I can't tell you how surprised I am to find you literate. How did war let you learn? I saw soldiers shoot their horses and use the corpses as shields from enemy fire, beautiful horses those soldiers loved as much as their mothers. I saw guards slide back doors on a cattle car and standing corpses tumble out like pylons which shattered into arms and legs when they hit the hardened mud. Es gibt nur platz zur stehen, the soldier laughed. I made love to the Italian journalist, Curzio, last night. He refused to tell me his surname. It's a fake, he said. Curzio still took the time for regret, and the eastern front only ten miles away! It takes something smaller than a spark to amaze me now. His fiat buzzed among burnt-out tanks that reminded me of dead horseflies on the radiator. We parked under trees lit up by search flares. Rain flashed by outside. He whispered: There's no time for phony names, Maria, or words, or even the wrong letters. Tell me, Thomas, can anyone be literate? Yet I continue to write... Tom met Maryann ten thousand feet above sea level. His third or fourth sentence to her went: Why? Well, you can blame it on After her requisite incomprehension and after flagging down the KLM stewardess for two more of the same Tom told her that Mumbo - real name improbable - reigned as Vancouver's bellyflopping champion. Ask any bellyflopper in Seattle; they shake like twigs at the mention of his name. Mumbo was instrumental in getting Tom to Russia - Mumbo, who had raised more than motes of dust while demonstrating his award-winning form on Larry's couch. He paused, arms spread-eagled, on a stool above Larry's impact-resistant furniture, then dropped like megatons or more. Vases rattled; Larry's piano hummed dischords to itself; a teevee documentary showing Yeltsin atop a tank - fist raised - fuzzed and blinked. Larry and Fran tilted their heads so far back with laughing their necks looked busted. That's when I delivered my speech, Tom told Maryann. He took his fill of the years-old footage of Yeltsin and stood up, Mumbo trying to extricate himself from the quicksand of cushions. Tom apologized: Larry, Fran... Mumbo. This isn't enough. sorry. Please don't blame yourselves but, he pointed at Mumbo's bulbous mouth - lips as if collagen-inflated - this isn't enough. I need more lawlessness. I need a vacation from this... he pointed more emphatically at Mumbo, ...this kind of fate. Tom rubbed his forehead with one finger, like a pencil eraser coming across indelible ink. I'm fired of the same old physical laws and possibilities. All three looked worriedly at their friend. On the threshold he mumbled: Nice to have met you That's why? asked Maryann. Tom nodded, hailing big drinks. Because Tom did not request the background to her trip, Maryann just blurted the information: I'm going because my father died in Russia. I want to see his, our, country. The communists killed him and other dissenters in prison. No shit? Tom rebounded off the rim of his caesar. So my mother's story goes. I was too young to remember. She gave me nightmares talking about him. Russia, Ukraine, Roumania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the rest all featured in her bad dreams; since childhood, her father's nemesis Ivan dominated part of her atlas. Maybe trip will finally help me get over my bogeyman. Nothing like the real thing to cure an overactive imagination. And that sentence dispensed all the wisdom Tom owned. On the Amsterdam layover Tom reclined on fake leather, mirages from jet lag playing behind his tinted wayfarers. Maryann threw a silver object into his lap and he lifted the sunglasses to look at it. I'm sitting down, over there, she pointed. Tom examined the trinket - a four-inch skeleton with working joints and a pin soldered to its back. Sterling silver right in the ass, she complained, rubbing. …