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The Ivan Aufulich Papers
15. Pasha Netembrayss
Pasha Netembrayss ("Pasha" is a diminutive for "Pavel"), another writer of bodice-rippers in the style of Maksim Malseks, who has come under fire as an imitator of decadent American novelists, who symbolize western economics as well as art, has announced through his publisher that he will be taking a "sabbatical to elevate his art." Knowledgeable observers understand that this will be no idyllic vacation at a Black Sea resort, but a grueling sentence digging potatoes or slopping hogs at a Siberian labor camp, and that he will not return until he is deemed ready to start turning out uplifting paeans to the glories of Soviet labor. While there he will no doubt have the opportunity to visit with others (such as certain of the dissident poets of Kazakhstan) who have run afoul of the defenders of Marxist-Leninist ideology (notably V. R. Nahtamyuzd) and have been sent to "serve on a collective"; but the conversations are "likely to be rather one-sided", in the phrase of the general in "Casablanca", since those others will be "serving" as fertilizer. Never-the-less, their witness can be expected to be eloquent, and Pasha is certain to be a changed man when -- or if -- he returns.
©1997 Grant Schampel