Russian diva Eduard Topol
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Title: Russian diva
About the book “Russian Diva” Eduard Topol
Eduard Topol is a writer whose work one cannot remain indifferent to. True, it must be admitted that the range of assessment ranges from enthusiasm to categorical rejection.
He is known as a journalist, author of action and crime novels, film playwright and producer. His literary work began with newspaper articles and film scripts. Eduard Topol called this period of his life sub-Soviet. It ended in 1978, when the writer emigrated to the USA. He explained his departure for several reasons, including the ban on two of his films, the denial of the right to purchase in Moscow, and the subsequent registration of a cooperative apartment on the grounds that he was a Jew. But the main reason, according to Topol, was the desire to write a novel about the second wave of emigration, for which it was necessary to go along with everyone else.
It was in the West that the writer’s individual books began to be published. They were published in all European countries, America and Japan. In almost all the novels of the emigrant writer, the Jewish theme is acute. Eduard Topol reflects on the special role of the Jewish people in history, their long-suffering fate from ancient times to the present, and the attitude towards Jews in the USSR. You can read about an equally exciting aspect of it - Russian-Jewish love, hatred and sex - in his book “Russian Diva”.
As the author himself points out in the preface, the adventurous erotic novel “Russian Diva” came out of his previous story “Lubozhid”, dedicated to the topic of Jewish emigration of the 60-70s of the 20th century. Taking three heroes from among his characters, connecting them with an intimate secret, the writer released a separate novel into the world. And like Eve, created from Adam’s rib, the “Russian diva” acquired an independent life and fans.
This is a story about the romantic adventures of a Soviet journalist-playboy, tossing between the idea of creating a novel about Jewish emigration and his love for Russian women. This is a kind of hymn to the beauty and character of the Russian woman, thoughts about the mystical essence and historical real connection between Russians and Jews, about the “love triangle” provoked by the Soviet existence and the hero’s attempt to avoid the “charms” of the Soviet regime. It contains intrigue and murder, deep love and frank eroticism, present in many novels by Eduard Topol. Readers will also be surprised by the very ironic ending. So, the author tried to give his book a chance to become both a spectacular and scandalous international bestseller. It's your turn to appreciate the writer's efforts.
`"Russian Diva" is a novel that is desperately interesting to read. In some ways painful and sad, in some ways funny and amusing, full of irony and cynicism, but from the first to the last line - incredibly sincere.
Dedicated to Julia, my beloved wife
Sexual polarity is the basic law of life and, perhaps, the basis of the world. The ancients understood this better, but we are disgustingly powerless and degenerate more and more.
Nikolay Berdyaev. Metaphysics of Sex and Love, 1907
Please note that I do not mean to say that being a Jew is such luck. After all, Jews have problems too.
Roman Gary
From the author
This book came out of my novel “Lubozhid”, like Eve from Adam’s rib. But how does Eve have Adam’s flesh - kidneys, liver and some others? internal organs - does not prevent the Eves of the whole world from rightly considering themselves completely original creatures, so the “Russian Diva,” I dare to assure the reader, after the fifth or sixth chapter separated from the “Lubozhid” and galloped off into its own plot so quickly that in the end, in the finale, even I, the author, threw up my hands in amazement.
However, this preface is not written for advertising purposes, but simply to inform the reader: yes, out of the dozen characters inhabiting the essay novel “Lubozhid,” I took three, connected them with an intimate secret and released them into a separate novel. What came out of this is for the reader to judge. Moreover, for those who have not read “Lubozhid”, this preface is not needed at all, unless, having read “Diva”, someone wants to know where it came from. And for those who are familiar with “Lubozhid”, I hope it still makes sense to overcome several familiar pages in order to sail with familiar characters on an unfamiliar voyage.
With all my authorial modesty, I know one thing for sure: just as women are an incomparably better creation of God than men (it’s not for nothing that they were created after us!), so the “Russian Diva” is much better than the flesh from which she was born. Amen.
Prologue
Summer 1961, USSR
Pioneer camp "Sputnik"
– Do you know what it means to be a Russian woman? I mean – what is it to be a real Russian woman?
He looked around at the faces of the girls around him. Thirty young Komsomol girls - the entire sixth detachment of the Sputnik summer pioneer camp - fell silent and looked at him with expectant interest. The glare of the evening fire illuminated their scarlet pioneer ties, blue T-shirts, tight-fitting elastic breasts, and short shorts, specially washed white by them to set off the chocolate tan of their legs, strengthened over the summer from volleyball, swimming and hiking. Further, behind them, in the darkness of the night, more visible than visible, were a wide river, buoy beacons and timber rafts quietly floating along the river rapids.
– And who is she – a real Russian woman? – he asked without raising his voice. – Anna Karenina, who cheated on her husband? Or Natasha Rostova, who gives birth to a child every year? Or the courtesan Nastasya Filippovna from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”? Or the pathetic prostitute Sonechka Marmeladova from the novel “Crime and Punishment”? Don't laugh, this is an interesting question! Look: the French inspired the world that French women are the most sophisticated fashionistas. Right? Spaniards - that the Spanish woman is the most ardent and sensual, right? We know about English women that they are cold and prim. About Jewish and Japanese women - that they are the best mothers. What about the Russians? You are the future Russian women. Yes, yes, there is no need to giggle, you should be Russian women, and who else? But what do you know about yourself?
