I pick up the last book and open it. It’s a long poem about His Majesty’s childhood. The poet Syrkov already wrote about His youth and adulthood a long time ago. An elegant publication: expensive calfskin binding, gold lettering, pink page edges, thick white paper, and a bookmark of blue silk. On the half-title there’s a lively portrait of the poet: a bit gloomy, gray-haired, stooped. He’s at the seashore, gazing out toward the horizon; the ocean waves crash and crash, crash and crash against the rock where he stands. He somehow resembles an eagle owl, and seems deeply immersed in himself.
“An extraordinary, spiritually uplifting poem, Sir Oprichnik,” says the peddler in a businesslike voice. “Such a vivid portrait of His Majesty, such lively language…”
I read:
How you ran, so alive and so cheerful,
How you played in the river and sand,
How you traveled to school, never tearful,
How you whispered, “my dear, native land,”
How you strove to be honest and steady,
How you learned about freedom from birds,
How your answers were swift, always ready,
How you tugged on the braids of the girls,
How athletic you grew, and how stubborn,
How you wanted to know all apace,
How you loved your sweet good-hearted mother,
How your father you walked to the gates,
How you ran with the dogs ’cross the valleys
How you studied the crops and the sod,
How in winter’s grim blizzards you rallied,
How by spring you maneuvered the yacht,
How you learned to fly huge helicopters,
How you crafted your own paper kite,
How you galloped on fleet-footed Topper,
How whole poems in Chinese you’d recite,
How you penned your calligraphy ably,
How at dawn you would shoot at the range,
How you copied the character “guo jia,”1
How with Father you flew a small plane,
How your Motherland swiftly awakened,
How dear Russia in you did resound,
How by Nature your spirit was shapen,
How abruptly your own time came ’round.
Well, not bad. A bit overly emotional, as always with Syrkov, but on the other hand—quite vivid. The peddler is right. I’ll buy the book, read it, and then give it to Posokha, so he reads this poem instead of that obscene Secret Tales.
“How much?” I ask.
“For everyone else, three rubles, but for Sir Oprichnik, two and a half.”
Not cheap. But then it would be a sin to scrimp on His Majesty’s life story. I hand over the money. The peddler accepts it with a bow. Sticking the book in my pocket, I get into the Mercedov.
And step on the gas.
“Putting out stars is harder than mixing honey and water,” our Batya likes to say. And it’s true. Nonetheless, it’s an important affair, an affair of state. But skill is needed, a special approach. In a word, it’s an “intelligent” affair. And intelligent hands are needed. You have to invent or fabricate something every time. It’s nothing like burning down Zemsky mansions.
Therefore, I head back for the center of town again. I drive along crowded Yakimanka, again in the red lane. I drive onto the Great Stone Bridge. The sun has peeked out from behind the winter clouds, illuminating the Kremlin. And it is shining. How marvelous that for the last twelve years its walls have been painted white. And instead of those demonic pentacles on the Kremlin towers the state’s two-headed eagles shine gold.
The Kremlin is glorious in clear weather! It glows. The Palace of the Russian Government blinds the eyes, it takes your breath away. The Kremlin walls and towers sparkle like white lumps of sugar, the cupolas reflect the sun tinsel gold, the Ladder of Paradise bell tower of Ioann Lestvichnik rises in the air like an arrow. Blue-tinted firs surround it like stern guards, and Russia’s flag flies proud and free. Here, just over the crenellated, blindingly white, stone walls, is the heart of the Russian land, the throne of our state, the core and hub of Mother Russia. There’s nothing shameful in laying down your life for the sugary white Kremlin and its towers, the majestic eagles, the flag, the relics of Russia’s rulers reposing in the Cathedral of the Archangel, Riurik’s sword, the crown of Monomakh, the Tsar-Pushka cannon, the Tsar-Kolokol bell tower, the pavestones of Red Square, for Uspensky Cathedral or the Kremlin towers. And there’s no shame in laying down a second life—for His Majesty.
