Day of the Oprichnik (7 page)

My hands sweaty from excitement, I take the globe out of the bag and place it in my left palm: there they are! Gold ones!

The ball is transparent, manufactured from the finest materials. It’s filled with a clear, nourishing solution. In that solution swim seven tiny (only five millimeters each) gold sterlets. I look at them, bringing the ball close to my face. Teeny, tiny microscopic little fish! Divine, charming creatures. People of great intelligence created you for our pleasure. In ancient times, nimble golden fish like you, magical fish, brought happiness to Ivan Simpletons in the form of carved towers, tsars’ daughters, and self-kindling Russian tile ovens. But the happiness that you bring, divine little ones, cannot be compared to any towers or self-kindling tile ovens, nor to women’s caresses…

I look the globe over. Even without a magnifying glass I can see—Giselle did not deceive us! Seven gold sterlets in my hand. I take out the glass and gaze more intently: superb, obviously made in China, not in wretched America and definitely not in Holland. They frisk about in their native element, shining in the miserly Moscow winter sun. How glorious!

I call Batya. I show him the globe.

“Atta boy, Komiaga.” Batya winks at me and in a sign of approval flicks his bell earring.

“Where to, Batya?”

“The Donskoi.”

“I’m off!” I speed out of the parking lot.

On the way to the Donskoi Baths I try to figure out how to plan my work for the rest of the day and evening, how to get everything done. But my thoughts are muddled, I can’t concentrate—the golden sterlets are right here, splashing in the sphere! Gritting my teeth, I force myself to think about state affairs. It seems I can manage everything—extinguish the
star
, and fly to see the soothsayer.

Donskoi Street is jam-packed. I turn on the State Snarl. A corps of cars quakes from the invisible sound, yields the road to me, pulling over. Great and powerful is the State Snarl. It clears the road like a bulldozer. I fly, I rush as to a fire. But the gold sterlet is more powerful than a fire! More powerful than an earthquake.

I whiz along to the yellow building of the Donskoi Baths. Outside, rising to the roof, is a figure of a bathhouse attendant with a broad, thick blond beard and two bunches of birch twigs in his muscular hand. The giant attendant thrashes his twigs and winks a mischievous blue eye every half-minute.

Holding the sphere tight in a deep pocket of my jacket, under my caftan, I enter. The doormen bow to their waist.
Our
room has already been reserved by Batya. I let them take my black caftan, and I continue down a vaulted corridor. My copper-soled boots clatter on the stone floor. Next to the door that leads to our room stands another attendant—strapping, tattooed Koliakha. He’s an old acquaintance, who always watches out for the oprichniks’ peace-of-mind time. A stranger could never get past broad-shouldered Koliakha.

“Greetings, Koliakha!” I say to him.

“To your health, Andrei Danilovich.” He bows.

“Anyone else yet?”

“You are the first.”

That’s good. I’ll choose the best place for myself.

Koliakha lets me into the room. It isn’t very wide and has low ceilings. But it’s cozy, familiar, lived in. In the middle is a round font, to the right is the steam room. It stands empty for want of use. For we now have
special
steam, ingenious steam. You couldn’t find birch branches for it anywhere in the world…

The lounge chairs are arranged around the font like daisy petals. Seven. The number of fish in the sacred sphere. I fetch it from my brocade jacket pocket, and sit down on the edge of the chair. The sphere of fish lies in my palm. The golden sterlets romp in their element. Even without a magnifying glass, you can tell they’re passing fair. An exceptional mind created this pleasure. Perhaps it wasn’t human. Such a thing could be conceived only by angels falling from the Lord’s throne.

I toss the sphere from palm to palm. Not an inexpensive pleasure. One sphere like this outweighs my monthly remuneration. It’s a pity that these magical spheres are strictly forbidden in our Orthodox country. Not in ours alone, either. In America they give you ten years for silver fish, and about three times that for gold. In China they hang you straight off. And in putrefying Europe, these spheres are too hard to chew. Cyberpunks prefer cheap
acid
. For the last four years our Secret Department has been catching these fish. However, as always, they swim over to us from neighboring China. They swim and swim, passing through the border nets. And they’ll keep on swimming.

