The Patriots

by Sana Krasikov

  “And every three months a new telka!” I say.

  “No. I didn’t say that. You have to listen. Three months is the limit.” I can see it’s of paramount importance to Kablukov that I understand this rule properly. He’s a family man, after all. “Three months is long enough.”

  “For your protection more than hers.”

  He nods gravely. “Anyway,” he says, “there are more interesting things in life.”

  Now he’s got me curious. What has the Boot discovered to be more interesting than towering blondes? I don’t have to wait long for an answer.

  “Horses!”

  “You race them?”

  “What? No! I breed the fuckers!”

  “They can’t do it alone?”

  “I can tell you’re joking, Brink, but this is a serious business. The cardinal rule of horse breeding is: no artificial insemination. Otherwise, your horse can’t get a passport. That’s why they fly the mares to my boy on private jets, so he can give them a proper fuck. He’s too valuable to race. His grandpa was some kind of Great Dane. I won’t tell you how much I paid for him, but I’ll tell you how much I’ve made on him. Fourteen mil. The life of a retired champion, I’ll tell ya. Doesn’t do a thing all day but eat and screw, eat and screw. Every sheikh in the Saudi royals flies his mare to my champion so he can shag ’em. The Arabs are fucking nuts about their horses. It’s part of their heritage, Arabian nights and all that. All the horses that won the races last year—all his babies. Daddy’s got children all over the world he don’t even know about.” Kablukov drops his voice to a murmur. “I keep him in a special stable, see? Not here in Russia. I’m no idiot. Here he’d be assassinated or kidnapped or both. No, he’s safe in England. Only two people know where that stable is—me and the stable keeper.”

  The infatuation that the Boot has developed for this equine Casanova has evidently supplanted any itch he might develop for a new mistress. In fact, he seems to identify so completely with his Thoroughbred—the thrill of his libertine lifestyle or the risk of his assassination—that for a moment I have to wonder if it isn’t himself Kablukov is describing.

  But even as I’m giving my full attention to the Boot, it’s difficult to ignore the laughter coming from the other end of the table, where Mukhov, our serial joker, has switched back to Russian to regale the young PolarNeft associates with jokes about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the youthful oil baron who five years ago was arrested on an airport runway and sent to await his sickly fate near the Chinese border. “Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky are sitting together in the banya. Berezovsky turns to him and says, ‘Misha, really, either lose the cross or put your underpants back on.’ ” This is followed by laughter, even from Tom, who doesn’t understand a damn word but has his Yankee Doodle grin affixed diligently to his face. All in good fun. The only one who isn’t smiling is our Captain Serdyuk.

  “Now let him sit in Chita Prison, the pilferer,” he puts in decisively, sawing into his veal. “Let him sit and think just like ordinary Russians sat.”

  I eye the still-grinning Tom and decide to spare him a translation. Serdyuk’s meaning is clear enough to me: let the Jew sit and think, the way ordinary Russians sat. Velkom home—I can hear Lenny whispering in my ear. I have a feeling that this is going to be my private refrain for the week. How my son handles this casual anti-Semitism day in and day out, I have no idea.

  But, for that matter, how did I?

  “That one over there’s all right,” Kablukov resumes, nodding in Tom’s direction. “Usually your Americans need everything neatly laid out on shelves like at a pharmacy.” He spreads his thick fingers, talonlike, on my biceps. “That’s why it’s good to have one of our own here to talk to. Even if”—he sighs again—“Mother Russia isn’t good enough for you anymore.”

  “Life leads us in her own direction, Ivan Matveyevich,” I say. By now it’s become clear to me that Tom hired me not merely for my engineering prowess but because Continental was looking for a friendly ambassador, someone effortlessly Russian and effortlessly American who could smooth things over to avoid involving lawyers (since ours are more or less useless in this corner of the world). I feel like Kablukov is testing me now, asking for proof of membership. Only, I’m a bit too drunk or jet-lagged to put him in his place. “It’s too late for me,” I say, mechanically adopting his nostalgic tone. “My son, on the other hand, he won’t leave this place for all the salt in the kingdom.” I can hear myself speaking before I know what I’m saying. But this confession draws a smile from Kablukov. His furry brows perk up above his Ray-Bans. “Oh? Did he grow up here, your boy?”

