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

XXXVIII

“YOU KNOW WHY I gave you the interview? Because you’ve never sucked up to anybody for anything,” Becky read on a banner hanging over the door to the editor-in-chief’s office. To one side of the banner were six photographs framed in black as if in mourning with the caption, “We are proud of you, and we remember you.” It all looked creepy, but first and foremost, this newspaper was read and cited throughout the world, and then secondly, their very own editor (at one point he had worked at Kommersant as the head of the accidents and emergencies desk and his catchphrase, “We fucked your Biennale,” which had been addressed to a colleague from the Cultural Bureau, still characterized him better than any other words), having read Becky’s text, told her that jokes about drugs were a bad idea, but even if this wasn’t drugs, it was still something he wouldn’t print, because it may be all the same to her, but he didn’t want to have to swallow dust in courtrooms for the rest of his life. She shrugged—what a fool—and gave us a call here.

This editor, on the contrary, liked it all, he only suggested adding a conclusion to the end: “The scum of Putin’s stagnation closed in over their heads,” and Becky didn’t object—well, let it be scum, then. When Becky left, the editor changed the headline from “A Children’s Farm Under the Banner of Modernization” to the scathing, “Fardwor, Russia!”—he had been told about the contentious nature of this journalist, and he was afraid to give her another reason to yell at him, he really didn’t like to be yelled at.

The newspaper came out on Monday and, though they screamed about it on the Echo of Moscow radio station—they know how to turn any minutiae from the newspapers into an event of global proportions—the sky didn’t fall to the earth, nor did any high-profile resignations occur, nothing really changed, in fact, and Becky, stirring her tea with a spoon, thought about what would have happened if, say, she had been able to prove, for example, that the FSB had blown up that building in Moscow in ’99. She looked at the brown surface of the tea as it settled down after being stirred and understood that no, no, nothing would have happened, nothing at all.

But toward Wednesday some underground wheels finally went into motion. The article was reprinted by the London Times, and the same morning the news about the children’s farm made the CNN headlines; that evening the press service of the Russian president reported on a telephone conversation between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama: “The development of bilateral relations and a scientific-technological partnership were discussed.”

And on Thursday morning in the offices of the state corporation that owned Soyuz a press conference took place with Health Minister Onishchenko, and Onishchenko (not mentioning Becky’s article) confessed—yes, yes, confessed!—that, in fact, the assisted living facility, closed for quarantine, was being used for the rehabilitation of children stricken by the flu. “Children, ladies and gentlemen,” repeated the Health Minister, “I want you to draw your attention to this—children, and children are like grown-ups, but small. Boys, in contrast to grown-up men, don’t sport beards, and girls, in contrast to grown-up women, don’t have breasts. Have I explained this clearly?” The press secretary of the corporation, smiling, told the journalists that a bus was waiting for them outside, and anyone who felt so inclined could go to Novaya Riga after the press conference and see with their own eyes what was going on at the facility. To get from the corporation’s office in the southwest of Moscow to Soyuz, which was on the far northwestern side of town, was a long ride, but they had blocked Leninsky and Leningradsky Prospects for the journalists’ bus, which was escorted by cars from the DPS, and Becky, looking out from her apartment’s window onto the emptied Tverskaya, wrote on her Twitter: “Make way, peasants, the louse is on the march.” She thought that it was someone from the Russian top brass.