Tears well up in my eyes…
I turn on to Vozdvizhenka Street. My mobilov pesters me with three cracks of the whip: it’s the captain of the Good Fellows, reporting that they’ve got everything ready for the extinguishing. But he wants to clarify details, elucidate, sort out, brainstorm, go over things. He’s not sure of himself, that’s obvious. That’s why I’m coming to see you, you dimwit! Young Count Ukhov from the Inner Circle runs this show, and the order answers directly to His Majesty. Their full name is the Fellowship of Russian Good Fellows for Good. They’re young blades, zealous, upright, but they need supervision, because their leadership went awry from the very beginning—no luck with brainy types, no matter what you do! Each year His Majesty changes their captain, but not much changes. It’s baffling…In the Oprichnina we nicknamed these ruffians “Good-for-Noughts.” Not all they do turns out for the good, oh no, not by a long shot…But that’s all right, we’ll help. We’ll lend a hand, not for the first time.
I drive up to their richly decorated headquarters. They don’t have much in the way of brains, but they’ve got money coming out of their asses. Suddenly—there’s a red call on my mobilov. Something important. It’s Batya:
“Komiaga, where are you?”
“Heading for the Good-for-Noughts, Batya.”
“The devil take them. I want you off to Orenburg—fast. Our guys have locked horns with customs.”
“That’s the left wing’s problem, Batya, I’m a former in that business.”
“Chapyzh is burying his mother, Seryi and Vosk are in a meeting with Count Savelev in the Kremlin, and Samosya, the idiot, ran into one of the Streltsy on Ostozhenka Street.”
So that’s it.
“What about Baldokhai?”
“On a business trip, in Amsterdam. Come on, Komiaga, get over there while they still haven’t bamboozled us. You worked in customs, you know the ins and outs. It’s a serious haul, around a hundred thousand. If it falls through, we’ll never forgive ourselves. As it is, those customs guys have gotten too cheeky lately. Go sort it out!”
“Work and Word!, Batya.”
Hmm. Orenburg. That means—the Road. There’s no joking with the Road. It’s worth drawing blood for it. I call the Good-for-Noughts and reschedule for the evening:
“I’ll be there by the time the wailing starts!”
I turn on to the boulevard, then over the Great Stone Bridge again and into the Kaluzhskaya-2 Underground Highway. It’s a good road, wide and smooth. I accelerate to 260 versts per hour, and eighteen minutes later I’m at Vnukovo Airport. I park my Mercedov in the government parking lot and enter the terminal. A young woman steps forward to greet me in the blue uniform of Aeroflot: with aiguillettes, silver embroidery, Hessian boots, and white leather gloves. She invites me into the security corridor. I place my right hand against the glass square. My whole life appears in the pine-scented air: date of birth, rank, home address, status, chart of habits, physical-mental characteristics, birthmarks, illnesses, psychosomatics, my character core, preferences, prejudices, size of my limbs and organs. The girl gazes at my mind and body, distinguishing, comparing. “Full and complete transparency,” as His Majesty says. And thank God: we’re in our own homeland, nothing to be shy about.
“What is your desired destination, Mr. Oprichnik, sir?” she asks.
“Orenburg,” I answer. “First class.”
“Your airplane departs in twenty-one minutes. The cost of the ticket is twelve rubles. Duratio
n of the flight is fifty minutes. How would you prefer to pay?”
“In cash.”
Nowadays we always pay for everything with genuine coins.
“With which kind?”
“The second mintage.”
“Wonderful.” She fills in the ticket, stirring the air with her sparkling gloves.
I hand over the money: a gold ten-ruble piece with His Majesty’s noble profile, and two rubles. They disappear into the frosted glass wall.
“This way, please,” she says, directing me toward the first-class waiting room with a half-bow.
I enter. A man in a white papakha hat and a white Cossack uniform takes my outer clothes with a low bow. I hand him the black caftan and hat. In the spacious first-class lounge there aren’t many travelers: two richly dressed Cossack families, four quiet Europeans, an old Chinese man with a small boy, a noble with three servants, some woman traveling alone, and two loud, tipsy merchants. And all of them, with the exception of the woman and the Chinese, are eating something. The tavern is good. I know, I’ve eaten here a number of times. And after golden sterlets you always feel like having a bite. I sit down at a table and immediately a transparent waiter appears, as though he’d come right out of Gogol’s immortal pages—plump cheeks, red lips, crimped hair, a smile:
“What, may I inquire, is your desire, sir?”
