Day of the Oprichnik (8 page)

Awakening…

It’s like rising from the dead. Returning to your old body, which died long ago and is buried in the ground. Oh, how loath you are to do so!

I lift my leaden eyelids and see my naked self stretched out on the lounge chair. I stir, cough, sit up. I’m hot. I grab a bottle of icy Esenin birch juice. Koliakha said he’d provide the birch juice, and he didn’t forget. It gurgles in my parched throat. The others are also stirring, coughing. How good. It’s always good on fish. Never been any
nasty crash
or
black slough
on fish. This isn’t any of your miserable smack.

We all cough as we wake up. Batya gulps his juice down. His pale face is sweating. Drinking your fill is the first order of business after fish. The second is belching. And the third is telling who did what.

We drink and belch.

We share what we’ve been through. This is the eighth time we’ve been the many-headed dragon Gorynych. Fish are a collective affair; only an idiot uses them alone.

As usual, Batya’s not very pleased.

“Why’re you always in such a hurry? You’re always wanting to burn or eat…You’re all fretting and fidgeting—first this way, then that. Calm down, fellows, one thing at a time.”

“It’s all because Shelet’s itching to start,” Yerokha says, coughing. “You’re always rushing to be on time, brother.”

“Oh, come on now,” says Shelet, stretching. “It was good, wasn’t it? I liked the part with the ship…the way they crawled through the portholes and jumped into the water!”

Mokry nods. “Great! But I liked that part in the city best: how we made a fan with seven streams, and the way they squealed in the skyscraper…cool! And Komiaga over there, isn’t he a genius? The way he did her! Smoke was comin’ out of that American broad’s asshole!”

“Komiaga’s inventive! He studied at the university, fuckin’ A!” Pravda grins.

Batya gives it to him on the lips—for cursing.

“Sorry, Batya, the devil led me astray.” Pravda makes a face.

“All in all—it was good,” Batya sums up. “They were the
right kind
of fish!”

“The right kind!”
We all agree.

We dress.

If the gold sterlets are good you don’t feel weak afterward, just the opposite: you’re stronger. Like you’ve been at a resort in our sunny Crimea. Like it’s the end of September outside, and you just spent three weeks in Koktebel lying on the golden sand and submitting various limbs to sinuous Tatar massage. And now you’ve returned to Whitestone Moscow, landed at Vnukovo, disembarked from the silvery airplane, taken a deep breath of the Moscow country air, held it in—and right away you feel so good, your soul feels so
perfect
, so balanced, so
important
…you realize that life is good, you are strong, you’re part of a great endeavor, and your confederates are waiting for you, a daring bold fellow who’s up to his ears in urgent work. The enemy hasn’t lessened in number, His Majesty is alive and well, and, most important of all: Russia is alive and well, rich, huge, united. Over the course of those three weeks our Mother Russia hasn’t budged; quite the contrary, her eternal roots have delved even deeper into the earth’s meat.

Batya is right: after fish you feel like living and working, but after
horse
you only want to run and find another dose.

I glance at the clock—I spent only forty-three minutes Gorynyching, but inside it feels like an entire life. And this life gives me new strength to fight our adversaries and root out subversion. I have quite a few questions about the fish: if they are so helpful to us, the oprichniks, why not make them legal, at least for us
exclusively
? Batya has conveyed our thoughts on this score to His Majesty more than once, but the response is adamant: the law is the same for all.

We come out of the bathhouse energized and seemingly more youthful. Each of us gives a half-ruble to tattooed Koliakha. He bows, pleased.

It’s frosty outside, but the sun has already hidden itself, rolled behind the clouds. Time to return to business. Right now, I’ve got a
star-fall
on my hands. It’s necessary business, state business.

I get in my Mercedov, drive onto Shabolovka Street, and call in: Is everything ready? It seems everything is.

I reach for my cigarettes—after fish I always feel like smoking. But I’m out. I brake near a People’s Kiosk. The merchant is all red in the face, like Petrushka in the street shows. He leans out:

“What does your honor desire, Sir Oprichnik?”

“I desire cigarettes.”

“We have filtered and unfiltered Rodina.”

“Filtered. Three packs.”

“At your service. Smoke to your health.”

