The Moscoviad (23 page)

“Shut up, old
Dumkopf!” replied “Catherine” angrily.

“Suvorov” kissed
her hand, as he was sitting next to her. The sweaty, freckled and powdered hand
of the great empress.

“Everything will
be fine,” assured the speaker. “We will turn Poland into a firing range from
one sea to another, and flood Finland with vodka. We will abolish their
anti-alcohol laws, declaring them to be in violation of basic human rights!”

Everyone
applauded once more. “Lenin,” giggling again, pulled out of his jacket pocket a
clockwork mouse and set it loose on the presidium’s table. Hitting heavily with
the palm of his hand, he caught it back himself and immediately twisted off its
head. Actually, the mouse could have been a live one.

“This will be our
final and eternal resurrection,” Black Stocking spoke once again over the wave
of applause and enthusiasm. “The severed arms and legs will grow back into one
whole. The idea of, phew, independence will suffer a global fiasco and human consciousness
will see it as something akin to fascism or even to sexual perversions. The
forbidden fruit of Empire will taste good to everyone. Millions of people are
only waiting to be proclaimed slaves. To be taken to build pyramids, canals,
great walls and bridges. Only inside an Empire can a discrete individual find
his being meaningful. Since every Empire is a great goal. A Millennial Goal.
It’s the subjugation of the entire world, it’s communism, it’s the immortality
of mummies in mausoleums. It’s the radiance of suns and rulers. It’s a tower
that takes ten thousand years to build. It’s the might of armies, it’s the
burning of witches, it’s the movement of people, continuous and unifying. It’s
the great copulation of nations, it’s the swallowing of the smaller ones by the
bigger ones, of the weaker ones by the stronger ones. These are monuments and
myths, these are rivers turned backwards, it’s the triumph of psychiatrists,
forensic scientists, and bird-catchers . . .”

“And what about
France?” “Suvorov” leapt out once again.

“Moron!” creaked
“Catherine.”

“Suvorov”
intimately hugged her by the waist, which was visible even from the back row.

“We will move to
France ourselves,” assured the speaker. “Five- and six-room residences with
balconies, in Paris, Marseilles, and Nice, will be granted to the
representatives of the elite, especially the participants in the present
symposium.

“And where do we
put the French?” a remark from the amphitheater reached through the applause.

“We’ll deport
them to the Gobi Desert,” answered the speaker without hesitation. “I can, by
the way, dwell a little longer on the problem of deportations, since this will
be one of the main factors of our domestic, eh, foreign policy.”

“A healthy
thought!” “Lenin” rubbed his hands, and having pulled from his jacket pocket a
whitish and crunchy radish, started chewing on it loudly.

“So, deportation,
as you know well from our great, maligned . . .”

“Shitty,”
corrected “Ivan the Terrible.”

“Thank you, but
this isn’t the case,” replied the speaker, “from our heroic history,
deportation is a wonderful remedy for any ethno-national problem. The main
thing is to resettle the Chukchi in the Ararat valley, and the Moldovans in
Franz-Josef Land, although it would be more logical to put the Austrians there.
Besides, we have a proposition to conduct several direct exchanges of areas of
compact settlement: the Lithuanians and the Vietnamese, the Swiss and the
Chinese, the Hungarians and the Uighurs. Supporting in all possible ways the
idea of great transfers of population, we will thereby also generate completely
new, phantom nations and ethnic groups with names so twisted that they will be
ashamed of them themselves: Rossiacs, Ukralians, Karelo-Mingrelians,
Cherboslovats, Romongolians, Netherbaidzhanis, Sweeks, Gredes, Fruzbeks,
Byeloswabians, Kurdofranks, Jerattlers, and Carpatho-Ruthenians.”

“And what about
Israel?” “Suvorov” jumped up cavalry-style, having first prudently grabbed
“Catherine” by the tit.

Mother Empress
did not say anything this time around, surprised by such exceptional liveliness
of the aging commander, and Black Stocking was once again nonplussed,

“Israel? We’ll
turn it into one large watermelon plantation!”

