Книга - Marilyn Monroe’s Russian Resurrection
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Marilyn Monroes Russian Resurrection
Dmitrii Taganov
Humorous and grotesque thriller. At the dusk of Soviet era in Russia, just before its collapse, the reigning leadership trying to rescue the country decides on cloning the legendary revolutionaries, raising them up abroad and bringing back to revive Communist spirit. Among them, including famous Lenin, was also the charming girl who was given birth by a genetics genius just for fun. This girl was a spitting image of her world-famous prototype, whose genetic material was used, and her name was also Marilyn Monroe. Not all clones survived, but those who returned to their historical motherland years later, were full of energy, but too unconventional to meet the expectations of politicians. Big money, love and bloodshed accompanied Marilyn during visit. When Marilyn was leaving, her luggage included funeral urns with the ashes of her clone-brothers. She parted forever with her new lovers, American diplomat and Russian private investigator, who rescued her life. .
Dmitrii Taganov
Marilyn Monroes Russian Resurrection
Being late
I was waiting for this man for over half an hour. Ive been sitting by the window in a half-empty caf, looking at the yellowing autumn trees, deep-blue skies, eying with great affection my new olive motorbike Harley. That was a wonderful Indian summer in Moscow, Russia, thats called Womens summer here, the last warm and dry good days. So I did not miss a day without my bike, before getting for next half a year, until late in the spring, into my old dusty jeep.
It was quite strange that this man was late the very first day. He asked me to meet him, fixed himself this time of a day and did not turn up. That was my new client, though probably a client. Because I did not say OK yesterday, because the phone call is not enough; moreover he could not state anything clear and comprehensible enough over the phone, and I did not understand his problem. Ive just returned to Moscow from northern woods, after two-week vacation with my fishing gear and mushroom basket, so I was eager to get back to hard work. Thats why I wasnt too choosy as usual, filtering out banal or plainly criminal proposals, and agreed to meet him in this caf.
I earn my bread as a private detective, thats quite a new profession in post-Communist Russia, and I specialize in corporate conflicts. Those are frauds, abuses, thefts, and similar dirt and rows in large corporations that recently went private. Too big money and resulting greed is their common problem, not yet restrained after decades of Communist rule and morale. Though, it always goes with blood, murders, abductions, and similar pus. But money they are craving for, and ready to cut throats each other, bring them at the end nothing but misery, and that happens before my eyes every month. However, the man who called me over the phone yesterday was not of that sort: he was associated with politics and, as I could guess, with big politics ahead of coming elections to Russian parliament Duma. That was something quite new for me, and though I warned him of my area of expertise and complete ignorance of current post-Communist politics, the man insisted, and I decided to see him.
My glass of juice was empty, so I looked at my watch and ordered double portion of ice-cream. Anyway, all my clients happen to live under such a stress that could be late not just half an hour, or forget all about appointment, but probably might also wind up in the hospital with nervous breakdown, so they need some mercy. Hell with that, I decided, Ill wait some more!
The waiter did not yet bring my ice-cream as the cell-phone squeaked in my pocket. I recognized his voice at once.
Nicolas? Sokolov? You hear?
I hear you, yes. Speak louder!
Its Fomin speaking. Too noisy here! Listen, I wont come to you, I cannot, emergencys here. Do you hear me?
I told him I heard him all right. His voice was trembling, breath coming in gasps. I heard also noise in the phone: voices, knocks, raps.
Nicolas, Im sorry! You know there is a dead body beside me! Hey, you hear me? Dead body of employee found just this morning. Police is here, lots of them. I cant come over to you.
I understand, and dont you worry, Ill see you some other time. Im sorry.
No, no, today! You should come here! Right now! You hear me?
I was startled: never did I go to any crime scene with a dead body, not yet having seen the client, or figure out what my job might be.
Come over to you now? Serious? Just to see some corpse?
Yes, now, while the body is still here! Cant you? Please.
What should I unearth for you over there?
The cause of his death. Its very important to us!
To whom?
To the leaders of our party. Please.
OK, Im coming.
I wrote down the address. That was inside the central Bulvarnoe ring, half an hour by bike, the headquarters of their party: Communist party, or more accurately, one of them. There were several just in Moscow, all of them inside Bulvarnoe ring neighboring Kremlin, the tiny hairs of once powerful Communist party of Soviet Union. I left the caf and hopped over my Harley. As I pulled from the parking lot I felt a pleasant tickle inside of me, and I knew what it meant: coming days wont be dull for me.
2.The first Corpse
When I arrived the body was lying on two office tables drown together. Over the body, from the head with ruffled blond hair to the naked pale feet, was dangling a thick electric cable. I recognized this man just glancing at his pale face with half-closed eyes. But not just his face or eyes, but everything here, including this twisted cable, seemed to me an absolutely improbable, a hundred percent dj? vu. Or more precisely, like a hundred-year-old photograph that Ive seen so many times before.
Police investigators just left this place before I came here, and in this ordinary city apartment stayed only employees or, more to the point, this partys head members. When I entered this apartment from the staircase two huge young men at once blocked my way. But they were not professional guards I can easily spot those. These looked like old Soviet style volunteers of militia, druzhinniki, they even had red bands on their sleeves. One of them, apparently taking me for minor party member coming for some routine, declared resolutely but softly that no reception today by Ts-Ka, and I should better call by phone tomorrow. Ts-Ka was for Central Committee of Communist Party, and that was obvious for everybody coming here. I was born and raised under very hard Communist regime in this country where only one party was legal for seventy years, thats why this softly spoken Ts-Ka had effect of electricity on me. The only thing that still ringed funny for me, this once mighty and inaccessible party organ now inhabited such a shabby place and received members and guests so simply. Times have changed, indeed.
In short, I told these two that somebody named Fomin asked me to come here immediately, and then one of them dashed back into the rooms, and in a half a minute returned with middle-aged slender man. The man had a short haircut, dressed in a dark expensive suit and white shirt with a tie. Silently and grimly as its suitable only at funeral, he shook my hand and with a jest invited to follow him.
We walked through the room that served as an office; it was quite large, with heaps of papers and rather old office equipment on the tables. It was empty and quiet as it happens in the places with a dead body lying somewhere. But next room was all different. It seemed as if in a moment I traveled thirty years back to glorious days of Communist Russian Empire. There stood huge, three yards high plaster bust of founder of that Empire Vladimir Lenin, sacred person for Communists of the whole world. On the wall behind it were gloriously spread two large flags, with golden profiles of this Communist saint glittering on its heavy dark-blood colored velvet.
Thirty years ago that kind of plaster busts of this great leader stood in the ceremonial halls of all countrys organizations. All these establishments factories, laboratories, shops, and everything, belonged to the government, and therefore the busts were everywhere. On frequent memorable days these halls and busts were decorated with flowers and with more flags; the passionate speeches were heard here, solemn oaths were given in front of these white busts. Those were official institutional sanctuaries. In the schools in front of the these busts of great Lenin young children were accepted to Lenins pioneers, and senior pupils were admitted to Leninskomsomol, the union of young builders of Communism. In research institutes and nuclear laboratories white busts silently sanctioned new progress in spread of Communist influence over the world. In front of these busts at the thousands of factories workers and engineers, that reached outstanding productivity, were triumphantly awarded with honorary titles and decorations as the winners of socialist competition. In the Lenins rooms of army and navy in front of these busts politruki, the Commissars, awarded the heroes with combat decorations.
Thats why passing this bust I involuntarily slowed down; my guide did just the same, and we stopped. In fact, I havent seen any Lenins plaster bust several decades, thats why I looked at it with kind of amazement.
After a polite pause the man said, You talked over the phone to me. I am Fomin.
I turned to him and nodded. He took a deep breath and said, "Come."
Behind the next door I saw two closely shifted tables and a dead body lying on them. I walked slowly around mans body and only then looked at his face. Perhaps, I had dumbfounded look, because I noticed Fomin darted a fast sharp glance at me.
Do you recognized him? he asked.
I didn't answer. This man was dead, and one couldnt be mistaken about it. Otherwise, I would take it for a strange and shameless performance. Not only his face incredibly resembled a person well-known in this country, but even this cable on which he was apparently hung, now was loosely stretched over his motionless body. I felt as if I was looking at almost century-old revived photo. In front of me lay the body of the famous Russian poet Sergey Esenin, who hung himself almost hundred years ago in the Sankt-Petersburgs hotel.
Whats his name? I asked, continuing to examine the familiar features of the mans face.
Well, I quite anticipate your further surprise. His name was also Sergey. He was colleague of ours working in this office.
Striking resemblance.
By the looks he could be taken for a twin, you know, and he idolized the great poet, too. Of course, he also wrote verses.
He played this role too true. But why put the neck into the noose!
After poets suicide almost hundred years ago dozens of his admirers did the just same, in the same manner his fans, as they could be called today. Perhaps this case was of this kind, very belated, but outwardly indistinguishable.
It looks like suicide, I said, with my back to Fomin.
Investigator said the same.
Do you think otherwise?
I would like to hear your expert opinion.
When was he found?
Early in the morning. Colleagues found him hanging on a hook from a ceiling chandelier with his neck in this cable-noose. The police said he probably hung there all night.
Who removed the body? Police?
Yes. I managed to take some photos before that, though. Take a look. He got out from his pocket a small digital camera and handed to me.
One by one I carefully examined five images taken from different angles. Thin body hanging on the hook; the neck unnaturally stretched; half-opened eyes. I tried to enlarge the image of a neck with a zoom. The way of tightening the noose knot could clarify something. Cruel killers hands tighten the noose sharply and strongly, maliciously. Ones own hands always do it timidly, fearing to cause unnecessary pain. But all these images were too small, and the zoom only smeared a neck into cloudy squares. One picture showed a part of a window. Glass at the edges was black, with the bright glare sweeping up from the cameras flash in the middle. How early they start working in this party! I silently reflected, because in September, in Moscow, such a dark window could be no later than at seven in the morning.
Good photos, I said and returned the camera. Anything else?
They found it on his table. Fomin handed me a sheet of paper. It was an ordinary computer printout, but the chosen font was not standard, it was slanted as if handwritten. There were only two lines.