It seems the fellow has a sense of humor. Taking out my wallet, I look at the kiosk window. It’s the standard selection: Rodina cigarettes and “Russia” cardboard-filtered
papirosy
, “rye” and wheat vodka, white and black bread, two types of chocolates—Mishka the Bear and Mishka in the North—apple and plum jam, butter and vegetable oil, meat with and without bones, whole and baked milk, chicken eggs and quail eggs, boiled and smoked sausage, cherry and pear drink, and finally—“Russian” cheese.

His Majesty’s father, the late Nikolai Platonovich, had a good idea: liquidate all the foreign supermarkets and replace them with Russian kiosks. And put two types of each thing in every kiosk, so the people have a choice. A wise decision, profound. Because our God-bearing people should choose from two things, not from three or thirty-three. Choosing one of two creates spiritual calm, people are imbued with certainty in the future, superfluous fuss and bother is avoided, and consequently—
everyone is satisfied.
And when a people such as ours is
satisfied
, great deeds may be accomplished.

Everything about the kiosks is fine; there’s only one thing I can’t wrap my head around. Why is it that all the goods are in pairs, like the beasts on Noah’s Ark, but there’s only one kind of cheese, Russian? My logic is helpless here. Well, this sort of thing isn’t for us to decide, but for His Majesty. From the Kremlin His Majesty sees the people better, they’re more visible. All of us down below crawl about like lice, hustling and bustling; we don’t recognize the true path. But His Majesty sees everything, hears everything. He knows who needs what.

I light up.

A vendor approaches me. He’s got a neat beard, wears a neat caftan, and has good manners. The tray he carries, strapped over his shoulders, is for books—that’s obvious.

“Would his honor Mr. Oprichnik, sir, care to acquire the most recent novelties of Russian literature?”

He unfolds his three-part tray in front of me. Bookstands are also standardized, approved by His Majesty and approved by the Literary Chamber. Our people respect books. On the left side there’s Orthodox Church literature; on the right the Russian classics; and in the middle, the latest works by contemporary writers. First I look over the prose of our country’s contemporary writers: Ivan Korobov’s
White Birch
; Nikolai Voropaevsky’s
Our Fathers
; Isaak Epshtein’s
The Taming of the Tundra
; Rashid Zametdinov’s
Russia—My Motherland
; Pavel Olegov’s
The Nizhny Novgorod Tithe
; Savvaty Sharkunov’s
Daily Life of the Western Wall
; Irodiada Deniuzhkina’s
My Heart’s Friend
; Oksana Podrobskaya’s
The Mores of New Chinese Children
. I know all these authors well. They’re famous, distinguished. Caressed by the love of the people and His Majesty.

“Let’s see…what’s this here?” In the corner of the tray I notice a textbook by Mikhail Shveller on developing carpenters for parish schools.

And under it—a textbook on carpentry by the same author.

“There are two schools not far from here, Sir Oprichnik. The parents buy them.”

“I see. Any young prose?”

“We’re expecting new works by young authors in the spring, as always, for the Easter Book Fair.”

Got it.

My eyes move to Russian poetry: Pafnuty Sibirsky, “The Motherland’s Expanses” Ivan Manot-Bely, “The Color of Apple Trees” Antonina Ivanova, “Russia’s Loyal Sons” Pyotr Ivanov’s “Water Meadow” Isai Bershtein’s “I Have You to Thank for Everything!” Ivan Petrosky’s “Live, Life!” Salman Basaev’s “Song of the Chechen Mountains” Vladislav Syrkov’s “His Majesty’s Childhood.”

I pick up the last book and open it. It’s a long poem about His Majesty’s childhood. The poet Syrkov already wrote about His youth and adulthood a long time ago. An elegant publication: expensive calfskin binding, gold lettering, pink page edges, thick white paper, and a bookmark of blue silk. On the half-title there’s a lively portrait of the poet: a bit gloomy, gray-haired, stooped. He’s at the seashore, gazing out toward the horizon; the ocean waves crash and crash, crash and crash against the rock where he stands. He somehow resembles an eagle owl, and seems deeply immersed in himself.

