Vodka

by Boris Starling

  Irk had never been much of a climber, but if a legless man could get up there, so could he. He hopped onto the plinth, stood on a stack of Yest Vykhod magazines—the homeless sold them on Moscow streets—to get some height, and then launched himself up the same route Rodion had taken. Sweating, breathless and with his shins smarting from being bashed against the girl’s substantial calf, he flopped through the service opening and inside the statue.

  It was surprisingly spacious. Most of the interior had been hollowed out. By the light of three paraffin lamps on the floor, Irk saw half a dozen children, maybe more, curved against the swells of the girl’s stomach. They regarded Irk silently. It was a moment before he spotted Rodion in the shadows. He was the same height as the children, of course, and next to them his face looked absurdly old, as though he were the victim of some dreadful aging disease.

  Rodion was sitting—did he sit, could one sit on stumps?—next to a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve. The boy’s eyes were lavishly soulful, reined in by cool, appraising lids.

  “This is who you saw,” Rodion said.

  “What’s his name?”

  “No names,” the boy said. He reached inside his torn shirt and scratched at his armpit—fleas.

  “How do you know him?” Irk asked Rodion.

  “Been in and out of the orphanage.” Rodion gestured around him. “Like most of them.”

  “What’s his name?” The boy nodded toward Irk. “Looks like a cop to me. Rodya, what the hell are you doing?” He spoke fast through full, girlish lips. “You know I’m hiding from the cops. That’s why I came here, to turn into a dot.”

  “His name’s Juku,” Rodion said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “He’s a cop.”

  “Investigator,” Irk said.

  “He doesn’t care what you’ve done,” Rodion said. “He wants to know about the girl.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s dead,” Irk said. The boy wiped a strand of hair from in front of his eyes and shrugged. Irk was incredulous. “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “You’re here, you’re gone. The dead are happier dead. They don’t miss much, poor devils.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Nelli.”

  “Nelli what?”

  The boy shrugged: no idea.

  “You seen any Chechens around here?” Irk asked.

  The others stirred, muttered. Their voices were unbroken, and their sleeves extended six inches beyond their fingertips. The Chechens; always the Chechens.

  “You come to take over their turf, copper? That it? It doesn’t matter, does it? Doesn’t matter who runs things, as long as someone’s fucking the little people, yes?”

  “The Chechens—would you recognize any of them?”

  “Those coons? They all look the same.”

  Twelve years old and already a racist; the boy would make a fine Russian man, Irk thought, if he made it that far. “Did Nelli stay here often?”

  “Sometimes. We move around. You see someone when you see them.” He rubbed at his eyes. “That’s enough, Investigator. You can leave us alone now.”

  Rodion hugged the boy, and kissed a couple of the other children on both cheeks, Russian-style, as he headed back toward Irk. They all responded enthusiastically. Irk was struck by how well the children reacted to Rodion. Perhaps it was because he was so small, or because they were less quick than adults to judge on appearances.

  Rodion and Irk climbed down the girl’s leg onto the plinth, and from there to the ground. On the far side of Prospekt Mira, tiny lights glittered around the Kosmos Hotel’s horseshoe outline.

  “They like you,” Irk said.

  “As much as they like anyone. They’re asphalt flowers, those kids. They know the world doesn’t really care about them, Juku. If they don’t grab something from life themselves, no one’s going to do it for them. Most of them aren’t even afraid of your lot. They know they can’t be punished until they’re fourteen.”

  “That boy was afraid. He didn’t want me there.”

  “He’s sixteen, that’s why.”

  “Impossible. He looks about twelve.”

  Rodion shrugged. “No one looks their age in Russia.”

  A motorbike roared past them, its exhaust unmuffled and reverberating. Irk winced and put his hands to his ears, too late to miss Rodion’s yelp. When Irk looked across, he saw that Rodion was panting, quick, sweaty, heaving breaths.

  “What’s wrong?” Irk said. “What’s wrong, Rodya? Calm down, old man, it’s only a motorbike.”

