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55° 46» 12» N
36° 39» 10» E
Odintsovo District, Moscow Region, Russian Federation
September 8, 1994
He woke up from the voices behind the door, finding himself lying on a hard mattress in a small, unfurnished room in the attic under the roof of a house. The mattress was not laid out, but at the head of the bed he found carefully laid sheets, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, a pair of clean but ragged jeans, a Dynamo Moscow t-shirt (how did they know it was his favorite team?), towels, and soap. He immediately sensed the smell of his own clothes and became ashamed of himself.
Outside the window, the gold crowns of birch trees sounded lovely as they rustled in the wind. A nearby radio blared a song about a «cherry-colored nine.»[8 - Nickname for the VAZ-2109, a popular Russian-made hatchback car.] Oleg looked out from the barred window and saw an old Uzbek raking leaves. A transistor radio hung on a clothesline around his neck. The Uzbek was collecting the falling leaves with the rhythm of the song. The door, to Oleg’s surprise, was not locked, so he stepped out of the room. He found a pair of old friends sitting in battered armchairs, smoking, and playing a game of nard.
«Hey, brother Oleshka is up!» sarcastically hissed one of the men, «And boy do you stink! Move your feet and go take a shower… you’ll find a razor and a toothbrush there. You didn’t forget how to brush your teeth, did you?» Both men erupted into loud laughter. Sometime later, Oleg came out of the shower refreshed.
«Oh! Who are you? Look at him! It’s Wise Oleg the Second!» His «rescuers» had no limits to expressing their surprise. «And you said, „why do we need this piece of shit?“»
«The boss will be happy this time!»
Oleg was indeed unrecognizable. The formerly homeless man spent a good hour under the hard stream of water and wasted almost the entire bar of soap. He used up two disposable razors on his face and head so that not a single hair remained. Oleg was a creative person, «an artist in life» as he called himself. And it didn’t matter what he was doing. Under the running water in the shower, he imagined himself as a young Grigory Kotovsky, a Red Army commander. His reasoning on creativity was that the art of an «artist in life» – whether a singer, sculptor, composer, poet, it doesn’t matter who – cannot and should not be considered in isolation from their fate – or, calling fate by its real name, death. Take Pushkin. His poetry wouldn’t have been any worse had he not been killed in a duel, but it’d be unlikely that he would have been remember by anyone to this day, just as few people remember the verses of Zhukovsky, Kukolnik or Baratynsky.
The consumer of art loves to «look to the last page» and find out that the author justly hanged or shot themselves. Or at least, they pranced around naked in a prison cell or an asylum. That means, all that an artist wrote, made, painted, or sang was the clear truth. People are pleased to know that Gogol had gone mad, that Tolstoy died in some obscure little railway station, that Venedikt Erofeev fairly died of throat cancer, and Oleg Grigoriev of cirrhosis of the liver. The genuine actor is obligated to die onstage. The singer must belt out the final note and collapse. Lennon or Cobain had to die young because that was the proper, real way to go. That’s how it’s supposed to be for the famous and truly talented. Unlike those well-known people, Oleg Pervushin himself knew how to make an exit in his own way. He was sure that he could «hop away like a bunny» from any vicious circle. Unnoticed. Disappearing like a shadow at noon.
He was born in Kazakhstan in 1960, in the city formerly known as Tselinograd. He was an excellent student. Then he served in the army for two years the Arctic Division as a flight technician at a military airfield. After the army Oleg entered the Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture. Many scoffed at him, «did they accept you without an exam, as a collective farmer from the country?» However, he didn’t finish the institute. Instead, he rode the rails across the whole country as a train steward and began to write short stories and diaries of his travels. Once these records fell into the hands of an up-and-coming publisher. The stories were published in the early nineties. Readers liked them, wanting more and more… Life, it seemed, started to move in the right direction. But then he vanished, quietly, like an Englishman.
He left to the village Gostilovo in the Ryazan region, where he fathered a son from his wife, Katya, and where they all lived together, along with a dog named Bad and a cat named Marquis. Oleg would spend the evenings on the porch in satin shorts down to his knees, smoking a cigarette and staring at the sky. His wife eventually got tired of this life and left for Moscow, taking their son with her. She said to Oleg before leaving, «Other freaks can at least energetically promote themselves. Today’s «modern artists’ convert their idiocy into hard currency… thousands of dollars! And what about you? Your books have a laughable circulation, your paintings are not exhibited anywhere, and the peak of your fame was an appearance on the local news about government officials supporting culture in the villages. What culture? Goddamn you!» In conclusion, Oleg Anatolievich Pervushin could quite truthfully say, as in the words of one old Ukrainian man, «the world tried to catch me, but could not.»
