The Senility of Vladimir P (5 page)

As for Sheremetev himself, he didn't think that he was a stranger for Vladimir. He wasn't a friend, he wasn't family, but he felt sure that he was something more to the ex-president than a faceless nurse. He was certain that Vladimir knew him and was at ease with him, even if he couldn't remember his name. He was the only one who could calm him before his agitation became too great. And when the look of confusion and fear came into Vladimir's eyes, it was him that he looked for. Sheremetev, for his part, regarded the ex-president as more than a mere patient. How could he not, having looked after him so intimately for the last six years? They had been through Vladimir's rages together, the slow, stuttering extinction of his insight into his condition, the eruption out of the remains of his mind of his delusions and hallucinations. Whatever was left of Vladimir's consciousness on any given day, whatever world he lived in, he was still a person, still Vladimir Vladimirovich, still someone who could feel, shout, cry, question, laugh. You can't live so closely for so long and go through such things with someone and not develop a relationship with them, a sense of concern and even affection, that goes beyond the merely professional, even if that person has no idea who you are.

But no one else in the dacha had such a relationship with Vladimir. Even those who came to the upper floor, the maids and house attendants who saw him each day, rarely exchanged a word with him, and were generally tentative, uncertain, tongue-tied, partly because dementia often has that effect on people unaccustomed to dealing with it, partly because of the aura of who Vladimir had been. The others who lived in the dacha saw him only by chance, in passing, when he was out for his daily walk. Other than Sherem­etev, the ex-president was surrounded by people he didn't know and who regarded him as unknowable, like some kind of living statue. It made the responsibility that Sheremetev felt as the only person in the dacha who knew and cared for Vladimir seem sometimes insupportable. At other times, when the second wife had waltzed in for the first time in six months and then waltzed out again twenty minutes later, as if fulfilling some kind of duty that was required to retain access to whatever funds financed her existence, it almost broke his heart.

As a nurse, Sheremetev had seen many people die over the years, some quickly, some slowly, some resigned to their fate, some raging against it, some peacefully, some in pain. But by far the worst death, in his opinion – apart from a death experienced with agony racking one's bones – was to die alone. Surely it was at the foundation of civility that a man should have some comfort from those who had loved him when his time came to depart, and surely it was at the foundation of love that they would want to give it to him. What kind of civilisation, he wondered, would allow Vladimir to live out his final days like this? And if this is all that Vladimir could expect – after his years of public life and all that he had done for the motherland – then what could anyone else hope for?

Well, Sheremetev wouldn't let the worst happen to him. He wouldn't let him die with no one to comfort him. That much, at least, he could ensure.

The doctors had said he should take him for an outing. Why not? Both he and Vladimir could do with a change of scenery.

When he returned after seeing the doctors out, Vladimir was sitting where Sheremetev had left him, deep in conversation with an armchair.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich,' he said brightly, ‘let's do something you'll enjoy. Shall we go to the lake? We used to go, do you remember? It's a nice day for a walk. Maybe we'll get Stepanin to pack us a lunch.'

Vladimir looked out the window.

‘See? It's sunny. I'll find something nice for you to wear.'

Sheremetev went into the dressing room. It was lined on all sides by shelves, hanging rails and drawers, and was many times larger than the little room in which Sheremetev himself slept each night. On one set of rails were at least three dozen overcoats, some fur, some leather, some wool; on others must have hung sixty or eighty suits. Elsewhere were rails of jackets, blazers and bomber jackets, shelves of sweaters, shirts and shoes, drawers of underwear, socks, belts and cufflinks. Sheremetev selected a suit, a shirt, tie, belt and shoes, then he put the clothes down on a chair and opened a freestanding cabinet that stood in the middle of the room.

The cabinet was about a metre and a half in height and half a metre in width and depth. Made bespoke for Vladimir out of a polished hardwood, it had a pair of doors that opened to reveal a column of drawers, each only five centimetres in height. Sheremetev applied a slight pressure to the front of one of the drawers, which slid smoothly out. The drawer was lined in black velvet and had three rows of five niches. In each of the niches nestled a watch.

Sheremetev perused the watches in the tray, then pushed it back in and opened another, from which he selected a silver timepiece with a blue face.

He closed the cabinet, gathered up the clothes, and took every­thing into the bedroom.

