Over a drink, Vladik liked to talk about the victories of the Russian military: aside from his dearly beloved Romans, he also admired Suvorov and reserved a special place in his heart for Marshal Zhukov, under whose command Vladik’s own grandfather had the honor of serving. All this did not prevent Vladik from respecting Hitler as well; he even developed a peculiar way of greeting people by raising his arm from the shoulder, almost Nazi-like, with the invariable accompaniment of a resounding “Hi!” This behavior, naturally, only increased Vladik’s scandalous popularity, but he remained democratic and drank with everyone. Since he was often the last man left standing, Vladik didn’t mind cleaning up, until one day, sweeping the evidence of yet another party into a piece of paper he had found, Vladik made a mistake. We must mention that the head of the expedition was Professor Lokotov – a pedantic bore of a man, who had been wounded tragically in the Great War. On May 9, 1945, a snotty Hitler-Jugend kid shot Lokotov’s tank with a Faustpatrone, killing his crew and leaving the future Professor one-armed. The injury made Lokotov anti-social, but it must have done wonders for his scholarly diligence, and by the mid-70s the old soldier had attained the rank of Professor, managed his own research group, and gained special fame in the academic community for his insistence on replacing, in his articles, the foreign borrowing “ceramics” with the simpler and more resonant phrase “broken pots.”
So, Vladik, highly intoxicated but still securely vertical, was taking out the trash. Right at the street door (the students were housed in the village school) he lost his focus for a moment and almost fell on top of Professor Lokotov, who was entering. Drops of red goo from the leftovers of sardines in tomato sauce, a non-negotiable item on the student menu, fell onto the Professor’s trousers. An empty bottle dropped from Vladik’s grasp and hit Lokotov painfully on the foot. Vladik hastened to retreat, but was instantly trapped by the enraged archaeologist.
“What is this? What is it?” the former tank commander shoved Vladik’s bundle of trash into his face. The paper into which Vladik had wrapped everything turned out to have been a school display; a picture of Lenin in the center had been pierced with a knife (Vladik recalled he sliced an onion there earlier) and the Leader of the Proletariat was smeared all over with the same red goo.
What happened next stunned everyone. Vladik – who may have been irked by the rough treatment, or insulted at being cornered like that, or perhaps simply not in the right mood – suddenly shoved the broken-pot luminary away and said, loud and clear:
“Fuck off, old man...”
The old soldier, we must admit, lost his bearings for an instant and gave in. Vladik bolted through the opening, thundered out the door, and fled to his cot accompanied by the angry clicking of his heel pads on the brick floor.
As a result, there was a personal complaint about the behavior of Komsomol member Kuznetsov. The History Department’s Komsomol Committee, however, was well acquainted with Professor Lokotov; they had been dealing with the professor’s personal complaints for years – he never came back from an expedition without a whole stack of them. It was, in fact, only the professor’s reputation with the Committee that saved Vladik from being expelled; he got off with a reprimand.
Kuznetsov responded with words that are not fit to print, expressing his disdain for such Komsomol nonsense.
The whole story appeared to have been the final blow to Vladik’s already shaky commitment to science. Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, who lived so many centuries ago, was cast into oblivion once again. Instead, Vladik was consumed by the idea of creating his own political party. He already had the greeting and the uniform; his ideology was a mix of Cato’s sense of entitlement, austerity and directness and Suvorov’s patriotism, with a dose of Nazi-smacking intolerance for Jews and Armenians. The latter sentiment was something Vladik developed following the advice of sailor Dyakovenko, who by then had transferred to the History of the Communist Party Department. Dyakovenko never made a secret of his intention to go back to the North Fleet after graduation: with his blue buoy of a diploma he fully expected to find a cushy political gig.
Vladik did not want a cushy gig. Vladik chose to fight. While he respected his grandfather’s lessons deeply, he was heard, in his inner circle, bemoaning the fact that the old man had not quite seen the things the way they were. Vladik was not satisfied by merely speaking truth to power; as every true Russian, he cared about the oppressed masses and dreamed of liberation, while he continued to plan for his radically new party.
Vladik acquired a pair of bodyguards: Kolya Bolshoi and a guy named Footmanov from a once-noble family. No one knew where he found them; the three held court at the University’s tap room and proselytized there without fear (and this was mid-70s, not today!), sometimes using their fists to make their arguments stick. Kolya Bolshoi’s fists, we must observe, were as big as his last name.
What was keeping Vladik at the University at this point? It seemed there was one more thing he wanted – the military course, despised by everyone else. That’s just the kind of man Vladik was – forever swimming against the flow, driven and stubborn.
Another story comes to mind.
A group of students led by Major Borodin, a well-known liberal, who had once aimed high but got burned (and was, people said, to remain a Major forever), an excellent military translator who had even been seen reading Salinger in the original on a subway train on his way to work – this group of students was ready to take in another class full of Major’s stories about his adventures around the world. The students had developed a sure method for getting the Major to talk. Whenever they were supposed to be memorizing something incredibly boring about the American Minuteman or Polaris missiles, one of Major’s favorites would raise his hand and ask, for example:
“Comrade Major, would you happen to know – can you see a submarine from a plane?”
Major Borodin would lean back on his chair and study his audience. When he was satisfied that indeed, everyone wanted to hear the answer, he would begin, “The Red Sea is home to a unique genus of giant sea-shells (here he would fire off an unpronounceable Latin name). If you are sailing, let’s say, a small storm-boat, the shape of one of these sea shells looks very much like the contour of an enemy submarine at periscope depth, as seen from, let’s say, a patrol helicopter.”
On the day in question, things were proceeding as usuaclass="underline" the rapt audience was listening to the Major expounding on the distinguishing features of Ethiopian women (as compared to Somalis), when, at a rather important point, the lecture was interrupted by the measured thumping of someone marching in the hallway. The noise seemed to be approaching. The tactful Major Borodin allowed his face to acquire the look of a gourmand surreptitiously surveying the dinner table, to make sure that indeed, his roast snails have been served without the garlic-and-marjoram sauce. The thunder outside, meanwhile, climaxed in the command, “Halt!” followed by a distinct clack of heels snapped together. Then, Vladik’s deep voice rumbled forth from behind the door:
“Permission to enter, Comrade Major!”
Major Borodin lifted himself from his chair just a bit, and, glancing at the door with growing alarm, replied almost according to the Manual, “Enter, granted.”
A strong arm opened the door; Vladik entered – no, rather, Vladik filled the frame, closed the door behind himself neatly, then marched, heels clacking, the 15 feet from the door to the lecturer’s desk and stood to attention.
“Permission to address, Comrade Major!”
“Yes, of course. Go ahead,” Borodin said, making it clear he had no desire to continue this game.