God be praised. Because talking about love, talking about men, only reminded Olga how much about Zvi she had forgotten. Because memory was a strand of hair pulled tight and too easily broken. Because even with her eyes closed, squeezed shut to the uncertain light of the lav, only with great effort could she recall Zvi in his service uniform, his hat perched on his head, his charcoal eyes. And that was it. Olga reached for a Letter to the Editor and scribbled a few lines.
Every day for twenty years on the back of the squares of Very Soft or Pigeon, popular brands of scratchy brown toilet paper, or on the backs of the Letters to the Editor, Olga wrote anything she could remember of Zvi. For twenty years she tried to corral her failing memory and word by word, memory by memory, reclaim her lost husband. But somehow (when she was cramming Hungarian into her ears? When she was forgetting the family prayers to make room for Nakh conjugations?) Zvi had inexplicably retreated particle by particle into the murk. Every day for twenty years she tried to call him back, detail by detail. For instance, Olga knew that every man wears a map of skin: sweat creases on the back of the neck or scars on the knuckles, indelible footnotes of the work done with the hands. But what signs and markings Zvi's body heralded, Olga couldn't remember. Only because her notes said so did she know that he had a star-shaped scar above the right cheekbone. In her note she reads how Zvi had an entire constellation of moles on his back that resembled letters of the Arabic alphabet, but now she could not recall what words they spelled. And it was only because the backs of the Letters to the Editors said so that she knew that Zvi's smile was so wide, it pushed his ears back. And it bothered her like nothing else that she couldn't remember his feet or his hands or his knees. If he had been a dreamer, a loner—the sound of his laugh—it was gone from her. Only his sneezes trumpeting through the corridor and rattling plates in the cupboard—that she remembered. But even then it was with effort, only after consulting her chipped dishes and stopping to wonder, 'How?'
'Am I right?' Vera's voice pulled Olga back to the bathroom smoke and stink. 'Should I not insult Sergei mercilessly and then give him the boot?'
'Absolutely you are in the right.' Olga thrust her notes into her purse. If a woman asked such a question, it was only because she knew the answer already and wanted quick confirmation.
But Olga had had about all she could take of sex and husbands. And realizing that she'd get nowhere on the cocktail menu with Vera, she wiped her backside with a Letter to the Editor:
To whom it may concern,
I think you should know that it is a well-established fact the Russian military is bankrupt and has been for years. Recruits have gone AWOL in record numbers and Russian soldiers have given their weapons to Chechen opposition in exchange for bottles of vodka. And why not? Under-equipped, underfed, under-supported, and ill-trained, why should these boys die in Chechnya? Good God! We sent tanks into Grozny without giving the tank navigators a city map!
(signed General S———, Mozdok.)
By the time Olga slid behind her side of the desk, Arkady's eyebrows had locked in a wrestling match. On the desk in front of him lay the week's inflation index.
'The President is an ass.' Arkady waved a curled transcript.
Olga glanced at the Topic Guide. 'I think "donkey" is the preferred nomenclature.'
'OK.' Arkady scratched at his arm. 'Donkey it is. And as such, according to city ordinance prohibiting the use of animals in public, he should stay at home in bed and keep his hangover to himself.'
'Hangover' was a not-so-subtle reference to the President's decision to invade Chechnya, a move prompted by a long round of holiday toasting and reckless dares.
Olga scowled. Yes, Russia was a country manned by drunks. No one knew it more than the fact-checkers and translators at the Red Star, but still, even in this age of pseudo-glasnost, there were things you shouldn't say. Now there were unconfirmed rumours that the President might be plagued with a bad heart. To this end, Kaminsky had installed a special cut-and-paste function. Any time the word 'president' appeared in print it was followed by 'could not attend the event because he was labouring over documents'.
Just then the teletype, a squat grey machine stationed beneath the glass window, spluttered to life.
Absurdity no. 6
The teletype.
...was of archival, that is to say antique, quality. Olga held her breath as the large round metal element spun in quick agitation, striking the paper in an exaggerated staccato fashion. Arkady adjusted his glasses and squinted at the transcript unfurling from the yammering maw of the machine. Although office protocol dictated that she and Arkady retrieve and translate as many assignments from the basket as they could, if the teletype went active, then they were to drop those assignments immediately, as something horrific was happening and the public—for their own good—must not at any cost hear about it in its raw and undiluted version.
If these were accounts of the economic catastrophe, such as the week's inflation index, then the assignment fell to Arkady, who could track the manifest rise and fall of the rouble in the cost of chewing gum or the ever-fluctuating price of bread. And Arkady could turn a phrase. A master of commercial euphemism, just the other day Arkady artfully dubbed the fact that for over two years the average monthly pension couldn't buy sausage and butter for a week as 'deficit earning'. The 28 billion roubles of unpaid wages to transportation, construction and agricultural workers he attributed to a common malaise known as 'indefinite delayed payment syndrome'—a condition encapsulated in a saying every Russian worker had known and repeated for decades: 'We pretend to work, they pretend to pay.'
Military reports, on the other hand—estimated numbers of casualties, movements of troops and munitions—fell exclusively to Olga.
Arkady ripped the transcripts from the carriage and squinted fiercely at the type. 'For you,' he said, handing it to Olga.
Olga winced and read the report:
After heavy fighting near Chervlenaja, Dolinsk, Pervomaisk, Petropavlovskaya, 250 troops were counted as lost.
Olga sighed a ponderous sigh. Two hundred and fifty lost might actually mean five hundred dead and far more than that wounded. Russian military organizations, Olga knew, each had different ways of tallying their losses. Only soldiers who actually died on the battlefield were counted as dead. Those who died in transport or various field hospitals did not count. Add to the confusion the fact that each service (defence ministry, internal ministry) had its own hospitals. And even though the actual figures could take months to trickle in, even she could see that during the first half year of the war in Chechnya the Russian Federal Forces suffered greater losses than the Soviet army sustained during ten years of war in Afghanistan. This was a difficult fact to play down. That Russian conscripts like her Yuri gained military experience at the price of their own blood was also a reality that required some delicacy. And from Yuri, who saw it with his own eyes, Olga learned that the bodies of Russian soldiers who died in high-altitude mountain terrain were very often left where they fell. Kholodets, they were called, meat in aspic, because if the helicopters designated for carrying human cargo couldn't gain the necessary lift, then those bodies were simply dumped into the mountain lakes.
And now it was Olga's job to whittle the numbers down to acceptable figures. She re-read the report summary and tapped her teeth with her pencil.
Noticing her distress, Arkady plugged in the hotplate then touched her sleeve. 'Round those numbers down and be done with it.'