Do You Have An Ideal?

by Misha Firer

1

Many years later, on his first ecstasy trip, Dima relished the same rapture he had felt marching across Red Square at a May Day parade.

Dima was in a Tel Aviv nightclub with his girlfriend, celebrating his conscription into the army, and the drug had just started working its way through his system. The hostile, or at best indifferent, world mellowed and painted itself pink. He gawked at his girlfriend with the sacred realization that he was in love with her, and would marry her the next day and spend the rest of his life by her side.

It was then that he had a flashback, a recollection dating back to his childhood in communist Moscow.

Dima held tight to his mother's hand and yelled at the top of his lungs along with thousands of grown-ups marching side by side with him, "Hurray! Long live the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!"

Scarlet banners flew above his head, the skies were a pristine blue, the marchers smiled and clapped complete strangers on the back, as if they were best friends. Dima wore a red tie that identified him as a Young Pioneer of the Communist Party. He had become a member only yesterday, and he wanted the whole world to see the symbol tied by his mother's gentle hands that indicated that he wasn't a baby anymore, that he was a grown-up, a part of this wonderful world around him.

A masterful DJ, the tips of his fingers on the volume controls, was bringing the exhausted crowd down. He lowered the beat and the sound and carefully observed the dancers closest to him for their reaction. They were sweating, their faces aglow with chemical happiness. He wanted them to relax a bit, so they wouldn't burn out.

Dima bought overpriced bottles of spring water from the bar and began giving them away to fellow creatures around him. Then he hugged his girlfriend and whispered in her ear, "Will you marry me?" From her vegetable state, she muttered something completely unintelligible. Dima didn't care about the answer. All he wanted was to dance. And he waved at the God DJ working his miracles on the podium.

"Look!" Dima's mother jerked his sleeve, "Leonid Sergeevich is waving at you!"

The Chief of the Soviet Union, from his podium overlooking the square, raised his hand feebly and saluted the marching crowd. It was just a slight motion of his hand, but it sent out a powerful ripple. Numerous hands flew up in the air, and an earsplitting "Hurray!" thundered like some bomb exploding throughout Red Square.

The DJ bounced his head up and down in time with the rhythm. He inserted a medical pause, to avoid heart failures, and then suddenly jerked all his throttles up to the max. Multi-colored laser beams, their motion attuned to the rhythm, shot at the sweaty faces glowing with bliss. The young people, smitten by a new ecstatic wave, hollered, whistled and began to dance with even more energy than before.

Dima's body was propelled back into the tribal dance. He experienced the urgency of the collective movement like many years ago at the May Day Parade.

Red and blue balloons filled with helium were released simultaneously. They took off into the blue skies and hovered in the air above the crowd. Dima looked up at his mother and smiled. She hugged him tenderly.

Dima was clinging tight to his girlfriend, drooling on her shoulder. The drug was wearing off and he was slowly but surely returning to reality. "Let me go," his girlfriend demanded, "just let me go."

They were returning home, hand in hand, and already the holiday mood was wearing thin. Dima could hear people shouting at each other, and the congested public transportation looked ugly, as there were not enough buses and trams to accommodate all the people returning from the parade at the same time.

And why was it so different back then while we were marching?

Yes, why? "It's called serotonin overdose," Dima's girlfriend said didactically. Then she added philosophically, and yes, indifferently, "But I figured you would be depressed your first week in the army anyway, so why not really enjoy your last day of freedom?"

2

While Dima was trailing the banged-up PT Cruiser and waiting for an accident to happen, he recalled his first meeting with Anton.

"Are you an idealist?" the potbellied mobster asked from the comfort of his Brighton Beach office.

"How many Gaza Strip tapes have I sold you and you're still asking me that question?"

Anton touched his receding hair, checking whether it was laying slick, and at length said, "I'm biased."

He explained, "A couple of years ago we had that bright Russian-Israeli kid. He was doing a good job, until he decided to inform us to the New York Times."

Anton's lips widened into an ugly grin, "Good for us his English was awful. And now that I think of it he wasn't much of a speller either. So there was no story and no investigation."

Anton stopped fondling his hair and placed his fingers on his belly, half a dozen gold rings adorning his thick fingers.

