The Senility of Vladimir P

by Michael Honig

  ‘My uncle gave it to me.’

  ‘And do you have a certificate of gift?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a certificate that says he gave it to you as a gift.’

  Sheremetev shook his head.

  Rostkhenkovskaya had a dealer in mind who would jump at this watch. But was it stolen? The small man who had walked into the shop with it didn’t have the manner of a criminal. It didn’t look as if he had done any research on the piece before trying to offload it. If she had to guess, he had no idea what it was worth.

  The dealer she was thinking of would sell this on, she estimated, at a minimum of one hundred thousand dollars. If that was what he thought he could get for it, he would pay her around seventy-five thousand for the piece. Her father’s rule of thumb was to offer the seller two-thirds of the price he would receive, which in this case would amount to fifty thousand dollars. But if there was a question of the piece being stolen, the calculation changed. If a theft came to light, the insurance company would normally pay something to get it back – twenty percent of the value was the norm. That would make the insurance payment for this watch twenty thousand, perhaps more. Her father’s rule had been to offer half the likely insurance payment, which still left a healthy profit if it turned out that the piece was identified as having been stolen, and an even healthier one if no one ever found out. For this watch: ten thousand.

  But all of that depended on how much you thought the seller knew.

  ‘Five thousand dollars,’ she announced.

  ‘Five thousand?’ murmured Sheremetev.

  ‘You have a second-hand, platinum and gold Daytona with some very small baguette-cut diamonds of average quality, Nikolai Ilyich. On the market, at the very best, unless you can prove to me that, I don’t know, President Lebedev wore it when he was sworn in, that’s worth ten thousand dollars. I give you half of that, so that’s five thousand.’

  Rostkhenkovskaya waited to see how Sheremetev would react. He gazed glumly at the watch.

  ‘What, Nikolai Ilyich?’

  In his dreams, Sheremetev had fantasised that the watch might bring him many multiples of that sum, as Dr Rospov had intimated that the one he had seen on Vladimir’s wrist might have done. In his more realistic moments, he had told himself that maybe he would get ten thousand, the price of Pasha’s freedom if the prosecutor saw sense. But five thousand . . . What good was that going to do? Was it worth selling?

  ‘Look,’ said Rostkhenkovskaya, ‘I’m giving you a fair offer. If we’re lucky someone will end up buying this for ten thousand, as I said. But they might not – the price might be lower. I give you five, but I don’t keep the other five. I take it to someone else who’s going to sell it. I keep maybe a few hundred for myself.’

  ‘I understand.’ Sheremetev sighed. ‘My nephew’s in jail. I’m trying to get him out. If only I could have ten . . .’

  ‘Nikolai Ilyich, really, what would that leave for me?’

  ‘I understand.’ Sheremetev hesitated, then began to wrap the watch in the handkerchief.

  ‘Nikolai Ilyich, stop. Listen. I want to help, okay? Let’s see what we can do. Your nephew’s in jail. It’s a terrible thing, and everyone in Russia is corrupt.’ Rostkhenkovskaya paused and shook her head as if in disbelief at her own weakness, as she had watched her father do since she was old enough to remember. ‘Seven and a half. Would it help if I made it seven and half thousand?’

  Sheremetev frowned, then gave a shrug and nodded. Rostkhenkovskaya smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a hard negotiator, Nikolai Ilyich. Seven and a half thousand! I’m not going to make a ruble . . . but, who cares, if it helps your nephew get out of jail? Not everything’s about money, is it?’

  ‘It’s a start,’ said Sheremetev.

  ‘Good. A start. So do we have deal?’

  ‘I feel bad, if you’re not going to make a ruble.’

  ‘It’s okay, please! Do we have a deal?’

  Sheremetev thought for a moment. ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll go and get the money.’

  ‘Now?’

  Rostkhenkovskaya turned on her heel. ‘Yes. Now.’

  She vanished into the back of the shop. An older woman appeared in the doorway while she was gone and stood, watching. Sheremetev smiled at her. She gazed blankly back at him.

  Rostkhenkovskaya came back and the other woman disappeared.

