Sorokin, Vladimir - Day of the Oprichnik

“What is your desired destination, Mr. Oprichnik, sir?” she asks.

“Orenburg,” I answer. “First class.”

“Your airplane departs in twenty-one minutes. The cost of the ticket is twelve rubles. Duration of the flight is fifty minutes. How would you prefer to pay?”

“In cash.”

Nowadays we always pay for everything with genuine coins.

“With which kind?”

“The second mintage.”

“Wonderful.” She fills in the ticket, stirring the air with her sparkling gloves.

I hand over the money: a gold ten-ruble piece with His Majesty’s noble profile, and two rubles. They disappear into the frosted glass wall.

“This way, please,” she says, directing me toward the first-class waiting room with a half-bow.

I enter. A man in a white papakha hat and a white Cossack uniform takes my outer clothes with a low bow. I hand him the black caftan and hat. In the spacious first-class lounge there aren’t many travelers: two richly dressed Cossack families, four quiet Europeans, an old Chinese man with a small boy, a noble with three servants, some woman traveling alone, and two loud, tipsy merchants. And all of them, with the exception of the woman and the Chinese, are eating something. The tavern is good. I know, I’ve eaten here a number of times. And after golden sterlets you always feel like having a bite. I sit down at a table and immediately a transparent waiter appears, as though he’d come right out of Gogol’s immortal pages—plump cheeks, red lips, crimped hair, a smile:

“What, may I inquire, is your desire, sir?”

“My desire, friend, is drink, appetizers, and a light meal.”

“We have rye vodka with gold or silver sand, Shanghai sturgeon caviar, Taiwanese smoked fillet of sturgeon, marinated milk mushrooms in sour cream, jellied beef aspic, Moscow perch in aspic, Guangdong ham.”

“Give me the silver rye, mushrooms in sour cream, and the jellied beef. And what do you have to eat?”

“A nice sterlet soup, Moscow borsht, duck with turnip, rabbit in noodles, charcoal-grilled trout, grilled beef with potatoes.”

“The fish soup. And a glass of sweet kvass.”

“Thank you kindly.”

The transparent disappears. You could talk about anything at all with him, even about Saturn’s moons. His memory is basically boundless. Once, when I was in my cups, I asked the local transparent the formula for viviparous fibers. He told me. And went on to describe the technical production process in great detail. Our Batya, when he’s had a bit to drink, has one question he likes to ask the transparent : “How much time remains until the sun explodes?” They answer precisely within a year…But now—there’s no time for boldness, and besides, I’m hungry.

The order immediately arises from the table. That’s the kind of handy tables they have here. They always give you a carafe of vodka. I drink a shot, take a bite of marinated mushrooms in sour cream. Humankind has yet to invent any better zakuska . Even Nanny’s half-sour pickles can’t hold a candle to this. I consume an excellent piece of jellied beef aspic with mustard, drink the glass of sweet kvass in one gulp, and set to work on the fish soup. You must always eat it slowly. I look around. The merchants are polishing off their second carafe, jabbering on about some “third-level magnetic tape sorter” and 100-horsepower paracletes they bought in Moscow. The Europeans talk quietly in English. The Cossacks mumble in their own language, wolfing pastries and washing them down with tea. The Chinese man and boy chew on something of their own from a bag. The lady smokes aloofly. Finishing the soup, I order a cup of Turkish coffee, pull out my cigarettes, and light up. I put in a call to our guys on the Road: I need to get up to speed. Potrokha’s face appears. I switch the mobilov to secret conversation mode. Potrokha rattles off the main points:

“Twelve trailers; ‘High Fashion’ ‘ Shanghai-Tirana.’ We put a little fly in their ointment, stopped them right after the gates, drove them straightaway onto the sample clarifier, but the insurance guys dug in their heels—they were paid by the old docket, they don’t want to cook up a new contract. We lean on them through the chamber, but the head honcho says they have their own interests with those merchants, there’s a wet petition; we go back to customs, but they’re getting a piece of the action, too, the chief closes the case, and the clerk turns . The upshot—they’ll let them go in two hours.”

“Got it.” I start thinking.

In these kinds of affairs you need to be a good chess player, to think ahead. This case isn’t simple, but it’s clear. Since the Customs Department clerk turned , they must have a corridor with clout , and they renewed the contract right after the frontier post. So that means they went through the Kazakhs clean . It’s obvious: customs closed down so they could smile at the western gates. They’ll hand in the second contract, pay in white, then they’ll tear up the insurance contract, and the Western clerks will draw up a four-hour report. Then they’ll hide the mole, sign a clean contract—and twelve trailers of “High Fashion” will sail off to the Albanian city of Tirana. And customs will get the better of us again.

I think. Potrokha waits.

“Here you go, man. Take the cardiac , made a deal with the clerk about a white discussion, take the greased junior clerk to the meeting, and get your physicians in place. Do you guys have a rotten contract with you?”

“Of course. What time should I set the meeting?”

I look at my watch:

“In an hour and a half.”

“You got it.”

“And tell the clerk that I have it .”

“Understood.”

I put away the mobilov. I put out my cigarette. The plane is already boarding. I place my palm on the table, thank the transparent for the meal, and walk down a delicate pink hallway that smells like blossoming acacia into the airplane. It’s not big, but it’s comfortable—a Boeing-Itsendi 797. Not surprisingly, there are signs in Chinese everywhere. He who builds the Boeings orders the music. I enter the first-class cabin and sit down. Other than me there are three people in first class—the old Chinese man with the boy, and that lone woman. All three of the Russian newspapers are available: Rus , Kommersant , and Vozrozhdenie . I already know all the news and don’t feel like reading about it on paper .

The plane takes off.

I ask for tea, and order an old movie: Striped Passage . On business trips I always watch old comedies; just a habit. This one’s a good little flick, cheery, even though it’s Soviet. You watch lions and tigers being transported on a ship; they break out of their cages and scare people. And you start thinking—those were Russian people living back then, during the Red Troubles. And they really weren’t all that different from us. Except that almost all of them were atheists.

I take a look to see what the others are watching: the Chinese— River Factories , that makes sense; but the lady…oh-ho, now that’s interesting— The Great Russian Wall . I would never have said by her looks that she’d like that sort of film. The Great Russian Wall …It was made about ten years ago by our great director Fyodor Baldev, nicknamed “Fyodor-the-Bare-Who-Ate-the-Bear.” The most important movie in the history of Russia’s Revival. The film is about the plot hatched by the Ambassadorial Department and the Duma, the construction of the Western Wall, and His Majesty’s battle; about the first oprichniks, heroic Valuya and Zveroga, who perished at the dacha of the traitorous minister. The whole affair went down in Russian history as the plan to “Saw and Sell.” What a hullabaloo that film caused, how many arguments, how many questions and answers! How many cars and faces were bashed in because of it! The actor who played His Majesty entered a monastery afterward. I haven’t watched it for a very, very long time. But I remember it by heart. For the oprichniks it’s a kind of textbook.