Day of the Oprichnik (16 page)

“We got it, Batya,” we always answer.

“Well, then, if you got it—thank the Lord.”

Batya crosses himself. We cross ourselves as well. We snort some more. Wash it down. Groan.

And suddenly Yerokha’s nostrils sniffle with hurt.

“What is it?” Batya turns to him.

“Forgive me, Batya, if I say something that might cross you.”

“Well?”

“I’m offended.”

“What offends you, Brother Yerokha?”

“That you put the noble’s ring on your finger.”

Yerokha is talking sense. Batya squints at him. Then he says loudly:

“Trofim!”

Batya’s servant appears:

“What do you desire, sir?”

“An axe!”

“Yes, sir.”

We sit, looking at one another. And Batya takes a look at us and suppresses a smile. Trofim comes back with the axe. Batya takes the ring off his finger, and places it on the granite table:

“Go ahead!”

Faithful Trofim understands immediately: he picks up the axe and smashes the ring. Splinters of diamond fly.

“There you go!” Batya laughs.

We laugh as well. That’s our Batya. That’s what we love him for, why we cherish him, and remain faithful to him. He blows the diamond dust off the table:

“So what are your mouths hanging open for? Go on and cut it!”

Potyka takes care of the
coke
, cuts the lines. I wanted to ask why the youngsters were involved with the count but we elders were in the dark. We weren’t needed? Lost our trustworthiness? But I hold back: better not to ask in the heat of the moment. I’ll get to Batya
from below
by and by…

And suddenly Baldokhai says:

“Batya, who wrote that pasquinade?”

“Filka the Rhymester.”

“Who’s that?”

“A talented guy. He’s going to be working for us…” Batya leans over and sucks a white strip through his bone tube. “He wrote a great one about His Majesty. Want to hear it? Hey, Trofim, call him.”

Trofim dials the number, and a sleepy, scared face in glasses appears not far away.

“Taking a nap?” Batya says, drinking from a shot glass.

“No, no, Boris Borisovich…” the rhymester mutters.

“Come on, then, read us the poem to His Majesty.”

The fellow straightens his glasses, clears his throat, and recites with feeling:

In our time, far distant and remote,

Behind the stone wall of the ancients,

Lives not a man, but Creation:

An act, a deed, as great as earth’s own globe.

Fate has given him his lot,

Which does precede the very void.

He is what all the boldest dream of,

Though none before has dared or thought.

But he remains a human being,

And should he come across a winter wolf,

He’ll shoot, and his shot, too, will echo in the woods,

As surely as it does for you and me.

Batya pounds his fist on the table:

“Well? Son of a bitch! See how cleverly he wrapped it up, huh?”

We agree:

“Clever.”

“All right, go back to sleep, Filka!” Batya says, turning him off.

Suddenly Batya begins singing in a deep bass:

The hour of grief, the hour of parting

I want to share, with you my friend.

Let’s drill right through our legs while farting,

And walk ahead, until the road does end.

I’d been hoping we’d avoid this today, that Batya would collapse before things came to it. But our commander is steadfast: after
coke
and vodka he wants to drill. What can you do—if it’s drilling, then it’s drilling. Not the first time. And there’s Trofim: he opens a red box; red bits are laid in it like revolvers. In every brace there’s a fine drill of viviparous diamond. I think Batya remembered this
sharp
pastime when the diamond ring was crushed. Trofim hands everyone a drill.

“At my command!” Batya mutters, smashed and stiff. “One, two, three!”

We lower the drills under the table, turn them on, and try to hit someone’s leg on the first try. You can stick only one time. If you blow it—don’t judge too harshly. I hit the mark—Vosk, it seems—and someone’s hit my left leg, probably Batya himself. The drilling begins:

“Hail, hail!”

“Hail, hail!”

“Burn, burn, burn!”

Endure, endure, endure. The drills go through meat like butter, and run into the bone. Endure, endure, endure! We endure, clench our teeth, look at one another:

“Burn! Burn! Burn!”

We withstand, withstand, withstand. The mosquito drills reach the bone marrow. And the first to cave is Potyka:

“Ooooowwww!”

“Break off,” Batya commands.

We break off the bits. The tips stay in our legs. Potyka lost: grimacing and whimpering, he grabs his knee. Patience—that’s what the youngsters need to learn from us, their elders.

“Vakhrushev!” Batya shouts.

The oprichnik doctor appears, silent Pyotr Sergeevich, with two assistants. They remove the pieces of diamond drill from our legs. The drills are finer than fine, just a bit thicker than a strand of woman’s hair. They bandage us up, inject us with medicine. Batya collapses in the arms of servants, hits them on their smackers, sings songs, giggles, farts. As the loser, Potyka hands over all the money he has on him to the oprichnik pot—a couple of hundred in paper and around a hundred and fifty in gold.

“All’s well that ends well,” Batya roars. “Drivers!”

The servants grab me under the arms and carry me out.

