Our skies are full of two-headed eagles. Bats have been loosed from their caves, worms crawl out of the earth, wolves prowl the land at will. All the rocks that for years weighed upon our country have been overturned, and we will be beset by the long-hidden horrors that lay beneath them for the rest of our days. But we must nevertheless do more; we must overturn the rocks that lie yet within each of us and stare without flinching at the vermin that tunnel through our souls.
When I woke the next morning, my eyes were wide open. For a half-conscious instant I imagined that I was sleeping with my wife again and prepared to draw away before she could notice that my body was touching hers; then memory shook me by the neck, and with delight I recalled who lay naked alongside me. I kissed Sonya awake; she returned my affections, for my deliciously wicked angel, having avenged herself upon her molester, was her own self again.
“Koshka.”
We got out of bed an hour later. My faculties had also returned to me, and at first I believed I suffered no lingering aftereffects from the week’s demanding events. As I dressed, I looked out the window to offer a silent good morning to my tired goddesses, who were always there to comfort me—as was Khrushchev; I almost expected him to wave as he walked past his window, scratching his hog’s ass.
I gathered up the newspapers from outside the door; young Sashenka brought them by for me every morning. It pleased me to see almost nothing in them regarding the pet market massacre of the day before, save for inchoate remarks in Arguments and Facts suggesting the likelihood of possible mafia involvement. There were more casualties than I’d realized: thirty-six in all, including nineteen innocent bystanders, but the poor folk of Russia are continually at the mercy of criminal brigands, and the authorities did not seem too troubled; the militia captain explained to reporters that most of the unaffiliated deceased were low-use segments of the population.
“Max,” Sonya said, emerging from the bathroom, wearing black wool slacks and nothing else. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”
“Of course, angel,” I replied, embracing her. I wanted my koshka just as much now as when I’d awakened, but as I’d not recovered from our morning exercise, I restrained myself. “Why else would I have brought you over?”
“No, I mean do you want me to move in?” she asked, parting my hair with her fingers. “I have to get out of our old apartment and away from that treasure room. Do you want me here with you all the time?”
“Of course.”
“Then will you be doing something with Tanya’s belongings? I feel as if she’ll be walking in on us at any minute.”
“That’s impossible, koshka. You know that won’t happen.”
“I’m only describing my emotions, Max. These things of hers make me uncomfortable. They make me feel like I shouldn’t be here.”
As I looked around I realized the degree to which my poor wife’s presence in the bedroom far exceeded my own. The doors of her closet were wide open, revealing racks of expensive clothing, hats, belts, bags; on her dressing table were her grooming implements, perfume bottles, decorative boxes, cloisonné figurines, and Chanel scarves. On the walls were photographs of Tanya as a child, as a student, and as a newlywed, standing with me on the Sparrow Hills and looking out at the view over Moscow. There were photographs of her parents, of her sister, of our son.
“All her possessions?”
“Certainly not, but you weren’t thinking of leaving things exactly as they are, were you? Do you want to live in a museum?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll sort it out, my angel. I may not be able to get everything put away by tonight, or tomorrow—”
“Of course.” She kissed me and headed back to the bathroom. “It was something I needed to tell you.”
The reason we Russians so treasure our poshlaia, I think, is that we have no other guides by which to tell if reality correlates with our memories. When I looked again at those photographs, I knew I’d once had a son, that he’d not been a fantasy; when I glanced at the dressing table and saw my wife’s brush, matted with gray-russet hair, I was reminded that while she had been here only days ago—hours, really—she would not be back again. Ultimately, I think, poshlaia is neither good nor bad in itself; like fred, it reflects the emotions and mood of its user. And like many drugs, poshlaia keeps you from sleeping but allows you to dream.
Did it sadden me to lose my wife before I could leave her? Would I be human if it did not? I cannot deny that the emotion my wife and I felt toward each other was love, true love—but married love, the kind that attains maturity only through years of shared trauma, becoming the love that forgets why it should remember its name. And, hear me, the problem with such love is that each partner comes to comprehend the troubles of the other so well and so constantly as to sweep from the soul all traces of passion (the emotion most dependent upon mystery and unavailability and, when sustained, capable of heightening the earthier aspects of existence into the spiritual plane) and, with passion, life. The marriage bond is no different from a dental plate: it can’t be ignored, but you get used to it; it causes discomfort, but rarely enough to ruin your life; it usually looks good from the outside, depending on the angle of the viewer; and when it is gone, the unfillable space strangely feels so much better.
Some of the photographs I would rehang elsewhere in the apartment; the figurines and boxes could be placed on the shelves in our parlor, along with matryoshkas and banners and hand-painted thimbles. Finding an envelope in a dresser drawer, I pulled out the hair that clung to my wife’s brush and slipped the tangle inside; then I dropped the envelope in the wastebasket.
When I looked up and out, I felt sick. Evidently Khrushchev had undertaken a calisthenics program. He stood near but faced away from his window, bending over repeatedly as if imagining himself able to touch or even see his toes. I don’t have to tell you he had not purchased special exercise apparel. As if this hellish sight did not make me suffer enough, I watched, appalled, as the young woman I had seen earlier reappeared. She’d not yet found her clothing, but this did not appear to concern her. My jaw dropped as I watched the girl throw herself physically onto Khrushchev, seeming unable to effectively fight off the attraction of his overpowering personal magnetism.
“My God,” I said. “This is reprehensible.”
“What?” Sonya asked, coming to the window, peering out at what I saw. The girl was dragging Khrushchev to the floor, perhaps to assist him in doing push-ups. My koshka laughed, but not out of malice; she plainly sympathized, which I could not help but find mind-boggling. “What a happy couple they are. Do you often spy on their love nest?”
“What is that poor girl doing with that fat old bastard?” I asked as they disappeared from view. “He must have drugged her. Why else would she be there?”
“Because she wants to be,” Sonya said, pinching my arm. “What, you think he’s imprisoning her as his sexual slave?”
“He must be. Didn’t you get a good look at him? Have you ever seen anything like it?”
“I thought he looked a little like you,” she said, smiling and returning to the bathroom to complete her ablutions. For a moment (longer, perhaps) I feared I was having a stroke. Faint hope; once more, my astonishing powers of recovery preserved me.
“Ten minutes for final farewells. Hurry, hurry.”
I asked Alla to give the eulogy at Tanya’s funeral the next afternoon, for I did not know what I could say about my late wife, or about my love for her and my hatred of our long-fought struggles, that would not somehow offend most of those in attendance. No, better to let another speak well of the dead; on that day if no other, if I could not speak truth I would say nothing.
“We all miss Tatiana Sergeyevna,” Alla began. “Our sorrow would please her.”
There were not as many in attendance as my wife would have liked; it was a long drive to Nicholas Archangel and the Glow of Life Columbarium, after all. None of Tanya’s relatives were still alive, save her sister Olga, and she had moved to Paris in 1991. When I called her to commiserate and tell her when the memorial would be held, she told me she had neither the time nor the desire to set foot in Russia ever again—she’d managed to almost forget that the country, and her sister, existed.
