“It collects the sweat,” he said. And it did too: little oily globules tumbled over each other toward her navel.
“It feels lovely.”
“You want some honey? It’s good for your skin.”
She looked at him with widening eyes. “Yes, please.”
Lev found the honey jar, dipped his fingers inside, and pulled them out trailing sticky golden tendrils which he smeared over her stomach, moving slowly upward in circles at first small and tight, becoming gradually wider, larger, right up to the underside of her breasts and, when she gave a little nod that came with a gasp, over them as well.
“Golden one,” he said.
“Use your tongue,” she breathed.
He knelt to her and began to lick, collecting stripes of honey on his tongue and tracing them back elsewhere on her body, and at last she found herself rising to him, catching the relief that her desire had not deserted her as she’d feared, and that she could still respond without needing the IV of vodka. Alice’s hair hung in a matted curtain around her face. Her tears sluiced down her neck and between her breasts to Lev, salt and sweet. He began to touch her with the very ends of his fingertips, light stroking that made her skin feel effervescent.
Now he was holding something against her; a nettle, she felt. He was pressing the plant’s hairs very gently onto her, brushing lightly to sensitize her skin and then pushing a little harder, sharp hot stings to excite her. Lev’s fingers ran lines over and inside Alice, spelling out words of love incomprehensible and illegible. When he paused, it was all she could do to choke: “Don’t stop!” and she could tell by the shape of his mouth against her skin that he was grinning. It was at once familiar and new, letting him seduce her all over again, and she knew why she was at last allowing herself to give in.
She had armored herself in layers against him. She had wanted to hide. She’d felt shame and inadequacy, anxiety and anger, both inside and out. Now she yielded and gave herself up to him, gave herself back to him, soft and welcoming.
They were flushed pink in their nakedness, emerging reborn from the dark womb of the banya, free from impurities, refreshed and cleansed into their true selves after so much lying and deception.
They would build their own banya, he told her; and they’d make love there, and what they did when they’d finished would depend on the time of year. In the summer, they’d retire to a cooling room with wall-to-wall mirrors and a servant waving stork-feather fans. In the winter—well, in the winter, they’d jump into a frozen lake or tumble in the snow, there was nothing better. “You get so hot that you can’t stand it and all you want to do is get cold,” he said. “So you run outside and jump through the hole in the ice until you’re so cold you can’t stand it and all you want to do is get warm.” He thought for a moment. “It’s the kind of pleasure you experience when someone stops hitting you.”
It was time to leave. Alice pushed herself sharply upright, and immediately felt woozy. “Take it easy,” Lev said. “Your vessels are all relaxed; the blood’s rushed down from your head.”
She clung to him until the sensation abated, and then moved to pick up all the stuff they’d brought in with them: the soap and the lye, nettles and milk and honey.
“Leave them,” Lev said.
“We should clear our mess up.”
“No. Leave them for the bannik.”
“The bannik?”
“The spirit of the banya. He’s an old man with hairy paws and long nails, and he lives behind the stove or under the benches.”
“Fuck the stupid old bannik.”
“Shhhh!” He seemed truly concerned. “We’ve annoyed him enough by making love here.”
“We have?” She still wanted to treat it as a joke, but it was clear that Lev was serious.
“Sure. Bathers have lost their skin and had their bodies wrapped around the stove for less. Loud singing, talking, swearing, lying, boasting; the bannik can get you for all of those.”
“But we haven’t done any of those.”
“All the more reason to leave our stuff for him, just to make sure. An angry bannik can throw red-hot rocks and boiling water; he can even transform harmless steam into deadly coal gas. So—” He ushered her out the door. “Da svidanya!” Lev called to the bannik.
Back in their room, overlooking the zoo, Lev pressed a small box into Alice’s hands.
“It’s not a marriage proposal,” he said, reading her face. “It’s more than that.”
She opened the box onto a gold ring in the shape of the infinity symbol, forever curling around on itself. The two holes fit perfectly over her third and fourth fingers, pinning them together.