Jumping out of September,
Heavens closer, God is there.
The rhyme was, of course, right to the point. However, it was odd that these last words in his life the poet did not write with his hand, but typed with computer and picked such a flowery font. But who can understand these poets.
Did they take his blood for analysis? I asked.
No, I did not notice. Why?
Alcohol, drugs, harsh hypnotics. It can reveal something. I said. As there was nothing else on the surface I was close to wind up. Looks like a suicide.
I think so too. He was a nervous young man. Very good one but very unbalanced. We grieve so much, all of us.
Relatives notified?
He had no relatives. At least we heard nothing of them. He arrived from India
"An Indian writing verses in Russian? A bottomless bag of surprises. Not a bad rhyme he left, though. Wonderful India. I said, and I felt pity for this poor foreigner. Are we done?
Not yet. I would like you to work with us a couple of weeks. As you possibly know, were in the midst of the election campaign. Our party will be a success on this election, undisputed success, but we have a lot of ill-wishers.
I do not perform security functions.
No, no, we dont need more security! We have our volunteer druzhinniki, and besides our sponsor-bank provides us with his security service when its required. We don't need any more guards.
Then what do you need?
Lets say, we need an expert for analyzing the hazardous situations in our election campaign.
Sounds very sophisticated, though I have no experience in politics.
Can I make an objection? Everybody in this country got this kind of experience already. You would work personally with me.
May I ask your position in this party?
I am the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Leninists, the only proper Leninist party left in this country.
The words Secretary General still have an electrifying effect on all Russians born and raised in former Soviet Union, just the same as the title czar had for our ancestors. Thats why I mused, Secretary General, hell, what a mess Im getting into again!
The Secretary General continued, Very soon our party will not only enter the Duma, but itll become a party in full power it deserves. All our people will rise, all the country will demand justice and punishment for traitors and Capitalist collaborators you'll witness it in pair of weeks! The present occupational regime will collapse as a rotten tree!
Wow, I thought what a conviction! Was this poor Sergey of that sort? Why then he hanged himself? Though I interrupted this pathos chant.
Excuse me, I must warn you. I am not a Communist. I have rather contrary views.
I know that. But in your work it wont be important. Maybe its even an advantage. And in a couple of weeks you may well become true and convinced Communist. And I can tell you sincerely, I would never have invited you for this job if I didn't hear of you from my friend, an ardent Communist, unfortunately departed.
I looked at him questioningly.
Im sure you remember him. He was the member of our party. Communist Glotov.
My God, I thought, who recommended me! Indeed, a year ago I rescued a large factory, where he was a chief, from the capture by the raiders a plague in post-Communist reality. But the Secretary General did not probably know about the last hours of his friend. They were tragic, he committed suicide. And what he didnt know for sure, I thought, that to stop him and save the life of hostage girl taken by this Glotov, I had to use a shotgun and wounded this member of his party. I described all that in published notes just like these here.
OK, I said aloud, I'll work with you.
I told him my rather high rates, and saw by his eyes it did not bother him at all. "It seems, I thought, a sponsor-bank, which he mentioned, showers money on them. If that banks able to earn its money it should also know what the horse to bet on in this election. Money is not the words, it must be returned.
Secretary General saw me to the doors, and he was very courteous. Catching sight of us, two druzhiniki with red bands on their sleeves, stepped from the doors and stood to attention. Not yet reaching them I stopped and softly said, I do not imagine how police would go with this case, but in your shoes Id have insisted on all analyses done including the contents of his stomach. I cannot exclude homicide.
Fomin just nodded and said loudly, changing his tone with druzhiniki nearby: Dont bother with it, police will do their job, concentrate on more important matters. Since he was a foreigner, police will do everything it should do. Poor Sergey, what a pity! Our poet arrived in this country just a month ago Because you will work with us you should know in a few days very important events will take place in Moscow. Those will be great opportunities for our party and the people of this country. Do not waste your time in vain, Nicholas. See you tomorrow in our office.
When I stepped down from the entrance to my Harley, a white van with red sanitary crosses just parked nearby. Two huge men, with traces of frequent use of alcohol on their faces, got out of it. Sanitary ambulance, called in Moscow trupovozka, dead mans carriage, arrived to take our Sergey to the morgue. I got on my motorcycle, and heard behind my back the telephone rang in the van. The driver briefly discussed something, and then he stuck his head out of window and shouted to his men entering the building, Hey, hurry up there! Manager just called, said one more to take on the way. Just found, laid for weeks in apartment. Rotten through, they say.
3.The Killer Rebrov
Ivan Rebrov woke up, as always too early, it was not yet six. Whenever he went to bed, sober or more often drunk, he woke up at this time and did not know where to put himself, especially recent years. He slid down from the wide bed and stepping over thick carpet went to the door. Passing by the high mirror, he glanced with no particular interest at his bare thirty-five-year lean and sinewy body. Without closing the door behind him in the toilet, he began to urinate, carefully examining the brown puddle in a toilet bowl. This morning it was almost of brick color, whether from the drugs or from the disease itself. Then for the first time in a day he cautiously, as if it was a child, touched his chubby and sore liver.
On the way back, before reaching his door, he grasped the door handle of the adjacent second of his bedrooms and jerked it open. On the wide bed lay a sleeping girl, scattered among the crumpled sheets. Last night his driver brought this night-butterfly for him. Rebrov did not even ask her name: she would have lied anyway. He called her Masha then as all of them before.
Yesterday Rebrov could not do anything with this girl. His right side ached badly after the dinner. He tried to fondle her, but immediately was overcome with nausea. So two of them just sat in silence and watched TV till midnight. When he paid and ushered her to the doors she started to beg him pitifully to stay till morning: she had no place to sleep. He did not like it, but thought maybe he will get stronger in the morning, could try again, and maybe that was the better time for him to have sex. So she stayed.
He entered the door, silently walked to the bed, stopped beside it and gently pulled off the sheet from her body. Asleep, she lay on her back, slightly bent at the knees, tanned, and with a sharp white strip where her panties should have been. Looking up and down at her beautiful naked body, he attentively listened to his own desire. There was none. He felt only that familiar big and cold, whining but not yet really aching, in his right side of the belly the liver.
The rage silently aroused inside of him. His hand grabbed the edge of the sheet to tear it away, to wake her up, and then to give her more money, to get her away from his house, out to the highway to get herself a taxi and beat off to her Moscow. But it came to him that it will raise her crying, screams, noise, and it will destroy the soothing silence of his morning house. He gritted his teeth, then threw the bed sheet back over her body and went back to his room.
Rebrov sat down in a chair in front of the TV set, but didn't turn it on, and just stared out the window. From the second floor of his mansion he could see the far woods turning yellow, the milky clouds running in the dim morning sky. It distracted somehow his mind from the troubles, and he recalled yesterday's telephone conversation. His telephone rang late at night when he was sitting with the girl at TV set. That was Leonid Levko, the President of the bank, and his partner, though formally Rebrov was his subordinate. After some standard polite words Levko asked, Can you drop to me around one oclock? We can lunch together.
Such a long time they didnt lunch together why all of a sudden tomorrow? They met this morning, and nothing important was said, they just shook their hands. So this late call could mean that something happened, good or bad. Rebrov didnt expect good news from anywhere, so that will be bad news anyway.
Ill come, he said curtly.
Good. What cuisine do you prefer, French or Chinese?
Levko had two personal chefs: Frenchman and Chinese, and they cooked lunches for him in turns. This question made Rebrovs nausea to arise again in his stomach, and he almost banged the phone at the wall, but restrained himself and said quietly,
Its same to me, Leo. Bye.
Rebrov owned half of their bank, more precisely forty-nine percent; the remaining percentages were Levkos. Levko was the President, and Rebrov was a Chief of the banks security service. He didnt care about more prestigious or sonorous positions, and has been banks head watchdog already for ten years.
Rebrov began to turn over in his mind what else could happen so suddenly, bad or dangerous, to their bank, or rather to his money. From the recent world financial crisis their bank got out plucked of thousands of unreturned credits, with great losses by depreciated shares in their portfolio, and with huge debts in dollars to foreign banks. Moreover, they were recently caught by Central bank authorities with factual criminal money-laundering business. If they will take away the banking license, it will be finishing smash for the bank and Rebrovs own millions. He always kept all his money in this single bank, twenty million dollars in the beginning, ten years ago. But how much of it was still there? He never understood the banks mechanics, and reckoned it should be there in some vaults, but always felt with dread, it was not so. And wheres Levkos money? Rebrov pondered. Out in off-shores, and in Switzerland. Scoundrel!
When Rebrov killed his first man he was sixteen. He ran away from the boarding school and began to work with a team of lumberjacks. It was in the early nineties. With perestroika, all state farms collapsed in their Novgorod remote villages. Half-broken tractors, rusty equipment, and hungry calves were then distributed among dumbfounded peasants, and everybody was invited to free-enterprising Capitalist world. With a great pump the land was distributed among them, though in the form of vouchers, pieces of paper with seals, nobody knew what to do with, and would gladly swap it away for a bottle of vodka if anybody then offered. Nobody of them became farmers after that, because one should be born a master to be one, or to be skilled enough, or hard-working. Seventy years of Communism wiped all of that, and there was only devastation and mess in their heads now. The only thing, that could support the families of these men, and supply them with vodka they depended on from their adolescence, was timber.
The most brave and cool of them bought old or stolen equipment, and hammered together teams of crazed from the lack of money men, alcohol-hungry and ruthless. Bribing or intimidating corrupt and defenseless foresters, getting permits from them, these predators chopped down twice or thrice as much, leaving only bald hills that have been once thick with beautiful north-Russian woods. In the nights, with the hysterical roaring, groans, and squeaks overloaded trucks hauled their lumber through long back roads to the Baltic ports. Reaching the pierces, trucks with no delay drew near to cargo ships with Scandinavian flags, and a sharp-clawed paw of the crane hurriedly grabbed northern fir-trees and carried them down to the deep holds. This hard mens lumber was paid on the spot, immediately, with cash from the cheap canvas bags. Packs of the money, tied up by rope bands, were hurriedly counted by the trucks head lights on its hot and steaming radiators. No one ever tried to cheat here, for these neat Europeans were really afraid of the wild men from the woods.
