Michael Honig
THE SENILITY OF VLADIMIR P.
1
HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long he had been sitting there. Could have been two hours. Could have been two years.
Suddenly, a connection in his brain sparked to life and set off a chain of ignitions, like a momentary flickering of stars lighting up across a darkening, dying galaxy.
‘Why am I here?’ he yelled angrily. ‘What am I doing?’
‘Waiting,’ said Sheremetev, plumping up one of the pillows on his bed.
‘What for?’
‘For the meeting.’
Vladimir’s eyes narrowed. ‘Have I been briefed?’
‘Of course,’ replied Sheremetev calmly.
‘Good.’ Vladimir nodded. His expression changed, losing its anger. Already, he was forgetting what he had been upset about. The connection, wherever it was in his brain, had been snuffed out, perhaps never to spark again, and the self-awareness that had erupted momentarily into his consciousness was gone. He sat quietly and watched Sheremetev work. Vladimir couldn’t have said exactly who the other man was, but nonetheless he was at ease with him. Somehow, he knew that it was right for him to be making up the bed, and he had a feeling that it might even have happened before.
Sheremetev was a small man, dressed in a simple white shirt and a pair of dark trousers. He had never worn uniform when looking after Vladimir, but the deftness and economy of his movements as he tidied the bed betrayed a long career as a nurse. It was almost six years since Professor V N Kalin, the renowned neurologist, had asked him to become Vladimir’s personal carer. That was shortly after Vladimir announced that he would be stepping down from the presidency. In those days, although the president’s condition was evident to those who worked with him closely, he was still well enough to hold his own in tightly scripted public appearances for which he was carefully prepared. His successor, Gennadiy Sverkov, had even continued to have him wheeled out on occasion to try to draw some of the old wizard’s magic onto his own increasingly lacklustre administration. Back then, Vladimir still had a valet to dress him and a pair of aides to keep him abreast of events, and Sheremetev’s role had been limited, but as Vladimir’s memory deteriorated, so Sheremetev’s responsibilities multiplied. Within a couple of years, Vladimir’s public appearances had become so erratic that even Sverkov’s people grew wary of parading him, and rumours of his condition – never confirmed – began to circulate. The appearances ceased. First the two aides were dispensed with, then the valet, and Sheremetev was left alone with him.
The nurse had never concerned himself with politics and had never kept track of who was doing what to whom in the Kremlin. To him, the whole business was a murky soup out of which names rose and sank without apparent rhyme or reason, and what was happening under the surface – and surely things must be happening, as everyone said – wasn’t something he tried to understand. He hadn’t been aware of the rumour that Vladimir had been forced out as his ageing cronies scrambled to hold on to their positions in the dying days of his power. All he knew was that the president announced that he was retiring – and a few weeks later Professor Kalin summoned him to his office.
‘Do you know my mother?’ asked Vladimir, as Sheremetev plumped the last of the pillows and set it down on the bed.
‘No, Vladimir Vladimirovich. I never had the honour of meeting her.’
‘I’ll introduce you. She’ll be here later. I’ve sent a car for her.’
Sheremetev turned around. ‘It’s time for your shower, Vladimir Vladimirovich. You’ll have to get dressed in something special today. The new president is coming to see you.’
Vladimir looked at him in confusion. ‘The new president? Aren’t I the president?’
‘Not any more, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Someone else is president now.’
Vladimir’s eyes narrowed. In the early years, hearing that might have driven him into a rage. But the rages were less frequent now, and when they did occur, didn’t last long. Nothing that Vladimir was told stuck for more than a minute or two in his mind. If he was agitated, it was probably because he was thinking about something that had happened twenty or thirty years ago.
‘Is someone coming?’ asked Vladimir eventually. ‘Is that what you said?’
‘Yes. The new president, Constantin Mikhailovich Lebedev.’
Vladimir snorted. ‘Lebedev’s the minister of finance!’
Sheremetev had no idea if Lebedev had ever been minister of finance, but he certainly wasn’t now. ‘He’s the new president, Vladimir Vladimirovich. He wants to get your blessing. That’s good, isn’t it? It shows how much he respects you.’
‘My blessing?’ Vladimir frowned. ‘Am I priest?’
‘No.’
‘Then why does he want my blessing?’
‘It’s a figure of speech, Vladimir Vladimirovich. In this case, you’re as good as a priest.’
Vladimir watched Sheremetev suspiciously. ‘Where are we?’
‘At the dacha.’
‘Which dacha?’
‘Novo-Ogaryovo.’
‘Novo-Ogaryovo? Why am I meeting Lebedev here? Why not at my office?’
‘Today you’re meeting him here.’
‘I’m going to fire that bastard. Have we got cameras?’
‘I think there’ll be cameras there.’
‘Good. We’ll see how he likes that!’ Vladimir chuckled. He remembered getting rid of Admiral Alexei Gorky, the commander of the Northern Fleet, in front of the television cameras at Severomorsk. That had gone down a treat.
Suddenly Gorky was right there in front of him. The look on the admiral’s face! The old peacock in his big peaked cap saw all the cameras pointing at him and thought Vladimir had come to pin another medal on his overdecorated chest, and now, before he knew it, he was getting the sack. ‘Didn’t see that one coming, did you, Alexei Maximovich? Who’s the boss, huh? Teach you to speak out about not having enough money for the fleet!’ Vladimir laughed, banging the armrests with his fists.
Sheremetev had left him to go into Vladimir’s dressing room. For the new president’s visit, he was determined to make sure that his patient looked like a president as well. He took his time in front of the heavily stocked hanging rails and shelves, considering various options, until finally he settled on a dark blue suit, light blue shirt, a red tie with white dots, and a pair of black leather shoes. From Vladimir’s impressive collection of watches, he chose what he considered to be a simple but elegant timepiece with a thin gold case, white face, gold hands and a leather band.
He brought everything back to the bedroom and laid out the clothes on the bed. ‘Come on, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Time for your shower. We have to get you spruced up.’
Vladimir gazed at him doubtfully. ‘Why?’
‘Constantin Mikhailovich is coming to see you.’
‘Lebedev? Is that who you mean? He should go to a priest.’
‘Why?’ said Sheremetev.
Vladimir frowned. He had a feeling that Lebedev needed a priest, but he had no idea why. ‘His mother’s dying,’ he proposed.
THE CAMERAS HAD BEEN set up in a formal reception room on the ground floor of the dacha, which hadn’t been opened for years but had been aired and cleaned that morning for the purpose. Two armchairs had been placed at forty-five degrees to each other on either side of an ornate fireplace, under a pair of studio lights. In the kitchen of the dacha, Viktor Stepanin, the chef, and his brigade had been working since dawn to produce a buffet of canapés and snacks that was now laid out on tables along one side of the room. Near the end of the tables stood a big man in a dark grey suit with an exuberant head of grey hair accompanied by two serious looking presidential aides. Other aides, television technicians and security men milled around behind the cameras.