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

XXVIII

THE SECURITY GUARD at the assisted living facility’s checkpoint, obviously not a local but someone who had been sent by the same program that had arrived with the document from Onishchenko regarding the quarantine, spent a long time inspecting the guest’s passport, then put it in the scanner, and even for some reason pressed the scanner’s cover down with his hand; Close to Zero could see the raw skin on the knuckles of the security guard’s hand. Then the security guard called someone, and within a minute Close to Zero was already shaking hands with a smiling man in a jacket without a tie—he looked like either a program director or just a man with a high degree of self-esteem.

“First, I want to understand how much they told you about what we need from you,” the director began as they walked along a cobblestone path, heading to the facility’s dining room.

“Well, not too much,” Close to Zero suddenly noticed how clean the air was here. It’s nice to get paid for your vacation in the countryside. “People from the regions, the modernizational majority, need to be brought up to date, to be taught how to conduct polemics, explain what the country needs, something like that.”

“All correct,” his companion seemed satisfied with his answer. “But there is an important nuance, and I want to ask you—do you mind if I speak informally?—I want to ask you to make sure that everything that you see and hear here will never go outside of this fence. We’re not asking you to sign anything, we’re adults here, but you understand me, yes?”

Close to Zero nodded. They entered a dining room—it really was a dining room—but one of gargantuan dimensions—after passing through it, they ended up in a room with a television and a big vase with what looked like real sunflowers. They sat in two chairs next to a table, a woman brought them tea and an ashtray—yes, you can smoke here—and the director, looking Close to Zero in the eyes, started to talk: everything is as it should be, the mobilizational majority is gathering here; among other things, it needs lectures about current politics and about the art of polemics—oral and on the Internet, and Close to Zero is an experienced online polemicist, the types of which are hard to find. But there is one important nuance: these people, well, they’re not quite… ordinary. To call them people with mental handicaps would probably be quite right, they are basically normal, but it just so happens that their cultural baggage differs (he said, “by several orders of magnitude”) from the cultural baggage of the average Russian—this was probably too much of a streamlined definition, but the director decided not to frighten his guest by telling him that the group now at the facility had just last Friday finished their study of the grade-school primer with Samuil Marshak’s poem, “Now you’ve learned your ABVs, all thirty-something of ’em.”

“But why am I going on?” The director grabbed Close to Zero on the knee. “Here they are coming to dinner already; you’ll see everything now for yourself.”