Aleph

“Have you read Mayakovsky?” I ask.

“No. His work is no longer compulsory reading in schools. He was a kind of state poet.”

He’s right, but I loved Mayakovsky’s work when I was his age and know a little about his life.

My publishers approach, fearful that I might be instigating a jealous brawl, but as so often in life, things are not what they seem.

“He fell in love with the wife of his publisher, a dancer,” I say teasingly. “They had a passionate love affair that was instrumental in making his poetry less political and more humane. Even though he always changed the names in his poems, the publisher knew perfectly well that Mayakovsky was writing about his wife but continued publishing his books anyway. She loved her husband and Mayakovsky. The solution they found was for the three of them to live together, and very happily, too.”

“Well, I love my husband and I love you!” jokes my publisher’s wife. “Why don’t you move to Russia?”

The young man gets the message.

“Is she your girlfriend?” he asks.

“I’ve been in love with her for at least five hundred years, but the answer is no, she’s as free as a bird. She’s a young woman with a brilliant career ahead of her, but she hasn’t yet met anyone who will treat her with the love and respect she deserves.”

“What rubbish. Do you really think I need someone to find me a husband?” says Hilal.

The young man explains again that he’s expected at home for supper, then thanks us and leaves. The other invited readers join us, and we set off to walk to the restaurant.

“Forgive me for saying this,” says Yao, as we cross the road, “but you acted quite wrongly just now toward Hilal, the young man, and yourself. With Hilal, because you failed to show due respect for the love she feels for you. With him, because he is one of your readers and felt he was being used. And with yourself, because you were motivated by pride and wanted to show him you were more important. It might have been forgivable if you had been acting out of jealousy, but you weren’t. You were simply showing your friends and me that you didn’t care, which isn’t true.”

I nod in agreement. Spiritual growth doesn’t always arrive hand in hand with wisdom.

“And another thing,” Yao goes on. “Mayakovsky was compulsory reading when I was at school, and everyone knows that his menage a trois didn’t end happily at all. Mayakovsky shot himself in the head when he was only thirty-six.”

WE ARE FIVE HOURS AHEAD of Moscow time now. People there are just finishing lunch as we are starting our supper in Irkutsk. The city has its charm, but the atmosphere among us is tenser than it is on the train. Perhaps we’ve become used to our little world around the table, traveling toward a definite goal; each stop means a diversion from our chosen path.

Hilal is in a particularly foul mood after what happened at the party. My publisher is arguing furiously with someone on his cell phone, although Yao assures me that it’s simply a discussion about distribution problems. The three invited readers seem even shyer than usual.

We order some drinks. One of the readers warns us to be careful because we’re being served a mixture of Mongolian and Siberian vodka and will pay the price the next day if we overindulge. However, we all need a drink in order to relieve the tension. We have one glass, then another, and before the food has even arrived, we’ve already ordered a second bottle. In the end, the reader who warned us about the vodka decides that he doesn’t want to be the only sober person at the table and downs three glasses one after the other while we applaud. Everyone cheers up, apart from Hilal, who remains resolutely glum, despite drinking as much as the rest of us.

“This city’s a dreadful place,” says the reader who had abstained from the vodka until two minutes ago and whose eyes are already bloodshot. “You saw the street outside the restaurant.”

I had noticed a row of exquisite wood-built houses, a rarity these days. It had struck me as being rather like an open-air architectural museum.

“I’m not talking about the houses but about the street.”

True, the pavement wasn’t the best I’d ever seen and here and there you did catch a whiff of the sewers.

“You see, the mafia control this part of the city,” he goes on. “They want to buy up the whole area and build another of their hideous housing developments. The residents have so far refused to sell their land and their houses, and so the mafia won’t allow any improvements in the area. This city has been in existence for four hundred years; it received traders from China with open arms and was respected by dealers in diamonds, gold, and skins, but now the mafia is trying to move in and put a stop to all that, even though the government is fighting them.”

“Mafia” is a universal word. My publisher is still busy with his interminable phone call, my editor is complaining about the menu, and Hilal is pretending she’s on another planet, while Yao and I have suddenly noticed that a group of men at the next table have begun to take a close interest in our conversation.

Pure paranoia.

The reader continues to drink and complain. His two friends agree with everything he says. They moan about the government, about the condition of the roads, the state of the airport. These are all things we would say about our own cities, except that here, every complaint includes the word “mafia.” I try to change the subject and ask about the local shamans, which pleases Yao, who can see that even though I haven’t yet said yes or no, his request has not been forgotten. But the young men start talking about the “shaman mafia” and the “tourist guide mafia.” A third bottle of Mongolian-Siberian vodka has arrived, and everyone is now excitedly discussing politics—in English, so that I can understand, or so that the people at the other tables can’t. My publisher finally finishes his phone call and joins in the discussion, as does my editor, with equal gusto, while Hilal downs one glass of vodka after another. Only Yao remains completely sober, gazing off into the distance and trying to disguise his unease. I stopped after my third glass and have no intention of drinking more.

And what seemed like paranoia becomes a reality. One of the men at the other table gets up and comes over to us.

He doesn’t say a word. He merely looks at the young men we invited to supper, and the conversation stops. Everyone seems surprised to see him there. My publisher, slightly befuddled by the vodka and by the distribution problem in Moscow, asks something in Russian.

“No, I’m not his father,” answers the stranger, “but I don’t know if he’s old enough to drink like that and to say things that are completely untrue.”

His English is perfect, and he speaks with the rather affected accent of someone who has studied at one of the most expensive schools in England. His voice is cold and neutral, without a hint of emotion or aggression.

Only a fool makes threats, and only another fool feels threatened. When someone uses that tone, though, it spells danger, because subjects, verbs, and predicates will, if necessary, be transformed into actions.

“You chose the wrong restaurant,” he says. “The food here is terrible, and the service even worse. Perhaps you’d better find somewhere else to eat. I’ll pay the bill.”

The food really isn’t very good, the drinks are clearly as bad as we were warned they were, and the service is appalling. However, the man isn’t concerned about our health and well-being: we are being thrown out.

“Let’s go,” says the young reader.

Before we can do anything, he and his friends have vanished. The man seems pleased and turns to go back to his own table. For a fraction of a second, the tension dissolves.

“Well, I’m really enjoying the food and have no intention of going to another restaurant.”

Yao spoke in a voice equally devoid of emotion or menace. There was no need for him to say anything; the conflict was over. My readers had been the only ones causing the problem. We could simply have finished our meal in peace. The man turns to face him. One of his colleagues picks up his cell phone and goes outside. The restaurant falls silent.

Yao and the stranger stare at each other.

“The food here can give you food poisoning and kill you almost instantly,” the stranger says.

Yao remains seated. “According to statistics, in the three minutes that we’ve been talking, three hundred and twenty people in the world have died and another six hundred and fifty have been born. That’s life. I don’t know how many died of food poisoning, but some must have. Others died after a long illness, some suffered an accident,