Trying to steer clear of Zhirinsky did no good. Even when he had no specific ax to grind, Vladimir Zhirinsky still tripped colleagues down the Duma stairs, slammed doors into people's faces and keyed cars in the Kremlin parking lot.
Everyone knew that when a smile appeared beneath the crazed senator's great bushy mustache, it was time to run back and see if the office or the wife and kids were on fire.
For a time his unorthodox behavior made him a hero. Zhirinsky the iconoclast challenged authority, ironically by seeking restoration of a government that would crush such challenges. He had even run for the Russian presidency.
Alas for Vladimir Zhirinsky, his brief popularity bubble among the Russian people had burst unexpectedly. It happened during a nationally televised debate. On the live broadcast, Zhirinsky's opponent had said something that the senator couldn't counter and, in rebuttal, Zhirinsky had done the first thing that came to him. He bit off the man's nose.
Worse, when the hapless moderator demanded he spit the nose back out, the ultranationalist smiled a blood-smeared smile before swallowing visibly. His great Adam's apple bobbed, and the screaming politician with the hole in his face lost his nose forever. It was little comfort to him as he was led, bleeding, from the Moscow studio that the night that robbed him of his nose was also the night that ended the career of Vladimir Zhirinsky.
In the wake of this event, the crazy nationalist lost not only the presidency but also his senate seat. And around the world was quiet relief that a man so unstable was no longer a serious candidate to assume the leadership of Russia.
Soon Vladimir Zhirinsky was forgotten.
It was the lowest time in his life, this public exile. To be forgotten while stuck in some faraway Siberian labor camp was one thing, but to be shunned on the very streets of Moscow was worse than any gulag.
His life for the past several years had been lived in shadows. But as he rode through the streets of Moscow this bleak February day, Vladimir Zhirinsky no longer felt the heavy depression of days past. His time of public exile was now, at last, coming to an end.
The sky over the capital was a sallow gray. Here and there snowflakes whispered to the pavement. Frozen pedestrians scurried past piles of dirty snow. Scarves and collars met in tight fists as men and women hurried home to cold walk-up flats.
Winter in Russia was a depressing season. One could feel it in the air. But that same cold made weak men strong.
Vladimir Zhirinsky sat bundled in his greatcoat in the rear of his battered Zil limousine. The rusted old car coughed and spluttered through the cold streets of Moscow.
Through careful eyes he studied the city as it passed his tinted windows.
They had just driven by McDonald's. Burger King, too. Radio Shack, Dunkin' Donuts and Pizza Hut all had franchises in Russia's capital. A few days before, Zhirinsky had traveled on business to San Francisco. It sickened him to see the same capitalist logos adorning buildings in his beloved Moscow as he'd seen in America.
An old Russian proverb spoke of the land of his birth as "not a country, but a world." If that was true, then in his lifetime, Vladimir Zhirinsky had seen the world grow smaller.
For the Communist it had been a waking nightmare. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were gone overnight. They were followed by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Kirghizia, Georgia, Uzbekistan and a hundred other puny states no bigger than a mile across.
All of them were ingrates. And they would each one pay.
The Soviet Union was gone only temporarily. If Vladimir Zhirinsky had his way, Mother Russia would rise again.
As he drove through the cold streets, the Kremlin rose up under the gloomy sky, its great onion domes touching the gray clouds. When he saw the buildings from the rear of his car, a smile curled beneath Zhirinsky's drooping mustache.
"Pray to your capitalist gods," he said with low menace, "for your end is near."
"Comrade?"
The nervous question came from the front seat. Even though the term was long out of fashion, Zhirinsky insisted his people use "comrade," the old Soviet form of address.
When he looked up, he found the fearful face of his young driver staring back at him in the rearview mirror.
"Nothing," Zhirinsky grunted with an impatient wave of his hand. His brow sank low in thought. "Their lackey president has a small nose," he mused as the Kremlin disappeared behind them, replaced by the bland facades of Moscow's downtown buildings. "Not like the last president. Now, there was a big Russian nose."
As he considered the nose of the last Russian leader, a thin dollop of drool rolled from the corner of his mouth.
He was patting his belly hungrily when the Zil pulled to the curb minutes later.
Zhirinsky's building was a good, solid Soviet-era affair. This was clear by the chunks of broken concrete on the sidewalk. Zhirinsky had to dodge hunks of falling mortar on his way to the cracked front door.
Inside, the elevator wasn't working. Even though it had never worked since it was installed in 1968, Zhirinsky blamed the capitalists who now owned what was rightly state property. He took the stairs.
Those people he met on his way up ran for the nearest exits when they saw the wiry, middle-aged man with the pale complexion coming toward them. Even while running, they kept their hands clamped firmly to their noses.
On the third floor, Zhirinsky steered down the dingy corridor. A crude hammer and sickle was outlined in red on the cracked veneer of one warped old door. Zhirinsky grabbed the wobbly doorknob, flinging the door open with a vengeance.
As the former Russian senator stomped into his cramped office, a pair of startled eyes shot up across the room.
"Comrade Zhirinsky," said the breathless young man from behind an overflowing desk.
Ivan Kerbabaev had been assisting Zhirinsky ever since he'd lost his job as a file clerk in the office of the chairman of Material Reserves.
Ivan jumped to attention, knocking a stack of pamphlets to the dirty floor. Mouth locking open in horror, he shot a look at his employer. Luckily, Zhirinsky seemed distracted.
He pulled off his hat, flinging it to his own desk. A tousled mess of brown-turning-to-gray hair spilled out.
"What is the latest intelligence?" Zhirinsky barked. Ivan's eyes grew wider. "Oh. The intelligence," he stammered. "About that..."
Fearful eyes darted around the office, but other than his desk drawers there was no place to hide. Ivan had a sudden mental image of Vladimir Zhirinsky stuffing his dismembered body parts into his desk. He shivered.
"Well," Ivan continued carefully, "everything seems to be going along perfectly. Better than perfectly. It is fan-socialist-tastic."
When he smiled weakly, Zhirinsky fixed Ivan with cold black eyes. His demented gleam sparkled with flecks of gray.
"So the capitalists have surrendered Russian America to us?" Zhirinsky said, his voice flat.
Ivan hedged. "Not yet, comrade," he admitted. "Not technically surrendered. I suspect they are getting things together. Packing, phoning ahead to see if there are hotel rooms ready, that sort of thing."
As he spoke, he pretended to scratch a persistent itch on the bridge of his nose.
"There should have been something by now," Zhirinsky said to himself. "I have crippled their oil pipeline and destroyed an entire village. Not to mention the demonstration against their army. I- Take your hand away from your face!" he snapped, suddenly distracted.
Jumping, Ivan slapped his hands to his sides. "The Soviet Union must be rebuilt piece by piece," Zhirinsky continued. "Russian America was lost even before the Revolution. By retaking it, we will signal the start of the new Revolution. The new age that will bring order back to this nation of thieves and whores." Before Zhirinsky, Ivan's hands quivered at his sides.