Assentierung (Part VI)

I directed myself towards the stage, where the last fifteen minutes were devoted entirely to Moniuszko. The museum piece, she sang with the sound of a bordello madam. Again it induced vomit. I dreamt to find myself at home already and after this horrific music to turn on the radio station AMERICAN FORCES NETWORK IN EUROPE to listen to big band Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet, Jimmy Lanceford, Count Basie or Benny Goodman. After a short intermission, from the stage came the characteristic rhythm of Soviet song, which was at this time unfortunately heard everywhere, and so grating to the ears. 

This time a curvy brunette sang, a pretty face with the tiniest mustache surrounded with a head of long flowing hair. On her shoulders she had a big triangular black poncho, somewhat resembling a bed sheet, somewhat some fantastical liturgical cloak. Her beautiful black hair matched the black poncho, so much so that even with good eyesight one had to take a good look to see where ended the hair and the poncho began, and where ended the poncho and the hair began. A not too long green dress revealed strong but nimble legs. Her thick stockings hid hairy legs underneath, which for this audience signaled immeasurable layers of feminine passion. On her shapely feet she had wooden shoes imitating cork in the fashion of the time. 

Accompanying her the entire time with his wet-combed hair was the ubiquitous pianist in the rubber coat, and during the more dynamic segments appeared a hotshot with a harmoszka, a black shoelace planted as if it were a Cossack mustache, and on his head something like a Cossack papacha, adorned with a red star cut from glistening paper, whose playing was not half bad, at times even syncopated. The situation had to amuse him greatly, I know, because every so often he’d make these monkey faces. 

When the hotshot left the stage because some slower Soviet number began, an atmosphere of unrest was introduced by a certain prospective who attempted to relieve himself behind one of the artworks displayed to the right of the stage. The painting was of a relatively big format, a rural landscape seen as if from the side of the farmhouse, or, rather, the backyard. Visible in the foreground were bushes, and then only fields and fields and somewhere on the horizon seven tractors with waving red streamers, except for one, which rather than a red flag waved a white-red one, and which drove as the last tractor, as if slower. Completely like the seven dwarfs of Snow White, with the last tractor being the obvious Dopey. He relieved himself under this sociorealistic painting, and had he been looking at it he would think that he had returned to the countryside. 

Instead he stared at the singer, waving the entire time with his free hand. Even when he was brutally pulled away by several other prospectives he was uninterruptible, and even put up a certain opposition before finally being thrown in the direction of the pungent defecated bathroom. The performer was just finishing singing some lyrical Russian shit, and the hotshot reappeared with his harmoszka and she began some mindless hit of the Soviet composer Dunajewski, which probably stood as the peak of the performance, the end of the program. 

Everything went OK, when suddenly from the very end of the hall extended a loud cry: “show your pussy!” The artist let this proposition go, ignored it. She only turned her head back like a fawn, allowing her rich, long, ebony hair to fall further down her hefty rump, and sang on. Now maybe in deeper thought, she had her eyes half shut and was trying to return to the mood. She was reaching finally the refrain, when from another part of the hall came an even louder shout: “you gypsy bitch, show your pussy!” 

The hotshot tried to silence this outburst, letting out several hopeless chords on his instrument, which had the opposite of the intended effect, because it spurred on this irresponsible and thoroughly spontaneous rumpus. This time the artist stopped mid-word and darted off the stage in the direction of the doors marked with the sign COMMISSION, and when she opened them, with a horrible shout she bolted back, because she came there eye to eye with a group of twelve completely naked peasants, just at the moment waiting to be measured, weighted and otherwise medically examined. 

The pianist who accompanied her was so preoccupied with his accompaniment that he had no idea what was going on, and when she darted off stage, he thought probably they would start pelting him with tomatoes, which were still very much in season. So this ugly thing ran, in his long rubber coat, looking back to see if something was already flying his way. The other artists directed by tribal instinct, ran off like monkeys from the stage and hurriedly exited the hall, the hotshot calmly leaving at the tail end of the musical procession out.

It was getting late. There were no more than thirty men left, the stage empty, the field kitchen out, the corporal and the young girl off somewhere; last someone saw them they had been crawling under the canvas back of an army truck parked outside. Near the cold kitchen Karl still sat, eating the rest of the soup without an appetite. The old woman meanwhile counted and segregated the freshly washed post-German trays. When with a tired voice he asked the old vulgar woman the time and she responded in her old vulgar way, he did not even smile. He sat listless, on his forehead were droplets of sweat. 

I went to take a look around the hall. The group that entered the commission at the moment was likely the penultimate one. The old conductor also wound down his concerns. Through one of the large windows that were wide open he handed the orangeade boxes to the much younger version of himself standing outside. There was no trace left of Lollobrigida, and they were arranging the wooden boxes in the back of the roll car, harnessed to a medium sized gelded horse. Again dark thought began to absorb me. I came to the conclusion that in a few minutes I would almost certainly be the holder of a military conformation card, and then pale ass.