At the upper end of the road, a new communal house, from which you can survey the whole village, is being built for meetings. It has a big, rounded window, which from farther away looks like a huge eye. Next to this house there is a path laid with expensive flagstones leading up to Vissarion’s house.
“What’s it like living so close to the Master?”
“We describe it jokingly like this: Below in the village the people are in boiling water; up here we are on the grill,” Richard answers. But the houses up here are visibly larger and of a higher quality; it seems like the posh area of Sun City.
Now I make a mistake. I reach for my camera, watching Richard’s reaction in case photography is not allowed here. But he doesn’t seem to have any objections, so I snap a shot of Vissarion’s house. White stone walls, a rounded portal, two statues of cranes in the neatly trimmed garden. Not a palace, but it is a pretty little villa.
As we make our way back a man approaches us from behind. He seems to be angry and demands that I delete the photo immediately. I comply and he lets us continue.
Back at the entrance gate of the village we are again accosted. A bearded guy wearing the usual linen clothes asks us what we were thought we were doing taking photos. How did he know? The lines of communication seem to work better than I had imagined. He also wants to know why he wasn’t informed of our presence, as he is the guest-minder here, and how we managed to meet up with Vadim. His tone is calm—watch out for those negative vibes—but his physical tension betrays his anger. Minna tries to pacify him and says that we registered on arrival.
“How did you get here in the first place?” he asks in a milder tone.
“By walking from Zharovsk.” This seems to be unusual, which makes us even more suspect.
Once we assure him that we were planning to leave Sun City today, he lets us go. We return to our accommodation to gather our belongings. On entering the dining area we sense a change in mood, though the faces show no sign of negative emotion. “What, you’re still here?” says a woman with a friendly smile.
AFTER WALKING A few hours we’re back at Alex’s house; a fire flickers in the living-room fireplace. I ask him what he thinks about my photo faux pas. “Not such a big problem; they’ll soon calm down.” He knows what it’s like to run afoul of Vissarion’s rules. Alex runs a shop on the main road that sells a wide variety of goods and has a small DVD rental section—mostly dealing in action movies, at ten rubles per DVD. A number of followers found this a bit disconcerting and asked for Vissarion’s view during one of the Sunday question-time sessions. The answer was that it was not okay and Alex was expelled from the “united families,” the group of particularly compliant devotees. Alex still rents out DVDs.
He is, in fact, worried about the lack of entertainment in the village; he has an eighteen-year-old son. Alex shows me a rough design for a café that he is planning to open in a few years, with guest beds and a stage for concerts. On the weekends there could be a disco, and in the small tower a telescope for observing the stars.
Despite the limited cultural life, Alex still thinks Zharovsk is a paradise in comparison to other villages of similar size. “Many Russian villages are almost completely destroyed. By drugs and alcohol. Particularly in the central regions of the country,” he says. “Do you want to know the truth about Russia?”
“Sure,” I say, “that’s why I came here.”
He tells me a joke: “A tribe of Indians captures a Russian, a Frenchman, and a German. The chieftain gives each of them two steel balls. He tells them, ‘Whoever does something with these balls that I find interesting goes free. The others will be killed.’ The next day he goes first to the German, who balances both balls on the tips of his fingers: ‘Look! That’s German precision.’ Next, the Frenchman shows him how good he is at juggling. Finally it’s the Russian’s turn: he has lost one ball and damaged the other. The chieftain can’t believe his eyes and sets him free.”
Alex thinks that tells you everything about Russians. “My son’s just like that. When he was three or four we let him go alone to the village. One hour later he came back; he had somehow lost all his clothes and was completely naked. Recently I lent him two modems; the next day he returned only one of them. He bought himself an amp—the next day it was kaput. Now he’s building a house.” Well, that’s going to be fun, I think to myself.
While we’re on the subject of Russia: “What is Putin actually like?” I ask Alex.
“The country is huge; we need a king, a strong leader. He is liked because he’s a patriot, not a thief, and he doesn’t drink. And he gives people money for a second child.”
I sense that he doesn’t really mean “he is liked” but rather “I like him.” But during my travels here I often have the impression that people are somewhat more cautious about praising Putin because of my roots, because they know how critically their leader is viewed in the West.
I only see Vissarion again in a few video clips on Alex’s computer. His sublime presence evokes a historical film version of Jesus. “It is wrong to come to conclusions without knowledge,” he decrees in a solemn voice, and the followers adoringly nod. When he’s right, he’s right.
Truth No. 15:
The greater your charisma, the wiser you will seem when stating very simple truths.
KYZYL
Population: 110,000
Federal District: Siberia
GOING TO PUTIN’S
I HAVE TO GET back to the “world.” Leaving is difficult; the simple life in the country has been like a short vacation. Even though (or maybe because) I received no feeling of enlightenment—not even two sevens in the matrix could help me there.
I’ve arranged to meet someone in Kyzyl about whom I know nothing other than that his online profile shows Putin in a black suit, casually walking away from a burning White House. His short answer to my couch request was a single line: “Privyet. I have a place where you can spend a couple of nights,” and his telephone number. He asks me via text message whether it’s okay for me to stay in a completely empty apartment that’s up for sale. Of course, I write back. I don’t even know his name.
I know a little bit more about the region he lives in. It seems to have little in common with the peaceful altruism of the place I’ve just left. Lonely Planet warns of being out on the streets of Kyzyl after dark because of the numbers of drunks out and about who, apparently, are inclined to be violent. This is doubly threatening as the most popular local sport is wrestling. Additionally, shamanism is in fashion, so the vodka-crazed fighting machines, before leaving me half-dead on the sidewalk, will rip out some of my hair to make an effigy. Even years later, long after the broken ribs from the suplex slam have healed, they could cause me horrific pains with the help of that effigy. Or so I imagine.
Having a non-traditional sexual orientation, which in Russia was only removed from the list of mental illnesses in 1999 and is still considered “treatable.” Since 2013 it has been an offence to speak positively about homosexuality to minors. The 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, won by the bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst, was a major educational challenge for families gathered around their TV sets. “There is no limit to our outrage. It is the end of Europe. There are no more men or women in Europe, just it,” raged Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the ultranationalist party LDPR, who is well known for provocative sound bites. However, “outrage” was a bit of an exaggeration, at least if he thought he was speaking for the whole country. At the voting stage, Wurst received a highly respectable eight points from callers in Russia.