Monumental Propaganda (33 page)

80

You know, it's an interesting condition, complete freedom. You can write or read what you like, listen to the foreign radio, tell political jokes, insult the president, travel abroad, make love to a partner of either sex, in a group or on your own, grow your hair long, wear rings in your ears and rings in your nose and generally transfix yourself with anything you fancy. Of course, many people were annoyed by all this. Especially since public-sector workers' wages were delayed and pensioners weren't being paid their pensions at all. Both groups were occasionally paid in locally produced goods. There was one time they began paying everybody for everything in the output of the local poultry farm, i.e., in chicks. Dolgov was swamped by an unprecedented number of chickens. They filled all the yards, swarmed over the kitchen gardens, wandered along the roads and got under your feet; there were so many of them it was hard to drive through town in an automobile without running over at least one. The chickens were all the same breed—Dolgov Dutch Whites—and in an attempt to distinguish their own chickens from other people's, the women marked the birds with ink of various colors: red, green, blue, black. Aglaya didn't take any chickens, not having any idea how to deal with them. She'd lived her entire life in a rural district, and she didn't even know how to milk a cow, let alone kill a chicken. Aglaya refused the chickens and ran out of money, and she had absolutely no idea what to do, but it's no accident that even atheists use the old saying “Don't worry, God won't let the pig eat you.”

On the warm morning of March 8, International Women's Day, a young couple knocked on Aglaya's door, tall and smiling, dressed well but modestly with carefully styled hair—she had little earrings in her ears, but he had no rings in his ears or his nose. He was carrying flowers and a hard briefcase, and she had two plastic carrier bags. They asked if they could come in. When they were asked who they were and what their business was, the young man held out a business card: “Valentin Yurievich Dolin, President of the International Charitable Organization ‘Age with Dignity.'”

“And I'm Gala,” the woman said with a friendly smile.

Aglaya thought they'd come to ask for money, but it turned out to be just the opposite . . .

When they were allowed in, the visitors removed their shoes and were left in just their socks. Stepping softly, as though they were afraid of waking someone up, they walked through into the sitting room. They stood for a moment in silence in front of the monument, with their heads bowed and their hands lowered. Valentin Yurievich confessed that although it was very unfashionable now, Stalin was his favorite historical figure. Then he got straight down to business.

“First of all, Aglaya Stepanovna, allow me to congratulate you on International Women's Day and present you with . . .” Valentin Yurievich turned to his female companion and she began extracting items from a plastic bag and setting them on the table: a bottle of “Soviet Champagne,” a bottle of Finlandia vodka, a thick piece of dietary sausage, a carton of Rossisky cheese, a box of Red October chocolate candies and a block of Marlboro cigarettes. Aglaya looked at all of this in great amazement, as though a magic tablecloth from a fairy tale had been spread out before her.

“What's all this?” she asked.

“It's for you,” Valentin Yurievich said quietly.

“Me? What for?” she asked.

“For your quintessential femininity,” Gala declared.

“Nonsense!” interrupted Valentin Yurievich. “Certainly Aglaya Stepanovna is feminine, but we intend to help her not only because of that, but for everything that she has done for our homeland and for future generations, for us.”

And he ran through the program of the Age with Dignity foundation. The foundation had been established by young people, patriots who had decided to help old people who had fought selflessly to build communism in our country. To free them from poverty and protect them against the tyranny of an antipopular regime. For a start they had come to find out what Aglaya Stepanovna was particularly in need of (food? clothes? medicines?) and then to provide all the help they could. The foundation's council had adopted a resolution to provide her with a supplementary personal pension of sixty conventional units a month from its own funds.

“Sixty what?” Aglaya asked.

“Greenbacks,” said Gala.

“What's that? Dollars?” asked Aglaya. “I don't want dollars.”

“You've misunderstood us,” said Valentin Yurievich with a smile. “It's not dollars, but conventional units. Rubles tied to the dollar.”

