52
PARTISAN REVIEW
There's nothing that can be done about that. This is the
drunken rubbish you have to live with: a community of people stut–
tering and slurring words and poisoned by cheap disgusting port
wines, that one-rouble swill with a slimy chemical sediment, the so–
called "Mumbo Jumbo." With rubbish like us, not only Pompeii
but, in a year or two, even Rome will topple. But we somehow have
to live together with them, that is, with ourselves, and to face
destruction with them. Emigration? No, that's just smoldering
embers, both inside and out.
The line rocked back and forth, drunken and pot bellied, with
mindlessly smiling eyes and faces smeared with volcanic soot. No
one in the present company suspected that a short distance away, on
the far shore of the dark, oil-slicked sea in the "lands of Capital,"
hundreds of hairdressers spend their time in charitable quietude,
with the reserved assurance that they can expect only upstanding
customers. On the other hand, I said to myself as I joined my com–
rades on line, in a certain sense there is the same-if not worse–
rotten smell everywhere.
"The same-if not worse-rotten smell is everywhere," I said
out loud to boost the courage of my comrades.
"It's worse in our metallurgical district," said one smiling
fellow.
"Why are you looking?" a second smiling fellow asked.
"'Cause. I'm just looking," said a third smiling
fellow.
"He waunts to look," uttered a fourth smiling fellow.
"Lat'm look," the fifth smiling fellow said.
"Look, if you waunt," the sixth smiling fellow said.
"Look, does no difference to me," said the seventh smiling
fellow.
The redheaded giant looked at the group of port winos, not
without a certain sense of horror. One of the smiling degenerates
stood out from the others and made a definite impression on him:
the powerful mold of a foolish old face-a retired colonel of the
legion of honor. At least all these heirs of Caesarism have preserved
something in their features, I thought, it may be the stability of an
ungifted but majestic epoch. Should I stick with them, the last piers
of society?
A peal of thunder slowly rolled over Pompeii. For a second the
stormy sea was lit up. The floor of the hairdressing salon heaved vio-