“As you and I will always be with each other,” he said. “We can never escape; we whirl around in an endless dance, independent and interdependent. Our love binds us together as this ring binds your fingers together, and like this ring our love goes on forever.”
97
Saturday, March 28, 1992
Stripped to the waist, Borzov was unconscious on his bed. His stomach, as large and slack as a sack of sand, had spread across itself and down his flanks, as a basset hound’s ears flop to the sides of its head. A IV ran from the inside of his right elbow to a transparent bag bulging thick red; the president was being sobered up by the simple method of changing half his blood.
There was a single prerequisite for those soldiers wishing to serve in the presidential guard, the Kremlin’s private army: they all had to have blood type AB, the same as the president’s. Borzov received a blood transfusion before virtually every major occasion; it was the only way to be sure of having him halfway sober when it mattered. The medical staff had initially tried keeping a quantity of frozen plasma on the premises, but it had soon become apparent that they’d need a walk-in freezer to cope with demand, and it had been deemed easier to have a large supply of donors permanently on-site.
The presidential suite at the Kremlin is magnificent, of course. Around Borzov were walls hung with silk of vermilion and pearl, beneath him a sheened floor of marble, above him a ceiling fresco that twirled and whirled to infinity. An anteroom overflowed with gifts; it seemed as though half the country had given Borzov a present. Huge floral arrangements covered a conference table; a mountain bike with a yellow bow tied around the handlebars rested against a wall. The floor was littered with rose petals. There were skis, boots, poles, suits, stereo systems and video recorders, Moroccan carvings and Mexican sculptures. In pride of place was the famous picture of Lenin conferring with his advisers, though here Lenin had been repainted in Borzov’s own image.
Russia’s elite spend a million dollars on a birthday present for a helpful politician—and none come more helpful (at least potentially) than the president—as casually as they send him a card. Those further down the scale are less expansive but no less heartfelt; they give to demonstrate their loyalty and keep themselves in the frame for future favors. So many petitioners had wanted to prove their devotion today that the staff had been obliged to organize visits in waves: twenty minutes for the vodka distillers, twenty minutes for the political correspondents, twenty minutes for the precious-metals faction.
And the most absurd thing about this grotesque feeding frenzy was that the recipient couldn’t have given two shits. This grotto of bounty and largesse, right next to his bedchamber, was entirely lost on him. He wouldn’t use a single one of these items. Rapacious underlings would remove half of them; the remainder would be given away or simply left to rot.
Borzov had put the Kremlin wardrobe at the disposal of Lev and Alice, and she at least had made full use of it. Her outfit was relatively simple—an unfussy black dress, a pearl choker, gold and silver bracelets, and a bronze butterfly in her hair—but somehow the effect far outweighed the constituent parts. She’d seen it in the reaction of those through whose presence her beauty had rippled: Lev, as he’d stood behind her and watched them both in the mirror; the sentries whom they’d passed on their way to the ball; and the other guest
s who made minute and perhaps even unconscious changes in their positions so they could see her better. Tonight she was a traffic stopper, and even the most beautiful can’t manage that at will.
The ball was being held in the three imperial palaces that cluster around a courtyard in the southwest corner of the Kremlin, and the guests were to be taken from palace to palace as the evening progressed: drinks in one, dinner in another, dancing in the third, each more beautiful than the last. They began in the Terem Palace, the oldest building in the Kremlin. Waiters hovered against the gilded stucco with trays outstretched: some offered lanky champagne flutes and stubby tumblers of vodka, others caviar blini and devils on horseback, each of them urging Alice with a smile to indulge, indulge, whenever would this happen to her again? She smiled through gritted teeth, shaking her head at the waiters with their poisonous flutes and tumblers, and she stuck to mineral water and orange juice.
