The Great Glass Sea

by Josh Weil

  “What did you tell them?”

  Bazarov looked up from the thin ruby drink he was pouring. “That you almost got half of the richest men in Moscow killed today.” He filled Yarik’s glass, started to pour his own. “Then I told them that I was taking you to supper, anyway. And that we would be delighted if any of them cared to join us.” He set the bottle down, made an exaggerated show of looking to his left, his right, of giving Yarik a puzzled face. “I don’t know”—he shrugged—“maybe it was something you did?”

  Yarik tried not to smile, but he could tell from the way Bazarov’s eyes lit up another notch that his face had showed it anyway. That was how it had been the last few hours. He had gone from fury to gratitude and didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the feeling that had flooded over him when the man’s hand had eased his own hands onto his own head, pressed protectively on top of his knuckles, the almost childlike wish that they would stay there just like that, didn’t understand why he had reached for the gun in the first place, what he had thought that could fix. After Bazarov had ordered Yarik be brought back to the sedan, in the hour he’d been sequestered in the backseat, his emotions had come unfastened from his thoughts: love for his brother; fury at him; confusion about what his role had been, about how—even if—he had been used; missing his children; longing for his wife; thrilled by being here, in Moscow, sitting on soft leather looking out a tinted window at the surface of a river alive with rain. All he’d understood then was that he owed it all—that he would see his children again, his wife, that he had a brother still—to Baz.

  Now, sitting across from his boss in the restaurant Baz had taken him to, Yarik watched a trio of waiters lay dishes on the table: olives and pickles and cucumbers sliced thin as parchment; tiny eggs sprinkled with saffron; a flower of golden pastries ringed around a crimson dipping sauce; a pyramid of rice bejeweled with semolinas; heat-wizened pepper skins stuffed with meat; bread strewn with blackened sesames, steamy with the scent of butter. It all smelled of butter. And mint and lamb and fennel and cinnamon. And over everything the chef had scattered gems: some sort of small crimson fruit seed, bright as a rain of rubies showered all across the table.

  Taking in the spread, raising the glass the billionaire had filled, Yarik said the only thing he could: “Thank you.” He used the formal word—“blagodaryu”—and looked the man in the eyes, and added, “Baz.”

  There came the crow’s feet wrinkling. “It’s nothing,” Bazarov said. “What would my mother think if I put you back on the plane without even filling your belly?”

  “I don’t mean for the meal.”

  The wrinkles deepened. Bazarov lifted his glass. “To life,” he said.

  The drink tasted like some fruit Yarik had never had and he took a second sip before he set it down. “Not just for my life,” he said. “But for my brother’s.”

  Bazarov tore a hunk from the loaf, swiped at a plate of earth-colored paste, spoke through his chewing: “Well, I guess I’m not Chernitsky. I don’t believe anybody is truly good or bad. It’s the things that we do that are good or bad. And we all do both. The key”—he cleaned his fingers with his napkin—“is knowing when to do which.”

  “You’ve done a lot of good things for me,” Yarik said. He had finished half his glass already, but he took another sip.

  “You like it?” Bazarov asked.

  “And I don’t think there’s even any vodka in it.”

  “No, no alcohol.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pomegranate.” Bazarov reached into a dish on the table, plucked one of the scattered rubies, held it out in his fingers. Yarik took it—in the light of the table lamp the fruit was translucent, luminous as a tiny incandescent bulb—and slipped it between his lips. “Not bad, huh?”

  He nodded, chewing, reached to a dish and picked out another.

  “Careful,” Bazarov plucked one for himself, “the seeds can hurt your teeth.” He popped it in his mouth, chewed, said, “Hm,” as if appreciating the taste anew again. Then he asked Yarik, “Do you want to know the truth?”

  Yarik let the pomegranate seed sit against his teeth.

  “You asked, before, what my business partners wanted you to do.” Bazarov reached for a stuffed pepper, grinned, said, “Not, I assure you, what you did,” and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.

  Swallowing the seed, Yarik watched the man chew, waited.

