Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Bribe

Ivan Nikanorovich Lyapunov took great pride in his ancestor Lyapun, the source of his last name. In 1546, scrivener Lyapun, sent to Bakhchisarai as the head of the tsar’s embassy, refused to pay “the staff duty” to Khan Sakhib-Girey’s murzas. The murzas – Crimean nobles – had the custom of meeting Moscow’s emissaries before the Khan’s palace and throwing their walking staffs under the Russians’ feet; they demanded a significant sum as the price for free passage. This wasn’t merely about having to bribe them: the payee, by virtue of having to buy himself entrance to the palace, acknowledged the supremacy of the Khan and his own lowly position as a payer of tribute – something upon which the Crimean Khans, who traced their lineage to Genghis Khan himself, were keen to insist. The poor Lyapun was stripped naked and paraded around the market with his nostrils and ears sewn shut to shame him before Bakhchisarai’s citizenry, but he did not give in and returned to Moscow never having gained an audience with the Khan or having signed a new treaty. Upon his return, Lyapun was promoted to clerk and sent to Stargorod, where he was destined to beget the famous Lyapunovs.

In the early days of democratization, Ivan Nikanorovich spent two years working as Stargorod’s mayor’s deputy, but he didn’t fit into the system, for he despised bribing as a phenomenon. So he returned to his old position at Stargorod University, where he taught Russian history and was a department chair.

He was just about to deliver his lecture about the relations between the Rus and the Golden Horde one day when an unexpected question made him revise his narrative: a student asked where bribes came from. Ivan Nikanorovich began with the Byzantine Empire, in which the administration was broken up into districts called dioceses (from the Latin dioecesis). Each diocese had its own judge and its own bishop. The judge was responsible for adjudicating civil disputes, and the bishop for keeping the spiritual peace, correcting violations of moral and religious norms. Neither official was ever paid a decent regular salary, as, for instance, judges in the West would later receive from the government, so they had to rely on whatever the parties to the suit could donate to the court for having justice done – and that’s how the bribe was born. No one saw it necessary to set a standard for the donations, so corruption quickly became the norm in the state’s apparatus. Over time, the state weakened and fell – easy prey to bloodthirsty Turks. In the West, where governments inherited Roman law, bribing was seen as a great shame and was punished severely. However, it was Byzantine customs that were imported to Rus along with Eastern Christianity; a prince, for instance, who was expected to act as a judge, received lands “to feed from” – basically, a token maintenance – and how much he charged privately for solving a citizen’s dispute was never discussed. The nobles and the common people traditionally looked the other way.

“Do you mean to say that bribing is in our blood and we can do nothing to root it out?” the student asked.

“I believe it is wrong to give bribes, and that we should fight this,” Lyapunov answered and ended the discussion.

After class, Kostya Stupin came by Ivan Nikanorovich’s office – Kostya was his graduate student and a fourth-generation fisherman from the Lake Country.

“Ivan Nikanorovich, dad sent you some fish,” Kostya said shyly offering the professor a box of smoked zanders.

“Are you offering me a bribe?”

“We caught these together, I smoked them myself, I just wanted to share – try them, it’s from the heart!”

To refuse would have meant to offend the boy. Lyapunov shook his head and took the box.

Later that day he went to visit his mother – she lived in a village, a dozen miles outside of town. His mother loved fish, so the zanders came at a perfect time. He drove through the gathering dusk, having forgotten to fasten his seat belt or to turn on the lights, and thought that he really should not have accepted the fish. At St. Christopher’s Cemetery, something – an apparition with a sergeant’s shoulder-straps jumped out of the bushes and waved the traffic police stick at him; Lyapunov pulled over. The apparition was skinny as a child: it had an almost-bald skull with a bit of thin hair on it, and its big-knuckled fingers ended in razor-sharp nails.

“Driving without lights, without the seat belt, and when you made that turn you traveled into the facing lane! Oh, is that fish you got there?” the skeletal apparition wheezed happily, poking its head into the window and looking over Lyapunov’s shoulder into the back seat.

“I won’t give you any money,” Lyapunov said sternly.

All of a sudden, the skeleton broke apart into three small boys in tattered clothes.

“Mister, we’re hungry, help us, ple-e-ase!” they sang out in unison. Their gaunt little faces would make a rock cry.

“To heck with you – here!” Lyapunov threw a couple of fishes out the window. The boys snatched them and vanished into the bushes.

In the village, he complained to his mother about the traffic police – they’re way out of line!

“You’re always judging people, Vanya,” his mother said. “And you should know better. To hear you say it, everyone’s just getting fat, and there are all kinds of people out there. Take Katya Pimenova – she lives on the other end of the village – her husband’s in the traffic police, and he’s skin and bones, a breeze could tip him over, but he works hard and does all the chores at home, and they have three kids, and he doesn’t drink but they’re poor all the same. Power’s gone to your head, Vanya – why did you ever want to mess with it?”

Ivan Nikanorovich did not argue with his mother, but threw back a shot of vodka, bit a pickle and went outside. It was frosty; the sky was pierced with stars. For some reason, he suddenly imagined his ancestor – how he walked across the Bakhchisarai market, naked, with his ears and nostrils sewn shut, the crowds cursing him with words he couldn’t understand. The vodka spread warm throughout Ivan Nikanorovich’s body. He brushed off a quick tear, turned, and went inside, to sleep.