Ivan Rebrov worked in the team of arrogant and impudent guy, Stepan, who was just born to do this murky timber business. Everybody, who had any power on these long roads to the port, was well bribed by him, and his trucks with lumber roared to the sea almost every night. But he was always late paying his hardworking men, and that day their pay was badly delayed, too. His men, used to vodka from almost childhood, and now weeks from their last drinks, could only stealthily curse their boss: they wouldnt get a job anywhere else here. Probably, their boss delayed money deliberately: less vodka, more timber to the port.
Ivan Rebrov, as young as he was, also couldnt live and work in the frozen woods without vodka. Even in the boarding-school he frequently got drunk not only with his gang, but also with their educators. Those were local village guys that couldnt get any other job before army enlistment. Sometimes they even drank together, or loaned money for a bottle when their pupils were out of money they usually got for cranberries or mushrooms sold to a girl at mobile shop.
In February once, late in the dark, Rebrov and the driver returned with a load of lumber from remote allotment; asevere frost in the woods, in their stomachs nothing but hunger, and both in great need of a drink. Their truck struggled forward over the narrow bumpy log-path in the snows, its headlights pushing aside crowded at the road black timber. Suddenly, behind the turn down the hill, where they worked all last week, two rubies of tail lights flared up under trucks headlights. It was plain whose jeep stood there in this midst of dense forest: Stepan, the boss, arrived to inspect with masters eye the stacks of his ready to howl timber.
Stop here! suddenly and unexpectedly for himself Rebrov said to the driver. The heavy truck groaned and stopped. In the dark Rebrov went by tractor trail to the timber stacks, and the anger as a cat with its claws tore on him. He was going just to get some money his boss owed them, because he badly needed a drink, and he was bored to death with potatoes meals of their team cook. But when he saw Stepan with a flashlight between the stacks he pulled out his knife. Rebrov thought that he would simply show this knife to Stepan, and the boss would understand: his hard workers are desperate, just on the edge without money. But boss, Stepan, had heard the roar of the truck, and now stood there looking cautiously at someone coming to him in the dark. In the forest a man senses a danger clearly, and Stepan sensed it immediately. When Rebrov was closer and he could make out in the dark his stony face, Stepan picked up two-yard long piece of timber and got ready. Closer, when they saw the eyes of each other, both men understood it was too late to talk. Stepan began to raise his timber, but Rebrov suddenly threw his fur-hat up and forward. Stepan glanced upwards, uncovering his bare neck under thick collar of sheepskin jacket, and immediately the knife entered his bare flesh under Adams apple.
Stepan still wheezed and spattered the snow with bloody foam out of his ripped throat, but Rebrov already threw open his jacket and fumbled through his pockets. From the wallet he threw everything out on the snow and picked up the money. There wasnt much who would go with money to the forest.
When they moved on, the driver asked, Talked to him?
No.
They drove in silence to the settlement, but nearing the store Rebrov said, Stop here.
With moans and groans heavy log transporter stopped. In the store Rebrov bought two bottles of vodka and a pair of pork stew cans, and he was out of money again. In the trucks cab he handed one bottle and a can to the driver. Driver looked cautiously into Rebrovs eyes and didnt move to take it at first. But then took it all right, and shoved it under his seat.
Utter a word that we stopped there, and Ill saw your head off, simply and softly said Rebrov.
The driver, huge middle-aged man, just looked into this youngsters eyes, nodded and said nothing.
The jeep was soon found, and police came. They walked and looked over freshly and heavily snowbound allotment with high timber stacks and left it until spring. They found Stepan only at the end of April, when the snow melted in the clearings, and this snowdrop, as police call them, showed up.
The lousy gambler! Rebrov thought of the banker Levko, looking through the window. It is my bank, mine. I beat all the money from the debtors ten years ago they wouldnt return you a cent!
That was true. Indeed, after the default of a ninety-eighth, when even the state itself refused to repay its debts, the winged phrase emerged among shady businessmen, Only cowards repay their debts. Bankrupted Levko gave his new acquaintance a list with a dozen of names and multiple-digit sums against each one and said to bandit Rebrov, Of the money you knock out of these gents half is yours. And then well launch a new bank together. Bandit Rebrov knocked the debts from almost all of these gentlemen. The only one who did not respond to his arguments was dead the next day. With this money they opened a new bank, which Levro proposed to name "Straight Credit". It sounded respectable, honest, but a banker and gambler Levko meant something different: awinning hand in a poker, Straight Flush.
Outside the window, down in the village, dogs barked, late roosters cried, and these simple homely sounds soothed Rebrov. Years ago this time in the mornings his mother returned home from the barn with a steaming bucket of milk. She kindled fire in the stove, and with the crackling of wood their dark morning hut turned bright and joyful.
When Rebrov by sheer chance came to Moscow, he could not really believe that one can permanently live in this city and stay normal and happy. When he pocketed his first millions, he immediately moved out of city. However, when the realtor took him to see a newly built house in the elite cottage settlement that sprang then around Moscow with mostly corrupt or criminal money, and when he saw these stone mansions with turrets, saw faces of this elite, that would become his neighbors, he didn't even bother to look whats inside, and just turned and walked back to his car.
He told his realtor to find him better some land in a simple village, where he could build a house of his dream. Realtor found in a week this beautiful but crumbling village with four neighboring families dreaming to get out of here and become city dwellers. Rebrov bought them for a million greenbacks four apartments in the capital, burned all their huts, sheds, and started new construction. He built his house of the northern fir-trees, almost a yard thick. He hewed house frame himself beaming with pleasure, and the hired carpenters just smiled with amazement and clicked their tongues.
All of his land Rebrov planted with apple-trees. But then he made a mistake that he didnt know so far how to set right. He fenced his land with a wall of pressed tin sheets. That was quite widespread way for newly rich to hide away from the peering eyes. Outside, such a brightly painted fence looked good. But inside, ones look was obstructed everywhere by close and monotonous wall that immediately evoked a disturbing feeling of being confined to some penitentiary. Rebrov never had been in a jail being convicted, with Gods mercy. But he spent three months in Butyrka preliminary prison, waiting for a court, on charges of plunder. Nothing was proved, but Rebrov learned there to appreciate his freedom.
Rebrov was in love just once when he was eighteen, and as it turned out the last time too. She lived in the neighboring village, on other side of the lake. That village was much bigger, and there was even a food store and elementary school with two classes. Adolescent Ivan Rebrov went to his school on a horseback: every day six miles around the lake, and six back. Only in January, with wolf weddings in full play, when they ran baring their teeth even into the villages, his father harnessed his horse in a sledge, threw inside an old rusty shotgun and drove his son to the school. But that happened only if his father could be livened up in the morning, because in the evenings he was mostly dead drunk.
From May till late autumn, if there was no high winds, young Rebrov sailed to that village by boat. The boat was made of two thick aspens, hollowed out and fastened by steel bolt. They didnt build boats any other way here. On the banks of numerous forest lakes one could always find such a boat, roiki, all of them for everyones use. Very stable and lifting, they did not require any maintenance: overturned in late autumn, with aspens bottoms up, they were left thus until spring. They were frequently used to transport cattle to far pastures, and less frequently, coffins, for the last trips by lake to the cemetery.
The cemetery was even further behind that village, on a hill by another lake. There were buried all Rebrovs grandfathers and grandmothers, there also rested in peace his beloved mother. Near the cemetery once stood a beautiful church, that was seen miles away, but in the thirties atheist bolsheviks dismantled it to use the quality old bricks and its bells for scrap. They left only high bell-tower, obviously, for some military reasons. Now this tower, declined and decayed, with thin birches growing on the crumbling bricks high over the ground, stood as if looking with sorrow at surrounding forests, lakes, the depopulated villages, recalling better life there: proper, godly and sober.
Ivan and Masha went to school together for only two years. From the third year he was sent to boarding school, and Masha was taken to her relatives living in the district center, having there a good high school. They saw each other and played together every summer, but real love came to Ivan Rebrov only at eighteen.
He worked then again in the woods, but with another team. He worked hard, sawing the timber and hauling it by the trucks. They paid better there and more regularly after that grim incident. Rebrov did not drink much and saved all the money: he wanted to repair his house and add one more room, good enough to bring his wife into. They both were waiting for spring to marry, when Masha will be eighteen, too.
Rebrov worked all that winter on distant allotments. Almost every week someone of their team went back home for a short stay to one of the neighboring villages, and Rebrov exchanged with his Masha gentle and loving letters. Rebrov never went home himself and didnt see her several months: he wanted to test their love, because he had to go to the Army soon. He tested their love all right, though it didnt endure their winter parting. By the end of the winter fewer letters reached the snowbound woods, and they became kind of formal and dry, and by the early spring they stopped coming. In April one fellow that came from the neighboring village frankly revealed to it to Rebrov, Shes having a good time, your Masha.
Rebrov went home only on First of May holidays. That was both official and folk festivities stretching often well up to Ninth of May, the Victory day. He sailed to her village by roiki with his little brother, but he didnt go to her house but stayed by the store with a bunch of his old half-drunk friends. He drank half a glass of vodka, then some more, but his soul was trembling. Then he suddenly saw her. She walked down the village main street, closely arm in arm with some guy. Rebrovs friends, who knew about his love, stopped talking at once, and the dead silence fell on stores porch. She saw Rebrov, too. As if trying to hide her boy from Rebrov she fussily turned, but then stepped forward, with a back to her boy, breasts to Rebrov, with worried and scared eyes, as a bird protecting her nestling.
Rebrov stepped forward. He just wanted to say Hi! to congratulate her with a Mays Day, and maybe to have some talk. But she warily backed from him, bumping at her boy. Rebrov, taken aback, stopped. Something flashed in his affected by vodka mind. And getting his knife out of pocket, he walked to them. Deeply insulted, with everybody around watching, Rebrov felt he should kill this guy now, because nothing else could lift his months-old pain, whatever happens with him afterwards.
