“Why would we want Romania? Nobody lives there but Italian gypsies and vampires. Such unnecessary countries have nothing to fear from the People’s Party of Hammer and Steel.”
Petrenko was on live television the next morning at ten, appearing on a magazine show on Channel 2times2. Our escapades of the evening before notwithstanding, he looked as if he had enjoyed twelve or fourteen hours of refreshing sleep, and not once did the interviewer trick him into saying anything he didn’t intend to say.
“What about Finland?”
“The Finns shiver like feeble women when they hear the name Petrenko. We spit in their eyes. Let them go on drinking and sharing intimate moments with their reindeer. What do we care?”
At first I believed that either Petrenko had superhuman powers of recovery, or else the show’s makeup staff had been trained by the preservation specialists who tend to the Livid Lenin (Mr. Waxy, as our late leader is known to the disrespectful), for he looked so healthy he might have been dead. Watching him more closely, I realized that the reason Petrenko could so impressively and expansively expound upon his theories was that he was still drunk.
As he continued to rage, I held my phone receiver close to my ear, listening with intense concentration to Dmitry explaining the process by which I became an accomplished counterfeiter. “Maxim, you concern yourself too much with these details. Why should it matter to you?”
“You don’t see why it would bother me that he believes I’m committing a capital crime?” I asked, trying not to shout, not trying very hard.
“Don’t you understand? He will not put all criminals to death, only those who haven’t been of assistance to him.” Dmitry slurred his words, and I imagined he too had not yet sobered up—or else he’d already started on his morning rations.
“Are you calling me a criminal?” I felt no compulsion to understate my worries.
“Of course not, Maxim, don’t scream—”
“Why did you even tell him about me?”
“A slip of the tongue.”
“You mean you were drunk.”
“Alcohol had nothing to do with it,” he claimed. “Although I cannot deny that Petrenko’s presence inspires me to drink more than I should. Surely you can sympathize.”
“Go on with your fables.”
“He was pressing me unmercifully, wanting to know who was producing the counterfeit currency, so-called. Considering your business, your name naturally came to mind. The moment I mentioned it, I realized the mistake I’d made. At once he insisted upon meeting you.”
“You assure me none of your people are involved in actual counterfeiting?”
“Certainly not. Petrenko had to be fed soothing fantasies in order to get him to go along with our plan.”
“You don’t see a danger in that?”
“Maxim, you told me you don’t want to know more about our business than you have to know, yes? So look, do your job and let us concern ourselves with such matters. You won’t have to involve yourself with Petrenko again, unless of course you wish to set up separate business arrangements with him.”
“Why should I want to do such a thing? Especially if he expects me to be supplying him with nonexistent counterfeit money? You don’t think he’ll be disappointed and seek me out once your lie is revealed?”
“It won’t be revealed,” Dmitry insisted. “Look, he never needs to actually see the currency, only the profits due him. As long as he has real money in hand, why should he be unhappy?”
“Only last night you told me he may not be so lucky,” I reminded him. “That you weren’t sure that he would receive any profits.”
“Maxim, I thought smart businessmen were always looking for new markets,” he said, ignoring the unwelcome intrusion of fact. “He’s happy; let’s keep him that way. You know, for your personal benefit I elaborated upon the full array of services your company offers. The possibilities fascinate him.”
“Thank you so much for sending me such clients,” I said. “There’s something else here I don’t understand. You told me you would be transferring souvenirs, true? But listen, I have it on good authority that the market for Russian souvenirs in America is sated.”
Dmitry hesitated, as I expected, before responding. “Not entirely.”
“This assignment of yours grows less attractive the longer we work on it.”
“Then think of your fee and nothing else. Doesn’t that seem the most sensible approach?”
“Hereafter don’t involve me so directly in these schemes of yours,” I said. “Be mindful, I could consider it a contract violation.”
“It was an accident, Maxim, it won’t happen again. Remember, I had only the best intentions.”
“Hell is paved with good intentions.”
After we hung up I returned my full attention to Petrenko, who was crowing like a rooster. Until I listened for a minute or two I couldn’t comprehend what subject presently so excited his emotions; he kept repeating “Big! Big! Big!”
“The cost of such a dome is estimated to be, perhaps, five hundred trillion rubles,” the interviewer noted, interrupting him. “Considering the present financial situation of our nation, do you not think that this could be problematic?”
“Some of your listeners may prefer to believe I am speaking of a metaphysical dome,” Petrenko replied. “So be it. There is ultimately no reason that it be constructed of such primitive materials as steel or plastic. My advisers assure me that advances in science will soon allow us to install an antimatter barrier that will fully encompass our borders, once we decide what our borders will be. Intruders will be reduced to women’s face powder.”
“Would you tell us more about this so-called antimatter barrier? This concept sounds somewhat magical.”
Petrenko waved away the question. “The technology is too complicated to be readily understood,” he said. “But do not worry, protective barriers of some sort will be built once we take power. Such barriers are necessary to insulate us against outside infection, as the Berlin Wall once kept West Berliners from sneaking across to enjoy the fruits of socialism.”
“West Berliners could come and go at will into East Berlin,” the interviewer pointed out; Petrenko rolled his eyes, as if he had been told the sun was hot. Ludmilla knocked at the door and stepped into my office.
“Mr. Bazhenkov is here to see you.”
My client entered, and we shook hands. Bazhenkov had been recommended by a mutual friend. His needs were simple—a few documents pertaining to late-seventies decrees of the bastard Suslov—and he did not mind waiting until my people finished working on Dmitry’s project before we attended to his. He might have been formed out of dough: walk any street in Moscow; see a thousand who look exactly like him. His suit, however, was like no others I have seen. It was double-breasted, expertly tailored, made of the finest woolen cloth—and was the color of an old carrot, pulled fresh from the soil. Without doubt he selected his muddy-orange suit believing it would inspire respect, yet the whole time Bazhenkov was in my office I could not help but wonder why he wasn’t also wearing a false red nose and wig. It amazes me, what my countrymen choose to spend their money on, once they have money.
“Gennadi Nikolaiech, I hope all is well with you,” I said, gesturing that he should take a seat.
“Not at all,” he said, in such lugubrious tones that at once I feared he had suffered business reverses and kept his appointment only to tell me that he would not be able to retain my firm any longer. “So tragic. You heard, of course.”