  Rodion rubbed his eyes; Irk heard his breathing begin to slow. “Sorry,” Rodion said. “Sorry.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  Rodion looked askance at him. When he answered, his voice was small. “A machine gun.”

  “From Afghanistan?”

  “You never really come home. War’s not a film clip, you can’t tear it from your memory.”

  Even the magnificence of the Komsomolskaya Station failed to lift Irk’s mood. Some of Moscow’s metro stations are more like ballrooms or museums than subway interchanges. Komsomolskaya is one of the finest, a sumptuous palace that exudes heroic triumphalism. The lower hall in particular is monumental, its vaulted ceiling held aloft by hundreds of columns. All the evening commuters wrapped up against the elements seemed unsuitably dressed; they should surely have been gliding through the marbled chamber to the strains of Rachmaninov, women swathed in rustling silk and men in tailcoats under the chandeliers. Irk was usually prone to such flights of romantic fancy, but today they flitted from his mind. All he registered were the negatives, the panels where Beria, Stalin and Khrushchev had once inspired the masses before they were airbrushed from history and the station alike.

  Svetlana was in a strange mood: half glee, half sadness, sometimes both at once.

  “Dad died today,” Rodion said bitterly. “It’s nothing to celebrate.”

  “Six years ago,” Svetlana said, using her pestle to mash some ingredients to pulp in the base of a mortar. “Six years, this very day—a Monday, just as it is today. Stupid bastard went out drinking all weekend and didn’t stop till he fell over. Better off without him, Juku, honestly I am.”

  “Don’t say that,” Rodion said.

  “I did everything for him—made his breakfast, washed his dishes, cleaned his laundry, bought his groceries, packed Rodya off to school or day care, everything he thought wasn’t a man’s job. Just what was a man’s job wasn’t altogether clear—except in bed, of course, and that happened less and less as he got more and more drunk.”

  “You’re bloody lucky he bothered at all, Ma.”

  “You should be grateful. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Sveta tipped the mortar’s contents into a bowl. When she spilled some on the floor, she grabbed a broom from the corner and swept it up. “On his days off, he’d stay in bed till late. When he did deign to get up, he’d do nothing but read the paper and watch television. Nothing but a waste of space. A true knight of the sofa. Don’t get me wrong—he wasn’t a violent drunk, he’d just pass out. And he wasn’t a bad father to Rodya, once he’d grown up a bit. Men aren’t interested in kids until they’re about two, you know that? Before then, they’re simply alien things, lumps of flesh. Men can’t deal with that. My friends envied me, can you believe it? He didn’t beat me up, didn’t beat Rodya up, got paid more than even he could drink away. They told me I was lucky.”

  Praising someone by virtue of what they weren’t rather than what they were; how Russian.

  “None of this applies to you, of course. You’re Estonian, a civilized chap. You must have all the Moscow matrons running after you!” She stroked Irk’s cheek. “Here, look in the mirror. What a handsome man.”

  “Yes,” Irk said, but what he saw was a dignified man aching with exhaustion, too tired to see an exit, too proud to take one.

  51

  Tuesday, February 11, 1992

  Karkadann had sent a messa
ge to Lev: Give in, and it stops.

  Lev understood both the message and what lay behind it. Karkadann had assumed that Ozers and Butuzov had been about to kill his family—they hadn’t been, of course, but that’s how Chechens saw Russians and vice versa—so he had killed them himself. It had been his choice: quicker that way, perhaps less painful. His choice, and it had destroyed him, shredding the last vestiges of his humanity.

  Lev understood all this, but he couldn’t tell Karkadann, because he didn’t know where to find him. Invisible, Karkadann was behind everything: he was rumor, legend, curse, terror incarnate.

  Channel Two was running vox pops between programs, people too dissimilar to have been randomly selected telling the camera how much they disliked privatization. Gosha, twenty-four, was first up. “If the state is giving it away,” he said, “it can’t be worth having.”