  “No. He came with us to America when he was six. Moving back here was Lenny’s own idea. He wanted to try his hand at the roulette table among the other young Turks. What about your own children?” I say.

  But Kablukov ignores my inquiry. “What does he do, your son?”

  I tell him he’s in finance, but spare the details of Lenny’s recent adventures.

  “I admire a man who forges out on his own,” Kablukov says. “How has his fortune held up?”

  I’m surprised at his interest; it’s unusual for Kablukov to be curious about anything anyone says. I shrug. “You have kids. Do they tell you anything?”

  The Boot nods gravely and cuffs my shoulder, then uses it to hoist himself up. “My friends,” he announces, “forgive me, but I must leave our cozy gathering.”

  “So soon, Ivan Matveyevich?” Mukhov objects happily.

  “Will you be joining us tomorrow,” I say, “for the first round of selections?”

  The Boot shakes his head. “I’m afraid pressing business calls for me in Tallin. But my two mates here have assured me that we have nashi lyudi among us,” he says, addressing me. His warm, abnormally large hand is heavy on my shoulder. “I have complete trust in your good sense,” he continues, looking at me. To this he drinks his final bottoms-up, and heads for the glass doors, a cell phone already hanging from his ear.

  As soon as Kablukov is out of the room, the good humor of the two lieutenants blossoms. Immediately Mukhov beckons a waiter to replace our dry decanter. Serdyuk loads the remaining veal chops from the silver tray onto his plate. The tactile memory of Kablukov’s fingers remains on my collarbone. It occurs to me that he didn’t say that he had complete trust in our “expertise,” but in our “good sense.” I turn to Serdyuk, now fully involved in the work of spearing and swallowing his meat. “So what’s so urgent in Tallin?” I say.

  Serdyuk continues eating as if he hasn’t heard me. I decide I won’t repeat the question, and pour myself another drink. Across our zone détente of empty carafes and platters, Mukhov’s angling in for another joke, this one about a new set of snapshots that have turned up in Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld has been announcing to the eager press that the recent batch is even hotter than the last. But if the American people want a glimpse, they first have to elect Bush to another term.

  McGinnis is translating this dated joke for Tom, on whose face I detect barely suppressed disgust—more physical instinct than emotional state, as if he’s just smelled some foul canned meat. I want to tell Mukhov that there are no third terms and Bush has long since retired Rumsfeld. But why bother with clarifications? There’s no honor these days in defending America. Three years have passed and the images are still fresh—a chinless girl who looks like a ten-year-old boy in her military pantaloons, tugging a naked Iraqi on a leash. America’s degeneracy on full display and the world can’t get enough of it.

  It’s almost a surprise when Serdyuk, cleaning off his plate, turns to me. “The Estonians have a refinery on the coast,” he says, finally ready to answer my question. “We built it for those kurads back in ’82. Then that rat charmer Khodorkovsky got his hands on it. And now it’s up for grabs, see? So we made them an offer, but they thought they could do better by selling to the Czechs.”

  “Are you planning to outbid the Czechs?” I say, though I suspect that’s not exactly L-Pet’s strategy here.

 
“Cut it with the idiotic questions. Transneft cut off their tap months ago.” I watch Serdyuk’s hand twist an invisible pipeline valve. “That showed them how loyal the Czechs are. Now Tallin’s mayor is practically begging us to buy that old plant. But guess what—now we’re going to sit back and think about it.”

  So that’s what it means to be VP of corporate security and communication. Kablukov, the affectionate capo, is being sent to Tallin to wrap up a little unfinished diplomacy alla famiglia. Now that L-Pet has conspired with Russia’s pipeline monopoly to cut off the refinery’s supply, driven it into bankruptcy, sunk its value, and frightened off its foreign suitors—now that it’s broken the Estonians’ shins—it’s finally ready to sell them some crutches. I’m surprised to find myself less disturbed by Kablukov’s role as enforcer in this scenario than by Serdyuk’s attitude about the whole affair: Who do those cheeky Czechs think they are to buy our refinery? And who do these dirty Estonians think they are to sell off what we built for them!

