Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin

XIX

IN THIS TIME, KARPOV tried not to think about Marina, not in the “forget-about-that-whore” sense, but—well, why upset yourself more when it’s out of your control, especially if there are circumstances that require immediate intervention—his shack—for the demise of which you needed to hand it to Karpov—he didn’t for a second try to link it to the disappearance of Marina and Mefody, he reasoned that even though the oligarch midget was a scoundrel, he had no reason to burn down Karpov’s shack; even if he supposed that Mefody had taken offense at something, it would have been sufficient revenge on Karpov just to run off with his wife. So regarding the shack, Karpov came up with two, well, to be exact, one and a half possible scenarios. The first: local hoodlums, some punks, or gopniki—“We saw the night, walked all night till morning”—they see that a shack, they think, hey, let’s burn it down. This is the first scenario, the less interesting one.

The second was profoundly conspiratorial in nature, and so Karpov treated it like half of a version; he didn’t believe in conspiracies. He didn’t want to be friends with Elena Nikolaevna? He didn’t. And she was, by the way, in charge here, in a good way (not in a good way, of course, but quite the opposite, in a bad way, but it doesn’t matter in this case), and she might very well have used this vandalistic method to convey the message to Karpov that on her territory he’s an unwanted person and that if he still wanted to cultivate calves and piglets, then let him choose some other place for his experiments.

The question, “Who is to blame?”, it must be said, had quite an optional significance—even if he was able to figure out who had burned down the shack, he wouldn’t do anything to the offender; he would just be upset. Much more interesting was the question of what is to be done. Karpov loved to say (these were really Marina’s words, but Karpov was in agreement with her) that a real man must always have a plan. And Karpov also had an important addition to this formula: yes, a plan is always needed, but what makes a plan a good one is that you can always modify it, “Let’s replace the scene at the stadium with a scene in a telephone booth”; so now, pacing back and forth in the long corridor of his grandfather’s apartment, Karpov pondered ways of modifying his original plan. He thought and thought—and then he got it.