from Dinky-Jazz, pipe-trousers,
jazz recorded on X-ray film. Then he understood that if he dug deeper, he could
find Michael Douglas' visit to Moscow, pre-revolution books of Main Reid,
Russian books about Nat Pinkerton--completely foreign things, having landed
there as a result of some inattentiveness. Then he gave me the can, having said
something unclear about how it was time to part with childish toys, and now
that he had a multiple-entry visa, and friends in every big city, he did not
need it anymore.
Now
it stands on my cupboard. I look at it sometimes and think that I have my own,
inherited America.
Only
one thing bothers me at such times--I never had an elder brother.