"inhumanity," reminding the Canadians that the mother played the
accordion and the daughter could quote Voltaire at will, but I quickly
took him into my study and closed the door. "Let's talk about art," I
said.
"What will become of my girls?" the painter asked. "My poor Elizaveta
Ivanovna and Lyudmila Petrovna," Chartkov said, eying the multitude of
English and German volumes that graced my bookshelves, abstruse titles
such as "Cayman Island Banking Regulations," annotated, in three
volumes, and the ever-popular "A Hundred and One Tax Holidays."
"Enough of this whimpering," I said. "Chartkov, do you know why I hired
you to execute my painting?"
"Because you slept with my sister Grusha," Chartkov surmised correctly,
"and she recommended me to you."
"Yes, initially so. But over the weeks I've come to appreciate you as,
mmm, a Christ-like figure. And I use the term loosely, because our
language has become as impoverished as our country and it's often hard
to find the right term, even if you're willing to pay hard currency for
it. See now, you alone can paint a picture of me, Chartkov, that will
guarantee my immortality. The problem is, it has to be real. Not this
General Suvorov nonsense. I mean, what next? Will you portray me in a
tricorne hat, riding a white mare to victory? Let's be realistic. I'm a
young moneylender, aging swiftly and, like all Russian biznesmeny, not
too long for this world. Also, in case you haven't noticed, I have dark
hair and a broken nose."
"But I want to make you better than you are," Chartkov said. "I want to
restore Christian dignity to your battered soul and the only way to do
so is . . . the only way—" I could tell his attention was occupied by
the piercing Russian "Okh, okh, okh!" coming from the parlor,
accompanied by some heartless Canadian grunting.
"That's precisely what you don't want to do," I said. "I'm a sinner,
Chartkov, and I am not too proud to admit it. I am a sinner and as a
sinner you shall paint me! Look deep into my hollowed-out eyes, try on
my disposable Italian suit, smoke from my musty crack pipe, befoul my
summer kottedzh on the Gulf of Finland, stuff yourself with my deer-and-
crab pelmeni, whip my manservant, Timofey, until he begs for his life,
wake up next to my ruined provincial girlfriend. And then, Chartkov,
paint exactly what you see."
Chartkov wiped some more of his infinite tears and helped himself to a
bottle of sake that I now pressed into his hand. "Will this get me
drunk?" he asked shyly, examining the strange Asiatic lettering.
"Yes, but you mustn't stop drinking it even for a second. Here, it goes
with this marinated-squid snack. And in return for your work, of course,
I will pay you, Chartkov, pay you enough for you and your Ruth and Naomi
to live a comfortable life forever. Perhaps you can even 'save them,' if
that's indeed still possible."
"Eight thousand dollars!" Chartkov cried out, grasping at his fragile
heart. "That's what I want!"
"Well, I would think considerably more." I was, in fact, expecting to
spend at least U.S. $250,000.
"Nine thousand, then!" Chartkov cried. "And I shall paint you just as
you like! With horns and a yarmulke if you so desire!"
What could I say? If only I had been a Jew there would have been no need
for Chartkov's services. Our Jews are steeped in familial memory and
even when they die, for instance when their Lexus S.U.V. gets blown off
a bridge by a well-armed rival, they remain locked in the dreary
memories of their progeny, circling over the Neva River for eternity,
dreaming of their herring and onions. I, on the other hand, had no
progeny, no memory, and really very little chance of surviving this
country of ours for more than a few more months.
Why deceive myself like the rest of my New Russian compatriots? My
wealth notwithstanding, Chartkov's was the only eternity I could afford.
"Well put, Chartkov," I said. "So we are in agreement. And now let us
not keep our company waiting. I shall send Timofey out to fetch an
accordion. That way the beautiful Elizaveta Ivanovna can entertain us
with her other talents."
"God bless you, Valentin Pavlovich!" cried Chartkov, pressing my hand to
his cheek.
[pic]
The next afternoon I woke up with the usual tinnitus in my left ear, a
series of duck flares going off in my peripheral vision. The crack-
cocaine pipe—the "glass dick," as the Canadians had called it—stared at
me accusingly through its single eye. My pillow was covered with
alcoholic slobber and what looked like little crack mites dancing their
urban-American dance. Meanwhile, coiled up next to me, my Murka was
making tragic whistling sounds in her sleep, shielding herself from
phantom childhood punches with one upraised skinny arm.