‘Come on, Vladimir Vladimirovich, let's get dressed.'

As much as was possible, it was good for Vladimir still to do things himself. This meant that simple activities took longer than they might have done, but Sheremetev was determined to help Vladimir preserve his capacities for as long as he could. He stood with the ex-president as Vladimir fumbled with his clothes, gently prompting him when he forgot what he was doing.

‘I wore this on election night,' said Vladimir, as he slipped on the suit jacket.

‘This suit?'

‘Look, it's got a spot.' He raised his left arm and pointed at a place near the elbow.

Sheremetev saw a very faint darkening in the material. ‘Which election night?' he asked. In the early years, Vladimir had often told him stories stimulated by items of clothing that he was wearing – meeting President Bush for the first time, hunting a Siberian tiger, flying into Chechnya at the height of the war, opening the Olympics, banqueting in Beijing with President Xi. The stories were endless, as one might expect from a man who had led such a life.

Vladimir frowned.

‘Well, doesn't matter which election, Vladimir Vladimirovich. It's a good suit.'

‘Seventy-two percent on a turnout of slightly over seventy!' said Vladimir suddenly. ‘First round! What do you think of that?'

‘That's good, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

‘Good? It's perfect! At the start we were naïve – the higher the vote the better. Now, of course, we know, a vote can look too high. Seventy and seventy, that's what we want. Seventy turnout, seventy in favour, the perfect recipe – actually, just over, so you can say however many turned out, more than fifty percent in absolute terms voted in favour. Once in a while you throw in a lower result to make it look like anything can happen.' He chuckled. ‘Of course, no matter how we do it, in the west they still say it's rigged. Last month, in Vienna, some reporter told me that he followed a bus from one polling station to the next and said he saw everyone voting twice. Some Italian reporter. How the hell did he get in anyway? He confronted me at the press conference after the nuclear talks. Thought he was going to catch me out. Takes more than some journalist with a smart arse question to do that, I can tell you! Do you know what I said? “Who did they vote for, these people you say you saw in the bus? Did you ask them?” He said they said they voted for me. Then I said: “So how can you believe such people? They admit to voting twice. You can't believe a word that comes out of their mouth. They're self-confessed criminals!”' Vladimir laughed. ‘What do you think? That shut him up alright!'

Sheremetev handed Vladimir his shoes and went to the phone that stood on a table in the dressing room. He called the security post in the hall and asked the guard to arrange for Eleyekov, the driver, to bring a car around. ‘Put your shoes on please, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' he said as he waited for the guard to call back. When the phone rang, the guard told him that Eleyekov had said that the Mercedes in which Vladimir was supposed to travel, a bulletproof S class, had broken down and wouldn't be ready for use until late the following day. Sheremetev told him to tell Eleyekov that they were only going to the lake and they could take the other car that was kept at the dacha, an armoured, bespoke Range Rover. The guard, sounding doubtful, said he'd call again and ask.

Vladimir sat gazing vacantly at the floor, one shoe on and the other in his hand.

Sheremetev prompted him, but Vladimir looked up at him in confusion.

Sheremetev eased the other shoe onto his foot and watched as Vladimir tried to tie the laces. He completed the bows for him. Then he handed Vladimir the watch that he had selected. Vladimir stared at it, a slight frown coming over his face.

‘What is it, Vladimir Vladimirovich?' said Sheremetev. ‘Would you prefer another watch?'

Vladimir looked up at him. ‘What?'

‘Would you like me to help you with the watch?'

Vladimir looked at him as if he was an imbecile. ‘I can do it!'

The phone rang. The guard told him that the Range Rover was unavailable too.

‘They're
both
broken down?' said Sheremetev incredulously.

‘And Vadim Sergeyevich just told me that the Mercedes – you remember I said it would be available tomorrow afternoon – he just got a call and now it won't be ready until the following morning.'

Sheremetev put the phone down in disbelief. Both cars broken down? What if they really needed them? There should be some emergency plan, he thought. Well, luckily, going to the lake wasn't a matter of life or death.

‘No lake today,' he said to Vladimir Vladimirovich. ‘Let's go for a walk instead.'

‘Where?' said Vladimir.

‘Wherever you like.'

‘The seafront.'

