Matryona has pressed an ear to the door, and to the connecting wall in the adjacent room but can hear no movement. I am waiting in the corridor to be invited in to taste his breakfast. My belly has started rumbling, for the Boss’s breakfast is my breakfast. But I can’t start without him.
None of the guards can risk disturbing him. The General Secretary expressly forbids it. He has told his contingent of guards he will shoot anyone who enters his room without an invitation. He is a man of his word. And he recently disposed of his secretary and bodyguard after they had given him twenty years’ loyal service.
All afternoon, we are gathered in the corridor – Matryona, myself, two guards outside the door, and a further two at the entrance to the garden, a maid, and Pavel, the Boss’s new secretary.
Other staff come and go. They press ears to the door and walls. They strain to hear. They shake their heads. They shrug. There are no signs, clues or indications.
At three o’clock the four members of the guard grow bold and draw lots. The plan is simple. Whoever draws the shortest match will ring the Leader’s room from the telephone in the main hall. Everyone has access to that phone. It will not draw suspicion on the guards. The caller will hang up as soon as there is any answer. The other three are sworn to secrecy. All will deny making the call.
If pressed, they will swear it was Dmitry the chauffeur. He is a surly and uncomradely individual. He is not married. He has no children. If it comes to the worst, and he has to be sacrificed for the good of all, he will not be so missed as any of the others.
Outside the Comrade’s room, we can hear the call. The phone rings loud inside. It rings on and on. But no one answers.
Although the Comrade is rust-proof, a Man of Steel, invincible and well-nigh immortal, those gathered outside his door look concerned.
We are very worried for him. We worry for ourselves if anything bad should happen to him. There is trouble if we do nothing. There is trouble if we do anything. Only the Leader’s quick temper, and readiness to punish, prevents us all from forcing an entry.
The afternoon shadows lengthen. The guard changes, having served their day’s stint. The floodlights are turned on outside. We hear the staff bus scatter the gravel as it turns to take the day shift back to The Kapital.
At ten o’clock, as every night, the last package of mail arrives from the Palace of the People. This carries important documents and details matters of immediate concern.
The Boss always insists that this postal delivery is brought into him, without ceremony or delay, whatever he is doing.
Now, at last – twelve hours after our first concern – we have permission. It’s safe to go in.
Lakoba, Captain of the Guard, orders Solitov in to deliver the package of mail.
The door is unlocked and swings open. From the doorway, I can see the Boss sprawled out on the parquet floor.
He is lying in a pool of liquid. It must be his own pee. He is wearing a white vest and long woollen underpants. There’s a copy of The Daily Truth at his side.
I see his watch lies besides him, the glass broken. It reads 6.30.
He raises his right hand.
‘Dzz …’ he says. ‘Dzz …’
The Boss looks red in the face, going on purple around the lips, dazed and very angry.
Matryona announces that his skin is very cold to the touch. He is in some kind of stupor. He cannot talk clearly. His eyes do not focus. It’s an easy guess. He’s had another stroke.
Tomsky the guard and Matryona lift him up and carry him to the sofa, next door, in the small dining room. It is warmer there and there is more space and fresher air.
Lakoba tells Solitov to ring the Ministry of State Security.
When they get Yubiov, the Minister, on the line he says they must ring Bruhah and Malarkov and take their orders from them.
They ring Malarkov. He says, ‘Do nothing.’ He will ring them back.
Half an hour later Malarkov rings back. He tells them he cannot get hold of Bruhah. But he tells them to stand by the phone, and wait for further instructions.
Half an hour later, Bruhah rings.
‘Don’t tell anyone the Boss is ill,’ he says. ‘I will be there shortly, to see for myself.’
At three in the morning, Bruhah arrives with Malarkov. They go in to see the Boss lying on the sofa in the dining room. Malarkov looks terrified. He pauses to take off his squeaking boots, and carries them under his arm, so as not to disturb the Boss. But Bruhah looks relaxed and cheerful.
