“Now that’s a nice turn of phrase!” he thought. “‘The spirit of liveliness reigned.’”
The fact that somebody was writing down every detail of his life, day after day, evidently didn’t surprise or trouble Semipyatnitsky. His only concern was that the author’s style be up to snuff, and that he acted in a professional manner.
Maximus lowered himself onto the chair in front of his computer, turned it on, and gathered up several sheets of paper from the desk, going through them while giving himself over to abstract and mournful thoughts.
First Pelevin, now this Herbalife devil, it’s like something out of Bulgakov… what next? Gogol? Quite the eclectic mix. Or, as they say these days, fusion. Yes, Maximus, your life is profoundly derivative—you can find every detail in Franz Kafka, who, by the way, was the favorite writer of Vladislav (Aslanbek) Surkov (Dudaev), who had such a friendly chat with you that time in an office in the Kremlin.
Semipyatnitsky recalled his dreams of Khazaria, especially the last one, and he asked himself: Who would be our present-day Khagan and who would be our Bek? Surkov the Khagan, and Putin the Bek? Or the reverse: Putin the Khagan and Surkov the Bek? A fat red line of letters appeared and began scrolling across the internal monitor of Maximus’s consciousness, interrupting these musings:
“You idiot! Weren’t you told in no uncertain terms that you are the Khagan? What does Dudaev have to do with it?”
“All right, but who’s the Bek, then?” Maximus tried to make his little contribution.
“The Cat in the Hat!”
His Inner Author was obviously not interested in having a constructive dialogue. Maximus would have to get to work. Begin, as always, by sorting the mail and purging spam. Today’s spam contained messages that seemed particularly deranged. Maximus read:
Stuck in a boring, unfulfilling job? Thwarted in your life’s dreams? Betrayed by your lover? No friends? Living a life without meaning, purpose, devoid of even the simplest pleasures?… Why not try NARCOTICS?
That’s no solution. Better just kill yourself.
But what really caught Maximus’s eye was the footnote at the end:
This is a public service announcement. Sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
The next message was an insurance ad, aggressively infernal in tone:
Better dead than poor! Sell a kidney and invest the proceeds in optional medical insurance!
And another one, an offer from a hard-currency broker:
While you were wasting time on porn sites, the Arabian dirham gained two points against the Japanese yen. Would you rather throw your life away on photographs of virtual-reality whores or make money on the forex market and buy yourself any whores you want—real ones? The decision is yours!
But the next message was the most interesting of alclass="underline"
We are NOT trying to sell you imaginary real estate on the moon for real money. We are NOT trying to trade you a bottle of vodka for your share in the socialist economy of a great country. We are NOT trying to persuade you to vote for that band of carpetbaggers masquerading as the government. Simply turn over your mythical “soul,” and in exchange you will receive a real Visa Gold card with $30,000 worth of overdraft protection!
Maximus smirked maliciously and dispatched the entire batch of spam into the trash.
There was a short message from Peter, writing from Holland, in English as usual. It had a businesslike, even dry, tone: “Hi Maximus! It was great to meet you in Saint Petersburg. Hope our conversation and disputes will help us strengthen our companies’ business relationships. Best regards, Peter.”
The letter’s tone gave Semipyatnitsky the impression that Peter was biting his own elbows out of fear that he’d said too much when he was in St. Petersburg, terrified that Maximus would get him in trouble.
The PS, though, adopted a more personal and friendly tone: “PS I took your kind advice, thank you! Now I have (you know what) for free (or almost free).”
Maximus opened the database and examined the purchase figures for Dutch frozen potatoes. Volume was growing fifteen to twenty percent per year. The peak came in summer, when the sidewalk cafés were open and serving French fries, which came over from Europe already cleaned and sliced into strips, crinkle style.
Lina was sitting in a stupor, staring at her phone. Obviously the aftereffects of whatever she’d been doing the night before.
Semipyatnitsky risked an attempt to rouse her.
“Lina!”
The girl shuddered and gave a grunt.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“Strange. You look like the ‘before’ picture in an anti-drug campaign. You have that overdose look. Or, worse, like after you got laid for the first time after losing your virginity on graduation night sixteen years ago… when was that again, a couple of weeks ago, was it?”
“Tatar bastard.” But her heart wasn’t really in it.
“Khazar,” corrected Maximus, as usual.
“So what did you want?”
“Oh, I wanted to ask you something. About the potatoes.”
“So?”
“Lina, look at these numbers: We import up to thirty tons from a single supplier. And we’re not even the biggest importer of Dutch frozen potatoes. And that’s not counting potatoes imported fresh and sold in supermarkets year ’round. And, think about it, Holland exports to other countries too. Off the top of my head, that would have to come to millions of tons of potatoes every year. It says here that in 1997 Holland produced eight million tons of potatoes. That’s their official statistic. Here in the Black Earth Region two hundred centners per hectare is considered a good yield. But the Dutch supposedly get seven hundred. How do they do it? All right, maybe it has to do with different weight standards. A Russian centner is equal to one hundred kilograms or 0.1 ton, but a German centner is one hundred pfunds, or fifty kilograms, or 0.05 ton. That means that their yield is still 350 centners per hectare—I mean, according to our standard. To get, say, seven million tons of potatoes, you need to plant two hundred thousand hectares. That is, two thousand square kilometers just for potatoes. The territory of the Netherlands is just short of forty-two thousand square kilometers—all right, accounting for rivers and lakes, canals, roads, and cities, there’s enough for that volume of potatoes. But only if all that land is used just for potatoes! But the area also exports all kinds of other agricultural products, from beef to tulips! So where do they grow all that? Where do all those Dutch potatoes come from?”
“Was all that meant for me?”
“Don’t act dumb. You know it was.”
“All right. Okay.”
“My dad was an agronomist.”
“I see.”
“What do you mean, ‘I see’? Answer the question. How can they manage to grow all that in one tiny country?”
“What makes you so sure they grow them all within their own borders?”
Maximus froze. Did Lina know about the pills? And here she was acting like it was no big deal.
But Lina was on a different track:
“Were you born yesterday? The Dutch and other European vegetables, fruits, and berries are imported from China—everyone knows that!”
“Everyone-everyone?”
“Of course! Even our clients! And our clients’ clients, everyone knows. Apparently you’re the only one who doesn’t.”
“But why do they import the Chinese vegetables into Europe?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’? Europe is where they put on the labels.”