‘Well, let's see how we go,' said Sheremetev, and he took the watch, which Vladimir was still holding, and fastened it on his wrist.

The notion of going
to the seafront didn't stick long in Vladimir's mind, not long enough to make it down the stairs. Sheremetev took him outside. Immediately surrounding the dacha was an area of lawn, and beyond it, in one direction, some of the birch forest that had originally covered the land. When Sheremetev had first arrived at the dacha, the rest of the estate had been a stately, landscaped expanse of meadows, rockeries and arbours, with a stream and a pond and couple of ornamental bridges, but the land had since been dug up and flattened and then covered with ugly long sausages of plastic greenhouses in which grew fruit- and flower-bearing plants alien to any Russian field. The stream had been diverted into pipes to irrigate them. Every thirty metres or so along the tunnels stood a giant steel installation with a huge pipe that fed hot air inside the plastic. The heaters weren't operating yet, but in the winter, if you walked between the tunnels, their low, vibrating thrum went straight to the stomach. Here and there amongst the tunnels stood a bench that survived from the time before the greenhouses had been erected, as if a reminder of what had been before.

Sheremetev usually left it up to Vladimir to decide which way they went. Today he marched straight up to one of the greenhouses. Inside, the air was warm and moist. Large-leafed plants were staked into the soil of raised beds on either side of the tunnel, thickly hung with dark, glossy aubergines ripening on the vine. A pair of labourers was working at each of the beds, weeding and picking off snails and slugs.

The workers stopped and stared as Vladimir approached.

Vladimir beamed at them, airily bidding them continue their work. The pickers smiled back at him uncertainly.

One of the dacha's three gardeners was there as well. Arkady Maksimovich Goroviev, a man of about fifty with thick greying hair and somewhat pockmarked skin, walked with a slight limp. Sheremetev had heard talk that Goroviev had had some kind of problems with the authorities in the past, but in Sheremetev's experience the gardener was a kind, gentle man, unfailingly restrained and polite. He was the only other person in the dacha who was uncowed by the ex-president and seemed able to see him as a fellow human being, rather than as some distant and awe-inspiring icon, and to speak to him normally. Whenever Goroviev encountered Vladimir, he always addressed him respectfully and inquired after his health in a fashion that suggested that he was genuinely interested in his condition from a human perspective, as one person ought to be interested in another. Today, after the demoralising visit from the doctors and the disappointment of his hopes of taking Vladimir on an outing from the dacha, Sheremetev was glad to have run into him.

Goroviev put down his tools. ‘Good morning, Vladimir Vladimiro­vich. How are you today?'

Vladimir didn't answer.

‘We're going for a walk,' said Sheremetev.

Goroviev smiled. ‘I can see. And yourself, Nikolai Ilyich? All is well with you?'

‘All well, thank you. Yourself, Arkady Maksimovich?'

‘All well. We have some flowers in the next greenhouse. Roses. They're in wonderful shape – tomorrow we'll cut them. Would Vladimir Vladimirovich care to see?'

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich?' said Sheremetev.

Vladimir was frowning, as if in concentration, but he didn't reply.

‘Let's go and see,' said Sheremetev.

He gave Vladimir a nudge and they walked with Goroviev out of a door beside the incoming shaft of one of the heaters. For a moment there was a shock of fresh air – not at all cool for October, but momentarily bracing after the warmth and humidity of the greenhouse – and then Goroviev opened another door and they were inside again. Warmth and humidity hit them. Sheremetev wondered if Vladimir was too hot in the suit in which he had dressed him, but the ex-president ignored the question when Sheremetev asked him.

An enveloping scent of flowers filled the greenhouse, almost too heady. Roses bloomed. Down the length of the tunnel, sections of one type of flower followed another in banks of colour.

‘Thes
e are Empress Josephines, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' explained Goroviev as he led them past fragrant buds of deep pink. ‘A very classical rose. They were first cultivated for the wife of the emperor Napoleon in the nineteenth century. They're much in demand again.' He stopped, pulled out a pair of small secateurs, snipped off a stem with a perfect bud and expertly removed the thorns before handing the bud to Vladimir.

‘I'll give this to Marishka,' said Vladimir.

‘That sounds like a good idea,' said Goroviev. ‘Come, Vladimir Vladimirovich, let's look at some others.'

