Day of the Oprichnik (3 page)

“Didn’t fly up the chimney, did he?” Posokha mutters.

“Gotta be a secret entrance in the house somewhere,” grumbles Kreplo, rummaging through the chests of drawers with his cudgel.

“The fence is surrounded by Streltsy, where can he go?” I object.

We climb up to the attic. There’s a winter garden, bathhouse stones, a wall of water, exercise machines, an observatory. Nowadays they all have observatories…That’s something I don’t get: astronomy and astrology are great sciences, it’s true, but what does a telescope have to do with it? It’s not a fortune-telling book! The demand for telescopes within the Kremlin’s White City is simply mind-boggling, I can’t wrap my head around it. Even Batya set up a telescope in his mansion. True, he doesn’t have time to look through it.

Posokha might as well be reading my thoughts:

“These nobles and moneychangers—indulging in star-goggling. Whadda they lookin’ for? Their own death?”

“Maybe God?” Khrul chuckles, knocking his cudgel against a palm tree.

“Don’t blaspheme!” Batya’s voice calls him to order.

“Forgive me, Batya.” Khrul crosses himself. “It was the devil’s work.”

“Why are you all searching around the old-fashioned way, boys?” Batya isn’t appeased. “Turn on the ‘searcher’!”

We turn on the “searcher.” It beeps and points to the first floor. We go down. The “searcher” leads us to two Chinese vases. Large vases, standing on the floor, taller than me. We look at one another and wink. I nod at Khrul and Sivolai. They swing back and—crash! The cudgels hit the vases! The porcelain is exceptionally fine, like the eggshell of some enormous dragon, and it flies in all directions. And from these eggs, like Castor and Pollux—the noble’s children tumble out! They roll around the carpet like peas and start howling. Three, four, six. All of them blond, about a year apart, one smaller than the next.

“Well, look what we’ve got here!” The invisible Batya laughs. “Ay ay ay, look what that crook concocted!”

“He was so scared he went completely batty!” Sivolai said, leering at the children.

His grin is
nasty
. But that’s the way it is. We don’t touch the little ones…No, not unless there’s an order to
squash the innards
, that’s something different. Otherwise—we don’t need any extra blood-spilling.

Our fellows catch the shrieking children like willow grouse, and carry them out under their arms. Outside, the lame tax collector, Averian Trofimich, has arrived from the orphanage in his yellow bus. He’ll place the little ones, he won’t let them fall between the cracks; he’ll raise them to be honest citizens of a great country.

To catch the nobles’ wives we use the cries of the children as bait; Kunitsyn’s spouse couldn’t stand it, she howled from her hiding place. Women’s hearts aren’t made of stone. We follow the cry—it leads to the kitchen. We enter at a leisurely pace. We look around. Ivan Ivanovich has a good kitchen. Spacious and intelligently laid out. You’ve got your preparation table, and stovetops, and steel shelves, and glass ones with dishes and spices, and complicated ovens with hot and cold rays and all kinds of foreign high-tech, and tricky ventilation systems, and transparent refrigerators lit from below. There’s any type of knife you could want, and in the middle—a wide, white Russian tile oven. Good for Ivan Ivanovich. What kind of Russian Orthodox repast can you have without cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge? Can a foreign oven really bake savory pies like a Russian oven? Would milk curdle the right way? And what about bread, the father and mother? Russian bread needs to be baked in a Russian oven—the poorest beggar will tell you that.

The mouth of the copper oven door is ajar; Poyarok knocks on it with a bent finger:

“The gray wolf has come, he’s brought some pies for you.

Knock-knock, who’s hiding in the oven?”

From behind the door come a woman’s wail and a man’s cussing. Ivan Ivanovich is cross at his wife for giving them away with her cry. Well, of course, what do you expect? Women’s hearts are sensitive, that’s why we love them.

Poyarok removes the damper door, takes out stove tongs and a poker, and drags the noble and his spouse out into God’s light. The noble’s hands are immediately tied, and a gag stuffed in his mouth. He’s pushed by his elbows out into the yard. And the wife…we’ll handle the wife in a merrier fashion.
That’s the way it’s usually done.
She’s tied to the butcher table. Ivan Ivanovich’s wife is a beauty: pleasing in form, fair of face, bosomy, well buttocked, spunky. But first—the nobleman. We all rush out of the house into the yard. Ziabel and Kreplo are already standing, waiting with their birch brooms, and Nagul with his soaped rope. The oprichniks drag the noble by the legs from the porch to the gates on his last outing. Ziabel and Kreplo sweep the tracks after him so that no trace of His Majesty’s enemy remains in Russia. Nagul has already climbed the gates and nimbly set up the rope; not the first time he’s hung Russia’s foes. We also stand under the gates, and lift the noble.