She took that to mean the rubles would be given to her literally tied to dollars with something—rope, thread, string—and it cost the young people an effort to explain that the connection would be conceptual and in actual fact the number of real rubles would increase with inflation, but the number of conventional units would remain the same.

“And apart from that,” said Gala, “we're going to help you with food. Once a week you will receive a food parcel.”

When asked what she'd done to deserve such good fortune, they started talking across each other in their haste to explain: It was for her outstanding services. For having been an uncompromising communist. And a partisan. And an educator of the young. And in general a worker.

“But all the same,” said Aglaya, still unable to make sense of it all, “what do I owe you?”

“Oh God!” exclaimed Gala, throwing her arms in the air and rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.

“Aglaya Stepanovna!” sighed Valentin Yurievich. “What are you talking about? You owe us? That's ridiculous. We owe you. When you think about it, you did so much for us, the members of later generations. It will be a great honor for us if you will accept at least the little help and support that we are able to offer you today.”

“And you don't want anything at all from me?”

Gala mimed total dismay once again.

“Well perhaps,” said Valentin Yurievich, “if you should wish in turn to help our foundation . . .”

“So that it can grow and develop,” Gala explained.

“In that case,” Valentin Yurievich continued, “if you . . . how should I put it . . .”

“None of us live for ever,” Gala sighed.

“Yes!” Valentin Yurievich glanced reproachfully at Gala for being so tactless, but he continued on the same subject and his words included the phrase “a will.”

His speech was rather flowery, but even so Aglaya gathered from his words that her visitors were not exactly insisting, but they felt that if she bequeathed her apartment to the Age with Dignity foundation, together with all her property and this work of art—a gesture of the hand in the direction of the statue—then, God grant her, of course, good health and long life . . . but afterward it would be a good thing if her property fell into honest hands. It would still be able to do some good for people, help other pensioners who had been robbed by the antipopular regime . . .

When Aglaya realized what they wanted from her and what they would give in exchange, she didn't hesitate for a moment. She was a genuine atheist and she wasn't concerned about what would happen after death. Of course, it would have been natural to leave the apartment to her son, but where was he? She hadn't heard a word from him for years now. And she knew for certain he was alive and well. He was an ambassador in one of the Western countries; every now and then they even showed him on the television, turned flabby and bald. He praised the changes and said he had always been a convinced anticommunist . . . Oh no, he wasn't going to get a thing. And anyway, what good to him was an apartment in a dump like this?

“Yes,” said Aglaya, suddenly remembering, “what about him?” She nodded toward Stalin. “When I die, is he for the garbage dump?”

“Aglaya Stepanovna,” said Dolin, rolling his eyes. “How can you! For me and for Gala, Comrade Stalin is . . .”

“Like Jesus Christ,” said Gala.

“On the word of a communist,” Valentin Yurievich went on, “we will preserve this holy relic until the time comes when it will proudly resume its rightful place. And believe me, it will happen.”

“It will definitely happen,” Gala confirmed. “We'll make it happen. Because Stalin is our idol.”

“Oh, all right then,” said Aglaya with a wave of her hand.

81

Alexei Mikhailovich Makarov, alias the Admiral, used to divide up our post–October Revolution history into the eras of Cellar Terrorism (under Lenin, when they shot people in the cellars of the Extraordinary Commission, or Cheka), the Great Terror (under Stalin), Terror Within the Limits of Leninist Norms (under Khrushchev), Selective Terror (under Brezhnev), Transitional Terror (under Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev) and Terror Unlimited (the present time).