His expression led me to believe that all the Bazhenkovs save himself had been brutally murdered in their beds. “What is it? What happened?”
“The little coma girl,” he said, tears wetting his eyes. “In Ekaterinburg. Dead.”
She’d been in her unproductive state for so long I hadn’t remembered she was still alive. As I sympathized with Bazhenkov I strove to affect a suitably mournful expression. “Heartbreaking.”
“Never awoke, died yesterday. So sad. And then two hours after she was admitted into heaven, her dog was found. He returned to her building on his own.”
“Heaven gives, heaven takes,” I said, and pointed again to the seat I offered him. “Perhaps we should turn our attention to matters of this world.”
“Look,” Bazhenkov said, sitting down, glancing at the television screen, gesticulating when he saw Petrenko. “There’s the man for Russia.” His sorrow was at once vanquished. With my easily distracted client I watched his shining knight.
“Simple arithmetic,” Petrenko was telling the interviewer. “If we kill ten million people, the remaining two hundred and ninety million will be much happier because we did.”
Bazhenkov grinned and clapped his hands together, as if applauding a seal for having caught a fish. “Which people?” the interviewer asked.
Petrenko shrugged. “The guilty know themselves, when they look in the mirror.”
After attending to the day’s business I let myself freely anticipate the tableaux of passion in which I would soon be striking poses. As I sat at my desk, gorging my mind on reveries of Sonya, I stared through the window at the world beyond. Above the roofs of nearby buildings was a cloudless sky, clear as blue ice; the temperature had risen enough above freezing that the black hillocks bulwarking every curb had finally begun to thaw. The dripping limbs of the courtyard’s birch tree scratched at heaven; carrion crows, ruffling their feathers against the wind, leapt along the branches, nipping at unseen buds. This was my favorite time of the year, when Spring stirs into half-consciousness, thinking it too dark and cold yet to awake, yet knowing it must. Of course, the joys of the season would be most manifest once Dmitry’s assignment was finished and he paid the remainder of his million-dollar bill.
Sonya came to the office at four, which allowed us three hours to share in exuberant frolic. The weather was so pleasant, however, that we decided to stroll the short distance from my building to our nest of love. As we reached the street she took my arm in hers and pressed herself close against me. For a fleeting moment I foresaw only pleasantries ahead; then she spoke. “Let us be like the Peripatetics and talk as we walk,” she said.
“Talk about what?”
“Your son.”
A brisk gust of wind nearly lifted the hat from my head as we turned the corner; I felt as if icicles slid unseen down my back. “I’ve told you before, Sonya, I have nothing to say. Why do you continue to bring up this subject?”
“I’d think a man could talk for days about his only child. If you don’t want to tell me what happened to him, then tell me what he was like.”
We entered Lubyanka Square; both of us reflexively looked toward the building. In the minds of Muscovites there is no blacker pit than this small office structure. Its dungeons have been empty for years, but if buildings absorb the evil that occurs within them as tissue blots ink (and remembering the night sounds in my flat, I think they do), there could be few places on earth more redolent of the lower depths. In Lubyanka, citizens were shot for failing to inform on their families, for being a party member “by accident,” for collecting foreign stamps, for using nonexplosive arsenic to blow up nonexistent bridges, for plotting to stir volcanoes into activity throughout the Soviet Union, timing them to blow up simultaneously, destroying the nation—were shot for being alive.
“There’s not much to tell. He was like any young boy, boisterous and proud.”
“Was he like you?”
“How can I tell you what kind of an adult he would have been? I am no soothsayer, no astrologer.”
“You’re not on trial, Max,” she said. “What I am asking you is was he like you when you were his age?”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember what I was like.”
Her elbow shot into my ribs as if it were a mallet; young women are often so much stronger than they look. “Were you as evasive then as you are now?”
“Not as much,” I said. “My father would have told you I was a worthless hooligan.” Beat your own and scare the stranger, my father would have said. “He was no soothsayer either. So how can I say what my son was like? I would undoubtedly be as much in error.”
In Lubyanka Square is an empty, graffiti-covered pedestal upon which once stood Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police. The statue, a bronze representation which looked like pig iron (had it been gold, it would still have looked like pig iron), was sculpted in the Mister Big Pants style of all Soviet monumental figures—by that I mean the idealized monster is seen to be evidently wearing the outgrown clothing of an older, larger brother. The night the putsch failed, three years ago, his statue was the first to come down. I recalled with satisfaction the sight of the crane hauling up Iron-Hard Felix by his neck, letting him hang as his victims might have hung, had they not instead been shot.
“Tell me, why are figures in Socialist Realist art always looking over their shoulders?” she asked. I felt relieved that she had decided to move on to a different subject, although it puzzled me why she would ask a question to which I should have thought anyone in Russia would instinctively know the answer.
“Paranoia. Somebody is always coming up behind them.”
She nodded and smiled. Her feigned guilelessness had fooled me once again. “Then they could all be statues of you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t trust anyone. Not even me. I hate you for that, sometimes.” We headed south, making our way through the crowds on Mokhovaya. On our left were shop windows. Displayed for sale in one were Parisian ensembles, fitted perfectly onto headless mannequins, and a selection of Chanel purses and bags; in the next, tin whistles and three dusty six-liter jugs of vinegar. “What kind of future do we have, Max?” She sighed and started to pull away from me, but I held her arm tightly, and after a moment she relaxed and we remained locked together. “You don’t trust me enough to tell me of the joys and sorrows of your most personal moments. How can I believe you love me as much as you say you do?”
On our right, across the broad avenue, was the TSUM department store and the store once known as Children’s World. The souk that has sprung up on the surrounding sidewalks appeared larger each time I passed. Naturally there were numerous kiosks, but there were many more individual traders, thousands perhaps, offering goods of every description: large-scale retailers with racks of clothing, appliances, and kitchenware; provincial farmers selling fresh chicken and winter vegetables for outlandish prices; Southerners, Northerners, Siberians, and Far Easterners, each offering the specific goods of their region; students selling off family memorabilia, middle-aged couples disposing of household necessities no longer thought essential, sad-eyed elders offering for trade or purchase a bottle of Polish shampoo, a medal once proudly worn on May Day, or a puppy.
