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Page 3 · column 2 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
Smolensky Square across from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the new McDonald’s.
The old Arbat Street, a name of Mongol origin, was celebrating its 500th birthday. It had been cleaned up since my last visit, indicating that someone, at least, was in charge of the sidewalk traffic of Moscow. A plague of vendors, drug dealers and trash had afflicted the historic old Arbat and it looked like it been temporarily put into recession.
I entered the Arbat from a connecting side alley that took me past the composer Scriabin’s house and joined a crowd of people who were looking at some street entertainment. This turned out to be an “Iron Man” act.
A bare chested, muscular blond man in his forties with pink Aladdinlike pantaloons was jumping up and down on shards of glass in his bare feet.
Not overly impressed, I started to leave when he brought out a bunch of kitchen knives. He walked over to an onlooker and recruited him to drop the knives onto a pine plank to demonstrate their sharp tips. He then asked the man to hold the same knives as high as he could and drop them onto his stomach.
The knives landed three in a row on his stomach bouncing off as if they had just hit a rubber band.
This Russian “Iron Man” earned his keep in the next act. He proceeded in rapid succession to drink five pint size glasses of kerosene, walk on his hands a bit afterward to settle it in, and then lit a small kerosene-soaked rag torch, From a storage reservoir in his gullet he spewed out a fine kerosene spray onto the torch, turning himself into a human carburetor, and fuel tank at once. “Iron Man” has apparently revealed the secrets of the human fire dragons of magic lore.
At least 10 times a plume of fire came from his mouth until he emptied his fuel-injected stomach. “Iron Man” had transformed himself into a Molotov cocktail, an apt metaphor for Russia today.
I heard the blaring sound of rock music coming from a side street which turned out to be a mini concert in an abandoned dirt lot--probably a party for the 500th birthday celebration. I walk back to the main Arbat at the end of which there again was a police line blocking my way.
“How do I get through?” I asked an officer.
“Over there behind the ministry building,” he said.
“Yes, but I’ve heared that before. Isn’t there a ring around the whole area?” No. He promised I could get through.
He was right. I came through the alley behind the ministry that led onto Smolensky Square. There was the other end of the police line to my right and the Belgrade hotel straight ahead. Police and auxiliary troops formed a right angle across the Gar
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