A Light Head (Легкая голова)
by Olga Slavnikova
Click here to read the author's biography
Click here to read a synopsis
***
Sample translation by Andrew Bromfield
Maxim T. Yermakov, the happy owner of a three-year-old Toyota and brand manager for several appalling varieties of milk chocolate, drove up to his chocolate office with his customary feeling of having no head on his shoulders. Meanwhile, the head was smoking and it could see the wet car park with the inflatable snowman standing in the black January puddle. But even so – it wasn’t there.
When he was a child Maxim T. Yermakov used to ask his parents a stupid question: How do people know that they think with their heads? His father, whose head was flanked by a pair of ears large enough to suggest it had the secret ability to fly, tried to explain about the two hemispheres of the brain: his mum anxiously touched her child’s warm forehead, seeking for an illness in that space where thoughts floated about like cosmonauts in zero-gravity. The concentration of the human sense of identity in the head, above the arms, legs and everything else, seemed the greatest human mystery of all to the young Maxim T. Yermakov. He disliked games that required agility and active movement because he was afraid of the strange void through which the wind blew freely between the neck of his tee-shirt and his denim cap; afraid that a branch might accidentally poke into that void, or a bronze beetle might fly into it.
The nurse at his kindergarten, who survived in his memory only as a pair of icy hands and a tiny mother-of-pearl mouth, used to put the group on the weighing scales every month and inform his parents that their boy, although he looked well developed, was lagging about four kilos behind the normal weight for his age. His mum, who didn’t understand what was going on, stuffed little Maxim T. Yermakov with cloudy oils from the pharmacy and high-calorie casseroles. As a result, the sluggish, force-fed Maxim T. Yermakov grew into a chubby youth with large pink cheeks and a second chin with the delicate texture of cream: anyone who looked at him realised instantly that only the very finest produce had gone into the construction of that body. Once the young man’s weight had reached a hundred kilograms, the missing four were not so obvious. But even so, the heavy bearer of a light head was constantly aware of the lack of weight on his shoulders.
Despite his lightheadedness, which he had not at first realised was a strictly personal quality, peculiar to him alone, Mikhail T. Yermakov’s grades in school and college were all As and Bs. But even so, he still did not understand when his teachers told him to “get something into his head”. The information that he was given – on everything from Pushkin’s poetry to product rebranding techniques – immediately escaped from his virtual cranium to become a free element of the world around him – which, properly speaking, was what it actually was. The world presented itself to him as a flexible information environment, and the knowledge, released into freedom, returned to him fully structured, bringing with it, like an industrious bee, nutritious nectar that it had gathered in parts unknown. It sometimes seemed to Mikhail T. Yermakov that he could acquire information without any books or internet, literally out of the air.
However, these personal peculiarities did not make Maxim T. Yermakov into either a genius or a master of life. While still a student, he found himself a job, just like everyone else did: he ended up in a commercial structure that promoted several kinds of transnational food products. For a brief initial spell he handled an instant coffee that supposedly possessed a ravishing aroma, which wafted through the air in the form of bluish-grey silk ribbons, but since then, the life of Maxim T. Yermakov had been focused entirely on chocolate. Chocolate bricks, chocolate bars, cream-filled chocolate, half a dozen difference kinds of chocolate sweets, white chocolate, honeycomb chocolate – all of it demanding enjoyment from the consumer in the same way as war demands feats of heroism. For, in real space, the product consisted of a bitty, sweet clay with the addition of soap, a mixture which was produced in a factory somewhere near Ryazan.
The jokes linking Maxim T. Yermakov’s figure with the object of his creative endeavours were groundless: Maxim T. Yermakov did not eat his own chocolate. However, he did successfully represent the product with his entire appearance as a flourishing fat man, with the ruddy bloom of his cheeks reaching right up to his eyes and sugary bristles on his head that produced free-flowing rainbow effects in response to the movements of his thoughts and skin. As already stated above, the delectation presumptively deriving from this chocolate was entirely incorporeal in nature. Maxim T. Yermakov knew a lot about the incorporeal. By combining images in the correct proportions, he created the visual imitation of a flavour that did not actually exist in nature. Sales increased. Even the executive director, V.V. Krapinov, nicknamed Crap, a superannuated monster overgrown right up to his eyes with grey stubble that the efforts of stylists had transformed into something akin to a coil of barbed wire, was reluctantly obliged to admit that whatchamacallim, the young chocolate guy, had a good head on his shoulders.