All workers of her firm were at hand save one—we hadn’t yet found Iosif, but his trail was burning hot. Anatoly and Roman sat with Sonya and myself in the front row, dabbing at tears with pocket squares soft as skin, while the office staff sat in the general congregation. Arteim and Evgeny were there, and Tanya’s lawyer Zhukov, with whom I had already exchanged unpleasant words; but he would do my bidding soon enough. Although I recognized everyone by face, if not by name, I could no longer be certain there were no representatives of the criminal classes present—excepting, of course, the crematory hooligans themselves.
“A woman of strength,” I heard Alla say. “Possessed of unwavering opinions. An inspirational figure in whom we can all take pride.”
I had made sure no disco organist would despoil the ceremony; Alla’s words alone echoed through the chamber as she spoke. Her eulogy was touching but unmemorable, and no one was surprised or disappointed—few people in our country have either the ability or desire to actually say anything of meaning when making a public address. It isn’t that our brains have been polished smooth by the constant rush of lies pouring over them, or our tongues numbed by the ceaseless flow of drink; only that anyone who has grown up in Russia is long-conditioned to bury the most innocuous beliefs beneath mountains of scenic rhetoric. How could the noblest words retain meaning, used by people trained since birth to say nothing that might offend someone, somewhere, sometime?
“—unlimited devotion to her work and to her husband, Maxim—”
Sonya took my hand and squeezed it, expressing love; save for such tender and welcome gestures, my koshka behaved herself admirably during the funeral. She was well aware that mortuary etiquette demands that rituals for a deceased spouse should proceed uninterrupted by the lubricious behavior of the chief mourner’s lover.
“Before we go,” Alla said, “I should like to remember our happiest—”
The columbarium’s female attendant flung open the doors and strode in, waving her arms as she stepped in front of Alla. Two apes followed in her wake and began taking away the bouquets surrounding the bier, so that the coffin could descend unhindered into the hungry flames. “Final farewells must be concluded at this time!”
Alla, with good reason, glared at the woman as if she were a barefooted peasant. “I’m not finished.”
“So what? Your time is up and there are people waiting. Hurry, hurry! Be off with you.”
“Max!” Alla shouted across the room. I stood and moved quickly to the front of the room. The attendant turned her back to me as I approached, plainly thinking that nothing I could say to her would be of any importance.
“This funeral is for an owner of this very facility.”
She shrugged. “We are equal in death.”
“This woman”—I pointed to Alla—“and I are also owners. I demand that she be given time to finish her eulogy.”
“I know who you are,” she said. “It’s still impossible.”
“Will you tell me why?” I asked, seizing her shoulder and shaking her. She nodded once to her thugs, who pressed a button on the wall. As we watched, Tanya’s coffin disappeared through the floor into the hungry oven. The attendant jerked away from me and signaled that her assistants should step forward, to be ready to act in the event I continued to offend her.
“What you think doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “We run a tight schedule. Many people are dying and need to use our facilities.” She directed her tattooed thugs to let in the next group. “Now listen to me, you people must get out of here,” she shouted to Tanya’s mourners, who were already walking away. “Go! Go! We join you in your sorrow! Good-bye!”
There was nothing else to do, considering that my wife had now been stolen from me for a second time. It was evident why the attendant had treated us the way she did, ignoring the accepted folkways of nonobtrusive service so blatantly, but she would pay for her crimes. I placed my arm around Alla’s waist, and our party left the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said as we reached the entrance lobby and I helped Alla on with her coat. “We should have expected that. What did your agents tell you?”
“We’ll have full control of the facility by the end of next week,” she said. “Max, when they give you Tanya’s ashes, will you make sure they are hers?”
“They will be. Several of my men are downstairs, watching them and seeing to it that the hooligans do as they’re supposed to.”
Upon gaining access to the property through right of ownership, we had quickly discovered why the Georgians so desired to take possession of the Glow of Life. Not only could such a facility and its experienced workers serve—and had been serving—as a convenient disposal operation for those hundreds who each month fell astray of gangsters, but bone ash has many profitable uses: to spread over icy streets in winter, to adulterate flour exported to the near abroad, as an industrial abrasive, and as an additive to cut the purity of drugs.
“That’s good.” Alla might have been a stove, she glowed so red-hot with anger. “I could strangle that bitch. How soon can we be rid of her?”
“We can be rid of all these employees once they are no longer owners,” I reminded her. “Don’t hound yourself sick with worry, I’ll take care of these minor details. Do you have a ride back to Moscow?”
“With Anatoly,” she said. “Good-bye, Max. Thank you.” She kissed me on the cheek, and we briefly embraced. “I’ll call.”
As she walked out of the building, Sonya lifted her arms so I might slip them into her own coat’s sleeves. “Will you have the woman fired?”
I shook my head. “Killed.”
Sonya said little to me on the way back; the events of the week appeared to have caught up with her, and she peacefully slept, her head on my shoulder. On our return to Moscow we joined the caravan of reconditioned army trucks barreling into the city, hauling goods legal and illegal to market. One open carrier had a black-ened-bronze statue of Lenin strapped securely onto its wooden bed. All ten meters of this representation had been molded in a standard pose; however, as Vladimir Ilyich lay on his back rather than standing atop a pedestal in a miserable township beyond the Urals, his outstretched arm pointed toward the sky instead of the luminous if ill-perceived horizon. In his other hand Lenin held his cap over his heart; thanks to the inventiveness of the sculptor, he wore a second cap rakishly tilted on his head. So many consumers outside our country, especially in America, find these icons of the Age of Small-brained Lizards so inexplicably attractive that I think, if demand continues to increase, it would be smart to reopen one or two shuttered statuary factories so that fresh-cast icons of our ham-headed egoists may be produced as desired to satisfy market needs. Glory ever be to the profit-making people! As we have always done, we shall offer the West a choice of monsters; but this time they shall be happy with the return on their investment.
During the next few days Sonya and I made several trips, tranferring her belongings into our apartment. The furniture and Dmitry’s possessions—including those isotope-tainted valuables in his treasure room—would be left in their old flat until I ascertained a suitable method of disposal. Once we emptied the place of everything she wanted to keep, I had the building’s cooperative seal the apartment tight for the duration.
“Did you see what happened to the little coma girl’s father?” she asked me as I helped fold another dozen of her dresses before packing them away. Not until the last night of moving did we attempt to order her storehouse of clothing.
“Coma girl?”
“In Ekaterinburg,” she said. “He was on trial for murder.”
“Oh, the dog-killer,” I said, at last remembering what she was talking about; recalling, too, Tanya’s inordinate interest in the case. “What happened? Is the trial over?”
She opened another suitcase. “Not guilty. That’s not the end of it.”
“Why?”
“The mother and her family were so traumatized by the miscarriage of justice that, when everyone left the courtroom and went outside, they killed the father and his lawyer with axes.”
“They overreacted, clearly,” I opined. “They’ve been charged?”
“Their trial should begin in several months,” she said. Then, entirely without warning, she brought up a subject that was so unlikely I at first did not know how to respond. “Are you tired of Russia, Max?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Do you think we have a future here? Do you think anybody does?”
“Of course we do. It only depends on what we do with it.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Maybe we should go to America.”
“We could use a vacation. Is that where you’d like to go?”
“In truth I thought we could move there one day.”