He broke a dry spruce branch with his knee and stirred the charred wood of the fire with it. The fire greedily flared up on the spruce needles, and he looked again at his listeners. He wasn't much older than them—six or seven years—and the daily battle for their attention had tired him out. Their thoughts are always wandering somewhere away from the conversation, there is always some kind of grin and challenge in their eyes, as if these piglets know a secret that is unknown to him, a twenty-year-old. But now it seems he has struck a chord with them. Still would! At this age, of course, they are interested in everything that is somehow connected with the word “woman.” But he will not rush...
“He will stop a galloping horse and enter a burning hut,” he quoted the Russian poet. – This is the definition given to a Russian woman in literature. Russian writers, even the greatest, even Tolstoy, have not added anything to these two lines. So is this really your main quality - to be a kind of Hercules in skirts? Or firefighters? A?
He waited for their laughter and continued:
– No, I think there must be something else, because of which the monarchs of Europe once fell in love with Russian women and, neglecting their princesses, erected Russians girls to the English, French, British and Norwegian thrones. But what? Beauty? Here I am looking at you. Of course, you are all beautiful and all beauties. Quiet, don't laugh. But are you much more beautiful than French women or, say, Italian women? Well, honestly - more beautiful? So I don’t know. And then I turn to history. I want to find the answer in ancient centuries: what distinguished Russian women from all others? And suddenly... suddenly I find out that no Russians have existed for a long time. There have been no Russians for almost a thousand years! Yes, yes, we live in Russia, and the whole world calls us Russian, but... facts are a stubborn thing - we only have a name from Russians. All historians - both Russian and Western - lost traces of the Rus back in the tenth century. The Rus, the real Rus - a huge tribe, an entire ethnic group that swept throughout Europe in the first millennium - have disappeared! They disappeared in the darkness of centuries, leaving behind the Scythian tribes only their name and later the dynasty of the Rurik kings. That's all. No language, no culture, no writing, no legends. Only names: Oleg, Olga, Igor. Yes, the names of the rivers: Dnieper, Dniester. However, these names also sound more German than Russian, right? But how can this be? How could an entire people disappear without a trace? And why? And disappeared?
He stood up impulsively. The flames of the fire cast a large, broken shadow from his thin figure onto the awnings of the tourist tents, whitening in the night. His face, narrow and illuminated from below by crimson highlights, suddenly acquired a kind of Mephistophelian and at the same time inspired expression, his dark eyes lit up with an inner light, and the wide wings of his large nose trembled predatorily at the unexpectedly close splash of a river fish, as if it had splashed in river water the very mystery for which he was looking for a solution.
- Look around! - he suddenly ordered, outlining a wide semicircle in the darkness with his charred spruce stick, and from this sharp gesture the coal-red end of the stick flared up like a fiery spear. “Twenty centuries ago there was the same darkness here, the same forests and the same mosquitoes. Along the banks of these rivers lived small tribes - some Ugrians, Burtases, Guzes. They fished, hunted and collected honey in the forests. But in the fifth - seventh centuries, God knows where - from the north, from the Baltic states - hordes of warlike warriors poured here. These were bandits, conquerors. They did not produce anything, but were only engaged in robbery and lived off looting. In the ninth century, they conquered the Slavic capital of Kyiv and from then on began to rule and push around everyone who was around - the Polyans, the Drevlyans, the Northerners. They robbed them, took heavy tributes from them and sold them into slavery in Byzantium, Greece, and Khazaria. They were rude, cruel, merciless in battles and treacherous in everyday life, and they left all their property, acquired by robbery, as an inheritance to their daughters. And they bequeathed only weapons to their sons, saying: “I got my fortune with this sword, take it and move on from me!” In other words, it was an ethnic group of bandits. But!..
He raised the burning spruce stick like a saber or like a staff. He had been walking along the dark shore for a long time, inspired by the attention of his listeners and those mirages of the past that he saw in the darkness of this summer night.
– But they were beautiful! - he announced. – This cannot be taken away - the rugs, which in these places began to be called “Russ”, were very beautiful. As the Iranian ambassador Ahmed ibn Fadlan wrote to his ruler in 922: “I saw the Rus. I saw the Russians when they arrived on their trading business and settled down near the Itil River. I haven't seen people with more perfect bodies than theirs. They are like palm trees, fair-haired, beautiful in face and white in body. They wear neither jackets nor caftans, but among them the man wears a pussy, with which he covers one side, and one of the hands comes out of it. And each of them has an axe, a sword and a knife, and he never parted with all this. And some have their whole body painted from their nails to their necks with images of trees, birds, gods and the like. And as for their women, they are all beautiful, their bodies are white as ivory, and on each of their breasts is attached a box in the form of a circle made of iron, or silver, or copper, or gold, or wood, according to the wealth of their husbands. They have been wearing these boxes since childhood to prevent their breasts from expanding excessively. On their necks they have a monista made of gold and silver, and a knife falling between their breasts, and green ceramic beads are considered the most magnificent decoration among the Rus. For each such bead they are ready to give a sable skin.
They come from their country and moor their ships on Itil - and this is a large river - and build large wooden houses on its banks. And ten or twenty of them gather in one such house, each has his own bench on which he sits, and beautiful girls for merchants sit with him... If the head of the family dies, then his relatives say to his girls: “Which of you will die with him? One of them, who loved him more than the others, says: “I.” Then they collect what he owned and divide it into three parts, one third for his family, the second for cutting clothes, and the third for preparing nabeez, which they all drink for ten days while they cut and sewing clothes for the deceased. For these ten days they put the deceased in the grave, and they themselves drink, marry women and play the saz. And the girl who burns herself with her master drinks and has fun during these ten days, decorates herself with various outfits and jewelry, and so, dressed up, gives herself to people.”
“I always wanted,” wrote Ibn Fadlan, “to get acquainted with this custom, until the news reached me about the death of one outstanding man from among them. When the day came on which he and the girl were to be burned, I arrived at the river on which his ship was located - and this ship was already pulled ashore, onto a wooden structure like large platforms. In the middle of this ship they placed a hut made of wood and covered this hut with various kinds of red tape. Then they brought a bench, covered it with quilted mattresses and Byzantine brocade, and the pillows were Byzantine brocade. And an old woman came, who is called the Angel of Death, she is the one who leads the dressing of the dead, and she kills the girls. And I saw that she was an old heroic woman, hefty, gloomy.
When they arrived at the grave, they removed the earth and brought out the deceased in the blanket in which he died. Even before that, they placed nabiz, some kind of fruit and a lute with him in the grave. Now they've taken it all out. And I saw that the deceased had turned black from the cold of this country, but nothing else had changed in him except his color. Then they put on him trousers, leggings, boots, a jacket, a brocade caftan with gold buttons, put a sable brocade cap on his head, and carried him to the ship, onto a quilted mattress, propped him up with pillows and brought nabiz, fruits, flowers and aromatic plants, and put it with him. And they brought bread, meat and onions, and left them next to him. Then they brought his weapon and placed it next to him. Then they took two horses, cut them with swords and threw their meat into the ship.
Many men and women have gathered, they play the saz, and each of the relatives of the deceased sets up a hut, and the girl who wanted to be burned with her master, having painted herself, goes to the huts of the relatives of the deceased, enters each of the huts, and the owner of the hut joins with her and says to her in a loud voice: “Tell your master: ‘Really, I did this out of love and friendship for you.’” And thus she goes through all the huts...
When the time came for the sun to descend, she placed her feet on the palms of her husbands, stood up and uttered some words in her own language, after which they lowered her. Then they raised her a second time and a third time, and I asked the interpreter about these actions, and he said: “She said the first time when she was raised: “Now I see my father and my mother,” and said the second once: “Here are all my dead relatives sitting,” and she said a third time: “Here I see my master sitting in the garden, and the garden is beautiful, green, and here he is calling me, so lead me to him!” »
And so they came with her to the ship. And she took off the two bracelets that were on her and gave them to that old woman called the Angel of Death, who would kill her. After this, all the men make their hands paved the way for the girl, so that the girl, standing on the palms of their hands, goes to the ship. But they had not yet brought her into the hut of her dead master. The men came, carrying shields and sticks with them, and they gave her a cup with nabeez. She sang over it and drank it. And the translator told me that she was saying goodbye to her friends. Then another cup was given to her, and the old woman, having a huge dagger with a wide blade, entered the hut with her, and then six husbands from her husband’s relatives entered the hut and each and every one of them married the girl in the presence of her deceased master until then. until she became joyful and light, like an angel. Then, as soon as they had finished exercising their rights of love, they laid her down next to her master. Two grabbed both her legs, two grabbed both her arms, and the old woman, called the Angel of Death, put a rope around her neck and stuck a dagger between her ribs. And the men began to hit their shields with sticks so that the sound of her dying cry could not be heard...
When she died, the closest relative of the deceased, while still naked, took a stick and lit it by the fire and went to light the tree piled under the ship.
And the fire took hold of the wood, then the ship, then the hut, and the husband, and the girl, and everything that was in it. Then the wind blew, big, terrifying, and the flame of the fire intensified, and its flaming flared up. Not even an hour had passed before the ship, and the firewood, and the girl, and her master turned into ash, then into the smallest ashes.
Then they built something like a round hill on the site of this burnt ship and planted a large tree in the middle of it, wrote on it the name of this man and the name of the king of the Rus and left.”
– This is what Ibn Fadlan wrote about the Rus, whom he saw with his own eyes here, on the banks of this river. Yes, it was right here - here the Russians sat with their goods and young beauties, slender as palm trees, and beautiful in face and body. And here Russian girls followed their lover or husband into the fire. And this was only one thousand forty-three years ago. But then, over the course of some seventy to eighty years, all the Russian men died in unsuccessful campaigns against Byzantium, Persia and Bulgaria. And what happened to their beautiful women is not written anywhere, but, most likely, they became the wives of the Slavs, Polyans and Drevlyans, who adopted their name because they wanted to be as formidable and beautiful as their former rulers. But did they? Ask yourself alone at night: can you follow your lover into the fire? Before death, drink a cup of nabiz, sing a farewell song to your friends and climb onto the burning boat of your husband? Ask yourself, and then you will know whether Russian women have survived in Russia. Thank you for your attention. And now - everyone go to the tents and sleep!
He waited out their squeals and shouts: “More!” Tell us something else! Please!" - then he scattered the ashen coals of the burned-out fire and said quietly:
- All! That's all for today. Lights out.
They surrounded him, jumping and screaming:
- No! You know more! Oh please! Tell us!
He looked up at them, and they fell silent, waiting for the story to continue. And he said:
“Maybe I know a hundred more interesting stories.” But if you ever want to hear them, you will immediately go to bed. I count to three. Once…
They rushed away, towards their tents. Squealing, laughter and the flashing of tanned ankles in the night... He grinned tiredly, looking after them. And then he turned to the river.
In the distance, in the darkness, the last light of the raftsmen's fire floated away from him and faded into the black canopy of the night. But from above, from the north, he suddenly heard some sounds - either the movement of a new timber rafting along the river, or the quiet splashes of oars. He stepped towards the water, peering into the darkness of the moonless night. An armada of dark silhouettes appeared on the river rapids, but from a distance and through the darkness of a moonless night he could not understand that these were rafts? boats? or the boats of the ancient Rus, sailing for new prey?..
Part I
Double hunt
1
In Moscow, Rubinchik did not have affairs. And not only because he valued his reputation as a famous journalist and employee of Rabochaya Gazeta, where he published under the pseudonym “Joseph Rubin,” but also because in Moscow he had neither the time nor the desire for these novels. A thin thirty-seven-year-old Jew with a provincial orphanage upbringing and metropolitan ambition, in Moscow he devoted himself entirely to the everyday editorial fever, two small children, a wife and a bitchy life that eats up all his leisure time, scandalous queues for food, shoes, clothes, medicines for children and everything else, without which everyday human existence is impossible. Wrapped in these tights, Rubinchik did not have a minute in Moscow to look around him and see someone’s woman’s face, the tempting neckline of a dress, or even the quiet dance of snowflakes under the street lamps.
But as soon as he went on a business trip, as soon as he threw off the hassle of Moscow worries, some kind of mystical, predatory and cheerful hunter’s passion awoke in him. But not just any game, no. Rubinchik did not have that omnivorousness that is characteristic of almost all husbands who escaped from the bed of even their beloved, but already so familiar, wife. And in general, it was not a matter of sexual hunger. It was about something else, which Rubinchik himself could not give a name to, and did not look for it. But at that moment, when he got into the editorial car or into an Aeroflot bus to go to the airport, and from there to fly to Siberian oil developments, Ural mines or Altai lumberjacks, a powerful surge of adrenaline into the blood in some strange way regrouped those who had settled down in Moscow orbits of atoms and electrons of his body, shook them up, split new kilowatts of energy into them, straightened Rubinchik’s shoulders, changed the position of his head, added relaxedness and wit and filled his gaze with self-confident audacity.
And from that moment the hunt began.
So a secret drug addict, almost without realizing his actions, goes out in search of a drug. So the killer maniac goes on a night hunt for his next victim. So a brilliant poet unconsciously searches for one single word that will make his verse soar above the sea of despicable prose.
The vast country - the entire Soviet empire at the height of its power - lay before him, freely stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, and he could hardly contain his excitement, like an alien landing on a new planet or like a horseman from the horde of Genghis Khan before the invasion of Siberia. A lot of events took place in this country - it discovered gas in the Arctic, caught foreign spies, prepared for the Olympics, laid canals in the Caspian deserts, persecuted dissidents, built hydroelectric power stations, sent rockets into space, listened to the Voice of America and Freedom, and Rubinchik with professional greed he absorbed, absorbed and entered into his notebooks everything he heard and saw around him. This was his country, and it all belonged to him - from Moldova and Estonia to Turkmenistan and Chukotka, and with all his little Jewish heart he loved its enormity, diversity and power. However, he never considered himself a Jew in the full sense of the word - he was an atheist, did not know the Jewish language, shortened his last name to its Russian sound, drank vodka no worse than any Russian, and, most importantly, he loved Russians women. Oh yeah! Every time, somewhere in the Siberian, Vyatka or Murmansk wilderness, his searching gaze finally came across one that made his hunting heart freeze, he discovered that this new one was related to all his previous finds by one indispensable quality: it is always were Russians women with an elongated figure, secretly sad gray or green eyes and that elongated face, high brow ridges and thin transparent skin that can be seen in the paintings of Rokotov, Levitsky and Borovikovsky.
Of course, Rubinchik almost never found a copy of Princess Struyskaya or Lopukhina, although these portraits do not accurately convey the image that, for an inexplicable reason, lived in his subconscious. But if you combine the face of the icon Our Lady of Vladimir with the eyes of some ancient Russian or Norwegian warrior-princess, or at least with the stern sacrifice in the eyes of Petrov-Vodkin’s female portraits, then perhaps it will be close to the ideal have which for Rubinchik was an obsessive and almost manic lust.
Such female types can still be found in the deep Russian provinces - although less and less often. Cosmetics, fashion in clothes and hairstyles, incest that swept through the Russian breed in the waves of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, Turkish captivity, Polish and French invasions, the debauchery of their own boyars, the German occupation, KGB dispossession, sub-Soviet migration and mass alcoholism - all this muddied, spoiled and dissolved the Nordic, but originally softened in Polovtsian blood, beauty of Russian women, which just a few centuries ago so captivated European monarchs that they led Russian brides to the wedding altars and seated them next to them on the thrones in England, Norway, France, Hungary - yes all over Europe!
Now, in our time, the standard of Russian beauty has shifted to copying Western film beauties in the Russian style, and only very rarely, by chance, like a winning combination of numbers on a lottery ticket, does fate suddenly bring together in one mother’s womb an old and truly Russian set of chromosomes lost over the centuries. And then, somewhere in the provincial wilderness of Siberia, the Urals or Karelia, quietly, in an ordinary family, without knowing it, a young copy of the epic Yaroslavna, the fabulous Vasilisa the Beautiful or the Scythian princess Olga grows up. For reasons unknown to herself and strange to those around her, she avoids her ghoul friends, factory dances with the obligatory groping of her breasts and other intimate parts by fixated peers, early defloration in the bushes of the district cultural park and the fashionable addiction of fifteen-year-olds to wine, cigarettes and lewdness in conversation. By the age of sixteen, she was already hopelessly “behind” her friends, she moved away from them into solitary and alarming daydreaming for her parents, reading books, knitting and studying at some technical school, and at twenty-two she, like an old maid, was almost forced are given in marriage. And, never distinguished from other commoners, this secret flower of the Russian race quickly withers as the wife of some warrant officer in a remote military town, becomes rude to her drunkard husband among children, dirty linen and the bitchiness of the factory hustle, or withers on its own from an unclear and unfulfilled of its intended purpose - withers to the hopeless Russian melancholy, the panel of the Kursk station and the women's prison.
But one glance was enough for Rubinchik to identify and identify, among the thousands of female faces that he encountered on his journalistic routes, the one in whom the pristine, primordial Russianness had not yet been shaded by provincial life, spoiled by village whoredom, or muzzled by an alcoholic husband. And when it happened, when he - finally! - he came across what he called to himself “an iconic diva”, everything froze in him - the pulse of thought, breathing. It didn’t last long—a split second—but he felt it deeply and powerfully, like a heart attack. And then the heart caught itself and threw such a quantity of hot blood through the weakened veins that the desire have This ancient Russian beauty permeated Rubinchik not only in his stomach, groin and legs, but even in the hair on his chest. Everything about him was cheerful, heaving, standing up, like a Mongolian horseman in stirrups and like the fur on an animal that has seen its prey.
It is amazing that these chosen ones never showed any resistance to him and did not even demand preliminary flirtation, long-term seduction, or even dinner in a restaurant in the manner of Moscow women. Something different, some unknown and untranslatable way of communication arose between Rubinchik and such an “iconic diva”, arose immediately, at that first moment when their eyes met. Rubinchik experienced the same feeling of instantaneous non-verbal communication once in the taiga during a chance meeting with an important young deer who turned her head towards him on a taiga path. They both froze - Rubinchik and the big girl. Five meters separated them from each other, exactly five meters, no more, and they looked into each other’s eyes - point-blank and with calm attention. Rubinchik clearly, right through to the back of his head, felt like an important woman, peering at him, comprehends him with his huge dark eyes, moist like fresh chestnuts. He mustered all his will to also penetrate the eyes and soul of this graceful and gentle beast, frozen on high and thin legs. And it seemed to him that - yes, there is contact! There, behind the moist cornea of those plum-like eyes, he suddenly felt something wide, dark, warm and thick, like blood, which was just waiting for his sign to let him in even deeper or just follow him along the taiga path. It seemed that if he made the right gesture or sign, the important woman would step towards him, gently and trustingly press her lips to his neck and become a submissive slave, bride, forest mistress.
But there, in the taiga, he did not know the secret sign that the taiga beauty had been waiting for from him so patiently and for a long time - perhaps for five whole minutes. And out of frustration, he sighed, made some small movement with either his hand or his Adam’s apple, and at the same moment the important woman dived into the spruce thicket, rapidly moving her thin legs of a forest ballerina in mid-flight and contemptuously lifting her short elastic tail over her bouncing white butt . Left alone on the path, Rubinchik felt like an uncouth lout at the ball of life, rejected by a taiga aristocrat for not knowing the forest mazurka.
However, here, among people, Rubinchik did not need secret codes, magical gestures, or words. Just as with one single glance he saw the Russian diva in the eerie cocoon of her padded jacket and ridiculous provincial dress, in thick knitted tights and rubber boots, so this diva herself, at first glance, recognized him as somehow different, until that moment even to herself an unknown instinct and some other, genetic memory. And a wide, spacious depth, thick and warm, like blood, opened before Rubinchik in her eyes.
Of course, he met a girl, said some routine words, but he clearly saw that she was only listening to his voice and, together with this voice, was absorbing him into herself, drinking it like a drug...
Rubinchik could never explain this effect to himself. That is, why he was attracted to Russian women - a thousand reasons can be found for this: from upbringing in Russian culture to the complex of a small and disadvantaged Jew in a sea of Slavic and state anti-Semitism. But what did they - the Old Russian princesses, the Polovtsian princesses, the Yaroslavs of the Don and the Vasilisses of Onega - see in him, a short, thin Jew with coarse black hair, a large Jewish nose, small brown eyes and thick hair coming out of the open collar of his shirt? Why, after a few insignificant words of acquaintance, they obediently, like bewitched important women, themselves came to his hotel room - openly! in front of your entire city or town! - and without even seeing, what The hotel administrators look at them with their eyes.
Rubinchik never understood this, and every time this happened, he was sure that this time he was probably mistaken and had played up a simple provincial giveaway.
But when the next “princess” went to the shower on his orders and returned from there barefoot, with goose bumps on her bare legs and wrapped from chest to pubis in a shabby hotel towel (with the obligatory purple “Goskommunkhoz” stamp so that the hotel guests would not touch this towel) , Rubinchik immediately saw that there was no smell here not only of whoredom, but also of any sexual experience at all. In her gait, figure, elongated neck and eyes there was something enchanted, frightened and mystically submissive to his will, word, gesture and thought. And most importantly - his lust. And slowly taking away this hotel towel covering her thin white body, breasts and tiny pale nipples, Rubinchik already saw that - yes, he was not mistaken this time, she was a virgin.
He seduced them, of course. But only if by seduction we understand defloration and nothing other than this purely medical act. Because in all other meanings of this word - to deprive a woman of her honor, to lead her astray from the right path - then what the hell is seduction here! He is not fucked them and not broke my virginity, and he walked them along the narrow bridge from girlhood to womanhood - he walked them with almost paternal caution, patience and tenderness, and then introduced them to the true and high female honor of being in bed not a log split in two, but a Priestess.
So, in the night fog, an experienced beacon keeper first finds the dark beacon of a lighthouse by intuition, then dismantles the lantern by touch, adds oil, refills the wick, finally lights the fire - and suddenly the light of this lighthouse blinds his own eyes.
The light of true femininity that Rubinchik lit on such a night somewhere in Izhevsk, Vologda, Igarka or Kokchetav was like the return to life of an ancient icon, when, after careful and reverent clearing, living and magical eyes suddenly flash on you from the depths of centuries.
Rubinchik prepared this moment especially carefully and even ceremoniously. In a country where, despite mass whoredom, sex education was provided only in dark hallways, obscene jokes and wall drawings in public toilets, where there was not a single book on the topic “HOW IT’S DONE” and where even the word “gynecologist” is embarrassed to say out loud , - in this country, millions of young women know no more about sex than pets. Lie on your back, spread your legs and give in- that’s all that ninety percent of Russian men teach their brides and demand from their wives. Should we be surprised at the massive frigidity of Russian women?
In the black sea of sexual ignorance, Rubinchik lit the bright lamps of sensuality and was the first to enjoy their quivering flame.
- Now, dear! Don't rush and don't be afraid! Forget everything that your friends told you about this, and forget all the dirty words that are written about it in the hallways. We'll do it completely differently. So that you remember this all your life, as the most sacred day of your life, as a Christmas holiday. Have some wine. Like this. And another sip. And further. Now give me your lips. No not like this. Forget about me and listen only to yourself...
This book came out of my novel “Lubozhid”, like Eve from Adam’s rib. But how does Eve have Adam’s flesh - kidneys, liver and some others? internal organs - does not prevent the Eves of the whole world from rightly considering themselves completely original creatures, so the “Russian Diva,” I dare to assure the reader, after the fifth or sixth chapter separated from the “Lubozhid” and galloped off into its own plot so quickly that in the end, in the finale, even I, the author, threw up my hands in amazement.
However, this preface is not written for advertising purposes, but simply to inform the reader: yes, out of the dozen characters inhabiting the essay novel “Lubozhid,” I took three, connected them with an intimate secret and released them into a separate novel. What came out of this is for the reader to judge. Moreover, for those who have not read “Lubozhid”, this preface is not needed at all, unless, having read “Diva”, someone wants to know where it came from. And for those who are familiar with “Lubozhid”, I hope it still makes sense to overcome several familiar pages in order to sail with familiar characters on an unfamiliar voyage.
With all my authorial modesty, I know one thing for sure: just as women are an incomparably better creation of God than men (it’s not for nothing that they were created after us!), so the “Russian Diva” is much better than the flesh from which she was born. Amen.
Dedicated to Julia, my beloved wife
Sexual polarity is the basic law of life and, perhaps, the basis of the world. The ancients understood this better, but we are disgustingly powerless and degenerate more and more.
Nikolay Berdyaev. Metaphysics of Sex and Love, 1907
Please note that I do not want to say that being a Jew is such luck. After all, Jews have problems too.
Roman Gary
Summer 1961, USSR
Pioneer camp "Sputnik"
Do you know what it is to be a Russian woman? I mean - what is it to be a real Russian woman?
He looked around at the faces of the girls around him. Thirty young Komsomol girls - the entire sixth detachment of the Sputnik summer pioneer camp - fell silent and looked at him with expectant interest. The glare of the evening fire illuminated their scarlet pioneer ties, blue T-shirts, tight-fitting elastic breasts, and short shorts, specially washed white by them to set off the chocolate tan of their legs, strengthened over the summer from volleyball, swimming and hiking. Further, behind them, in the darkness of the night, more visible than visible, were a wide river, buoy beacons and timber rafts quietly floating along the river rapids.
And who is she - a real Russian woman? - he asked without raising his voice. - Anna Karenina, who cheated on her husband? Or Natasha Rostova, who gives birth to a child every year? Or the courtesan Nastasya Filippovna from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”? Or the pathetic prostitute Sonechka Marmeladova from the novel “Crime and Punishment”? Don't laugh, this is an interesting question! Look: the French inspired the world that French women are the most sophisticated fashionistas. Right? Spaniards - that the Spanish woman is the most ardent and sensual, right? We know about English women that they are cold and prim. About Jewish and Japanese women - that they are the best mothers. What about the Russians? You are the future Russian women. Yes, yes, there is no need to giggle, you should be Russian women, and who else? But what do you know about yourself?
He broke a dry spruce branch with his knee and stirred the charred wood of the fire with it. The fire greedily flared up on the spruce needles, and he looked again at his listeners. He was not much older than them - about six or seven years, and the daily battle for their attention tired him. Their thoughts are always wandering somewhere away from the conversation, there is always some kind of grin and challenge in their eyes, as if these piglets know a secret that is unknown to him, a twenty-year-old. But now it seems he has struck a chord with them. Still would! At this age, of course, they are interested in everything that is somehow connected with the word “woman.” But he will not rush...
“He will stop a galloping horse and enter a burning hut,” he quoted the Russian poet. - This is the definition given to a Russian woman in literature. Russian writers, even the greatest, even Tolstoy, have not added anything to these two lines. So is this really your main quality - to be a kind of Hercules in skirts? Or firefighters? A?
He waited for their laughter and continued:
No, I think there must be something else, because of which the monarchs of Europe once fell in love with Russian women and, neglecting their princesses, erected Russians girls to the English, French, British and Norwegian thrones. But what? Beauty? Here I am looking at you. Of course, you are all beautiful and all beauties. Quiet, don't laugh. But are you much more beautiful than French women or, say, Italian women? Well, honestly - more beautiful? So I don’t know. And then I turn to history. I want to find the answer in ancient centuries: what distinguished Russian women from all others? And suddenly... suddenly I find out that no Russians have existed for a long time. There have been no Russians for almost a thousand years! Yes, yes, we live in Russia, and the whole world calls us Russian, but... facts are a stubborn thing - we only have a name from Russians. All historians - both Russian and Western - lost traces of the Rus back in the tenth century. The Rus, the real Rus - a huge tribe, an entire ethnic group that swept across Europe in the first millennium - have disappeared! They disappeared in the darkness of centuries, leaving behind the Scythian tribes only their name and later the dynasty of the Rurik kings. That's all. No language, no culture, no writing, no legends. Only names: Oleg, Olga, Igor. Yes, the names of the rivers: Dnieper, Dniester. However, these names also sound more German than Russian, right? But how can this be? How could an entire people disappear without a trace? And why? And disappeared?
He stood up impulsively. The flames of the fire cast a large, broken shadow from his thin figure onto the awnings of the tourist tents, whitening in the night. His face, narrow and illuminated from below by crimson highlights, suddenly acquired a kind of Mephistophelian and at the same time inspired expression, his dark eyes lit up with an inner light, and the wide wings of his large nose trembled predatorily at the unexpectedly close splash of a river fish, as if it had splashed in river water the very mystery for which he was looking for a solution.
Look around! - he suddenly ordered, outlining a wide semicircle in the darkness with his charred spruce stick, and from this sharp gesture the coal-red end of the stick flared up like a fiery spear. - Twenty centuries ago there was the same darkness here, the same forests and the same mosquitoes. Along the banks of these rivers lived small tribes - some Ugrians, Burtases, Guzes. They fished, hunted and collected honey in the forests. But in the fifth - seventh centuries, God knows where - from the north, from the Baltic states - hordes of warlike warriors poured here. These were bandits, conquerors. They did not produce anything, but were only engaged in robbery and lived off looting. In the ninth century, they conquered the Slavic capital of Kyiv and from then on began to rule and push around everyone who was around - the Polyans, the Drevlyans, the Northerners. They robbed them, took heavy tributes from them and sold them into slavery in Byzantium, Greece, and Khazaria. They were rude, cruel, merciless in battles and treacherous in everyday life, and they left all their property, acquired by robbery, as an inheritance to their daughters. And they bequeathed only weapons to their sons, saying: “I got my fortune with this sword, take it and move on from me!” In other words, it was an ethnic group of bandits. But!..
He raised the burning spruce stick like a saber or like a staff. He had been walking along the dark shore for a long time, inspired by the attention of his listeners and those mirages of the past that he saw in the darkness of this summer night.
An emigrant playboy who loves Russia must also love Russian beauties. The price of emigration may be not only the rejection of Russian women, not only the “love triangle” inspired by the cruel soviet life. This is an attempt to avoid the “horrors of the Soviet regime” in a series of incredible adventures. This is intrigue and murder, sex and love and, most importantly, an ironic ending that will not leave any of the readers indifferent!
Sexual polarity is the basic law of life and, perhaps, the basis of the world. The ancients understood this better, but we are disgustingly powerless and degenerate more and more. Nikolay Berdyaev. Metaphysics of Sex and Love, 1907This book came out of my novel “Lubozhid”, like Eve from Adam’s rib. But just as Eve’s presence of Adam’s flesh - kidneys, liver and some other internal organs - does not prevent the Eves of the whole world from rightly considering themselves completely original creatures, so the “Russian Diva,” I dare to assure the reader, separated from the “Lubozhid” after the fifth or sixth chapter ” and galloped off into her own plot so quickly that in the end, in the finale, even I, the author, threw up my hands in amazement.
However, this preface is not written for advertising purposes, but simply to inform the reader: yes, out of the dozen characters inhabiting the essay novel “Lubozhid,” I took three, connected them with an intimate secret and released them into a separate novel. What came out of this is for the reader to judge. Moreover, for those who have not read “Lubozhid”, this preface is not needed at all, unless, having read “Diva”, someone wants to know where it came from. And for those who are familiar with “Lubozhid”, I hope it still makes sense to overcome several familiar pages in order to sail with familiar characters on an unfamiliar voyage.
With all my authorial modesty, I know one thing for sure: just as women are an incomparably better creation of God than men (it’s not for nothing that they were created after us!), so the “Russian Diva” is much better than the flesh from which she was born. Amen.
Dedicated to Julia, my beloved wife
Eduard Topol
This book came out of my novel “Lubozhid”, like Eve from Adam’s rib. But how does Eve have Adam’s flesh - kidneys, liver and some others? internal organs - does not prevent the Eves of the whole world from rightly considering themselves completely original creatures, so the “Russian Diva,” I dare to assure the reader, after the fifth or sixth chapter separated from the “Lubozhid” and galloped off into its own plot so quickly that in the end, in the finale, even I, the author, threw up my hands in amazement.
However, this preface is not written for advertising purposes, but simply to inform the reader: yes, out of the dozen characters inhabiting the essay novel “Lubozhid,” I took three, connected them with an intimate secret and released them into a separate novel. What came out of this is for the reader to judge. Moreover, for those who have not read “Lubozhid”, this preface is not needed at all, unless, having read “Diva”, someone wants to know where it came from. And for those who are familiar with “Lubozhid”, I hope it still makes sense to overcome several familiar pages in order to sail with familiar characters on an unfamiliar voyage.
With all my authorial modesty, I know one thing for sure: just as women are an incomparably better creation of God than men (it’s not for nothing that they were created after us!), so the “Russian Diva” is much better than the flesh from which she was born. Amen.
Dedicated to Julia, my beloved wife
Sexual polarity is the basic law of life and, perhaps, the basis of the world. The ancients understood this better, but we are disgustingly powerless and degenerate more and more.
Nikolay Berdyaev. Metaphysics of Sex and Love, 1907
Please note that I do not want to say that being a Jew is such luck. After all, Jews have problems too.
Roman Gary
Summer 1961, USSR Pioneer camp “Sputnik”
Do you know what it is to be a Russian woman? I mean - what is it to be a real Russian woman?
He looked around at the faces of the girls around him. Thirty young Komsomol girls - the entire sixth detachment of the Sputnik summer pioneer camp - fell silent and looked at him with expectant interest. The glare of the evening fire illuminated their scarlet pioneer ties, blue T-shirts, tight-fitting elastic breasts, and short shorts, specially washed white by them to set off the chocolate tan of their legs, strengthened over the summer from volleyball, swimming and hiking. Further, behind them, in the darkness of the night, more visible than visible, were a wide river, buoy beacons and timber rafts quietly floating along the river rapids.
And who is she - a real Russian woman? - he asked without raising his voice. - Anna Karenina, who cheated on her husband? Or Natasha Rostova, who gives birth to a child every year? Or the courtesan Nastasya Filippovna from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”? Or the pathetic prostitute Sonechka Marmeladova from the novel “Crime and Punishment”? Don't laugh, this is an interesting question! Look: the French inspired the world that French women are the most sophisticated fashionistas. Right? Spaniards - that the Spanish woman is the most ardent and sensual, right? We know about English women that they are cold and prim. About Jewish and Japanese women - that they are the best mothers. What about the Russians? You are the future Russian women. Yes, yes, there is no need to giggle, you should be Russian women, and who else? But what do you know about yourself?
He broke a dry spruce branch with his knee and stirred the charred wood of the fire with it. The fire greedily flared up on the spruce needles, and he looked again at his listeners. He was not much older than them - about six or seven years, and the daily battle for their attention tired him. Their thoughts are always wandering somewhere away from the conversation, there is always some kind of grin and challenge in their eyes, as if these piglets know a secret that is unknown to him, a twenty-year-old. But now it seems he has struck a chord with them. Still would! At this age, of course, they are interested in everything that is somehow connected with the word “woman.” But he will not rush...
“He will stop a galloping horse and enter a burning hut,” he quoted the Russian poet. - This is the definition given to a Russian woman in literature. Russian writers, even the greatest, even Tolstoy, have not added anything to these two lines. So is this really your main quality - to be a kind of Hercules in skirts? Or firefighters? A?
He waited for their laughter and continued:
No, I think there must be something else, because of which the monarchs of Europe once fell in love with Russian women and, neglecting their princesses, erected Russians girls to the English, French, British and Norwegian thrones. But what? Beauty? Here I am looking at you. Of course, you are all beautiful and all beauties. Quiet, don't laugh. But are you much more beautiful than French women or, say, Italian women? Well, honestly - more beautiful? So I don’t know. And then I turn to history. I want to find the answer in ancient centuries: what distinguished Russian women from all others? And suddenly... suddenly I find out that no Russians have existed for a long time. There have been no Russians for almost a thousand years! Yes, yes, we live in Russia, and the whole world calls us Russian, but... facts are a stubborn thing - we only have a name from Russians. All historians - both Russian and Western - lost traces of the Rus back in the tenth century. The Rus, the real Rus - a huge tribe, an entire ethnic group that swept across Europe in the first millennium - have disappeared! They disappeared in the darkness of centuries, leaving behind the Scythian tribes only their name and later the dynasty of the Rurik kings. That's all. No language, no culture, no writing, no legends. Only names: Oleg, Olga, Igor. Yes, the names of the rivers: Dnieper, Dniester. However, these names also sound more German than Russian, right? But how can this be? How could an entire people disappear without a trace? And why? And disappeared?
He stood up impulsively. The flames of the fire cast a large, broken shadow from his thin figure onto the awnings of the tourist tents, whitening in the night. His face, narrow and illuminated from below by crimson highlights, suddenly acquired a kind of Mephistophelian and at the same time inspired expression, his dark eyes lit up with an inner light, and the wide wings of his large nose trembled predatorily at the unexpectedly close splash of a river fish, as if it had splashed in river water the very mystery for which he was looking for a solution.
Look around! - he suddenly ordered, outlining a wide semicircle in the darkness with his charred spruce stick, and from this sharp gesture the coal-red end of the stick flared up like a fiery spear. - Twenty centuries ago there was the same darkness here, the same forests and the same mosquitoes. Along the banks of these rivers lived small tribes - some Ugrians, Burtases, Guzes. They fished, hunted and collected honey in the forests. But in the fifth - seventh centuries, God knows where - from the north, from the Baltic states - hordes of warlike warriors poured here. These were bandits, conquerors. They did not produce anything, but were only engaged in robbery and lived off looting. In the ninth century, they conquered the Slavic capital of Kyiv and from then on began to rule and push around everyone who was around - the Polyans, the Drevlyans, the Northerners. They robbed them, took heavy tributes from them and sold them into slavery in Byzantium, Greece, and Khazaria. They were rude, cruel, merciless in battles and treacherous in everyday life, and they left all their property, acquired by robbery, as an inheritance to their daughters. And they bequeathed only weapons to their sons, saying: “I got my fortune with this sword, take it and move on from me!” In other words, it was an ethnic group of bandits. But!..