  Alice wanted to be with Lev, to help and support him while he tried to do the right thing over the child killings, but the auction was getting nearer by the day and she had too much to do as it was. Galina had asked her to come to the exhibition complex on Krasnaya Presnya, a few blocks from the zoo in western Moscow, where Bob had rented one of the conference halls for the auction. Alice was needed to translate as much as supervise; Bob’s thick Texan accent was proving something of a handful for the staff.

  At first glance, Galina had been as good as her word. She’d found one hundred and fifty young people. When Alice looked closer, she saw combat trousers, stubbled chins, nose studs and earrings—hardly the average business crowd. Some of them were reminiscing about defending the White House during the August coup.

  “Look at this bunch,” said Bob. “I’ve seen smarter people in precinct holding rooms.”

  “They’re Galya’s friends, and I trust her. We haven’t got time to give them handwriting tests and polygraphs, Bob. They’ll be presentable enough on the day, that’s the important thing.”

  “I’ll beat a few of them like they were rented mules, that’ll knock them into shape. Jesus, Alice, how did I let you talk me into this?” Bob cleared his throat and turned to face the room. “Listen up.”

  There was no reaction; everyone just carried on with what they were doing. Bob turned to Alice and gestured at his hands, his face; the color of his skin. “Why don’t we just hand out bananas so they can throw them at me? No, no, don’t say it: because there’s no fresh fruit in this shithole of a city, that’s why.” He turned back to face the room. “Hello? We’re burning daylight here. Can we please get on with it?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, the chatter subsided as the volunteers settled back in their chairs and waited for him to begin.

  “Thank you.” His voice dripped with exasperated sarcasm. “This is how we’re going to divide y’all, so pay attention and work out which category you think you’re best suited to. We need forty staff at the doors, to make bidders feel welcome and answer any questions they might have. Fifty tellers to take bids, verify they’re legit, give bidders a receipt and enter all the details on tally forms.” He was writing the numbers on a whiteboard as he went along, as though the volunteers were kindergarten pupils. “Twenty-five controllers, to check the applications have been filled in correctly. Ten counters, who’ll split the paperwork: applications go to the five sorters, tally forms to the two computer operators. Then we’ve got a first aid person, a secretary, a translator, and fifteen floaters to fill in as and where you’re needed.”

  Yarik, forty-five, said: “I buy vouchers off some people and resell them to others. Doing this, I make as much money in a day as I do at work in a month. I’ve a good brain, but I have to use it to survive—there’s nothing left over for me to contribute to society. I could be working in a factory or an institute.”

  Bob took the volunteers through the principles of both types of bidding, passive and active. Passive bidders had to accept the strike price—the price reached at the end of the auction—but they were guaranteed at least one share. Active bidders would nominate a price at which they were prepared to buy a certain number of shares per voucher. Since active bidding would involve second-guessing an entirely unknown market, it was assumed that the majority of bids would be passive. Bob demonstrated several likely scenarios with a theoretical model of one thousand shares in various proportions of passive and active bids, the latter on a sliding scale from one share through five per voucher.

  The strike price was to be calculated on the basis of three principles: at least one share for every passive bid; any remaining shares to be sold to active bidders bidding above the strike price; and no splitting of shares. As the number of remaining shares was gradually eaten away, the ratio of shares per voucher would decrease toward or all the way to its bottom limit—one. All this raised the possibility that a large investor would come in late on auction day and lower the strike price dramatically by gobbling up the remaining shares in one go. Not that it made much difference: vouchers were free and inflation rampant, so the shares would be virtually worthless whatever the strike price. It was going to be a giveaway.

  “I’m too old to understand the whole business,” said fifty-one-year-old Nellya. “I’d much rather the government had given me a new pair of shoes.”

  “Do you mind if I have a word with them, Bob?” Alice said.

  “Be my guest.”

  Alice stood up and pointed to a man in the front row. “You, with the goatee beard. What are the three principles behind calculating the strike price?”

  He looked blank. “Er … passive bidders get a … no, I mean active shares…” and trailed off. The others laughed; this was schoolroom stuff. Alice picked on the girl with the loudest laugh.

