The servants are quiet. The lout grabs his slit mug; blood runs through his fingers.
Pogoda puts his knife away and spits on the fallen servant. He winks at all the others:
“Pah! His mug is bloody!”
These are famous words. We always say them. That’s the custom.
Now it’s time to dot the i’s. I lift my cudgel.
“On your knees, you lumbering louts!”
At moments like these, everything is transparent. Oy, how you can see through Russian people. Faces, faces of the servants, struck dumb. Simple Russian faces. How I love to watch them at such moments, the moment of truth. Right now, they’re a mirror. In which we are reflected. And the winter sunlight.
Thank God this mirror hasn’t grown dim, hasn’t darkened with time.
The servants fall on their knees.
Our guys relax and start moving around. Batya calls right away: he’s following everything from his residence in Moscow.
“Well done!”
“We serve Russia, Batya! What about the house?”
“For demolition.”
Demolition? Now, that’s new…Usually a suppressed mansion or estate is kept. And the former servants stay on under the new master. Like my home. We look at each other. Batya grins a white-toothed grin.
“Why so quiet? It’s an order: clear the place.”
“We’ll do it, Batya!”
Aha…Clear the place. That means the red rooster. This hasn’t happened in a blue moon. But—an order is an order. Not open for discussion. I order the servants:
“Each of you can take a sack of goods! We’re giving you two minutes!”
They already know that the house is lost. They jump up, run off, disappear into all the nooks and crannies to grab whatever they’ve saved and whatever they happen upon. Meanwhile our guys are looking the house over: gratings, iron doors, walls of red brick. Everything good and solid. Good brickwork, smooth. The curtains on the windows are drawn, but not tightly: eyes dart through the cracks. That’s where the homefire is, behind the bars, a farewell warmth, hiding, trembling with deadly trepidation. Oh, how sweet it would be to penetrate that cozy place, how sweet to pluck that farewell fear out!
The servants gather a sack of goods each. They file out obediently, like pilgrims. We let them through the gates. And there, at the gap, the Streltsy are on duty with their ray guns. The servants leave the mansion compound, looking back. Look back, you uncouth louts, we don’t mind. It’s our time now. We surround the house, banging our cudgels on the bars, on the walls:
“Hail!”
“Hail!”
“Hail!”
Then we circle it three times, following the sun’s orbit.
“Woe to this house!”
“Woe to this house!”
“Woe to this house!”
Poyarok affixes a firecracker to the iron door. We stand back and cover our ears with our gloves. Blast!—and there’s no door. But after the first door there’s another door—made of wood. Sivolai gets out a ray saw. There’s a whining, and a blue flame furiously punctures the door like a thin knitting needle—and the section of door falls through.
We enter leisurely. There’s no reason to hurry now.
Inside, it’s quiet, peaceful. The nobleman has a good house, very comfortable. The parlor is decorated in the Chinese style—sofas, rugs, small low tables, human-size vases, scrolls, dragons on silk and carved in jade. The news bubbles are also Chinese, bordered with black bent wood. The room smells of Eastern aromas. It is the fashion, what can you do about it…We climb a wide staircase fitted in Chinese carpet. Now we get to the familiar smells—icon oil lamps entice, good old-fashioned wood, old books, valerian root. A quality mansion, made of logs, well caulked. With towels, icon cases, trunks, chests of drawers, samovars, and tile stoves. We wander through the rooms. No one around. Could that worm really have gotten away? We run our cudgels under the beds, pull off bedclothes, smash the wardrobes. The master is nowhere to be found.
“Didn’t fly up the chimney, did he?” Posokha mutters.
“Gotta be a secret entrance in the house somewhere,” grumbles Kreplo, rummaging through the chests of drawers with his cudgel.
“The fence is surrounded by Streltsy, where can he go?” I object.
We climb up to the attic. There’s a winter garden, bathhouse stones, a wall of water, exercise machines, an observatory. Nowadays they all have observatories…That’s something I don’t get: astronomy and astrology are great sciences, it’s true, but what does a telescope have to do with it? It’s not a fortune-telling book! The demand for telescopes within the Kremlin’s White City is simply mind-boggling, I can’t wrap my head around it. Even Batya set up a telescope in his mansion. True, he doesn’t have time to look through it.
Posokha might as well be reading my thoughts:
“These nobles and moneychangers—indulging in star-goggling. Whadda they lookin’ for? Their own death?”
“Maybe God?” Khrul chuckles, knocking his cudgel against a palm tree.
“Don’t blaspheme!” Batya’s voice calls him to order.
“Forgive me, Batya.” Khrul crosses himself. “It was the devil’s work.”
“Why are you all searching around the old-fashioned way, boys?” Batya isn’t appeased. “Turn on the ‘searcher’!”
We turn on the “searcher.” It beeps and points to the first floor. We go down. The “searcher” leads us to two Chinese vases. Large vases, standing on the floor, taller than me. We look at one another and wink. I nod at Khrul and Sivolai. They swing back and—crash! The cudgels hit the vases! The porcelain is exceptionally fine, like the eggshell of some enormous dragon, and it flies in all directions. And from these eggs, like Castor and Pollux—the noble’s children tumble out! They roll around the carpet like peas and start howling. Three, four, six. All of them blond, about a year apart, one smaller than the next.
“Well, look what we’ve got here!” The invisible Batya laughs. “Ay ay ay, look what that crook concocted!”
“He was so scared he went completely batty!” Sivolai said, leering at the children.
His grin is nasty. But that’s the way it is. We don’t touch the little ones…No, not unless there’s an order to squash the innards, that’s something different. Otherwise—we don’t need any extra blood-spilling.
Our fellows catch the shrieking children like willow grouse, and carry them out under their arms. Outside, the lame tax collector, Averian Trofimich, has arrived from the orphanage in his yellow bus. He’ll place the little ones, he won’t let them fall between the cracks; he’ll raise them to be honest citizens of a great country.
To catch the nobles’ wives we use the cries of the children as bait; Kunitsyn’s spouse couldn’t stand it, she howled from her hiding place. Women’s hearts aren’t made of stone. We follow the cry—it leads to the kitchen. We enter at a leisurely pace. We look around. Ivan Ivanovich has a good kitchen. Spacious and intelligently laid out. You’ve got your preparation table, and stovetops, and steel shelves, and glass ones with dishes and spices, and complicated ovens with hot and cold rays and all kinds of foreign high-tech, and tricky ventilation systems, and transparent refrigerators lit from below. There’s any type of knife you could want, and in the middle—a wide, white Russian tile oven. Good for Ivan Ivanovich. What kind of Russian Orthodox repast can you have without cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge? Can a foreign oven really bake savory pies like a Russian oven? Would milk curdle the right way? And what about bread, the father and mother? Russian bread needs to be baked in a Russian oven—the poorest beggar will tell you that.