The latter phase of terror is distinguished from the preceding phases by the fact that it is not perpetrated in the name of SCOSWO, is no longer centralized and has been simplified. Anybody at all can sentence anybody else at all to death for anything at all. People eliminate each other by every possible means: by stabbing with knives, shooting with shotguns, pellet guns, rifles, pistols, submachine guns, machine guns and grenade launchers, by using poisons, chemical fumes, radioactivity and explosive devices. All with a high level of efficiency and a zero solution rate. We always find out who's been killed, but who killed them remains forever a secret. Everywhere in the cities, both large and (in some cases) small, criminal gangs, known to everyone, are active, with leaders whose names are also known, underworld bosses who hide from no one and ride around in armor-plated limousines with bodyguards, conduct international business and bank their money offshore. They are known as bankers, oligarchs, mayors, governors, ministers, industrialists, and the owners of newspapers, shipping lines, oil wells and television channels. The life they live is good, but it is often short and overshadowed by fear. They are not afraid of the police, but of each other, and with good reason. Their laws are not recorded in writing, but they are strict. Capital punishment is the routine sentence. And so there is a constantly rising demand among these people for all sorts of firearms or items that explode and which can be used to take out a colleague. These items have to be manufactured by somebody and Vanka Zhukov became one of these manufacturers, with a growing reputation among his potential clients. Everybody knew that if a cracker was made by Zhukov it wouldn't let you down. Fireworks Inc. had a constantly expanding customer base, the clients who drove around to see Vanka on their foreign sets of wheels treated him with deference, spoke to him respectfully, calling him Ivan Georgievich, and didn't haggle over the price. They allowed him total creative freedom, which was important to him, because he was a creative artist in his own line of work. He always tried to do something distinctive and original, but with limited impact. Let us not overromanticize the image of our people's avenger. The work he did was reprehensible, but even so he was distinguished from other craftsmen in the same business by a certain fastidiousness, always calculating precisely the power and direction of the explosion and attempting to avoid unnecessary casualties.

The detonators of Vanka's crackers were all of original construction: mechanical, chemical, acoustic, bimetallic, electrical and electronic. They reacted to the most varied of signals and impulses, to the touch of fingers with specific prints, to smell, to color, to light, to a tone of voice— in other words, every time the goal was redefined in every respect with regard to the specific case in hand. Vanka's first large cracker was installed in an automobile and was supposed to go off when it reached a speed of 120 kilometers an hour. Vanka didn't think it was possible to drive through the streets of the town at that kind of speed.

82

Aglaya Stepanovna had never lived so well and with so few worries. One pension had not been enough, but with two there was no need to deny herself anything. Especially since apart from the money she also received a comprehensive food delivery. Every Thursday, vivacious and smiling, Gala turned up at her place with two string shopping bags, her fine figure sporting denim jeans and a stylish denim jacket. She came through into the kitchen and laid everything out, chattering away in a manner reminiscent of one of the waitresses in the sanatorium in Sochi: “Look, I've brought you some bread and a nice bit of butter, some beautiful eggs and some sausage, lovely cucumbers, fine tomatoes and this too.” And she narrowed her eyes as she took out a bottle of Finlandia vodka. “It's fine vodka, this, pure stuff, not like ours. I quite like getting a bit of a high on, as they say, myself, but we mustn't overdo it, you and me. My brother's a doctor; he says, just you remember, Gala, the female organism is more susceptible to alcohol than the male.”

Gala would ask her not to hurry with the drinks. First she would tidy the sitting room and make dinner. Then she would take off her jacket, roll up the sleeves of her white blouse and the legs of her jeans and set to work. When she leaned forward, her little gold cross would tumble out and dangle on its chain. She shoved it back inside her blouse. She set soup and buckwheat or potatoes to cook on the stove, and while the flames were doing their work, she plugged in the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the carpets. She wiped down the statue with a damp cloth. She watered the plants on the windowsill. And she did all of this quickly and easily, flitting around the apartment and repeating to herself: “Oh, what a lot of dust you have! Where can it all come from? I wiped everything last time, and here it is again. It's terrible! I really think something must be happening to the environment.”

Sometimes she would ask about Stalin: Why did people love him so much? Was he kind?

“How can I put it?” said Aglaya, pondering. “He showed his enemies no mercy, he exterminated them ruthlessly, but that way he did a lot of good for the working class.”

Aglaya had never been sentimental, but now some sort of shift took place inside her. She noticed herself waiting for her benefactress, feeling happy when she arrived, and sometimes she even called her Galochka. And she liked it when Gala addressed her as “Mama Glaya.”