Youth is ambitious. It took time for Maxim T. Yermakov to accept his common fate. He was a member of an international army of millions of corporate clerks, a single droplet who merged with the masses in the hours-long struggle to negotiate the Moscow traffic jams that resembled an agglomeration of flies on strips of sticky paper. Meanwhile, in his light head, with its apparent lack of all physical boundaries, a clear truth gradually took shape – things were not looking black, on the contrary, they were looking bright. Because in these modern times the human rights defended by serious international organisations had been superseded by the Rights of the Common Individual. From numerous messages that seemed to originate from various sources, Maxim T. Yermakov summarised the concept that the Russian dilemma posed by Dostoyevsky – Shall I let the world go to hell or skip my tea? – was resolved nowadays in favour of the tea. To choose tea was to choose freedom – which is what our hero did, focusing his efforts on acquiring several square metres of floor space within Moscow’s Garden Ring Road. Twice he was almost suckered out of serious money, but that only gave his character a final polish. Maxim T. Yermakov was now entirely prepared for his freedom – which distinguished him favourably from millions of his compatriots who, according to many channels of the media, were not at all prepared for freedom and were, in fact, totally unfit for anything However, he was completely unprepared for the surprising and strange events that started at the moment when the alarm system of his Toyota glugged as it came on and his mobile phone simultaneously swelled up to twice its size and started squirming about in his pocket.
“Max! Why are you so late?” said a mini-micro voice in the phone. The voice belonged to little Lucy, his immediate boss’s secretary. “Vadim Vadimich wants to see you urgently! We’ve been searching for you everywhere!”
“Okay, I’m on my way, I’ll just drop my coat off in the office,” Maxim T. Yermakov muttered, increasing the speed of his stride through the listless winter rain that was mottling his fine cashmere.
“No, no, no! Straight to the seventh floor!” little Lucy squeaked and Maxim T. Yermakov immediately switched her off when he heard a second signal forcing its way through the first one and literally bursting its way out of his phone.
“Maxim Terentievich? Vadim Vadimovich wants you to come to his office immediately.” This time it was Big Lida, Crap’s own secretary, speaking in a husky voice, as if her temperature was rising by leaps and bounds.
Maxim T. Yermakov started feeling alarmed. But the alarm actually felt pleasant: he had the brief, brazen thought that the outcome of all this ballyhoo would probably be an opportunity to earn money, since everybody needed him so urgently. As he trotted across the silent synthetic carpeting of the seventh floor, he had visions of those elegant little toy building bricks of life, ten-thousand-dollar wads in bank wrappers,. In the outer office Big Lida jumped up to her full towering height as he came in and looked at him as if she had never seen him before. Pale-faced, with a pair of new silicone lips that looked like two pieces of mild-cured Atlantic salmon, she dragged Yermakov’s damp coat off his shoulders and shoved him into the office before he had time to catch his breath.
There were two visitors sitting opposite the boss of the entire enterprise, who seemed poised rather uncertainly in his imposing chair. They were reflected in the glass desk top like dark islands, with the absolutely empty, clean ashtray gleaming between them like a thick circle on the water.
“Ah, well, at last! Twenty minutes late!” Crap exclaimed in the voice of a kind-hearted school headmaster, which was entirely unlike him. “Here you are. Our young colleague,” he said, turning to his visitors and baring a clutch of bluish crowns in a grin.
“Good morning,” Maxim T. Yermakov said to them, and thought to himself: “Fifty grand, at least.”
“May I go now?” Crap enquired, half-rising to his feet.
“Yes, dismissed,” said one of the two visitors, but Maxim T. Yermakov couldn’t tell which one.
Crap, who had obviously been waiting desperately for the moment when he could bolt from his own office, acted entirely out of character, hurrying over the doors and giving Maxim T. Yermakov a farewell flash from his dull metallic old man’s eyes. Only then did the visitors turn towards the person they wished to see. Their faces were entirely bloodless, with prominent foreheads. The features of the character sitting on the left were completely blurred and he had a tuft of dry hair right on the top of his head; the second one or, rather, the first and most important one, to judge from the invisible currents running between the two of them, resembled a human foetus that had not been born, but developed and matured in some other, more obscure fashion. The thin skin of the inordinately large bald head seemed semi-transparent, but it was impossible to make out anything inside it and hideous flames blazed in wreaths of purple wrinkles below the hairless arches of the brows.
“What a pair of ugly freaks,” thought Maxim T. Yermakov, making himself comfortable in a chair.