To be honest, I don’t see anything antigovernmental in these fish. Ordinary folk can’t afford them, while the rich and those of high position must have their weaknesses; after all, weakness has many faces. In his time, His Majesty’s father, Nikolai Platonovich, issued the great decree “On the Use of Energizing and Relaxing Remedies.” This decree permitted the general use of
coke
,
angel dust
, and
weed
forevermore. For these substances cause the state no harm, they do but help citizens in their labor and leisure. One may purchase several grams of
coke
in any apothecary for the standard government price: two and a half rubles. Every apothecary is equipped with counters where a workingman may come in the morning or at his midday break and have a snort, in order to return, energized, to work for the good of the Russian state. They sell syringes with invigorating
angel dust
, and cigarettes with relaxing
weed
. True,
weed
is sold only after five o’clock. Now, if we’re talking about
horse
,
acid
, and
mushrooms
, these substances really do poison the people. They weaken, flurry, and deprive them of will, and in so doing bring great harm to the government. For this very reason they are forbidden throughout the entire territory of Russia. This has all been wisely thought out. But these little fish—they are matchless, far above all your
coke-horses
taken together. They resemble a heavenly rainbow—they come, bring joy, and leave. After the sterlet rainbow there’s no hangover or
withdrawal
.

The door opens with the blow of a metal-tipped boot. Only our Batya enters that way.

“Komiaga, you here already?”

“Where else would I be, Batya?”

I toss the sphere to Batya. He catches it, looks at it through the light, squinting.

“Ah…good!”

Shelet, Samosya, Yerokha, Mokry, and Pravda follow Batya in. Batya’s entire
right
hand. In other places, with the
left
, Batya suppresses his
excitement
. That’s as it should be—in such affairs it doesn’t do to mix left with right.

Everyone’s already a tad
edgy
. What do you expect? The fish are right at hand. Samosya’s dark eyes flit back and forth and his fists are clenched. Yerokha’s cheekbones bulge, he’s clenching his teeth. Under drooping eyebrows, his teary walleye stares intently, as though he wants to bore a hole in me. Last time, he was the one who found the fish. Pravda always keeps his knife at hand—just a habit. His fist blanches as he squeezes it. All the right-side oprichniks are like that—fiery fellows. They’ll fly off the handle, snuff ’em without flinching.

But Batya reins our guys in.

“Shoo!”

He places the sphere on the stone floor and is the first to take off his clothes. Servants aren’t supposed to be here—we dress and undress ourselves. The oprichniks take off their brocaded jackets, peel off their silk shirts; we walk around naked and each of us takes his place on his lounge chair.

I lie down, covering my privates with my palms, and the shakes begin:
golden
ecstasy awaits just around the corner. As always, Batya does the
launching.
Baring himself, he takes the sphere with the fish and walks over…to me, of course. I was the procurer today. Therefore I’m the first of the seven. The first little fish is mine. I stretch my left arm out to Batya, squeezing and pumping my fist, pressing my forearm with the fingers of my right hand. Batya leans over my arm, like the Lord of the Hosts. He places the divine sphere on my swollen vein. I see the fish grow still, rocking in their aquarium. One of them is pulled in the direction of the vein pressed to the sphere. It wiggles its tiny little tail, drills through the supple glass, and pierces my vein. That’s it! Hail to you! Tiny golden fish!

Batya moves over to Yerokha. He’s already shaking, clenching his teeth, squeezing his fist, pumping his vein up stiff. Batya-Saboath the Bare-Assed leans over him…

But my eyes are not directed toward them. I see the vein in my left arm. I see it clearly. The teensy, millimeter-long tail of the golden sterlet peeps out from the pale bend of my elbow, straight out of the middle of my swollen vein.

O, divine instant when the golden fish enters the bloodstream! You are beyond compare, unlike any earthly pleasure, closest to what our forebear Adam experienced in the thickets of paradise, when he tasted of the invisible fruits created for him alone by the gray-bearded Saboath, Lord of the Hosts himself.