But then yesterday, everything changed, and the «world» finally caught him with its net, in a manner understood only by its own worldly sense. He remembered how an old army friend, a Kazakh as dry as an old tree, put him first on a light drug, and then on a heavy one, heroin. He never took any money from him, never. He just made him a pusher. He made him more and more addicted to the thin doted line in his arm. It’s like in an old joke: «even in a competition of assholes, you’d finish in second place!… but why only second, my dear?… because you are an asshole!» Here he was, Oleg Pervushin, an asshole-loser. Lived in some hole in the Ryazan woods – no money, no job, no glory, no recognition. If he made any trips to Moscow, it was only for pushing the shit. While he was lucky never to have been caught for that, he still found ways to get mixed up in bad stories while travelling. Usually it involved drinking in some strange company – cheerful, good-natured Oleg taking one shot after another, to health, to life… and next thing he was in a police van again. With his blue Kazakh passport, he was an easy target for the cops, whose eyes were trained to pick out individuals like him in any crowd. That was just another reason why Katya left him.
While standing in the shower, Oleg was thinking how well everything was at the start of yesterday. He was on his way to see him son in Moscow when he began drinking with some «good people» in the third-class sleeping carriage. He recalled there were a lot of words and fraternization, tears in his fist, and the lapel of his jacket smelled of smoke. Twice he ran out to buy vodka from women at the stations the train made stops at. The last bottle was one too many – everyone collapsed. When the train arrived in Moscow in the morning, the conductor had to drag him out and push him onto the platform. Oleg walked straight to the Red Square. He didn’t have a penny nor his passport on him. Then – these «brothers» in their «crimson blazers,» a car, a mattress… what happened?
After bathing and dressing, the «brothers» once again surveyed Pervushin from head to toe and took him to the second floor. They walked past massive and intricate Bali-style furniture, including several vases and a palatial heavy table with six chairs. When they stepped into a spacious office, the first thing Oleg saw was a large table occupied by souvenirs from exotic countries – various collectibles, masks, stands for ancient writing utensils. There he saw an antique telescope with shimmering copper sides and a vintage globe upheld by a bronze ring. Just like in the quarters of a military commander, a highly accurate map of the world hung above the table. Red pins dotted the map like bugs, likely indicating the owner’s travels.
A short and stout man, completely bald and with absolutely no neck, sat at the table. His head grew directly from his shoulders. He was wearing a red Liverpool FC shirt. «My name is Aleksey Potapov, in case someone doesn’t know…» He patted his bald head and with a smirk looked at the similarly hairless Oleg, who suddenly realized that he had no desire to know the name of this man. He lowered his head and stared down at his feet in the Chinese-made sneakers. A chronometer ticked loudly on the table. Outside, someone was swearing and shouting. Probably the Uzbek gardener. The silence dragged on and Oleg looked up. A man named Aleksey Potapov was staring at him. Under the long glare of those unblinking eyes, Oleg felt a void and dread inside himself. A painful hangover started to take over as Oleg felt his joints stretch and back stiffen.
«Since I don’t have much time, I will be brief with you… what’s your name again?» The bald man referred at a piece of paper under his hands, «Oleg. Oleg Pervushin. Especially because you don’t have any choice. I want to read you something.» He pulled out a copy of an old geography journal from his desk, leafed through, stopped at the right page, moved the magazine slightly as do people with impending farsightedness, and began to read. «There are more than 190 polar research stations in the Arctic and the Antarctic. They generally have enough fuel and food supplies for one or two people for a period of five or six years. For the USSR, these stations are a matter of national prestige. In addition, these deserted stations provide navigation support to the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route and are also used as weather stations.»
Finished reading, he set his sights back on Oleg. «It’s on one of these stations that you must work, brother. That is, just live there a little. You know, just survive. We’ll visit you every three months, check if you still eat your food. And the longer you last, the better chances you have of getting back to the world. I have to say, you’re looking much better than yesterday. Yesterday, you were the bottom of the barrel. Today, you’re something else, aren’t you?» He laughed, «You’re a casino chip! Six powerful, serious, and respectable citizens made a bet on you, brother. I’m one of them. You’re not doubting my integrity, are you?»