  The young woman examined the watch again to make sure, unlikely as it seemed, that this apparently guileless customer hadn’t pulled a switch under the eyes of her mother. Then she counted out seven hundred thousand rubles in five thousand ruble notes.

  ‘It’s actually seven thousand five hundred and forty dollars,’ she said as she handed them over. ‘I rounded up.’

  ‘I’ll give you change!’

  ‘No, Nikolai Ilyich. Let’s not quibble.’

  Sheremetev thanked her again. ‘It’s quite a lot, isn’t it?’ he said anxiously, gripping the wad.

  ‘Put it in a couple of pockets,’ advised Rostkhenkovskaya.

  As she watched, Sheremetev proceeded to do so, just like a schoolboy following the advice of his teacher, dividing the money between the two inside pockets of his jacket.

  ‘Do you want a receipt?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Listen . . . I’m sorry I couldn’t give you all the money you need. If you need more . . . Nikolai Ilyich, you said your uncle had a lot of watches. He didn’t . . . you know, give you any more, did he?’

  Sheremetev coughed. ‘There might be a couple more.’

  ‘Really? I don’t suppose you know what names they might have. This one’s a Rolex. Do you know what the others are called? Are they all Rolex?’

  Sheremetev tried to recall the name of the watch the doctor had seen on Vladimir’s wrist. ‘There’s Hablet or Hoblet . . .’

  ‘Hublot?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Sheremetev had seen other names on Vladimir’s watches over the years. ‘Patek something.’

  ‘Patek Philippe?’

  ‘That’s right. And Vach . . . Vach . . .’

  ‘Vacheron?’ said Rostkhenkovskaya, digging deep into her resources of self control to conceal her excitement.

  ‘Vacheron, that’s it. Are they worth anything, those things?’

  Rostkhenkovskaya took a deep breath, recovering her composure. She shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, it depends. Maybe it would be worth me taking a look. Shall I come to your house?’

  ‘No,’ said Sheremetev quickly.

  ‘But you know it’s quite risky carrying watches like that – I mean, not that they’re worth that much – but still, it is taking a chance. I could come and—

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. Look, Nikolai Ilyich, if you need more money to get your nephew out of jail, why don’t you bring me a couple more and I could see if they’re worth anything? The others, though. Not more Rolexes.’

  ‘Aren’t the Rolexes good?’

  ‘Of course. They’re fine. But let’s look at some of the others next time. A Vacheron, a Patek Philippe, a Hublot. Others as well, if you have any. Bring as many as you like. What do you think? Shall we do that?’

  Sheremetev frowned. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Do you want to give me your phone number?’

  He shook his head.

  Rostkhenkovskaya held out a card. ‘Here’s mine.’

  Sheremetev slipped the card in a pocket. ‘Goodbye, Anna Mikhailovna.’

  ‘Goodbye, Nikolai Ilyich. Come back with the other watches.’ She gave him a coquettish smile. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  Rostkhenkovskaya pressed a button to unlock the door and watched the unlikely little man step outside.

  Sheremetev walked quickly back to the Arbatskaya metro, conscious of the bundles of notes in his pockets as if they were a pair of dead weights pulling him down.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK to the dacha, Sheremetev crept guiltily into the house,
feeling that the security guard in the entrance hall, the house attendant he passed on the stairs, must surely be able to sense that he was up to something. Vera, who had come to cover for him at short notice, was upstairs with Vladimir. He got rid of her as quickly as he could, then retrieved the cash from his jacket pockets and hid it under his mattress.

  Sheremetev wasn’t much of a drinker, but right now he craved the fire of a vodka in his throat. Vladimir was in his sitting room. He had had his dinner and was waiting to be put to bed. He could wait a few minutes more.

  Sheremetev headed downstairs. Seven or eight of the security guards were in there, slouching around with the remains of their dinner in front of them. After what Stepanin had told him about Artur, he looked at them differently now. They were probably getting ready to go out for their night’s thuggery. He went to the sideboard, poured himself a vodka and threw it down in one gulp. The security boys at the table watched him, grinning.

  ‘How’s the face, Nikolai Ilyich?’ one of them called out. ‘Been in any more fights?’

