No tents for us at night? No undercover? It is hard for me to believe I lacked so much judgement that I allowed you to persuade me to leave them out of the equipment list when we first began this caper. Nevertheless, despite a long time out on the endless plain seemingly not getting anywhere, we are an agency nonetheless; “published” under the stars, and responsible as agents – you are right, we are not sure who to – but we have both been told to keep an eye on each other.
That is under surveillance, but surveillance which is not of the usual kind, more like a forensic examination grounded in the tradition of the novel, or Listening Stations, of which we have spoken before. For instance, I join a small group of seven Russians sat around a table waiting for their dinner order to arrive. Moscovites, and like us out in the open under the stars, and it appears they have also been waiting a very long time. There are two couples about our age, one with a strapping tall tennis star son, and some other lady relations and friends of non-specific age. Apart from the tennis star, they have little English between them, but I am not averse to trying out some ‘bourgeois theorisations’ on them.
I would like to discuss Marxian Theory of Crisis, I begin, Fire away, the tennis star replies, Do you still think there is such a thing as ‘overaccumulated’ or ‘fictitious’ capital, I serve him up the question hoping to test out the inherent contradictions in the capitalist mode of production. The young tennis star translates our conversation into Russian as it progresses for the benefit of the other listeners at the table, and as he speaks I notice the inverted commas surrounding overaccumumated and fictitious glow in the darkness again, hanging like phosphorent fireflies in the air.
One of the older men scowls at me, thin and bald headed he carries a life time of experience in his hooded eyes, and and then speaks at some length to the tennis star son. Daddy does not think so, the tennis star says to me when there is eventually a pause. End of rally. I do not wish to give the wrong impression about Russians abroad at their Listening Stations, these good people are not the ‘super-rich’ types we think of as the only kind of muscovites there are abroad these days, nor is the tennis star son really a 'pro' or in any way well-known, strictly an amateur lover of the game who has a bad back. Later in our conversation, which by the way becomes more and more animated and filled with laughter through the evening and this without the involvement of any alcohol, plus talk is cheap and perhaps I also need to repeat dinner takes a very, very long time to arrive, it transpires that Dad is a hero scientist of the nuclear energy industry. Cutting his teeth at Chernobyl in the 1980’s, he now runs a business decommissioning power stations, which includes the task of transporting the ‘spent’ nuclear rods for long-term safe storage area, as well as other very high risk tasks at these aging creations of the Soviet period.
Theory of Crisis go hang, I say, I think your Dad deserves every kopeck he gets, and we all nod at each other when this is translated by the tennis star son, It is so good to have you Russians back, I continue, We have missed you. There is a moment's confusion when this is translated to the listeners, But we have not met you before I think, the tennis star says, Oh yes, I say, I mean we have been missing you since 1920, you know, when you last were here.
The joke is appreciated and repeated back and forth across the table for some time. 1920! Like us here, it appears that these good people also have no difficulty in travelling over large distances of time as well as continents, and in the company of the dead as well as the living, so that Uncle Wally* and gorgeous Judith are later invited to join us. He of course brings Mikhail Bulgakov with him, and there is an especially loud cheer from everybody when he arrives at the table!
* About ‘Not Getting There’: as well as Kafka, Walter Benjamin also considered emigrating to Palestine in the late 1920’s – Was it the mirage of being "published under the stars? – but of course didn't go in the end.