Monumental Propaganda (40 page)

101

While Zherdyk was speaking, the old man with the yellowish-green face had been standing behind him waiting his turn.

“Don't you recognize me?” he asked. “I'm Max Ogorodov, the sculptor.”

And then he launched into some string of gibberish out of which it gradually emerged that he had been seriously ill and it had cost him a great effort to come here, driven by the urgent need to say farewell to his finest creation and the passionate desire to approach it and touch it before he died.

“Why not?” said Aglaya. “We'll be putting it up tomorrow, you can touch it then.”

“No,” protested the sculptor, “not tomorrow, tomorrow he'll be standing way up there. What I'd like is . . . before he's up on the pedestal, while I can still embrace him.”

Aglaya didn't much like the idea of what Ogorodov intended to do. Why would he want to embrace him? What would happen if everybody got it into their heads that they wanted to embrace him?”

“But it's my creation,” Ogorodov reminded her.

“All right then,” she agreed, “let's go.” And he plodded obediently after her.

Getting up the stairs to the second floor was hard work for both of them. Aglaya set her bag down two steps ahead, stepped up, moved the bag on and so eventually reached her landing.

“I didn't have time to tidy the place,” she warned him, feeling guilty, and observing to herself that when she was drinking it didn't matter to her whether the place was tidy or not, or what anybody thought about it. But now it did.

The sculptor made no reply, panting rapidly, like a dog that wants to drink.

Her hands were shaking too and the key kept missing the keyhole. She walked in through the door so slowly that in his impatience Ogorodov even pushed her aside rudely, darted through into the sitting room and went down on his knees in front of the statue.

“Well, hello,” he said, holding his arms out wide, as if he were expecting something to fall into them from above. Aglaya set her bag down at her feet and leaned against the lintel. Ogorodov moved closer to the statue, put his arms around it and began crying quietly.

Aglaya did not like people who cried. But she disliked men who cried most of all. And never felt sorry for them. Despised them. But old age must have made her weak, and she gave way to a feeling unworthy of a Bolshevik.

“There's no point in crying over it,” she said in her rough manner. “All of us are only here for a while. Even him”—she pointed to the statue— “what a man he was, and he still died. But us . . . Look how many people there are in the world. If we don't die, then how many of us would there be? There'd be no space left anywhere on the planet.”

Ogorodov moved away to the wall, wiped away his perspiration with his sleeve and, looking at the statue, he said: “You don't think I'm crying for my life? I've completely vindicated my life. I had a vision. That all I had to do was touch him, and my illness would leave me immediately. He absolutely must save me . . .” Ogorodov suddenly began wheezing and coughing, he shuddered and clutched at his chest. Black foam began bubbling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Hey, don't do that, stop!” she cried in alarm, and began fussing around him. “Wait a bit. Don't die here. This isn't the right place. I'll call a doctor right away.”

She was weak herself, but she managed to shove him across to the sofa. He collapsed backward onto it and froze there with his eyes bulging out of his head. He lay there for several seconds with his head thrown back and didn't even seem to be breathing. Which frightened Aglaya even more. Luckily, the fit passed and her visitor recovered his senses, even to the extent that he was invited into the kitchen and given tea to drink from the mug with the inscription WPRA—20 YEARS.

Aglaya watched him purse up his lips, blow into the mug and then drink the tea without any apparent desire.

“So what do you do now?” Aglaya inquired.

“Now? Nothing. Before that I used to sculpt leaders. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko . . . I kept thinking about your pedestal. How it wasn't good for it to be standing empty.”

“It was good,” Aglaya objected. “It was waiting for its master. The old saying still holds good: ‘There'll be dancing on our street again.'”

“Yes, it still holds good,” her visitor agreed, and then once again he was racked by coughing and clutched at his chest.

“If you don't mind my asking, what illness is it you've got?” asked Aglaya, reverting to a more formal tone of voice. “Something like cancer, is it?”

“Worse,” he coughed out.

“What could be worse?”

“Apparently, there is something.” He smiled strangely and looked her straight in the eye. “I've got AIDS. Have you heard about it?”

“AIDS?” she queried, perplexed. “How can you have AIDS. You can only get AIDS if you're one of those . . . Aha,” she guessed, “so you're one of them too?”