The gardener led them past other beds of roses, each time patiently explaining the provenance of the variety and stopping to select a prime bud for Vladimir.

‘Would Vladimir Vladimirovich care to see something else?' asked the gardener when they came to the end of the greenhouse.

Sheremetev glanced at Vladimir to see if he was getting tired. If Vladimir reached a certain point of fatigue, he might decide that he needed a nap and would simply refuse to go on. There had been times when he had simply dropped to the ground and Sheremetev had had to call a contingent of security men to carry him back – which Vladimir usually resisted. Then it would be a question of giving him an injection of tranquilliser or letting him sleep where he had dropped for an hour or two. That wasn't such a bad thing in the summer, but it was a different matter if they were out for a walk in January with the snow a metre high on either side of the path.

Vladimir didn't look tired yet, but it had been a turbulent night, and the doctors' visit had meant that they had started their walk later than normal. Sheremetev checked his watch. Lunch wasn't far away. Hunger was another thing he had to watch out for.

‘I think we might go back,' said Sheremetev. ‘Do you want to go back now, Vladimir Vladimirovich?'

Vladimir shrugged.

‘I think we'd better go.'

‘Goodbye, then, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' said Goroviev.

Suddenly Vladimir looked at him probingly. ‘What do you do?'

‘I'm a gardener, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

Vladimir stared at Goroviev a moment longer. Then the energy went out of his gaze and he grunted and turned away.

Sheremetev led Vladimir back towards the dacha. As they came in sight of the house, he saw Stepanin pacing around on the grass behind the kitchen. Even from a distance, the cook looked agitated. He marched up and down like a caged animal, head bowed, one fist clenched, a cigarette clutched in the other. Suddenly he stopped and kicked out at a branch that lay on the ground, sending it flying.

The cook was given to explosions of rage, Sheremetev knew, but normally a good shout at one of the potwashers was enough to mollify him.

Suddenly Sheremetev looked around. Vladimir had kept walking. He hurried to catch up.

Upstairs, they went back
to the sitting room, where Vladimir's lunch would soon be brought.

‘Shall we get changed out of your suit?' said Sheremetev.

‘Why?' demanded Vladimir. ‘I won an election in this suit.'

‘I know, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

‘Do you think the election was rigged? Is that what you're saying?'

‘No.'

‘Seventy-two percent!' said Vladimir, his voice rising. ‘On a turnout of seventy.'

‘Yes, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

Vladimir gazed at him suspiciously for a moment. ‘Get Monarov.'

‘I don't think Monarov's —'

‘Get him! I'm waiting.' He tapped on his watch portentously.

‘Would you like to sit at the table, Vladimir Vladimirovich?' said Sheremetev. ‘It's almost time for lunch.'

‘Good. Here he is.'

‘There's no one else here, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

‘Monarov, have you eaten?'

‘No,' said Monarov.

Vladimir laughed, rubbing his hands.

Dishes of caviar, herring, roe and pickles were laid out on the table. Monarov took a spoonful of caviar and ate it neat, chasing it with a glass of vodka, as he liked to do. Vladimir did likewise, spilling a little of the caviar on his jacket sleeve as he raised the spoon. He brushed it away. ‘Shit!' he said, looking at the stain it had left.

Monarov laughed.

‘Caviar never comes out,' muttered Vladimir.

‘It's good luck.' Monarov filled their glasses again. ‘To another election! To all those who voted again . . . and again . . . and again . . .'

Vladimir pretended to still be angry for a moment, then they both roared with laughter.

There were few people with whom Vladimir allowed himself to be at ease – actually, no one – but with Evgeny Monarov he came closest. Monarov was a true Chekist, one of the old boys from the Leningrad KGB. He had been with Vladimir ever since he came to Moscow, filling various roles, from chief of the president's staff to chairman of a state oil company to finance minister to head of homeland security. But whatever he was nominally doing, there was one role he had always had: handling the money. The arrangement was that he kept for himself twenty percent of Vladimir's share, building his own not inconsiderable fortune, and, as far as Vladimir could ascertain from the various secret investigations he had ordered into him, doing it with scrupulous honesty.

Monarov took another spoonful of caviar, then stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You're not happy, Vova? I can see that look on your face.'

‘I wouldn't say I'm unhappy. Thoughtful.'