Gala cooked, spread the tablecloth, set the table tastefully, took out two spirits glasses and two glasses for apple juice, and then they ate together, sometimes talking on late into the evening.

Gala was happy to talk about her parents. Both of them were communists. They worked in the metallurgical combine in Norilsk. They'd wanted to save up some money and leave it to their daughter. “But then these you know, whatever they were called, pardon the expression, came to power, and all of my parents' savings were just wiped out. The shock of it killed my dad. In fact, yesterday was his anniversary—I went to church and lit a candle. Sent mum some money. She gets a miserable little pension. Even less than yours. I help her, of course, she's my mother. Imagine it, she's been slaving away all her life, and now she can't even feed herself. I wouldn't be able to, either, if not for Seryozhka . . . You know, Mama Glaya, my Seryozhka's really kindhearted. When he sees some old person with their hand held out begging, he really suffers! He'd be just perfect if he wasn't so jealous! Oh, Mama, how jealous he is! Did you see the bruise I had last time I was here? Maybe you didn't notice, I powdered over it, but look, you can still see.”

“And has he anything to be jealous of?” Aglaya asked.

“Well, Mama Glaya, to tell the truth, he has. He's always working, working, working. He comes home tired and sometimes a bit tight as well, lies down and just turns to face the wall. But I'm a lively young woman, Mama Glaya, I'm twenty-six years old . . . I expect you were the same when you were twenty-six . . . ?”

“At twenty-six I was in command of a partisan unit.” Aglaya tried to make the announcement proudly, but it came out as though she were apologizing for a misspent youth, when she had wasted her time on foolishness.

But Gala was embarrassed too: “Oi, Mama, I'm sorry, I feel ashamed. Oi, what incredible people you were. So high-minded and brave. And who are we? I could never be a partisan, I'm so terribly afraid of blood. Even when someone I don't know at all cuts their finger, I feel faint. You really did work for us and fight for us. And we . . . I feel so ashamed . . . Seryozhka says we're young communists, but actually we haven't got any ideals at all. Our heads are just full of nothing but having fun, clothes, food and sex. Sometimes I do get a yearning for something above all that, but my thoughts drag me down. I'm what they call an easy lay. Do you know what Seryozhka calls me?”

“What?”

Gala sighed and said nothing for a moment, as though wondering whether she should say or not, and giggled in embarrassment: “Giveaway Galka.”

“So he has good reason to belt you?”

“Of course he does. I wouldn't stand for it otherwise. It upsets me too, Mama Glaya, you can't imagine how much. I wonder myself why it is I'm such a whore, pardon the expression. But a man only has to touch me and I just melt like butter. I can't say no, and that's all.”

“Tell me . . .” Aglaya began, then stopped in sudden embarrassment.

“What?” asked Gala.

“Oh, nothing . . . Anyway you know . . . at your age I had different morals, we were all for the motherland, for Stalin, for the Party, we fulfilled the five-year plans and we didn't think much about ourselves. Don't laugh now, but now in my old age all I hear is ‘orgasm, orgasm.' But what is an orgasm? Are you going to laugh?”

“What a question, Mama Glaya!” Gala opened her eyes wide and her voice dropped to a whisper. “You really don't know? Oi! What are you saying? Well, basically, it's—I don't even know what it's like. When I'm doing it . . . first I feel as though something inside me is being pumped up, bigger and bigger, like a balloon, you know, one of those huge great balloons, and I'm flying away somewhere, flying away when suddenly—bang!—it bursts. It just bursts all over on every side and spills out, like a puddle, like a lake, like a sea. And at that moment I'm completely gone, I'm dying, there's music in my ears, how can I put it . . . it's like . . . Michael Jackson.” Gala looked at Aglaya and thought for a moment, then asked, as though she wasn't sure what the answer would be: “Mama Glaya, you were young too once, weren't you?”

“What do you think?” Aglaya asked.

“I don't know,” said Gala. “I know you must have been, only somehow I can't imagine it.”