“Yes, I'm a homosexual,” Ogorodov said defiantly. “And I'm proud of it. Nowadays the entire civilized world knows that it's nothing to be ashamed of. Especially since I'm an artist. A creative individual. All artists are the same.”

“All of them?” she said disbelievingly. “All artists give it to each other up the backside, do they? Repin and Shishkin and our satirists the Kukriniksy too?”

“Why, don't you know about Tchaikovsky?” he asked. “Everybody knows that gays are the most talented people. All the rest are worthless mediocrities. All the rest are just—pah!” He spat. True, not in Aglaya's direction, off to the side, but she was alarmed all the same.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “What do you mean spitting in someone else's house? Especially since you're infectious. Give me that!” She grabbed the mug out of his hand, swilled out the remaining tea, already cold, and said in a feeble but decisive voice, “Get out of here.”

“What's wrong?” Ogorodov asked, puzzled. “You can't catch AIDS from a cup.”

“Get out, I told you. It makes me sick to look at you. You miserable homo! Go away. Get out!”

She shoved him into the hallway, stuck his hat and coat in his hands and scarcely even gave him enough time to put them on, and then afterward, as he was already making his way down the dark stairs, clinging to the handrail, she shouted after him: “Rotten queer!”

And then, as though in reply, she heard: “La donna è mobile . . .” It was Zherdyk's voice.

Aglaya leaned over the banister, hoping to catch sight of the singer, but there was no one on the stairs and Zherdyk's voice seemed to be coming from the basement, where Vanka Zhukov lived. Only it sounded odd somehow. Zherdyk wasn't singing the whole song, he kept repeating “La donna è mobile . . . La donna è mobile . . .” over and over again, endlessly.

“What stupid nonsense,” thought Aglaya.

But it wasn't nonsense. It was Vanka Zhukov running a tape loop with a recording of Zherdyk's voice and tuning a device that would respond only to that voice, only to that melody, and only to the words “La donna è mobile . . .”

102

What is life like for an individual transformed from a handsome young man full of energy into a hideous stump and robbed even of the ability to cater to his own needs? Healthy, happy people can't even imagine it. A cripple like that has different feelings and different joys; his view of the world is not the same as ours and life doesn't seem such a very precious gift to him.

Ivan Georgievich Zhukov was watching an old movie comedy on TV, starring the actors Mironov and Nikulin. Vanka was relaxing and he had a right to. In his efforts to solve a highly complex task, he had finally achieved what he wanted. It had not been easy to make a thing like that. It would respond unfailingly to certain words and a certain melody sung by only one man and no one else. It might happen tomorrow, December 21, the birthday of Stalin, or Uncle Joe, as Jim called him. Tomorrow the statue of the cast-iron uncle would be set in its old place. And after that certain people would want to celebrate the event. They would drive to the Golden Spring restaurant. They would have a drink. And they would want to sing something soulful . . .

The film was followed by advertisements for a washing powder that washed everything clean and didn't spoil anything, an antidandruff lotion and a chocolate bar which, according to the gibberish of the jingle “had the right to share your success.” After the chocolate came the chronicle of crime. A stern-looking policewoman told everyone what had happened over the last twenty-four hours in Moscow. There had been an explosion at one of the markets. A bomb with a timing mechanism had been hidden in a sack of potatoes. Nine people had been killed and thirteen wounded. “Not one of mine,” remarked Vanka. A nineteen-year-old girl student, assisted by a male classmate, had strangled her mother with a washing line in order to get her hands on an old icon. A three-year-old boy had fallen from a sixth-floor window and lived. There had been a fire in a hotel. An Audi 6 automobile driven by a drunken driver had veered into the opposite lane and crashed into a tiny Tavria. The driver of the Tavria and his wife had been killed instantly; the driver of the Audi had been saved by his air bag. Then suddenly Vanka saw Gravalya. They showed her seated, evidently in a police station. The newscaster said: “An elderly woman has been detained at the Belorussian Railroad Station. During a search her suitcase was found to contain about two kilograms of hexogen, four hundred grams of TNT and two antitank grenades. The suspect claims that the explosives do not belong to her, but cannot explain how they got into her suitcase. When arrested, the woman was not carrying any identification, and she refuses to give her name. We ask anyone who knows this person to call us on—”

“Oh no!” Vanka said to himself, then switched off the television and started thinking. Although there was no point in thinking at this stage. They'd picked up his granny, and there wasn't much chance they'd let her go. Which meant they would soon turn up here. What was to be done? From his chair he gazed around through a full 360 degrees, surveying his equipment and stocks of explosives, and realized there was nothing that he, an invalid, could do. Except wait for them to come for him. Ah, but when they came . . .