  “But, really, why all the hysterics and runny noses over a few photos?” Mukhov says, picking up the thread. “We can get some good shots like that from our Chechen brothers in Chernokozovo. The point is, this scandal—what is it about? A myth. What myth? That your American soldiers fight with white gloves on.” He’s begun to address the table at large, dropping the role of joke teller and coming fully into his own as a propagandist. I prepare my face for what’s to come: Your military—sadistic brigands! No better than our Spetsnaz. Your democratiya, imitation-cheese democracy just like Russia’s! And your supposedly free press—let’s not even start on that charade. “Well, guess what? It turns out everyone is exactly the same!” he says, right on cue. “Only our State Department doesn’t bother with the pretense of publishing an annual report about what it’s done for democracy this year.” The righteousness of his anti-righteousness is simply too irresistible to contain. He’ll have no peace until he’s convinced me that every institution in America is a fabrication as elaborate as Russia’s own boundless Potemkinville.

  And here we are again, dragged by the tide of alcohol into that vast epistemic gulf where every lunatic proposition is self-evident while universal truths are hauled in for questioning. A Logic-Free Zone where I’ve been, more than once, cornered into testifying that Roosevelt did not have advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor bombing, or challenged to “prove” that smoking really causes cancer.

  “Don’t forget to mention how Neil Armstrong never set foot on the moon,” I suggest. “That it was all a hoax pulled off in some Hollywood studio.”

  He gives me a sidelong look, trying to gauge my sincerity. But in the end, it’s another landing that’s of interest to him. “The moon I don’t know about,” he says. “What I’d rather find out is what happened to the other planes.”

  “Which planes would those be?” I say.

  “Come on, now, the 9/11 planes! There were seven of them.”

  The PolarNeft guys and I trade looks. “I never heard of any seven,” I say.

  “Wow.” Mukhov looks around the table, aghast. “They really don’t report anything to you people over there, do they?”

  “Well, what’s your theory,” I say, “the CIA set it up?”

  “How should I know? Maybe the CIA. Maybe the FBI…”

  “Or maybe the KGB, right. Let’s not go too deep into all the hairy theories tonight.”

  “Who’s talking about theories? You’re an intelligent person. I’m only saying, look at who benefits.”

  “According to that logic,” I say, “the Kremlin bombed those apartment buildings and blamed it on the Chechens so your troops could reenter Grozny.”

  Across barriers of language, Tom is sensing enough explosive tinder in my accusation so that his arm begins to rise toward a defusing toast. But he has no chance to make one, because Mukhov is beaming—not with fury but with jubilation! “Yasnoye delo!” he shouts. “Of course we did it!” He reaches out his arms as though to give my recalcitrant head a kiss, his face shining with the satisfied glow of a man who’s gotten his point across at last.

  It was after nine when Florence awoke. Leon was lying beside her with his eyes shut and his mouth open. His arm was thrown over her breasts, gathering her in a half-hug. She took care to untangle herself gently from his embrace, but her ankle nonetheless knocked against the wooden leg of the armchair by their bed.

  When she first moved with Leon into their very own eleven-square-meter room, Florence had envisioned the place as a kind of Soviet version of a bohemian Greenwich Village studio. Unlike some of the tiny, plywood-partitioned rooms their neighbors occupied, the quarters she would share with her new common-law husband came with its own fireplace, and a deep window that cast oblongs of light on their walls—golden Moscow light that struck the grain of the naked parquet and infused the room with an air of intellectual and spiritual contemplation. Their limited space, Florence had believed, could be overcome with a charming and spare arrangement of furniture: their bed doing double duty as a couch, her trunk turned on its side to form a bookcase, the deep windowsill serving as a reading area, and Leon’s writing desk transformable with a painted kerchief into a table for entertaining. What she had not accounted for was that the common kitchen down the hall would not be nearly big enough for all the people in the apartment to store their food and cooking utensils (and if it had been, Florence would not have trusted her items to remain unsnatched), so, in the end, her contemplative windowsill had been conscripted as a shelf for storing sacks of flour, bread, oil, tomatoes, and jars of pickles and conserves. Leon’s writing table was likewise occupied by daily necessities: their kerosene lamp and Primus hot plate, and a basket of linens to iron. From this basket Florence now fished out a dry towel. She threw on her house robe and grabbed her bucket and soap from behind the door, then marched on toward the communal washroom, dismayed to hear already the sounds of someone’s scatological efforts from the adjoining toilet.