“Sometimes I shouldn’t even trust myself, koshka,” I told her. She rested her head against my shoulder as we walked. Old biddies glared at us, struck mute with envy of our youth. “I trust you more than I trust anyone else.”
“Even your wife?”
“In some ways,” I said, speaking truthfully; she appeared to believe me. “Koshka, if I don’t choose to tell you about my son, it has nothing to do with whether I trust you or not. I can’t explain it to you more clearly than that.” Whether or not she believed me, I couldn’t say, but it was a statement she seemed to accept. “One thing I can tell you, I was a good father to him.”
“Did I say you weren’t?”
“No, of course not. But I was a good father, no question.” She gave me a most quizzical look. “Not the best.”
“But not the worst.”
Could I honestly say that? I didn’t know. I should never have taken him to the West. “Let’s talk of other matters. Please, my angel. Please.”
From the calm expression on her face I could see she would take me off the spit for a while; I’d been cooked enough to suit her taste. “All right,” she said, stopping before an entrepreneur’s small table. “Buy me something.”
“Anything you wish.” I had no difficulty understanding or fulfilling this particular desire of hers. The dealer watched us closely as she examined the merchandise he displayed, keeping a hand tucked beneath his filthy coat. At last Sonya selected an especially grotesque object, a small porcelain hippopotamus painted white, with gold tusks, eyelashes, and toenails; it was evidently a smoker’s accessory, for in its back was a cavity ready-made to hold the contents of a pack, and in its mouth another hole, which would allow the ceramic creature to share a fragrant papirosi with its owner.
“How much?” I asked the dealer. He grinned, showing a dismaying lack of teeth in his upper jaw.
“Three thousand rubles or two dollars.”
“Fifteen hundred rubles or one dollar,” I offered.
“Two thousand rubles,” he replied.
“Eighteen hundred.” We agreed, and I handed over a stack of candy wrappers. Sonya held the hippopotamus up to her face as if she planned to kiss it, but she recovered her senses in time and returned her new item of poshlaia to the dealer. He placed it within a tissue-filled box. She kissed me, and then took a compact from her purse, to check her lipstick in its mirror.
“We should get to our flat, I think,” my koshka whispered. “If we see cosmetics for sale, I need a new compact. The powder I have is too gritty, almost like toothpaste.”
I should here try to explain for my Western readers what, exactly, poshlaia is—those who have not grown up with its taste, bitter on the tongue, find it hard to know its savor. Poshlost’, in itself, suggests the trivial, the vulgar, the noncultured; it infers a banality obscene yet dull, evil yet mundane, yet a banality that comes so naturally and is as necessary to the Russian soul as love or hate. A set of matryoshka dolls on a parlor mantelpiece is poshlyi; so too a woman who weeps at the sight of cheap postcards illustrating cats entangled in yarn. But I am not strictly speaking of kitsch, or even lovers of kitsch as you may think, for that too severely circumscribes the concept, which applies as much to our lives as to our arts. That which is poshlyi makes life bearable without making it worth the trouble of being alive; poshlaia turns life into a habit. The most specific and typical example of poshlyi behavior I can think would be that of a married couple who continue to make love long after their desire for one another has faded away. After the Revolution, our farseeing leaders fervently attempted to rid the country of all that was poshlyi; in so doing, however, they only ensured that all that was Russian would forever after be poshlaia.
Sonya and I passed the Museum of History and the Lenin Museum—both presently closed for repairs (of the kind not easily accomplished with hammer and nails)—and, as we did, looked between them into Red Square toward St. Basil’s nonet of domes and spires, a quarter kilometer distant from where we were walking. Directly ahead of us on the left were Kremlin walls, the color of dried blood. A crocodile of people queued to await entry into Lenin’s mausoleum. Evgeny asked me, not long ago, if I thought I could strike a deal with the government to have Lenin relocated to Sovietland, but I refused to admit I’d even heard his ridiculous question. Better they should leave the Leader of Free Peoples where he is and, if upkeep proves too dear, install a roulette wheel in his chest and turn the mausoleum into yet another casino.
The scene here in the hub of the wheel looked at first glance as it always had, but recent changes were evident if you cared to see them. Everywhere I looked, I saw Westerners, notably Americans, flatfootedly stumbling along, studying the marvels of our alternate world, imagining they understood a tenth of what they saw, unaware of how, to criminal eyes, they willingly stood as exposed as chickens ready for the pot. Yet I couldn’t help but suspect that these new tourists possessed a more sophisticated mindset than American guests of past years (miserable delegations from socialist organizations, trade union tour groups, flotillas of university students), all of whom happily allowed themselves to be dragged by the nose by Intourist girls, snapping up lies they were thrown as if they were bones.
The least of threats to tourists were two small boys lurking nearby, waiting to pounce upon likely victims. “Señorita,” one cried out to Sonya, in the inexplicable belief that she was Cuban. She clutched her purse, but neither runty brigand moved to snatch it. “Money for rubles?”
“Beat it, you hoodlums,” I said, shaking my fist. “Fortochniks. Begone!”
The most recent generation evinces no pretense of love for its elders. “Stick your head up your ass!” the older of the two brats shouted. “Prickface!” screamed his companion. I shoved my hand into my coat’s inner pocket as if reaching for a gun. Without a second’s hesitation the boys turned and vanished into the crowd.
(A fortochnik, you should know, is a small boy employed by a gang. The older gangsters shove the boy through unlocked fortochkas of ground-floor apartments. Once in, he unlocks the door and allows his companions to enter. Fortochniks carry icepicks and, if they find anyone at home, kill them by stabbing them in the temple.)
“You looked like an old granny,” Sonya said, laughing and stabbing the air with her own fists. “You’re as red in the face as a radish. Ignore the hooligans.”
My anger faded at once. “I’m not that old.”
“Not at all,” she said, and we walked on. “Moscow isn’t like it used to be. So much is shabbiness and ruin, and no one cares.”
“You sound like an old granny yourself,” I said. “Eventually there’ll be no better place in the world.”
“You believe that?”
“It won’t happen overnight.”
My koshka grinned without smiling. “But in the future, no doubt.”
“Sooner.” Without a doubt, my optimistic nature led me to hold such a cheering belief. You can’t always expect the worst, I thought at the time; but what I didn’t yet understand was that I should have.
