FICTION
Sergei Dovlatov
THE PERFORMANCE
There were three of us sitting in the Command Patrol
Station. Security Officer Bortashevich was shuffling creased, worn
cards. Gusev, on watch, was trying to get some sleep without taking
a lighted cigarette out of his mouth. I was waiting for the kettle to
boil and the dry bread propped against it to warm.
Bortashevich drawled limply, "Take broads, as an example.
Say you and her are getting on good: movies, sugar wafers, polite
conversations . . .. You quote her Gogol with Belinsky.... Go
hear some bloody opera . . .. Then, naturally, it's into the bunk.
But
madame
tells you: marry me, you bastard . First the register of–
fice, then the baser instincts. The instincts, you see, don't suit her.
But if they're holy to me, then what?"
"So again, it's those kikes," Gusev said.
"What do you mean, kikes?" Bortashevich said.
"They're everywhere," I said, "from Raikin to Karl Marx. Take
the venereal disease clinic at Chebyu. The doctors are Jewish, the
patients are Russian. Is that the Communist way?"
Just then the telephone from the main office rang. Bortashevich
put the receiver to his ear, then said to me, "For you."
I heard Captain Tokar's voice. "Come over and see me, and
right away."
"Comrade Captain," I said, "it's already nine o'clock, by the
way."
"Oh?" the captain said. "You only serve your country till six?"
"Then why bother posting work schedules? I'm supposed to
report out tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning you will be in Ropcha. There's an assign–
ment from Chief of Staff-to bring one prisoner from the Ropcha
Transit Camp. To make it short, I'm waiting."
"Where are you off to?" Bortashevich asked me.
Editor's Note: This story
will
appear in
The Zone
by Sergei Dovlatov, translated from
the Russian by Anne Frydman, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., this fall.