“An extraordinary, spiritually uplifting poem, Sir Oprichnik,” says the peddler in a businesslike voice. “Such a vivid portrait of His Majesty, such lively language…”

I read:

How you ran, so alive and so cheerful,

How you played in the river and sand,

How you traveled to school, never tearful,

How you whispered, “my dear, native land,”

How you strove to be honest and steady,

How you learned about freedom from birds,

How your answers were swift, always ready,

How you tugged on the braids of the girls,

How athletic you grew, and how stubborn,

How you wanted to know all apace,

How you loved your sweet good-hearted mother,

How your father you walked to the gates,

How you ran with the dogs ’cross the valleys

How you studied the crops and the sod,

How in winter’s grim blizzards you rallied,

How by spring you maneuvered the yacht,

How you learned to fly huge helicopters,

How you crafted your own paper kite,

How you galloped on fleet-footed Topper,

How whole poems in Chinese you’d recite,

How you penned your calligraphy ably,

How at dawn you would shoot at the range,

How you copied the character “guo jia,”
¹

How with Father you flew a small plane,

How your Motherland swiftly awakened,

How dear Russia in you did resound,

How by Nature your spirit was shapen,

How abruptly your own time came ’round.

Well, not bad. A bit overly emotional, as always with Syrkov, but on the other hand—quite vivid. The peddler is right. I’ll buy the book, read it, and then give it to Posokha, so he reads this poem instead of that obscene
Secret Tales
.

“How much?” I ask.

“For everyone else, three rubles, but for Sir Oprichnik, two and a half.”

Not cheap. But then it would be a sin to scrimp on His Majesty’s life story. I hand over the money. The peddler accepts it with a bow. Sticking the book in my pocket, I get into the Mercedov.

And step on the gas.

“
Putting out
stars is harder than mixing honey and water,” our Batya likes to say. And it’s true. Nonetheless, it’s an important affair, an affair of state. But skill is needed, a special approach. In a word, it’s an “intelligent” affair. And intelligent hands are needed. You have to invent or fabricate something every time. It’s nothing like burning down Zemsky mansions.

Therefore, I head back for the center of town again. I drive along crowded Yakimanka, again in the red lane. I drive onto the Great Stone Bridge. The sun has peeked out from behind the winter clouds, illuminating the Kremlin. And it is shining. How marvelous that for the last twelve years its walls have been painted white. And instead of those demonic pentacles on the Kremlin towers the state’s two-headed eagles shine gold.

The Kremlin is glorious in clear weather! It glows. The Palace of the Russian Government blinds the eyes, it takes your breath away. The Kremlin walls and towers sparkle like white lumps of sugar, the cupolas reflect the sun tinsel gold, the Ladder of Paradise bell tower of Ioann Lestvichnik rises in the air like an arrow. Blue-tinted firs surround it like stern guards, and Russia’s flag flies proud and free. Here, just over the crenellated, blindingly white, stone walls, is the heart of the Russian land, the throne of our state, the core and hub of Mother Russia. There’s nothing shameful in laying down your life for the sugary white Kremlin and its towers, the majestic eagles, the flag, the relics of Russia’s rulers reposing in the Cathedral of the Archangel, Riurik’s sword, the crown of Monomakh, the Tsar-Pushka cannon, the Tsar-Kolokol bell tower, the pavestones of Red Square, for Uspensky Cathedral or the Kremlin towers. And there’s no shame in laying down a second life—for His Majesty.

Tears well up in my eyes…

I turn on to Vozdvizhenka Street. My mobilov pesters me with three cracks of the whip: it’s the captain of the Good Fellows, reporting that they’ve got everything ready for the
extinguishing
. But he wants to clarify details, elucidate, sort out, brainstorm, go over things. He’s not sure of himself, that’s obvious.
That’s why I’m coming to see you, you dimwit!
Young Count Ukhov from the Inner Circle runs this show, and the order answers directly to His Majesty. Their full name is the Fellowship of Russian Good Fellows for Good. They’re young blades, zealous, upright, but they need supervision, because their leadership went awry from the very beginning—no luck with brainy types, no matter what you do! Each year His Majesty changes their captain, but not much changes. It’s baffling…In the Oprichnina we nicknamed these ruffians “Good-for-Noughts.” Not all they do turns out for the good, oh no, not by a long shot…But that’s all right, we’ll help. We’ll lend a hand, not for the first time.

I drive up to their richly decorated headquarters. They don’t have much in the way of brains, but they’ve got money coming out of their asses. Suddenly—there’s a red call on my mobilov. Something important. It’s Batya:

“Komiaga, where are you?”

“Heading for the Good-for-Noughts, Batya.”

“The devil take them. I want you off to Orenburg—fast. Our guys have locked horns with customs.”

“That’s the left
wing
’s problem, Batya, I’m a
former
in that business.”

“Chapyzh is burying his mother, Seryi and Vosk are in a meeting with Count Savelev in the Kremlin, and Samosya, the idiot, ran into one of the Streltsy on Ostozhenka Street.”