Oleg had only one pestering thought on his mind. What fucking station? What fucking North Pole? If I don’t get a dose in one minute, I’m going to kill myself! The bald Liverpool supporter named Aleksey Potapov stared at him for another half-minute and then slowly opened his mouth, «And now, we’ll stay here while you go prepare for your winter vacation in the Arctic. Here’s a little keepsake from me… the guide to your mission.» Potapov ripped out the page with the article about the Soviet polar stations from the magazine and tucked it in the back pocket of Pervushin’s pants. One of the «crimson blazers» then gave the same hind pocket a strong and confident slap, signaling Oleg to head for the door. His other hand seized Oleg’s elbow with an iron grip.
When Oleg was taken into the corridor, Potapov called the «crimson blazer» over. The goon turned around, relaxing his grip for a moment. This was enough for Oleg to pull away and break free from the hold. Oleg rushed to the window, knocked the high, storefront-like window with his head, rolled on the warm and sparkling iron roof, and thundered down into the rose bushes. He fell on his back. There was no pain, there was no sound. He frantically breathed in the garden odors – wet grass, smoke from the leaves, the smell of apples from his childhood. And then he lost his consciousness. The radio hanging around the Uzbek’s neck was airing the weather forecast. «Tomorrow, September 9, Moscow will face freezing rain and north-easterly wind, with a possibility of black ice on the roads…»
CHAPTER 15
21° 20» 70» N
86° 80» 81» W
Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
December 15, 1971
The thin black hen, clucking energetically, went into the half-open door of the hut in full confidence that the mystery of the sacred act of laying an egg will now happen. The hot sun rose, announcing a new day – it was time for the birth of a new life. But in a corner of the hut, in the hen’s sacred straw bed located, lay something big and strange. Something that was completely covered by a frayed colorful blanket was breathing softly and snorting. The hen did not tolerate these unexpected circumstances and unceremoniously jumped on top of the sleeping assailant. Diego felt a strange movement on his belly and gave a startled jump. The hysterical screams of the fleeing bird brought his mind back into the young day. He wasn’t scared at all and quickly remembered the previous evening, sweetly stretching out like a kitten after the long sleep. He got up and went out of the hut. His hands were resting on his belt. Diego looked carefully at the native village which was drenched by the sunlight of the early day.
The old, dry man with an ashen face was sitting in front of the bonfire at the edge of the glade, as if waiting for Diego since last night. He looked like he was dozing, his disheveled head bowed down to his chest. Diego stretching once again, smiling at the discordant twitter of birds. In obeyance to his rumbling stomach, Diego headed towards the weak smoke that curled over a strange, shapeless clay oven.
Without saying anything, a short and wide old woman who was cooking at the stove gave Diego a clay bowl and filled it yellow corn and few small pieces of fried chicken using a big wooden spoon. She gave the boy a smaller spoon and motioned with her hand towards a small table with a pair of improvised stools near the humble dwelling. Gobbling up the breakfast, which was delicious despite its simplicity, Diego looked up and discovered that a dozen curious black eyes were watching him with great interest from the bushes behind him. He was surprised, but still finished his breakfast, brushed off his knees from falling motes and left the shade of the trees to go to the «town» square.
Soon as he came out of the grove, Diego stopped short. About three dozen villagers looked straight at him. They all had dark skin, the color of cocoa powder. All of them were very thin, and many of the adults were lacking teeth. Their legs were crooked or swollen. The children hid behind their parents, some gnawing on corncobs, and looking suspiciously at this strange boy. The bare breasts of the unclothed women sagged down to their bellies. The men’s colored loincloths hung dejectedly, barely covered looked what looked like dried pea pods. Some mothers held their infants wrapped in towels, but not one of them cried. There were as many dogs as people in the village – they were also skinny and bow-legged, but none of them barked. The only sounds in the crowd were dry coughs here and there and nothing else.
Directly in front of the crowd, in the same position as last night, an old skinny man with a scar on his face was sitting, still as a rock. The silence began to bother Diego, so he put his hand on his chest and bowed awkwardly. The old man raised his hand and a few teenagers from the crowd came forward, still holding gnawed cobs in their hands. One of them suddenly struck Diego in the chest with this cob. Diego froze still with both his arms up in the air.
