“South of that. Flatbush is all sorts of people.”
“Yeah, all sorts of doctors and all sorts of lawyers. Don’t be so sensitive,” he said, and gave her a familiar pat on the back. He was looking ahead into the crowd, but the triumph of this discovery brought a smile to his face, and the pleasure of the smile seemed to spread outward, past the corners of his mouth to where the unkempt black hairs of his temple cropped down into a curling sideburn.
There was no response Florence could think of that didn’t involve smacking him. A protest tried to take shape in her mouth, but at that moment a wave of music and cheering from the loudspeakers drowned out all talk on the street. The brick pavement was engulfed by workers from other factories around the city. “It means he’s there if they’re cheering,” shouted Essie. Their column began to move forward at a jogging pace to catch up with those ahead. Florence felt her shoes touching cobblestones as the colossal expanse of Red Square opened up before them. Columns of people in front of them were spreading outward, swallowing the Kremlin like sea foam around a sand castle. She had been to demonstrations, but nothing like this, and her powers of observation fell short of its immensity. She was just one of thousands now, one of tens of thousands. It was a carnival of conformity. Above the singing and shouting crowds, transmissions of the official announcer boomed like thunder, saluting the marchers, extolling the selfless effort of the Great Soviet People, the potency of their constructive labor, the leaders of their Party—vanguard of the proletariat. With every step closer to the Mausoleum, the atmosphere in the crowd became more theatrical. They were conscious of Stalin in their midst, and held themselves as though he were conscious of them. Young women suffered spasms of ecstasy, their eyes watering. Men overcome by fits of poise held their shoulders as if at any moment Stalin himself might single out any one of them. “There he is, with his arm in the air!” someone behind Florence shouted.
“That’s Voroshilov, you idiot!”
“No, over there, standing by Budyonny!”
The Bolshevik leaders perched atop the Mausoleum were no easier to tell apart than chess pawns. But Florence too was certain that she could recognize the twinkling eyes of Joseph Stalin, which looked down at her each workday from the oil painting above Timofeyev’s desk. She slowed her pace to catch a better view, but the Red Army soldiers were prodding rubberneckers with the butts of their gleaming rifles, and the marching crowd pressed her forward.
“Get a good look, Flatbush?” the young man said once they’d crossed to the other side of the Mausoleum.
“You gonna call me that from now on?”
“What would you like me to call you?”
Even this seemingly innocent question made her feel like she was about to have her pockets picked. “Florence,” she said, as a long cheer rose up behind them. Stalin had saluted the workers. Florence tried to involve herself in the “Hurrah!”, but her voice suddenly lacked conviction. The self-forgetfulness she’d experienced only a moment earlier was gone. The music from the loudspeakers no longer carried her ahead toward some glorious future, but backward into a memory: sneaking off with one of her girlfriends from school to Midnight Mass at St. Francis. She was fifteen. She went out of curiosity, hid the expedition from her parents, and felt like an impostor the whole time. The Catholics had smiled kindly at her and her friend, thinking them pious girls worshipping Christ. Now, as then, some dark, subversive corner of her heart was threatening to overturn her awe and deem the whole scene a farce. It was the “Flatbush” remark, she was sure, that had broken the spell: his sly suggestion that she was an interloper among the true proletariat inheritors of the Revolution. She turned to find his pretty mouth still curled in its infuriating shape of wit. Another loud cheer rose from the crowds, and this time he joined it loudly, whistling and whooping like a wino at Mardi Gras.
—
The Foreign Workers’ Club on Hertzen Street was crammed with expatriates of every kind that evening. Austrian Schutzbunders and stiff-necked German socialists danced the foxtrot. Hungarian and Czech polit-emigrants swung each other out in big rumba turns. American Cominternists rushed the floor whenever the band began to play a Lindy Hop. Even the thin, bearded Italian anarchists were having a go on the footworn parquet. The political frenzy of the afternoon had been all but drowned in a flood of cheap champagne. Out in the cold, those who’d started celebrating early now staggered through the icy streets or lay in gutters. From half-frozen mouths could be heard the discordant slur of patriotic hymns.
Because Florence knew few other foreigners, she found it necessary to attach herself to Essie. She had yet to dance, and now it seemed too late: all the amateur dancers were vacating the floor to make room for a professional performance. A few feet away from them Florence recognized loudmouthed Leon from the parade. Before she could turn, Essie shouted at him over the music, “We lost you at the bridge!”
“Sorry about that,” he said, approaching, though he didn’t sound very sorry.
“We looked, but there were too many people on the embankment!”
“My friend had to go load the trucks and return all the props to the plant. I got pulled in. I had a hunch you’d end up here.” His eyes flashed back and forth between Florence and Essie.
Florence, having resolved never to speak a word to this person again, kept her eyes on the dance floor. A duo—a young black man and a petite Russian girl—was warming up its act to the whistles and encouragements of the crowd. It struck Florence that in most parts of America this pairing would likely be objected to, if not on legal then certainly on moral grounds. The black man sported a thin Frenchman’s mustache, and his blond partner, a plain-featured girl with a perfect figure, wore a polka-dot dress that fanned to show her underwear as he rotated her in a few fast, sleek turns.
“That’s Jumpin’ Jim Cosgrove and his girl, Polly,” Leon informed her, though Florence hadn’t asked.
“You know him?” Essie said with naked eagerness.
“Everyone knows Jimmy. He’s been tearing up the floors of all the hotels—the National, the Metropol. Dancing for all the big wheels.”
“Jeez—he’s terrific! Is he a professional?”