“All right then. But it has to be voluntary.”
“My wife volunteers.”
“And the government accepts no liability for your actions, nor for its own. And I must speak to Irina Vsevolodovna, to confirm her willingness.”
Vasya slides Chernomyrdin across the table. Ira lifts the receiver with a limp hand, her eyelids heavy.
“Yeah,” she says.
Vasya hisses, “It’s the prime minister!”
Irina doesn’t change her expression. She is either listening to Chernomyrdin or is about to doze off.
She says, “Uh huh.” And then: “Yes, I agree. My own responsibility.”
She hands the receiver back to her husband.
“Yes sir?”
“Vasily Yegorevich, everything’s agreed. The bus will arrive shortly. You have my word and the word of the government of the Russian Federation.”
The line goes dead. They remain in their chairs. The heat of the day still smells like blood. Someone cries out in pain in the other room, probably on television. Vasya and Ira don’t look at each other. Yet the muscles around Vasya’s heart loosen their grip. He becomes aware of possibilities and potentialities. Is it a breeze that briefly tingles his scalp?
Outside their window an engine mutters and tires gently tear at the asphalt. Trying to hide his anticipation, Vasya slowly rises from the table and steps to the window. A pale yellow bus is parked in front of the building. It’s an army bus, but relatively clean and undented. Its door opens and two soldiers in camouflage uniforms and ski masks step from it, waving their rifles ahead of them as if they are clearing cobwebs. They sweep the guns up and down the scorched, noiseless street. One of the soldiers makes a hand signal and another half dozen, hoisting rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, exit the bus. A soldier looks up at Vasya, only his eyes visible. Vasya nods in acknowledgment. Two armored personnel carriers pull behind the bus. The soldiers pile in and the vehicles take off.
Ira noiselessly joins Vasya at the window.
He turns. The heat of the sun, intensified by the surrounding flatlands, reflected by the concrete landscape, and trapped in the confines of the kitchen, is nothing compared to the warmth of Ira’s smile.
She squeezes his arm and presses against his side. “You’re wonderful,” she says.
Vasya sinks his face into her hair, aware only of its tickle. After several long moments he pulls away.
“Let’s hurry,” he whispers hoarsely. “Let’s not even pack. We don’t have a minute to lose.”
Salt
СолЬ
… a failure, common in Russian economic and political debate, to grasp the notion of creating wealth—that transactions are possible that will make everybody better off.
In a certain city lived a certain merchant with three sons: the first was Fyodor, the second Vassily, and the third Ivan. The merchant gave his first two sons great ships with which to seek their fortunes. The first son, Fyodor, went off to the forests of the north and brought back lumber that the city’s wealthy used to build fine homes and palaces, and they paid him handsomely. The second son, Vassily, went off to the mountains of the south and brought back coal that the city’s multitudes used to heat their homes and shops, and they paid him handsomely as well.
The merchant didn’t expect much from his third son, Ivan, who was not quite right in the head, so he gave him a flimsy vessel made from rotten beams and planks.
With this ship Ivan sailed to the Thrice-Ten Lands, where he came upon a beautiful white mountain embraced by mist. He touched the mountain and brought his finger to his lips. The mountain was made entirely of salt, good Russian salt. Ivan ordered his men to load his ship with as much as it would carry, and they sailed until they reached a distant kingdom. There he presented himself and a thimble of salt to the king, telling the king that it was good Russian salt, and that he would be pleased to sell him as much of it as he liked.
The king had never heard of salt. He sniffed it suspiciously and declared that it was nothing but white sand. He sent Ivan away. Puzzled, Ivan wandered through the palace until he reached the king’s kitchens, where he witnessed the cooks preparing a meal without the use of salt. When their backs were turned, Ivan opened the pots and tasted the food. It was so bland it was nearly inedible. He withdrew the thimble from his cloak and liberally sprinkled the salt into the pots.
Later that evening the king was served his dinner. At the very moment in which he placed the first morsel in his mouth, a fearful tremor rippled across his face. His queen, grand vizier, and counselors at his side became very still, unable to take a breath. He was a much loved king. As if under a sorcerer’s compulsion, the king slowly chewed the morsel. At last he swallowed it and contemplated the swallow and the effects upon his person.
“Delicious,” he murmured at last, taking pleasure in the way the word’s syllables caressed his tongue and the roof and sides of his mouth.
He consumed the remainder of his meal with a passionate intensity that his courtiers had never witnessed before. They shook their heads in wonder. The king summoned his cooks, who told him that they had prepared his food just as they had in the past and could not explain its change in taste. Then an assistant recalled having seen Ivan loitering around the kitchen earlier that day. Ivan was brought to the king and freely confessed that he had added salt to the king’s food. “But salt, what is it?” the king asked.
“Sire,” Ivan replied, “salt is a rare substance collected in the tears of the Firebird on the morn of Michaelmas. A small quantity quickens the appetite, invigorates the palate, and excavates from each element of food its true and unalloyed flavor. Unsalted food is merely the shadow cast by real food. As the first grains of salted food touch the tip of the tongue, a man’s salivary glands contract in an exquisite spasm. Can you not feel the ache? The released liquor dissolves each morsel and molecule. In this coupling, the goodness inherent in the food is transferred to our bodies. Salt is the essential ingredient to our lifeblood, to our health, and to our good fortune. It comes from a faraway place, by great difficulty. I have an entire ship of it.”
The king took one last bite from his dish, closing his eyes to shut out the distractions of the court. When he finished, he said, “Then name your price.”
Ivan trembled at his own audacity. “An equal measure of gold, sire.”
The king clapped his hands. “Done,” he cried.
The transaction was completed before dawn. Throughout the night, as torches burned on the pier, the king’s men carried crates of gold ingots and doubloons to Ivan’s ship, to be weighed against similar crates filled with salt that were unloaded by Ivan’s men. In the garish, oily light of the lamps, Ivan stood alongside the king’s grand vizier, who ensured the preciseness of the exchange. Dawn broke with Ivan’s ship low in the water. The king himself arrived to wish Ivan farewell.
The ship sailed for neither a long time nor a short time and was then becalmed on the desert sea. Below deck, sealed within the mossy saltwater damp, Ivan took the dampness into his lungs in shallow, pained breaths. The boards cried out as the ocean thudded against the ship’s hull. Rats skittered overhead, swishing their tails. Sightless in his unlit bunk, he asked himself, am I traveling in a ship, the idea of a ship, or the word for a ship?
Above the deck the righteous sun never moved; through the endless day it remained directly overhead. Ivan leaned over the rail. In the haze, no horizon was visible to separate the atmospheric realm from the watery one. The sea and sky melted into a single pale blue gauze that only barely hid what was behind it. The ship’s hull strained against the gauze, close to tearing through to the truth of things.