How long he was in that position, Diego himself didn’t know. He only woke up when someone gently touched his shoulder. Two brazen boys approached Diego from the side and started sputtering something in their language. Diego smiled stupidly – he didn’t want God-knows-who to knock him out in this God-knows-where village. One of the natives suddenly poked Diego in the chest, right in the «Granada School – Buenos Aires» inscription on his t-shirt. «Argentina?» he asked. Diego just nodded, being somewhere far away in his mind. «Foot-ball?» continued his stranger-friend. Diego nodded again, knowing that the magic word «football» may perhaps be the only straw that can convert hostility into friendship. Another local gave a toothless smile, gave Diego a friendly push to the shoulder, took out a small round object from behind his back, and threw it at Diego’s feet. A crowd of boys approvingly shouted, waved, and clapped their hands. All over sudden, a group of children, no older than nine or ten years, jumped out from nearby bushes and surrounded Diego.
The game somehow began itself. After the kids poured into the field, shouting, and jostling their arms, they quickly divided into two teams without much thinking required. They pushed Diego into one of them. Immediately, goalposts were put in place in the form of two coconuts, shaped not too differently from that strange, black ball. Diego committed himself to the game from the first touch of the ball. If only his classmates could see him now! He was so tired of their constant ridicule, whether of his plumpness or his bowed legs or his slowness or his inability to do different tricks with the ball. None of them knew how much effort he gave and how much time he spent trying to improve! He spent hours in his room, trying to master the technique – but nothing worked. That’s why he was usually placed as a secondary defender at best, but more often – put on the bench. But where did all his clumsiness go today? He felt nimble, almost rubberlike, as if he could do whatever he wanted with the ball! And the ball seemed to stick to his feet. Full of happiness, Diego was flying across the field with invisible wings.
It was in this condition – fully absorbed by the game and happily shouting something to his new teammates in some strange language he was picking up on the spot – that Diego was found by his father, who reached the village by following a barely visible road. Beside him sat the amusing native man who found Diego yesterday in the woods. Last night, when the boy fell asleep, the man got to the construction workers and immediately found the search party headed by Diego Sr. Through a local interpreter, the man reassured the anxious father that his son is in perfect health. However, he also said it would be better to pick the boy up tomorrow because it is dangerous to move through the bush at night, and there would be no point. Although his father was eager to go retrieve his son right away, his colleagues calmed him down, and the native man said that he would stay overnight in the construction workers’ village. And now, Diego Sr. joined the spectators gathered around the field. Nobody paid any attention to him, and in order not to interrupt the magical flow of what was happening on the field, Diego Sr. started to watch the game with great interest.
The play on the field brought mixed success to both teams. Surprisingly, the native boys played very well, strongly owning this black ball, as if they’ve been kicking it from the moment they began to walk. What they lacked in skill, they made up for with their endless enthusiasm and passion which were more than enough to cover the technical flaws. Diego, by contrast, stood out on the field with his technical tricks, which he memorized from his school trainings. And that’s what was amazing about this day – with this little black ball, everyone was playing so damn well. In whatever complex combination Diego could take this little black ball, the two of them immediately merged, becoming one mechanism, and Diego always managed to do with the ball exactly what he wanted. For example, not only did he manage to shoot a nice goal between the legs of the nearly naked goalkeeper, he also made some exceptional passes, one of which also resulted in a goal. And now, with the score 5:5, Diego tried to get a comfortable position in the opponent’s penalty area. His team earned a corner kick, and now both teams stamped before the goalkeeper, pushing shoulders and elbows, hoping to score the winning goal. Or prevent it. By some pre-destined fate, they were playing for that sixth goal.
The kick! The ball slowly tore the space between multiple bodies, arms, and legs, seemingly freezing over Diego’s head. But instead of jumping and trying to change the direction of the ball with his head, the boy took off vertically, swinging in the air with his whole body, and at the top, continuing to twist, he hit the ball hard towards the net. The goalkeeper didn’t even move while the ball flew right through its target, hit the ground, rolled over and stopped in the lifted white dust. The ball stopped its movement beyond the gate, just at the feet of the ancient and scarred old man. Diego, as a result of falling, deeply cut his left hand against a dry-stemmed bush that grew from the cracked earth. He also cut his eyebrow from the pebbles on the ground. The boy stood up, brushed his dusty shorts and T-shirt, leaving bloody stripes on his chest.