That night Tanya and I lay in our bed in a semblance of peace. I am not ashamed to tell you that I always slept naked, as prolonged pressure of night clothes during sleep inevitably causes premature withering of the male organs. Tanya, on the other hand, was swaddled tightly within her flannel floor-length gown, resembling a gigantic baby. If at any moment her body bumped against mine, she drew away at once, as from poison ivy. As I lay there, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts—without conscious effort or intention—turned from tender moments shared with Sonya to the conversation I had had with her, then to memories of my son, and then to my father. I remembered his torrent of complaints directed toward me throughout my youth. There was no question that Evgeny was his mother’s son, they were so alike in personality as to be twins; but as for me, it was clear to him that plainly some hereditary alteration (induced from without, in accordance with Lysenko’s theories) ensued between sire and foal—that somehow he produced a wastrel, a wrecker, an insatiable fly forever rubbing his legs in piles of Western shit. He would work himself into such despair over God’s cruel joke against him that he could recover a sense that the world was not utterly absurd only by lashing me into unconsciousness with his belt, at least until I attained a size greater than his own. I don’t have to tell you, it did no good; I went about my business as before, secured good positions at university and in the Ministry after leaving college, and, against his expectations and my desires, became to some degree like him as I aged. But never once did I lay a belt, a foot, or even a hand on my own son. Possibly I should have.
“You heard about the dog.” My wife was not asleep, after all. She said this with no forewarning, startling me so that I nearly leapt from our bed.
“Dog?”
“The little girl’s dog, in Ekaterinburg. Do you ever pay attention to events you don’t profit from?”
“I heard she died, but I’m too old to cry,” I said. “What about the dog?”
“He came back to the little girl’s building at the instant she died.”
Already, in its retelling, history was undergoing its necessary revisions. “I heard something of the sort, but I know nothing else.”
“Her mother believed the dog’s return was a sign,” she continued. “Her father did not and cursed the dog for coming back. When he saw his mistress lying on her deathbed, he was so stricken with grief that he ran to the apartment balcony and leapt off.”
“The father or the dog?”
“The dog, of course. Aren’t you listening to me?”
“With rapt attention, my small wren. He was killed?”
In the dark, I discerned her head nodding affirmatively. “Ten floors, what do you think?”
“Will they be buried together?”
“That isn’t the point,” she said. “There were new developments today. The little girl’s mother filed a criminal complaint this morning against her husband, the father, for murder.”
“Murder?” I repeated. “He killed the girl?”
“Not the girl, the dog. The dog didn’t commit suicide in its grief. The father was so infuriated he picked up the dog and threw it off the balcony.”
The more she told me, the more I found myself overcome by the need for nature’s nightly restorative. “The authorities agreed to charge him with murder?”
“Evidently the mother’s uncle is Ekaterinburg’s chief of police. It will be interesting to see what happens.” Her story was finished, I supposed, and I closed my eyes, feeling as if I might be instantaneously asleep; but her next statement, unrelated to what we had been discussing, guaranteed that I would spend a wakeful night. “Alla said Dmitry’s wife, Sonya, was in your office the day you met with them about the Bruneians,” she told me. “What was she doing there?”
God help my pathetic soul, but she’d at last entrapped me. What had I told Alla? I couldn’t remember; too much time had passed. There could be no escape, not now. At once I understood that my wife’s suspicions had been assured. I stammered out a reply, unable to judge for myself how feebleminded it might have sounded. “She was dropping off documents belonging to Dmitry that we needed.”
“I see,” she said.
“Is there anything so strange in that?”
“Not at all.”
I held my breath, hoping I would be able to defend myself once she made her next remark, a sly inference, a direct accusation. She said nothing else; was she so sure of my guilt, and of what she supposed would be my reaction to her interrogation, that she was merely awaiting my full confession? After five or ten minutes passed I edged closer to her and listened carefully to the monotonous sound of her gentle exhalations. Asleep? Out like a snuffed candle.
My workers finished Dmitry’s project three weeks later; he called to tell me that the Georgians were happy. He suggested we get together soon and have a celebratory drink, or two, or ten. I agreed, thinking I could at last have a chance to pin him down about his involvement, if any, in the money laundering at Melodiya—neither my capable workers nor my adept investigative team had had any success in digging up enlightening information.
At seven that Sunday evening I went to the Metropole on Theater Square near the Bolshoi, doubtless the finest hotel in Moscow and, I have heard it said, the most beautiful in Europe. Erected at the turn of the century, the Metropole appears to be a splendid palace of nobility, built in Russian Art Nouveau style. The hotel is large, but superb proportions allow you to imagine that it was designed on an intimate scale. A terra-cotta stringcourse of sculpted figures runs along the south and west facades, beneath the top floor and cornice; mosaics in majolica tiles enliven the uppermost stone gables. Rows of chimneys lend the roof a medieval silhouette, and curlicued wrought-iron balconies enhance the building’s glory as expensive jewelry enhances a woman’s.
In Soviet days, only the most favored guests could stay at the Metropole. After the Revolution, Central Executive Committee meetings took place in the spectacular dining room, and ovations rising to thunderous applause echoed off the ceiling’s painted glass canopy, that astonishing translucent tent, each time Lenin or Trotsky spoke. Bukharin and Sverdlov kept rooms in the hotel so they would have a luxurious abode in which to rest between necessary engagements. The famous Irish writer Shaw stayed there in the early thirties, and there Stalin came to see him, discussing at length over six-course meals of fresh vegetables the incomparable perfection of Soviet life. Shaw is of course also recognized as a master satirist, but in no way could this have been considered a meeting of equals. No sooner did he conclude his enlightening visit, stomach full and spirits lifted, than kulaks in Ukraine began to eat their small sons and daughters in order to survive the famine the Father of the Peoples benevolently bestowed upon them.
The Metropole was restored by Finns in the late eighties, thereafter becoming the first Moscow hotel whose prices matched those of Tokyo rather than Bucharest. Rooms presently go for five hundred dollars a night, and the guest list remains exclusive. Anyone, however, can skulk within if they have enough of what I believe is called attitude in America: that is to say, a certain bearing arising from greater self-assuredness than most of my countryfolk possess. But along with American entrepreneurs with mouths full of promises, European representatives of nonexistent firms, and Asian criminals busy setting up intracontinental trading arrangements, domestic examples of capitalism’s more shameful manifestations are also to be found constantly parading through the Metropole’s classical lobby, ascending marble staircases, or sitting languidly in finely detailed public rooms.