Unexpectedly she flung herself at him, threw her arms around his neck, kissing his face and pushing him back. Rebrov couldnt even to move away his knife in time and it stuck between them with its blade between their stomachs. She was kissing his face all over, pushing back, step by step, away from her boy. Rebrov felt his knife cuts her, but she did not stop kissing, silently pushing him further back from her boy. Finally, he threw out his hand with the knife sideways and cast a quick look at it. The blade was glittering red. With his other hand Rebrov gently pushed her back, just to take a look at her. Down her waist over her festive dress ran a bloody stain.
Something that was painfully strained for months suddenly snapped and broke in him. He reached out his hand down to her bloody stain, but she at once threw herself back from his hand, and Rebrov saw closely her eyes. There was nothing in it but unconcealed stony fear. Rebrov let down the knife from his hand and it fell on the ground. Then he closed his face with both hands, turned and slowly walked away. Feet brought him down to the lake and he got into his boat. Something hard and tight suddenly squeezed his neck and a lump rose in his throat. He clamped both his hands to the eyes and his body violently shook all over. Soon his little brother came running after him. Rebrov leaned overboard, drew a handful of cold water and splashed it on his face.
At home Rebrov packed his sporting bag, tried to wake up his drunken father, but then hugged his brother and went in the light spring night to the railway station some fifteen miles away. Passenger train stopped there once a day. On even days of a month the train went to Sankt-Petersburg, and on the odd days to Moscow. If it would have had happened to be an even day the train would have taken Rebrov to Petersburg, where his uncle lived, a non-drinking cheery fellow. Every time he came for vacation, to see his sister when she was alive, he always lured Rebrov to come and work with him at metal works. However, early morning of that day in May happened to be odd. Rebrov went to Moscow, became there firstly a burglar, and then a professional killer. He never came back to his village.
4.Lunch with a Banker
Levko has chosen Chinese cuisine for lunch with his partner. First dish was to be a swallow's nest, thats a soup cooked of small fishes caught and brought by swallows to build their nests, glued together with something tasty. Second dish was simpler, the duck a la Peking with bamboo shoots. Levko hired his first private cook in the nineties when he founded his first bank. It was vitally sensible: in those wild years the less the banker showed up in crowded places, the longer he was expected to live. He named his first bank as a born gambler and reckless card player: Bid Credit. This bank, with the doors from a dirty backyard, did not deal in loans, but mostly had laundered criminal money. If Levko ever gave any loans then, that was to the traders who brought to the country second-hand clothes or long overdue sausages and canned food bought cheaply from Europes shops. That was quick and profitable turnover for his bank. But the main business of his bank was laundering criminal rubles and moving it abroad turned into hard foreign currency, minus, of course, a fat percent for his banks risk and trouble. Also, his bank transferred rubles from its accounts into paper cash keeping no record and trail, if the owners needed it for some shady and murky deals. That was even more illegal. Though, the problems were only with the suitcases to carry to and fro billions of those inflated and weak rubles, called then "wooden".
Levko also stuffed his pockets with easy money when privatization was undertaken by current government. Issued privatization vouchers, a silly idea in the falling apart country, meant to justly divide all of the states riches among two hundred million people. But currently those pieces of paper had meant or cost almost nothing in those hungry years and were sold by most people just for dinner. Thus almost all riches of the great country were seized and divided between a hundred fat corrupt cats; two hundred million people got nothing. Levkos bank very actively bought and sold those notes of countrys potential wealth, getting huge and quite legal profits.
Confused by privatization and shock therapy applied by vigorous but entirely ignorant government, millions of Russians took their scarce wooden rubles, fast depreciating with inflation, to newly sprung unknown banks such as Levkos Bid Credit. Advertizing in the newspapers, Levko boldly promised everyone a hundred percent gain, but by the end of year the ruble lost thousand percent of its value, leaving him profits he could never dream of.
Those were golden years for such operators as Levko, and no wonder it so foolishly ended in ninety eighth with a crash. Country finance could no long endure economy a la Levko and had burst as a bubble; vigorous but ignorant vouchers-managers drove the country to default. Bid Credit went bankrupt in concert with his countrys government. Levko then reasoned that if even his State does not pay its debts, he wont do that even more so. His own money was transferred in advance to off-shores, because he felt long before that something wrong was going on: the state government, as a loser gambler in tatters, was borrowing money by growing every week three-digit percentages.
Bid Credit vanished. They simply removed the sign and locked all the doors. But still there were dozens of those who owed money to the bank, and a lot of money. To lose it seemed to Levko ridiculous. Though the debtors were shrewd enough and also hid their money wherever they could, though to sue them in a civilized way and get then just pennies was stupid: those pennies would immediately be claimed by banks creditors. So it was the best to go bankrupt and approach the bandits. Thats when the banker Levko met the killer Rebrov.
Levko always lunched at his spacious office, because he did not like being away from his computers even for an hour. Everywhere one could throw a glance, on the tables and on the walls, flickered and silently stirred charts and tables on computer monitors. The world stock exchanges directly reported to Levko the current results of his risky financial speculations. He was an innate gambler. As a youngster he had begun playing cards for living on golden beaches of Sochi. At nights, in stuffy and smoke-filled hotel rooms Levko beat and baffled rich Caucasian food markets traders, winning all they had on them. But never Levko entered numerous casinos, that were opening everywhere with perestroika. He played only those games where chances and luck were on his side, but not obviously on someone else's. Levko was a very clever gambler.
Five minutes to one Levko tore his eyes from the monitors and went to the farther corner of his office where the lunch table was laid by the window, and attentively inspected it. The table was served in Chinese style with the blue elegant porcelain. Levko was an aesthete in everything. At lunch he liked listening to classical music, particularly opera arias, which he adored. Therefore, he swiftly went through the disk collection on the shelf, looking for something Asian, and chose Cio-Cio-San.
Levko was an avid concertgoer and frequenter of opera theatres, at home and abroad. He had many friends behind the stage, and almost all ladies, whom he invited to his two-storey apartment, were of those arty circles. Those nights he sent away his servants, so they wouldnt babble, because Levko was married. His wife and son lived mostly in London, coming back just for short visits, and that suited Levko fine. The reason was his sons bad case of mischief. His son, a sixteen-year-old goof, studied at school there, but a year ago he got involved in a bad incident of group rape. All the boys involved were from good rich families, though the girl was from a respectable family too. To hush up this case Levko had to disburse, with pain in his soul, several hundred thousand of British pounds. The case was "amicably" hushed up, but after that incident his wife rented apartment near his sons school and lived there, keeping an eye on her son
Levko seated his guest facing the window and took place at the opposite side, to watch two large plasma monitors on a wall.
Well, I don't offer you a martini, but I will drink one for the appetite, said Levko fingering a napkin. Or will you?
Rebrov shook his head and pursed up his lips; he didnt drink for several months. Young waitress, with a happy smiling face, brought a bowl and poured soup into cups with porcelain spoons. When she closed the door behind her, Levko said, Vladimir arrives next Friday.
Rebrov tore off his eyes from the window where he watched the crows sitting on a poplar tree and looked at Levko. "That's it, he thought, So its real."
Are you ready? Levko asked, and Rebrov just nodded. Did you warn your men?
Not yet, too early.
Both fell silent taken up by their soup. Rebrov tasted some, and then just stirred the soup with the spoon, driving swallows little fishes around the cup. Levko ate with healthy appetite, considering his next important and touchy question.
What on earth happened to that poet Sergey? He asked very lightly.
Suicide, they say. Hung. Rebrov shrugged his shoulder.
Why? Such a capable twin!
Levko contemplated Rebrov's face with sharp eyes of a gambler: any muscle of his face could give him out. Levko had met that Sergey just once, and he went to see him out of curiosity, as a freak of nature, and was amazed by his resemblance to the great poet. Levko didnt care at all about that strange out-of-date twin, and whether he already met with his great prototype. What he worried about now was a possible double game being played behind his back. Didnt Rebrov himself put Sergeys head into the noose?
Rebrov didnt answer the question considering it rhetorical. He caught with his spoon a little fish and asked, How do the swallows catch them, as they cant swim?
They are Chinese, Levko said, engaged with his soup. Listening to quiet aria of unhappy Cio-Cio-San he continued to think of nuisances. He never trusted anybody in his affairs, and the leftist politician Fomin, he recently met, could be trusted even less. One could expect anything from such a determined Communist. Their great purposes, as it well known, justify any means. Thats what he told Levko, though what means were appropriate for him any current minute one could only guess. More so, because of their ideology the banker Levko should have been their worst enemy.
Levko had fed already millions of dollars to this leftist party, but they asked more and more, and he with no debate donated more off his thin, almost ruined bank balance. But it shouldnt have to go this way much longer. His investments should return soon with a thousand-fold gain, just in one week, at longest one and a half. Although, there was no hanged poet in their scenario! Why is this mess?
Suddenly the charts on TV screens on the opposite wall sharply stirred, and Levko jerked his head up and fixed his cold eyes on them. In the morning Levko entered into a pair of not very big deals in the currency markets; first one, with an expectation of the growth of the dollar against the euro in London Stock Exchange, and the second, of the fall of the dollar against the Russian ruble in Moscow Exchange. All the morning before lunch current prices for both deals looked like curved saws on the charts, though both were heading to the monitor corners where Levko wanted them to go. Thus, a steep hill was formed on a London chart, and an abrupt slope on Moscow one. But suddenly latest teeth of both chart saws crumpled and abruptly jumped: London, up, and Moscow, down.
Excuse me, said Levko and almost leaped to his computer. All was ready there for his final touch; he just twice clicked with the mouse button, and both his deals were closed, and very successfully closed. With his two fingers he earned these morning twenty thousand dollars, just a trifling in his situation, but very pleasant and encouraging, and it will warm him from inside till the end of a day. Levko returned to the lunch table in a very high spirits.
Pekinese duck was served, and when waiter girl closed the door Rebrov asked, So whats happened to our money, Leonid? How are things? By Levkos carefree grin, familiar to Rebrov for twelve years, he guessed that it was too bad.
So-so. But one bank promised me to help with credit. Dont you worry; well break through as usual. Dont worry.
Very bad, and I am sick of it already. Its so shaky, Leo.
In two weeks you will be billionaire. It suits you?
I doubt it.
