13

On the same day we lit our bonfire on top of the missile launchpad, I ran over to the Dzerzhinsky statue, got on all fours, and started banging a bottle of Zubrovka on the asphalt so Slavka could hear me.¹ And from underground came an answering “tap-tap, tap-tap.” There’s an underground prison down there, and they’ve extended the Metro right up to its gates (the Helsinki accords now strictly forbid the aboveground transfer of prisoners). “Slavka!” I call out, “Slavka! I’m going to quit drinking any minute now. They’ve chased me out of the Party—they’ve run my ass right out of there. Momma and I have brought you a fish fillet with fried potatoes and cucumber. Slavka!”

I don’t remember anything after that. Please, brother, don’t go on about how you’re not a lieutenant general, and you’re not my brother at all. Don’t tell me you’re just my attending physician. If you do, you’re shit, and I don’t want to talk to you. If you really are the person you say you are, then write me a prescription. I’m sleeping badly, and all I can hear in my brain is Levitan’s voice droning on: “From Lenin to the victim’s asshole—eight meters, ten to Marx and Engels, and forty to the street.” He gives me no peace. Jam Levitan’s voice like you jam “Radio Liberty….” Hey! It’s gone silent! Maybe Levitan just died? He is really old, after all. Or maybe he died a long time ago, and maybe, in the Lubyanka, before he died, they extracted from him all his most important dispatches—all the way up to 1991—and recorded them on tape.² He didn’t manage to keep it secret, the parasite!

So it turns out I’m in an insane asylum? That’s fantastic. Fantastic! Fantastic with butter on it. And it turns out there never was any camouflaging, it turns out that’s a figment of my … help me out here … a figment of my sick imagination? You mean they don’t really transport hydrogen bombs in convoys of trucks marked “MEAT” and “EAT COD FILLET”? Well, then, what are they carrying in those trucks if there’s no meat within ten kilometers of Moscow, and if you can’t find fish fillet anywhere in Moscow in a month of Sundays? What are they hauling in those trucks? Where’s the logic here? You’re not saying? You’re right. My Duska says, “Enough camouflage, Fedya, it’s time for you to grow up, become a man. Don’t read the newspapers, don’t go to meetings, to hell with the radio and TV. They’ve exhausted themselves with their lying, Fedya. They’ve gone bonkers, they’re farting peas at us. And in the place where truth used to be, a prick is growing. We women, we can see better than our leaders what’s happening to you damn men. You’re following those old goats straight into the meat-packing plant!”

By the way, Doctor-General, Paramedic-Lieutenant-Marshal, Brother-Orderly, it’s a good thing we’re not brothers. It’s great! Let me tell you the whole truth! It’s about how my little cousin, also named Fedya, died in Tula from twisted bowels.