The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight (16 page)

'Am I right?' Vera's voice pulled Olga back to the bathroom smoke and stink. 'Should I not insult Sergei mercilessly and then give him the boot?'

'Absolutely you are in the right.' Olga thrust her notes into her purse. If a woman asked such a question, it was only because she knew the answer already and wanted quick confirmation.

But Olga had had about all she could take of sex and husbands. And realizing that she'd get nowhere on the cocktail menu with Vera, she wiped her backside with a Letter to the Editor:

To whom it may concern,

I think you should know that it is a well-established fact the Russian military is bankrupt and has been for years. Recruits have gone AWOL in record numbers and Russian soldiers have given their weapons to Chechen opposition in exchange for bottles of vodka. And why not? Under-equipped, underfed, under-supported, and ill-trained, why should these boys die in Chechnya? Good God! We sent tanks into Grozny without giving the tank navigators a city map!

(signed General S———, Mozdok.)

By the time Olga slid behind her side of the desk, Arkady's eyebrows had locked in a wrestling match. On the desk in front of him lay the week's inflation index.

'The President is an ass.' Arkady waved a curled transcript.

Olga glanced at the
Topic Guide.
'I think "donkey" is the preferred nomenclature.'

'OK.' Arkady scratched at his arm. 'Donkey it is. And as such, according to city ordinance prohibiting the use of
animals in public, he should stay at home in bed and keep his hangover to himself.'

'Hangover' was a not-so-subtle reference to the President's decision to invade Chechnya, a move prompted by a long round of holiday toasting and reckless dares.

Olga scowled. Yes, Russia was a country manned by drunks. No one knew it more than the fact-checkers and translators at the
Red Star,
but still, even in this age of pseudo-glasnost, there were things you shouldn't say. Now there were unconfirmed rumours that the President might be plagued with a bad heart. To this end, Kaminsky had installed a special cut-and-paste function. Any time the word 'president' appeared in print it was followed by 'could not attend the event because he was labouring over documents'.

Just then the teletype, a squat grey machine stationed beneath the glass window, spluttered to life.

Absurdity no. 6

The teletype.

...was of archival, that is to say antique, quality. Olga held her breath as the large round metal element spun in quick agitation, striking the paper in an exaggerated staccato fashion. Arkady adjusted his glasses and squinted at the transcript unfurling from the yammering maw of the machine. Although office protocol dictated that she and Arkady retrieve and translate as many assignments from the basket as they could, if the teletype went active, then they were to drop those assignments
immediately, as something horrific was happening and the public—for their own good—must not at any cost hear about it in its raw and undiluted version.

If these were accounts of the economic catastrophe, such as the week's inflation index, then the assignment fell to Arkady, who could track the manifest rise and fall of the rouble in the cost of chewing gum or the ever-fluctuating price of bread. And Arkady could turn a phrase. A master of commercial euphemism, just the other day Arkady artfully dubbed the fact that for over two years the average monthly pension couldn't buy sausage and butter for a week as 'deficit earning'. The 28 billion roubles of unpaid wages to transportation, construction and agricultural workers he attributed to a common malaise known as 'indefinite delayed payment syndrome'—a condition encapsulated in a saying every Russian worker had known and repeated for decades: 'We pretend to work, they pretend to pay.'

Military reports, on the other hand—estimated numbers of casualties, movements of troops and munitions—fell exclusively to Olga.

Arkady ripped the transcripts from the carriage and squinted fiercely at the type. 'For you,' he said, handing it to Olga.

Olga winced and read the report:

After heavy fighting near Chervlenaja, Dolinsk, Pervomaisk, Petropavlovskaya, 250 troops were counted as lost.