His laboratory was well equipped with everything necessary to transform it into a thundering, flashing hell for anybody who came there. Vanka laughed. He'd often thought about how his life would end, and he'd been intending to go out in spectacular style. But how exactly? He'd dreamed about it so often. Blinding flame billowing up in brilliant colors, and people flying through the flame like birds . . .

Vanka turned on the computer and contacted Jim via the Internet.

“Hi,” he sent to him.

“Hi,” Jim answered. “How's it going?”

“Getting close to the end,” Vanka told him.

“Can you be a bit more precise?”

Vanka explained.

“Okay,” Jim responded. “I won't try to talk you out of it, even though I'll miss you.”

Vanka didn't respond.

“Don't you want to answer me?” Jim asked.

“I don't know what to say to you,” wrote Vanka, and at that moment someone knocked at the door.

“Who's there?” asked Vanka without moving. And he heard singing: “La donna è mobile . . .”

Vanka froze. He'd thought there was nothing left that could excite him anymore, but now his heart was pounding so fast he was amazed. His hand trembled as he drew back the bolt. When he opened the door, Vanka saw a man in a long unbuttoned coat and a red scarf, clutching a bottle of something foreign in his hand and already clearly tipsy.

“You?” Vanka asked.

“In person,” Zherdyk laughed loudly and started singing again: “La donna—”

“Stop!” Vanka shouted at him. But as yet, he hadn't put the batteries into the device he'd created, and the bomb was still safe.

“What?” asked Zherdyk, unable to understand why Vanka was so agitated. “Don't you like my singing?”

“Yes, I like it,” said Vanka. “But sing a bit later, if you don't mind.”

“Sing not, my beauty, unto me and sing not unto others,” said Zherdyk merrily. “Ah, you, my old bosom buddy!” He moved toward Vanka, intending either to embrace him or slap him on the back, but stopped short, realizing that it wouldn't be easy to do either. “I only just learned today that you're alive. I was at your funeral, wasn't I? You were given full honors, by the way. Buried as a hero. But you scoundrel, you fooled us all, you sly dog.”

Zherdyk clowned in lively and merry style, and if he had had any feeling for words, he would have realized that he was striking a false note. But he had no such feeling, and he put his foot in it again by asking Vanka if he'd recognized him right away.

“And did you recognize me?”

“Did I? Recognize you?” said Zherdyk, attempting to express amazement or indignation. What kind of question was that? How could he fail to recognize his friend from the old days? But he did at least realize that would be a bit too unlikely. “Yes. I'm sorry,” he said. “But I really did recognize you. I always would. You know there are people who are nothing but an external shell, and then there are personalities. And a personality, Vanka, always finds some way to express itself. It radiates its own special light or . . . I don't know what to call it . . . Vanka, my friend, you can't imagine how glad I am!”

“Come in,” said Vanka, rolling backward toward the computer. “Take a chair, sit down, I'll just log off the Internet.”

“Sorry,” he typed to Jim. “An old friend has dropped in.”

“Okay,” Jim replied. “Do I know him?”

“Yes,” typed Vanka. “It's La Donna.”

“O!” typed Jim, concerned. “What has he come to see you for?”

“He wants to have a drink.”

“And will you drink with him?”

“Maybe,” replied Vanka.

“O.K.,” wrote Jim, and Vanka sensed the doubt expressed in those two letters. “But will we still be in touch or . . .”

“Or,” replied Vanka.

He logged off and turned to face his visitor. Zherdyk was sitting on the chair, holding the bottle on his knee.

“You're something, you know that! I bet you're the only one in our town who's really mastered the Internet.”

“Not the only one, but I was the first,” said Vanka.