Ivan, I just ask you to be honest with me. You know where were heading, and we should stick together as one fist. And please, dont you trust this Communist maniac.
Did he find a madman for this job?
I don't know and I don't want to know. That homicidal part is strictly your business, and dont you ever talk with me about it.
Since when did you turn into such a saint?
Long enough, and please never even mention these things to me.
OK, Leo, and dont you worry too. They say he hired some private detective. I guess for this job.
Did you see him?
Not yet. Perhaps, Ill see him tomorrow at the funeral.
Probe him, talk to him, we dont want this sniffer dog spoil us everything.
They ate the duck in silence. Rebrov just pecked his plate with the spoon.
Why dont you eat? Does it hurt? Levko asked going on with his duck, not even looking up.
No appetite.
What does the doctor say?
Nothing.
Did you really question him?
When I die? Not yet.
Levko knew better than his partner when he will certainly die, because he consulted this matter with a renowned doctor. With the symptoms of the cirrhosis of the liver that Rebrov told him once, with the bleedings from the bowel veins, he was already on the last stage of the decease and could live no longer than half a year, but perhaps even less. When Levko was told about it he wasnt much distressed. He wasnt glad too, because he considered himself a decent man, but certainly he was not distressed. Levko was afraid of Rebrov for a very long time. He often had nightmares with this man doing something cruel to him. He even called him in his mind nelud, werewolf in Russian, or devil. Twelve years ago, as it was apparent now, he underestimated Rebrov. He thought then that he could easily get along with this illiterate village lad, or bend him down, or at least do away with him any time he wanted to. Levko was wrong. This youngster happened to be much cooler than anyone he ever met before, and very clever. Since then Levko never felt himself a total boss in his bank. The only argument his new partner and security chief ever proposed for all business conflicts was death. In fact, that was quite a common argument in the business circles during those wild ninetieth years.
Rebrov didn't stay for a dessert, and Levko didn't implore him to. The moment he left Levko rushed to his computers and peered into figures appeared there during his absence. Today these figures, or maybe the stars in the sky, were favorable to him. With the eyes on the screens he familiarly groped for a long brass chain with the key of his Porsche, and whirled it around his finger. This cheap brass chain was very special for Levko, because it was bringing him luck. He noticed it twenty years ago when he was a black market money changer on the street. Thats when he bought his first car, secondhand Lada, and since then, standing in the street, waiting for customers, he whirled this brass chain with a car-key around his finger. Car-key was visible sign of his rising status, and a long brass chain was a clear warning to anybody who would approach him with malicious intentions. Many thugs and trumps had such intentions on that street.
Keeping his eyes glued to the figures, Levko quickly and cheerfully twirled the brass chain with a Porsche key in front of the computer screens.
5.The Funeral
Because of the heavy rain that showered me on the motorbike, I came to the crematorium later, and at once had to go the mens room to wash my spattered with dirt face. When I found the assigned ritual hall, all the mourners were there, with bunches of flowers waiting for the doors to be opened.
I saw many familiar faces there and solemnly nodded them. Those were twenty or so men and women I saw in the corridors of the party headquarters, all of them colleagues of the deceased. Although, there was nobody who looked like his relative, or fan, or lover. That seemed quite unnatural to me. After all, this Sergey was a poet, and not just another unhappy poet, but someone bearing striking likeness to the great, long dead Russian genius. One person there attracted my attention, because he wore a red turban on his head. Apparently, he was the Indian Consulate official, to testify the transition of his compatriot to another world. At last, the doors were slowly opened, and the solemn crowd was let inside the ritual hall.
Poet lay in casket dressed in a black suit, with a white strip of cloth and a small wooden cross on his forehead. The wreaths and bouquets of flowers were heaped around, and still more was being laid, covering up the polished wood of the coffin.
Just behind the head of deceased his portrait was placed on adjoining pedestal. It was black and white, and extraordinarily enlarged. When I looked at it closer I was just dumbfounded. My God, I thought in amazement. What a bad-taste spectacle! Because it wasnt a portrait of the unfortunate poet Sergey from India, but it was the portrait of great Sergey Yesenin himself, his widely known photograph that was made a hundred years ago, with his blond hair parted in the middle. In a deep amazement and shocked to the core, I looked around at the mourners: Why dont they notice it, they look like educated people! All of them now silently and mournfully stood around the coffin, looking at the pale face there, at the portrait, and apparently awaiting for some speeches.
I was also surprised yesterday, being introduced to the subject of my job in the party. Whatever I asked seemed to be the top secret no one had authority to disclose. All the day I was taken care of by the party official of high rank, comrade Myacheva. She was a tall and massive woman with a shock of a blond hair, in a bland dress and with a loud voice. Most noticeable about her were long and red shining nails, warning perhaps of some danger. I was put in some kind of a library, and Myacheva had brought me a pile of their election leaflets, flyers and a complimentary textbook on the history of the Communist Party in this country, and asked me to acquaint myself with it. I think that was a standard procedure for all new members of this party, because she wasnt sure of my function here. With a feeling that I'm wasting my time in vain, I honestly flipped through all these glossy papers, and even read some pages of textbook, though I knew this embellished party history from my college years, and there was nothing new to me.
Finally, when Myacheva was passing me by in the aisle, looking like a stern school teacher, I addressed her very politely, Madam, I have acquainted with all these, thank you, but I was invited to work here. I was told there would happen something extraordinary very soon. Whats that? Who will tell me?
At first her eyes widened like angry teachers, then looked warily sideways, right and left, as if checking foes, and then her hand jerked with frightened gesture to her lips.
Who, who told you that!
Your Secretary General told me that. I said. It seemed as if I unintentionally offended her because her face turned red.
I am not authorized to discuss it with you.
Who is authorized? Let me see that one, because I waste my time here.
Ill find out. You study meanwhile. She turned around and almost ran out of the room.
To the end of a day I sat being bored at the table waiting for somebody with enough authority to introduce me to my job. Sometimes I left the room to stretch out and walked through the corridors, observing the colleagues. Finally, with no one coming to me, I gave up waiting and went home.
At the head of the coffin, besides the portrait, was standing the Poliburo of this party: Fomin, Myacheva, and others that I had noticed yesterday. First was to speak Fomin, the Secretary General.
Comrades, friends! This is a sorrowful day for all of us, because we pay tribute to our young colleague, ardent Communist, the faithful Leninist Sergey Yesenin.
Oh, my God, I thought, Why drag in the last name of the great poet, thats over the top! He is out-of-time twin, a poet, a namesake, he got the same portrait at his head, but why Yesenin? Of course, I did not know then that his last name by his Indian passport was also Yesenin.
He gave his life for our common righteous cause! roared Fomin. He fought to the last moments of his life. His words and verse in the leaflets and media publicity materials will long live, they will guide whole our nation to the Leninist goals. Duma elections are coming, and no doubt we will win. But Sergey will not rejoice with all of us, we shall never see again his disarming smile, nor hear his delicate voice. But you, Sergey, did not in vain live your short life, not in vain you came to us from far away India. Youve struggled honestly and courageously.
That was a recurring and lengthy speech, and I observed the people around the coffin. The sorrowful faces of men and women were now brighter, and chins were up, eyes glistening. Drizhinniki, party militia with red bands on the sleeves, drew closer from their post at the doors, their faces shining blissfully.
I noticed also four new mourners who just entered the doors and were standing behind. These were altogether different: in expensive black suits, with grim and bored faces, one of them with his hands in the pockets. It was easy to guess: professionals, sponsor-banks Security. One of them was huge and powerful like a hog, another two tall muscular athletes, and the fourth was strangely both sinewy and thin, with a dead face as if cut of stone.
Suddenly mourning silence that was strained by General Secretary's firm echoing voice was pierced by shrill hysterical cries. I heard some strange sounds some minutes before, but I thought they come from adjoining ritual hall: nervous breakdowns and hysterics were commonplace here. The sounds seemed muffled at first, but then they rang out closer, and I could make out two arguing shrill female voices. Suddenly the door of our ritual hall banged open, and I saw in the doorway two women that were nearly fighting. One of them was breaking her way forward to the hall, and another one was pulling her backwards trying to stop her. Finally the first one freed herself, and with shrill A-ah! pushing everybody aside ran to the coffin. Dark shawl slipped from her head, but being caught by the collar flapped on her back like a black bird.
I was standing near the coffin, at the feet of the deceased, in the aisle, and she ran nearby. I closely saw the curled and luminous hair of this young blond. She ran around the coffin, scattering the flowers with her feet and fell, prostrated, on the chest of the dead man, covering his face with the kisses. In a moment her shoulders began to shudder with silent sobs. Secretary General Fomin broke off his speech in a mid-sentence and anxiously stepped aside.
I looked back. The second woman stayed at the open doorway, with a horror on her face, but all the four of the sponsors Security moved forward, closer to the coffin; no more boredom was seen on their faces, but acute alarm. Suddenly the blond girl rose to her full height and turned to the hall. I was standing some three yards away from her, and when I saw her face, her hair and bright red lips, I thought I was losing my mind, or already lost it. Jesus Christ! I thought feeling cold shivers on my spine, She is a dead spit of Marilyn Monroe!"
Maybe something strange was happening then to my mind, but undoubtedly that was Marilyn Monroe who was standing at the coffin with gleaming eyes. Yes, that great American actress, a singer, the eternal icon of western pop culture, genuine and everlasting sex-symbol of America. When she was still alive, some fifty or sixty years ago, any man as it was in the papers without doubt would give his right hand for just one night with Marilyn. That was excess, but popular one and very close to the point. She was delightful, charming and most beautiful woman in the world, who, alas, committed suicide half a century ago, taking as a nightcap an over-dose of barbiturates. I saw this fascinating woman in a dozen of old movies, I viewed her risky sexy photos, and I did vividly remember her velvety voice, when she sang Happy birthday to you for President Kennedy, who without doubt loved her. I adored this woman. I loved Marilyn Monroe from my adolescence.