“Good morning, Maxim Terentievich,” said Foetus, with his gaze fixed on a spot somewhere above Maxim T. Yermakov’s shoulder. “As you have probably already realised, we are here as representatives of the state.”
In synchronised motion, the two opened their ID cards – not the usual format, but large and square, a similar shape to the chocolate slabs of his closest competitor. Glowing in bright gold inside them was the predatory emblem of the state, with solid gold letters stamped into the paper: “Russian Federation. Special State Committee for Social Forecasting”. Despite the strange appearance of the documents presented to him, Maxim T. Yermakov somehow realised immediately that the IDs were genuine and these were very, very, serious guys. Far more serious than all the VIPs he had ever seen before, all lumped together. His sensation of joyful anticipation of money suddenly changed from warm to icy cold. “A million. A million dollars,” Maxim T. Yermakov thought quite distinctly, twining his fingers together more tightly on his stomach.
“The actual title of our department is rather different,” Foetus remarked casually and lowered his ID into some crevice in his blank clothing, which seemed not to have a single button on it. “And now, permit me to enquire, Maxim Terentievich: is your head in good order?”
Something like a small tornado took shape in Maxim T. Yermakov’s absent head, drawing down the ceiling lamp into itself. Maxim T. Yermakov thought: “I have a pain between the ears, as the Red Indians, I think it was, used to say”. Out loud he said:
“Well, actually, it’s my head. And whatever might happen to it is my own personal business.”
The state freaks exchanged glances. “Like something straight out of 1937,” thought Maxim T. Yermakov, feeling amused at the thought that in this old game he knew everything in advance and knew he was right in advance.
“All right, then we will tell you,” Foetus said imperturbably, crossing his legs to display a lacquered shoe as simple as a plain galosh. “Your head causes a certain slight, just a tiny little disturbance in the gravitational field. That is the feature by which we located you.”
“Do smoke if you like,” Blur put in, nudging the virginal ashtray in Maxim T. Yermakov’s direction. “We know you smoke ‘Parliament’. It’s not really allowed in here, but you can smoke with us.”
Feeling annoyed, Maxim T. Yermakov took out a pack of “Parliament”, which had instantly come to seem trashy and tasteless. He really was feeling a quite brutal desire to smoke. As usual, the cigarette smoke filled up his head, rounding it out and materialising it, streaming about inside with a pleasant sensation.
“And why are you interested in me?” Maxim T. Yermakov asked cautiously, trying to figure out the smartest way to haggle with these two, who had opened the bidding with their artless state security gambits.
“I shall not attempt to conceal the fact we are extremely interested in you,” Foetus declared, wincing. “In a nutshell, our department deals with relationships of cause and effect. I won’t talk about the theory and the know-how involved, especially since I have no right to do so. I can only inform you that these relationships are entirely material structures, you could even call them living organisms. And our research indicates, for instance, that the human sacrifices in pagan cults were not superstitions, but rational actions. Every so often, cause and effect relationships enter a vegetative phrase. And then the individuals whom we call Alpha Objects appear. And, strange as it may seem, the future course of many, very many events depends on them. You, Maxim Terentievich, are precisely such an object, if you will pardon us for saying so.”
While Foetus spouted this raving gibberish, Maxim T. Yermakov’s eyes were glued, as if he were hypnotised, to Foetus’s loosely assemble fingers, tapping out some kind of faltering scales on the desk; they looked as if they made of ice, and the gold wedding band on the crooked ring finger glinted in the sombre light of day as if it was made of iron. Naturally, Maxim T. Yermakov did not believe what he had heard, but above and beyond the words, he could feel the character of the space around him changing. “I wonder which presidential candidate is going to be my chocolate now?” he thought, and his heart started bobbing up and down, like a small object disturbed by someone’s heavy footsteps.
“So you want to offer me a job?” he said out loud, assuming an air of indifference.
The state representatives exchanged another quick glance under their domed foreheads, as if they had instantly dealt each other cards.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Foetus said in a dreary voice. “You have to commit suicide by shooting yourself in the head.”
Maxim T. Yermakov smiled politely. A shudder ran down through him and back up again, as if someone was using him like a tin-whistle to play a shrill melody. He screwed his cigarette into the ashtray so hard that it squeaked, emitting a stream of unused smoke straight into the face of Blur, who constricted his narrow nostrils squeamishly.
“And if I refuse, you will eliminate me yourselves?” said Maxim T. Yermakov, not even hearing his own voice.
