190
PARTISAN REVIEW
lightbulbs. The number of them kept increasing. For the finale ,
Tarasyuk tossed them all up in the air at once, then stretched out his
elastic waistband, and all the lightbulbs fell into his loose satin
pants .
Then Lieutenant Rodichev read a poem by Mayakovsky. He
stood with his feet wide apart and tried to speak in a bass voice.
He was succeeded by the recidivist Shumanya, who performed
without accompaniment a tap dance called "The Little Gypsy Girl."
As he was being applauded, he exclaimed, "Too bad - without pa–
tent leather boots you don't get the full effect."
Then they announced a camp
kapo,
Loginov, "accompanied by
a guitar." Loginov walked out, bowed, touched the strings and sang:
A gypsy reads my cards, her eyes cast down,
An ancient necklace and a string of beads.
I wanted to try Fate for a queen of diamonds
But once again it was the ace of spades.
Why is it, my unhappy fate ,
Again you lead me on a road of tears?
The barbed wire's rusty , the iron bars close ,
A railway prison car, the noise of wheels .. .
They applauded Loginov for a long time and called for him to
sing an encore. However, Khuriev was against it. He walked out
and said, "As they say, the good in little doses."
Then he adjusted his chest strap, waited for silence and
shouted out, "The revolutionary play, 'Kremlin Stars.' The roles will
be played by inmates of the Ust-Vym Camp complex. Vladimir
Ilych Lenin - prisoner Gurin. Felix Edmundovich Dzer–
zhinsky - prisoner Tsurikov. Red Army soldier Timofey - prisoner
Chmykhalov. The merchant's daughter Polina - Administration
Management worker Lebedyeva Tamara Evgenievna.... And so,
Moscow, 1918."
Khuriev backed off the stage. A chair and a blue plywood stool
were carried onto the proscenium. Then Tsurikov climbed up on–
stage wearing the khaki tunic. He scratched his leg, sat down, and
fell into deep thought. Then he remembered that he was sick, and
began to force a cough . He coughed so hard that the tunic came up
out of his belt.
Meanwhile, there was still no sign of Lenin. From the wings , a
stagehand belatedly brought out a telephone without a cord. Tsuri-