All of Moscow’s great and beautiful were here, pulsing beneath the painted vaultings and between the elaborately gilded stoves. Every time Alice turned she saw someone she recognized: a cabinet minister adjusting the collar beneath his chins, a ballerina dropping kisses like confetti, a tycoon moving like a lizard through the crowd. She laughed at the reactions of those who saw her and Lev there, after everything that had happened. When she realized that all these people had absolutely no idea what would happen later, she laughed harder.
Lev and Alice stood in the lower of the Terem’s two medieval churches and lost themselves in the iconography. The pillars spread up to the roof like spring flowers in bloom, and not a square inch was left uncovered: angels and demons, knights and maidens, all soared across the ceiling and swooped down the walls. It was like being inside the head of a tattooist.
At eight o’clock sharp, the guests were politely but firmly taken out past the Church of the Deposition of the Robe and into Sobornaya Square, from where they’d ascend the Red Staircase to the diamond-patterned Hall of Facets. Borzov and his wife were standing at the top of the staircase like a modern-day czar and czarina, the comparison underscored by the imperial double-headed eagles that perched on the arches above their heads. The guests clapped and cheered, and Russia’s first couple—for tonight, its royal couple—clapped back and beckoned for the guests to come up and join them. As Alice climbed between stone lions, the light from the arc lamps brushed the steps beneath her feet, and she remembered that this staircase had once run with blood; it was down these treads that Peter the Great had tossed his mutinous relatives in 1682.
Above the Kremlin, Borzov’s face had been projected demigod-like onto the clouds.
Dinner was served in the banqueting hall where Ivan the Terrible had treated foreign ambassadors to roast swan and elks’ brains, and where more recently Gorbachev had entertained Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A single massive pillar in the center of the room supported the vaults, as though Atlas himself had stopped by and had the place built around him.
Courses came and went: sorbet, soup, ham sliced laser-thin, fish, lamb, pancakes filled with curd cheese, potato and nut dumplings with cinnamon and sour cream, more sorbet. Each course was served with its appropriate vodka: the ham came with bison zubrowka (a Russian version, of course) to accentuate the mustard; the pancakes were offset beautifully by Starka; and the lingering aftertaste of pure cherry vodka made it seem as though the dumplings had drawn the alcohol clean away.
Alice had the Kyrgyz prime minister to her right and a telecommunications chairman on her left, and they tried to impress her with tales of yurts and band-widths respectively. The Kyrgyz was funnier and more charming, and she spent most of her time talking to him. On the wall behind her, Prince Vladimir of Kiev stood immortalized in icon, forever showing his twelve sons how to live righteously and wisely.
Lev had the pistol in the inside pocket of a tuxedo cut generously enough to leave no bulge. He chatted amiably with his neighbors. If there was turmoil within, he gave no sign; but when Arkin stood and called for silence, Alice noticed Lev make the slightest, quickest of inhalations. Arkin was to introduce Borzov, Borzov was to speak, and Lev was to make his move then.
There were two official videographers there tonight, and they swung their cameras toward the prime minister. Borzov had wanted the event recorded for posterity; Arkin wanted taped proof of the attempt on Borzov’s life, to show the nation how close they’d come to losing their leader.
The crowd quieted, and Arkin began to speak. The evening was yet young, he said, and there was much more to come. They’d go from there to the Holy Vestibule, a multiplicity of doorways gilded with ornate golden latticework, and into the Great Kremlin Palace itself for dancing. Before that, however, the president wanted to say a few words.
Borzov rose unsteadily to his feet. The effects of the half-completed blood transfusion had worn off, sped on their way by furious quantities of vodka. He thanked everyone for coming, and had just launched into a story about his time as head of the Sverdlovsk Party committee when he stopped suddenly and peered across the room.
“The chief’s grandson is here!” he exclaimed. “So long past his bedtime, but what a lovely surprise! Come, Edik. Come and give your grandpa a birthday kiss.”
The room was held in a terrible hiatus.
“Anatoly Nikolayevich,” Arkin said, “that’s not your grandson. That’s a camera tripod.”
There was a smattering of laughter from those who thought that the joke was deliberate.