A government driver takes me home in my Mercedov. I’m sprawled out and half asleep. Nighttime Moscow whizzes by. Lights. Moscow’s late-night suburbs race by. Firs and roofs. Roofs and firs. Roofirs, dusted with snow. After a full day of work it’s good to leave the stern capital behind and return to my dear Moscow woods. To say farewell to Moscow. Because Moscow is the head of all Russia. And the head has a brain. By night the brain tires. And sings in its sleep. And in the singing there’s motion: contraction, expansion. Tension. Suspension. Millions and millions of volts and amps create the necessary rate. Energy doctors dwell there. Nuclear bricks flicker. They whistle and align. Together they bind. Stick fast forever and evermore. And man is made from this store. Molecule houses of three rows. Even four or five. Which is wide? Sometimes of eighty-eight. We’ll ask them later. And all the houses are behind sturdy fences, they all have guards, the subversive vermin, willful worms, born with silver spoons, for execution doomed. The state cauldrons boil. The fat, fat, fat of those who’ve met their Maker drips on the snow. Human fat, rendered from a cast iron cauldron brimming over, over, overflow, overflowing. An unending stream of fat pouring flowing out on the snow. It swirls in the bitter cold it swirls. Swirls into frozen mother of pearl. It freezes and sets, sets, sets, sets into a sculpture so beautiful. Sublime. Superb. Inimitable. Splendid. Delightful. The beauty of the fat sculpture is divine and indescribable. The pink, mother-of-pearl fat, tender, cool. Her Highness’s breast is cast from the fat of her subjects. The enormous breast of Her Highness! It hangs above us in the blue. It is vast! If only to reach her, fly upward on a swift-winged Chinese airplane, on our enemies’ fierce fighter jets, to touch her with my lips, to press against her breast, to press my cheek, press, press, freeze forever, so no cripples or clowns can tear me away, so that no one can pull me off, off the breast, pull me away from Her Highness’s breast, nor rip away with red-hot tongs, nor slice off with a knife, nor crack apart with a crowbar, nor break with bones, bones crack loud, the meat bursts, my meat, my flesh, fleeting, corruptible meat, my poor meat, glory to you in the heavens above, glory to you for now and evermore,
mamo
, Our White Fat!

“Master, lord and father, Andrei Danilovich!”

I open my eyes. The night-light illuminates Anastasia’s tear-stained face. She’s holding an ampoule of smelling salts and sticking it up my nose. I push it away, frown, and sneeze:

“Ah, go to…”

She looks at me:

“What are you doing to yourself? Why don’t you take care of yourself?”

I toss and turn, but don’t have the strength to sit up. I remember: she did something bad to me. I can’t remember…what…I’m thirsty:

“Drink!”

She brings a pitcher of white kvass. I drain it. Totally exhausted, I lie back on the pillow. Now the most important thing is to belch. I belch. I feel better immediately:

“What time is it?”

“Four thirty.”

“In the morning?”

“In the morning, Andrei Danilovich.”

“So, I haven’t gone to bed yet?”

“They brought you here unconscious.”

“Where’s Fedka?”

“I’m here, Andrei Danilovich.”

Fedka’s gloomy face appears near the bed.

“Did anyone call?”

“No one called.”

“What’s going on in the house?”

“Nanny got food poisoning from farmer’s cheese—she vomited bile. Tanka is asking for Wednesday off to go home for a baptism. The shower is leaking again; I already put a call out on the network. And you need to approve the dog’s head for tomorrow, Andrei Danilovich. On account of the one we got now the crows picked to pieces. I have two: a Caucasian sheepdog, fresh, and a Bordeaux Great Dane, frozen, from White Cold. Shall I bring them?”

“Tomorrow. Get out of here.”

Fedka disappears. Anastasia turns out the night-light, undresses in the dark, crosses herself, mutters a prayer for the coming night, and lies down with me under the blanket. She nestles her warm body against me, and takes the gold bell out of my earlobe, placing it on the nightstand:

“Will you allow me to love you gently?”

“Tomorrow,” I mumble, closing my leaden eyelids.

“As you command, master…” she sighs into my ear, caressing my forehead.

She did do something to me, I’m sure of it…something not very nice. Something in secret…But what? Someone told me today. Where was I today? At Batya’s. At the Good Fellows. At Her Highness’s. Who else? I forgot.

“Listen, you didn’t steal anything from me, did you?”

“Lord almighty…What are you saying, Andrei Danilovich?! Lordy!” She sniffles.

“Nastya, where was I today?”

“How should I know, sir? You probably planted your seed in some city missus, and that’s why you don’t want me anymore. There ain’t no need to take it out on an honest girl…”

She sobs.

Barely able to turn my leaden arm, I embrace her:

“Now, now, silly girl, I was doing government work, risking my life.”

“May you live a hundred years…” she mumbles, sobbing in the darkness, her feelings hurt.

Maybe not a hundred, but I’ll live awhile longer. We’ll live, we’ll live. And we’ll let others live as well. A passionate, heroic, government life. Important. We have to serve the great ideal. We must live to spite the bastards, to rejoice in Russia…My white stallion, wait…don’t run away…where are you going my beloved…where, my white-maned…my sugar stallion…we’re alive…oh yes, we’re alive…stallions are alive, people alive…all alive till now…everyone…the entire oprichnina…our entire kindred oprichnina. And as long as the oprichniks are alive, Russia will be alive.

And thank God.

A Note About the Author

Vladimir Sorokin was born in 1955. He is the author of many novels, plays, short stories, screenplays, and a libretto. He has won the Andrei Bely Prize and the Maxim Gorky Prize, and was a finalist for the Russian Booker Prize. His work has been translated into many languages. He lives in Moscow.

A Note About the Translator

Jamey Gambrell is a writer on Russian art and culture. Her translations include works by Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Tatyana Tolstaya, and Marina Tsvetaeva. She has also translated Vladimir Sorokin’s
The Ice Trilogy
, his novella
A Month in Dachau
, and a number of his stories. She lives in New York City.