The little golden tail wiggles and the fish hides inside me. It swims along with the bloodstream. A trickle of blood shoots out in a fine fountain from a tiny hole. I press on my vein, throw my head back on the soft headrest, and close my eyes. I feel the golden sterlet swimming inside me, feel how it moves up along my vein, like it does in spring, striving to reach the spawning grounds at the headwaters of Mother Volga. Up, up, and farther upward! The golden sterlet has a destination to reach—my brain. My brain waits immobile in exalted anticipation: the sterlet-enchantress will deposit her heavenly caviar in my gray matter. Swim, oh swim, little fish of gold, rush unimpeded, spray your golden caviar into my tired brain, and may those roe-berries hatch into Worlds Grand, Sublime, Stupendous. May my brain rise from its slumber.

I count aloud with dry, chapped lips:

One.

Two.

Three…

Ah, how my eyes they opened wide,

That’s right, my eyes, yellow eyelet eyes,

Yellow eyelet eyes on my head, my crown,

On my crown, on my head so mighty.

And my crown—o this lovely head of mine,

Sits atop a neck that’s long, it is, and strong,

Strong and long it is, and serpentine,

Clad in serpents’ scales it is,

And sitting by this fabled head of mine,

Are six heads fine, and they do writhe, they do,

They twist and coil, and wink and blink

Their golden eyelet yellow eyes, they do.

They wink and bicker,

They spit and sputter,

Their jaws are red, so scarlet, so marvelous,

Gums of pink and teeth so sharp,

An acrid smoke pours from these jaws, it does,

This smoke rolls out and fire flares,

To bellowing and a mighty roar.

And for every head there is a name that’s his,

A name that’s sworn in brotherhood.

The first head is nicknamed Batya,

The next is called Komiaga,

The third is nicknamed Shelet,

The fourth goes by Samosya,

The fifth is called Yerokha,

The sixth is called Mokry,

The seventh is simply Pravda.

But all of us, seven-headed us,

I call Gorynych the Terrible—

The fire-breathing Dragon Ruinator.

And all seven heads sit on a torso,

A wide and broad, a stocky one.

On a stocky trunk, on a weighty one,

With a heavy tail, a sinuous one.

And that torso so exemplary

Is carried by legs, two thickset ones,

Both stout and thickset mighty ones,

With claws that stab the brittle earth, they do.

On the sides of the thickset trunk you see

Two webbed wings stretch and grow,

Webbed are they and sinewy,

Strong, and flapping forcefully.

They sweep the air most gloriously,

Tense and taut, they rise, they do.

Wrench away from our mother earth,

We rise right there, above our native land,

Above the earth, the whole Russian land,

And fly through the sky, the blue sky we do

Fly easily, wherever we want to go.

And the seventh head asks:

“Where are we flying, where does our path lead?”

And the sixth head asks:

“What lands are in our plans today?”

And the fifth head asks:

“Must we fly far, through the sky today?”

And the fourth head asks:

“Where should we turn our valiant wings today?”

And the third head asks:

“Which winds will wag our tails today?”

And the second head asks:

“What lands do we set our sights upon?”

Then the first head, the head of heads,

The greatest of all, replies to them:

“We’ll fly right across the sky, we will,

Straight across the sky so blue,

Straight west to a land far away we will,

To a land far away, and wealthy, too,

A land beyond the crash of the ocean blue,

A far-flung land, yes, one that’s flourishing,

Rich with gold and silver treasure nourishing.

In that far-off country towers stand,

Towers high and higher stand,

Tall, pointy and sharp they are,

Mercilessly buttressing the sky so blue,

And in the towers brazen people live,

Brazen and dishonest they live, they do,

They live with no fear of God they do,

These godless people,

They wallow in filthy sin, they do.

They wallow and enjoy themselves,

Mocking all that’s sacred, all that’s holy, too,

Mocking, jeering, and sneering is all they do,

They hide in Satan’s work,

And spit on Sacred Rus, they do,

On the onion domes of Russia’s Orthodox,

They all defame the golden name of God,

They flout the truth, oh yes, they do.