“Yeah? Maybe. I'm on the Internet too, of course. But . . .” he waved his hand dismissively. “Vanka, what are we talking about this garbage for? That's not what's important here. What's important is that you're alive. You're living, breathing, creating. Yeah, you've got a whole laboratory here! Have you got a name for it?”

“Yes, I've got a name,” Vanka confirmed. “I call it Little Hiroshima. Haven't you heard it?”

“Yeah, I have,” Zherdyk confessed. “Our district FSB man informed me. Know who he is? You don't and you'd never guess. But I'll tell you. Later. Meanwhile, why don't you show me your Hiroshima?”

“You won't sell me out?” asked Vanka.

“Me?” Zherdyk was flabbergasted. “You?” He puffed himself up and turned bright red, not from shame, but from the insult. “Listen, Vanka, if that's a joke . . .”

“It is,” said Vanka.

“It's a pretty stupid one.”

“Okay, don't get angry,” said Vanka. “Look at this. See this powder? It's mostly powdered sugar. But if you mix this powder with this coal dust, tip it into a tin can and seal it in with gelatin, then bang on it with a hammer . . . Would you like to see what happens then? You wouldn't? Pushkin was right: we are lazy and stupid, how does it go? . . .”

“Uninquisitive,” Zherdyk corrected him.

“That's it. Uninquisitive. And here we have the stock of finished articles. Do you remember I used to have a photocopying machine?”

“Sure I do!” said Zherdyk. “Of course.”

“Well then. Everything here is just as technologically advanced. This thing here. Put it in an automobile. It goes off at a specific speed. I made it for one idiot's Merc, so it would go off at a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. I thought he'd pick up speed somewhere out of town. But he did it right here, on our ruts and potholes . . .”

He showed his childhood friend cunning devices hidden, according to the purpose they were intended for, in a tin can, a saucepan, a violin case, or an engine cylinder. They were triggered by various means: a radio signal, the touch of fingers with unique fingerprints, the smell of rosin, the pressure at a certain height or the pronunciation of a specific password. Vanka showed and Zherdyk admired. And in reply he told Vanka about the career he'd made for himself and why.

“Remember we used to talk about the dissidents. I thought then that what they were doing was wrong. And I still think I was right. Back then they were already depriving people of faith in a better future with their disclosures, destroying—how can I put it?—their spiritual infrastructure. And what happened? The total collapse of all life and all moral principles. But even so, people have a need to believe in something good.”

“In communism?” Vanka asked.

“Communism is only a name. But it is possible after all to build a more or less just society. The people running things now don't think about people, but we do. And we're going to do something for them. Little deeds are more important than stupendous achievements. And we're starting with the little things. Now we've won the election, we'll start doing something concrete for people. For instance, we've already decided to buy you a wheelchair with an electric motor. We'll give you a specially equipped apartment. As far as possible, we'll try to give you a normal life. And in general, there's a lot we could do, if only people didn't interfere.”

“Who's interfering?”

“Plenty of people. Yesterday one of the oligarchs was speaking on TV. Frightening the people by saying that if they started redistributing property again there'd be a civil war?”

“Well, won't there?”

“Who against who? Millions of people believe they've been robbed by an oligarch, and they want to take back what he stole. Who's against that? No one but the oligarch. So who's going to fight on his side? His bodyguards? They'll be the first to turn him in.”

“So your main enemies are the oligarchs?”

“Not only. All kinds of bastards are our enemies. All sorts of fascists. We have one really hideous specimen around here too. An old acquaintance of yours, as it happens . . .”

This hideous specimen, as you've probably guessed, was Roof.

“He was a bandit and he still is. Only now he's a bandit with an idea. Have you heard of the White Hawk?”

“No.”

“It's a fascist organization. Clear-cut ideology, iron discipline. Local organizations right across the country.”

“So is Roof a member of this Hawk?”

“Not a member—he runs it.”

“From Dolgov?”

“The headquarters is in Moscow. But it's handier to run it from here. Not so high-profile.”

“And what are the FSB and the MVD and the public prosecutor's office doing about it?”

“You really are a naïve man, Vanka. What are they doing? He's one of them. A really hideous specimen!” Zherdyk repeated. “If he's not stopped . . .”

“We'll stop him,” Vanka reassured him.