Then Lieutenant Rodichev read a poem by Mayakovsky.* He stood with his feet wide apart and tried to speak in a bass voice.
He was succeeded by the recidivist Kuptsov, who performed a tap dance called ‘The Little Gypsy Girl’ with no accompaniment. As he was being applauded, he exclaimed, “Too bad – without patent-leather boots you don’t get the full effect.”
Then they announced a zek foreman, Loginov, “accompanied by a guitar.” Loginov walked out, bowed, touched the strings, and sang:
“A gypsy reads my cards, her eyes cast down,
An ancient necklace and a string of beads.
I wanted to try Fate for a queen of diamonds
But once again it was the ace of spades.
Why is it, my unhappy fate,
Again you lead me on a road of tears?
The barbed wire’s rusty, the iron bars close,
A railway prison car, the noise of wheels…”
They applauded Loginov for a long time and called for him to sing an encore. However, Khuriyev was against it. He walked out and said, “As they say, the good in little doses.”
Then he adjusted his chest strap, waited for silence, and shouted out, “The revolutionary play Kremlin Stars. The roles will be played by inmates of the Ust-Vym camp complex. Vladimir Ilych Lenin – prisoner Gurin. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky – prisoner Tsurikov. Red Army soldier Timofei – prisoner Chmykhalov. The merchant’s daughter Polina – Economic Administration worker Lebedyeva, Tamara Yevgenyevna… And so, Moscow, the year 1918.”
Khuriyev backed off the stage. A chair and a blue plywood stool were carried onto the proscenium. Then Tsurikov climbed up onstage wearing the khaki tunic. He scratched his leg, sat down and fell into deep thought. Then he remembered that he was sick, and began to force a cough. He coughed so hard that the tunic came up out of his belt.
Meanwhile, there was still no sign of Lenin. From the wings, a stagehand belatedly brought out a telephone without a cord. Tsurikov stopped coughing, picked up the receiver, and fell into even deeper thought.
A few emboldened prisoners in the audience started yelling, “Come on, Stilts, don’t drag it out!”
At that moment, Lenin appeared, carrying an enormous yellow suitcase. “Greetings, Felix Edmundovich.”
“Hello there,” Dzerzhinsky answered without getting up.
Gurin set down the suitcase, squinted cunningly, and asked, “Do you know, Felix Edmundovich, what I have here in my hand?”
“A suitcase, Vladimir Ilych.”
“And just what it’s for – can you guess?”
“Haven’t the slightest idea.” Tsurikov even turned away slightly, showing complete indifference.
From the audience, some shouted again, “Get up, Stilts! That’s no way to talk to the boss!”
“Sha!” Tsurikov answered. “We’ll sort it out… Too many of you here are overeducated.” Reluctantly, he rose slightly.
Gurin waited for silence and continued. “The suitcase is for you, Felix Edmundovich. So that you, dear fellow, can go off and take a rest at once.”
“I can’t, Vladimir Ilych. There’s counter-revolution all around us. The Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries” – Tsurikov glanced angrily at the audience – “bourgeois… what do you call them?”
“Scouts?” Gurin prompted.
“’At’s it, ’at’s it…”
“Your health, Felix Edmundovich, belongs to the Revolution. The comrades and I have discussed it and decided: you must take a rest. I say this to you as a member of the ruling body.”
Tsurikov was silent.
“Do you understand me, Felix Edmundovich?”
“I understand,” Tsurikov replied, and grinned stupidly. It was blatantly obvious that he had forgotten his lines.
Khuriyev came near the stage and whispered loudly, “Do what you want…”
“And what can I want to do,” Tsurikov said in the same loud whisper, “if my memory’s gone full of holes?”
“Do what you want,” the PI repeated louder, “but I’m not leaving service.”
“Everything’s clear,” Tsurikov said. “I’m not leaving—”
Lenin interrupted him. “The main asset of the Revolution is people. To care for them is our arch-important task. So get your things together, and to the Crimea, dear fellow, to the Crimea!”
“It’s still early, Vladimir Ilych, it’s still early. Let us first finish with the Mensheviks, decapitate the bourgeois cobra—”
“Not cobra, but hydra,” Khuriyev said.
“Same bugger,” Dzerzhinsky said, and waved his hand.
Beyond that, everything went more or less smoothly. Lenin reasoned, Dzerzhinsky wouldn’t give in. A few times, Tsurikov raised his voice shrilly.
Then Timofei came out onstage. Lieutenant Rodichev’s leather jacket did remind one of the double-breasted Chekist coat. Polina asked him to go to the ends of the earth with her.
“To join General Wrangel and the White Army, is that it?” Timofei asked, and grabbed his imaginary Mauser.
From the audience, zeks yelled, “Play your hearts, Cleanup! Drag her to your berth! Show us something’s still clucking in your pants!”
Lebedyeva stamped her foot wrathfully, straightened her velvet dress, and again drew near Timofei. “You’ve ruined the best years of my life! You’ve left me, I’m all alone now, like a mountain ash in a meadow.”
But the sympathy of the audience was with Timofei. Their cries carried from the halclass="underline" “Look how she’s laying it on, the hussy! You can see her candle’s burning out!”
Others yelled back, “Don’t frighten the actress, you morons! Let the seance gather steam!”
Then the barn door flew open and Security Officer Bortashevich cried, “Legal convoy, report for duty! Lopatin, Gusev, Koralis – get your weapons! Sergeant Lakhno, get the documents, on the double!”
Four of the guards headed for the door. “Excuse me,” Bortashevich said.
“Continue,” Khuriyev said, and waved his hand.
The performance moved to the final scene. The suitcase was stored away for better times. Felix Dzerzhinsky stayed at his battle post. The merchant’s daughter Polina forgot her personal claims…
Khuriyev sought me out with his eyes and nodded with satisfaction. In the first row, Major Amosov squinted contentedly.
Finally, Vladimir Ilych stepped up to the microphone. For a few seconds he was silent. Then his face lit up with the light of historical prescience. “Who is this?” Gurin exclaimed. “Who is this?”
Out of the darkness, thin pale faces focused on the leader.
“Who is this? Whose are these happy, young faces? Whose are these cheerful, sparkling eyes? Can this really be the youth of the Seventies?”
Romantic notes sounded in the voice of the actor. His speech was coloured with unfeigned excitement. He gesticulated. His powerful palm, covered with tattoos, swept upwards. “Can it really be the splendid grandchildren of the Revolution?”
At first, there were a few uncertain laughs from the front row. After a few seconds, everyone was laughing hard. You could hear Major Amosov’s bass in the general chorus. Lebedyeva yelped in a reedy voice. Chmykhalov held his sides. Onstage, Tsurikov took off his beard and shyly laid it beside the telephone.
Vladimir Ilych tried to speak. “I envy you, messengers of the future! It was for you that we lit the first lights of the new-builds. It was for your sake… Hear me out, you dogs! There’s just a sparrow’s beak of this junk left!”
The hall answered Gurin with a terrible, irrepressible yelclass="underline" “Be still, Lisper, before the rule of lawlessness!”
“Hey, whoever’s closest, give that Maupassant a good tickle!”
“Beat it, uncle, your pretzels are burning!”