Most dress expensively, if without taste: mid-level mafia, who are never told they will not be served unless they wear a tie; gamblers en route to casinos, pockets fat with unburned money; would-be peddlers of art, drugs, weapons, and nuclear material, all certified as to authenticity; and, circling vulturelike around them all, prostitutes of the highest level, predominantly brunette save for the few genuine blondes, every one wearing clothing that uncovers them so effectively that they might as well be naked. But in the Metropole, all who are allowed to enter may—for as long as their wallets stand it—pose as affiliates of the golden class.
Dmitry and I sat in the bar at a table with a bottle of vodka, far from the distracting crowd. We shared two toasts; after those, I sipped when he swallowed or abstained from rounds entirely, not caring if he thought me rude. “You must join us at the feast tomorrow,” he said. “I told our hosts you will be there.”
“Why did you do that? I have no desire to meet these Georgians. Petrenko was bad enough.”
“Oh, Pasha.” He waved a hand as if brushing away an annoying insect. It surprised me to hear Dmitry use the familiar form of his name; they’d apparently grown close. “You know, to get him off my back I had to tell him a week ago that the shipments were already going out.”
“By the end of this week, without question,” he said. “You probably want to know when you’ll receive the remainder of your fee.”
“I expected that we would touch upon the subject.”
“Wednesday. I promise you on my mother’s grave.”
“No later,” I told him. “A bank transfer?”
“Certainly not,” he said. “You’ll be paid in cash.”
“You’ve that much at hand?” He nodded. “What about the Georgians? Or Petrenko? Don’t they expect to receive their cuts at once?”
“Everyone will enjoy similar satisfaction, let me put it that way.” Picking up the bottle, he refilled his glass and tried to refill mine. “So Sonya and I will see you at the celebration?”
“If possible, I’ll stop by.”
“They’re expecting you, Max.”
“Why?” I asked. “What have you told them about me? How thickly are you spreading lies?”
“I’ve told them you’re my personal friend and long-time business associate,” he said. “A staunch supporter of Russo-Georgian friendship. Good business possibilities for you, Max, I assure you. The party starts at noon and runs at least a day and a night, you know what Caucasians are like.” He downed another glass and as quickly poured himself a fresh serving. What was in him that he tried so hard to drown? “I have to tell you I’m glad this is nearly over. The tension has been unbearable. Constantly fearing something would go wrong.”
“That they’d find out who you were, you mean,” I said, and he couldn’t deny it. “Tell me, Dmitry, who is receiving these souvenirs for you in New York?”
“American associates,” he said. “Mostly poor immigrants. We should help our brothers there whenever we can. The place is no utopia, after all.”
“Everywhere there are problems,” I said. “How do these poor immigrants get the money to purchase souvenirs at wholesale?”
“Their invention is admirable,” Dmitry said, avoiding my stare. “As I understood it, Max, the less you knew about our operation the happier you were.”
“Our business is concluded, and my curiosity is aroused.”
He didn’t smile, but neither did he avoid my question. “The receivers will of course be assisted by countrymen more experienced in American ways.”
“Mafia?” I asked, not that it was necessary to understand, only confirm. “This is something else you’ve neglected to tell Petrenko, I bet. My God, Dmitry—”
“It would be ideal to work with angels, sure, but how is that possible? America is a criminal nation; everyone there is a born gangster. It’s historical tradition, their spiritual heritage.”
“Which is what Russians and Americans have most in common, yes?” We laughed. “Dmitry, there’s something specific I need to ask you about. While working on your assignment, a troubling aspect of the past came to my attention. I’d like to know what you knew about it.”
“If I remember, I’ll tell you.”
Habit caused me to speak in near whispers, not that any spy could have heard me over the disco blaring through the bar. “When railroad money was laundered at Melodiya,” I said, “it looks as if most went through the Happy Guys’ accounts. Was money duly owed them embezzled during the course of those transactions?”
“That would have been possible, but I’d have no way of knowing,” Dmitry said. “As I understood the arrangements, it was essential that whoever enabled transfers to proceed in any of the departments or ministries we used took their expected cut. How else could it have been done?”
“Was Esenin receiving a cut?”
“You don’t know?” Dmitry asked, pausing a moment, as if taken entirely by surprise by my questions. “Since I didn’t know you at the time, I had no way of knowing the degree of your participation when I first came to you with this assignment. I imagined you’d either tell me if you had been involved or not; it didn’t ultimately matter.”
“I wasn’t.”
“And you’re so much the poorer for it, then,” he said, and smiled. “Esenin would have overseen dispersal of the percentages at Melodiya, in any event. He probably wished to preserve your innocence.”
For once he had been so straightforward that, alarmingly, I suspected him of telling the truth. In any event, he appeared to know no more than I did, and so I said nothing else. Dmitry stared into his vodka as if within its crystal he could divine his future; when he lifted his head he turned a sadder face toward me, as if he’d not much liked what he foresaw. “Life is more interesting than it used to be, Max, but there’s much I miss about the old days. You know the way it was. The most of the most.”
“The most of the most for the least,” I said. “You’re living like white people now, why should you complain?”
His eyes misted as he wallowed in nostalgia. “These youngsters, these foreigners will never know. How could you tell of the marvels of our lives?”
Anyone would find it marvelous, beyond comprehension, a veritable fairy tale—where should I start? By explaining that Russia has so few computers even today because for years cybernetics was deemed a reactionary pseudoscience? That food in state restaurants was so bad because by deliberately making it inedible there would be more left afterward to use in overfulfilling the State Waste Food Plan? What could I tell you regarding the private railroad car used by the Politburo gerontocracy to transport their personal cows and milkmaids when they traveled? How if the old bastards went fishing, scuba divers would lurk beneath the surface of the deep, attaching fat salmon to their hooks? What about Ministry of Science attempts to bring the dead back to life in the belief they would be better workers, once risen from the grave? What about Khrushchev, assured in his Lysenkoistic beliefs that corn could sprout from sand, as pears might grow on mice? Or Uncle Lyonya, presenting a platinum bust of himself, to himself, for supreme sacrifices in improving the lives of the people? Or Chernenko, the esteemed living corpse, always needing prompting to remember the name of the country he led? Or the Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples, line-editing hack novelists in order to clarify their plots? No, I think the marvels of our Soviet society were too multiform, too rarefied for any to comprehend, even after a lifetime of study or experience. “What days they were,” he murmured, nose-deep in shit, convinced it was honey.