“My desire, friend, is drink, appetizers, and a light meal.”
“We have rye vodka with gold or silver sand, Shanghai sturgeon caviar, Taiwanese smoked fillet of sturgeon, marinated milk mushrooms in sour cream, jellied beef aspic, Moscow perch in aspic, Guangdong ham.”
“Give me the silver rye, mushrooms in sour cream, and the jellied beef. And what do you have to eat?”
“A nice sterlet soup, Moscow borsht, duck with turnip, rabbit in noodles, charcoal-grilled trout, grilled beef with potatoes.”
“The fish soup. And a glass of sweet kvass.”
“Thank you kindly.”
The transparent disappears. You could talk about anything at all with him, even about Saturn’s moons. His memory is basically boundless. Once, when I was in my cups, I asked the local transparent the formula for viviparous fibers. He told me. And went on to describe the technical production process in great detail. Our Batya, when he’s had a bit to drink, has one question he likes to ask the transparent: “How much time remains until the sun explodes?” They answer precisely within a year…But now—there’s no time for boldness, and besides, I’m hungry.
The order immediately arises from the table. That’s the kind of handy tables they have here. They always give you a carafe of vodka. I drink a shot, take a bite of marinated mushrooms in sour cream. Humankind has yet to invent any better zakuska. Even Nanny’s half-sour pickles can’t hold a candle to this. I consume an excellent piece of jellied beef aspic with mustard, drink the glass of sweet kvass in one gulp, and set to work on the fish soup. You must always eat it slowly. I look around. The merchants are polishing off their second carafe, jabbering on about some “third-level magnetic tape sorter” and 100-horsepower paracletes they bought in Moscow. The Europeans talk quietly in English. The Cossacks mumble in their own language, wolfing pastries and washing them down with tea. The Chinese man and boy chew on something of their own from a bag. The lady smokes aloofly. Finishing the soup, I order a cup of Turkish coffee, pull out my cigarettes, and light up. I put in a call to our guys on the Road: I need to get up to speed. Potrokha’s face appears. I switch the mobilov to secret conversation mode. Potrokha rattles off the main points:
“Twelve trailers; ‘High Fashion’ ‘ Shanghai-Tirana.’ We put a little fly in their ointment, stopped them right after the gates, drove them straightaway onto the sample clarifier, but the insurance guys dug in their heels—they were paid by the old docket, they don’t want to cook up a new contract. We lean on them through the chamber, but the head honcho says they have their own interests with those merchants, there’s a wet petition; we go back to customs, but they’re getting a piece of the action, too, the chief closes the case, and the clerk turns. The upshot—they’ll let them go in two hours.”
“Got it.” I start thinking.
In these kinds of affairs you need to be a good chess player, to think ahead. This case isn’t simple, but it’s clear. Since the Customs Department clerk turned, they must have a corridor with clout, and they renewed the contract right after the frontier post. So that means they went through the Kazakhs clean. It’s obvious: customs closed down so they could smile at the western gates. They’ll hand in the second contract, pay in white, then they’ll tear up the insurance contract, and the Western clerks will draw up a four-hour report. Then they’ll hide the mole, sign a clean contract—and twelve trailers of “High Fashion” will sail off to the Albanian city of Tirana. And customs will get the better of us again.
I think. Potrokha waits.
“Here you go, man. Take the cardiac, made a deal with the clerk about a white discussion, take the greased junior clerk to the meeting, and get your physicians in place. Do you guys have a rotten contract with you?”
“Of course. What time should I set the meeting?”
I look at my watch:
“In an hour and a half.”
“You got it.”
“And tell the clerk that I have it.”
“Understood.”
