Gvardi Tsytyla
trans. Mariya Gusev
Don’t
You Even Look West--Nothing Good There, For Sure!
Of course, you’ve had the virus since your tender years, methinks: between the jean pantaloons, dancing like a robot[1], and shouting about the advantages of the Western lifestyle. You, the roly-poly dimwit, even in your small room--do you recall?--had managed to erect an altar: a picture of Jimmy Carter all done up in flowers, aromatic candles, and you, crouching in front of it all, bleating “Stairway to Heaven” with great enthusiasm. Of course, you have now changed the prism of your views--age wise, you’re pushing what you’re supposed to, and Jimmy Carter is like a small pawn already, everything looking different on the hilarious chessboard of history. But still, every once in a while, your old-type thinking suffers an abscess, I mean the die-hard habits of your younger stupidity, and here you stick your patented leather shoe in my face, and go: “A hundred dollars one thing costs shoes!” You could have gone to play the balalaika--but no, you managed to find some sort of guitaring negroids, to whom you listen, happy, ears flapping in the wind--it’s like I’m in Woodoo-Stock, you say, and I would dig some Mary-huana and a cow in ripped-up jeans, and then I will be a Sexual Revolutionary! Or when you listen into the telly, and the Amerikani had thrown a bomb elsewhere, there you stand in a salute, applaud and whisper unto yourself: “Amerikani are making democracy, soon they’ll throw us something, watch--we too will have whisky selling in bulk!”
Just you wait, I am not joking a joke, all the same--barking up this tree will get you hoisted by your own petard! After you break your back for five years or so at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt gravel factory-plant, after you sing along in chorus with udarniki’s[2] gutteral song: “Hey, frost, do not freeze me, do not freeze me and my horse[3]”, after you get naturalized by mistake as some nigra or a chikanose--you will bewail like a crazed fish, and the Amerikani will say: “Wasn’t it you, a two-faced soul, that had met us as liberators with a stuffed bald-headed eaglet, wasn’t it you, mister, that had opened our eyes about Elvis, who is alive and well in the town of Myski, of Kuzbass[4] state, making a buck with markscheider[5] duty? And wasn’t it you, compadre, por favor, proclaiming that Russia has long been in need of a hairy hand to instill some lawful decency?”
Right there and then you will experience nostalgia
about the stewed turnip, about the kick-in-the-pants kvas[6],
and the itinerary paupers. Here, right away, you’ll be wanting some dirty foot
wrap to press your nose against, to work up the mother-field with your plow, to
ask the cuckoo what time it is, to get lost in a three pine forest with a young
maiden…[7]
Raise your teary eyes up into Nature--what pines?--only palm trees with a tribe
of monkeys taunting you--what black-eyed Susans?--everywhere there is
Cock-and-Hens pushing through the ground--what pickles?--cactus growing
everywhere wanting to prick you--what young maidens?--only models on pussywalks
walking and talking foreign, those models that have legs growing from their
necks, and who hold up their panties with their chins, and what is in those
panties I don’t want to know--I am not feeling well, somehow.
And you want all of this?… Well then go right ahead
over there, up into the West, bang on the tam tam, go sniff a cigar, dance the
twist on your haunches, shoot drugs, listen to crapomercials, and cry from awe.
For us, leave the shit-soaked felt boot, our crooked log house, babushka
squatting by a stoop, our partisan back roads, leading to the waterhole, our
grand achievements, and our unsteady gait. And you can go to Boney M., the late
Ella Fitzgerald, and to your Cocksucker Clinton, he’ll find a way to amuse you
in the Offal office. Us you can spare, we will make do somehow, by hodge-podge, onion and garlic we will
weather out, we will make a doghouse for Sharik or Bobik, and dance with a bear
at the market, i.e. what’s ours is dearest to us.
Ten years since the cow had licked[8], and here you are in Sheremetyevo[9] wearing bermudas, in that hat of theirs, with briefcases, a golden tooth, just climbed off the airplunk, still vomiting, all green-like, you will befall the home soil, howling like a horned cat, mahzer, mahzer, kantri, Rasha, I mean, keep this in mind, because you had missed it so, heaved toward it, the Motherland that is, so you better hold on to your roots, better here than there, to this I attest.
[1] In Russia, slang for Break dancing.
[2] Literally, “hitters”--highly motivated skilled workers, winners of productivity awards--a term coined during the Soviet regime, during the period of early economic growth.
[3] A line from a popular Russian folk song--written in English in the original essay.
[4] Southern region around Kuznetsk, a rich source of coal.
[5] A term for a type of coalmine worker, originally from German.
[6] A traditional Russian drink, mildly alcoholic, made from blackbread.
[7] Themes from Russian folklore, mixed with modern innuendo.
[8] A common form of transition, used in Russian fairy tales, to mark the passage of time: “the fish has flipped its tail”; “the bird had flapped its wing”, etc. Here, also a reference to an odd story that had made the headlines sometime in the eighties, and is now an urban myth--a “magic” cow had appeared in the Russian countryside, whose saliva had unusual properties--it could make men re-grow lost hair. Great numbers of balding men had then made the trek to the “magic” cow’s home village, and waited in line for hours to have their heads licked.
[9] Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow.