Free House of Meetings by Martin Amis Page B

that they had earned the status of a phylum, the
Johnreeds,
like the
Americans
and, later, the
Doctors
—the Jewish doctors. In its stirred account of the October Revolution, John Reed’s book barely mentioned Joseph Vissarionovich, so he banned it, thus whipping out the carpet, so to speak, from under all the Johnreeds.
    Arbachuk used to bring titbits for Lev, who always refused them. Not just chunks of bread, either, but meat—mince, sausage—and on one occasion an
apple
. “I’m not hungry,” Lev would say. I couldn’t believe it: he sat there with Arbachuk’s tongue in his ear, and half a pork chop dangling under his nose, saying, “I’m not hungry.”
    “Open!” said Arbachuk, squeezing the bolts of Lev’s jaw in his hand.
    “I’m not hungry. This tattoo, Citizen. I can only see the last word. What does it say?”
    Slowly and grimly Arbachuk rolled up his sleeve. And there were the bruised letters:
You may live but you won’t love
.
    “One bite. Open!”
    “I eat the full ration. I’m not hungry, Citizen. I work in a strong brigade.”
             
    Like the kind of man who cannot forget or forgive a woman’s past, and must sit her down, every other night, and have her go through the hoops all over again (“He touched you
where
? You kissed his
what
?”), I would come to Lev, seeking the narrative of greatest pain. I know about that kind of man, because I’m him—he’s me. In later years it was the only way I could tell for sure that I was finding a woman interesting: I would want her to confess, to denounce, to inform. And they quite enjoyed it at first, because it felt like attention. They soon came to dread it. They soon caught on…This trait of mine didn’t really have the time or the opportunity to get started between war and camp. You see, nearly all the ex-lovers of nearly all my girlfriends—they were dead. And I didn’t mind the dead. It would be a strange kind of Russian who didn’t forgive the dead. I didn’t mind the dead. The living were what bothered me.
    When, shortly before I was arrested, Lev asked for my permission to try his luck with Zoya, I didn’t even take the trouble to laugh in his face. I gave him the trisyllabic
You?;
and that was all. I honestly didn’t give it a moment’s thought. But Lev was like clever little brothers everywhere. He watched what I did and then tried the opposite. He came at Zoya without intensity.
    Oh well
done,
I said, during one of our last conversations in freedom. You’re her errand boy. And her mascot.
    “That’s it,” he said, stuttering. He was always stuttering. “Come on, how close did
you
ever get to her? Me, I’m there in the room. I’m there all the time. I’m there when she’s
changing
.”
    Changing?
    “Behind the curtain.”
    How big is the curtain? And how thick?
    “Thick. It goes from the floor up to here. She drapes clothes over the top of it.”
    What clothes?
    “Petticoats and things.”
    Jesus Christ…And now she’s fucking that linguist. I don’t know how you can bear it.
    “Oh, I can bear it.”
    This went on for nearly a year—a year in which Zoya had three more affairs. “One a term,” he now told me. And it was while he was sitting there, in the conical attic, holding her hand, and talking her through her latest misadventure, that Lev made his next move.
    “I said it teasingly. I said, ‘You’re unlucky in love because you’re drawn to the wrong men. These head-in-air types. Try a slightly smaller, uglier one. Like me. We’re so much keener.’ She laughed, and then went silent for five seconds. Then next time I said it, she laughed and went silent for ten seconds. And so on. And then she had another.”
    Another what?
    “Another affair. A whole other one.”
    Is it possible, I said, that you and I have a drop of blood in common? Weren’t you jealous?
    “Jealous? I couldn’t have borne it for a minute if I’d been
jealous
. I didn’t have the right to be jealous. In whose name?