The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (72 page)

“And are you aware of the fact that later, when the local elections came around, three parties fought each other for that priest’s endorsement?”

“Can’t be! I’d never...”

“Exactly. You’d never. You made him a public figure, a moral authority. Who was he before you discovered him? Just another ragtag village priest, without voice or power. And then you made your show—and he’s a spiritual shepherd! Pilgrims from the whole region mob his church; bigwigs roll up in SUVs, bringing their children. We’ll do as Father says! And you say it wasn’t out of nothing!”

“You have a strange way of looking at things, Vadym. My role was not at all as critical as you see it.”

“Oh, stop it. Modesty, as a friend of mine says, is the shortest path to anonymity.” Vadym pauses to give me the opportunity to appreciate the joke and when he doesn’t get a reaction (my head’s humming like a power substation), winks at me: “And you were a star! And could remain one.”

“You want me to help you create heroes, is that it?”

He looks at me almost gratefully—did I save him from further verbal exertion?

“Precisely.”

Another pause. A kind of very slow approach—millimeter by millimeter, so as not to startle his prey, except that his breathing gets louder. (I heard a man breathe like this once, the two of us
were in the same train compartment: I woke up in the middle of the night because he, breathing like a horse, was very carefully, so as not to wake me, pulling the covers off me before dashing back to his berth, the instant I, scared to death, stirred and mumbled something as if still half asleep.)

“A political project. Image focused. We’ll put together a strong team, with first-class foreign experts; you’ll love it. Naturally, they will all work behind the scenes. What’s needed is a public face, sort of like a press secretary. But it can’t be just a pretty face; it has to be someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone from inside the kitchen, so to speak.”

“And what will that kitchen be cooking?”

He nods in approval: we’ve finally gotten to the heart of the matter.

“This information cannot be made public yet. In the elections, besides the two main contenders—from the establishment and the opposition—there will be a number of technical candidates.”

“Meaning what?”

“What—the usual. Candidates who are there to divert votes from the front-runner.”

“From Yushchenko?!”

Now I really don’t understand anything. Isn’t Vadym a member of Yushchenko’s coalition?

“Give me a break, Daryna!” he cringes, and I shudder: it’s Vlada’s phrase, part of her vocabulary, that’s where he got it! “Yushchenko, while we’re on the subject, is also, you could say, a technical candidate. In a way...”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the fact that things are much more complicated than they appear to you. Than what they look like from the outside. And even if Yushchenko wins, although that’s more than doubtful, his victory won’t be the end of the game that’s going on, you can be sure of that. Yushchenko got propelled to the top by a whole series of favorable circumstances, he’s always had luck; you might say he’s charmed.” At this last word, Vadym’s
voice twangs with a barely audible note of envy, like the ding of chipped glass. “But there’s no
corporation
behind him. The ones backing him as a viable candidate today are all the disgruntled ones, the ones Kuchma left standing with nothing when he divvied up the property. And a coalition like that, as you can surely see yourself, cannot last. If Yushchenko does manage, by some miracle, to win, all hell will break loose—the ones who ride his coattails to parliament will waste no time wresting the steering wheel away from him.”

“And you decided not to wait until after the elections?”

Lord, my head hurts!

“And I,” Vadym doesn’t take offense, only swirls the cognac in his glass unnecessarily fast—with a short, slightly nervous circular motion. “I attempt to take a broader view. And to benefit from any outcome. And I would advise you to do the same. What does it ultimately matter if it’s Kuchma, or Yushchenko, or someone else, or the next guy? You can’t teach a pig to sing. Think about it, who are we, really? A former colony, with no statehood tradition of our own, knee-deep in shit. A transit zone. In the current global scheme of things, that’s our only asset: we are a country conveniently located for transit. And that’s where we can earn our commission—and trust me, it’s not pennies. The future outlook is not too shabby either, if one knows how to use one’s head.”

“What kind of outlook do we have if no one cleans up the shit?”