  Sheremetev scowled, and they laughed.

  When he went back upstairs, Vladimir was sniffing the air and muttering darkly about the Chechen. Sometimes Sheremetev thought that if he could understand who the Chechen was, he would understand Vladimir Vladimirovich, unlock the secret of the man. But Vladimir never said anything about him, just called whoever he thought he was seeing the Chechen and hurled abuse at him.

  Sheremetev helped Vladimir change into his pyjamas, prompting him each time he forgot what he was doing, nodding each time the old man looked at him for confirmation. Sheremetev felt Vladimir’s vulnerability and need for him as acutely as ever. But yesterday he had listened to him for the first time – really listened to him – and had heard, out of Vladimir’s own mouth, a confession of unmitigated abuse and corruption, without even the faintest hint of contrition to relieve it. He had asked the questions Goroviev had wanted to ask and received the answers he least wanted to hear.

  How could he continue to stay at the dacha to look after this man? But with Vladimir looking at him like that, how could he leave?

  Vladimir climbed into bed. Sheremetev gave him his medications.

  ‘Goodnight, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said.

  Vladimir said nothing, as always, but lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Sheremetev turned off his light. He withstood the temptation to go to the cabinet in Vladimir’s dressing room where so many more watches lay waiting. He needed to think. He retreated to his own room and lay down, conscious of the wads of money under his mattress, imagining that he could feel them through the springs.

  His phone rang. It was Oleg. He wanted to know if Sheremetev had been to the watch shop.

  Sheremetev hesitated. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘How’s Pasha?’

  ‘Okay. When are you going to the shop?’

  ‘I couldn’t get away today. Tomorrow, I hope.’

  ‘Do you really think you’ll get something for the watch?’

  ‘I don’t know, Oleg. I’ll have to see. Listen, I have to go.’

  ‘Kolya, what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll try to go there tomorrow.’ Sheremetev put the phone down before Oleg could ask any more questions.

  He rested back on his pillow and closed his eyes. Already he had under the mattress more money than he would ever have imagined one could get for a watch before Dr Rospov had enlightened him. He felt bad when he thought about the young lady in the watch shop, and how he had made her pay him so much that she wouldn’t make any money for herself. But still it wasn’t enough. Certainly, if he took the money he had got for the watch, and added to it what he had in the bank, and perhaps a little more from Oleg, they would have ten thousand for the prosecutor – but would the prosecutor really suddenly agree to drop his price? Might not the unexpected offer of ten thousand merely encourage him to hold out for more, and to make Pasha’s life even harder until it was delivered? And in the meantime, how many more watches were there in Vladimir’s cabinet? Hundreds! Enough to fully quench the greed of the prosecutor.

  Sheremetev felt the fear he had always felt when faced with the prospect of wrongdoing, fear that everyone else around him seemed to be able to ignore. Somewhere, he thought, there must exist an inventory of Vladimir’s watches and one day, someone would check it. And if things were missing, who would they blame?

  But other people had access to the dressing room. The maids, for instance, who were always taking things. After all, just a few days ago one of them had been dismissed for theft even though her real crime was sleeping with Stepanin. Surely it would be assumed that the maids had done it.

  But would he then allow the maids to be sent to jail for a crime that he had committed? On the other hand, they had committed plenty of crimes, according to Stepanin, so what difference would it make if they were punished for something they hadn’t done rather than something they had?

  No, he couldn’t imagine himself standing by and allowing that to happen. But then he could never have imagined himself stealing and selling a watch – and he had done it!

  Maybe there wasn’t an inventory. No, there must be one, he thought.

  Even if there was an inventory, would anyone worry about one missing watch when the other three hundred were in place? For all anyone knew, Vladimir himself might have taken it and before long it would turn up behind a cushion or in a sock drawer. It was natural that at any given moment one might be missing. More than one, however, and people might start to wonder.

  But what if it was only a few more, say three or four? Would anyone really care? But he needed three hundred thousand dollars for Pasha, and three or four watches wouldn’t be enough. Besides, what would he say to Oleg? That he had sold one watch for so many hundreds of thousands of dollars?

