Red Squares (May 1, 1992)
I.
Fortress walls of the Kremlin thunder once again. Loudspeakers drone out the laughter of orphans dancing. Folk dancers, clowns posing for photos, bears dancing the Lambada, and Russian army jazz musicians: All fold up their tents.
Red flags wave beside the bus-barricaded Revolution Square. The thousands march, chanting “Down with Yeltsin!” Red banners embroidered in gold. Chests proudly port Five and Dime store medallions. Relics scrapped in the ash heap of Party annals.
Goo-goo eyed, sub-urban children now snap photos of St. Basil’s Cathedral, then coo at the high and long step rhythm of the changing of the guard, “Juri, where are you???” Searching for their guide, Innocents Abroad brush aside Old Believers.
“Lenin should be buried along with the rest of you,” Juri scowls. Looking for a fist fight, he regrets not being there the day the empire popped like a Zeppelin but somehow without dropping from the sky in flames.
His friends— defiant— stood up upon a tank, their photo immortalized. “You’re lucky to be on the winning side,” I tell him, “After Tiananmen, satellite images still tell a thousand words.”
A moment of silence. “Lenin! Lenin! Lenin!” the Old Believers shout.
But there is no transmigration of souls: The embalmed one declines the invitation of the Spanish tourist board to visit the Canary Islands.
His sarcophagus winces in grief: Upon the façade of the old Dumas he so detested, black letters in Russian and English blare in new Newspeak, “Freedom Works!”
The ceremony comes to a close. Old Believers file from the square, cursing Innocents Abroad. Knives darting from their eyeballs slash publicity desecrating such hallowed turf.
Before the former Karl Marx Metro stop, clarinets sway from out of the roaring twenties. Son of Fuehrer II clichés in stereophonic sound.
Autograph hunters supplicate before the gaze of a celluloid star. I buy his newspaper but foreswear his signature, my guilty fingertips now smudged with radioactive ink.
II.
I talk to the one man in the crowd who will respond in English.
Tall, aristocrat of the street, long white coat, a high school English teacher, he tells me in perfect English, “he just loves to talk to foreigners,” he says (for a few dollars, it is understood)— and has corresponded with a “delightful” lady in Holland for many years.
His eyes never look directly at me.
Speaking Jabberwocky, we discuss the global ramifications of Humpty Dumpty’s fall in front of the Bolshoi while sub-urban children collect Red Army souvenirs and haggle for scalped tickets (starting at twenty dollars, getting down to five, sometimes even less).
One young soldier is willing to sell his pants for a few greenbacks; my street guide tells me that, by the way, he also has caviar and army uniforms to sell…. As if on a fashion runway, sub-urban children then port their newfound khaki camouflage to Swan Lake— to the evident disdain of the audience.
Then, as he stares [ ] into the clouds, he tells me that his son just happens to be a fighter pilot in the Far East and has much to tell me— but he’s not permitted to speak to foreigners, he adds.
Needless to say, I decline the invitation.
—1992
The.American.Word. 