Politika

ONE

Headaches, vodka, and aspirin; aspirin, vodka, and headaches.

The combination was enough to make anyone reel, President Boris Yeltsin thought, massaging his temple with one hand as he popped three tablets into his mouth with the other.

He reached for the glass on his desk and took a long drink, then silently began counting to thirty, swishing the vodka in his mouth to dissolve the aspirins.

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, swallow. He put down the glass, lowered his head, and pressed his palms into his eyes. And then waited.

After a little while the pain in his head eased. Not as much as on previous days, however. Not nearly. And he still felt some dizziness. Soon he would have to add another tablet to his home remedy. Four to a swallow. Or perhaps he would experiment. Increase the amount of vodka, chase down the medicine with a good, clean shot. Certainly that would make things more palatable. Still, one had to wonder about certain things. Was it possible to overdose on aspirin and alcohol? And where would it lead? Actually, he already knew that. Perhaps, before it was all over, he would again turn on the television news and see himself dancing foolishly to rock and roll music at a campaign stop, behaving for all the world like some drunken teenager.

Yeltsin sat there at his desk with his eyes closed, the curtains drawn over his windows to block out the sunlight pouring in over the high east wall of Red Square. He wondered what the headaches, dizziness and early morning drinking said about the general state of his health. Certainly nothing good. And why not be expansive and think about its meaning vis-à-vis the state of the body politic? If, as he believed, the power of an elected president was largely symbolic in the modern world, how might the declining condition of a man who held that position be interpreted? A man who had scarcely had so much as a cold — and never had a drink during the day — in his entire life before taking office was now a man who had lost his appetite for sex but arose from bed each morning with an irresistible lust for his vodka. A man who had already spent too much time under the surgeon’s knife, he thought, absently rubbing the scar left by his last bypass surgery.

Yeltsin straightened, opened his eyes. The bookcase opposite his desk doubled and trebled in his vision. He took a deep breath, blinking twice, but the room remained unfocused. Dear heaven, he felt ugly. Much of it, he knew, was due to the pressures of dealing with Korsikov and Pedachenko. Especially the latter. He had been infecting the nation with his rhetoric for some time… and the infection had been spreading more rapidly than ever since he’d acquired a televised platform from which to promote his extremist views. What would happen if the situation in the southern agricultural areas worsened? It was one thing for Pedachenko to rail about the corrupting influence of Western dollars, and the threat that he believed NATO — and especially the Founding Act — represented to Russian interests. These were abstractions to his audience. But hunger was another matter. Everyone was capable of understanding it. And it would not be assuaged by calming words from political rivals. Pedachenko was clever and opportunistic. He knew which buttons to push. And there was no escaping his charisma. If the dreadful projections being made about the crop failure were even close to accurate…

Yeltsin jettisoned the thought before it could complete itself. He capped off the vodka, put it into his bottom drawer. At any minute the lights on his phone would begin to flash. His aides would arrive with their file folders and summary briefings. He would be presented with a multitude of problems, many requiring his immediate attention. Be given documents to read and sign.

He needed to pull himself together.

He stretched his legs, pushed back his chair, and stood. The bookshelf swelled in his eyes again. He put his hand on the edge of the desk to steady himself and waited. This time the blurriness didn’t subside. He waited some more, perspiring now, queasy and light-headed. He could hear his heart beating in his ears. The collar of his shirt suddenly seemed much too tight. It was as if all the air pressure had been let out of the room.

What was wrong with him?

He reached out for his phone console, thinking he would have to cancel his appointments for the next several hours. He needed to rest.

But before Yeltsin could push the intercom button, the pain tore through his head in a blinding, jaggedly excruciating white bolt that made him stagger back from the desk, his eyes wide and bulging, his hands flying to his temples as if to keep them from blowing apart. Groaning and terrified, he propelled himself toward the phone, literally dove across the desk for it.

His fingers were still fumbling for it when the seizures came on. He began helplessly thrashing around on the desktop, then rolled to the floor, his arms flapping with uncontrollable spasms, his hands hooked into claws.

Yeltsin was already falling into a coma when he was discovered by his secretary ten minutes later.

Two hours after that, agitated doctors at Michurinsky Hospital pronounced the President of the Russian Federation dead.