Alisa’s father, a high-ranking Soviet official, as he pulled the strings to get his daughter a job, told her the tale of the lion who came to be sheriff in a new forest: “Just remember to send a goat or a sheep up to the bigger lions every so often, and you’ll be fine.”
That is how she did things. Bosses promoted Alisa for her agreeable disposition and sharp wits, and sprang to attention at the sight of her waspish waist, but Alisa remained faithful to one Olady Evlampovich, a successful artist she married after she returned from Japan. His position as secretary to the Soviet Artists’ Union, however, proved to be not quite important enough in the new Russia. Alisa transferred to the Ministry of Culture and started helping her husband obtain commissions. She was always good at manipulating state funds, wasn’t greedy, but never missed a good opportunity, knowing full well that a civil servant in traditional Russia is an immortal force, and no one and nothing would ever end the sheriffhood. Her daddy was right: the “goats and rams,” transformed into the brick and mortar of her dacha on the Klyazma reservoir were mute just as one expects cattle to be.
In her work of implementing the government’s priorities, Alisa often had to fight against conservatism and provincialism, but that was okay – she liked a good fight. For instance, take the recent government decision to cut federal funding for regional museums. It meant cultural institutions would have to learn how to make money on their own. The Pottery Museum in Stargorod fell victim to the cuts. The museum was undeniably provincial, with an inflated budget of a million dollars a year and its only claim to fame as an archaeological site was that Putin himself had visited and subsequently allocated funds to build an open-air dig. The director, loyal to Alisa, pocketed most of the money and gave her a kickback. And everything would have gone smoothly, if not for a small-time ram of a researcher who blew up the whole story in the local press. The director got cold feet, fired the researcher and shut down the dig.
Alisa flew out to Stargorod post-haste; she had to nip the scandal in the bud. They raked the director over coals of such heat that everyone knew right away: his days were numbered. The archaeologists and other museum employees, with the bitter provocateur in the rank of assistant professor at their helm, looked on with distrust. Alisa made sure to speak to them quietly, intimately, her eyes hidden under half-lowered eyelids, so that the overhead light did not allow them to read her expression (a trick she learned from her Japanese mentors); she called the director an embezzler, and asked the staff to give her a year to set things straight in the capital. They struck a deaclass="underline" the museum would be disbanded, and then created anew. The archaeologists, in the meantime, were to organize themselves into an independent structure, a corporation that would later become the basis of the resurrected museum. A grant to continue exploration would ensure their independence of their old supervisor.
A glimmer of hope lit up in the eyes of the rebels – as if their scientific explorations could change anything. Big money was beginning to flow into Stargorod; a Moscow general (not without Alisa’s prompting) had begun a wholesale renovation of the city’s historic center. As the Ministry’s official, Alisa needed to implement archaeological and historical oversight over the renovation, but it didn’t matter to her who would get to do it and file the reports.
As she departed, she said casually, “Come visit, I’m always happy to help.”
That evening, at her dacha, Alisa sat in a rocking chair under an apple tree. The museum’s director called. He apologized, made promises, flattered and fawned. The proud assistant professor did not call – did not send “a goat and a ram” up to the bigger lion – and missed his chance. In a year’s time, the scandal would be forgotten; Alisa decided to forgive the loyal director.
A number of different animals lived at the dacha – it’s fashionable now. Olady, seeing his wife in low spirits, brought to her Glasha, her favorite nanny-goat. Glasha took a piece of carrot from Alisa’s hand and licked her fingers.
“Go milk her, I’ve had enough of this!”
The husband obediently led Glasha to the little barn in the back. Alisa had long been bored with Olady Evlampovich; getting any use out of him was like milking a billy-goat. Alisa closed her eyes, drew in the air and focused on her “hara”; she imagined herself swimming out into an endless ocean. The chair rocked gently, peacefully. With her narrow, exquisite foot, Alisa felt for the ground – just in case – and there it was, she hadn’t lost it. She never will.
Our Progress
The military support base in Pankratovka – a village half sunk into the marshes north of Stargorod – was dismantled in the early 90s. Soon after the order was issued, the army stopped supplying coal for the base’s boilers. The pipes of portable corn-stalk stoves emerged like bristles from the two-story lime-and-sand-brick housing units, which came to resemble a Pacific fleet flotilla awaiting its sad fate at Port Arthur.5 The base veterans wrote to the Defense Ministry twice a year: they were entitled to new, comfortable apartments, but the Ministry had forgotten about them. Over the next 15 years, of the 82 officers’ families that used to live on the base, only 43 were left in Pankratovka.
The very first year, the retirees planted orchards and vegetable gardens and would have become complete peasants were it not for Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Semyonovich Bulletov. Understanding that the men had to be kept busy, the former CO ripped the old banner “Our Progress Heads for the Woods!” from the gates of the base’s garage and nailed up a new sign. It read “Automotive Club Varyag.”
To start with, the men hauled a T-34 tank out of a nearby gulch and returned it to combat-ready condition. Then, in a marsh, someone found the shell of a light BT-7A tank. This machine was a rarity; you can count the surviving examples of this model on the fingers of one hand. The crew dug up original construction blueprints, restored the machine to its old glory and power, and added it to their fleet. Over the next decade and a half, the repair workshops of the former military base gave new life to several ZIS 151 trucks (basically assembling them from snot and shoelaces), a three-ton army workhorse – the ZIS 5 (1934 vintage) with a 6x4 wheelbase, one each of a German and a Soviet AFV, and a legendary Nazi Tiger tank. The crown jewels of the collection were one of the first trucks of the 1940 Freightliner model, manufactured by James Leland and Co. at their Utah plant, before the corporation moved to Portland, and a GAZ-A which was said to be one of the cars that took part in the 1933 motor rally across the Karakum Desert, as described by Ilf and Petrov in The Little Golden Calf. Collectors would have offered insane sums for either of these two vehicles, but Varyag was not in the business of selling history. At the very dawn of the club’s existence, Bulletov purchased, at scrap prices, a garageful of vintage Volgas, Pobedas, Moskviches, and ZIS and ZIM limousines; a special division – Varyag Corporation – restored and custom-tuned these for private clients.
In the new millennium, in light of the new trend for vintage vehicles, the business finally began to turn a profit. Twenty-two mechanics, four spare-parts experts, an accounting office and a crew of laborers – almost all of them retired military – worked under Semyon Semyonovich’s management, and, what is most important, no one felt left out or short-changed.
The club began to attend vintage car and machinery shows; a TV crew made a show about them, and it was broadcast on national television. This brought it to the attention of the governor himself, a great lover of all things vintage. To line up the heroic machines in the Red Square, just before the elections to the federal Duma, where the Governor aspired to win a seat, struck him as a brilliant political move. On top of that, an influential person from one of the forces’ ministries let it be known that, were the legendary GAZ-A to come into his possession, he could smooth out a few disagreements that had arisen between our Governor and the Kremlin.