This was a possibility I’d never remotely considered. “You’ve never been out of Russia before,” I said. “Why not visit first and then decide? How do you know you wouldn’t hate America, once you see it in real life?”
“How do you know I wouldn’t love it?”
“Moving to another country is not like moving across town,” I said. “And something happens to American Russians. They change.”
“They become Americans. Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know that it’s good,” I said. “Something in the soul transforms, I think. It’s clear to me from talking to my friend Lev that he’s greatly changed since he went there.”
“I’m not Lev,” she said. “Maybe he believes you’re the one who’s changed.”
“Maybe he’d be wrong.”
“You’ve never been there either, so what are you doing, telling me all about America? People I know who have been told me about what they saw with their own eyes. New York, Miami, San Francisco. What magical names. I have heard Las Vegas is beautiful, Max. The lights at night make night disappear.”
“I think you are imagining dream America, angel,” I said. “I have no objections to visiting, so we may see it through our eyes and not someone else’s. But why should we leave our country when all is finally beginning to go well?”
“Because it can go wrong very quickly,” she said, opening a fifth suitcase and packing away more stacks of frocks, slacks, and skirts. “How can we predict what will happen here next year, or even next month? Look at what has happened just this past week. It’s only luck we’re still alive, you know.”
“I can’t believe my luck,” I said, embracing her, hoping to distract her from giving continued attention to these incomprehensible desires.
“You’re scared to move to America,” she said, taking my ear between her teeth. “Aren’t you?”
Nostalgia may be the preferred opium of our people, but America has always been the favored drug of a certain percentage of the intelligentsia, of the cultivated classes; even of the nomenklatura, though none of its members would ever admit it. Understand, in the Russian mind America is the Anti-Russia, the earthly heaven that has never existed: an enormous, welcoming utopia with golden cities, green pastures, fields of grain, dark forests, rivers of wine, and candy mountains. But this land of fantasy must surely bear no greater resemblance to the real America than the perfect Soviet Union did to this magnificent, tormented country in which we live, have lived, and will ever continue to live. Who wants to live in utopia, ultimately? Only those who cannot or will not adapt to the sometimes soul-crushing stresses and strains of existence. For me, emigration was an impossible possibility. Leaving Russia would be as inconceivable as leaving Sonya, losing my country as painful as losing my wife.
“I have unbreakable personal ties here,” I reminded her. “My businesses, my heritage, my many associates.”
She laughed and eased out of my grip. “You’re an intelligent man. You could do well anywhere, you know that.”
“America drives people crazy; even their poets say so.”
“And what do Russian poets say?” she retorted. “You’re scared.”
“All right, I am,” I said, almost losing my temper. “I’m scared seeing the West might affect you as it affected my son. How can I be sure it wouldn’t?”
You may laugh and think I am being sentimental, but that was honestly how I felt and what I feared. I must have turned koshka-like eyes upon my angel, for the expression on her face suggested that she herself was set to melt. “There’s no danger of that,” she said, speaking very softly. “Oh, my hard one.”
“But you aren’t sure,” I said. “Besides, what if one day my son was to come back and I’m no longer here?”
She stared at me without saying anything for what seemed a very long time; as if I had expressed the belief that if we flapped our arms long enough we could fly. “Do you really think that could happen?” she asked, and I nodded. Why should I not believe it possible, even if I cannot think it probable? I am not so different from my countryfolk, after all; only I would prefer to live in a familial, rather than a societal, utopia. If that is as foolish a dream, so be it.
“We’ll go to America this fall for a visit, if you’d like,” I told her. “I promise you. Then we’ll see what we think. All right?”
“All right.” My koshka smiled but did not look happy; perhaps she believed that by the time September came, I would have forgotten I’d ever made such an assurance and even deny that I had. I cannot pretend I had not given such avowals to Tanya, more than once, and afterward denied them; but believe me, I am no longer a person who could tell such outrageous lies to one I loved. “Max, there are still some sweaters of mine in the dresser in our bedroom. Would you get them? I have to attend to myself.” She headed toward the water closet.
“Do you need help?”
“Devil,” she said, and skipped back across the room to kiss me, nipping my lower lip as she drew away. “Oh, Max, wherever we wind up, what a future we have ahead of us!”
After she shut the door behind her I entered their bedroom and slid open the top drawer of her dresser. Before my eyes lay an astonishing collection of lingerie. “What about these intimate items?” I shouted.
“Keep your filthy hands off those,” she cried out. “My sweaters are in the second drawer from the bottom.”
Poor Tanya never wore anything beneath her street clothing that was not outsized, white, and cotton, but Sonya’s tiny underthings came in every color, in silk, satin, and lace. I couldn’t resist passing my hands through their fragrant softness. The enticing feel of her most personal articles, combined with indelible visions of the body upon which this lingerie so charmingly fitted, stimulated me to such an extent that I could no longer contain myself. Fishing up a handful of her lace pants, I pressed them against my face and deeply inhaled her lingering perfume. Teen Spirit; I smiled and shivered with anticipation of lovemaking. The toilet flushed; as I quickly thrust her delights back into the drawer, preparing to close it, I saw something I hadn’t expected to see, tucked beneath pairs of black silk stockings. It was an airline ticket folder from Swissair; even as I lifted it out of the drawer I could tell that it had not been slipped away and forgotten, months or years ago; by the feel of its crisp envelope, I judged it might have been issued as recently as the past weekend.
I held the ticket in my hand, studying the design of the airline’s corporate logo. Had Dmitry gotten away, would there have been no one waiting to meet him?
“Max?”
Even in Russia you can sometimes be too cynical. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I trusted my koshka enough not to look at the ticket itself and ascertain the destination and time of departure. Still, I thought it wise to open the fortochka in the bedroom window and leave my lingering curiosity forever unsatisfied. I watched the ticket float out and then down into the night’s darkness until I could see it no longer.
“I’m here, angel.” Romance will be the death of me yet.
The following weekend, we paid our first visit to the site of Sovietland, fifteen kilometers south of Moscow’s Outer Ring, on forty thousand hectares of land running along the Moskva River. I took Sonya, Evgeny, and Irina there in my late wife’s BMW. Spring had at last returned unhindered to our land; the sky was swept clear of clouds, fields sprouted green with new grass, gentle winds shook the branches of budding trees. “The site may look a little rough to you,” Evgeny warned us while trying, and failing, to ward off the devoted attentions of his youthful charge. “Probably it will help if you use your imagination.”
“What did the Bruneians say when you brought them out here?” I said, as we turned onto the rutted gravel road leading into the site. Nothing of the park could be seen from the highway.
“They were speechless, Max. I wish you could have seen their faces.”
“If you had told me you were bringing them out, I would have.” Even before we reached the site I was suspecting that we would never see the Bruneians or their vast wealth again.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” he said. “They needed to return to their native land and insisted on seeing how the project was coming along. I called, but you weren’t in your office.”
“You could have called my cellular number.”
“These advanced technologies are very complex, Max. It’s not as if I didn’t try.” He pointed out the window at the magnificent stands of birch forest that surrounded us. “These woods will of course be chopped down to provide plenty of room for parking.”
After another five minutes the blue river came into view. Not far from the banks of the river were several antiquated earthmovers, a crane, two or three trucks, and four high mountains of excavated dirt. Twenty or so workmen wandered about aimlessly, as if they’d been struck on the head, seeming to believe they were giving an impression of frenetic energy.