  “The truth,” Bazarov said, when he’d finally gotten the pepper down, “is that I didn’t bring you here to do anything. I brought you here to watch. Did you?”

  “Watch?”

  “Watch.” Bazarov stared at Yarik staring at him. “What did you see?”

  “Under the tent?”

  “If I was watching”—Bazarov shrugged—“that’s probably where I would look.”

  “I don’t know what you want me—”

  “I want to know what you saw. Who you saw.”

  “I don’t know who was who,” Yarik said. “I don’t remember their names. I don’t know—”

  “Whose names?”

  “Them.”

  “Them?”

  “The businessmen.”

  “You saw businessmen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know,” Yarik said. “I saw their bodyguards—”

  “And?”

  “And you.”

  Bazarov sat back. “Me?” he said. He plucked a dumpling off a plate, dipped it in a purple sauce, and asked, “What was I doing?”

  Yarik picked his napkin off his lap. He held it in his hands. “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Yaroslav Lvovich,” Bazarov said, “do I not have the right to ask you a simple question?”

  “Mr. Bazarov—”

  “Baz.”

  “Baz—”

  “Do I not have the right to ask you any fucking thing I want?”

  Yarik stopped twisting at the napkin. He put it down on the table. “I already thanked you for protecting my brother. I thought I already—”

  “Oh!” Bazarov cut him off. “That’s what I was doing. I was protecting your brother.”

  “And me,” Yarik said.

  “And you.” He shook his head, as if at the wonder of it. “I bet that wasn’t easy. Did it look easy?”

  “No.”

  “I bet,” Bazarov said, “there were times it wasn’t even easy to tell that that’s what I was doing. I bet there were times when you couldn’t even tell if I was doing something good or something bad. From your viewpoint,” he said, “from what you saw, did it look like I was doing something good or bad?”

  “Good,” Yarik said.

  “That’s what it looked like?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “It was good.”

  “For who?”

  “Me,” Yarik said. “And my brother.”

  “Huh,” Bazarov said. “Now why would I do that?”

  “Because,” Yarik said, “you know when it’s the right time to do a good thing.”

  Bazarov grinned, lifted his shoulders a little. “Or a bad one,” he said and, turning towards the waiters emerging from the kitchen, “ah, here comes the main course.”

  He winked when he said it. And all the while that the waiters laid out the dishes, the baked lamb and grilled fish, ground spices and hot fat and the sweet sharp smell of onions fried, Yarik didn’t once look down at the table. He kept his eyes on the man across from him. The man who, when the waiters were gone again, leaned in a little closer, nothing playful about his face at all.

  “Cossack,” Bazarov said, “I have something good that you can do for me.” He selected a skewer and clinked the metal tip on Yarik’s plate and with his knife started sliding pieces of charred sturgeon off. “This strike won’t last long,” he said. “In a few weeks those people will flood back to work. They’ll ask for more hours. The Oranzheria will be repaired. Its expansion will begin again. And with the other potential bui
ld-sites watching from all across the country, I’ll push it outward at twice the pace. Let those other cities drool. Let their mayors beg for us to set up for them that kind of revenue. Let the investors break down the goddamn doors.” He popped off the last piece of sturgeon. “I won’t let anything get in the way of that.” He set the skewer aside and dipped a ladle into a yellow stew, dished out on Yarik’s plate onions and tomatoes, lamb on the bone. He made a small sound in his nose, shook his head a little. “I didn’t mean to say those people,” he told Yarik. “I’m sorry.” He looked up through the steam rising off the stew. “They’re your people, of course. You’re still one of them. After all, that’s the whole point of the publicity campaign. Except, the other point is that you’re rising above them, out of them. That must be a tricky place to inhabit.” He lowered the ladle towards Yarik’s plate. “You aren’t going to eat?”

  Yarik picked up his fork, his knife. Across the table, Bazarov filled his own plate.