So that’s it.

“What about Baldokhai?”

“On a business trip, in Amsterdam. Come on, Komiaga, get over there while they still haven’t bamboozled us. You worked in customs, you know the ins and outs. It’s a serious
haul
, around a hundred thousand. If it falls through, we’ll never forgive ourselves. As it is, those customs guys have gotten too cheeky lately. Go sort it out!”

“Work and Word!, Batya.”

Hmm. Orenburg. That means—the Road. There’s no joking with the Road. It’s worth drawing blood for it. I call the Good-for-Noughts and reschedule for the evening:

“I’ll be there by the time the wailing starts!”

I turn on to the boulevard, then over the Great Stone Bridge again and into the Kaluzhskaya-2 Underground Highway. It’s a good road, wide and smooth. I accelerate to 260 versts per hour, and eighteen minutes later I’m at Vnukovo Airport. I park my Mercedov in the government parking lot and enter the terminal. A young woman steps forward to greet me in the blue uniform of Aeroflot: with aiguillettes, silver embroidery, Hessian boots, and white leather gloves. She invites me into the security corridor. I place my right hand against the glass square. My whole life appears in the pine-scented air: date of birth, rank, home address, status, chart of habits, physical-mental characteristics, birthmarks, illnesses, psychosomatics, my character core, preferences, prejudices, size of my limbs and organs. The girl gazes at my mind and body, distinguishing, comparing. “Full and complete transparency,” as His Majesty says. And thank God: we’re in our own homeland, nothing to be shy about.

“What is your desired destination, Mr. Oprichnik, sir?” she asks.

“Orenburg,” I answer. “First class.”

“Your airplane departs in twenty-one minutes. The cost of the ticket is twelve rubles. Duration of the flight is fifty minutes. How would you prefer to pay?”

“In cash.”

Nowadays we always pay for everything with genuine coins.

“With which kind?”

“The second mintage.”

“Wonderful.” She fills in the ticket, stirring the air with her sparkling gloves.

I hand over the money: a gold ten-ruble piece with His Majesty’s noble profile, and two rubles. They disappear into the frosted glass wall.

“This way, please,” she says, directing me toward the first-class waiting room with a half-bow.

I enter. A man in a white
papakha
hat and a white Cossack uniform takes my outer clothes with a low bow. I hand him the black caftan and hat. In the spacious first-class lounge there aren’t many travelers: two richly dressed Cossack families, four quiet Europeans, an old Chinese man with a small boy, a noble with three servants, some woman traveling alone, and two loud, tipsy merchants. And all of them, with the exception of the woman and the Chinese, are eating something. The tavern is good. I know, I’ve eaten here a number of times. And after golden sterlets you always feel like having a bite. I sit down at a table and immediately a
transparent
waiter appears, as though he’d come right out of Gogol’s immortal pages—plump cheeks, red lips, crimped hair, a smile:

“What, may I inquire, is your desire, sir?”

“My desire, friend, is drink, appetizers, and a light meal.”

“We have rye vodka with gold or silver sand, Shanghai sturgeon caviar, Taiwanese smoked fillet of sturgeon, marinated milk mushrooms in sour cream, jellied beef aspic, Moscow perch in aspic, Guangdong ham.”

“Give me the silver rye, mushrooms in sour cream, and the jellied beef. And what do you have to eat?”

“A nice sterlet soup, Moscow borsht, duck with turnip, rabbit in noodles, charcoal-grilled trout, grilled beef with potatoes.”

“The fish soup. And a glass of sweet kvass.”

“Thank you kindly.”

The
transparent
disappears. You could talk about anything at all with him, even about Saturn’s moons. His memory is basically boundless. Once, when I was in my cups, I asked the local
transparent
the formula for viviparous fibers. He told me. And went on to describe the technical production process in great detail. Our Batya, when he’s had a bit to drink, has one question he likes to ask the
transparent
: “How much time remains until the sun explodes?” They answer precisely within a year…But now—there’s no time for boldness, and besides, I’m hungry.

