The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Mind the Doors: Long Short Stories by Zinovy Zinik. Trans. and adapted by Bernard MearesMichael Pinker
Zinovy Zinik. Mind the Doors: Long Short Stories. Trans. and adapted by Bernard Meares, Andrew Bromfield, and the author. Context, 2001. 192 pp. $21.95.
Zinovy Zinik’s zanily comic portraits of Russian exiles who share a mordant sensitivity to cultural differences line this latest offering. The shock of displacement appears in strange guises, which the Russians may seldom overcome, for they cannot escape certain mocking reverberations of the Soviet past, echoes just beyond earshot, portending an ambiguous future. "A Pickled Nose" recounts the colorful tale of a louche artist’s prize protuberant organ, which attains notoriety at tasks quite beyond the ken of your average hooter, according to the testimony of one London pub anecdotalist. In "No Cause for Alarm," a linguist plagued by unaccountable stomach rumbling repeatedly sets off London security alarms hither and yon, to his discomfort and frequent peril. "Double Act in Soho" transforms a sad, middle-aged Russian’s desire for a beautiful young woman into a quest through Soho porn shops for an American video, only just avoiding falling victim to the shop-clerks’ mysterious purpose. In "The Notification," a curiously destitute émigré provides a hallucinatory account of his seduction by a protean Jerusalem enchantress, for whom he writes letters to relatives of fellow exiles, keeping the fiction of their abiding concern alive. Finally, the title story depicts how a subway car becomes a trap for another émigré returning to Moscow post-Glasnost, who achieves minor celebrity trying to avoid embarrassment before an audience whose feeling for his plight cannot be predicted. Whether eluding a threatening gang of shop clerks or pinioned by a posh raincoat in a subway door, Zinik’s hapless Pierrots misread the folly of their pursuits until they are involved past recovery. His fun at their expense is merciless. Unwitting marionettes in search of an evanescent liberty, always out of their depth, Zinik’s doomed Russians present the comic potential of the artless émigré who never quite escapes his past. [Michael Pinker]