“No. Unfortunately not,” Blur answered this time, speaking in the same tone as Foetus, only in a different voice. “It must be your will and your hand. If we perform the deed ourselves, we will not merely fail to achieve the required result, but also deprive ourselves of a quite indispensable opportunity.”
Phew. The thick snow that had started falling outside the window suddenly seemed to Maxim T. Yermakov more blindingly white and festive than any snow he had ever seen since he was born. The snow fell at an angle, sometimes accelerating to a dense, stippled blur, sometimes hanging in the air and swaying back and forth, together with the pale office towers, which looked like wet, shaggy towels. Still a little stunned and doused with joy like a tub of cold water, Maxim T. Yermakov asked:
“And what reasons do you think I have to shoot myself?”
“You have very important reasons, Maxim Terentievich,” Foetus replied with a disdainful smile. “If you are not sacrificed – pardon me for calling a spade a spade – the cause and effect relationships will develop in a highly undesirable direction. You can already see the beginning: tsunamis, climate change. It would be hard to list all the consequences. But in the very near future, they will affect very many people directly. Out of the full range of possibilities, only the most negative will be realised. Take Ludmila Viktorovna Chebotaryova, your department head’s secretary. Her little son is ill, a congenital heart defect. He will die. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, shopping centres and amusement halls will collapse and the dead will be counted in thousands. There will be a major accident on an oil pipeline. A new war will break out in the Caucasus. We can expect a major terrorist attack in some large regional centre in Siberia. Then a global economic crisis will break out …”
“Hang on, hang on!” cried Maxim T. Yermakov, interrupting the state security man’s tedious listing of disasters. “Terrorist attacks, accidents – these are all part of your job, aren’t they? You’ve given me an interesting overview of why you need my, shall we say, sacrifice. Now explain to me what I need it for. Only in a way that makes sense to me.”
“Name your own terms,” Foetus said icily, wrapping himself tighter in the loose shaggy wrapping that covered him all the way down to his galoshes.
At this point Maxim T. Yermakov suddenly felt like laughing again. Once again he had the distinct feeling that he had wandered into some film about the year 1937, only with a big initial signing-on bonus, unlike all those ardent revolutionaries who cried out at the end: “I am innocent before the people and the party!” “Well, if they want me, it’s going to cost them money,” he thought, his earlier certainty confirmed, then clicked his lighter in front of the cigarette wobbling about in his mouth and declared:
“Ten million dollars, gentlemen.”
“We accept,” Blur said quickly in a humdrum voice. “Ten million. Will you be writing a will?”
“What will? What for?” Maxim T. Yermakov asked in surprise. “I can give you my bank details, but cash is better.”
“Unfortunately, Maxim Terentievich, that’s not the way it works,” Blur said with a smile: if you looked closer, what he resembled most of all at that moment was a collective farm accountant. “You see, we cannot deceive you. The connections that we deal with are in a very delicate state at the moment, we must not damage them. Every cause must have its effect and so, as soon as you shoot yourself, your heirs will receive the money. But you can scam us. Take your millions, and then refuse to shoot yourself. Or ask for an advance, blow it all, smash up a couple of Mercs and decide you want more. You’d have the entire state working for you. We can’t allow that to happen, so it’s better not to start. I tell you in all seriousness: you personally will not receive a kopeck. So give instructions for your nearest and dearest to get the money.”
And so saying, he pushed a blank piece of paper towards Maxim T. Yermakov, with a cheap ballpoint pen that had been chewed like toffee lying across it. Maxim T. Yermakov stared blankly at the white surface. He tried to imagine his parents if they suddenly became rich. When was the last time they had called him? On New Year’s Eve? All his father did was act cheerful and boast, breed rabbits with fat backsides at the dacha and go to communist meetings with a half-bottle of vodka in his pocket. His mother gave music lessons and in the evening she played “for herself” on the old piano, as if she washing the laundry. Moving her shoulders and shoulder blades like a washerwoman, hammering out tangled gibberish on the keys as they were a washboard. They’d get a life and move to Moscow. If not his parents, then who? Well, not Marinka, that was for sure. What kind of nearest or dearest was she? All she had were her long, long legs and her extravagant ambitions. Maxim T. Yermakov’s future wasn’t bright enough for her. The other women? Absurd. All they left behind in the morning was a stuffy little hollow in his pillow and a little mouse hole in his budget. A sudden feeling of revulsion for all the people who supposedly made up his perfectly humane and comfortable world set Maxim T. Yermakov shuddering inwardly. They weren’t people, just empty holes. And now the stroke of luck that this morning had dangled in front of him was down the tubes too. They just wanted to screw him for free for the sake of the state and the people. When the devil bought your soul, at least he let you live for a while, but not these people.
