‘No?’
‘But, for the moment, it is messy.’ He wrinkles his piggy nose at his misfortune.
‘Messy?’
‘Alas, I am up to my elbows in blood.’
I guess this is his colourful way of saying he has done some things he regrets.
‘So many bullets. So many lists. So many pits to be dug. So much quicklime. It’s Hell itself to organise.’
‘Yes?’
‘When you live with wolves, you must act like a wolf … Owww … Oww …’ He sticks out a pink tongue, looks upwards, as if addressing the moon, then commences to howl like a lonely wolf. It is not a good, realistic impression. Maybe he intends it just as a joke.
‘Yes?’
‘Yet, in my heart I am kind. My dog loves me. He worships the ground I walk upon. He is a Finnish Spitz called Tommi. I do not scare my children. Except when I mean to. My wife respects me. To my family I am gentle.’
‘Good,’ I say.
‘Some people cannot separate their work and their family.’
‘Yes?’
‘I knew a prosecutor in Leninstadt who would go home every night and interrogate his loved ones – often with electricity.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some can’t switch off, you see. They go home and arrest their relatives. I mention no names. Or throw their friends into prison. Or report their mother to the Secret Police. Or put their wife in a work camp. Before they know what’s hit them, they are kissing the lift attendant at work, and sleeping with their stenographer, and married to their job.’
‘Really?’
‘It is not that way with me.’
‘Good.’
‘No executions in my cellars,’ he smiles. ‘No show-trials in the bedroom,’ he grins. ‘No work camps in the kitchen.’
Then he lifts me off the ground, hugs the breath from me and plants a damp, hot, onion-and-spittle kiss on my forehead.
‘Together we will look after the Boss,’ he says, ‘now he is sickly, in his hour of need … We both know. His head is not right. So keep a close eye on Malarkov and Bruhah … Listen out. Tell me, if you hear anything odd. Or if they get up to anything suspicious …’
*
When Marshal Bruhah passes me in the corridor later that day, he hands me a small white envelope.
‘Here,’ he says, ‘I have a message from your father …’
‘Thank you, sir. Where is Papa?’
Bruhah holds a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh,’ he says, ‘Read.’
True enough, it is a note from Papa, but his writing looks large and shaky –
My Very Dearest Son Yuri
This is to let you know I am well and healthy.
Marshal Bruhah has me in his protection. He is a good, kind man who cares for our welfare.
Do whatever he asks of you, to the letter, and without hesitation, however strange his requests may seem.
Then everything may end happily.
Your ever loving Papa
‘Where can I find him?’ I ask. Something makes me feel uneasy.
‘Shhh.’ Bruhah looks around in alarm. ‘Walls have ears. It is a secret. But he is safe. He is nearby. He asked me to look after you.’
‘Yes?’ I say. ‘It’s just the note has no date.’
I think the Marshal senses my doubts, for he reaches into his jacket pocket and removes an object wrapped in a white, red-speckled handkerchief. He lays it on his open palm, and uncovers it.
‘There!’ he says. ‘Do you recognise these?’
‘Why, yes,’ I say, ‘they are Papa’s dentures.’
‘He asked me to show you.’
‘Why?’
‘As proof he is well, and with me.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask. There’s a liver-coloured glob stuck to the back molar, and a crimson smear.
‘Just a small piece of food,’ says Bruhah. ‘Or maybe he has a mouth ulcer.’
‘But how can he eat, without his dentures?’
‘Good point,’ Bruhah nods wisely. ‘I am going back to The Kapital shortly. I will return them to him immediately. So he can enjoy his supper.’
What can I do? I cannot call the Minister for Internal Security a liar. We are in his power, Papa and I.
But I feel most uneasy.
Papa is a very private, careful man. It is not like him to part from his dentures, or send them on errands ahead of him, in someone else’s pocket.
8. BRINGING UP BABY
The Boss likes to watch a film late every night with his close colleagues, and choicest enemies, before they all take dinner together.