Olga sighed a ponderous sigh. Two hundred and fifty lost might actually mean five hundred dead and far more than that wounded. Russian military organizations, Olga knew, each had different ways of tallying their losses. Only soldiers who actually died on the battlefield were counted as dead. Those who died in transport or various field hospitals did not count. Add to the confusion the fact that each service (defence ministry, internal ministry) had its own hospitals. And even though the actual figures could take months to trickle in, even she could see that during the first half year of the war in Chechnya the Russian Federal Forces suffered greater losses than the Soviet army sustained during ten years of war in Afghanistan. This was a difficult fact to play down. That Russian conscripts like her Yuri gained military experience at the price of their own blood was also a reality that required some delicacy. And from Yuri, who saw it with his own eyes, Olga learned that the bodies of Russian soldiers who died in high-altitude mountain terrain were very often left where they fell.
Kholodets,
they were called, meat in aspic, because if the helicopters designated for carrying human cargo couldn't gain the necessary lift, then those bodies were simply dumped into the mountain lakes.

And now it was Olga's job to whittle the numbers down to acceptable figures. She re-read the report summary and tapped her teeth with her pencil.

Noticing her distress, Arkady plugged in the hotplate then touched her sleeve. 'Round those numbers down and be done with it.'

Exactly what he had said nearly twenty years ago when the first reports from Afghanistan arrived. And in those days, when Olga was young and optimistic that a war could be won, she was only too happy to comply. She purposefully reported inaccurate numbers of casualties, citing figures that did not even remotely correspond to the numbers of actual wounded. This fell not too far afield from the beloved and well-intentioned
vranyo,
a type of fib one told purely for entertainment purposes. In the town where Olga grew up,
vranyo
masters, able to put the best possible spin on any awkward or embarrassing situation, were highly esteemed. And this type of lie was told with the expectation that everyone would immediately recognize the fib for what it was and know not to believe a word. The usual and polite response was to leave the
vranyo
unchallenged and undiscussed, like the discovery of a sudden turd dropped from the sky. The stink was unmistakable, but the custom was to simply step around it without comment and, with a wink, get on with business.

But over the years of reading endless reports of how little had been accomplished in each of these wars and how much lost, Olga had grown more and more uneasy with her work at the
Red Star.
She saw the names of people she knew—neighbours, their sons and brothers. She saw her cousin's name and the name of a boy who had kissed her in the tall grass when her mother wasn't looking. So many names! And how, she'd like to know, do you lie about a name, which is all that was left of some of these people? And how do you decide which names
to cross out, when, as her mother taught her long ago, no name should ever be forgotten? It's bad enough to die, but to die and not be mourned? Unthinkable.

Again the teletype spluttered. Arkady and Olga sat listening to it spit and spew. When, at last, the machine fell silent Olga ripped the message from the carriage.

This time, a letter.

In days not too long ago the Russian military was considered the best in the world. It shames the Russian military, and every Russian citizen, to be so soundly defeated in our first assault on Grozny. So completely such an important city as Grozny. We must act. But we must have more soldiers.

To this end we, the undersigned who wish to preserve Russian honour, urge the President and the central committee to reinstate compulsory re-enlistment of former service personnel.

'I can't believe what I'm reading.' Olga slid the copy across the desk. Arkady read the report, his lips moving. When he finished he pushed the report across the desk with the end of his pencil, as if he could not bear to actually touch the paper with his finger.

'Burn it with a bright blue flame,' Arkady said, his voice tight as a wound coil.

'As if one humiliating defeat weren't enough, now these military geniuses want to empty every academy and re-recruit every returned vet for a second assault.' Olga squeezed her eyes shut. She thought of Zvi. She considered how lucky she was really, for all her losses, that she still had her son when so many mothers didn't. Then she thought of all those names she could not remember, and all the names of boys she would not be allowed to print.

Olga felt fear taking on an animal quality inside her stomach, moving hard and dark behind her ribs. Loss diminished, loss denied, was still loss. And what purpose did all this loss have if they were not allowed to record it, to remember it properly? What good was their simple sorrow, these raw husks that rattled emptily in their hands? What good when those who perpetuated the loss denied the loss and were later helped along in their denials by people like her? This is what bothered her most: that their generational sorrows were daily diminished. By her. That as a matter of routine, of editorial policy, their suffering had been made meaningless and that she'd helped make it that way—unbearable.