‘Ah,’ says Bruhah, gazing down on Comrade Iron-Man, ‘what’s the panic? Can’t you see the Comrade is taking a nap? He is sleeping peacefully. He must be very tired …’
Then Bruhah and Malarkov turn about and are gone.
Nobody knows what to do. The guard daren’t defy Bruhah. It’s not their task to make the decisions.
At eight o’clock Krushka appears, looking sheepish. He doesn’t go in to see the Boss but, hearing he’s poorly, orders us to call in the doctors.
And not before time, because Comrade Iron-Man has been lying there without medical help for more than a day.
*
It takes thirty-three minutes for Modern Medicine to arrive and, when it finally comes, it comes loud and in force, with sirens, bells and flashing lights, in a convoy of vans, ambulances and cars, spilling out a crowd of doctors and nurses. They are neatly labelled by their lapel badges as Cardiologists, Anaesthetists, Thoracic Surgeons, Neurologists, Ear-Nose-and-Throat Specialists, Ophthalmologists. In their wake come technicians pushing mobile x-ray machines and life support systems.
The doctors crowd the room. But they are strangely hesitant. No one seems to want to lay the first finger on the sick man.
‘Please, Comrade Professor, will you make the initial examination?’
‘Please, Comrade Colleague, I believe a Cardiologist should examine first …’
‘No, observe the Petrov Reflex. Surely, a Neurologist is needed here …’
Then the heavyweights spy a junior dentist, lurking at the door, and order him to chance his arm by making the first incursion.
He’s told to remove the patient’s false teeth to free the airwaves. But his hands are shaking so violently he spills the dentures on the floor, then stamps on them by mistake, sending pink and white splinters of mastic cascading across the tiles.
Professor Luvetsky comes forward. He says they must take off the patient’s shirt and measure his blood pressure. They cut the clothes away with scissors.
The pulse is 78 beats per minute but faint. The blood pressure is 190 over 110. His right side seems paralysed. They agree he’s had a catastrophic stroke from a bleed in the left hemisphere.
He is given a 10 per cent solution of magnesium sulphate, and a camphor injection. They place four leeches behind each of his ears.
An hour later they apply a kaolin poultice to his neck, and increase the dose of leeches to six on each side. But it is still not enough to restore the Great Man.
Bruhah and Malarkov let it be known that the doctors must first clear any further medical procedures with them.
The doctors advise that the General Secretary is dying of a massive stroke. It is a matter of days not weeks.
*
I have not been allowed close. I’m watching it all from a distance, in the corridor. But I can’t help thinking that events are following a curious course.
The Boss is seriously ill but they have left him a day before calling for any medical treatment.
Bruhah has taken it upon himself to instruct everyone in their tasks – including even Krushka, Bulgirov and Malarkov.
Isakov, who was one of the dacha guards, has become Bruhah’s confidential shadow, padding behind him everywhere, taking his orders, and bossing his former colleagues, as if suddenly promoted.
While the doctors are struggling to save the General Secretary’s life, Bruhah and two of his assistants from Internal Affairs are clearing the Boss’s office, examining every single sh
eet of paper. Shredding some and filing others. You sense they are looking for something particular.
All this serves to remind me of the Boss’s final letter. The one he calls his last testament. And I wonder again where I left it. For now would be the time to produce it. I don’t want to conceal it. But I don’t want to admit I have lost it.
Bruhah’s chauffeur collects the boxes of papers and returns at hourly intervals for the next load.
Meanwhile Bruhah is interviewing the dacha guards and reassigning them to new duties, posting them out in distant directions, far away from The Kapital. As if they won’t be needed here any more.
Lakoba asks to stay at the dacha, near the family home, since his wife is about to deliver their baby. But he is offered a choice of ‘here’ – Bruhah stamps the ground – or a transfer to Minsk. So he opts for Minsk, instead of burial, without further argument.
The Boss is still alive but already his household is being disbanded while he lies on his sickbed.
People don’t expect him to live.