Because he has been unwell, with high blood pressure, and does not care to travel, they show the movie on a portable projector in the large dining room here in the dacha, with the audience lounging on sofas, rather than at his personal kinema in the Palace of the People.
His projectionist, Ivan Sanchin, has come over, together with the Minister for Kinema, Ivan Bolshakov, to organise this entertainment.
‘Tell me, Comrade Minister,’ the Boss asks, smiling grim, with more teeth than warmth, like a krocodile, ‘what film do you have for our viewing tonight?’
The Minister is nervous to address the lofty sections of the Politburo. He wears a pinstripe suit, and has a starched collar that swallows his neck. His forehead glistens pink. Beads of sweat are descending his cheeks. He clears his throat, then coughs. ‘Tonight I have Yankee film …’
The collected Ministers hiss and boo. But this is just a mean sham – a pretence of loyalty to Slavic Film Making, because I already hear Deputy Malarkov whisper to Comrade Bulgirov –
‘Please let it be some Hollywood movie with busts and legs and swimsuits … not some home-grown bollocks about collective farming, or some Bulgarian cartoon shit about fairies …’
Anyway, everyone knows the Boss enjoys USA movies, especially Cowboy and Indian slaughters, Gangsters betraying each other, and shooting each other dead, especially James Cagney, and the Tarzan series about this wild man, and his animal friends in the jungle.
Minister Bolshakov coughs again nervously, then raises his shaky hand to calm the gathering. Beneath his arm, his jacket is darkened with a giant circle of sweat.
‘With great respect,’ he says, ‘this is film by distinguished director Comrade Howard Hawks, famous for gangster movie Scarface, cowboy film The Outlaw and detective movie The Big Sleep. But this movie is different. It is film about culture of Amerikan Life. It is called Bringing Up Baby.’
‘A documentary? About child-care?’ The Boss sounds peeved. He looks grim.
‘Not child-care. Not documentary,’ says Bolshakov, ‘but crazy, laugh-a-minute, wet-your-pants, screwball komedy. Showing the decadence and futility of Amerikan Life.’
They say the poor Minister has to spend his whole day learning about a movie before showing it to the Chairman. To make sure there are no naked-lady-parts, anti-Communistic propaganda, or rude appearances by the insufferable face of John Wayne.
‘Roll it, then,’ says the Boss, ‘and let’s hope it’s funny. And there’s no nudity. Because we are not running a brothel here … And Bolshakov, is the dialogue in English?’
‘Yes, Comrade Chairman.’
‘Then you’d better translate as we go along …’
Bolshakov coughs.
‘This is Palaeontologist. He has assembled an entire brontosaurus skeleton …
‘It is missing only one bone to make it complete …
‘The intercostal clavicle …
‘Now we see the same man, later this day. Now he is playing golfs …
‘Golfs is a popular, petit-bourgeois find-the-hole, ball-and-stick leisure-game …
‘You must push the white ball into the small tunnel …
‘The man who makes the fewest pokes is the winner …’
Lucky day for Bolshakov. He takes longer and longer pauses. He starts to trust the film to talk for itself.
It is funny. Man and woman argue. Woman steals man’s golfs ba
ll. Woman drives car into man’s car.
Soon most Ministers have laughed, one or more times. Out loud. Even the Boss has been seen to chuckle.
And most of the action is obvious, so you don’t need so much translation. Handsome man meets beautiful woman. Then they argue forever. Until, in the end, they get married. Then they can argue for life.
At first, the film presents a strong impression of life in the USA. It is sunny all day. There is no work. People are good-looking. Everyone has their own car, even women. Shops are full of foods and products. Meals are taken in expensive, glamorous restaurants. Men wear only suits. Women wear only fashionable dresses, and clank their jewellery.
But there are many small, Kapitalist, bourgeois mishaps along the way including two car crashes. Woman tears man’s jacket. Man tears woman’s dress, exposing her undergarments and bottom. When woman falls into a pond, the wet clothes stick tight to her body, particularly round the bumps and into the curves.
