Mother Russia Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t you, that way. Robespierre. Well, God grant you don’t end up the way he did.” She releases his hand, sniffs the air. “You don’t I hope to God have any communicable diseases, do you?”
    “He looks as white as a sheet,” Ophelia comments.
    “No, no, perfectly healthy is what I am,” Pravdin protests. “Pale is how I always look. Hustlers, like Hasidim, avoid the sun. Take my word for it, little mother, from me there’s nothing you can catch.”
    “Tant mieux,” she tosses over her shoulder, heading forthe kitchen and indicating with a flick of her fly swatter that he is to follow.
    “You’re in the attic, up those stairs. The toilet’s here. Each of us expected to buy paper whenever we find it, Scandinavian brands preferred. They’re more, excuse the expression, absorbent. As for the kitchen, I suppose Ophelia told you about no meat. No meat includes no chicken. No meat. No chicken. Fish, eggs, grains, herb teas of all sorts. Here”—Mother Russia thrusts into Pravdin’s hands a eucalyptus branch—“put this on your windowsill, it will discourage the mosquitoes. When you’re unpacked call me; whatever you do, don’t knock at my door; never knock at my door. I invite you for an infusion. We will have a conversation, you and I; perhaps we will the both of us together figure out why you have come to us.”
    “I have come to you only to live, little mother,” Pravdin says, puzzled.
    But Mother Russia only smiles as if she knows better.
    Pravdin unpacks his belongings, folds away his khaki shirts on the top shelf of the closet, lays out his toilet articles on the shelf over the small washbasin in his room, disinfects the basin with alcohol that he pours on and ignites. He finds a broom in a kitchen closet and sweeps the attic. From under a dresser he collects a pile of sawdust. Termites! he thinks, horrified. He pulls out the drawers one by one and examines the interior. Nothing. He gets down on his knees and examines the under side. On the inside of one of the legs he finds a layer of wood plaster. He tests it with his fingertip. The plaster is dry, but behind it there is a small hollow. Pravdin leans back on his haunches, wipes away with his sleeve the sweat that has accumulated on his forehead. Suddenly he shudders. Why, he asks himself, struggling for calm, for logic, for perspective, why would they put a microphone in my room? What is it they expect to hear? He is tempted totalk into it, to tell them he knows it’s there, to take a knife and pry it out and fling it from the window (open, with the eucalyptus branch on the sill). But an old camp instinct tells him:
    A microphone you are aware of is something you can fill with silence.
    Pravdin, his pinky angled off into space, sniffs at the infusion, which has been sweetened with small chunks of green apple, as if it is medicinal
    “Drink up,” Mother Russia orders. She hovers over him, tapping her leg impatiently with the fly swatter. “Water lily roots are excellent for the circulation. Judging from the paleness of your skin you could use with a little circulation. Exhale first so you won’t smell it. That’s the way. Now drink. And be careful how you handle my china. Let me see, where was I before I interrupted myself?”
    She inserts a cigarette in a long ivory holder, lights up. The holder bobs as she speaks. “Ah, I was in Lvov. I saw only five cats during the five years I lived in Lvov—all at the same time! They were all, God bless them, black. It was just before they came for my husband. I took it as an omen: five black cats crossing your path at once! They belonged if I remember correctly to a fat Germanic housewife; she was plodding toward her back door with an armload of kindling, surrounded by an honor guard of five equally fat cats, tails en chandelle (you do speak French, don’t you?), weaving gracefully about her. I dropped what I was doing and hurried home to warn him—too late, too late.” Mother Russia sighs;