“No. No deal,” he snapped, pushing back the pen and paper which, it turned out, he had managed to cover with bold lacy squiggles. “Please, catch the terrorists and build the hypermarkets properly, so they don’t fall down. But I’m leaving, I’ve got a lot of work to do.”“But what about the higher considerations” asked Blur, suddenly raising his voice. “It’s not all free and anonymous. We have good script writers. They’ll work up a legend for you, you’ll become a national hero. Would you like us to put up monuments to you in Moscow and your home town?”
“No, that I don’t want! Who do think I am, Alexander Matrosov?” Maxim T. Yermakov shouted furiously, exulting in the knowledge that in the front office they could hear him yelling at the state security bogeymen, who had frightened everyone half to death. “Higher considerations! You can stuff that totalitarian eyewash up your backside! You’re not using me as raw material for your propaganda! Like some kind of Gastello! At least in that war they paid the troops properly for keeping the Germans out of Moscow!”
“An interesting concept,” Foetus laughed, and the semitransparent bubble of his head turned slightly pink. “Well then, Maxim Terentievich. This isn’t the last talk we’ll have, you realise that. Here, take my card. It has my numbers, call if anything comes up.”
He held out the rectangle of cardboard to Maxim T. Yermakov in his finger and thumb, like a pair of pincers. It had the same double-headed eagle glowing on it as the rowanberry-red page of his ID. “Sergei Yevgenievich Kravtsov, Senior Expert” was stamped on it above two seven-figure telephone numbers, in which the first three digits were 111.While Maxim T. Yermakov sceptically twirled the little card in his fingers, Foetus squinted sideways at Blur’s shapeless outer garment. Blur understood, nodded, stuck his hand into a deep, crumpled fold and pulled out a heavy item, which proved to be a large revolver with a fluted grip. Maxim T. Yermakov shuddered. Grinning with half of his wrinkled mouth that had sagged open like a pocket, Blur launched the pistol across the desktop towards the Alpha Object, who gazed, mesmerised, at the weapon’s slow revolutions, like the finals turns of a roulette wheel.
“That’s a Makarov PMM. A twelve cartridge clip. Loaded, reliable, easy to use,” said Foetus, introducing the baleful apparition that had left Maxim N. Yermakov covered in fine beads of sweat. “Take it and keep it with you. It will come in handy, believe me.”
The pistol was clearly not new: the bare metal showed through on the ripples of the handle, like an old black rasp, the trigger in the lop-sided guard looked greasy from the squeezing of numerous fingers. “Why, the lousy bastards, they even cut corners on this,” Maxim T. Yermakov thought in amazement as he picked the weighty souvenir up off the desk. “But okay, at least it’s a little clump of wool off the sheep’s clothing these big, bad wolves are wearing. It’s quite a toy, interesting.”
“I don’t promise to call. All the best, gentlemen,” he told them out loud.
And, weighing down his jacket pocket by stuffing the heavy PMM into it, he set off towards the door at a waddling jog. Maxim T. Yermakov could feel the souvenir smacking hard against his thigh and his soul was seething with bitter fury.
“Maxim Terentievich! One moment!” called Foetus, stopping him right at the door.
“Well?” he asked, half-turning.
“You have not asked the question that all initiated objects ask,” Foetus said imperturbably, swaying his foot.
“What question?”
“Was the man known as Jesus of Nazareth an Alpha Object?”
“Well?” Maxim T. Yermakov repeated irritably, trying to work out what would happen if he simply shot these two state security men who had taken up residence in Crap’s office as if it was their own home.
“He was not. He was a case of a phenomenon that lies beyond the comprehension of our present-day science,” Foetus declared dispassionately, darkening to total impenetrability against the background of streaming snow, with only his intently gazing eyes shimmering purple, like the lenses of powerful binoculars.
The day passed somehow or other. Maxim T. Yermakov frittered away the time, calming down sometimes, and then lapsing back into bitter fury against the morning’s visitors. He had no ideas for the new “valentines” – brittle little chocolate hearts in violent pink wrappers. And in general, Maxim T. Yermakov suddenly had the feeling that his chocolate, which congratulated the population of the country on every possible kind of holiday, was somehow fusty and putrid, like a General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Whatever office he visited, he was followed by furtive glances from below lowering brows and the hands extended to be shaken seemed to have turned from men’s into women’s. He found himself casting sideways glances at Little Lucy, whom he had hardly even noticed before, always picturing her as a vague blob with something glittery on her mealy, ashen-grey little neck. He didn’t notice anything special now either; slivered hair, miserably thin eyebrows, spectacles. For some reason, he’d always thought of Little Lucy as not much over twenty years old, but to look at she was actually thirty something.