Bruhah applauds. Krushka whistles through his fingers.
Pet dog buries valuable, missing dinosaur bone. Woman has tame leopard as pet. It likes listening to music, in particular the popular song ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby’, but it gets exchanged with wild leopard that growls, bites and takes no interest in vernacular music.
This can happen because you take your leopard for a drive in the back seat of your motor car and it swaps places with an identical leopard escaped from a travelling circus, just passing through town.
I believe, for convenience, they get the same cat (of species Panthera pardus) with unchanged spots to play both leopards. They say he is very same well-connected, highly regarded cat actor that stars in the Tarzan movies.
At the end, the Boss stops chuckling, the lights go back on, and he gives a short speech.
He says that Bolshakov has chosen a very bad film for us to watch, but that he is forgiven because it is an educational, good-bad film that demonstrates the decadence of the West, and the parasitical life of the Amerikan rich.
In this film, he says, you don’t see a single person do a single job of work.
He says there is another strange thing. There are thirteen million black people in Amerika. But none in this movie.
‘Bolshakov …’ he barks, ‘who is this leading male actor?’
‘That is Cary Grant.’
‘Anyone notice anything remarkable and striking about this Cary Grant?’ the Boss enquires.
There is a long silence. No one wants to chance a wrong answer.
‘Here …’ says the Boss. ‘I give you a clue …’ He swivels sideways, to display his profile.
The painful silence continues. But I’ve guessed the solution.
‘Excuse the faulty opinions of a child without political insight, and with traumatic damage to the Frontal Lobes of his cortex …’ I pipe up, ‘but doesn’t this Cary Grant look a lot like you?’
There is sudden murmuring of muffled agreement.
‘Exactly,’ says the Boss. ‘He looks like me. But not so much like me as that other actor …’ He pauses to summon the name of his look-alike from the tip of his tongue.
‘Clark Gable,’ Bolshakov volunteers.
‘Exactly,’ the Boss clarifies the confusion, ‘Cary Grant does not resemble me so much as Clark Gable resembles me … in that film …’
‘It Happened One Night,’ Bolshakov announces.
‘Exactly,’ says the Boss. ‘In the kinematographically significant, culturally memorable, anthropologically important, politically enlightening film It Happened One Night, Clark Gable has a moustache and smokes a pipe. People have remarked it is hard to tell him apart from Chairman Iron-Man.’
There is applause. For the film, for the Boss’s observations, for his similarity to Clark Gable.
And on that happy note, the company takes itself to supper in the large dining room.
I think of Papa. And I trust he is reunited with his teeth. So he too can enjoy a good supper.
*
Now comes the time for me to work. But no one tells me to stay. No one tells me where to go. No one notices I’m even there.
I’m the invisible taster. Standing between the Boss and poison, the General Secretary and Death.
There is a long table down the middle of the room, laid with a white cloth, candlesticks, china plates, crystal glasses and fancy cutlery.
The side table is stacked with steaming salvers, platters of fish, joints of meat, baskets of breads, boards of cheese, bowls of cooked vegetables.
First off, to break the ice, the gathering plays a game of guess-the-temperature. The Boss holds a mercury thermometer. And everyone must give their estimate.
Krushka guesses wrong by six degrees centigrade and has to drink six glasses of vodka. Bruhah is out by two and has to down a couple of glasses.
Bulgirov gets the temperature exactly right. And, as a punishment for acting superior and being too clever by half, he is made to drink seven glasses, then to crawl all round the dinner table, on his hands and knees, braying like a donkey.
Then they take the soup course. There is borscht or a wild mushroom pottage. The Boss takes a bowl of each, then pours one into the other, to mix them, then crumbles in some bread, to thicken the mix, then spoons it avidly into his mouth.
I take first sip. I cannot claim it is a happy marriage. The purple spiciness and the mushroom earthiness are not a good mix and don’t taste like friends.
For a small man, he has a large presence and a big appetite.
