Silver Lining IN SEARCH OF MELANCHOLY BABY by Vassily Aksyonov Translated by Michael Henry Heim and Antonina W. Bouis Random House; 227 pages; $15.95

By Donald Morrison

Midnight in Moscow, and Vassily Aksyonov, like many young Soviets in the 1950s, would find himself in some dark cellar listening to American jazz from pirated records cut on used X-ray plates. "Jazz on Bones," he and his friends called that marriage of music and medicine. "From the moment I heard a recording of Melancholy Baby . . ." he recalls, "I couldn't get enough of the revelation coming to me through the shadows of ribs and alveoli, namely, that 'every cloud must have a silver lining.' "

Aksyonov knew from clouds. His father, a Communist Party official, and his mother, a distinguished historian, spent nearly two decades in labor camps and Siberian exile during the Stalin years. He was raised in provincial Kazan by an aunt, completed medical school in Leningrad and became a popular though officially censured novelist. The Burn, his fictional account of Stalin-era Siberia, was published abroad in 1980. For that offense he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship while traveling in the U.S. and found himself stranded there.

That cloud, at least, turns out to be silver-lined. In this entertaining account of his Americanization, Aksyonov finds a country as exasperating as his own. His life becomes a feast of surprises, like TV newscasts with little real news but lots of murder, unemployment and homelessness, just like the Soviet press carries about the U.S. The solipsism of American novelists distresses him, as do the squalor of the South Bronx, the smell of popcorn in movie theaters and the fondness of Washington politicians for jogging. "Public figures are not to be seen running through the streets of Moscow with their trousers off," he notes disapprovingly.

At the same time, Aksyonov discovers heroic all-beef patties (gamburgery, as Russians call them) and college students who tackle his Soviet-literature courses with gusto, as well as enough fellow immigrants so that he never has to feel insecure about his English. The transplanted jazz fan is disappointed to learn that his beloved music has been shouldered out of the marketplace by rock. But he gains a grudging, un-Marxist respect for the market itself. "The sad fact," he writes, "is that the human race has failed to invent a system of economic relations more natural than money." He even comes to appreciate American football and shows a visiting Soviet the televised carnage. Says the awestruck guest: "A country that plays this game is invincible!"

Aksyonov is sometimes a bit too fascinated with subjects Americans take for granted, like big cars, surly bureaucrats and the "notorious checked trousers and flower-laden hats" of the elderly. Nonetheless, the message of Melancholy Baby is reassuring: America is still the immigrant's silver lining, tarnished by its blandness but ennobled by its generosity. "I see more than the bright windows of my new home," Aksyonov concludes. "I see its mildewed corners as well. I trust that if I point them out my new country won't throw me out." Not to worry. America tends to welcome its satirists, even smother them with ^ affection. In fact, the danger for Aksyonov is that, like sharp-minded emigres before him, he will become so fond of the place that his criticism will lose its bite.