*
Bruhah is in a wildly excitable state. He is exhilarated by the Boss’s sickness, then fearful at any flickering sign of recovery.
When Comrade Iron-Man shows any fleeting sign of returning strength – opening his eyes, muttering in his stupor, turning his head towards visitors – Bruhah fawns upon him, kneeling by the bedside, kissing his hand, coaxing him – ‘Dear Comrade Secretary, promise us, you will never leave us …’
But, as long as the Boss lies silent, failing in his coma, Bruhah looks to him with contempt and speaks to him with condescension – ‘Koba, make up your mind. What are you doing in life? Are you coming or going?’
*
And, to pass the time, he starts telling him jokes –
It is an international athletics competition. A Slav runner is talking to other competitors – an Amerikan, a Romanian, a German and a Swiss.
‘Excuse me,’ the Swiss asks, ‘but what is your opinion of the current meat shortage?’
But everyone frowns. They shake their heads in confusion. For no one understands the question.
The Amerikan says, ‘What’s a “shortage”?’
The German says, ‘What is “excuse me”?’
The Romanian says, What is “meat”?’
And the Slav says, ‘What is “opinion”?’
‘Here is another one, Koba.’ Bruhah taps the Comrade’s shoulder. ’A joke about you …’
Early in the morning, Comrade Iron-Man arrives at his office and opens his window. He sees the sun and says, ‘Good morning, dear Sun!’
The sun replies, ‘Good morning, dear Josef!’
The Comrade works, and then at noon he heads to the window and says, ‘Good afternoon, dear Sun!’
The sun replies, ‘Good afternoon, dear Josef!’
In the evening, the General Secretary calls it a day, and heads once more to the window, and says, ‘Good evening, dear Sun!’
But the sun has fallen silent now. So Comrade Iron-Man says again, ‘Good evening, dear Sun! What’s the matter with you?’
And the sun says, ‘You can go kiss my arse, shorty. I’m in the West now.’
‘What do you think, Koba?’ Bruhah stabs the chest of the comatose General Secretary. ‘I hear people tell it on the streets. Good joke, or bad?’
*
But there’s a stranger turn of events than that.
Yubiov, Minister of State Security, has used his initiative.
Without consulting Bruhah or Krushka, he has searched out the very top doctors in the land – those that had treated Comrade Iron-Man in the past. He tracks them down to the cells of The Freedom and Peace Prison.
He finds they are being held by his Ministry, and being interviewed, under duress and with menaces, in order that they will confess to their conspiracy – to murder the leaders of the State.
Yubiov has them released, now he needs them all of a sudden, to treat the General Secretary.
They have been washed down, tidied up, bandaged over, fed, clothed and comforted, but they look a sorry, demoralised bunch. You sense that their hearts aren’t in the task of saving their tormentor, and their capacities are diminished.
It’s chilling to see them. They have suffered for their profession as doctors. They treated the Boss. And so did Papa.
Our nation’s leading Neurologist has lost his front teeth, upper and lower. The lenses of his spectacles are cracked, blurring his vision. He has developed the kind of rapid facial tick he used to treat in others. He has taken to squealing quietly to himself, under his breath, every few seconds, as if he’s impersonating a terrified mouse.
The Professor of Cardiac Surgery has a black, paddle-shaped left hand. For all the fingers have been crushed and flattened with a hammer. One of his eyes is closed completely, swollen purple like a plump ripe plum, so it looks as if he’s engaged in a monstrous, playful wink. Both his arms jerk. He is unsteady on his feet.
The ear-nose-and-throat specialist has fared worse than the other two. He arrives on a stretcher, lain on a gurney, bandaged in white crepe, from neck to thigh, with an oxygen mask taped to his black and purple face Although he cannot actively examine the patient himself, it is thought he may be able to contribute to the general discussion and make some useful observations lying down, in his wide-awake moments.
The two walking wounded examine the patient as best they can. They do not seem optimistic when Bruhah challenges them.