There is Georgian wine to drink, which the Boss calls fruit juice because it is not so strong as some other wines, so you can drink whole bottles of it, to wash down the vodka, before getting slurred and falling over.
After the soup there is folk dancing. The Boss selects someone who must then dance around the table for the others. Malarkov is chosen to do the Troika, which means he must jump high in the air and, with his arms outstretched, put the soles of his feet together, so his limbs form a diamond. Ideally he must hover in mid-air, a metre above the ground.
But because he is fat and over seventy, and breathes very heavily while sweating a lot, and is crimson-faced, and cannot launch his feet more than five centimetres off the ground, his attempt does not present itself as athletic or graceful.
So, the Boss observes, ‘Sit down, you’re a disgrace, you tub of lard,’ and instead gets Krushka to dance the Kalinka.
And I have to say that for a big, heavy man, he swivels delicately with his hands on his hips, and wiggles his ample wobbly bottom, does mincing, backward steps with great precision, and swirls like a ballerina, and everyone whistles and claps in time, so the Boss lets him carry on for ten minutes, or more, till the sweat is rolling down his crimson face in rivulets, till you see the Deputy’s eyes pleading to be allowed to stop. But, as Comrade Krushka told me earlier, when the Boss says ‘Jump’, you ask ‘How high?’
Then there is great hilarity because Malarkov, who is wearing a spotless white naval suit, has sat down on several over-ripe tomatoes that some villain has placed on his chair, so he now sports a damp red bottom, like a baboon in heat.
So the Boss insists Malarkov takes off his trousers so a member of the household staff can take them away and clean them. But you can see from his face and manner that Malarkov was much happier as he was before, wearing trousers like everyone else, without exposing his underwear and naked knees and shin-garters holding up his sulphur-yellow socks.
Then they take the fish course. There are pickled herrings, pike baked in a salt crust, and grilled perch with a green-herb sauce.
A lot of wine and vodka has been drunk. The talk is loud, but their speech not as clear as before, now everyone’s tongue has loosened.
It’s then that the Boss tells an interesting story how he ran twenty kilometres through the snow as a child in bare feet, before swimming across a freezing lake, then shooting twelve mallards with his catapult. Truly, the Kind Uncle is the Man of Iron.
Then eve
ryone applauds. Then guests get their chance to sing a song for the others.
Malarkov sings ‘Smuglianka – Death to Fascism, Freedom to the People’. Bulgirov gives us ‘Cossacks Never Say Die’, while Krushka sings a peace-time song, with lively hand and tongue gestures, called ‘Olga’s Tits’.
*
Comrade Dikoy has been watching from the corner of the table. He appears tonight not as a double for the General Secretary but as guest, actor and celebrity. It is rumoured that the Iron-Man is a great admirer of his work and will have no one else take his part in films.
But now the leading double appears without a Marshal’s uniform, and shorn of his stage-moustache, and paste-on sideburns, with his lank, curly hair flopping over his brow, rather than combed back over his crown, and wearing a leather jacket and a beret. He has a more bohemian look and barely resembles the Great Father now.
Although he hasn’t touched any food, he has a large array of glasses in front of him, and frequently refills his tumbler with vodka, which he then dilutes with German schnapps.
His eyes are piercing embers. His voice is slurred.
‘Look at them …’ he leans over and whispers, his boozy breath hot into my ear. ‘The leaders of the Socialist World.’ He points to them in turn. ‘The one who murdered the peasants … The one who murdered the Revolution … The one who murdered all his friends and family … And the one who picks women off the street, fucks them, strangles them, then buries them in his garden.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘Which?’ I didn’t know.
‘Suppose you got all the most ambitious and ruthless men in the nation, and locked them in a room together, and called it, say, the Communist Party Congress of 1945, and left them alone to quietly, calmly murder each other …’
‘Yes?’
‘That’s who you have left, when all the head-butting, kicking, eye-gouging, cannibalism, ear-chewing and back-stabbings have reduced their number to five …’
‘Oh …’ I say.
‘So,’ he asks, ‘who will be next?’
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