“Dmitry, what is really being shipped to the New York mafia?”
“Brighton Beach mafia,” he said, correcting me. “Max, this is not a productive line of conversation.”
“Is it counterfeit currency?”
“Didn’t I tell you it wasn’t?” he said, sneering. “Petrenko and his louts think they’ll make dollars worthless as rubles by flooding America with counterfeits. Don’t they understand the Americans would just print even more money and thus make the bad worthless? Petrenko is no Milton Friedman.”
“Then what?” I asked again, hoping he was drunk enough to say, but he wasn’t.
“Please don’t ask these questions, Max,” he said. “There is something I need to talk to you about. I suffer a crisis of the soul. I think Sonya is having a love affair.”
Thank heaven my reaction time was slowed by drink! This was possibly the last statement I expected to hear from him, although looking back from my present vantage point I’m astonished that I convinced myself that this should forever be the case. But my luck held, and I was rescued once more; those quadrants of my brain capable only of animal response took over as he intoned his words, and my face signaled no surrender. “Do you know with whom?” I asked.
“No, it’s nothing but suspicion, but solid suspicion.”
“Why do you think she’s having an affair?”
“Scientific reasoning,” he said. “The look that appears on her face sometimes, when her thoughts seem to turn to one she misses. During the day she disappears, and I have no idea where she goes. She says shopping, but she spends her entire life shopping, so who can tell? I think she has been dressing for someone other than me, choosing outfits which shamelessly exaggerate her physical features.”
Memories of those ensembles reappeared as tantalizing ghosts in my mind. The room suddenly felt hotter, but I wasn’t perspiring. Were his suspicions more informed than he let on? Was he testing me to see if I would break down with guilt? How long could he go on; how long could I keep from cracking? During the purges, those accused who refused to confess would be sometimes placed alone in a soundproof room; then, after a time, they would barely hear over hidden loudspeakers a two-sentence conversation—His mouth is filling with saliva; yes, you can see it form at the corners of his mouth—over and over again, never louder, for minutes, hours, an entire day. It always worked.
“You’ve been working too hard, I think,” I told him. “Nerves or your stomach produce these feelings. Something physical is taking its toll.”
“It’s more than that,” he told me, his facial muscles going slack.
“Why do you think so?”
“The situation is plain, Max, any fool can see,” he said. “I’m much older than Sonya, and she has the beauty of a goddess. Even with my money, it’s a miracle she ever went for me. Now I’m afraid it’s ending between us. I’ve always been aware of this possibility, but I never thought it would happen.”
“Have you confronted her with your suspicions?”
“No. As I say, I have no undeniable proof. The last thing I want to do is make myself a laughingstock in front of her.” He swept his limp green-gray hair from the sides of his head; when he brought his hands away I was amazed to see pale locks still clinging to them. If Dmitry noticed anything unusual in this, he didn’t let on. Bits of hair wafted like dandelion fluff to the floor as he shook his fists. “But the possibility makes me crazy with anger. If she’s having an affair, I swear to you I’ll catch her. And if I find her in the sexual act with her lover, I’ll hack him to pieces. With my gun I’ll blow off the top of his head as if it were a hat. I’ll bash in his brains with an ax. I’ll stomp his face into jelly with my boots. And Sonya will watch every minute, I’ll make sure of it.”
“These are possibly unhealthy fantasies, Dmitry.”
“Afterward I’ll say to her, Come home and let’s have dinner.”
“Her response would be instantaneous,” I assured him.
“My passionate love for her allows these thoughts to torture my soul. If she is having an affair, and I’m sure she is, I can only hope she’ll see the error of her ways before it’s too late.”
“Bear in mind, Dmitry, if you were to come upon Sonya and this so-called lover and react as you have told me, punishment afterward would be swift and harsh. This isn’t France, you know.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Realistically, I’d have to kill them both, then myself.”
“Who does it benefit, saving a dead face?” I asked, hoping I could perhaps pound sense into his thick head. “Be sensible. If you discover hard proof your wife is involved in illicit behavior, confront the parties involved in the most emotionless manner. In that way, secure your position. What if this theoretical lover is younger than you, larger, or crueler? Then who’ll wind up jelly?”
“I know you’re right, Max, but it’s difficult.” He poured another drink. Undoubtedly he would not express such Tatar desires when sober; vodka is always bloodier than blood.
“Tell her how much you care about her,” I said. “That heartens women.”
“She must swear eternal fidelity to me alone.”
“I’m sure she’ll react as she thinks proper. It’s getting late, Dmitry—”
“When I wake up and see her in the morning,” he told me, “her eyes, her hair, her ethereal form, I think to myself, How lucky can a man be? But now I can’t get these suspicions out of my mind. I see her, and then at once I visualize her mouth encircling some fucker’s prick. I have to practically bite my fist to keep from smashing it into her face.”
His wry badinage began to pall. Had I not have needed to explain myself too fully afterward, I should have liked to do nothing more at that moment than smash my own unbitten fist into his tired, lying old face. “If she were guilty of nothing, what purpose would that serve?” I asked.
He poured another drink. It is hard to be identifiable as an alcoholic in Russia, but Dmitry exerted superhuman effort to be so recognized. “She’d understand why she should behave,” he said.
“Vodka is doing its talking for you. Deal with her lover, if she has a lover,” I told him. “The rest takes care of itself.” My assuring words evidently had the calming effect I intended them to have. Perverse as it may sound to you, I had no difficulty saying them; in our country we have had long experience employing words whose meaning is subordinate to their value—sometimes we believed there could be no other kind. “I think you should call it an evening, Dmitry.”
“I’ll be fine”—swilling his drink, splashing some on his cheap suit.
“Very well,” I said, not adding that I hoped he would be fine only until he paid me the money he owed me; otherwise I didn’t care what happened to the bastard, not after the way he talked about his wife, my koshka. After leaving the bar I stopped long enough in the lobby to call Sonya, on my own phone.