Shocked and fascinated, I looked with awe at these three faces, jumping from one to another: pale one in the coffin, black and white oversized face of the great poet on the portrait, and indescribably lovely one, sweetest in the world and beyond all the questions very alive the face of Marilyn Monroe. I felt there was some incomprehensible, inaccessible to my mind link among three of these mysterious, monstrous. Nothing of it coincided neither in time nor in logics, or in common sense. The dead man in a coffin, whom Marilyn Monroe was kissing now, and whose portrait was put beside as quite appropriate, should have been in a grave for ninety years. This blond actress Marilyn Monroe was born two years after his real death, and by no means could sob here, but abide half a century at the heavens. The natural chances of such freakish doubling and a crazy performance were zero.
He didn't die! He couldn't die! suddenly yelled the blonde girl in Russian, though with a distinct British accent. You killed him, you the Communists! God damn you, killers! He couldnt commit suicide, he loved life! Oh, Sergey
But they didnt let her yell any more. One of those four in expensive suits, who reminded me of a hog, leaped over to her, grabbed her arm, and rudely dragged her away from the coffin. But this girl happened to be surprisingly lively and fast, she managed to slip out of his grip, then seized from under her feet a bunch of flowers, and then went on lashing with it his fat red face. That bouquet was of roses with the thorns, and the Hog, clutching his face and protecting the eyes, backed away from her. This moment the fourth of the sponsors Security, sinewy one, with a stony and somewhat sickly face, jumped to them, grabbed the girls hand and twisted it so hard that she briefly screamed, then he pushed her back, and rudely dragged her down the aisle to the doors, with mourners hastily stepping aside ahead of them.
The girl did not really walk: her legs were trailing behind, she was carried away. Sinewy one dragged her from the side that was closer to me, and the Hog dragged from another. I could not stand it, not because she was a pretty blonde, but because when I see anybody weak being offended or hurt, I take it as a personal offense. That's all. When the girls shoes scraped the floor just in front of me, I seized the sick-faced mans hand.
Hey, easy with the lady! I shouted, and heard my voice echo in the silent hall.
That man didnt even look at me; he just hit my arm with his fist, on the biceps. His blow was so quick and painful that I let the girls arm go, and both of those proceeded to drag the blond girl to the doors. Something flashed in my mind, and everything around me turned crisp and clear. I grabbed the shirts collar of that man from behind, jerked it back, and in the frozen silence of the hall rang the ripping sound of his shirt. The man let the girls hand go, though also losing his balance and falling back. I jerked his collar down, and sinewy man fell, with a swing, to the base of the coffin stand, with back of his head into the heap of the flowers.
The hall was silent, the only sounds heard were the rustling of flowers under the coffin. I didnt even notice beside me the second man, the Hog, because I looked to the right at the fallen man. Then I heard the calm voice of the sinewy man, rising from under the coffin, Dont touch him.
I looked at my left and saw the Hog with a raised fist ready for the blow. He was really huge, taller and heavier than I, and he was all ready. I wouldnt have had even a chance to raise my arm for protection. I stepped back, but the Hog with indifferent air obediently turned away from me, stepped to the coffin, and helped his boss to get up.
I looked around for the blond girl, and saw her standing with her arm held by comrade Myacheva, party-official already well-known to me. And I heard her saying softly: Marilyn, stop it! Behave yourself! She said it in Russian, and then repeated in English with a terrible accent.
My God, what I hear, she called her Marilyn! I thought in amazement. The dead twin is a double namesake, and this grieving lover here, who is strikingly Marilyn Monroe in her looks, is also Marilyn!
Marilyn was led away to the doors. She was calm now and did not resist Myacheva. At the doorway she suddenly stopped and turned around looking for someone in the crowd. I was staring at her, as all silent mourners did, and I saw her eyes running from face to face. When our eyes met, she stopped her search. Seconds were passing, and as I looked into her eyes I felt I was drowning. All of a sudden she smiled, barely, with just a stir of her lips, but her eyes sparkled for me only, I was sure.
6.Marilyns Dad
Around five that day after the funeral Fomin walked nervously around his private office on the second floor of the cottage. Previously he cancelled funeral repast, solemn feast after the burial, customary in Russia. He told his comrades that such a feast has an ecclesiastical nature, and therefore alien to the true Communist spirit, and also it was absolutely inappropriate now because it could slacken them on the eve of the great days coming. Every time Fomin approached the window he looked down at the neighboring cottages, at the farther yellowing fields, then turning away and walking back, tousling his hair.
This cottage in the elite suburbia, as they call prestigious high-end settlements in Russia, was his partys property, and was bought just a month ago with sponsor-banks money. However, these last weeks before the elections Fomin lived here, moving here alone from his familys city apartment. In this cottage, besides him, lived his guests from India. Actually, this house was bought especially to accommodate them with appropriate class and luxury.
Ten minutes ago Fomin called by phone the adjacent room, but when a girl there heard his voice she immediately hung up. However now, after walking around the office, he stopped at the window and dialed her number again. When long beeps ended Fomin clearly and emphatically said into the phone:
Marilyn, dear, your Dad will get very upset. Daddy would cry. We should go to him at once, right now, your Dad is already crying!
Because a girl didnt reply immediately, Fomin guessed that she, having recognized his voice, had thrown in anger her cell phone, but then with a great relief he heard her quiet voice, Yes, Ill go to see my daddy.
Fomin immediately dialed Myachevas phone. This party deputy of his was waiting for his call on the first floor. Calmly he said, Marilyn has agreed to go. Pick her up in ten minutes.
Fomin, chewing his lip, looked again at the yellowing fields in the window. Even yesterday he was sure he could keep this crazy girl in check at least last few days. He badly needed only these three or four days, and after that all this would be insignificant, including this whore. But the death of her dear Sergey made her wild. I had to foresee that! I had to! He thought with a pain. They were lovers from the age of fifteen! What else could I ever have expected?
He and his party could formerly cope with Marilyns hurt feelings, her grief, her hysterics, and silent suspicions, but things cardinally changed today after her screams in the funeral hall about Communists. After that everything has changed radically. This woman, having cried out those words, became a dangerous and unpredictable enemy of his party.
Fomin felt with the fingers his chin checking the bristle, and began to dress up: afresh shirt, tie, black suit. Fifteen years ago, when Gorbachevs perestroika started, when "indestructible" Soviet Union, as it was named in the national anthem, began to shake and tremble, Fomin was the Second Secretary of the District Committee of Komsomol, the youth Communist organization. That was a very high post for twenty-five year old graduate of Komsomol University. As a member of Communist party from age of nineteen, Fomin took all the innovations of the new Secretary General of his Party as the forced measures, apparently obligatory at the moment, in a hostile imperialist encirclement, with a sharp drop of the world oil prices that fed his country for a quarter of century. He did not know, as all of his countrymen, that without a providential gift of nature their plentiful oil and gas and its exorbitant prices at the global markets, their country of triumphant Communism would have had immediately go broke, with population starving and dying in millions, as it already happened in the time of Stalin who destroyed the agriculture repressing most of hard working farmers in gulag camps.
Fomin, making frequent speeches at the young Communists meetings at the factories and construction sites, explaining the political moment, always told his young comrades: Do you remember from the school-course, what our great Lenin once said about his New Economic Policy? He said, we should use capitalistic methods for some more years, or else bourgeois would strangle our young Socialist republic. Now its the same, and its just for a few years. Well never give up undying gains and victories of the great October revolution; well never surrender to the bunch of greedy crooks and profiteers. That will never happen: we are not to sacrifice our holy principles! All as a one, shoulder to shoulder, we unanimously support far-sighted and smart policy of our party, under the wise leadership of Secretary General! Glory to our party!
But a year later his friend and his party boss had organized in the rooms of his district committee a trading cooperative. That was the time when the government, after seventy years of strict ban, permitted their citizens a free private enterprising. They bought vodka in rusty casks made of toxic technical spirits from some criminals, and sold it oddly bottled at food markets. Their firm was registered, of course, as a cooperative for the introduction of new technologies. Every day Fomin passed in the corridors of his district committee the high stacks of plastic crates full of bottles of odd shapes and colors without labels. The piles were so high they blocked slogans and photographs of leading Komsomol members of their district hung on the walls. But the business was to grow. With documents of the mutilated veterans of Afghan-war that were coming back from the battle-fronts by echelons, who were granted then many privileges, Fomins young comrades founded a foreign trade co-operative. They brought into the country fake Polish liquors, counterfeit cigarettes, unmixed alcohol Royal in two-liter bottles; all of it was tax-free, thanks to mutilated veterans. Money the comrades now earned were fantastic by all the standards of the half-hungry country. Although Fomin did nothing in connection with that dirty profiteering, his special bank account was growing every month as of a senior comrade. All those years Fomin never took a cent of that money. One year later all of it, enough to buy a house and several cars, just vanished during shock therapy in the nineties when the account in the state saving bank was simply frozen at first, and then a three-digit inflation annulled it.
Nevertheless, all Fomins committee comrades were getting rich, and fully enjoyed it. The country was still locked inside of iron curtain; nobody had a freedom of crossing the borders, and the foreign currency could be only bought from murky street moneychangers risking a fraud or a plain robbery. Thats why all those crazy by the lean Russian standards money were mostly spent on no less crazy orgies. They added a sauna to the committee building, and every night drinking sprees, with flocks of women, disturbed the neighborhood till daylight. Competing with inflation, they bought badly made but unavailable for ordinary people flashy cars, heaps of bartered clothes made in China and similar vulgar luxuries of newly rich.
Fomin couldnt then recognize his Komsomol comrades. If he wasnt a Leninist-materialist he would be sure that Demon possessed them all. However, Fomin believed only in the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, and with advance of perestroika and collapse of the restrictive state economy, his convictions were getting firmer every month. At first he tried to protest their dirty profiteering, putting shame on them, denouncing them as renegades at the Party meetings. However, his comrades and his party boss listened to his speeches with boredom, later with an irritation, and at the end with an open hatred. Everything was falling apart before Fomins eyes, the whole world that was regular and settled for seventy years. Socialism and the achievements of great October revolution were collapsing, and heritage of Lenin-Stalin disintegrating.
All that finished suddenly in the ninety-first, immediately after the coup. His Party, the only legal one in the country, had been deprived of all its privileges with just a signature on the presidential Decree. Those were generous privileges, but Fomin really regretted only one: their recently renovated nifty Committees building they had to clear at once.
