I answered it.
‘Mikhalich?’ a man’s voice asked.
‘Mikhalich can’t come to the phone right now,’ I said. ‘He’s very busy.’
‘Who’s that?’
I couldn’t think of any short and simple answer. After a few seconds of silence the person on the other end of the line hung up.
What a crazy idea that was - to change the name of the KGB. One of the greatest brand names ever was simply destroyed! The KGB was known all over the world. But not every foreigner will understand what the FSB is. One American lesbian who hired me for the weekend kept confusing ‘FSB’ and ‘FSD’ all the time. ‘FSD’ is ‘female sexual dysfunction’, an illness invented by the pharmaceutical companies in order to launch the production of the female version of Viagra. Sexual dysfunction in women is a bluff, of course: in female sexuality it’s not the physical aspects that are important, so much as the context - candles, champagne, words. And to be completely honest about it, the most important condition for the modern female orgasm is a high level of material prosperity. You can’t solve that with a pill - as Bill Clinton said: It’s the economy, stupid. But I’m digressing again.
Although the name of the KGB was changed, the personnel remained the same as before, disciplined and tough. Any normal man would have been out cold for a long time after a blow like that from a bottle. But Mikhalich started to come round quite soon. Perhaps that was because he received the blow in an altered state of consciousness - when the physical properties of the body are transformed, as any alcoholic can testify.
I realized he was conscious when I tried to take the key to the door out of his pants. When I leaned down over him, I saw he was looking at me with his eyelids half open. I jumped back immediately. I was frightened by what had happened to him after the injection - I’d never seen anything like that before, and I didn’t want to take any risks.
‘Phone,’ Mikhalich whispered.
‘What about the phone?’
‘Who . . . who . . .’
‘Who called?’ I guessed. ‘I don’t know. Some man or other.’ He groaned. Amazing. After a blow like that an ordinary man would have been more concerned about the eternal questions. But this one was thinking about telephone calls. As the Soviet poet Tikhonov wrote, ‘If we could make nails out of these men, everyone in Russia would have a happier life’ (he later changed this to ‘there would be no stronger nails in all the world’, but the rough draft was exactly that, I’ve seen it).
‘Give me the key,’ I said, ‘it’s time I was going.’
‘Wait a bit,’ Mikhalich sighed, ‘talk.’
‘I don’t talk to junkies.’
‘Don’t get clever . . .’
He spoke with an effort, leaving long pauses - as if every sentence were a high mountain he had to climb.
‘Oh, sure,’ I said in an offended tone. ‘Don’t get clever. That’s what they said to Liuska too. And then when her client died on the sakura branch, she was arrested. Her lawyer said it was peritonitis, an unfortunate accident. But the investigator stuck the rupture of the colon on her, unpremeditated murder. Bung them three grand, then it’ll be unpremeditated, otherwise you take the full rap. Give me the key, or you’ll get it again. And I don’t give a damn if you are from the FSB. Nothing will happen to me, it’s self-defence.’
And at that I picked up the bottle again.
He made a sinister sort of sound - like a water sprite laughing somewhere in the depths of his millpond. Then he tried to say something, but all that came out was:
‘Sit . . . si . . .’
‘Listen, I’m asking you nicely one last time,’ I said, ‘give me the key!’
‘Bitch,’ he said surprisingly clearly.
These officers are such boors, you know. They simply can’t talk to a girl in a civilized manner. I raised the bottle to hit him again, and at that point the door behind my back opened.
Standing there in the doorway was a tall young man wearing a dark raincoat with the collar turned up. He was unshaven, sullen and very good-looking — I noted that without any kind of personal involvement, with the cold eye of an artist.
The only thing that spoiled him a little were the arrogant, angry creases beside his lips. They didn’t actually make me dislike him, though, they just seemed to establish some distance. But even with those arrogant creases he looked very, very attractive indeed. I’d say he was just a little bit like the young Tsar Alexander Pavlovich - as I recall he also had a fierce, wolfish look during the years immediately after he ascended the throne.
I was struck by the expression of his face. I don’t know how to explain it. As if someone had been living with toothache for many years and become accustomed to taking no notice of it, even though the pain tormented him every single day. He had the kind of glance that’s hard to forget as welclass="underline" those greyish-yellow eyes imprinted themselves on your retinas and looked straight down into your soul for a few seconds. But the most significant thing about this face, I thought, was that it was a face from the past. There used to be a lot of faces like that around in the old days, when people believed in love and God, and then that type almost disappeared.
We looked into each other’s eyes for a while.
‘I was going to give him some champagne,’ I said, putting the bottle on the table.
The visitor shifted his gaze to Mikhalich.
‘Brought your daughter, have you?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ Mikhalich croaked from his armchair and even moved his arm (evidently the presence of the visitor had helped him to gather his wits). ‘Nah . . . the whore . . .’
‘Ah,’ said the visitor and looked back at me. ‘So this is the one . . . who offended our consultant?’
‘That’s her.’
‘And what happened to you?’
‘Boss,’ Mikhalich mumbled in reply, ‘the tooth, boss! Anaesthetic!’
The young man sniffed at the air and a grimace of disapproval appeared on his face.
‘So they used ketamine for your anaesthetic, did they?’
‘Boss, I . . .’
‘Or did you call the vet in to have your ears docked?’
‘Boss . . .’
‘Again? I can understand it, out on the job. But why here? Didn’t we have a talk on the subject?’
Mikhalich lowered his eyes. The young man glanced at me and it seemed to me his glance was curious.
‘Boss, I’ll explain,’ said Mikhalich. ‘Word of . . .’
I could physically feel what an effort the words were costing him.
‘No, Mikhalich, I’ll do the explaining,’ said the visitor. He picked up the bottle of champagne off the table and hit Mikhalich over the head with it with all his strength.
This time the bottle broke and a geyser of white foam washed down over Mikhalich from his head to his toes. I was quite certain that after a blow like that he would never get up out of the armchair again - I know a thing or two about human anatomy. But to my amazement, Mikhalich just shook his head from side to side, like a lush who’s had a bucket of water thrown over him. Then he raised his hand and wiped the spatters of champagne off his face. Instead of killing him, the blow had brought him round. I’d never seen anything like it before.