  “As you’ve probably guessed,” Bazarov said, “I’ve known your history from the start. Just as, from the start, we’ve both known another history: that of the land on which the Oranzheria is built. A history in which a small minority of former kolkhozniki have tried to play too big a roll. In Turgenev’s words, ‘The Russian peasant will have God himself for breakfast.’” He tore a turnover in half, bits of meat and onion spilling out. “In my words”—he put one half on Yarik’s plate—“those are some seriously stubborn sonsofbitches. And for too long they’ve kept out of my hands a swatch of land, not huge, but smack in the way of . . .” He wiped his fingers on his napkin, grinned at Yarik. “But now you’re starting to understand what I need you to do.” He took a bite of the sturgeon, hummed with pleasure. “You look skeptical.” He pointed with his fork. “Try more of the fish.” He laughed. “You’re thinking, why can’t I just leave that little swatch alone. Could I not still have my fairly luxurious car? Could I not still fly a friend to Moscow for a day just to take him out to supper? Could I not eat a delicious shashlik of sturgeon every meal, if I wanted, and I might, because you have to admit this is really fucking good? But you already know the answer. Because I’m a successful person, and nobody becomes successful thinking like that.

  “Maybe, though, you’re thinking I could just build the Oranzheria right over it. Leave a little preserve. A kind of game park for old stubborn kolkhozniki. Maybe it could even be a tourist draw. Like one of those nostalgic outdoor museums, an ode to the old days, a real Russian mir with real Russian . . .” And with a shout he broke out into the old folk song—“Kalinka, kalinka, kalinka moya, v’sadu yagoda malinka, malinka moya!”—blasting at the top of his voice so everyone in the restaurant turned to look. “In the middle of the glass.” He sat chuckling, shaking his head. “Frozen like some bug in amber.” Lifting the bottle of pomegranate drink, he tipped it towards Yarik’s glass, saw Yarik hadn’t touched it, poured his own full. “Aside from the obvious impracticalities,” he said, “ask yourself this: what kind of message would that send to the other farmers farther north whose land I haven’t yet bought? Or to the ones outside Nizhnevartovsk and Salekhard and Lensk? Because I assure you, there are stubborn old sonsofabitches everywhere. But mostly,” he said, “what kind of a lesson would that be for the next generation, the people who are going to build this country up or let it sink, keep it on the track that we—me, the men you saw today—started it on twenty years ago, or twist it back towards the past, what kind of lesson would that be to the keepers of the flame, the ones who are like I was when I was starting out, the people, Yaroslav Lvovich, like you.” He took another bite of fish, paused midchew. “Oh,” he said, through his mouthful, “which reminds me,” and he turned and lifted a hand. The maître d’ looked up like he’d been waiting for just that motion. Bazarov nodded to him. The man disappeared.

  While Yarik watched him go, Bazarov lifted a tureen of plum-colored sauce and leaned over the table and poured a stream of it over Yarik’s fish. “Try it with this.” He put the tureen down with a clank. “At least eat a few bites. You’re being rude.”

  But by the time Yarik had picked his knife and fork back up, the maître d’ had reappeared. In his wake one of Bazarov’s black-suited men carried a leather bag as old and worn as it was strange: two twin pouches covered in heavy flaps, bound by a band slung over the man’s shoulder, one knocking at his chest, the other at his back. From one pouch a long hole-punched strip dangled like a belt, from the other, the buckle. The man stopped. The buckle clanked against the tabletop. Tooled into the leather of the bag closest to him, Yarik saw four words, two he recognized—UNITED STATES—and two he didn’t—POSTAL SERVICE. Then the man shrugged the thing off his shoulder, deposited it in Yarik’s lap, and left.

  “Open it,” Bazarov said, as if it were wrapped in a bow.

  But Yarik just sat there, the heavy weight on his legs, the smell of old leather mixing with the scents of the food. “How much is it?” he said.

  “Open it.” This time it wasn’t a request.

  Inside there must have been enough to pay off the families of four or five dead guards, maybe enough to buy the restaurant they were sitting in. He shut the flap.

