Read Online Russian Spring by Norman Spinrad - Free Book Online Page A

are real soul mates. If I had to choose between my dream and love, I’d choose my destiny too, which would not mean that I didn’t really love you either. On that level we truly understand each other, and there is no blame, Sonya Ivanovna.”
    “Yuli—”
    “But in other ways we are quite different,” he said, snatching up the second bottle of Médoc. “For you the dream is merely personal, but I serve a vision. I too am a careerist and an individualist, but I am also an idealistic Communist, or will be when I am admitted to the Party.”
    He opened the second bottle with the corkscrew, refilled their glasses, slugged half of his down as if it were cheap vodka rather than a noble imported French vintage. “You seek only personal gratification, whereas I identify my own personal gratification with the good of Mother Russia.”
    “What’s good for Yuli Markovsky is good for the Soviet Union!” Sonya snapped back, swilling an unseemly gulp of wine herself.
    “What’s good for Yuli Markovsky is the satisfaction of sailing the ship of Soviet state into the safe harbor of Common Europe,” he declared grandiosely, and Sonya, through her own growing barblement, realized that he had become quite drunk.
    “And living the luxurious life of a globe-trotting diplomat in the process!” she said.
    “But of course! The New Soviet Man is no socialist monk!”
    “I’ll drink to that!” Sonya declared, and she did.
    “And so will I,” said Yuli, pouring himself another.
    “You don’t hate me for doing this, Yuli?” Sonya muttered, feeling her head starting to spin, feeling herself becoming quite maudlin.
    With what seemed like a mighty effort, Yuli held himself bolt upright and stared with bloodshot eyes unwaveringly into her own, and through the drunken haze, or perhaps via its instrumentality, a crystal moment of clarity seemed to pass between them.
    “I don’t hate you, I pity you, Sonya,” Yuli said. “There is a dimension of life you are blind to, a passionate color your eyes don’t see, the joy of true dedication to a vision of something greater than yourself, without which, without which . . .”
    “Ah yes, Yuli Markovsky, the selfless servant of the people, andnext you will be quoting Lenin on socialist idealism, no doubt!” Sonya shot back. But there was something in his eyes, something behind his words, that made her want to get even drunker, though the room was already beginning to whirl, and she swilled down another gulp of wine, without, however, being able to avert her gaze.
    “Nothing of the kind,” Yuli said. “These are great days to be young and Russian and part of a great adventure. This is to be our hour in the center of the stage, to push against the world and feel it move, to ride the wild stallion of history, to hold the reins in your hands and bend destiny to your will to serve the greater good. . . .”
    “Great days to be young and Russian and be living in Common Europe, that is the great adventure, Yuli,” Sonya shot back, clawing her way back from the edge of something pulling her down into his wild bloodshot Rasputin eyes, something she feared to fathom, something that was beginning to make her feel small and foolish and lost.
    “You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you?” Yuli said, and then at last he broke the intense eye contact, and slugged down another drink. “You have no sense of destiny at all, mine, or your own!”
    “Don’t patronize me!” Sonya snapped.
    “Oh I wouldn’t think of it,” Yuli said, lurching across the bed in her general direction.
    Sonya managed to catch him in her arms as the room really began to reel. “You’re completely drunk!” she declared.
    “And so are you!”
    “Who am I to deny it?”
    “In that case,” Yuli said, rolling her over under him and fumbling at her breasts and his pants at the same time, “let us not spend our last night together yammering like feckless intellectuals. Let us fuck ourselves good and