56
PARTISAN REVIEW
they expressed their ecstasy in real bawdy language: Oh, I got
banged sweet, ah, I'm all wet, oh, Galka, oh, Tomka, look how
starry the sky is, look a star is falling a star is falling ...
What they took for stars were falling volcanic bombs. The tor–
turous and jolting eruption began reducing the carnal bestiality's
bellowing to an exhausted lowing.
"I tell you, Client, you made me rustle," Svetka uttered. Since
Nikolai and Tolya killed each other I haven't had a feast like that. "
The soot was smeared all over her face; her eyes shone
thankfully.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Where had the redheaded giant
disappeared to? My balding head was melting away like a candle,
my body was swelling up like yeasty-beasty, sour dough.
A scorching stone crashed onto the beach, cast up a fountain of
pebbles, spun like a top, and rolled into the sea, where, with a hiss,
in sank in a cloud of steam.
I got up and walked away, hardly moving my elephantine feet.
Buttons on my shirt popped off and my hairy black stomach hung
down, suddenly unbelievably swollen.
Roofs of the houses along Shoreline Road cracked under the
pounding of boulders. Broken windows were raining down . Neon
letters that survived here and there spelled out
abracadabra.
A power–
ful flame was raging inside of a little store with the coquettish name
of" Sweet Tooth ." However, next to it, people who had gathered in
the morning were quietly standing on line at the neighboring gro–
cery store. They were waiting for the delivery of some fantastic
boiled salt pork, although there could be no chance of a delivery
since all the passes above Pompeii were enveloped with smoke and
covered in flames.
Orchestras were playing everywhere. The "Love Machine "
thundered from basements, from under the canopies of open-air res–
taurants. People of all ages danced in a frenzy. It was freedom of
movement unthinkable in the times of Caesarism: eyes bulging and
mouths lusting; the eerie Pompeiian shimmy. Socialism that imitates
capitalism is socialistic to the point of tears.
Of all the people who had it good in the burning Pompeii , the
gloomy fat guy with dirty dark locks hanging down on both sides of
his balding forehead had it worst of all. The arrogant elephantine fat