‘Which of you,’ he demands, ‘will guarantee the life of Comrade Iron-Man?’
‘He is dying,’ says the Cardiologist. ‘It’s too late. There’s a massive bleed in his brain. It’s been left too long. There’s no saving him. But …’
‘But what?’ barks Bruhah.
‘He is coughing up blood.’
‘So?’
‘He is suffering a severe stomach haemorrhage.’
‘Well?’
‘This does not indicate a stroke as primary cause. It indicates that something else caused the bleeding – in both the stomach and brain.’
‘Yes?’
‘It indicates poisoning.’
‘Poisoning?’
‘From a blood-thinning agent … Like Warfarin, say …’
‘Surely,’ Bruhah glares, ‘you must be mistaken.’
‘And now he is drowning, slowly.’
‘Drowning?’ asks Bruhah.
‘In his own blood – collecting in his lungs.’
*
If appearances are anything to go by, this drowning in your own blood is a very unpleasant and slow way to die. From the doorway, I watch the Iron-Man’s face undergo grotesque gurning, while he mutters and whimpers.
At intervals he seems to briefly recover consciousness. Then he casts evil, threatening looks on those around him.
Once he lifts his hand and points one digit upwards. But we do not understand. If it is a profound gesture. To the heavens. Or an earthly observation, showing us all the finger.
*
The next morning, I duck under the outstretched arm of a guard and get into the treatment room. I’ve decided to see it all for myself, close up.
You’d never guess.
It’s unbelievable. But true.
Honestly. Trust me.
The patient, the man on the gurney, is not Comrade Iron-Man.
Anyone should be able to see.
He is younger, at least seven centimetres taller. With different, fleshy ears. And deeper scars on his face. His unwebbed feet, with unfused toes, reach the steel bar at the end of the trolley.
I can see the patient’s profile clearly.
Then I burst into tears.
For I see the features of my good-friend Felix. Poor, dear Felix. Conjurer, joker, discoverer of eggs in strangers’ ears.
His face is frozen, and oddly reddened.
‘He is close to the end,’ I hear a nurse whisper.
‘He looks so different …’ says the red-eyed, blotchy-faced, straggly-haired
, sniffy lady at the foot of the trolley, smearing the tears on her powdered cheek with the back of her gloved hand. ‘So strange. Unrecognisable. Like a different man. Older yet younger … And, when he looks at me, it’s as if he just doesn’t know me …’
We know she is Nadezhda, the Boss’s daughter, summoned to her Papa’s bedside, before it is too late.
The twitchy man by her side with the glazed eyes is Viktor, the Boss’s son. He is unsteady. He sways forward and back, muttering in slurred undertones, ‘You’ve killed him, you bastards … You evil, fucking, murderous bastards …’
Everyone knows Viktor. He’s a man of dark moods, and drunk as usual – even called to his father’s deathbed.
He fears his father will interrogate him on his job as Air Force Commander of the Kapital Military District. He fears difficult questions, and so comes armed with files of correspondence, figures and weather maps.
I won’t disturb the Great Man’s children by telling them directly what they should see for themselves. But they need to be told. The world needs to know. The truth must be told. There’s some awful mistake at work here.
*
Then the sick man takes his last rasping breath, and turns the final corner – to become the dead man. And someone says it –
‘He’s gone.’
Then wails go up, overlaid by gasps, whimpers, blubbers and murmurs.
The gathering laments the Iron-Man’s passing.
Myself, I weep for a better man. I cry for Felix.
By some unwritten rule, those gathered form a line behind the son and the daughter. And take their turn to kiss the dead man, some on his cheeks, some on his forehead and some on his hand.
Bruhah bustles in front of the other grandees, to be the first amongst equals.
I turn from the doorway and walk to Krushka who is standing beside Malarkov, whispering to his ear.
‘Uncle Nikita,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t worry yourself. There’s some terrible mistake. That’s not the Boss on the gurney.’
‘Shhh,’ he whispers. He frowns. He looks around in alarm.
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