“Pull over there, Max.” My brother directed me to a barren flat several hundred meters from the construction area. I parked in an area that looked not quite as sodden as most of the ground, but I erred; the instant we stepped out we sank ankle-deep in mud. I estimated it would take two hours for an earthmover to extract my car from the fen, unless the ground entirely swallowed it in our absence. “It’s the wet season,” Evgeny reminded us, as sucking mud coated my once-fine shoes. We were but a short distance from grass when my poor koshka screamed, sinking up to her waist in a bog; I had her out in no time.
“I can barely control my excitement,” Evgeny said. “This is wonderful, Max. You will not believe what I have to show you.”
“Where is this ride?” I asked.
“Over there,” he said as he ducked, pointing to another expanse of rubbish-strewn acreage upon which nothing stood save an unpainted wooden shed, some hundred meters or so in length, which I fancied to be a temporary construction used to store easily replaceable equipment.
“Where?”
“There, Max. Right there.”
“That shack?”
“The exterior needs work,” he admitted. “The contractors thought it wise to first complete the interior, and the ride itself, before tackling the outer decor. Now that the weather is improving, the essential framework can be covered with appropriate plaster decorations. Soon it’ll look like a big lump of sugar.”
“My mouth’s watering,” I mumbled, realizing I would have to start spending less of my money and more of my valuable time, keeping a keen eye on the actions of these contractors. I saw a concrete-lined canal running entirely through the shed.
“Everything we build will contribute to the aura of a magic Communist fairy kingdom,” my brother noted, trying desperately to interpret all we saw. Six small rowboats without oars floated in the canal’s inky water. A workman who looked to be blind drunk—granted, it was long past noon—leaned against the rough wall of a small outbuilding housing an assemblage of outdated electrical equipment.
“How do we get aboard?” I asked.
“A pier is in the planning stages,” said Evgeny, picking up a long grappling hook and drawing a boat toward us.
“What kind of ride is this?” Sonya asked, peering into the dark cavern that confronted us as I took my seat alongside her.
“This is the Progress of the Proletariat Tunnel of Love,” Evgeny said, helping Irina into our boat, giving her a good feel as he lent his assistance. “Bone-chilling but educational. The dioramas detail the course of world history in accordance with unbreakable laws of dialectical materialism.” My brother turned to shout at the ride’s bibulous operator. “Andrei! Start us up.”
I listened to the hum of a generator warming up. Our boat shuddered violently and then started to glide into the tunnel. Evidently a moving track was set in the floor of the canal, and each boat was hooked on with chains.
“Are you all right?” I asked Sonya; she shivered and pressed herself against me.
“I have mud in my undergarments,” she whispered, offering me (for later inspiration, as necessary) a vision deserving of my imaginative powers. “I’m freezing cold. I’m filthy as a pig. I’m furious. Is this damned thing safe?”
“Don’t touch the water while the boats are moving, whatever you do,” Evgeny said. “There may be unfortunate leakage of electricity.”
“Are you serious?” He nodded. “What, are you trying to kill us?”
“I think it has been repaired but be careful, in case.”
The moment we floated into the shed an overpowering scent of mildew filled my nostrils, the smell of a ill-tended bathhouse. An unearthly voice blared over unseen speakers, startling us so that Sonya and I lunged forward, almost falling out of the boat into the lethal waters. I knew I had heard the voice before, but static prevented me from sure recognition. “Who is that speaking?”
“Igor Kirillov. I hired him to read historically appropriate narration, as part of the multimedia experience.”
Kirillov worked for twenty years as the news reader for Vremya and in that post served as the ex-officio voice of the state. Everyone takes what work they can find in these difficult days; I was sure he hadn’t come cheap. “He’s barely understandable,” I said, my ears ringing with the amplified squawk. “The feedback is deafening. How do you expect people to put up with this?”
“By the time the park is open to the public, we will have wireless headphones installed for the benefit of riders. The narration will be simultaneously translated into every language in the world. Don’t worry, Max, I’ve thought of everything.”
Our craft bumped against the side of the canal but continued on without sinking. We sat, not moving, as we floated past the first illuminated diorama on our right. On the cracked surface of the concrete was a communal group of papier-mâché ape-men, encompassed by primeval plastic jungle undergrowth, warming themselves as they huddled around a red lightbulb that, I suppose, represented fire. Not one of the cave hominids exceeded half a meter in height, and some were smaller; the ape-women, in truth, looked like Barbies that had also fallen prey to the site’s hungry mud. The display in its entirety might have been made by children—unintelligent children—for a school art project.
The speakers worked as they should have, the farther we penetrated into the tunnel’s blackness, and I better understood what Kirillov was saying; understood, however, is not the most accurate word. “Time passes quickly,” he intoned. “Things which only yesterday or today or the day before yesterday happened seem to have happened in the past even before they happen. Tomorrow we may tire of what has happened, and the day after tomorrow not even remember what these things that happened were.”
“Who wrote his narration?” I asked.
“I did,” said my brother.
“Were you drunk?”
“Only on the music of language,” he swore to me. “You know I abstain from spirits when I am creating.”
Next we saw Egyptian pyramids—both of them, neither of which would have come up to my knees—and teams of slaves hauling matchboxes over a scattering of sand under the guidance of pharaonic oppressors. Papier-mâché mannequins, some already missing limbs, were again employed to instill in the willing audience a mind-shattering semblance of reality.
Great drops of water fell onto my head from new-forming stalactites as history progressed. There appeared, in turn, Spartacus leading the Roman slaves into revolt against their conquerors, mitered popes gleefully overseeing the torture of heretics, crowned kings commanding troops to rape and murder the honest working people of defeated lands, and Czar Ivan the Awe-Inspiring relishing the sight of a long line of patriots undergoing sanctifying decapitation at the Place of Skulls in Red Square. The level of workmanship glimpsed in the first diorama was equaled in every instance.
As we entered the nineteenth century, where capitalists wearing top hats and smoking cigars cracked whips at hapless workers in satanic mills, Sonya pressed her lips against my neck; plainly, she was seized by the desire to be held fast in the yoke of capitalist slavery; so that the time spent within this miserable hole would not go entirely to waste, I responded by lovingly caressing my dirty girl.
“Max, Max!” my brother shouted, with impeccable timing, and we looked up. “The thrilling conclusion. This is best of all.”
We floated through a gauzy, blood-red curtain illuminated from behind. “The International” began playing over the speakers, the boat cleared the curtain, and I saw ahead of us Moscow as I had seen it in my dream: the nexus of the Socialist utopia, the capital of the Soviet Union of the mind. “Great is our admiration of this heaven-worthy place,” Kirillov began to shout above the anthemic music. “We look on in breathless wonder at its beautiful main streets, splendid new buildings, reconstructed and well-paved suburbs lined with workers’ palaces, gleaming factories whose chimneys egust snowy smoke, all witnessing to the persistent and devoted efforts of the Party.”