The order immediately arises from the table. That’s the kind of
handy
tables they have here. They always give you a carafe of vodka. I drink a shot, take a bite of marinated mushrooms in sour cream. Humankind has yet to invent any better
zakuska
. Even Nanny’s half-sour pickles can’t hold a candle to this. I consume an excellent piece of jellied beef aspic with mustard, drink the glass of sweet kvass in one gulp, and set to work on the fish soup. You must always eat it slowly. I look around. The merchants are polishing off their second carafe, jabbering on about some “third-level magnetic tape sorter” and 100-horsepower paracletes they bought in Moscow. The Europeans talk quietly in English. The Cossacks mumble in their own language, wolfing pastries and washing them down with tea. The Chinese man and boy chew on something of their own from a bag. The lady smokes aloofly. Finishing the soup, I order a cup of Turkish coffee, pull out my cigarettes, and light up. I put in a call to our guys on the Road: I need to get up to speed. Potrokha’s face appears. I switch the mobilov to secret conversation mode. Potrokha rattles off the main points:

“Twelve trailers; ‘High Fashion’ ‘ Shanghai-Tirana.’ We put a little fly in their ointment, stopped them right after the gates, drove them straightaway onto the sample clarifier, but the insurance guys dug in their heels—they were paid by the old docket, they don’t want to cook up a new contract. We lean on them through the chamber, but the head honcho says they have their own interests with those merchants, there’s a
wet
petition; we go back to customs, but they’re getting a piece of the action, too, the chief closes the case, and the clerk
turns
. The upshot—they’ll let them go in two hours.”

“Got it.” I start thinking.

In these kinds of affairs you need to be a good chess player, to think ahead. This case isn’t simple, but it’s clear. Since the Customs Department clerk
turned
, they must have a
corridor with clout
, and they renewed the contract right after the frontier post. So that means they went through the Kazakhs
clean
. It’s obvious: customs closed down so they could
smile
at the western gates. They’ll hand in the second contract, pay in white, then they’ll tear up the insurance contract, and the Western clerks will draw up a four-hour report. Then they’ll hide the mole, sign a clean contract—and twelve trailers of “High Fashion” will sail off to the Albanian city of Tirana. And customs will get the better of us again.

I think. Potrokha waits.

“Here you go, man. Take the
cardiac
, made a deal with the clerk about a
white
discussion, take the
greased
junior clerk to the meeting, and get your physicians in place. Do you guys have a
rotten
contract with you?”

“Of course. What time should I set the meeting?”

I look at my watch:

“In an hour and a half.”

“You got it.”

“And tell the clerk that I
have it
.”

“Understood.”

I put away the mobilov. I put out my cigarette. The plane is already boarding. I place my palm on the table, thank the
transparent
for the meal, and walk down a delicate pink hallway that smells like blossoming acacia into the airplane. It’s not big, but it’s comfortable—a Boeing-Itsendi 797. Not surprisingly, there are signs in Chinese everywhere. He who builds the Boeings orders the music. I enter the first-class cabin and sit down. Other than me there are three people in first class—the old Chinese man with the boy, and that lone woman. All three of the Russian newspapers are available:
Rus
,
Kommersant
, and
Vozrozhdenie
. I already know all the news and don’t feel like reading about it
on paper
.

The plane takes off.

I ask for tea, and order an old movie:
Striped Passage
. On business trips I always watch old comedies; just a habit. This one’s a good little flick, cheery, even though it’s Soviet. You watch lions and tigers being transported on a ship; they break out of their cages and scare people. And you start thinking—those were Russian people living back then, during the Red Troubles. And they really weren’t all that different from us. Except that almost all of them were atheists.

I take a look to see what the others are watching: the Chinese—
River Factories
, that makes sense; but the lady…oh-ho, now that’s interesting—
The Great Russian Wall
. I would never have said by her looks that she’d like that sort of film.
The Great Russian Wall
…It was made about ten years ago by our great director Fyodor Baldev, nicknamed “Fyodor-the-Bare-Who-Ate-the-Bear.” The most important movie in the history of Russia’s Revival. The film is about the plot hatched by the Ambassadorial Department and the Duma, the construction of the Western Wall, and His Majesty’s battle; about the first oprichniks, heroic Valuya and Zveroga, who perished at the dacha of the traitorous minister. The whole affair went down in Russian history as the plan to “Saw and Sell.” What a hullabaloo that film caused, how many arguments, how many questions and answers! How many cars and faces were bashed in because of it! The actor who played His Majesty entered a monastery afterward. I haven’t watched it for a very, very long time. But I remember it by heart. For the oprichniks it’s a kind of textbook.

I can see the face of the minister of foreign affairs on the blue bubble, and his accomplice, the chairman of the Duma. They’re composing the terrible agreement on the division of Russia at the minister’s dacha.