Now we fly most easily,

Through endless skies of baby blue,

Through nearby merchant countries,

Through groves and piney backwoods, too,

Through fields and meadows greening,

Through lakes and rivers clear as day,

Through villages and European towns,

Then we fly ferociously,

Far away from home, across the ocean-sea

Far away to where the godless roam.

We spread our webbed wings,

We wag our tail to the seven winds,

Our wings catch hold of the swift eighth wind,

The speedy eighth, the wind that travels the way we want to go,

We fly into its wake, stream into its wake, we do,

We saddle it, yes, straddle it, like a dashing stallion,

We ride the wild and galloping, we ride the rolling winds,

We take off on the winds, on a journey wild and dangerous.

We fly the first ten days,

We fly the first ten nights.

Ten days and nights over glassy water smooth,

Over the steep and rolling waves.

Our webbed wings weaken,

Our Gorynych heads grow weary,

Our mighty tail droops,

Our feet flail, our claws unclench.

Then, lo and behold on the ocean-sea,

We spy a metal house, on poles, on iron ones,

Built to pump and suck our mother earth,

To drink her deepest blood, amassed throughout the centuries,

We land atop that iron house,

We tear apart the iron roof,

We eat the twelve impious there,

And spit their bones into the sea.

We rest three days, and then three nights,

On the fourth we set the house afire,

And head off to the west again.

We fly ten days again,

And ten nights more,

Ten days, ten nights, the glassy waters o’er,

’Til our webbed wings weaken,

Our Gorynych heads droop,

Our mighty tail lolls, half dead

Our feet, our claws unclench.

Lo and behold in the ocean-sea we see

A mammoth six-decked ship.

A massive vessel floating east, it does,

From a wily country, from the godless land.

Bearing vile and filthy goods,

Carrying godless people,

Subversive letters and seditious documents,

Bearing delights demonical,

Bringing pleasures satanical,

Conveying decaying whore-swans

Like a whirlwind we attack that ship, we do,

Scorching and burning it from seven heads,

From seven heads and seven mouths,

We burn, we obliterate the godless filth within,

We gorge on decaying whore-swans, oh yes.

We rest three days, and rest three nights,

And on the fourth day we move on.

We fly another ten days,

And a third ten nights.

When lo we glimpse the godless land.

We fly, we fly, and fly anon.

We torch, we scorch it from seven heads,

From seven heads, from seven mouths,

We smite and bite the godless ones.

When we’ve had our fill of them, we spit out their bones, and again we char the vermin, the vile parasites, those disgusting whoresons, brazen and godless, who’ve forgotten everything sacred, everything thrice-sacred, they must be like the spawn of Asmodeus like cockroaches like stinking rats scorched mercilessly to ashes we scorch whoresons the accursed burned to a crisp, we do, with pure and honest fire, burn and burn and when I slam against the hard glass window the first time it holds I slam it the second time it cracks slam it the third time it breaks I stick my head into the dark apartment the vermin hid from heavenly judgment but my yellow eyes see in the dark they see well my yellow eyes and I stare and find the first foul creature a forty-two-year-old man wedged in a wardrobe I set the wardrobe on fire I watch the wardrobe burn he sits inside and doesn’t budge he’s scared and the wardrobe burns the wood crackles and he sits there and I wait he can’t stand it and flings the door open with a cry and I send a thin stream of flame, my faithful skewer of flame into his mouth and he swallows my fire and falls I keep searching I find two children two little girls six and seven hiding under the bed under the wide bed I drench the bed in a wide stream the bed burns the pillows flame the blanket they can’t stand it they scramble out from under the bed run to the door I send a fan of fire after them they run as far as the door burning both of them I keep on searching I’m searching for the sweetest thing of all and I find her a woman thirty years old blond who hides frightened in the bath between the washing machine and the wall dressed only in her nightgown her knees are bare she’s squatting petrified she looks at me with fear, her eyes wide and round, and slowly my nostrils inhale her sleepy smell I move closer to her closer closer closer I look and tenderly I touch her knees with my nose and slowly spread spread spread her and send my thinnest stream my faithful flaming skewer into her narrow womb I send it and its might fills her trembling womb, my flaming skewer fills it she howls inhuman cries and slowly my fiery flaming skewer begins to fuck her to fuck her to fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.