Fifteen minutes later, the official Mercedes delivered Nebendov to the city administration head’s dacha. Inside, the paralyzed Nozdrevatykh sat in a leather armchair next to a big round table.
“Trust me, Anton,” he said in a deflated voice, “it was easier for me in the war. I can’t bear it – people elected me, but it’s nothing but wolves and bloodsuckers out there.”
“What are you talking about, Misha?! The war’s just begun! Get up and crawl around the table, that’s an order!” Nebendov thundered like an angel of the apocalypse, as he grabbed the armchair and pulled it out from under Nozdrevatykh. “Crawl three times around the table and you’ll feel your legs, or else – great woe to you! I’m spending all the magic powers I got from my witch grandmother on you.”
The sight of him was terrifying: he stood short, disheveled, with his tie askew and his eyes burning like hot embers, arms spread wide. Nozdrevatykh tried to crawl, but his legs would not obey him. One way or another, groaning and creaking, he circled the table three times.
“You didn’t get it? Well, this’ll be the end of me, but you won’t live either!” and with these words, the Ukrainian exorcist whipped out a small firefighter’s axe from behind his back and charged at his jinxed comrade. The battle-tested general howled like a Chinook at lift-off, jumped to his feet and leapt out the window.
Nebendov caught up with him only at the dacha’s gate.
Two weeks later, the two were dining at the Olde Tymes, celebrating Nebendov’s new seat in the regional legislature.
“You gave me quite a fright back then, Misha,” Nebendov said.
“Shut up, I still get flashbacks of you with your axe,” the city head admitted.
From the jukebox, a cracked voice began singing “Say You’ll Haunt Me.”
“Are you saying I haunt you?” Nebendov asked. “Nonsense. I’m the one who was haunted. And then today the governor congratulated me with victory – and not a word about toilet paper!”
And he slapped his comrade’s exorcised knee – good and hard.
Medici
Our city’s historic waterfront spent the Soviet years slowly dying. The buildings – an old hotel and nearby merchant villas – looked like the moth-beaten eighteenth century kaftans on rickety mannequins in the local museum. The once-proud street was unsightly, as though it had been recently bombed by the Germans and was good for nothing except maybe making movies about partisans.
With the arrival in Stargorod of Anton Porfiriyevich Nebendov, who steered the ne’er-do-well Stargorodian shovel factory to prosperity with an iron grip, the situation changed dramatically. Of course, the Poltava-born philanthropist could not be suspected of knowingly imitating the famous banker Cosimo Medici – instead, Nebendov acted instinctively. Cosimo, when he came to Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, poured hundreds of thousands of florins into good works, and, by sponsoring ambitious church building all over the city, secured his position among the city fathers and enshrined his name for posterity. True, Cosimo’s pious image was somewhat undermined by certain actions he took, but one can’t repent unless one sins, can one?
Cosimo once said that he should designate himself the Lord’s debtor in his accounting books, and if the Good Lord can wait for payment, he’d return the debt with interest. I think Anton Porfiriyevich would sign his name under those words had he had a chance. He bought up the crumbling buildings along the waterfront and restored them. A respectable restaurant materialized in the old hotel, together with hot running water, which had never before made an appearance there. United Russia’s campaign office moved into the building adjacent to the hotel; the villas were given (charitably), one to the Stargorodian workers’ union, another to the city itself, and even the architect who oversaw the renovations received a free studio in one of them. Then, Nebendov developed the vacant lots nearby, filling them with single-family houses in the “neo-Catherinian” style. He moved his family into one of these, but never entertained at home: the hotel and “the guest house” with a pool table, sauna, full bar and VIP suites accommodated all his social needs. The notoriously demanding Federal Preservation Committee gave the development its full and instant approval, and overnight the street became a textbook example of historically-sensitive construction – a turn which even Anton Porfiriyevich, with his truly Renaissance thirst for glory, could hardly have predicted.
Uplifted by his success, Nebendov put new roofs and a new coat of paint on the two churches on the other side of the river – both designed by the famous architect Barsov. People immediately began whispering that Nebendov had bought the bankrupt little factory on whose land the churches technically stood.
Naturally, the philanthropist’s 50th birthday party became the social event of the year for the district and region. The lieutenant governor made a speech celebrating Anton Porfiriyevich’s contribution to the revitalization of our community; his party comrades presented him with a statue of a bear carved of larch (he already had four), the game commissioner draped forty sable pelts atop the mountain of presents, and the local banker pinned the furs down with a gold nugget, which promptly made an appearance in the speech by the director of diocesan social services, who compared Nebendov himself to the precious metal. The city architect in his speech called Nebendov a new Russian Medici, which only added to the chagrin of the jealous audience.
The evening’s most illustrious guest – Pal Sanych Koshel, chairman of the legislature, former lieutenant governor to the currently imprisoned former governor – took the celebrating Nebendov aside.
“A new Medici? Congratulations! So how come you got the churches painted but didn’t pay for new crosses – you bought the factory and the land, didn’t you?”
“Let the diocese take care of the crosses. The churches are right across from my windows, they spoiled the view – so I had them painted.”
And, without answering the legislator’s other question, Anton Porfiriyevich left the party and went outside.
“Cosimo Medici,” he said to himself, savoring the sound of it and looked at the graceful old churches on the other side of the river.
He bought the factory a week ago, but the news of it hadn’t spread through the region yet. He’d have to rebuild the factory, of course, to accommodate the new manufacturing line he’d already ordered from Spain, but it wasn’t a big deal. Pal Sanych himself had long had his sights set on that factory, but he beat the chairman to it, and didn’t even pay that much for the property. Come to think of it, why did he have the churches painted? Because he was the only one who could afford to do it? Or was it because he knew the gesture would appeal to the factory’s owner, and he’d offer him a deal? Or because every newspaper in the region ran a story about it? Or was it because of that time when he was telling his granddaughter how people used to white-wash their old mud-walled houses in the villages around Poltava before Easter, and the girl glanced at the churches outside their window and asked him, “Why are those so dirty – will you paint them for Easter, too?” – and he didn’t know what to say to her?
Nebendov took another deep breath of fresh air and went back inside his hotel to entertain his guests. Someone’s drunken voice mumbled behind his back: “Had the churches painted, fucking millionaire! Couldn’t do something for the children instead.”
Anton Porfiriyevich recognized the voice as belonging to the director of the diocesan social services, to whom he recently donated a truckful of computers for the orphanage.
Anton Porfiriyevich knew decidedly nothing about Cosimo Medici, but determined to make a trip to Florence and learn about the man. He was curious, after all.
Candy