“You’re not paying attention,” he chides me. “I told you, the Yalta era is about to end. The balance of power in the world is changing; new players are coming to the stage...China, possibly India. And until the new trade balance shakes itself out, Russia and America will keep dragging us back and forth, like dogs in a tug-of-war. Neither will let go—the bone’s too big. We’ve always been a trading card in the big countries’ games anyway; it’s a function of our geography. Except that only a few of them in the past century realized that Ukraine is nothing less than critical for any serious political ambitions—Lenin knew this, and, by extension, Stalin. Today, the Russians understand this much better than the
Americans. Europe’s not even worth mentioning—they’re off the field, and it’s not a given that they’ll ever get back on it, aside from falling into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Not the least bit. Gazprom already owns a good half of Europe. They have Nord Stream lobbyists in every European government. Everyone, Daryna, loves money. Especially the big kind. Especially when the one paying it is someone you used to fear. That’s power. Money, you know, is not just banks—it’s also cell-phone service operators, and Internet providers. You see what I’m saying? As soon as those losers in the EU implement electronic ballots, you can write Europe off. Politically it’ll mean no more than some Kemerov region; they’ll have all their leaders chosen in Moscow. So the stakes are quite high, Daryna—it’s a big game. And in the scheme of this game, we are the testing ground for new management technologies. The ones that will determine the fate of the world in the new century. Try to see it that way.”

“So what, we are a kind of a shooting range? Like in World War II, and with Chernobyl? Your big players come play here, see what happens, and then bury us again—till the next time?”

“A range—that’s well put. Here’s to your health!” He holds up his snifter to let the cognac flash in the light. “You have a way with words. History’s secret range. Not bad at all, it’s got that something...I bought this book the other day, by a British guy, about Poland, a thick one.” He stretches his fingers, a pair of sausages, to show me. “It’s called
God’s Playground
. I liked that, too—I think that’s even more fitting for Ukraine than for Poland.”

“Then it shouldn’t be God’s. Should be the Devil’s. The Devil’s Playground.”

(Devil’s Playground, yes—where the best are the ones who perish. The ones who expose themselves, who stand up from the trenches. One can’t expose oneself on the Devil’s Playground—can’t step into the floodlight’s beam, unless one plays for the side that’s sitting in the bushes with the sniper’s rifle; on the Devil’s Playground, one can only make good if one lives the way Vadym
says: get low and watch where the strongest current will run—and swim in it. You are a wise, wise man, Vadym, aren’t you; you’ve got it all figured out...)

“Why do you have to be so dramatic,” he mutters, and an absurd hope that he is simply drunk flares up in me—that he is just drunk, that’s it. Look at how much less cognac there is in the bottle; I didn’t even notice how he’d siphoned all that out. This may well be merely the ramblings of an intoxicated man. Damn it, why is my head crackling and hissing so much—like a cell phone with a weak signal! No, drunk he is not.

“Now, a range—that’s well put!” He sticks to his tune. “That’s exactly what it will be. Just you wait and see—there’ll be a whole bunch of interesting new tricks launched for the first time in these elections! Someday, they’ll write textbooks about it. Post-information era government technologies—that’s something! It’s like when they first split the atom. In the beginning, no one could see what possibilities that opened up either. This’ll be an interesting year for you and me, Daryna.” All of a sudden, he rubs his hands together with such a youthful, hungry lust for life, like a teenage boy after a swim that I, taken by surprise, miss my chance to react to his “you and me.”

“Let’s have a drink!
Let’s drink, honey, let’s drink here, they won’t pour on the other side
.... What’s that, why didn’t you finish your ice cream? Watching your girlish figure?”

“Drink to what, Vadym? To whose victory?”

“Ours, Daryna, ours! Let those Yankees and Ivans tussle all they want; our business is to make profits! The first round in this game went to Russia: after the Gongadze case, the Kremlin’s got Kuchma right where they want him, totally under their control. Now they’re betting on the Donets’k contingent, they do business together; they’re one crew and all that, I’m sure you know this. Going back to the Soviet days. And the Americans bet on Yushchenko—with the goal of keeping Ukraine in the buffer zone. And we shall wait and see how well it works for them.”

“And all the people who actually live in this country—the way you see it, they aren’t a part of this game? We’ve no will of our own?”

“Whose masses do, Daryna? Name one country. Or do you, by chance, believe that bullshit about history being shaped by the people? Don’t make me laugh; we don’t live in the nineteenth century! Seventy percent of people, according to statistics, wouldn’t know their own opinion if it bit them in the ass—they just keep repeating whatever they’ve heard. People are stupid, Daryna. That’s the way it has always been and always will be. People eat up what’s put before them. And you belong to the elite who have the opportunity to do the putting. So, please, do me a favor, don’t take that for granted.”

