Comrade Yuri

The Marxist Center (CPUSA) is overplumbed. Friend, you have never seen so many pipes in one room. I’ll go along with water, steam, sewage—but some of this hardware has to be fake. Bolshevik romanticism, that’s what it is. Finger grub marks on the wall are romantic. And draught-pushed dust balls. And a fold-away cot. And posters—Che, Lenin, Marx, Winston, Zapata, also where there’s smoke there’s ire—posters that elbow patch the splintering plaster. It’s six steps down from West End Avenue at 107th Street: not an underground Communist organization exactly, more of a split-level. The joint stinks from radical sentimentalism. This is what your ideal subversive cell should look like: in a bad Clifford Odets play. Danger and suffering and comradeship and send out to Burger King between the acts.

But Yuri Antipov, third secretary for the Soviet UN delegation, isn’t what you’d call a Valentine’s Day card. There are two basic Russian male faces (the economy can’t punch out more). 1) Brezhnev walking-bear type: can file iron down with its chin stubble. 2) High-cheekbone, Oriental-from-Caucasia, Tussaud-complexion type. Yuri is type 2. Handsome, self-confident, passionless, blood-let, frightening: could probably impregnate himself and break off children amoeba-style. Got up like a Kansas farmer for church (Good Will-drop blue suit, maroon tie with knot so fat it might be diagnosed as goiter). Yuri will address these New York Communists. Subject: “The Party in Russia.” He isn’t real ecstatic about it. He has ignited capitalist Marlboro #3. Somehow no one points out the smoke/ire sign.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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The Marxist Center (CPUSA) is overplumbed. Friend, you have never seen so many pipes in one room. I’ll go along with water, steam, sewage—but some of this hardware has to be fake. Bolshevik romanticism, that’s what it is. Finger grub marks on the wall are romantic. And draught-pushed dust balls. And a fold-away cot. And posters—Che, Lenin, Marx, Winston, Zapata, also where there’s smoke there’s ire—posters that elbow patch the splintering plaster. It’s six steps down from West End Avenue at 107th Street: not an underground Communist organization exactly, more of a split-level. The joint stinks from radical sentimentalism. This is what your ideal subversive cell should look like: in a bad Clifford Odets play. Danger and suffering and comradeship and send out to Burger King between the acts.

But Yuri Antipov, third secretary for the Soviet UN delegation, isn’t what you’d call a Valentine’s Day card. There are two basic Russian male faces (the economy can’t punch out more). 1) Brezhnev walking-bear type: can file iron down with its chin stubble. 2) High-cheekbone, Oriental-from-Caucasia, Tussaud-complexion type. Yuri is type 2. Handsome, self-confident, passionless, blood-let, frightening: could probably impregnate himself and break off children amoeba-style. Got up like a Kansas farmer for church (Good Will-drop blue suit, maroon tie with knot so fat it might be diagnosed as goiter). Yuri will address these New York Communists. Subject: “The Party in Russia.” He isn’t real ecstatic about it. He has ignited capitalist Marlboro #3. Somehow no one points out the smoke/ire sign.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.