  If living under the iron rule of her old landlady on Petrovka had been like lodging in a strict boarding house, then life in a nine-room kommunalka was like residing in the ward of a public hospital: a habitation made humid with haste and confrontation, always tense and always on the verge of a crisis. Everything in their cramped conditions had the capacity to provoke hatred and jealousy. With the worsening of the political situation and the daily newspaper headlines warning of “spies and saboteurs,” the hostility had become more apparent. “Not enough that they’re nipping at us from outside, the ones here gotta be riding on our backs,” a neighbor named Vitkina had said one day in the kitchen, after putting down the paper. She did not look at Florence when she said it. She did not need to.

  But Florence was also aware that the real trouble lay not in the prevailing political winds but in her own personality. She did not play the game. She was unwilling to waste time listening to Vitkina complain about her rheumatism, or rehash her old adventures as a partisan in the war rebuffing the proposals from highly attractive officers. Nor did Florence have the patience to gossip with whoever happened to interrupt her cooking in the kitchen to conscript her into the latest entente. While she understood, in a general way, the unspoken rule of communal living—which was that men could keep a kind of neutrality in conflicts, but women could not—in practice it offended Florence’s sense of pride and autonomy to lower herself to the level of these gossipy shrews just to get along.

  Not two years earlier, she had wanted to be “among the people,” the great Russian narod, and now that she was forced into close quarters with this behemoth abstraction, she had to learn to suffer its all-embracing ignorance and malice, the grand scale of its pettiness, its envy. She seemed to have no gift for the sort of deflection Leon could carry off with breezy charm: flirtatiously flattering the old crone who called their corner of the common kitchen “the kikes’ table,” responding to the woman’s provocations with theatrical benevolence until the nasty old bitch scuttled out of the kitchen completely confounded and mutte
ring hateful nonsense to herself. Nor was Leon beneath having a drink late at night with Garik, the flabby-cheeked Armenian who worked at the chicken plant. “Putting a request in at inventory” was what Leon called these late nights over vodka and pickles, while Florence sat up in bed waiting for him, like some lovesick girl, to come back and lay his hands anywhere on her body. Indeed, days later, the reward of a young chicken would arrive as promised. But Florence wasn’t fooled: none of his repentant joking about the necessity of these manly labors could camouflage the fact that Leon seemed, at heart, to enjoy them.

  She was aware of this fundamental difference between them: Leon had always lived the way they lived now. In tenements, in poverty, in hideous overcrowding. He had learned early on to make his way through the world by cajoling and charming and wheedling. Her pity for such a childhood had played a part in her love for him, and she feared that complaining too bitterly about their living conditions would expose her vanities. Yet she could not deny how irritated she was that Leon found nothing wrong with the way they lived, exposed to so much prying and spite. In America, such complacency would have signaled a lack of ambition. But here, no amount of ambition would alter anything. Everyone lived like this, stirred into one big pot (everyone except of course the big wheels, like Timofeyev). And that was the whole sickening, unsolvable problem: the fact that Leon couldn’t be blamed for being unable to give her any other kind of life did not lessen her longing to start afresh. She vowed to take a long walk today, alone, to clear her head.

  Florence returned from her lukewarm shower to find Leon at the table, peeling an apple into a chipped enamel bowl. He set down his knife when she removed her robe, then crept up to cradle her from behind, pressing his lips to the water-warmed skin of her shoulder blade.

  “It’s half past nine, darling.”

  “I’ll make breakfast after,” he offered. His voice was deep and throaty from sleep.