  He stopped. ‘Kolya,’ he said to himself, ‘what are you talking about? Stealing watches, one after the other? Is that what you’ve become? A common thief?’

  But it was in a just cause. What right did the prosecutor have to demand three hundred thousand dollars to free Pasha from a charge that should never have been brought? What was that but common thievery, even if it was perpetrated by a man in a suit?

  Sheremetev felt ill with fear and uncertainty and self-loathing. He touched gingerly at the laceration on his face. Even now, four days after Vladimir had injured him, it was still tender.

  He wondered what Karinka would say. She had never, not once, in all the months she had been dying, ever asked him to take bribes. He wished she had. He wished she had made him confront himself as Nina had done.

  But watches, more watches . . . Stealing them . . .

  It was hunger that finally interrupted his thoughts. He looked in on Vladimir, who was sleeping peacefully, took the monitor and went downstairs. He was later than usual. He knocked on the kitchen door and one of the potwashers opened it.

  ‘Can I have something to eat?’ he asked.

  The potwasher yelled over his shoulder: ‘Nikolai Ilyich wants something to eat.’

  Sheremetev sat at the dining table. Stepanin came out with a couple of dishes and put them in front of him. Then he sat as well. Sheremetev felt like telling him to go away – the last thing he wanted now was to have to listen to Stepanin whining about his endless feud with Barkovskaya.

  In front of him was a dish of fried potatoes with egg and a kind of stew that appeared to contain aubergines and salami in sour cream.

  Sheremetev looked questioningly at the cook.

  ‘I’m not using that bitch’s meat. Into the pit it goes with the chickens.’

  Sheremetev didn’t think that was going to work for very long. The security boys might have tolerated the disappearance of poultry from their diet, but meat was another matter. ‘What are you going to cook with, Vitya? Air?’

  ‘I can’t let her do this.’

  ‘Vitya,’ said Sheremetev wearily, ‘she’s going to win. She’s the one who pays the bills. You can’t beat tha
t. How many arms and legs do you want to break? How many of your suppliers do you want to have firebombed? Talk to her and see if she’ll come to an arrangement.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Stepanin didn’t reply.

  Sheremetev shook his head in exasperation and began to eat.

  ‘How is it?’ asked Stepanin after a while.

  Sheremetev shrugged. ‘Better than it looks.’

  Stepanin couldn’t hold back a grin. He explained enthusiastically how he had created the potato dish, a new twist on a classic. Sheremetev’s irritation with him evaporated. The truth was, he was a good cook, and he wanted people to enjoy his food, and what else can one ask of a cook? Even these two dishes, that he had concocted, it seemed, out of spite for Barkovskaya, were tasty. And in the end, was he really such a bad man? Was it so terrible, what he wanted, to set up his own restaurant in Moscow? Russian fusion, minimalist décor – was it such an abominable dream? And everything had been going so well for him. True, he had been skimming a little off the top – or a lot off the top, if what he had told Sheremetev about his astronomical savings was true – but who didn’t? Only him, Sheremetev.

  And what right did he have to sit in judgement, after what he had just done and with two thick wads of cash hidden under his mattress? And whose money was the cook taking, after all? If it was Vladimir’s, it had been obtained through theft, and the cook, like Goroviev, was simply taking it from him in turn. Siphoning it off seemed far less of a crime than the stealing of a watch out of a defenceless man’s cabinet – and not just any man, but a patient who was in his care – in which he, Sheremetev, had just indulged, and which he was thinking of repeating.

  ‘Vitya,’ he said, suddenly feeling sympathetic towards the cook. ‘Don’t be rash. Talk to Barkovskaya. See what she’ll do. She’s probably more reasonable than you think.’

  Stepanin shook his head grimly. ‘There’s only one language that woman understands.’

  THAT NIGHT, THE PREMISES of Bolkovskaya’s meat supplier were firebombed. Sheremetev guessed something like that must have happened when veal cutlets, lamb plov, boeuf à la Tversk, pork chops, stewed liver, fried brains, braised tongue and ham terrine all turned up on the sideboard at lunch, an extravaganza of meat that seemed to have exploded out of Stepanin like the triumphant crowing of a cock over its dead foe.