Lev looked across at Arkin, and the prime minister silently willed him forward. The time is now, Arkin’s handsome face urged, do it, do it. Arkin would trust Lev when it was all over and he’d done his bit, but not a moment before. It would of course be insane for Lev to do anything other than what he’d agreed, knowing what the consequences would be both for him and for Alice; but illogicality has never been a bar to any course of action in Russia.
It was not a conscious decision on Lev’s part. He felt like an actor who’d just heard his cue, and his feet were taking him to his destination whether he wanted to go there or not, because there was no alternative; any course of action other than the ordained one was unthinkable. He jabbed his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around the pistol butt. The touch seemed to impart tremendous clarity to his vision. He saw everything as though it were momentarily frozen, with him walking through a tableau: Borzov’s mouth as he talked, drunk enough to have forgotten or not to care that in a few seconds he’d have to pretend to have been shot; Arkin, tense as he waited for events to unfold; the turning faces of the guests as they wondered what Lev was doing interrupting the presidential toast.
Lev was a stride and a half from Borzov now. Out came the gun from his pocket, smooth as he could have hoped, no problems with the barrel catching on the lining, safety off with his left hand, and even though it made no difference he was still careful to aim properly, nine inches below Borzov’s shoulders and dead center, to take out as many vital organs as possible, the reports cracking loudly in the vast hall as he squeezed the trigger, once, twice, again, and the Kremlin guards were already on him and slamming him to the ground, there was nothing fake about their tackles, six of them hitting him at once to ensure that he was taken down, and as the wind whistled from Lev’s lungs he saw Borzov’s bodyguards bundle their president from the room, Arkin following fast behind them.
The Kremlin has a hospital, but it’s not capable of dealing with gunshot wounds, so the charade had been extended to encompass the Sklifosovsky. Russian leaders are usually treated at the Kremlinovka, far out to the west, but in a crisis such as this they’d go closer to home, and the Sklifosovsky has the best emergency department in the country.
The presidential limousine and its motorcycle outriders shot from the Savior Gate and across Red Square. Shimmering in upturned lights behind them, the Kremlin was midway between reality and dream, an immense, oppressive vision. In the floodlights, the walls hovered and the swallowtail battlements shivered.
Four frantic minu
tes through the streets, and then they were pulling up outside the main entrance of the Sklifosovsky, where paramedics were on hand to lay Borzov on a stretcher and wheel him inside. “It’s an emergency!” they shouted, and indeed it was. There was blood gurgling from sucking wounds in Borzov’s torso; he was unconscious, his breath came in shallow pants, and his pulse was fading. The surgeons preparing their instruments under Lewis’s direction would have been amazed to know that the shooting was supposed to have been a setup, as this was definitely not for show. The president was dying.
The ball had broken up in panic and confusion. Alice had been taken back to her apartment in the Kremlin, where she was watching television. Normal programs had been suspended; every channel carried live footage from Red Square, and the feeds from the video cameras at the ball were already being broadcast. There was Borzov, standing up; there was Lev, walking toward him—they’d removed any footage of Borzov actually speaking, Alice noticed—there was Lev, taking aim; the shots; Borzov staggering, Lev being wrestled to the ground.
Reporters gabbled urgently to anchormen, and then a switch to the Sklifosovsky. Arkin was standing on the front steps. He was covered in blood, and his face was streaked in tears. Alice saw Lewis in the background, still in his surgeon’s scrubs. His clothes were splattered red, his face bathed blue in the revolving lights of the police cars parked nearby. It was the expression on his face that kicked deep into Alice’s senses: Lewis, who usually showed as much emotion as a man doing the weekly shopping, looked as if he was about to be sick, burst into tears, or both.
“Following the shooting incident at the Kremlin this evening,” Arkin said, “Anatoly Nikolayevich Borzov was brought to the Sklifosovsky Hospital with severe external injuries and internal hemorrhaging. The hospital’s finest surgeons have fought to save him, but to no avail. Life extinct was declared ten minutes ago. The president is dead.”
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