It was a fine moment to be a St. Petersburg gentleman. I called Timofey
on the mobilnik and he came ambling in from the next room, already
dressed in his morning frock. "Did you deliver the painter Chartkov to
his digs?" I asked of him.
"Yes, batyushka," said Timofey. "And a great one he was, that painter.
Soused, like a real alkash, and easy with his fists, like my dear dead
Papa. I had to carry him up to his flat, and once I laid him out on the
divan he started hitting me with his belt. Then we had to get on our
knees and pray for a good half hour. He kept shouting 'Christ has
risen!' and I had to reply 'Verily, he has risen!' Such people I do not
understand, sir."
"The ways of artists are beyond us, Timofey," I said. "And did you give
him nine thousand dollars in ninety consecutive bills of a hundred
dollars each?"
"That I did, batyushka," said Timofey. "The painter then took off all
his clothes and touched himself in many places with the American
currency, while whispering batyushka's name most reverently. I was so
scared, sir, that I spent half the night in the alehouse."
"You're a good manservant, Timofey," I said. "Now go tend to our
Canadian friends while I spend the day frolicking about."
I meant what I said about frolicking. Being a modern moneylender is not
a difficult occupation. Armed with computers and bookkeepers and hand
grenades, I find the work pretty much takes care of itself. My most
pressing duty is showing up at the biznesmenski buffet at the T Club
every Thursday and glowering across the swank airport-lounge dйcor at my
nearest competitors, the ones that keep trying to blow me off the
Troitsky Bridge.
On this warm summer day, the Neva River playful and zippy, a panorama of
gray swells and treacherous seagulls, I walked over the bridges to the
Peter and Paul Fortress. But unless one gets very excited about third-
rate Baroque fortifications, there's really nothing to see, so instead I
followed a group of young schoolchildren. In their own way, the children
were sublime: destitute in their lousy Polish denim and Chinese high-
tops, scarred with acne and low self-esteem, members of the world's
first de-industrialized nation but still imbued with our old cultural
deference, a Petersburg child's mythical respect for Dutch pediments and
Doric porticoes. I watched them fall silent as the tour guide intoned
about an occupant of the fortress's ramshackle prison, a revolutionary
who once wiped away his tears with Dostoyevsky's handkerchief, or some
other such luminary.
Can it really be true, as the sociological surveys tell us, that only
five years hence these tender shoots will forsake their cultural
patrimony to become the next generation of bandits and streetwalkers? To
test this theory, I looked into the face of the prettiest girl, a dark
little Tatar-cheeked beauty with a pink, runny nose and flashed her my
standard Will-you-sell-your-body-for-Deutsche-marks? smile. She looked
down at the monstrous Third World clodhoppers on her feet. Not yet, her
black eyes told me.
Saddened by our children's plight, I doubled back over the Palace Bridge
and pushed through the long line of sweaty provincial tourists at the
Hermitage, shouting all the while about some obscure Moneylender's
Privilege (droit du dollar?). I wangled a self-invented Patriot's
Discount out of the babushkas at the box office by pretending I was a
veteran of the latest Chechen campaign, then ran straight up to the
fourth floor, where they keep all the early-twentieth-century French
paintings.
I stood before Picasso's portrait of the "Absinthe Drinker" and
marvelled at the drunk Parisian woman staring back at me. How many
Soviet years have we wasted here on the fourth floor of the Hermitage,
looking at these portraits of Frenchmen reading Le Journal, pretending
that somehow we were still in Europe. In our musty felt boots we stood,
staring at Pissarro's impressions of the "Boulevard Montmartre on a
Sunny Afternoon" and then, out the window, at our own dirt-caked General
Staff building, its pale semi-circular sweep forming the amphitheatre of
Palace Square. If we squinted our eyes, or, better yet, took another nip
out of our hip flasks, we could well imagine that the General Staff's
delicate arch was somehow a portal onto the Place de la Concorde itself,
its statue of six Romanesque horses harnessed to Glory's chariot really
an Air France jetliner ready to sail into the sky.
And, let me ask you, For what all that suffering? For what all those
dreams of freedom and release? Ten years later, here we were, a hundred
and fifty million Eastern Untermenschen collectively trying to fix a
rusted Volga sedan by the side of the road.
You know, it was best not to think about it.
So I returned my gaze to Picasso's absinthe drinker and this time
discovered a previously elusive truth. The drunk Parisian had not been
staring at me all those years, as I had romantically, egotistically
supposed, but solely at the blue bottle of absinthe, her face radiating
as much slyness as despair, a careful contemplation of the heavy poison
