Polina Dashkova - Madness Treads Lightly

Veniamin Volkov had never succumbed to the temptation of fast, easy money. Everyone else did business for the present, with no thought for the future. For everyone else, the decision was easy: better a thousand right now than a million next week. When it’s all dirty money, there’s no guarantee you’ll live to the end of the week anyway.

Consequently, Veniamin Productions was the only entertainment company that created genuine stars. To make a star, you have to have quality raw material. Other producers turned shit into candy, sickly-sweet lemon drops that made even the Russian consumer’s teeth crumble and his belly ache. Veniamin Volkov spared neither time nor effort in creating his stars—and he wasn’t afraid of taking risks. He understood that if there were nothing but butts flashing across the television screen, the public would eventually want to see the occasional face.

Standing onstage, arms at their sides, the girls sang some typical garbage, most likely of their own composition, in thin but pleasant voices. He wasn’t really listening. He examined their faces and tried to tell whether he could sense the delicate aura of success.

Success in his business was an unpredictable thing. The public’s taste can’t be calculated using logic, but it can be divined. It just took a special talent. Which Veniamin Volkov liked to think he had. He’d worked long and hard to get to this point, through blood, mud, and mob shoot-outs. He’d stepped over others so many times, he could relax now and enjoy his success.

Smoking, sipping his thick, sweet, creamy coffee, he was annoyed to realize that these girls were just the latest fluff. There wasn’t a whiff of success about them. He might get a decent video out of it if he played on the contrast of types, but to do that he’d have to train them for a long time. They weren’t worth the effort.

“Thanks, that will do,” he interrupted the song, clapping softly.

They broke off in the middle of the beat.

“Veniamin Borisovich, can we sing you one more song?” the blonde suddenly suggested loudly.

“No, that’s enough. I know what I need to know. You can go, girls.”

“Just one verse, please,” the blonde insisted. “Two minutes.”

“All right, go ahead.” He couldn’t be bothered to drive them away, and they clearly weren’t going to leave without singing their verse.

The skinny brunette’s voice was lower and deeper. She started, and then the blonde came in. The ballad by Kim from some 1970s movie was beautiful and sad. But that wasn’t important now.

He lowered his eyelids. It was very pleasant. Something came to him from far away. A campfire on a steep bank, a June morning, the dawn’s delicate fog hanging over the river like torn lace, the dense city park, and a melody:

His heart beat harder. His hands got hot, burning hot. Blood pulsed hotly in his temples.

Two young women, a vivid, plump blonde and a skinny, thoroughbred brunette. A sex kitten and a stray dog.

Soon they would notice how hard he was shaking. Pretty soon he would get up, walk toward the stage, and go up the stairs. His right hand instinctively squeezed his Parker pen with the sharp gold nib. The cap was already off, and the pen lay on his open planner. A very sharp nib.

The girls were carried away with their singing and didn’t notice how red in the face he was, how his right hand was shaking the pen it clutched. Fourteen years ago, to the sounds of this very song, he had forced himself to stand up and quickly escape into the swelling darkness of the city park that transitioned smoothly into taiga.

He stabbed the pad of his thumb on the sharp nib. It pierced his skin deeply, but he felt no pain. His blood mixed with the black ink.

“That’s enough,” he said in a muffled voice, trying to stop his teeth from chattering. “You can go. Leave!”

When they’d left, he walked quickly to the tiny room behind the stage where the dusty, broken-down stage sets from the Pioneer drama club’s shows were stored. Without turning on the light, he locked the door from the inside and stayed there in the dusty darkness, which smelled of old paint, for nearly half an hour.

His secretary glanced cautiously into the empty auditorium, saw the door to the room shut, and tiptoed away. Her boss had quite a few eccentricities.

In the funeral chapel at the Archangel Nicholas Mortuary, there were loud, heartrending sobs. Katya Sinitsyna rushed toward the open casket and kissed her husband’s icy-cold hands.

“Mitya! Dear Mitya! Forgive me!” she cried.

“Hurry it up, please. We have another funeral in this room after this one.” The mortuary employee, a striking redhead in a flawless black suit and white blouse, frowning in irritation, whispered to Olga, who was standing nearby.

A Bach organ fugue poured out of hidden speakers. Olga walked over to Katya, took her by the shoulders, whispered something in her ear, and tried to lead her away from the casket. Two young men, Mitya’s friends, approached to help, but Katya wouldn’t let her husband’s dead fingers go and continued sobbing loudly.

Lena Polyanskaya was standing nearby with Mitya’s eighty-year-old grandmother, Zinaida Lukinichna. Up until that moment the old woman had put on a brave face. But Katya’s sobs were the final blow, and she began sinking, slowly and heavily. Lena barely managed to catch her.

“Zinaida Lukinichna,” she asked her softly. “What is it? Your heart?”

“No, child,” the old woman whispered in reply. “I’m just dizzy.”

Olga had asked Lena to come to the funeral specifically for her grandmother’s sake.

“I’ll be with my parents,” she had explained. “And his wife is probably going to break down. And it’s up to me to organize everything. Please forgive me. I know your Seryozha is leaving for England, but I can’t entrust my grandmother to anyone but you. I’m afraid for her, given her age. And you’ve always had a calming effect on her. She’s always had a soft spot for you.”

“Dear relatives,” the funeral home employee said loudly, glancing at her watch. “Anyone who wishes to say good-bye to the deceased, please do so now.”

Members of the next funeral party were peeking impatiently through the room’s half-open door. Behind them would be others, and others, and so on, from morning till night. A conveyor belt of death.

Lena thought that you have to have a special emotional profile to work with death, with daily, even hourly, grief. She imagined this redheaded woman drinking her morning tea or coffee, putting on makeup, setting out for work, and returning home in the evening. She wondered whether she discussed her day with her family, her husband and children. Did she share her feelings? Did she even have any feelings about her work anymore?

What am I going on about? Lena pulled herself up irritably. A job’s a job. Someone has to do it. There are lots of professions that bring you in constant contact with death and grief. Over and over, my own husband has to go look at dead bodies. Then there are the medical examiners, the ambulance doctors, the paramedics, the gravediggers, and the people who work here, behind the mortuary’s black curtains. What makes this elegant woman any different from an ordinary person, other than the fact that each workday she has to pretend, to depict grief with her face and voice, and to utter perfunctory words of sympathy?