“And radishes,
radishes, we must also plant radishes,” insisted “Lenin.”

“Kryuchkov” in
the meantime blinked his artificial eye with such delight that it seemed the
eye was real. He rejoiced at having brought these great people together.

Enthusiasm was
spreading across the audience. The amphitheater was caught in a wave of
elation. The speaker proceeded with the hurricane-strong finale,

“The Great
Disintegration will be stopped! The Great Chaos will be overcome! The Great
Symphony will lead humanity into a millennial campaign. We will protect our
most sacred with impenetrable thickets of creeping vines and with the latest
military technology. This will be a united orchestra of total obedience and . .
.” the speaker stumbled for a moment.

And this was
enough for “Minin-and-Pozharsky,” who until then looked almost devoid of life,
to pose a question in two voices,

“And who, who
will be the boss?”

“The people!”
Black Stocking answered curtly and confidently, and everyone burst out
laughing.

You are again
feeling worse and worse, von F. This nonstop circling of the hall, along with
the theater boxes and balcony above it, with the walls, these processions of
wooly mammoths, comet tails, and giant severed genitals projected into the
space above you, this noise of animal masks—all this pressed you into the
surface of the chair and sapped your will and understanding. It seemed that
your head, screwed onto your shoulders with great effort, was about to come off
and roll to the feet of the presidium, covering everything in this world with
the black foam of powerless curses for one last time. And when someone, sitting
down next to you, slapped your knee in a familiar fashion, you decided it was,
like everything else, only a hallucination. But a rather familiar colorless
voice suddenly crawled into your ear,

“So, what’s your
impression, Otto Wilhelmovych? How do you like it all, damn it?”

This was
“Sashko.” In difference from the locals, he wasn’t wearing a mask. Apparently
he had no need to conceal his identity. The only thing he did to alter his
looks was to glue on a thin Argentine-style mustache, but it kept on coming off
and dangled like a noodle. “Sashko” was rocking slightly and generally had a
bizarre glare in his eye.

“I absolutely
loved your joke with the telephone,” said “Sashko,” raising his thumb. “That
was a powerful punch! They demoted me as a result. Don’t stare at me like that,
I’m a Ukrainian just like you! And I did have a drink. Perhaps out of joy,
perhaps out of sorrow—who cares? Stop turning away, stop pretending you are not
really you. I recognized you at once, Otto Wilhelmovych. Only you would dress
as a fool! You think I did not study your style well enough? I memorized all
the reviews of your work! Stop putting me down, damn it!”

And “Sashko”
started breathing heavily in an offended fashion, the way drunk people often
do.

“No, you really
did a fine job with the phone!” he started bubbling again in a minute. “And
with the rats! It’s fucking tops, damn it!”

“And what will
happen now?” you asked.

“Life goes on,
brother,” answered “Sashko.” “Even if one has been demoted. You know, old man,
I’m now a captain. But life goes on, fuck it, and no one can do anything about
it, even these goddamn windbags whom we are protecting with great pomp. I’m
sorry, I’ve had a few earlier today.”

“Today!” the
speaker seconded him; it seemed he still could not finish. “Today! Our future
begins today! If we take the responsibility upon ourselves, if we want to save
the Idea, the State, the Hierarchy, the Elegance of it all, if that’s the
case—then already at this moment, today, without a minute’s delay, we must . .
.”

But not all of
his words were audible—the audience reacted in an increasingly loud manner. And
“Sashko’s” heavy breathing didn’t help either.

“Have you come to
arrest me?” you asked him.

“Life goes on,”
answered Sashko. “Trees are blooming, boys are chasing after girls . . . But
listen, you really did a fine one with the phone! It’s tops!”

“I’m glad you
have enjoyed it,” you shrugged your shoulders modestly. “My God, how my head
hurts! How everything in this world hurts! Is there any escape from all this?”

“There are no
cities without gates,” answered “Sashko.” “I’ve been entrusted with killing
you.”

“And then they’ll
restore your rank?”

