Last Call for Blackford Oakes Read Online Free

living in Moscow. Now, a year later, they had finally received the necessary permission to marry. Rufina would soon be leaving her roommate.
    â€œYou have never told me, Ursina, why you prefer to read books in English.” They were having tea, late in the afternoon, before going together to the ballet.
    â€œRufina, dear, there are lots of things I haven’t told you. For instance, I am not going to give you the details on the patients I treated this morning.”
    â€œI don’t want any such details. Well, maybe I would like to hear about some of them. Have they discovered a cure for erectile dysfunction?”
    â€œYes, but they won’t publish it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThe Cold War. Why do you ask?”
    â€œWhat does erectile dysfunction have to do with the Cold War?”
    â€œAh, Rufina, you are so naïve.”
    â€œMe? I remind you I am affiliated with the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute.”
    â€œWhat do they know about the effects of erectile dysfunction?”
    Rufina looked pained. She often did when conversing with Ursina. “The Institute is engaged in important research projects that touch down very heavily on the behavior of the bourgeois world.”
    â€œDoes your Institute predict the birth rate in the enemy nations?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell, can you not figure it out? The birth rate, which is a national concern, is influenced by erectile health.”
    Rufina decided not to play along. Ursina liked to tease, but she could carry it on longer than Rufina, sometimes, was inclined to do. So, “Never mind, Ursina, never mind. Are all your patients men?”
    â€œMost of them. I have some female patients.”
    â€œWhat is their trouble?”
    â€œTheir lovers’ erectile dysfunctions.”
    â€œOh shut up, Ursina. I don’t think I will encourage you to meet my fiancé. He is too delicate.”
    Ursina laughed. “Too delicate to do what? To work?”
    â€œHe does not … work, in the sense you are using the word. He does teach one seminar. Apart from that he is, well, retired.”
    â€œRetired from what? From work?”
    â€œYou have a way of twisting things around. Anyway, Andrei Fyodorovich doesn’t talk about his former work.”
    â€œOh, he too was a urologist?”
    Rufina noisily closed her book. “Get back to the question I asked you. Why do you like reading in English?”
    â€œBecause Mark Twain does not read convincingly in Russian.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œâ€˜Dey’s two gals flyin’ ’bout you in yo’ life. One uv ’em’s light en t’other one is dark. One is rich en t’other is po’. You’s gwyne to marry de po’ one fust en de rich one by en by.’ Is that enough for you, Rufina? Or shall I read more from Tom Sawyer? ”
    Rufina raised her hand in surrender. “Surely some Russian has tried translating Twain?”
    â€œYes. Dina Volokhonsky tried, and she failed. Maybe your Andrei will try his hand at translating Mark Twain?”
    â€œI know of course that Mark Twain was an eloquent historian of the depravity of the American South.” Rufina, the economist, thought something serious and productive should be said in this conversation with Ursina.
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œThat is correct, isn’t it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow is it incorrect?”
    â€œMark Twain simply recorded what life was like. He was a portraitist, not an ideologue.”
    â€œArtists, we are amply informed, need to serve the truth.”
    â€œMark Twain did that.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œHe spoke about young Negro Americans, and all of America listened, and learned.”
    â€œYou can hardly say that. Mark Twain was when?”
    â€œ1835 to 1910.”
    â€œThey did not have civil rights until … until they felt the pressure from us to treat people equally.”
    â€œYes. Yes. They