What the narrator now proclaimed was coherent, if still nonsensical. Probably my brother had lifted this text directly from one of our many literary masterworks of the late era. As we floated past the perfect society, I saw that it was presented in a most accurate manner: the Workers’ Paradise was made of flaking plaster, rusting chicken wire, warped scrap metal, and badly painted plywood. Each smokestack had tacked onto its free end a puff of ash-smudged cotton. The tiny figures scattered throughout the display had been amateurishly carved out of clothespins.
“Go forth in pride, workers of the world! Salute as you go the Father of Us All, the Coryphaeus of Socialist Forward-looking Thinking! Be happy here in the happiest land on earth!”
Above the exit was a glass globe; as we approached, its inner light blinked on, and we saw that the gleaming sphere was blown in the shape of Stalin’s head. No sooner did we start passing under it than the bulb within exploded, raining sharp-edged fragments onto us. No one was cut badly; sunlight blinded us as the boat emerged from the dark, and we shut our eyes against the glare of day.
As I felt the vessel bump to a halt, I looked up and saw the murky tarn into which the canal flowed. Malaria would be an especially memorable souvenir for our guests to take back from Sovietland. Evgeny patted my shoulder. Rarely have I seen my brother so ebullient.
“What do you think?” he asked, helping Irina out of the boat. Once they were on shore I lifted Sonya to safety.
“How much money was spent in preparing this marvelous exhibit?” I asked.
My brother counted on his fingers while he made his tally. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Dollars, not rubles.”
“That’s right.”
“You idiot,” I said, not yet raising my voice. “You cow-headed imbecile. You brain-addled fool.”
“What is it, Max?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s right?” I replied. “I’ve never seen such a pathetic display. You’ve sunk vast amounts of money into this thing, and this is the result?”
“I warned you to use your imagination.”
“Tolstoy wouldn’t have enough imagination,” I shouted. “Small wonder the Bruneians went back home.”
“You’re seeing only the initial phase, remember—”
“The last phase, I call it. Count yourself lucky they didn’t kill you when they saw what you’d done with their money. Not to mention what you’ve done with my money. Do you honestly believe you have something here that anyone will pay to see?”
“But Max, there’s—”
“Father was wrong about me,” I blurted out; had we not been interrupted, I would have gone on to say, He was right about you. Naturally, I would have forever afterward regretted saying that aloud, but it did not come to that. An unexpected cry caught our attention, and we turned to see who was calling us.
“Borodin!” A workman was coming across the field, holding something wrapped in a rag in his hand. He stopped, halfway over, and again shouted. “Something here you need to see!”
“What?”
“This way,” he said, returning in the direction whence he came. The four of us caught up with him in a matter of minutes.
“What is it?” Evgeny asked.
“You need to see.”
We silently walked a short distance over the waste toward a house-sized excavation one hundred meters from the riverbank. Two earthmovers were parked at the rim of the pit; a group of workers stood on a dirt ramp that descended into the black ground, staring at whatever lay at the bottom.
“We discovered bones,” the workman told us.
“You mean fossils?” Evgeny asked. “Mammoths? Antediluvian beasts?”
The workman unwrapped the object he held in his hand, revealing a small browned skull. Turning it over, he pointed at the bullet hole in the back of the cranium. “Not as prehistoric.”
“An old cemetery?” Even my brother knew better than that.
“No headstones,” the workman said. “Many bones, stacked four to five meters deep. All ages, I would say.”
The day was as beautiful as it had been minutes earlier, but now all had been cast in different light: shadows were darker, the blue of the sky appeared to be a more disconcerting hue, the caw of carrion crows sounded harshly in the ears. It was as if we had been awakened to be told we’d been sleeping with corpses—and that was precisely what we had been told.
“What was going to be built here?”
“The disco,” Evgeny told me. “It would have a clear plastic floor, with colorful lights shining up from underneath.” He held a hand to his mouth; Sonya and Irina looked as if they could not contain their tears for long.
“That’s obviously ruled out,” I said. “The rest of the area should be dug up as well. Likely as not, there will be many more underneath us.”
“What about Sovietland, Max?” my brother asked. “What are we going to do?”
The workman looked at us and looked back at the pit; he spat on the ground. For several minutes I stared at the small skull in his hand and listened to the women crying. “I have an idea.”
“Good evening, friends!” Mels proclaimed to all who ascended the broad granite steps and knocked at the high oaken doors. His midnight-blue tuxedo fitted him perfectly, his tremendous size notwithstanding; as he had insisted on wearing both his black leather jacket and black leather trench coat over his formal garb, however, the fine workmanship of its tailoring was not readily evident. “Welcome to Sovietland.”
His assistant Baiken, a fellow Kazakh of even greater size, asked each arrival a follow-up question. “You on the list?”
“Of course,” said the gentlemen awaiting entry, handing over gold-edged engraved invitations as they thrust stubby fingers between neck and wing collar, struggling to loosen their clothes enough to take a free breath. “Oleg Lavreich Gertsenzon of Menatep.” “Valera Arkadich Kovalev, Ministry of the Interior.”
Baiken looked over his documents until he found their names. “Enter, friends. Do as you will within reason.”
The Petrovsky house, restored to its full splendor, was the ideal setting for such an exclusive private club as Sovietland. I smiled, reassured that my trusty gatekeepers were admirably performing their duties on this opening night, and so went back inside, glad to be out of the chill October air. Thus far, over a thousand representatives of Moscow’s elite had paid their ten-thousand-dollar annual dues, and I knew everyone here on this memorable evening would go out the next day and sign up two more. They would be welcome: we employ no elitist standards to deny entry to anyone; while you have money, Sovietland is yours to enjoy.
(High government officials, of course, are favored with honorary dues-free membership, as befits their useful placement in society.)
In the entrance hall, after handing in weapons, our guests paused to check their thick chesterfields and fur wraps with the coat girls, five lithe brunettes dressed as French maids. Male guests clearly appreciated the way their short starched skirts flipped up to reveal lace-frilled lingerie, and more often than not—as I’d predicted—our female guests would prompt their companions to go at once to the gift counter and purchase comparable sets of expensive intimate wear.
“Maxim Alexeich,” I heard many times that evening, “this is the finest club in Moscow.”
I stopped in the antechamber long enough to adjust the sleeve cuffs and smooth the satin lapels of my dinner jacket. Our guests paused to gaze in wonder at the golden fountain’s mythic figures. The speakers in the base now played Frank Sinatra at low volume, rather than ear-splitting disco, and instead of unnaturally hued water the fountain now recirculated vintage Armenian brandy. Racks of glasses were attached to the wall so that our guests, if they desired, might select and dip stemware into the amber nectar and savor a delectable refreshment before deciding which of the many activities provided by our club seemed most attractive. At all times, I had two guards in formal wear stationed in the room, so they could prevent our less cultured guests from urinating in the fountain.
“Maxim Alexeich,” I heard, more than once, “tomorrow I will call you. We have business to discuss.”
Upon leaving the antechamber, guests could proceed to different rooms offering something for every taste. In one chamber there was a churning Jacuzzi capable of holding twenty people; in another, a karaoke stage; in a third, a library environment with comfortable leather chairs, dark wood paneling, green-shaded lamps, and naked female dancers (for looking, not touching). In the former dining room we installed a bar/restaurant and small casino. If you wanted to see a film, we had a screening chamber in which prints of upcoming Western movies were projected (director’s or even editor’s cuts). In the ballroom that evening, and for the next two weeks, we provided live entertainment twice nightly for a small cover charge of fifty dollars: Elvistroika and the Happy Guys. The former claimed to have obtained his gem-studded white jumpsuit from the American rock king himself; the latter were sons of the originals and no less talented.