Just in days all his young comrades were dispersed, but that didnt much confuse them. They hid their Party-membership cards far away, and never told anyone of their solemn oaths under the banners of great Lenin. They were no more interested in the struggle of the worlds working class; they were stuffing their pockets now. But Fomin found himself on the street, with no job, no helpful skills or money, though with an acute bitterness and the desire of revenge.
They left the cottage in half an hour, three of them sitting at the back of Partys BMW. Marilyn sat in the middle, looking fixedly forward at the running belt of gray asphalt. She wore the same dark shawl. They were silent all the way. Their car firstly went closer to Moscow, then some miles around it by the ring highway, and then again away from the city, though soon their elegant car turned off the highway to a narrow dirt road. Fomin cleared his throat, and softly, so the driver wouldnt hear, said, Marilyn, I beg you, do not upset your daddy, please. It will injure him, he might even die.
Marilyn did not reply. The car bumped over potholes, and entered the gate of the nursing institution for the aged.
Three of them entered the lobby of the two-storied wooden house and stopped at the vacant office desk. Irritated, Fomin looked around. On the bench in the dark corner of the lobby sat some old men and women looking at newcomers with immense interest. The oldest of them had stood up, Oh, Ill find him, wait a minute.
The attendant was as ancient as the first man, but walked to his desk quite firmly. He opened a thick registration ledger, took a pen, and then sternly looked over his spectacles at Fomin, Do you have a passport? Whom do you visit?
Fomin, well acquainted with the routine, just declared full names of the three, and the old man scribbled it down, satisfied. The second name, Marilyns, held him up, Sorry, whats the last?
Monroe.
O, yeah, Monroe, I remember the name. You come frequently to Sedov, a good girl.
They ascended creaky tilted stairs, passed the corridor with badly worn linoleum, and stopped by the door of thin plywood. Fomin cautiously put his ear to the door, then knocked softly and called, Dr. Sedov, may we come in?
As Marilyn crossed the threshold, she cried, "Daddy!" then dashed to the bed, and fell sobbing on the chest of old man. The man lay under the blanket, and just his bald head with unkempt grey beard was seen on the pillow. Fomin and Myacheva stepped shyly closer and stopped at his feet.
Fomin said, Dr. Sedov, today we escorted your son Sergey on his final journey.
The old man looked at them with teary bleary eyes and answered with an effort, What a grief, what a pain! Thank you for coming. Please, sit down. He got his hand from under the blanket and awkwardly patted the Marilyns back. Daughter, you shouldnt grieve so much, you know our Sergey may not die, you very well know that.
I want to be with him, howled Marilyn with her head still on old mans chest. And I want to go home.
Our home is here, daughter. Forever.
Oh no, no! Marilyn had risen rapidly shaking her head, and her blond curls sprang from under the shawl.
Here are some fruits and grapes we brought for you. Please, take a bite, comrade Sedov, said Myacheva unwrapping two heavy packages.
Sedov was ninety-two years old. After his second stroke he was paralyzed below the waist. His real name was not Sedov, though that was known only to Fomin. They silently sat by the bed of old man for another half hour, and Marilyn sobbing occasionally. Then she started to feed old man with the grapes, saying, Please, eat, Daddy dear, eat. Youve fed us like that at home remember? Oh, I want to go home, Daddy, I cant live here any longer, and she sobbed again.
Finally, Fomin looked at his watch, and with his eyes gave a sign to Myacheva. The woman suddenly roused herself, Marilyn, my dear, your Daddy is tired, he needs some rest, and we should go. Come with me, Ill help you to tidy up. Come, my dear.
Obediently Marilyn followed Myacheva out the door. The old man was still chewing a grape with his toothless mouth, and Fomin cleared his throat.
Alexander Ivanovich, he arrives in two days, said Fomin and straightened his back.
The old man ceased chewing and looked up. So what do you want of me? He looked really tired, breathing heavily.
Same thing, Dr. Sedov. Nothing new.
He is a mature adult, and Im a feeble dying man.
He will listen to you and do whatever you ask, and you perfectly know that. He wouldnt decline your demand.
Demand? Ive never demanded anything of him in fifty years. Not a thing!
If its so, Im afraid, you wasted these fifty years of his, and twenty five of yours. You lived in vain! You suffered in vain! Why dont you think of millions, billions of working people around the world? Shame! Thus you will break the promise you had given to the late Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. You will betray the hopes of all the Communists of the world! The history will never forgive it to you. That will bring shame on you for the years to come!
OK, Ill talk to him, simply said the old man and tiredly closed the eyes. Its for him to decide. Please, leave me now.
And one last thing, excuse me. Please, allow us to move you out of this impoverished refuge to our cottage? We feel ashamed you live in such a hole.
Never! And dont ever mention it to me.
Fomin left the room, then waited for his women in the corridor and said to them, He is very tired, no need to disturb him with farewells, let's go.
Down in the lobby Fomin met the nurse that looked after the old man, and said to her, Weve just visited him, he looks worse. Here, take it for expenses, and feel free with this money.
When their car reached a smoother road, Fomin turned to Marilyn and said softly, Your elder brother arrives the day after tomorrow.
Having heard these words, Myacheva, who sat by Marilyn, uttered a constrained shriek and grasped her breasts with both hands.
7.The Mission Assigned from Death-bed
The old man, who was left at the impoverished home for the aged, and who was known by false name Sedov, was actually the legendary academician, a star of the Soviet science, a proud recipient of the numerous government rewards, and also a former member Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. That was a career-zenith anyone could dream of in this country, but that was thirty years ago.
As a scientist Sedov was occupied then by the mysteries of organic life, but as the member of Ts-Ka of his Party he administered all fields of biology and its researches in dozens of laboratories and institutions. In the early eighties the famous laboratory under his direct leadership was on the verge of epochal discovery, which could bring results worthy of Nobel Prize. Although, Sedov refused to publish anything; he and his colleagues never uttered a word about the matter of their research outside their laboratory. That was very right thing to do, as it would have had revealed later.
The theme of their epochal discovery was the cloning, that is indistinguishable, as facsimile copying of any living beings, but at the molecular and genetic level. There was some experimenting with cloning also abroad; cloned lambs, doggies and other animals were born in some laboratories, but they didnt live long and died in extreme anguish. Soviet renowned scientist and ardent communist Sedov attained then an unbelievable advancement in genetics and practical cloning; he could not just clone, but could now make some sort of fax-copies, and almost send them by wire of the human beings. To make a perfect human clone he needed just clipped off scraps of nails or a lock of hair, and a pair of smears taken from the private parts, preferably of original human persons, but his immediate kins would also could do. The clone would turn out healthier if could be used tissues of his intestines, but still better from his head.
Having felt a chill in a backbone at the prospects of his discovery, the academician instantly proclaimed all information on this subject as classified material. He called the First department of his laboratory, a branch of secret police KGB, to be the watchdog of his top secret research. The next day Sedov, as a member of Partys Central Committee, applied for an appointment with the powerful chief of Soviet secret police KGB, comrade Yuri Andropov. In a week Sedov entered with self-assured stride the office in the most dreaded building during gulag years on Lubyanka square.
The academician explained KGB chief as simply as he could the essence of his discovery. The tall elderly man just silently and patiently watched him through his glasses, asking no questions. Then he suddenly cut short the academician, Whom do you intend to clone first?
Academician faltered: he never thought of that. At least he never thought about his human clones as of real people with regular names and surnames of their prototypes. Being a scientist, he always imagined them being nude and virgin as biblical Adam and Eva.
Well, we havent yet planned that. I mean may our Party decide that, because of immense importance and implied consequences of such action.
OK, can you clone, or copy, or whatever can you resurrect all the Old Bolsheviks massacred by Joseph Stalin? Can you resurrect entire old Lenins guard?
Struck dumb, scientist said, I think, yes, we can possibly try. Why?
These days of moral decay we need as never before, as an air in our lungs, their enthusiasm, their revolutionary gust, their Bolshevist courage. They would kind of vaccinate all of us, all our country. They would inspire our Party with a new life, with a new flame and ideas!
Yes, comrade Andropov, we could do this, that is a great honor for us, uttered the academician, coining the words. Their genetics materials had been wisely preserved with an incredible far-sight by Soviet scientists in the twenties; its in excellent condition: the body tissues, brain slices. I know it as a curator of Organics laboratory which oversee the body of immortal Lenin in his mausoleum.
Fine. Yet, dont you breathe a word to anyone. Do you understand? All I said is a top state secret. You will be informed of my decision. Go to your work, and dont waste any time.
Academician waited nearly a year for this decision to be relayed to him, but the government-direct-line telephone in his office, vertushka, was silent. Suddenly as can be sudden the death of a sick eighty-year old died current Secretary General who ruled the country for more than twenty years. It also triggered the coming death-harvesting of gerontokratia in the Partys Politburo. He was buried with a pomp and artillery salutation in the grave near the Kremlin wall on the Red Square. The next Secretary General, the third in history of the Party, was elected by the intimate circle of old members of Politburo. They elected KGB chief Yuri Andropov.
When academician saw a foot-high photo of the new Secretary General in the party paper Pravda he announced top alert warning in his laboratory, though everything was ready months ago. All the previous year, not yet having any directives from above, the academician, using his position of a member of the Central Committee, could manage to get the cuts of the brain and samples of body tissues of almost all Lenin inner circle Bolsheviks of early twenties, of all legendary Lenin Old guard ruined later by Joseph Stalin. In his hyper-freezers were also stored now ready for initial experiments the tissues of great poets and scientists of the country. All these precious materials came from the Institute of Brain, laboratory, organized by Bolsheviks, and which received in mandatory manner the brains of all the states elite who died in the twenties and the thirties of natural causes or not. These brains came, and that was registered by photographs, in a shallow bathroom basins, covered with plain towels, for consequent weighing, cutting into paper-thin slices, and then a profound research. It was universally believed that disclosing of the mystery of human genius was a matter of paramount importance for a young Soviet science. In those famine-years, when millions died deprived of the bread that was sold abroad for machinery for the industrialization, this Institute of Brain was granted precious death-tolled gold to purchase in Germany a marvelous machine that could cut off finest, almost transparent layers of human brain, as a ham in a food store. Of course, those scientists didnt decipher the riddle of human intelligence with those translucent pink-colored films, but, nevertheless, they stored them as a priceless treasure, each one between two glasses, inside of the tall beautiful cabinets of polished walnut.