“He’s drunk and talking violently,” I told her, after informing her of his suspicions. Dear girl, she was blithely unconcerned by my warning and was truly astonished (and pleased, no doubt) that I took his threats so seriously.
“Every time he gets drunk he starts talking that way, you’ve seen him in action,” she said, laughing. “For years he’s suspected me of everything, even when I’ve been completely innocent.” It was hard to imagine her in such a state, but I tried. “I’m supposed to be scared? Don’t worry, my strong man, he merely blows wind from north instead of south. Pay him no mind.”
“You should be careful, just in case.”
“I’m bigger than he is, remember,” she said. “He hits me, I hit him back harder. He hits me again, I kill him. Then he’ll learn his own lesson.”
I allowed her to convince me; then we exchanged heated farewells. It was after eleven, and I phoned my evening driver to pick me up, for though the Metropole is not a twenty-minute walk from my apartment, Moscow’s streets are not without hazard at night. Glancing into the bar once more before leaving, I was surprised to see Dmitry, not only still there but still conscious. I left him alone, hoping that eventually that night he would crawl all the way into the bottle and not go home.
Stepping into the crisp air to await my driver, I waited near the entranceway for safety’s sake. The slovenly night doormen were engaged in striking deals with a cabdriver; a gang of four Azeris, or so they appeared in the dark, lurked menacingly at the curb beyond a streetlight, awaiting opportunities. A flock of young prostitutes of the sort once called currency whores (a thin dollar was thick enough to pry apart their legs), having been denied entry into the Metropole, swooped down upon a pair of men—Bruneians?—leaving the hotel, cawing loudly and pecking the arms of the unwary travelers. All the girls bore the faint resemblance to Barbie to which I’ve alluded; one, especially au courant, had shaved her natural eyebrows and drawn in their place thin arcs, seemingly with iodine. The men, wisely, held aroused passions in check and attempted to break away from the harpies before their clothes were torn from them; sadly, they raced directly into the welcoming arms of the southern cadre. No sooner did the thugs fall upon the pair than the girls launched their own assault. With the doormen and cabdriver I watched, entranced, as a fight broke out between hooligans and whores over who had priority. In the midst of the contretemps, militiamen drove up in a holding vehicle to rescue the hapless foreigners, tires squealing to a halt. The officials heaved the tourists into the armored back of their black crow and sped away. Sometime before dawn the men would be released, probably somewhere in the distant suburbs, their wallets lighter for having paid off the officials with sizable bribes to avoid being arrested for creating a public disturbance. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t have been raped. Oh! our incomparable Russian life, in this new epoch of human progress.
It did not please me to see that Tanya was awake when I got home. As I drew near, to press my lips against her hair as she turned away from me, she stepped back. “Is there something wrong, my pigeon?” I asked. “You’re up so late.”
“There is something we need to talk about.”
“A business problem?”
She shook her head. For a fortnight, she had been moodier than usual. Her emotional state shifted repeatedly, from seeming catatonia so profound she appeared incapable of thought, to a state of contained rage so intense, yet so wordless, that I worried she would have a stroke. As she would never tell me what troubled her, I could only imagine she was undergoing physical transformations women her age suffer. Lifting her hand, she bade me to follow her into the living room, which I did. She closed and locked the French doors behind us, drawing the lace curtains over the glass panes. I cannot tell you why my suspicions weren’t aroused except that perhaps, after numberless rehearsals, when my time came to take the stage I froze. Possibly that corner of my soul most needing confession and repentance seized control of my brain, causing me to ignore natural suspicions. Maybe my allotted time simply ran out.
There were sheets and a pillow on the sofa. This troubled me. “Is someone staying over tonight, my sweet one?”
“I have something I think you’ll want to hear,” Tanya said, and directed me to sit down on the sofa. She took her Walkman off a nearby table and placed it in my hands. “You’ll be as fascinated as I was, I’m sure.”
“What is it?” I asked, fitting the headphones over my ears.
“Listen and then tell me.”
When I switched on the machine I initially discerned rustling sounds, as of a ream of paper being thumbed, then heard the squeaking of chairs above the recorder’s gentle hiss. Then a conversation started coming over the wires, passing through the tiny speakers directly into my head.
Koshka, I was saying, my voice wavering in pitch, I want you. I’m exploding inside.
Darling, explode, Sonya said, her voice muffled, as if she were speaking from beneath blankets or through pants. Succeeding moments were wordless although interpretable. My wife stood tapping her foot against the floor. The nihilist in my soul commanded me to rush from the room as quickly as possible, breaking down the doors in my haste, but realistically I knew I could never commit such a cowardly act. After a few more seconds I took off the headphones and placed them, and the recorder, on the table before me. This was the moment I’d long dreaded; there was only one thing I could do.
“Has someone convinced you that this is my voice on the tape?”
She responded to my question in a way I would never have predicted. With speed few boxers could match, she slapped my face so soundly that I almost fell off the sofa. “Explode!” she shouted. “Go on, then! Two can explode!”
“How did you obtain this so-called conversation?” I asked, rubbing my hand against my cheek, thankful she hadn’t broken the skin with her rings.
“My associate Iosif,” she said, staring at me; I would rather have confronted the eyes of any murderer. “Pay the people who sweep your office better, Max, if you expect to enjoy a secretive life.”
“That little bastard bugged my office?” I asked, infuriated, but a second slap curbed my appetite for debate.
“I know you’ve had affairs before with cheap whores, don’t deny it,” she shouted. “But this! Meeting her in your office! Obviously your entire staff assists you in lying to me. My God, Max! You made me have dinner with her!”
“That wasn’t my idea,” I said. “Why are you making these rash accusations? Look, it isn’t difficult, manufacturing conversations.” It didn’t seem likely that I could make a believable case, but I tried. “Who is this Iosif? For all you know he was put up to this by business enemies of mine.”
“Iosif is dependable, Max, that’s why I had him install the bug,” she said. “This is a record from life, no question. Why do you deny it?”
“Have you had the tape subjected to scientific tests?”
“Loyal as a tomcat, timid as a hare!” she shouted. “Can’t you admit your actions? I listened to the entire conversation, such as it is. Any fool can tell nothing has been edited. You think me less than a fool? It broke my heart to hear that tape, you monster. How long have you been with her? How long, Max?”
That was it; there was nothing I could do but surrender. “April.”