He squints—quickly, conspiratorially—and again this flicker, like a shadow across the surface of the water (and I’m underwater; I am
under
the whole time; what gills do I have to breathe?) and a flare-up of another senseless hope: what if it’s a sign he is giving me (Before whom, in front of what third party or surveillance camera?), a sign that all this is not for real, that he is pulling my leg and I shouldn’t believe a single word he says? “Do not trust anyone, and no one will betray you”—was it Vadym who said that? (When?) But instead, he grows more solemn.

“So when it comes to serious money, Daryna, only Russia is prepared to invest in us. That’s the reality.”

In my mind, I shake off the water—droplets sit cool under my skin.

“The foreign experts you mentioned—those are Russians?”

“What does that matter?” he shrugs. “I am offering you the most interesting work a creative person could have, and right up your alley: take a dark horse, Vasya the gas-station-guy, doesn’t matter who, we can talk about that later.... You take him—and make him a hero! A leader! A cult figure with his own myth—you guys can figure out what that myth is, brainstorm something together. You’re creating your own hero, like the Good Lord from clay—how beautiful is that? And in the people’s memory that Vasya will remain the man you made him. It’s like a whole
new kind of art, right there! And with the widest appeal—even cinema can’t come close.”

You couldn’t say Vadym spent four years with an artist for nothing.

(Art, Vlada used to say, contemporary art, is first and foremost the making of one’s own territory, a discrete exhibition space where no matter what you brought in, even a urinal, would be perceived a work of art: modern civilization has allocated its artists a niche in which we can play with impunity, letting off steam, but from which we can no longer change anything in the accepted way of seeing things.)

“That’s not art, Vadym. Art is what you don’t get paid for.”

“Whoa there!” Vadym even leans back in his chair. “And when Leonardo da Vinci painted the Sistine Chapel—was he doing that for free now?”

“Michelangelo.”

“What?”

“Not Leonardo—it was Michelangelo. You’re getting it mixed up with
The Da Vinci Code
.”

“So Michelangelo, whatever. What’s the difference?”

“From the client’s point of view—none. The same job could have been done by someone else. They were only paying for a canonical treatment, nothing else. That airy lightness that blows you away, and you don’t even know why—that’s just a bonus, it may very well not have been there. Art is always a bonus. That’s how you know it when you see it.”

“Give me a break.” Vadym is visibly irritated by our detour off topic. “That was a different time, so of course the commissions were also different. The church is also a governing corporation, and, while we’re at it, it was the most powerful one of its time. Take a broader view, Daryna! Everyone does this, not just politicians—every person tries to create a legend out of their life, if only for their kids and grandkids. It’s just that not everyone can have this done professionally—that takes money...”

And another splash, and again I am underwater. Why didn’t it ever occur to me to see things the way he talks about them? Aidy’s professor at The Cupid, the old poetess who shook her dyed tresses before me so proudly—they are losers, amateurs who simply did not have any money, and so were trying to buy me with what they had: their thinning tresses, gossip, lies, the peeling gloss of worn-out fake reputations. And there was more, more—crowds of random faces spill out of my memory as if from the opened doors of an overstuffed closet: bosses of all kinds, administrators, directors, princes of tiny local fiefdoms, all performing their greeting rituals for me—television’s come!—in their offices. They click through my mind frame after frame like a newsreel from a military parade: the suits—gray, charcoal, black pinstripe, gray herringbone (one such bundle of tweed with suede elbow patches still calls me, keeps inviting me out to dinner)—rise energetically from behind their desks cluttered with telephones; a front-desk Mashenka brings in the coffee; and, after a short prelude, every one of them turns the conversation to his monumental contribution to one thing or another, blows himself up into a hot-air balloon, bigger and bigger, ready to fly up to the stratosphere, and stoops, and bows, and fawns over his goods. And then there were the high-fliers, the unacknowledged geniuses, the inventors of perpetual motion machines, and the victims of incredibly convoluted intrigues who couldn’t wait to fill my poor ears with assurances that their story was the one that was going to make me famous world over (the breed that, fortunately, has collectively diverted to cyberspace with the arrival of the Internet, like water finding a break in a dam).