Yet, months were elapsing, but the academicians team didnt get any commands from above. A year passed in a strained waiting, although quite suddenly academician and his lab forgot all about their ambitious dreams. From the remote Afghanistan to their country commenced to arrive on leisurely schedule long trains of refrigerators loaded with the cargo 200. That was the designation for casualties, coined at that time and became regular in later post-Soviet bloody clashes. Cargo 200 from Afghanistan directly affected academician and his laboratory, though not all of it, but only hundreds of burnt or torn to tatters, and hence unrecognizable remains, having neither names nor faces. Academician and his lab plunged into the enormous work of their identification. Only their organics lab had sophisticated genetics expertise for this job, to determine the identity of everyone in order to pay last tribute to these fallen heroes.
But all of a sudden at the end of the nineteen eighty three, on the New Year eve, academician had an unexpected call from the Secretariat of Central Committee and was summoned at long last to the Secretary General. But what seemed to the academician very alarming, he was called not to the Kremlin, or Central Committee building, or any of suburban residences. He was to arrive at the Central Hospital, to meet Secretary General Yuri Andropov privately. Of course, it was implied the top secrecy of Yuri Andropovs whereabouts.
In the early December twilight academicians black chauffeur-driven Volga passed a check point barrier, then slowly and respectfully moved through snow-covered birch alley and stopped at the entrance of this foremost hospital in the country. Having put on a hospital gown, academician silently followed the assistant to the Secretary General and his on-duty doctor, passing desolate hushed corridors. On their way Security officers and the nurses stood up respectfully at their desks. Three of them stopped at one of the wards, the academician was asked to wait and his escort entered the door. In a motionless silence the academician has distinctly heard the loud beating of his heart. In five minutes he was asked to enter the ward, too.
The academician didnt immediately make out Secretary General in a dim ward. It was really dark there with just a few gloomy lamps illuminating sophisticated equipment by the walls, and the cabinets full of drugs. At first, with his eyes adapting to darkness, he made out the wide, specialized bed, then a frigid figure of the patient under the covers and the glittering flexible tubing diving under his blankets from the huge apparatus by adjacent wall. Only then the academician noticed cyanotic and bloated face, deep in the pillows. He didnt immediately recognize Secretary General, because he remembered his face mainly as he saw it in the newspapers, but they of course published retouched photos shot several years ago. Unexpectedly this time, at his second encounter with Secretary General, the latter was the first one to smile. He raised just a little his hand and made a friendly sign to sit down. The academician had sat shyly on a chair by his bedside, being lost as to how respectfully behave with this patient, and what the words were appropriate in the circumstances. But the Secretary General was the first to address him, unexpectedly loudly for the hospital ward.
Long time we havent seen each other.
Good evening, comrade Andropov. Hows your health?
What health do you mention? I got no health any more.
With the small talk the academician felt himself more confidently, his eyes got accustomed to the dusk, and he secretly examined the large white apparatus in the corner connected to General Secretary by flexible tubing. The apparatus sighed deeply with soft metallic murmur and a distinct liquid gurgling inside it. The academician has heard the rumors that the sick kidneys plagued the Secretary General and that seemed true. He realized that the sighing apparatus was an artificial kidney; he never saw such a sophisticated thing before.
General Secretary looked at his assistant sitting at the desk by the door and said softly, Lets hear something jazzy. Yeah, put the disk of Duke Ellington for us.
The assistant went to the side table with a record-player, picked up from the stack on the shelf a vinyl record and put it on the turntable. The wards tranquility was pierced by tenor saxophone.
Louder, please, said the Secretary General, and the saxophone resonated too loud even for apartment parlor. Thats fine. You can go.
As a member of the Central Committee academician knew about some of personal interests of their leader. Andropov was the first in a succession of Communist leaders who understood music preferring classical jazz, and he even purchased abroad through the states Embassies a vast record collection. But this flashy and too loud for a hospital ward jazz music could mean only the reliable and sure way to protect their conversation from eavesdropping, that was frequently used by partys members from revolutionary days. In the thirties, those deadly gulag years, and even later, all somewhat serious talks the Soviet people normally accompanied with the loud noise of the radio broadcasts.
Hows your work advances? Secretary General asked the academician, surpassing the Duke Ellingtons Take the train A.
Everything is ready a long time ago, comrade Secretary General.
Good. You see whats going on in our country. Corruption and negligence everywhere, and still thousands of our soldiers are killed in the bloody war at Afghanistan. I'm trying to clean this mess, and Ive done all I could but now Im in this bed. Tell me honestly, as a Communist, can you grow up from your clones an active and ardent Lenins clique quickly, or lets say, with an accelerated Bolshevik tempo?
Well, Im afraid it may take many decades because you would need adequate and grown up Bolsheviks, anxiously said academician, but the Secretary General interrupted him.
No, that wont do, too long a time, our Soviet Union wont hold on that long. We need it sooner, as early as possible, or never.
For the first time in his life academician had heard such words about the Soviet Union, and those words were spoken by the Secretary General of his party. Therefore, confused, he spoke then very erratically.
Yes, we have, in the stage of experiments, a methodic of accelerated growth, though its very dangerous for their health, its a great risk to try, and we cannot foresee all the consequences
Times of paramount importance now. What we need is just their appearance among us. Just let them ascend the tribune on the mausoleum of great Lenin at the Red Square, at least once or twice, so they would have been seen and heard. That would stir millions of people in our country, it will inject lost enthusiasm, ignite the revolutionary flame in the breast of every Communist. Those sparks will be sufficient to ignite a fire in the breasts of all peoples of the world, which would be inextinguishable, as it happened seventy years ago after our October revolution. That would be enough! Having done that your clones could then leave us forever, they would have had accomplished their historic mission. Am I clear to you?
Yes, comrade Andropov. But, unfortunately, the fastest we can grow them is at the rate of two clones years per one of humans, thats twice faster than natural. No way to force the process, because they would die too soon.
Thats some better. Maybe we could outrun the time and avert the disaster. Possibly can its just a chance. I dont see any other rescue-boat around anyway.
On your orders we can start the process of conceiving the clone embryos practically tomorrow.
No, no, dont you even try! You cannot raise them in this county. I forbid you doing that! Raising them here for twenty years and thats a minimum, you say! Do you forget the bloody fate that awaited Russian princes, including the last one? Dont you know what happened to the children of repressed Bolsheviks, including the ones you want to clone? You would have absolutely no chance here to grow them alive. To do this honorable work you will have to leave this county. You should be prepared to change your name and go for those long decades to some place with a firm Communist regime. Are you ready to do that?
Im a Communist, comrade Andropov.
I had no doubts in your faith to the Party, thank you. I had more spare time in this hospital, and Ive considered your case. North Korean Communists rule their country much firmer than we had done, they do not lose their noble ideals so easily, and they will survive for decades or even centuries after we perish of course, you must properly understand my frankness. That is why, you must go there, and raise your clones in that country: North Korean Communists proved their ability to build Communist society on their soil. If you are willing to go, I'll start to test the waters. But well have to get them interested in this project. Say, could you clone also a baby MaoZedong? Body of this great Chinese revolutionary lies in a mausoleum in Beijing, China, exactly as our Lenin here in Moscow, and that means the necessary genetic material is available. Koreans would like to get the upper hand with their Chinese friends, having a baby-Mao clone all to themselves. They will welcome you, Im sure. Soon you will have a lot of kids, and a lot of fun. Ready?
Of course, Im ready. Its my duty, comrade Andropov.
Jazz record still played, and that meant their conversation continued less than twenty minutes. As a farewell General Secretary just tiredly nodded and closed his eyes.
Though, in a months time General Secretary Yuri Andropov had died. The academician watched on the TV screen his coffin being solemnly carried on a gun-carriage through the snow-covered Red Square, and a lump rose to his throat. He felt that most important purpose of his life would never be accomplished now, and as a Communist he had lived his life in vain.
Another one and a half years elapsed. One more Secretary General accepted the office, the next one in a queue of elderly Politburo members, but he also died very soon. Much younger Gorbachev was given the office, with a mutual hope on vigor in his veins, but that, as it turned out, was a dubious decision. The last in the partys history Secretary General started his perestroika, that is a reconstruction, and the great Communist state, or as US President Ronald Reagan named it, an Evil Empire, started to slide slowly and inevitably down to the abyss of ideologically opposing Capitalism.
One hot summer evening, when academician got out of his Moscow apartment for a walk with his dog, from the car that was parked by the doorway appeared a stranger and approached him in twilight. The academician noticed him only when the stranger called him by the name.
.
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, (https://www.litres.ru/pages/biblio_book/?art=64476547) .
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- Жанр: Английский язык, Иностранные языки
- Теги: метод комментированного чтения, разговорный английский, Самиздат, углубленное изучение английского языка, Изучение иностранных языков
- Язык: Книги на русском языке
- Объём: 260 стр.
- Дата написания: 2021
- Возрастные ограничения: 18+
- Дата выхода книги: 19 марта 2021
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
Humorous and grotesque thriller. At the dusk of Soviet era in Russia, just before its collapse, the reigning leadership trying to rescue the country decides on cloning the legendary revolutionaries, raising them up abroad and bringing back to revive Communist spirit. Among them, including famous Lenin, was also the charming girl who was given birth by a genetics genius just for fun.
This girl was a spitting image of her world-famous prototype, whose genetic material was used, and her name was also Marilyn Monroe. Not all clones survived, but those who returned to their historical motherland years later, were full of energy, but too unconventional to meet the expectations of politicians.
Big money, love and bloodshed accompanied Marilyn during visit. When Marilyn was leaving, her luggage included funeral urns with the ashes of her clone-brothers. She parted forever with her new lovers, American diplomat and Russian private investigator, who rescued her life.
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Видео по теме - "My Therapist" (1984) Starring Marilyn Chambers