“Almost a year. Time for a new one, don’t you think?” she asked. “How can you do this? Treating me so shamelessly? All these years, and who knows how many women?”
“And with whom do I remain?”
“You bastard! You don’t respect me!”
There is no greater or more painful accusation that one spouse can hurl at the other in our country. “Don’t say such a thing. I have the highest respect for you.”
“Then why do you follow these bitches like a dog? One woman isn’t enough for you, no, you need a harem. You think I never realized? I didn’t care?” She balled her fists as if preparing to strike me again. “Why do you think I insisted upon going into business for myself, rather than depend on your largess? I didn’t want to be left to starve like a pensioner when you left me for some young whore.”
“Sonya is no whore.”
“Have you ever had her over here?” she asked. “Has she been in our bed?”
“Never.” I spoke unfiltered truth. “There’s much I’m guilty of, but that would be sheerest disrespect to you. Something I’d never do.”
“Shut up!” she screamed. “She means more to you than the rest, I can tell; don’t tell me she doesn’t. Are you planning to leave me for her?”
“I’ve never wanted to leave you, my angel, I swear to you. Believe me when I say I’d never abandon you.”
“How can I believe anything you tell me?” she asked, picking up the recorder and throwing it at the wall, shattering the housing and breaking a hole in the plaster. “Even when I present you with undeniable truth you try to lie your way out of it. Do you even know what truth is?” Tanya wasn’t crying, which troubled me; nothing in her face implied that she felt anything but the most undiluted rage at that moment, and I could think of no way to calm her. “Did you have to bring your mistress to your office? Do your workers see you betray me every day? Do you fuck her on your desk?”
“Not every day.” She tried to slap me again, but this time I caught her wrist. I held her tightly until she calmed down enough to scream before letting go.
“If I told you to stop seeing her you wouldn’t, would you?”
“Tanya, please.”
“Would you?”
“I want you both,” I answered, in absolute honesty.
“You can’t have us both!” she shouted. “You must decide.” For an instant I thought she would cry, but she was too accomplished in controlling unseemly emotion; the shades fell over her eyes, and by will she allowed her features to take on the warmth of marble. “Whatever you decide, I will remain your business associate. It’s up to you as to whether you want me as your wife.”
“You’re giving me an ultimatum?”
“Exactly,” she said.
“You don’t want me to move out?”
I wouldn’t have called the expression on her face a smile, but it came close. “No, Max, you stay here and decide.” My cheek felt remarkably sore when I touched it. “Don’t worry, you’re not bleeding.” With that she turned and walked out of the room, shutting—and locking—the doors behind her.
I am no starets, no holy man, no doomsaying Cassandra; apocalyptic visions do not bombard my waking life, and premonitions of coming days never force me into making millenarian prophecies for which I can be held accountable. But later that night, when at last I fell asleep, leaving my troubles behind in the sunlit world, I dreamed. In my dream I possessed the power of ubiquity. I dreamed of Moscow and the radiant future it had been denied in waking life, and this is what I saw.
Many-storied buildings rose throughout the city, their designs a thousand years ahead of our time: oval towers bridged by skywalks, glass pyramids glowing like braziers, bundles of steel tubes held aright by guy wires, gold-domed cylinders of granite and green tile. Through the black iron latticework of the Tatlin Tower ascended a cyclopean glass ball into which was etched a map of the world, each country made of sparkling red rubies. Rising above all was the Palace of Soviets, three hundred stories in the style of the tower of Babel; at its apex was an aluminum statue of Lenin, one hundred meters high. Two red searchlights beamed constantly from his eyes, directing all into the path of his mesmeric stare. Squadrons of ten-engined airplanes with half-kilometer wingspans soared in formation through the night sky, their fuselages emblazoned with Socialist Realist figures illuminated by tail-mounted searchlights, their loudspeakers endlessly blaring agitprop into the atmosphere. Autogiros buzzed like bees over the city; carmine zeppelins cruised in elegant progression high above black clouds curling up from ten thousand smokestacks. Boulevards twenty lanes wide ran from the Kremlin in every direction. The river, enlarged by voluntary prison labor into a deep ocean harbor, provided Moscow with a seacoast almost Bohemian in its grandeur. Ships docked to load up our national products, goods transported from Stalingrad, Stalinsk, Stalino, Stalinbad, Stalinir, Stalinkan, and Stalinovo, goods to be sent forth to a waiting world: caviar and sables, vodka and papirosi, heroin and hashish, plutonium and red mercury, balalaikas, matryoshkas, lapel pins, rayon banners, platinum busts of our leaders, and coypu. Posters of milkmaids, gymnasts, weight lifters, folk dancers, tractor drivers, miners, soldiers, and all for whom labor is a matter of honor papered every building’s facade. Red neon signs mounted to the Kremlin walls proclaimed:
CANNIBALIZATION IS FORBIDDEN
LET’S CATCH UP WITH AND SURPASS AFRICA
WE’LL OPEN A WOMEN’S SHOP
THROUGH WHIPPING TO SOCIALISM
WHO IS KILLING WHOM?
As I watched, Moscow’s surviving citizens emerged from their buildings. In silent procession they marched into Red Square. From every streetlight hung friends of relatives of enemies of the people. Trams ran on bone lines. In bookstores, works sold were bound in the skin of the authors. Skulls sprouted from the earth like mushrooms in the city’s great parks. Impaled upon the spires of Stalin’s seven skyscrapers were the swollen heads of old Bolsheviks: Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Bukharin, Rykov, and Krupskaya.
The assembled populace applauded wildly as they watched the moon, gleaming like chains, white as a silver fist, rise high over Sovietland. No one in the crowd wanted to be the first to stop clapping. The ever-intensifying ovation continued; palms stung, fingers swelled, blisters burst. People clapped the skin from their flesh. Tendon sprang loose of muscle, muscle slipped from bone, and still the applause grew louder. Bloody spray resettled as opaque fog, enshrouding the crowd. As the people vanished within the red cloud, they continued to cheer the moon for having delivered the darkness they craved. In the moon’s face was the silent, mustachioed face of the Father of Night: the man after our own hearts, the man who missed nothing, the man who forever found you out, the man who knew you better than you would ever know yourself.
Why did no one realize that if we built hell on earth there would be nothing to look forward to?