"I'd hate to see that happen again."

Dima replied gravely, "I have no use for ideals. I'm into real life and I have no illusions left."

To cheer up his new recruit Anton said, "Sasha, that guy who connected us is a movie director these days. Making some action flick with Jaylow or Huilow or whatever her name is, as the leading actress."

The PT Cruiser moved slowly, carefully looking for an ambiguous traffic situation, which could be exploited.

"We set up car accidents, where we are the victims. Then we 'treat' our drivers in our own medical offices. Then we have them represented in court by our own attorneys. The insurance companies pay our salary. Now as for your job, it will be to evacuate our drivers after the accidents, once the police have filed the report. Rule number one, don't let the ambulance barge in and take your man to the hospital. Basically, that's all you have to do."

Dima finally saw the "accident." He had waited half a day for it to happen. As he peered through the windshield at the results, he realized that this time they had got a little bit more than they had bargained for.

An SUV with one passenger was speeding through the intersection on a red light. That was too good an opportunity to miss. Dima remembered Anton saying that his drivers all had a sixth sense about how to use suckers who were breaking traffic rules for maximum profit.

This is twenty grand, guaranteed, Dima thought as the drama unfolded.

The PT Cruiser rammed into the SUV right in the middle of the intersection. The SUV's wheels left the ground as it spun a full circle, came crashing down and, with an ear-splitting screech, slid over the asphalt like it was a skating rink into the lane of oncoming traffic.

As the upended car skidded across the intersection, its occupants had already been thrown out of it. The driver and the passenger: two fools. Two unfastened fools. Now they were two dead fools.

The PT Cruiser's front looked like an accordion. The driver slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious.

Dima sprang out of his car and ran towards the PT Cruiser. He flung the driver's door open and reached for the driver's neck to check his pulse. He was alive all right.

"I'm a medical doctor!" Dima yelled to the shocked spectators. "This is my friend. I'm taking him to the hospital."

There were no protests as Dima dragged the Russian Mafia driver to his car. He opened the back door and thrust the driver in.

Sixth sense, my ass, Dima muttered as he left the scene of the accident.

3

An anti-war demonstration—with all the optimistic, glowing people—Dima felt like he had seen them all before, somewhere else. Dima had no patience for déjà vu or analyzing patterns.

She didn't list her home address or phone number on her website, but there was a picture of the outfit she would wear at the anti-war demonstration. It was not much about a political statement, the demonstration, but an event to show your distinctiveness, your individuality. It was like a masquerade, where you attracted the attention of others by wearing the most extravagant costume. It was a parade of protest against social complacency and conformity rather than about soldiers dying somewhere out there.

There were thousands of people with painted faces carrying posters trying to outwit each other with semantics, bravura and arrogance. How can I find her in this crowd? Dima was beginning to feel demoralized.

Gaudy faces, stoned eyes, posters illustrating and ridiculing the war frenzy. If only they knew. He was looking. He was looking for the specific, for the distinguishable, for the familiar. She would look different; she would stand apart.

There was a man at the podium. He spoke through the microphone, commanding the attention of a crowd that was getting bored with passivity.

The cheers from the crowd below him greeted every clichéd antithesis he pronounced. Gradually the noise of the crowd reached a collective hysteria, each person joining his or her personal distinctness into the chorus of the indistinguishable in order to generate enough energy to ennoble and empower their vision.

Dima was ramming through, pushing, caring little for polite excuses. The picture of her outfit from her website was etched in his mind. He looked for its real representation. He knew she was here.

And then he saw her. It all came back to him, in an avalanche of memories steeped in delusions, in life lessons. He felt weak in the knees. And he felt elevated, pretty much in sync with the crowd of war protesters. He approached her.

The man was shouting something or another from the podium. People exploded, rekindled and burned bright.

Dima touched his ex-girlfriend on the shoulder. She turned around.

There was a scrap of paper in his hand. He handed it to her. She took it silently and read it.

Then she looked back at Dima, her eyes glistening with tears and doubt.

Dima waited for the noise to subside to hear her answer.

Copyright © Misha Firer 2005

Do You Have An Ideal was first published at skive magazine.