“Maxy, why are so down in the dumps? They say you had a visit from the police today?” Little Lucy asked in a quiet voice when for some unknown reason Maxim T. Yermakov wandered into his boss’s front office yet again. “Maybe I should make you some strong coffee?”
“Maybe I should give her some money?” Maxim T. Yermakov thought drearily. But money was tight.
The estate agent Gosha-Cherdak called at half-past three. His voice sounded thick, as if it had been smothered with sauce.
“Max, it’s like this, we have a problem,” he said with gravitas. “The seller’s upping the price by thirty grand. Remember, first I knocked them down by five, but now a new buyer’s turned up, some sort of Armenian with big bucks. They’ve just gone to take a look at the apartment, and I’m going after them. You’d better get stuck in too. Think how much you can raise. Between you and me, the apartment’s worth it.”
“But we put down a deposit!” Maxim T. Yermakov gasped, taken aback. “No fucking way! What are they fucking about at? We already agreed!”
“Life is hard, Max, do you understand me?” Gosha-Cherdak admonished him solemnly. “Putting down a deposit is one thing, buying an apartment is something different altogether. Real estate is like a big fish, it can slip off the hook a dozen times. So get your wheels on down to Gogol Boulevard and on the way ring everyone you can, beg and borrow. Okay, get on it!” – and he disappeared, like a coin into a slot.
Maxim T. Yermakov went hurtling down the stairs, muttering incandescent obscenities and repeatedly failing to slip his hand into the sleeve of the coat trailing behind him like a crippled wing. People shied away from him, clutching their paper cups of coffee and files close to their bodies. In the car park the inflatable plastic snowman was tumbling about in the wind, like a soft-boiled egg. Snow swirled furiously, windscreen wipers swept aside streams of murky water, brown puddles quivered under wheels, fed copiously by the wet mass of snow.
The apartment on Gogol Boulevard, which was tiny, although it was on two levels, was being sold like solid gold. Maxim T. Yermakov had already wrung himself totally dry and he was counting on the new annual chocolate budget, out of which he intended to filch a fair-sized chunk. He had no idea who to call and, as he drove slowly through the snowy glop, he ferreted aimlessly through the memory of his mobile phone. The domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour drifted past on the left, as pale as electric bulbs burning during the day. As he turned into the courtyard where he intended henceforth to park his Toyota in exalted proximity with expensive, high-pedigree motors, Maxim T. Yermakov almost believed that the Armenian buyer with the big bucks would actually turn out to be a phantom.
His hopes were shattered ten minutes later. Hovering in the centre of the apartment that Maxim T. Yermakov had divided up in his dreams into such neat style zones was the owner of the property, a bulky old woman with dull carats of gold glinting in her stretched ear lobes and a face that looked like a flabby peach covered with grey fuzz. The old woman’s estate agent, a red-haired businessman in a tight-fitting crimson suit, was working the new client with a vengeance, detailing the merits of the living space and emphasising the limited number of similar offers on the Moscow market. The client was nodding patiently; his big head, like an irregular boulder, didn’t even turn in Maxim T. Yermakov’s direction as he stumbled into the studio. Gosha-Cherdak was nowhere to be seen. “The bastard’s late, he’s dumped me with this lot,” Maxim T. Yermakov thought spitefully and immediately spotted, in the half-light by the stairs that led up to the bedroom, the individual for whom, evidently, the apartment was being acquired – the apartment of which he had already made every square centimetre his own in his dreams. About eighteen years old. More likely the Armenian daddy’s daughter than his girlfriend: little white collar, boring black skirt, like the slip cover of a man’s umbrella. Sumptuous curls with no gloss to them, fuzzy, pinned back with a crude piece of glass; huge great moist eyes, exactly like a sheep’s. It took at least a minute for Maxim T. Yermakov to realise just how good-looking the Armenian girl was. The thought that the apartment would belong to her, and she would never belong to this unsuccessful competitor, whom her rich father was about to grind into the dust, made him want to break something. “Never mind, she’ll soon get fat and grow a moustache,” Maxim T. Yermakov thought vengefully about the girl, feeling a little tornado dancing on his shoulders in the place where a head ought to be.