‘About?'

Vladimir sighed. ‘I can't go on forever. One more election victory, yes, but when I go, who follows? Where are the great men, Evgeny? Only a strong man can rule Russia. Where's the next Czar?'

‘In jail,' said Monarov, smiling. ‘Or in London. Or dead. You should know that better than anyone, Vova.'

‘Very funny.'

Monarov put the caviar in his mouth.

‘They're in jail or in London or dead,' said Vladimir, ‘precisely because they were not great. One way or another, they had a poor conception of the reality of Russia. Look at the oligarchs. For them, it was only about money.'

‘Kolyakov, yes. He'd do anything you said if it would get him another contract. But the others? Trikovsky? What about him?'

‘Trikovsky more than any of them! The hypocrite. A democrat, sure – a democrat once he had a television station to broadcast his propaganda and the money to buy an election. Before that, Zhenya, where was his love of democracy then? Let him rot in Switzerland, issuing his manifestoes. Water off a duck's back. Okay, then look at the liberals. They'd take us back to the days of Boris Nikolayevich. Do you remember what it was like? People forget, they have a rosy view. Chaos! Another year of it and the whole country would have been down the pan. The only smart decision the Old Man made was to get out when he did, the bloated pig.'

‘And to appoint you.'

‘And to appoint me. True. Alright, two smart decisions. At the end I couldn't bear to look at him. I'd think: what have you done to Russia, you fucking pig? Look at the chance you had and what you did with it! I knew then it would take me years to get us back. And it did. Years! And now what's going to happen?'

Monarov shook his head.

Vladimir noticed that others were at the table as well, Luschkin, Narzayev, Serensky, all boys from the KGB who had been with him in the Kremlin for years. Not everyone from the agencies had supported him. His old supervisor from the KGB, Grisha Rastchev, had joined the refounded communist party and had turned into a real thorn in his side, even ending up in jail on various charges over the years. That was a shame. Rastchev had helped him in his early career and Vladimir would have liked to make him rich – but you can only do so much. What can you do if the horse won't even go near the water, let alone drink it? And not only that, but keeps yelling to the other horses that you've poisoned it? But the ones who had come with him, the loyal ones, they were the rocks on which his governments were erected, from whom shot out the iron fists needed to keep the opponents at bay. They had reaped the rewards. And why not? In every country, someone has to be rich. Why should Russia be an exception?

Yet none of them had the strength and the vision that he had, none of them were capable of taking his place. And besides, the boys were old now, older than him. Only Narzayev was younger.

They all agreed that there was no one. It didn't even need to be said.

‘What can we do, Vova?' said Serensky. ‘No one lives for ever.'

‘Who knows what our Vova can do?' said Luschkin. ‘Maybe he'll never die!'

Vladimir glanced at him, wondering how someone could say something so stupid. Oleg Luschkin was a big man with strong, Slavic cheekbones of which, as a fierce Russian nationalist, he was inordinately proud. A face lift had stretched his skin tight. It was almost painful to watch him smile, so close did the skin seem to be to the point of tearing across those bones of which he was so vain. He was loyal, or always had been, and had served in a series of roles for which Vladimir required someone safe, solid and unimaginative. But when people started saying things so stupid to prove their loyalty, it was time to be careful of them.

‘What about Gena Sverkov?' suggested Narzayev.

‘Lightweight,' muttered Vladimir dismissively, amidst chuckles from his cronies, Narzayev included. Vladimir considered that all his prime ministers, including those with whom he had alternated the presidency, were lightweights – which was the reason he had chosen them.

‘Seriously, though, Vova, Sverkov's someone we can control. That way we can preserve your legacy.'

Vladimir knew what Narzayev meant by that – their interests. And it was no small thing. If the wrong person got his hands on the Kremlin after he was gone, there was no telling what might happen. It wasn't just a matter of losing influence or money. In Russia, anyone could end up in jail, no matter how high they had flown, once the political wind changed. Vladimir knew that better than anyone. The most important thing was to make sure that whoever came after you wouldn't allow any investigations to be made, as he had guaranteed to Boris Nikolayevich and his family when he had taken the throne. The difficulty in ensuring this was one of the reasons Vladimir had never dared to retire, not after the third presidency, nor even after the fourth, when he had certainly considered it.