“Work and Word!!”

In the blink of an eye Ivan Ivanovich is swaying in the noose, wheezing, sniffling, jerking, farting his farewell. We remove our hats and cross ourselves. We put them back on. We wait until the noble has given up the ghost.

One third of our work is done. Now—the wife. We return to the house.

“Don’t kill her!”—Batya’s voice warns us,
as always
.

“Got it, Batya!”

This work is—passionate, and absolutely necessary. It gives us more strength to overcome the enemies of the Russian state. Even this
succulent
work requires a certain seriousness. You have to start and
finish
by seniority. So this time, I’m first. The widow of the now deceased Ivan Ivanovich thrashes on the table, screaming and moaning. I rip off her dress, tear off her intricate lace undergarments. Poyarok and Sivolai force her smooth, white, well-tended legs open, and hold them. I love women’s legs, especially their thighs and toes. The wife of Ivan Ivanovich has pale thighs, a bit cold, but her toes are tender, well formed, with well-kept toenails covered in pink nail polish. Her weak legs squirm in the strong oprichnik hands, and a slight shiver runs through her toes; they splay and stiffen from tension and fear. Poyarok and Sivolai know my weaknesses: they hold her tender, trembling foot near my mouth; I gather the shaking toes between my lips, and launch my bald ferret right into her womb.

How sweet!

The widow jerks and squeals like a live pink piglet on a red-hot spit. I dig my teeth into her foot. She screams and thrashes on the table. But I bring my
succulent
work to completion meticulously and implacably.

“Hail! Hail!” the oprichniks mutter, turning away.

Important work.

Necessary work.

Good work.

Without this work, a
raid
is like a stallion without a rider…without reins…a white stallion, white knight, white stallion…beautiful…brilliant…bewitched stallion…a tender stallion-galleon…a sugar-sweet stallion with no rider…no reins…no reins…with a white fiend…a sweet fiend…a fiend of sugar reigns…no rider…no rain, no galleon-stallion, galloping and no reins, no sugar reins, no sugary rains…galleon galloping where the white sugar fiend reigns and the distant sugar rains, faraway, the reins galloping, trotting, sugar reins, galloping, cantering, sugary, cantering to the sugary, to the canterer, how faaar to the sugary caaaantering cuuuuuunnnnnntttt!

How sweet to leave one’s own seed in the womb of the wife of an enemy of the state.

Sweeter than cutting off the heads of the enemies themselves.

The widow’s tender toes fall out of my mouth.

Colorful rainbows swim before my eyes.

I turn over my place to Posokha. His member has freshwater pearls sewn in it; the pattern resembles Ilya Muromets’s diamond-shaped vestments.

Oh my, the noble’s got the heat up high. I go out onto the porch and sit down on the bench. The children have already been taken away. Spurts of blood on the snow are all that remain of the slashed and beaten stable hand. The Streltsy dawdle about the gate, looking at the noble swinging in the breeze. I take out a pack of Motherland and light up. I’m fighting this heathen habit. Although I’ve reduced the number of cigarettes to seven a day, I just don’t have the willpower to quit permanently. Father Paisii prayed for me, commanded me to read the canon of repentance. It didn’t help…The smoke lies across a frosty breeze. The sun is still shining, the snow and sun winking at each other. I love winter. The cold clears the head, invigorates the blood. In the Russian winter state affairs get done faster, go more smoothly.

Posokha comes out onto the porch: his huge lips are swollen, saliva is about to drip from them, his eyes are dazed, and there’s no way he can zip his pants up over his purplish hardworked member. He stands with his legs spread out and does his business. A book falls out from under his caftan. I pick it up. I open it—Afanasev’s
Secret Tale
. I read the epigraph:

In those far-off olden times,

When Sacred Russia had no knives,

Carving meat was done with pricks.

This little book has been read till there are holes in it; it’s tattered and grease almost oozes from its pages.

“What are you reading, you impudent lout?” I slap Posokha on the forehead with the book. “If Batya sees it—he’ll throw you out of the oprichnina!”

