Polina Dashkova: Madness Treads Lightly

“She will.” Lena nodded. “But what’s the point? They already gave her the predictable explanation for it. They can’t even hold his funeral in a church. There are his parents, and his old grandmother, and each of them is wondering why he did it. Each is trying to find a reason and are blaming themselves. Mitya was the youngest, the baby. They loved him and spoiled him. Can you imagine what they’re all going through right now? Olga’s not about to look for the murderer, of course, but still, she needs to know for certain whether he did it or not.”

“She can hire a private detective. She can afford it, after all.”

“She might,” Lena said pensively.

“Veniamin Borisovich, the Butterfly duo is still waiting for you,” his elderly secretary, dressed in a pink wool suit, told him.

“No.” He shook his head. “Tell them to come the day after tomorrow. Even better, Monday at eleven.”

“Veniamin Borisovich, you’ve been putting them off for more than a month. Just take a look at them. They’re pretty girls, I promise.”

Butterfly—the two eighteen-year-old singers Ira and Lera—had in fact been coming for more than a month to audition, but he never had the time or energy for them.

In forty days they’d managed to give his secretary, Inna Evgenievna, everything from big boxes of Mozart chocolates to the latest Chanel perfume. The secretary accepted these offerings with casual benevolence, as if she were doing them a favor. It all vanished immediately into her desk drawers, where it was instantly forgotten.

Only today did it occur to the blonde, Ira, who was sharper and more practical, just to slip three bills—US hundred-dollar bills—in a white envelope into Inna Evgenievna’s jacket pocket.

“Veniamin Borisovich, you do know I have a practiced eye,” his secretary persisted. “They’re unusual girls. Just take a look at them. There’s demand for their type.”

“All right.” He sighed. “Bring me coffee. Have them come in. Only directly to the stage, and warn them there won’t be any lip-syncing.”

“Veniamin Borisovich! What lip-syncing?” Inna Evgenievna took offense on the duo’s behalf. “So far they haven’t done anything but live shows.”

“Age?”

“Eighteen. Both.”

“Where from?”

“Moscow.”

“Fine, call them in. Only get me that coffee quick, and make it strong.”

Auditioning novice performers was the hardest and most thankless part of his job. Every time, sitting in the small auditorium of the district’s former House of Pioneers, he felt like a tired and grubby prospector stubbornly panning ore in search of the smallest flecks of gold. When those rare flecks did come his way, though, they paid him back with interest for the exhaustion and the bad voices and the tired and tiresome tunes.

He’d bought this late eighteenth-century, two-story private home in the very center of Moscow three years ago. He hadn’t scrimped on renovating and furnishing the wooden, almost rotten merchant’s home that had miraculously survived the 1812 fire. Now he had his office, sound studio, and editing room here. Even music video producers sometimes worked here.

The house’s insides were entirely new, and the walls had been rebuilt altogether. Inside, everything gleamed the way the studio and office of a billionaire’s production company should. But there was one room Veniamin Volkov wouldn’t let anyone touch.

In the last two centuries, the largest room in the house had served as a drawing room for the former owners, the Kalashnikovs, Moscow merchants who traded in textiles. In the 1930s, the house became the district House of Pioneers, and the former drawing room had served as its auditorium. Drama and dance clubs had used it right up until the early 1990s.

A varnished, time-dimmed barre ran along the walls, which were bedecked with bugles, banners, and other Pioneer symbols. Two little steps, smoothed over the years by thousands of children’s feet, led to the small plank wall. Behind the stage there was a tiny, windowless room that still contained parts of plywood stage sets.

He wouldn’t allow anything in that room touched. It was here that he did his hardest, most exhausting work.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in another life, fifth-grader and Pioneer Venya Volkov got up on the same kind of wooden stage and sang the Civil War–era song “Far Away, Across the River” to the accompaniment of an aged, out-of-tune piano. That was in the Tobolsk House of Pioneers, not the Moscow one, in a similar old merchant’s home, in an auditorium with bugles and banners covering the oil-painted walls.

For the seven minutes the song lasted, thirty boys and girls in the small hall were listening just to him, looking just at him, plain, skinny, towheaded little Venya.

He was singing for just one little girl, fifth-grader Tanya Kostylyova. He put his heart and soul into that song as he looked at Tanya’s gentle, slightly elongated face, at her slender, defenseless little neck wound round with a red silk tie. At the time, he didn’t understand what those feelings were or what the dense, unbearable fever that filled his whole body would later lead to.

He sang the intensely sad melody perfectly, not garbling a single note. At the time, thirty years ago, he didn’t understand anything about himself, but now he suddenly thought that it would have been better if back then, right on that creaking wooden stage, he’d been struck dead, instantly and painlessly, without finishing the pretty little song. Yes, that would have been better for him and for the slender-necked fifth-grader in the silk tie—and for many, many others.

“Veniamin Borisovich!” his secretary’s voice called sweetly.

She deftly rolled in a tall mahogany serving cart with a big, heavy ceramic mug on it. Venya couldn’t stand small, delicate teacups. He drank his coffee strong and sweet with lots of heavy cream. He liked his coffee and his mug substantial.

Two pretty young things in tight blue jeans were already on the stage. Butterfly. He hadn’t even noticed them come into the room. For a few seconds he scrutinized them silently. They really were no more than eighteen. One was a cropped blonde, a little plump, with soft, heavy breasts under a thin sweater. The other was a skinny brunette with straight, shoulder-length hair. The blonde was definitely sexier, but in a conventional way. The brunette was more interesting. There was something unusual about her, her high forehead, the arrogant slant of her eyes, her slender hands. Yes, you could sense the thoroughbred in her. Inna may have been right. The combination could be interesting—a standard and overt sexuality alongside something else entirely, an unexpected novelty, a thoroughbred.

Frames of possible videos automatically flashed through his head. Have I really lucked out? he thought with cautious excitement, and said, nodding kindly, “Begin, girls. There won’t be any accompaniment or mic. For now. Sing your first song standing still. Just sing. Is that clear?”

They waited silently. This was exactly how he always started an audition. What he cared most about were their faces and their voices. You could always add choreography later. Without dances, accompaniment, or a mic, it was terribly hard to perform the pop junk these boys and girls usually brought him. He knew that alone with the empty, meaningless words, a performer was basically naked and defenseless. You could see all of him.

None of his colleagues, his former competitors, bothered with anything this tedious. They made money not on people who could sing but on people who were anxious to see themselves or their wives, children, or lovers in a professionally produced music video. There were plenty of takers for that. Success didn’t come from the performer but from the money behind him. You could turn a telegraph pole into a household name—given the right amount of money.