“Perhaps. But
that’s not the main thing. The main thing is that I must kill you.”

“And this is the
only way for me to get out of here?”

“There exists one
more,” “Sashko” cunningly and weightily twisted his sagging little mustache.
“But don’t think badly of me, brother! You know, as to all these russkies, I
believe as much as you do that they deserve . . . respect!”

Meanwhile the
agitation in the presidium and among the audience reached a frantic climax.
Black Stocking declaimed with great virtuosity the truly final prophetic
phrases.

“Having gathered
all lands and nations, having huddled them all together, we will fulfill the
will of our great fathers! Since now they toss and turn in the loneliness of
their mausoleums at the sight of what’s happening to their heritage. The
State’s cosmic mission stares us in the face with millennial eyes. We hold in
our hands the decisive cards for the great game: telephones, official posts,
agents, computers, but most importantly—millions, billions of people who
desire, who dream of being enslaved, who for the sake of their blissful
enslavement will go out into the streets and squares, for there is no greater
honor and greater dream for the simple little person that to be an obedient,
self-sacrificing, proud and humiliated slave of the great, super-powerful,
pyramidal, celestial Empire that will expand unstoppably further and further
west, destroying their plots of land and cottages, buses and phone booths, all
this sinful and dissolute well-being of anarchic individuals—in the name of our
radiant gold mummies! . . .”

“What a
headache,” you repeated, cringing from the roar of the ovation. “What horrible
verbosity! How many capitalized words! One must do something. Warn the guys
somehow . . .”

“Warn the guys?”
“Sashko” breathed alcohol vapors on you. “You aren’t capable of anything bigger
than that?”

“You see, I
haven’t written poetry for a long time. Not a single line. Well, you know about
it . . . What do you mean by demanding of me something bigger?”

“There exists
another way out. But this must be a deed. This must be a horrifying, bloody
deed. A sea of blood, understand? A terrorist act, damn it! That’s what I mean
. . .”

“I am not a
terrorist.”

“Ha!” “Sashko”
burst out. “I didn’t expect anything else! He’s not a terrorist! He is
generally a nobody! . . .”

“I can’t kill a
human being,” you explained guiltily. “I would have done it with pleasure, but
I can’t . . .”

“Well, then
everything will happen the way that guy in the black stocking has described
it,” sighed “Sashko” disappointedly. “Your problem, my dear Arthur—allow me to
call you by this name sometimes—that you have always tried to avoid things. You
have turned liminal situations into an operetta. We are tired of watching you.
In a sense you have gone way too far. And you will get out of here only at the
price of your own survival.”

“Who are you?”

“No one knows who
he really is. But this thing with the phone—you . . .”

“Stop it already
with your phone! And don’t dare call me by this vile name!”

“Wow! And what
will happen? I have been calling you this, and I will! And you won’t do
anything, because you can’t do anything! You are so afraid of sinning that you
sin at every step, you bastard! . . .”

You must, you
must do something, you kept on thinking.

And I really did
think this, because my head was ringing like crazy, and the entire presidium
was celebrating noisily the end of the speech, and the guy in the black
stocking was carried out from behind the podium by some bubbas in Red Army
soldier masks. Streams of blood and excrement flowed towards the foot of the
podium. And all these boars, Santa Clauses, pirates, crocodiles, centaurs, and
commissars made one’s eyes spin, and “Lenin” was bouncing the papier-mâché
Russian imperial crown like a basketball, and “Ivan the Terrible” was dancing a
repulsive fox trot with “Dzerzhinsky.” “Kryuchkov’s” glass eye shone
victoriously and even shed tears, so moved was he. “Suvorov” kissed
“Catherine’s” ass. Only “Minin-and-Pozharsky” remained immobile, since it was
only a copy of the monument on Red Square, or perhaps even the monument itself,
dragged down here for some unknown reason.

And then you
thought that everything indeed depended upon you. That you are the only one to
have such an opportunity. That all the same there is no other way out to the
surface. And must the way out lead necessarily to the surface? Any place at
all, as long as it is out of here! For your head hurts too much.