“Maxim Alexeich,” I heard, repeatedly, “may we honor you in some way?”
Stepping past the antechamber’s guards, I climbed the curving staircase to the second floor, trailing my hand along the balustrade’s cold stone waves. I strolled down the hallway, nodding to each of my upstairs guards until I reached my office, which had once been Nadze’s. When I unlocked the door I saw Telman and Ivan Ivan waiting for me inside. Their long search had at last paid off.
“What has he told you?” I asked.
“He hurts.”
Heavy chains secured the weasel; Iosif dangled from a ceiling fixture, his wrists bruised black by the pressure of his fetters, uttering a series of high-pitched vowel sounds. He substituted nicely for the room’s chandelier. The toes of his shoes just scraped the floor. As I walked by I gave him a push, so as to increase the momentum of the arc he described. My associates had stripped off his shirt. Needled permanently into his chest, back, and arms were a multitude of remarkable tattoos.
“He must have been imprisoned with a Rembrandt of the art,” Telman noted. “Very attractive designs.”
“Are either of you familiar with the symbolism?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Ivan Ivan, stepping up and pointing at a blue knife covered with red blood stenciled into the right shoulderblade.
“This signifies that he told tales on people while in custody.” Our consultant redirected my attention to Iosif’s waist, where there was an apparent representation of a bloody carcass. “The skinned rabbit lets us know he raped and killed a child molester. Very commendable.” Ivan Ivan’s fingers moved to a pair of azure skulls on the lower left deltoid. “Two other murders. No one important.” In the center of Iosif’s back was a breathtaking illustration of a woman copulating with a black stallion. “This is a new one on me. Homage to Catherine the Great, maybe.” Ivan Ivan stepped around to look at Iosif’s chest and laughed at what he saw on the right pectoral, a black tomb encircled with black words: Sleep Mother and Wait for Me. “She won’t be waiting long.”
Iosif started to groan more loudly, but I didn’t worry that our guests would be disturbed. Nadze was farseeing enough to have had his office thickly insulated for soundproofing purposes, and nothing could be heard by anyone outside the room, even in the adjoining hall. Our prisoner opened his eyes; seeing me, he miraculously recovered the power of speech.
“Take me down!” he shouted. “God help me.”
“Who are you to give orders to either of us?”
“My arms,” he said, gasping for breath. “Pulling out of their sockets.”
“That must be very painful,” I said. Keeping the arms fixed overhead in such a position for very long eventually results in death by suffocation—the chest muscles slowly lose their operative power; this principle explains the efficacy of crucifixion, as I understand it. “I wonder how painful it was for my wife, before they killed her.”
“I didn’t know what they’d do,” he said, trying to speak and breathe at the same time. “I didn’t know, I didn’t.”
“If they sewed open her eyes while she was still alive, I should think that would have been very painful.”
“Please—”
“My wife’s eyes.”
“Mother of God, they forced me to do what I did.”
“You had no free will?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he pleaded, his breath seeming to fail. The chains holding him rattled as he shivered. “I confess. I confess.”
I shrugged. “Nichevo.”
He made a choked strangle and then howled all the more. I felt confirmed in my belief that I could never have worked for the competent organs in an interrogative capacity. To treat this bastard in such a fashion satisfied without stimulating; at no time did I feel the profound cosmic intensity which it seems professionals in these arts often experience, far exceeding (or so I have been told) the mere emotions stirred in man by love of woman, food, or country. To be assured that this particular felon was paying for his particular crime gratified me, but I knew no apotheosis, however momentary, into godly realms through the instrumentality of torture. I am sorry to tell you, in fact, that the longer I watched him hanging there the more bored I became.
“Finish him off, Ivan,” I said. “Pick up the dolls down the hall as agreed. Telman will show you.”
“Barbies?”
“Three hundred, in boxes.”
“Excellent, Mr. Borodin.”
“Come downstairs when you’re done, you’ll need a drink.”
He reached behind the divan and lifted up a meter-length scimitar that possessed a jeweled handle and a blade of shining steel; it appeared to be a museum piece of highest quality, worthy of display in the Kremlin Armory. “A magnificent weapon,” said Telman.
“It’s been in the family for years,” Ivan Ivan claimed.
I helped Telman unroll plastic sheeting beneath Iosif before leaving. “Mind the furniture.”
As I closed the door behind me, I stepped directly into Sonya’s arms—she’d finished dressing in our flat on the floor above and waited in the hall until I emerged. Before I could express appreciative surprise, she’d fastened her mouth onto mine, and I happily allowed her to suck out my air. For this special evening she had worked herself into her red leather jumpsuit and tall black boots, making me for a time unable to think of anything but carnal pleasures to come.
“I hope it will not be too great a struggle to get this off, Mrs. Boroda.”
She shook her head. “You’ll have no trouble skinning your cat.”
As we kissed once more and I held her close against me, I realized that not even my own eyes told me utter truth—although her suit appeared to be nothing more than an extra layer of epidermis, the material had been cunningly cut in order to artificially lift, separate, and emphasize her provocative features. I sighed; not even Sonya could be as ageless as she appeared to be. But what right did I have to complain? Were I to look too closely and too honestly at myself in a mirror, who would I have seen glaring back? Khrushchev? Beria?
I knew the answer and so tried never to look.
“Tickles,” she said, touching her fingers to the mustache I’d grown. It had come in white, but what should I have expected? So I was aging—I would be a good vintage. I was pleased to imagine that my koshka and I might grow old together. “What were you doing in there?”
“Going over the books. Let’s go downstairs. The evening is quite a success.”
We descended the rear staircase and went into the bar, which was filled to overflowing. I think that two of the many reasons this room proved especially popular were our waiters and waitresses. All were black graduates of Lumumba University, who had not had luck finding jobs in Moscow until I afforded them the opportunity. The waiters wore American marine dress uniforms; the waitresses, gorgeous native African costume. They were far more intelligent and trustworthy than most of our fellow Russians, especially those who work in the service sector (nonobtrusive or otherwise), and possessed an exotic appearance that incited our clientele, male and female, in ways that would cause them to spend more money as they attempted to sublimate socially problematic desires.
Indirect lighting shining through blue filters lent subaqueous ambience to the room. Arteim stood at the long bar, observing the crowd, talking to Evgeny and Irina. My stylish associate wore an expensive tuxedo like mine, but I was not surprised to see that my dear brother had been more inventive in selecting evening wear. His suit was a glistening gray-green, reminiscent of polluted sea water. Irina had fitted herself into a strapless silver lamé gown, which showed to great advantage her powerful back and shoulder muscles. Most of our male guests wore subdued if expensive clothing; their women, however, outfitted themselves in spectacular ensembles: black sheaths that hid the torso and little else, tall suede boots with spurs, sequined gowns cut to the pubis in front and the coccyx in back. I wasn’t sure how Ivan Ivan would react, walking into such a gathering, and I hoped he’d remember his place.