“I’m sorry, Komiaga, the devil made me do it,” Posokha mutters.

“You’re walking along a knife edge, you dimwit! This obscene stuff is subversive. There were purges in the Printing Department on account of these sorts of books. Is that where you picked it up?”

“I wasn’t in the oprichnina then. I came across it in the house of one of them generals. The devil nudged me.”

“Just understand, you idiot, we’re guards. We have to keep our minds cold and our hearts pure.”

“I understand, I understand…” Posokha scratched the black hair under his hat, in boredom.

“His Majesty can’t stand cusswords.”

“I know.”

“Well, if you know—burn that indecent book!”

“I’ll burn it, Komiaga, here, I’ll swear on it”—and he crosses himself in a sweeping gesture, hiding the book.

Nagul and Okhlop come out. As the door closes behind them I hear the moans of the noble’s widow.

“What a fine bitch!” Okhlop spits, and cocks his cap back.

“They won’t bang her to death, will they?” I ask, stubbing out my butt on the bench.

“I don’t think so…” The wide-faced smiling Nagul blows his nose into a white handkerchief lovingly embroidered by someone.

Ziabel soon appears. After a roll in the hay he’s always excited and garrulous. Like me, Ziabel attended university, has a higher education.

“How glorious it is to destroy Russia’s enemies, don’t you know,” he mutters, taking out a pack of unfiltered Rodina. “Genghis Khan used to say that the greatest pleasure on earth was to conquer your enemies, plunder their possessions, ride their horses, and love their wives. What a wise man he was!”

The fingers of Nagul, Okhlop, and Ziabel reach into the pack of Rodina. I take out my flint-fire with cold blue flame and let them light up.

“It looks like you’re all hooked on this devilish
weed
. Do you know that tobacco is damned forever by the seven saintly stones?”

“We know, Komiaga.” Nagul grins, taking a toke on his cigarette.

“You’re smoking Satan’s incense, oprichniks. The devil taught people to smoke tobacco so they would praise him with incense. Every cigarette is incense to the glory of the foul fiend.”

“But one defrocked monk told me, ‘He who does tobacco smoke / is sure to be Christ’s bloke,’” Okhlop objects.

“And the Cossack lieutenant in our regiment always said, ‘Smoked meat keeps longer.’” Posokha sighs as he takes a cigarette.

“You numbskulls, you blockheads! Our Majesty doesn’t smoke,” I tell them. “Batya quit, too. We have to watch the cleanliness of our lungs, too. And our tongues.”

They smoke silently, listening.

The door opens and the rest of the lot stagger out with the noble’s wife. She’s naked, unconscious, wrapped in a sheepskin coat. For us, tumbling a woman is a special kind of work.

“Is she alive?”

“They rarely die from it!” Pogoda smiles. “It’s not the rack, after all.”

I take her senseless hand. There’s a pulse.

“All right, then. Drop the woman off at her family’s.”

“You got it.”

They take her out. It’s time to finish up. The oprichniks keep glancing at the house: it’s wealthy, full of goods. But since the mansion is to be demolished by order of His Majesty, no stealing is allowed. It’s the law. All the goods go to His Majesty’s
red rooster
.

I nod to Ziabel; he’s our guy for fire.

“Take over!”

He takes his Rebroff out of the holster and puts a bottle-shaped attachment on the barrel. We move away from the house. Ziabel aims at the window and shoots. The windowpane splinters and shatters. We move farther away from the house. We stand in a half-circle, take our daggers out of their scabbards, raise them up, lower them, and aim them at the house.

“Woe to this house!”

“Woe to this house!”

“Woe to this house!”

There’s an explosion. The flames are thick, belching out the windows. Shards of glass, frames, and grates fall on the snow. The mansion has been taken. His Majesty’s
red rooster
has come to call.

“Well done!” Batya’s face appears in the frosty air, in a rainbow frame. “Let the Streltsy go, and get yourselves to prayer in Uspensky!”

All’s well that ends well. When work is done—we pray in the sun.

We exit, avoiding the hanging corpse. On the other side of the gates the Streltsy are pushing back reporters. They stand there with their cameras, champing at the bit to take pictures of the fire. Now they’re allowed in. Since the News Decree, after that memorable November, it’s all right. I wave to the lieutenant. The cameras focus on the fire, on the hanging nobleman. In every house, in every news bubble, Russian Orthodox people will know and see the power of His Majesty and the state.