When I began to write this book, I thought that I will write how I fell in love with NYC. Will write about the nights in the city, about walking across the island, about driving taxi and doing theatre, teaching and being in love. New York was the right -place to land after my fall from the previous life.
Questions
Notes
I do not write about shows I direct -- not much about "why" I stage this or that title. Do I really know? Like my dreams they come without being asked to come...
I have to make new pages. This one is about New York City. From Italy I arrived at the Kennedy Airport.
The International Resque Committee placed me in the Roosvelt Hotel, right at the corner of Broadway. My Polish roommate was watching TV. "You have to lean the language," he explained.
He already had a job downtown at "Kiev" restaurant.
I had my first interview. I worked as a security guard. It was one day employment.
That was the second time in my life I had a uniform. In the Soviet Army it was one day only too.
"I do not speak English," I said.
"Good," said the owner of this security agency. "Very good!"
"I don't understand Englsih," I said.
"Excelent!" He had two huge dogs next to his desk. They too didn't speak English, but they understood it.
"Don't get involved, understand?"
I understand simple things. But the uniform and the stick?
"You see any trouble -- you call the police. Understand?"
He gave me a nice hat with the big emblem in front.
There was another Russian who explained everything to me in plan language.
"What are you doing here?" He asked me when I showed up for dutty at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. "What is that?"
He pointed at my uniform and the hat.
"Where you came from?"
"From Italy," I said.
"We all came from Italy. I mean, in Russia."
"Moscow."
"Than you should know, that is a bullshit job (there is a Russian word for it). They pretend that they pay you, you pretend that you work. Remember?"
I remembered that Soviet proverb.
He was right and he was gone. I am like a good pioneer walked arong this skyscreper for another other hour...
The difficult part was to give this good uniform and the wonderful hat to the dogs. But I wasn't Soviet anymore, I wanted to be an American. I didn't want to pretend.
[ 1984 : The River Leta runs everywhere, including New York City and Heron has many faces, including females. It's easy crosss the river to get to the kingdom of the dead, if you know the schedule. On Tuesday, I believe, it's free. You live the world with hor dogs, sunlight, time of the day and enter the eternity. Nothing changes there, you can come back and see the same Biblionian stone lion and it's the same as it was year ago, ten or hundrend years. In the world of living I left behind everything changes; people die and get born, wars come and go, but here like3 in the library time is frozen. They say because it is the nature of what we call the past. I disagree; every time I revisit my own past I feel different. Maybe because I am still not Metropolitan Meuseum. Not yet.
I know only two cities well enough to feel home: Moscow and New York. My short American youth took place in New England and NYC. Unlike my Russian childhood in Moscow, the second one was fast; that is what happends when I live it for the second time at age of 31. You don't have that much time later and it's shring with every year. You can't stare at the Hudson River for hours, for many days and years as you did watching Moscow-River waters. I couldn't do it even with Neva-River because I met it as a teenager. You can't waste time anymore, because you getting too busy to live. You can't follow the riverboot all the way until it disappears from the sight. I only wish I could sit somewhere on the bench near the Riverside Church and watch the passing water. The only hope left is the old age, really old, whern everyone counts you dead and leave you alone.
New York was good to me. This is place where I met myself in America. It didn't care that a few months ago I was Russian and Moscow was my birthplace. One might say that it didn't care at all, but I disagree -- the subway worked twenty four hours and the little shops were open all night. Are you hungry, Anatoly? Get the hot dog at the corner. You don't know the city? It's easy; after 91st street is 92nd. And I walked and drive and had friends, who were strangers yesterday. Life-time long friends as I learned later. Of course, you might say that it wasn'r personal, the welcome. Not just for me, anatoly, but like a child I didn't understand it. Does children care that sun is not rising for them? No, this is not like a child sees it. It was for me, me only!
Yes, I could get greedy and ask for the same from Paris and London, but I think that I twice was blessed already.