I put away the mobilov. I put out my cigarette. The plane is already boarding. I place my palm on the table, thank the transparent for the meal, and walk down a delicate pink hallway that smells like blossoming acacia into the airplane. It’s not big, but it’s comfortable—a Boeing-Itsendi 797. Not surprisingly, there are signs in Chinese everywhere. He who builds the Boeings orders the music. I enter the first-class cabin and sit down. Other than me there are three people in first class—the old Chinese man with the boy, and that lone woman. All three of the Russian newspapers are available: Rus, Kommersant, and Vozrozhdenie. I already know all the news and don’t feel like reading about it on paper.
The plane takes off.
I ask for tea, and order an old movie: Striped Passage. On business trips I always watch old comedies; just a habit. This one’s a good little flick, cheery, even though it’s Soviet. You watch lions and tigers being transported on a ship; they break out of their cages and scare people. And you start thinking—those were Russian people living back then, during the Red Troubles. And they really weren’t all that different from us. Except that almost all of them were atheists.
I take a look to see what the others are watching: the Chinese—River Factories, that makes sense; but the lady…oh-ho, now that’s interesting—The Great Russian Wall. I would never have said by her looks that she’d like that sort of film. The Great Russian Wall…It was made about ten years ago by our great director Fyodor Baldev, nicknamed “Fyodor-the-Bare-Who-Ate-the-Bear.” The most important movie in the history of Russia’s Revival. The film is about the plot hatched by the Ambassadorial Department and the Duma, the construction of the Western Wall, and His Majesty’s battle; about the first oprichniks, heroic Valuya and Zveroga, who perished at the dacha of the traitorous minister. The whole affair went down in Russian history as the plan to “Saw and Sell.” What a hullabaloo that film caused, how many arguments, how many questions and answers! How many cars and faces were bashed in because of it! The actor who played His Majesty entered a monastery afterward. I haven’t watched it for a very, very long time. But I remember it by heart. For the oprichniks it’s a kind of textbook.
I can see the face of the minister of foreign affairs on the blue bubble, and his accomplice, the chairman of the Duma. They’re composing the terrible agreement on the division of Russia at the minister’s dacha.
CHAIRMAN OF THE DUMA: So, we take power. But what do we do with Russia, Sergei Ivanovich?
MINISTER: Saw it up and sell it.
CHAIRMAN: To whom?
MINISTER: We sell the east to the Japanese; Siberia goes to the Chinese; the Krasnodarsk region—to the
Ukies; Altai—to the Kazakhs; Pskov Oblast—to the Estonians; Novgorod Oblast—to the Belorussians. But we’ll leave the center for ourselves. Everything is ready, Boris Petrovich. We’ve not only hand picked all our people, they’re already in place.
(A significant pause. A candle burns.)
Tomorrow! What do you say?
CHAIRMAN (looking around): It’s a bit scary, Sergei Ivanovich…
MINISTER (breathing hot and heavy, embracing the Duma chairman): Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared! Together we’ll control Moscow! Eh? Moscow?
(He squints lustfully.)
Think about it, my dear fellow! We’ll have all of Moscow right here!
(He shows his pudgy palm.)
Come now, will you sign?
Then there’s a close-up: the eyes of the Duma chairman. First they look back and forth, intimidated, frightened, like a wolf brought to bay. Then anger awakens in them, intensifying to a furious rage. Menacing music grows louder, a disturbing, slanted shadow falls, the night wind billows the curtains and blows out the candle; a dog begins to bark. In the dark the chairman clenches his fists, at first shaking with fear, then with anger and hatred for the Russian state.
CHAIRMAN (clenching his teeth): I’ll sign it all!
He’s a good director, Fedya Baldev. It was no accident that right after this film came out His Majesty appointed him head of the Cinema Chamber. But this lady…she looks like a noble. And for the nobility this film is like a stab in the heart. The lady looks at the film on the bubble as though she weren’t seeing anything. Her face is cold, indifferent. It’s not very pretty, but clearly pedigreed. You can tell she didn’t grow up in some Novoslobodsk orphanage.
I can’t help myself:
“Excuse me, madame, do you like that film?”
Day of the Oprichnik Page 8