My birthday is coming soon. Another one. That explains why Rudi has been too busy to see me recently. He knows how I love surprises.
Gutbucket Petrovich comes to take my place while I go for a tea-break. They dropped me off the rota once, and left me sitting in my gallery for a whole day. I made Rogorshev sack the ringleader. None of them ever speaks to me now, but they never forget my tea-break.
The staff canteen is empty. The catering workers have already gone home by the time my break comes around, so I am all alone in the echoing hall. The Gutbucket crew consider this ostracism a victory, but it suits me. I make myself a cup of my own American coffee and smoke my favourite French cigarettes. The soft flame ignites the tinder-dry tip and I suck and — Ah! As exquisite as being shot! I know how much my dear co-workers would adore the merest puff of this cigarette, so I like to leave the room perfumed.
I can see Dvortsovaya Square from here. A whirlpool of wet cobbles. It takes two minutes just to walk across. A dwarf is running after his umbrella, he’ll cover it in one.
How dare those dairy cows come on so pious with me? The fact is they are stewing with jealousy that I possess the basic female skills to net my men, while they do not. They can’t net their hair. I admit that my little understanding with Head Curator Rogorshev brings me my privileges, quite beside its place in the grander plan, but if they could, any of those warty hags would die for these privileges quicker than you could say ‘knickers round your ankles’. Yes, even Gutbucket Petrovich, with her frothy new panscrubber hairstyle and lardy thighs.
When Petersburg was Leningrad, I could have had the whole ruddy lot posted to the middle of fucking nowhere! Further than nowhere! They’d have been shipped out wholesale to mind a museum in the Gobi Desert and live in gerts!
I was the concubine of two powerful men, you see. First, a politician. I’m not going to tell you his name, he was as high as you could get in the Politburo without being knocked off as a potential threat. High enough to know the codes to nuclear warheads. He could have ended the world if he’d wanted to, virtually. He pulled some strings at the Party Office for me and got me a lovely little apartment overlooking Alexandra Nevskogo Square. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, I selected for my next lover an admiral in the Pacific Fleet. Of course, I was given a new apartment — and the lifelong lease — that befitted an admiral’s station. I still live there now, near Anichkov Bridge, down Fontanki Embankment. He was very affectionate, my admiral. Just between you and me, I think he used to try a little too hard. He’d try to outdo the presents that the politician had bought for me. He was terribly possessive. My men always are.
My God, were those ever the days.
‘Lymko,’ I’d say, ‘I’m a little cold when we go to the ballet at nights...’ And the very next morning a mink coat would be delivered. ‘Lymko, I need a little sparkle in my life...’ I’d show you the diamond brooch that came, but I had to sell it to set up a business venture of Rudi’s, back in our early days, you understand. It would have made Gutbucket Petrovich’s jaw drop so far that she wouldn’t be able to shut her mouth for a week. ‘Lymko, so-and-so at the Party department store was quite beastly last week. Quite improper. I wouldn’t want to get anyone into trouble, but he said things about your professional integrity that hurt me deeply...’ And the next morning so-and-so would discover that he had been promoted to junior cleaner in the public shit-houses around Lake Baikal. Everyone knew about me, but everyone played along to keep the peace. Even his wife, kept out in the naval base at Vladivostock with her clutch of admiral brats.
Another cigarette. The ashtray is already half-full. The dwarf never caught his umbrella.
Back on my plastic chair. I’m almost groaning with boredom. I’m forced to play this game of patience, dying of a lack of interest, day after day after day. The end of the afternoon staggers into view. I’m hungry and I need a vodka. Rogorshev has his own secret bottle. I count the seconds. Forty minutes, times sixty seconds, that’s twenty-four thousand seconds to go. There’s no point looking outside to relieve the boredom, I already know the view. The Dvortsovaya embankment, the Neva, the Petrograd side. I’d get Head Curator Rogorshev to change my gallery, but Rudi says no, not now we’re so close to the big night. Jerome agrees with him for once, so I’m stuck here.
Strange to think, us Russians once mattered in the world. Now we have to go begging for handouts. I’m not a political woman — thinking about politics was too damned dangerous when I was growing up. Besides, what was this Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, really? Republics need real elections and I never saw any of those, I damn well never heard of any Soviets — I’m not even sure what one is. Socialism means the common people own the country, and all my mother ever owned was her intestinal parasites. And where was the union? Us Russians pouring roubles into these pointless little countries full of people eating snakes and babies all over Asia just to stop the Chinks or the Arabs getting their hands on them? That’s not what I call a union. That’s what I call buying up the neighbours. An empire by default. But could we ever kick arse in those days! Jerome told me that some schoolkids in Europe have never even heard of the USSR! ‘Listen, meine kinder,’ I’d tell ’em, ‘about this country you’ve never heard of, we used to have enough nuclear bombs to make your side of the Berlin Wall glow beetroot for the next ten thousand years. Just be grateful. You could have been born with the arms of a mushroom and a bag of pus for a head, if you’d been born at all. Think about it.’
But sometimes, I wonder if much has changed at all, since Scumbag Gorbachev. Sure, for the common people, their floorboards rotted through and down they fell. At the top, I mean. The same people who shredded their Party membership cards now wheel out the democracy bullshit slogans by the steaming cartload — ‘flair and verve in the strategising stages’, ‘originality in capital manipulation’, ‘streamlining and restructuring’. The letters I type out for Head Curator Rogorshev are full of it. But really, where’s the difference? It is now what it’s always been. Recognising the real, but invisible goalposts, and using whatever means are at your disposal to score. These means might be in a bank vault in Geneva, in a hard disc in Hong Kong, encased in your skull or in the cups of your bra. No, nothing’s changed. You used to pay off your local Party thug, now you pay off your local mafia thug. The old Party used to lie, and lie, and lie some more. Now our democratically elected government lies, and lies, and lies some more. The people used to want things, and were told, work and wait for twenty years, and then maybe it’ll be your turn. The people still want things, and are told, work, and save for twenty years, and then maybe it’ll be your turn. Where’s the difference?
I’m going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.
But like I said, I’m not a political woman. The things you think of, sitting here.
I recognised Head Curator Rogorshev’s footsteps striding down the corridor outside — with the footsteps of a woman. I heard him telling her the same jokes he had told me months before while I was seducing him, and I heard her laughter flutter, just like mine had. It’s a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.
‘And here,’ Head Curator Rogorshev said wheeling a tall leggy woman into my gallery, ‘you’ll doubtless recognise Eve and the Serpent, by Lemuel Delacroix.’ He winked clumsily at me, like I couldn’t see what was going on.