Day of the Oprichnik

On the way to the Donskoi Baths I try to figure out how to plan my work for the rest of the day and evening, how to get everything done. But my thoughts are muddled, I can’t concentrate—the golden sterlets are right here, splashing in the sphere! Gritting my teeth, I force myself to think about state affairs. It seems I can manage everything—extinguish the star, and fly to see the soothsayer.

Donskoi Street is jam-packed. I turn on the State Snarl. A corps of cars quakes from the invisible sound, yields the road to me, pulling over. Great and powerful is the State Snarl. It clears the road like a bulldozer. I fly, I rush as to a fire. But the gold sterlet is more powerful than a fire! More powerful than an earthquake.

I whiz along to the yellow building of the Donskoi Baths. Outside, rising to the roof, is a figure of a bathhouse attendant with a broad, thick blond beard and two bunches of birch twigs in his muscular hand. The giant attendant thrashes his twigs and winks a mischievous blue eye every half-minute.

Holding the sphere tight in a deep pocket of my jacket, under my caftan, I enter. The doormen bow to their waist. Our room has already been reserved by Batya. I let them take my black caftan, and I continue down a vaulted corridor. My copper-soled boots clatter on the stone floor. Next to the door that leads to our room stands another attendant—strapping, tattooed Koliakha. He’s an old acquaintance, who always watches out for the oprichniks’ peace-of-mind time. A stranger could never get past broad-shouldered Koliakha.

“Greetings, Koliakha!” I say to him.

“To your health, Andrei Danilovich.” He bows.

“Anyone else yet?”

“You are the first.”

That’s good. I’ll choose the best place for myself.

Koliakha lets me into the room. It isn’t very wide and has low ceilings. But it’s cozy, familiar, lived in. In the middle is a round font, to the right is the steam room. It stands empty for want of use. For we now have special steam, ingenious steam. You couldn’t find birch branches for it anywhere in the world…

The lounge chairs are arranged around the font like daisy petals. Seven. The number of fish in the sacred sphere. I fetch it from my brocade jacket pocket, and sit down on the edge of the chair. The sphere of fish lies in my palm. The golden sterlets romp in their element. Even without a magnifying glass, you can tell they’re passing fair. An exceptional mind created this pleasure. Perhaps it wasn’t human. Such a thing could be conceived only by angels falling from the Lord’s throne.

I toss the sphere from palm to palm. Not an inexpensive pleasure. One sphere like this outweighs my monthly remuneration. It’s a pity that these magical spheres are strictly forbidden in our Orthodox country. Not in ours alone, either. In America they give you ten years for silver fish, and about three times that for gold. In China they hang you straight off. And in putrefying Europe, these spheres are too hard to chew. Cyberpunks prefer cheap acid. For the last four years our Secret Department has been catching these fish. However, as always, they swim over to us from neighboring China. They swim and swim, passing through the border nets. And they’ll keep on swimming.

To be honest, I don’t see anything antigovernmental in these fish. Ordinary folk can’t afford them, while the rich and those of high position must have their weaknesses; after all, weakness has many faces. In his time, His Majesty’s father, Nikolai Platonovich, issued the great decree “On the Use of Energizing and Relaxing Remedies.” This decree permitted the general use of coke, angel dust, and weed forevermore. For these substances cause the state no harm, they do but help citizens in their labor and leisure. One may purchase several grams of coke in any apothecary for the standard government price: two and a half rubles. Every apothecary is equipped with counters where a workingman may come in the morning or at his midday break and have a snort, in order to return, energized, to work for the good of the Russian state. They sell syringes with invigorating angel dust, and cigarettes with relaxing weed. True, weed is sold only after five o’clock. Now, if we’re talking about horse, acid, and mushrooms, these substances really do poison the people. They weaken, flurry, and deprive them of will, and in so doing bring great harm to the government. For this very reason they are forbidden throughout the entire territory of Russia. This has all been wisely thought out. But these little fish—they are matchless, far above all your coke-horses taken together. They resemble a heavenly rainbow—they come, bring joy, and leave. After the sterlet rainbow there’s no hangover or withdrawal.

The door opens with the blow of a metal-tipped boot. Only our Batya enters that way.

“Komiaga, you here already?”

“Where else would I be, Batya?”

I toss the sphere to Batya. He catches it, looks at it through the light, squinting.

“Ah…good!”

Shelet, Samosya, Yerokha, Mokry, and Pravda follow Batya in. Batya’s entire right hand. In other places, with the left, Batya suppresses his excitement. That’s as it should be—in such affairs it doesn’t do to mix left with right.

Everyone’s already a tad edgy. What do you expect? The fish are right at hand. Samosya’s dark eyes flit back and forth and his fists are clenched. Yerokha’s cheekbones bulge, he’s clenching his teeth. Under drooping eyebrows, his teary walleye stares intently, as though he wants to bore a hole in me. Last time, he was the one who found the fish. Pravda always keeps his knife at hand—just a habit. His fist blanches as he squeezes it. All the right-side oprichniks are like that—fiery fellows. They’ll fly off the handle, snuff ’em without flinching.

But Batya reins our guys in.

“Shoo!”

He places the sphere on the stone floor and is the first to take off his clothes. Servants aren’t supposed to be here—we dress and undress ourselves. The oprichniks take off their brocaded jackets, peel off their silk shirts; we walk around naked and each of us takes his place on his lounge chair.

I lie down, covering my privates with my palms, and the shakes begin: golden ecstasy awaits just around the corner. As always, Batya does the launching. Baring himself, he takes the sphere with the fish and walks over…to me, of course. I was the procurer today. Therefore I’m the first of the seven. The first little fish is mine. I stretch my left arm out to Batya, squeezing and pumping my fist, pressing my forearm with the fingers of my right hand. Batya leans over my arm, like the Lord of the Hosts. He places the divine sphere on my swollen vein. I see the fish grow still, rocking in their aquarium. One of them is pulled in the direction of the vein pressed to the sphere. It wiggles its tiny little tail, drills through the supple glass, and pierces my vein. That’s it! Hail to you! Tiny golden fish!

Batya moves over to Yerokha. He’s already shaking, clenching his teeth, squeezing his fist, pumping his vein up stiff. Batya-Saboath the Bare-Assed leans over him…

But my eyes are not directed toward them. I see the vein in my left arm. I see it clearly. The teensy, millimeter-long tail of the golden sterlet peeps out from the pale bend of my elbow, straight out of the middle of my swollen vein.

O, divine instant when the golden fish enters the bloodstream! You are beyond compare, unlike any earthly pleasure, closest to what our forebear Adam experienced in the thickets of paradise, when he tasted of the invisible fruits created for him alone by the gray-bearded Saboath, Lord of the Hosts himself.

The little golden tail wiggles and the fish hides inside me. It swims along with the bloodstream. A trickle of blood shoots out in a fine fountain from a tiny hole. I press on my vein, throw my head back on the soft headrest, and close my eyes. I feel the golden sterlet swimming inside me, feel how it moves up along my vein, like it does in spring, striving to reach the spawning grounds at the headwaters of Mother Volga. Up, up, and farther upward! The golden sterlet has a destination to reach—my brain. My brain waits immobile in exalted anticipation: the sterlet-enchantress will deposit her heavenly caviar in my gray matter. Swim, oh swim, little fish of gold, rush unimpeded, spray your golden caviar into my tired brain, and may those roe-berries hatch into Worlds Grand, Sublime, Stupendous. May my brain rise from its slumber.