“How is everything?” I asked Arteim. The barmen, seeing me, stopped juggling bottles long enough to offer bows of respect; I leaned against the bar and directed them to get back to work. Sound vibrations shook the counter’s wood. The beat of the songs, so-called, blasting through the room (jungle, according to my beloved music consultant), was so stimulative and so unceasing I briefly worried that our older guests might suffer cardiac seizures from mere exposure—but, after due consideration, judged their escorts to be more hazardous to their health.
“A complete success,” Arteim replied, shouting back.
“We should have thought of this years ago,” Evgeny said to me, raising his glass in salute. My koshka smiled at her brother-in-law as she coyly rubbed her leg against mine; I trembled. “There are no brothers as smart as mine,” he reminded his youthful protégé.
“No incidents?” There was no danger of our being assaulted from without; the Kazakhs had long experience in securing the perimeters of the house and its grounds, and the mines we’d set into the lawn along the length of the encompassing wall further assured peace of mind. However, no one can foresee how people will behave in a sybaritic atmosphere, and so I took further steps beyond simple disarmament to ensure that no untoward events would occur inside the club.
“None,” Arteim said. “These people are the most of the most, Max. But our undercover men are scattered throughout, to be sure.” He stood on tiptoe in order to whisper an additional comment in my ear. “As directed, they are also keeping notes on shameful behavior.”
“Excellent.” Such irrefutable records could prove useful, later on, when and if we wished to make business arrangements with otherwise hesitant club members—certainly the records could be edited, if need be, by my reliable workers at Universal Manufacturing.
“Look who’s here,” my koshka said, placing her hand on my chest, deftly prompting me to glance up and over.
“Max!”
I embraced my associate, allowing him to crush me in his usual hearty fashion. It pleased me to see that Petrenko had taken my advice and refrained from bringing either his two-footed or his four-footed dog to this gala occasion.
“What a grotesque saturnalia!” he shouted. “It sickens me. Bartenders! Lemon vodka!”
“A bottle,” I told them, and they provided. Petrenko pulled off the cap and poured a full glass. He lifted the brim of his fedora to better take in the sight of my koshka, studying her more intently than I would have expected him to do.
“What kind of uniform is this?”
“Private army,” she replied. “Would you like to join?”
He blushed, as if his mother had caught him enjoying himself in his room with pornographic pictures. “I’m astonished, Max,” he said, turning from her. “This will serve me as the exemplar for all that is wrong in our society.”
“Villains wallowing in soul-sapping decadence,” I offered, and his eyes glistened with joy—or alcohol; he drained half the glass with his first swallow. “A good investment, Pavel, wouldn’t you say?”
“I couldn’t be happier,” my silent partner said. “Max, I have brought along someone for you to meet. Allow me to introduce you.” He snapped his fingers, and an older man wearing a gray suit stepped up to shake my hand. I recognized him at once.
“It is a pleasure to meet the Vice-President,” I said, before he could speak. We stared into one another’s eyes until he finally turned away and grinned.
“A mutual pleasure,” he said. “Allow me to thank you for your remarkable donation to the Armory. Our spirit of appreciation exceeds anything that could be put into mere words.”
“What else could a Russian do, finding himself in possession of an irreplaceable exemplar of our noble heritage? Such a treasure belongs where it can be seen and appreciated by the multitudes,” I said, knowing full well the Fabergé egg had already been hidden deep within the very bowels of the Kremlin, where it would never be exposed to harmful light again—unless, of course, one of our captains of government had stolen it. “I am sure you will find a way to best express your satisfaction.”
“The President looks forward to meeting you next week.”
“My heart leaps at the prospect.” Petrenko and I glanced at each other and smiled. “Bartender,” I commanded. “A toast.” Rounds were poured for the Vice-President and myself, and we lifted our glasses. “To Russia.” I swallowed my mineral water as he downed his vodka. “Another, please. Tell me, how do you like our club? Have we provided a comfortable environment?”
“I know of nothing better,” said the Vice-President, taking in the vision of Sonya. “My God,” he whispered, “Oktobriana.” She smiled in return and ran her tongue along her lips. I quickly placed my arm around her waist, so that he would not start feeling too comfortable. “A much better idea than that theme park we heard about,” he said. “Have you entirely discarded that notion?”
“Not at all. We’ve had to move up the proposed completion date,” I explained. “The property required additional preparation. Sovietland the park will be built one day, as long as we can obtain necessary funding, which is difficult. It is in fact terribly complex.”
“Let me speak to the Minister of Finance,” he said, sidling over in order to speak quietly into my ear. “I can tell you, Mr. Borodin—”
“Call me Max.”
“Max, let me tell you in confidence that the Minister is very pleased with your background and business record. I don’t have to tell you, it is not often we see entrepreneurs who attain such rarefied levels of success without mafia assistance.”
“We do what we can.”
“Undoubtedly he will have suggestions, some advice,” the Vice-President said. “I will recommend he consider setting aside funds for assistance.”
Ivan Ivan and Telman came into the room, gaping at the women as if they never before had seen such creatures. It heartened me to see that my associate had convinced Ivan Ivan to change clothes and put on a suit. Even though my conversation with this high official was proving as useful as I had hoped it would be, I thought it best to continue our discussion elsewhere, at a later date. “Splendid,” I said, grasping his hand. “When I come to see the President next week, may I drop by your office? There is another matter I should like to talk over with you. A question of finding someone for whom I’ve been looking for a long time.”
“I will set aside a free hour. I’ll give you all the help I can.”
“And I will leave you with happy memories in return,” I said. “Tell me, have you had a chance yet to see all of our club?”
The Vice-President frowned. “Pavel refused to enter the room with the naked hostesses.”
“Shameful hoydens,” Petrenko said, refilling his glass. Sonya and Irina laughed.
“Arteim,” I said. “Would you accompany our guest to the library?”
“I would be honored,” he said, and they walked off, the Vice-President’s security retinue in tow. Ivan Ivan and Telman made their way to the bar, moments later. Our consultant held tight to the handles of a plastic carrier bag.
“Finished?” He opened the bag and I looked in, careful not to let anyone around me (Sonya, in particular) see what I saw: two pink Barbie boxes. “What is this?”
“Souvenirs.” Ivan Ivan reached in and shifted the boxes, giving me a better view. Through the clear cellophane windows I glimpsed two tattooed hands. I looked over at my associate—he shrugged—but I demurred. Had I wanted to keep any part of Iosif, I should have asked for the head.
“Good job,” I said to Ivan Ivan. “Telman will tell you where they should be left when he shows you out.”
“Keep me in mind, whenever you need assistance. My skills are many.”
As Telman led Ivan Ivan away through the crowd, Petrenko leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. “I thought you and the Vice-President would get along. We’ve known each other for years; he’s a good man. Listen, Max, when does the sport begin?”
“Five minutes,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Let’s go take our seats. Evgeny, will you be joining us?”
“I think we will go home,” my brother said, idly (unconsciously) fiddling with Irina’s sequin-hidden nipples as if they were radio knobs. “It’s getting late.”
“Yes, you should obviously get to bed,” I told him. “Good night.”