  “The sturgeon,” Bazarov said, and when he saw that Yarik couldn’t eat it with the bag piled on his lap, got up and came around the table and, setting the bag on the chair between them, leaned down, took Yarik’s fork and knife, started cutting up his fish. He cut it into bite-size pieces, talking close in Yarik’s ear. “Next time, when all this is over, and you’ve done your good thing for me, we’ll eat something even better than this. Just wait till your first taste of roast boar. Wait till you pick your bullet out and put it on your plate.” Yarik could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Do you remember,” Bazarov said, “a while ago, back when we were first getting to know each other, we discussed the idea of opportunity. Seeing it. Taking it.”

  Yarik didn’t shake his head, or nod, or anything.

  “Friedman,” Bazarov prompted. “Khodorkovsky.”

  “I remember.”

  “You remember Mizin? Yuri Mizin? No?” Yarik felt the warm breath of the word on the side of his face. “No one does.” Bazarov paused in his cutting. “Though back in ’92? Privatization? The state handing out shares to the old Soviet directors, workers . . . It was Mizin who saw how to take it: the geologias in the north where big gas was trying to expand, the shares held by the workers there. Goes up, tries to gain their trust, get them to vote the Red Direktors out, his directors in, and he might have, too, if he hadn’t found he liked the people so damn much.” With the knife he scraped a chunk of fish off of the fork. “Because when sweet talking wasn’t enough, when he would have had to push a little harder—cut someone up, break someone’s hand—he balked. Couldn’t do it. So?” Bazarov set the fork and knife down with a clank. “The Red Direktors stayed on, the geologias stuck in their Soviet ways, outdated, corrupt, until they folded, and the workers lost their jobs, and a year later the second most common cause of death was drunkards freezing on the streets. The first most common was starvation. Suicide?” He picked the fork back up. “It barely came in third. And what about Mizin?” He shrugged. “Who cares?” Bazarov speared a piece of fish and held the fork for Yarik to take it. “He’s not even why I’m telling you this now.”

  He left Yarik holding the fork and went back around the table and pulled out his chair. “I’m more interested,” he said, sitting, “in what you think.” He opened his palms. “What do you think? Was what Mizin did a good thing or a bad thing? Was what seemed a good thing a good thing in the end? Or would more good have come from the thing that might have seemed at first to be bad? What do you think, Cossack?”

  One by one Yarik speared pieces of food, the tines scraping against the plate, until his fork was stacked thick. Then he set it down. “How much is in there?” he said.

  Bazarov smiled. “In that bag?”

  “Is there enough to buy Kartashkin’s farm?”

&
nbsp; “No,” he said, his laugh a quiet accompaniment to the small smile. “That’s only half of what the stubborn sonofabitch thinks he’s going to get for it. And he’s probably right. Which is why, even if he demands twenty million roubles from you, you’re going to say OK. And he’s going to trust you. Because you’ll have a quarter of it in cash. And a letter from me promising the other three-quarters as soon as he sells the land to you. And you sign it over to me.”

  “Why a quarter?”

  “Because,” Bazarov said, “that’s what’s in one of those pouches. The other is filled with another five million roubles for you.” He raised his hand, signaled in the air for the check. “Of course,” he said, “that’s only if you decide you want to do it.” He tongued at something in his mouth, then opened his jaws as wide as he could and, lips stretched, teeth showing, dug with his fingers at whatever was stuck. When he got it, he yanked it out and wiped it on his napkin and told Yarik there were other solutions, of course, that he could always use on the farmers who were holding out, the sort of tactics Mizin hadn’t had the stomach for, the sort of thing the businessmen they met with that afternoon had been talking about. After all, he said, Yarik and he both knew that half of what he’d spouted back there in that tent had been bullshit. There were plenty of things, he said, that the Consortium could do to Dima, and plenty of ways to do them, that would bring the workers back to the Oranzheria just as fast. “Eat up,” he said. “We have to get you back on the plane.”

  But Yarik couldn’t touch the fork. All across the table, the meat had gone lukewarm, the grease congealed, the smells settled into the cloth like mold. In his stomach he could feel everything he’d eaten sitting there, could taste it on the lining of his throat, and looking across the table at Bazarov, at his sated eyes and full cheeks and small dark slick of something stuck in the hairs of his goatee, all he could think was how hungry his brother must be.