  “OK, clever clogs, what’s the bottom limit of the ratio of shares to vouchers?”

  “There isn’t one?”

  “There is one, and it’s one. Who in fuck do you people think you are? I looked around the room when Bob was explaining how the auction’s gonna work, and I could count on one hand the number of you writing anything down. That’s not right. If you don’t want to do this, then fuck off and we’ll find someone else—there are thousands of people out there who’d kill to be here, in your shoes. We’ll pay you, and pay you well, depending on your performance. But in return, we expect you to turn up on time and work until you’ve finished your tasks for the day, whether that’s at five in the afternoon or five in the morning. Whatever you’ve been used to before, understand this: I don’t care. Problems are yours to sort out, not mine. I don’t want to hear bleating about the boiler not working or your second cousin who’s in the hospital. From now on, these are the rules: one mistake, official warning; two mistakes, you’re out.”

  They were cowed and silent. They hadn’t expected a Western banker to use Bolshevik fear tactics. When Alice looked at Galina, Galina looked at the floor.

  “It’s just another way for the government to deceive people,” said Stopya, sixty-three.

  Irk had spent all day coming up against walls of Mafia silence and evasion, and was as drained of color as the small victims of the monster he hunted. He felt he existed only in chiaroscuro.

  When he saw Svetlana lying on her stove—“Best way to keep warm, Juku,” she said—he had a sudden image of her as Baba Yaga, the hideous old witch with a huge distorted nose and long teeth. Rumored to be the devil’s own grandmother, she too would lie on stoves to keep warm. She was also said to live in a forest hut that stood on chicken legs, like the ones Svetlana had served last month; to eat those who failed to fulfill their part of an agreement, just as Svetlana had threatened Irk the very first time they’d met; and to travel in a giant mortar that she drove at high speed across the forest floor, steering with the pestle in her right hand and sweeping away all traces of her progress with a broom in her left, just as Svetlana had mashed up the ingredients and then swept them away yesterday.

  Irk shook his head to clear the images. This was absurd. Sveta was his friend: a kindly, bustling, lonely woman for whom life had been hard. She was no
more a fiend than he was. It must be his exhaustion, making him think like this. He wanted nothing more than to sleep.

  52

  Wednesday, February 12, 1992

  Alice woke some hours after the vodka had knocked her out; long enough for it to drag her back to the surface for a few hours’ restlessness before putting her under again before dawn. Perhaps she’d have found it endearing or exciting a month ago, when everything was new and exhilarating, but now it was simply tiresome, another hassle she didn’t need. Everything suddenly seemed annoying and difficult. The shine had come off, that was for sure. Alice could speak the language, but she couldn’t yet understand how people lived. So far from home and so long gone, she felt she’d already lost a part of her identity without having replaced it with anything. Maybe she never would. What was Lev: the avenue to a new life, or the architect of her destruction?

  Alice marked time until lunch, knowing what she had to do and dreading the moment when she had to do it. At twelve-thirty, unable to stand the waiting any longer, she virtually yanked Galina from her chair and took her downstairs, out into air so cold they could hardly don enough layers, and along the street to a small café that took dollars only and served one dish a day, no menu. Today was an unspecified variation on beef. Alice took one look and ordered a vodka to go with it.

  They found half a table, next to a couple of builders who winked at them as they sat down. Galina lifted one leg above the table and pinched at the suede of her trousers. “You like?”

  “Very much.”

  “Good, because they cost me a fortune. Much more than I can afford, but I saw these in the shop, they were just so beautiful, and …”

  Alice understood, all too well. That’s the way things are in Russia; spending money on luxuries rather than necessities is part of what keeps people human. Russians are the biggest dreamers in the world, and the maddest consumers, even though—or especially because—they can’t afford to be. This month’s edition of Russian Vogue carried a letter from a pediatrician in Omsk; with two children to support, she didn’t have the money for a single item featured in the magazine—in fact, she had to save up even to buy Vogue—but for the four hours she spent reading it cover to cover, every word, masthead and disclaimers included, she was in heaven.