Sonya and I linked arms and followed Petrenko as he elbowed his way through the crowd, past the games of chance, toward the room we called the Betting Circle. Not even the Petrovsky house had space enough for a gymnasium, but sport on a smaller scale could be readily provided for our guests. The door of the Betting Circle was outlined in pink and blue neon; two Kazakhs stood guard, making certain that all who entered had money enough to wager. Murat and Nursultan were formerly the outside gatekeepers, but I judged them deserving of promotion—they at least possessed greater fashion sense than their staff overseer and had had their tuxedos made of black leather, so the superb tailoring could be appreciated.
We stepped inside, evidently the last to arrive. The walls of the Betting Circle were hospital white; in the center of the ceiling was a high-powered halogen lamp, which cast intense light onto the round dirt-floored pit directly below. A dry moat through which the animal handlers moved separated the pit from ten rings of bleachers. A small section at the front was roped off, reserved for my personal guests and myself; the fat asses of our nation’s rulers filled the other seats. There were in attendance financial manipulators and stock market officials, military officers and ministry heads, SVRR kingpins and masters of the wholesale trade—the golden youth gone gray—each one accompanied by his own personal Moscow Barbie. They were the elite, truly, but the collective stench in the crowded room may as well have been that of a beer hall’s. A swirling blue-gray haze of cigarette smoke fogged the air.
The attendants moved quickly through the narrow aisles, noting and collecting bets. “Fifty!” said one gambler, the new owner of the October chocolate factory. “Eighty,” an army general cried out. “Sixty-five!” “Ninety.” “One hundred and twenty!” The winner would be the one who accurately guessed the final count in advance; he (or she—the women bet as well) would receive all the money wagered. In the case of more than one winner, the pot would be divided equally; if the precise number had not been picked, the money went to the house. As the club’s animal handlers tallied the official count, you can probably guess whom the odds favored.
“How good is this first dog, Max?” Petrenko asked me as an attendant came by to take our bets.
“I don’t know,” I said, speaking honestly. “They are all supposed to be masters in their field, I’m told.”
“One hundred and ten,” he said, handing the attendant a hundred dollars.
“I say seventy-four,” said Sonya, extracting a ten-dollar bill from her poitrine. “You’re not betting, Max?”
“Gambling holds no charm for me,” I said. “I’d rather watch.”
The attendants rushed off to count the take, in the company of two of my more trustworthy guards—a certain amount of skimming is to be expected, of course. As they stepped out of the room, two dwarfs waddled in. The little trolls wore cut-down versions of a Cossack’s splendid garb, complete with tall fur hats, and leaned long valveless trumpets against their shoulders as if they were rifles. “Ladies and gentlemen,” they screeched. “Presenting Champion Rex.” Lifting the horns to their mouths, they loudly blew the first call; you would not have imagined they had so much air. One of the animal handlers lifted a shit-brown bull terrier over the shiny glazed walls of the pit, dropping him inside; he sprang up and off the sides, racing back and forth, barking as maniacally as a politician. The audience applauded and cheered wildly, shouting and waving their fists in the air.
“You should bring Pussy Eater here sometime and see how he does,” I suggested to Petrenko.
“Not Pussy Eater!” he shouted. “Stormbreeder is my dog’s new name. I have told you more than once: Stormbreeder!”
“I forgot.”
“He is too valuable and beloved a possession to risk, Max. I couldn’t consider it.” That saddened me, but as long as I didn’t have to see the beast too often, I would live with it. “There is something I want to tell you,” he continued. “I am not adept at expressing appreciation, you know. A hard man finds it hard to relate his private emotions to others.”
“I understand, Pavel,” I said, my suspicions aroused.
“I want to—” He grunted, and then began again. “Listen, thank you for the help you have given me and my party.” I relaxed. “Do you know, we have been able to triple our funding through the sale of that bastard’s treasures?”
“I thought they would be more readily disposable than that egg.”
“By far,” he said. “So many of our business and governmental supporters delight in possessing rare items of our national heritage; I would not have guessed. And the prices they pay! You have made them very happy.”
“They’ll enjoy them as long as they live,” I said accurately. Sonya jabbed her elbow into my side. “Thank you for reinvesting some of the money in what will clearly be a thriving concern.”
“But a hive of decadence, however profitable. In public, I will have to continue speaking my public mind. I must not go easy on you, Max.”
He winked; we smiled. “What are friends for?” I replied.
“Match!” the dwarfs cried out and raised their trumpets again; in unison, they issued another ringing blast. Doors in the sides of the pit slid open; the audience shouted in delight and the doomed rodents rushed out, trying and failing to scramble up the walls. Champion Rex snatched them off their scratching feet, sometimes two at a time, snapping their necks and hurling them to the ground. A few of the rats made brave attempts to fight back, leaping onto the terrier’s back, trying to fasten their teeth in the dog’s short hair or clipped ears—to no avail; the instant they slid off, they were broken.
The crowd stood up to cheer all the more lustily. “More! More!” some shouted. “Stop! Stop!” others cried. Their eyes shone with pleasure and fear as they watched the dog mow through the squirming pile. A number of times Champion Rex shook loose a rat with too much fervor, sending the bloodied corpse into the midst of the bettors. Women screamed each time a rat landed on or near them; their gentlemen, tempers hot as the terrier’s, stomped on one another as they fought to be first to flatten the carcasses.
“Pizdyetz!” Pavel shouted, shaking his fists in the air as Champion Rex disposed of the last few rats, scattering the dead as he went for the survivors, adding their blood to that which ran streaming down the walls of the pit. Arteim entered the room, and walked over to where we were sitting, taking a place next to me, while Petrenko continued to stand, waiting with everyone to hear the final tally once the handlers swept up and counted the rats.
“The Vice-President is happy?” I asked.
“He is well satisfied, I’ll tell you,” my associate said, subtly uncapping a vial and palming a small mirror. I glimpsed my face in the mirror and quickly looked back, into the pit. One of the handlers passed a slip of paper to the shorter of the two dwarfs, and he held up a small fist to gain the crowd’s attention.
“One hundred and eighty-three,” he cried, and a moan of disappointment rose from the crowd. The attendants began taking the second round of bets while the handlers hosed off the walls of the pit. Petrenko fumbled through his wallet, pulling out another hundred before waving frantically to our attendant.
“Take my bet! One hundred seventy-two!”
“This just came in?” I asked, whispering to Arteim. He nodded and poured a thread of powder onto the mirror he held; inserting a golden straw in his nose, he speedily inhaled the drug. Had it been snowy white, I would have known it was cocaine, intended for the domestic market; but since it was a rich brownish-beige, I knew it was fred—fred as our operatives prepared it—and therefore destined for export to the biggest market of them all. “How is it?”
“Bony,” he noted, rubbing his nose. By lifting an eyebrow, I evidently changed my expression just enough to fill his heart with fear. “Gritty, I mean. Gritty.” I stroked my mustache as I watched him sitting there silently for a moment or two; then his eyes went out of focus, his breath came faster, and he wordlessly nodded his approval—this latest shipment could be delivered to an anxious world. I whispered a word into my koshka’s ear.
“Angel.”
She embraced me, revealing a multitude of sharp teeth as she smiled. “Devil.”
Where else could I know such bliss? O Russia! Capitalist utopia! Magisterial society! Heaven on earth! Land of opportunity! Nothing can be proven, so my conscience is clear.