No. Olga shook her head. No. She said it, quietly, then louder, NO. She would not participate. Not anymore. Olga pounded the desk and Arkady's teacup jumped.

'Grozny! Chechnya is full of Groznys! Next it will be Pervomaisk, Arshty, and after that another village, and after that another, and another. Because if you say three attacks, then you are suggesting a fourth, and if you suggest a fourth,
most certainly a fifth is implied. And if we say five we may as well admit six or seven. For every village and city in Chechnya is a Grozny.' Olga took a deep breath and glanced at the oversized window. Did she say that aloud? It seemed so, for the pneumatic tubes stopped their howling as if sensing her indiscretion. Arkady passed gas quietly, and then that shrieking from the tubes recommenced.

'This job,' Olga said quietly, 'turns each one of us into liars.'

'So tell the truth.' Arkady scratched savagely at his forearm.

Like putting ashes in a cellar, it might bring badness, but things couldn't possibly get any worse, Olga reasoned. 'It would represent a great triumph over ourselves. That we could openly discuss such things. Don't you think?'

'Not at all the perpetuation of historical sediment to which we have become so accustomed,' Arkady said, all the while scratching savagely at his arm.

Olga's stomach lurched. They could not help reverting to clichés even in moments of high-profundity content. Olga took a breath, held it, and then she started typing: everything she'd read from the generals and the report and the letters to the newspapers, everything she'd heard from Yuri, everything she knew to be true from Vera.

When she was done, Olga rolled the waxy paper into a tight scroll and stuffed it into the canister and secured the hasp. The wind howled through the tubes. She swallowed hard, then slid the canister into the receptacle, holding it there until the next big gust carried it away.

Two minutes passed. Then three. Arkady unplugged the hotplate and Olga sat drinking tea, her eyes fixed on the dull spots of illumination cast by the unambitious banks of overhead lighting hung over the work floor. A great torrent of snorting and braying trumpeted through the pneumatic tubes. And then Chief Editor Kaminsky materialized at the threshold, his usually florid face pale as alabaster. His eyebrows seemed more peaked than usual and his forehead was a jumble of deep furrows. With the demeanour of a man just back from a wake, Chief Editor Kaminsky studied his hands for a moment. 'Oh, Olga Semyonovna. Olga. Olya. You know how Editor-in-Chief Mrosik feels so very passionately about punctuation, how serious he is down to every last comma and full-stop.'

Olga pinched her face into a contortion of concentration.

And you know how much I like you and you know how rare it is for me to like anyone. As a personal favour to your father I hired you against the advice of my colleagues. Never did any of us imagine how brilliant you were, translating the most difficult military reports and memos and turning them into such pieces of diaphanous gossamer fragility that they've even become suitable for inclusion in children's variety shows. But this latest report of yours'—a measure of starch crept into Chief Editor Kaminsky's voice—'is rendered so transparently, well, it will give everyone a heart attack! What people want is security and stability. They want to feel good about this new Russia which needs them to feel good about it.'

Olga squinted at Chief Editor Kaminsky's hair standing tall
to attention, pointing the way to the pneumatic tubes, which she now associated with every trouble, real or imagined. Oh, how she wanted to clip those ridiculous strands off his head and knit them into something she could sell: a foot warmer, a tea cosy, a sweater for a dog.

Instead Olga nodded her head with an exuberance she herself did not feel but hoped her body would find convincing enough to believe, if only on a muscular level.

'You are the head of the translation division. The head of the head, the heart and the brains. What will we do if we lose you? We will flounder, that's what we'll do. Flounder and sink and drown. Drown and die. Is that where you want to leave us? Drowning and dying?' Chief Editor Kaminsky wrung his hands. 'Oh, please, I beg you. Nothing like this again, or I'm afraid we'll have to find another department for you—obits, or translating approved recipes from the Ministry of Meat and Dairy, or perhaps something even worse.' Chief Editor Kaminsky's gaze settled on the children's primer for a moment.