He was already surrounded by the boys from his team, who were shouting, laughing, and clapping Diego’s shoulders and back. But Diego suddenly stopped, seeing how from the edge of the field that horrible old man was slowly moving in his direction. «You came, you came at last!» Diego heard the deep voice coming at him, although it was crying out in some incomprehensible language. «Let soro ta kama vok! Ton guha!»
CHAPTER 16
To: Head of Intelligence Directorate,
General Staff of the Red Army,
General I.I. Ilichev
December 16, 1942
From the report of GRU Major S.S. Solomakhin
Comrade General,
Here is a document received by our fact-finding group that confirms our original suspicion that the former leadership of the OGPU had an interest in the object of our concern.
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE NKVD (6
DIVISION)
Case №38—9. Top secret.
Transcript of surveillance recordings
Moscow, Bolshaya Lubyanka, Building 11, Room 208
From the book of visitors of Deputy Chairman of the OGPU G.G. Yagoda
Date – June 12, 1931
Visitor (Time In / Time Out)
V.G. Karpov, OGPU Lieutenant (04:16 / 04:27)
«Allow me to report, Comrade Yagoda?»
«Come in, Karpov, report what you got on this… Prichitalov?»
«Uhm…»
«Uhm… what!?»
«Uh, I…»
«What is it? Karpov, you have to pretend that I’m not me, that I’m not Yagoda, but, say, your comrade-in-arms and we are in the midst of crushing the Kronstadt rebellion. You are… (noise). And we’re together, we are eliminating the enemy… (noise) line of attack… And we are not in the Lubyanka right now, but in the storage room….»
«But I already put everything on record…»
«That report of yours, Vasiliy, is adequate. You described everything well. But the number of mistakes in there…»
«Comrade Yagoda, I’m not well-educa…» (noise)
«Okay, so what’s this with your former fr…» (noise)
«… he is not my friend, Comrade Yagoda. When I was chased around by the police hounds before the revolution, Prichitalov was an investigator with the Moscow Criminal Department. I was young back then, so he pulled me out of jail, made me promise that I will not under… (noise) help him…»
«… right.» (noise)
«He came by yesterday. He’s an old man now, really old. He said, I helped you once, you owe me a favor, but not a heavy one. I trust you, he said, and I want to hand over some documents from a case that the Okhrana[9 - The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order («The Guard»), Russia’s imperial secret police before the 1917 Revolution.] closed 23 years ago… (noise) concealed and redacted. I don’t need anything, he said, but your department should know this… Deliver this to the head, personally.»
«Did you read it your… (noise) … and also… mention to anyone else?»
«I briefly looked at Filippov’s case. Nothing special. He died from a lightning strike. My old man also died from a lightning… (noise) haymaking field… (noise) … The dossier is too heavy, it’s painful to read, all these scientists, numbers, words… (noise). And the part about Chri… (noise) the Savior is just nonsen… (noise) … My mother goes there every weekend. I tell her, your son is in the organs, and you embarrass me like… (noise)»
«Alright, Karpov. Well done, you are dismissed.»
«I serve the So… nion.»
(noise)
«… about Prichitalov?»
«Everything will be alright… (noise) Dismissed.»
«Yes, Comrade Yagoda!»
Karpov leaves. Pause of 11 minutes and 32 seconds before telephone connection is made with the office secretary.
(Connection established)
«Nastya, bring me some strong tea and connect me with Comrade Kaganovich.»
«Yes, Comrade Yagoda.»
(Connection, signal made, only a one-way deciphering of the conversation)
«H-hello, dear Comrade Kaganovich.»
«…»
«I don’t sleep, I serve of the proletariat…»
«…»
«I had a visitor a few minutes ago, poor man, may his soul rest in peace…»
«…»
«What do you want me to say?»
«…»
«Yes, our souls…»
«…»
«… looks like our concerns are justified. He brought me a stack of papers on the Cathedral of Christ the Savior – you will not be disappointed, dear Comrade.»
«…»
«It is very much confirmed.»
«…»
«We have to dig up all the corpses, open the crypts, tomb after tomb…»
«…»
«I think it is there, in their Russian graves, which they continue to hold on to…»
«…»
«And if not, then what?»
«…»
