It’s spontaneous, the soul’s reflex: I cross myself. A soldier is startled, alert. In Lenin’s tomb, comrade, you don’t make unexpected moves. You shuffle, hands open and out, coat buttoned closely up. This is it, I’ve seen him: a stumpy, short corpse, old number 666 himself, the Antichrist. We watch newlyweds place their bouquet at his feet. Here fresh lives begin with a mummy’s benediction; you wonder sperm don’t die in their glands. The grotesqueness of it, the horror, leaves one half drunk. I want to laugh, but the soldier is tense, I’ve pressed my luck enough. And at midnight, across beautiful Red Square, boots echo— slap, slap, slap—Lenin’s guard changed in a tick-tock goosestep, shoe tips hurled to eye level, again, again, again. But the eyes don’t see. Animation comes only from flashing, avid bayonets. I hear it, beaten out in code, an end to the West. There isn’t one soldier stateside so purblind-efficient. Those footsteps, unhurried and assured, are making their way toward us.
I remember what Jeff Hart said before we left. “It’s not the government, it’s the Russian people I dislike.” A nice turn of phrase, I thought back then. But it was more than that; it was the limpid truth. Waste no sympathy on Russia. Leninism, Stalinism, purges, Gulag, agitprop, oppression, these have all been necessary, drawn out by a slave people’s sharp inner need.
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