From The Bewildered Letters of an Exiled American in Russia, with notes on The Hamburgler

December 3, 1988 - Moscow, U.S.S.R.

Eligio:


To answer your question, I don't believe in hell, not even for Nazis or Saddam Hussein - although for them I wish it were true - because of the afternoon when I came upon a book of Milton in a box of folded clothes meant for donation, and which, when opened, unleashed a flood of moths into the attic. Milton and his moths say it is all a dream, and that each man when he dies, good or bad, is cast out to sea on a beautiful night under a sky of stars. They evidently have not heard the news that the Catholics have done some construction on hell and demanded the segregation of the afterlife. Thank God we modern men have our choice of hells! (And here I imagine Jesus the carpenter constructing the atheist's modest coffin, and his disciples writing the post-modern atheist's coffee-table book of coffins, while 'Little Red Corvette' by Prince plays in the background.)

All of which wouldn't even matter, except that they have opened a McDonald's across the street from the Kremlin, and I can't help but feel that somehow I am living in a weird, Gorbachev-guarded purgatory. And yesterday outside the McDonald's I saw a withered old Babushka beating her granddaughter over the head with a big plastic purse full of flowers, and there are no little red corvettes here, no corvettes of any kind -


[incomprehensible scribbling, followed by a not-bad sketch of The Hamburgler, followed by an amazing sketch of The Grimace with Gorbachev's head on it]


The other day, for instance, in an ugly moment of homesickness, I read about people who kill themselves by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge, which is the most enormous middle finger to your ancestors you can possibly extend, but which in their waterlogged hearts they probably felt was romantic. All those mamushkas and papushkas, packing up their life savings in paper bags, lugging the family history in boxes, boarding the boats, surviving the ghettos, searching for gold - a century, two centuries just spent in paying rent - and then, what’s this? Your great, great, great grandson shuffles off the Golden Gate into San Francisco Bay with only his tie to wave thanks and goodbye in his wake.


I don't carry a gun anymore, nor do I adopt dogs and cats. Does this mean I have grown old?


Your bedridden and inevitably hellbound brother,
Angelo


P.S. With regards to your insistence that birds can't understand God:

What about willow tree-cathedrals for the gospel of sparrows?
And what about the resurrection of swans in the spring?
Many a mass in St. Basil's has been dumbstruck by doves.
The vibration of the organ shakes them from their perch in the rafters,
and the poor priest, having lost his congregation, can only watch and wait it out as they circle the ceiling for the length of an endless hymn.

P.P.S. Please refrain from calling me a faggot - I can practically hear you saying it from across the ocean. "Angy, you are a faggot. A beautiful, beautiful faggot."

P.P.P.S. What do you call a quarter pounder with cheese in Russia?....
"A fucking miracle."

return room, friday, summer shift

Early morning, the stained glass window in the north wall of Wilson library discolors beautifully a construction crane uplifting a handful of men in mismatched hard hats. They scrub seriously with spare rags the permanent spots, as if stained glass were a curable cold and not a fixed condition. Their furrowed brows, their tongues curled between their lips, their neon-taped shirts all freckle the window, which resembles a kaleidoscope wavering between arrangements. A little later, near the central bathroom, a worker glimpses the inside of a forbidden maintenance closet, with its rainbow of rags hanging to dry on the wall and the startled face of the janitor who always, no matter the time, smells of a recently smoked cigarette.


Just before lunch and just outside the elevator, the president's wife, who coincidentally resembles another more famous president's wife, stands slightly stooped over the slightly too-small desk of a coworker's crowded office, her skinny leg made shapely by the lift of a leather pump, key-lime green to match the key-lime suit and skirt she wears at least once a month, which certain library employees snidely refer to as her 'leprechaun suit.' She is like a voluptuous line-backer dipped in popsicle paint.


During the hazy hours of the day, we find a circus of commanders and coquettes from Circulation, the mysterious boss or underling who magics themselves from who-knows-what-department to push carts or pester the maintenance man, the old friend, the skinny son, the tour group parents and their pale, perplexed children; and sometimes in passing we note the way stray dreadlocks are constantly escaping from the woolly turban of the poet Frost who works upstairs.


At lunch, the ominous notes of a cello being tuned in preparation for a lawn performance sound for all the world like a distressed woman about to phone home or hospital, and the shock of sun sliding over the music library's window with the concert banner clinging to its ledge by a single piece of tape, and the woman stepping up to its ledge, in slow motion, to shout for a silent second at a bassoonist in the orchestra below – all these charms can't quite calm the nagging anger that I've just paid upwards of five dollars for a single wedge sandwich.