Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets Read Free Book Online Page B

sounded more like an explanation of the untenable social order that demanded his racketeering activities than a justification of the same.
    “My father is a fucking Communist,” Vova began. “He still believes in that nonsense, or at least he thinks he believes in it. I tell him he is a fool. The simple truth is that this is anarchy. And anarchy doesn’t respect fools.…”
    We drove on. Vova became silent. I said nothing. It started raining. The monochrome landscape blurred. We were now deep in the heart of Kupchino. Vova piped up, noting we were near the Button Factory he’d quit. And it was for those who continued to toil there that Vova reserved his most potent venom.
    “Whorehouse!” Vova sputtered, shaking his head. This time the word served not only as an empty exclamation. “A bunch of fucking whores, that’s what they are. Mentally ill people! I just can’t understand why those workers keep degrading themselves. They are slaves. What’s more, they enslave themselves to rottenness. And what is the only thing worse than a slave? A slave unwilling to liberate himself. He willingly submits to a state of enchainment. He works blindly in the name of a monstrous force.”
    Here Vova’s monologue turned from the gutter-level Russian I was used to from him into a literary bloom of rich verbs. But the point waspretty simple. In a world of scoundrels and baseness, it is better to be evil and free than decent but enchained.
    Vova suggested we stop off to see Pavel, a mutual friend and fellow watch-hawker I had met during the good old days of making barbecue in the Leningrad forest. Pavel also lived in Kupchino. The pair had met at the Button Factory, where Pavel still worked the night shift, a fact that Vova ridiculed. We turned onto Budapest Street and got out of the taxi, paid the fare, and entered another cookie-cutter-looking building. We climbed several flights of stairs—the elevator was out. The hallway smelled of sweet and sour garbage and urine. I slipped on what felt like some vomit on the floor and barely avoided tumbling head over heels down the stairs. We reached an upper floor and knocked on a door. A woman clad in a bathrobe with a faded purple-flower print—Pavel’s wife, Sveta—opened the door cautiously and then began to smile.
    “Vova!” Beaming, she eagerly invited us inside.
    She led us into a tiny kitchen, where we found Pavel eating a bowl of noodle soup. Pavel embraced us warmly, and we took a seat. Sveta sat down and resumed the activity she had been pursuing when we interrupted her—twisting bits of cotton into small, compact pads. I asked her what she was making. She looked at me as if I were an idiot. Through an elliptical description, she explained that the rectangular cotton cutouts were, in fact, makeshift feminine sanitary pads—tampons were in short supply.
    Pavel’s mother-in-law walked in, a stout matriarch with a military bearing. She smiled and put her arms around me. Then she glared at Vova and grunted a hello. It was obvious the two were not on good terms.
    “How are things, Vova? What are you up to these days?” she asked. “Oh, you know, just business,” came the terse reply. The room became eerily quiet, save for the duet of Sveta’s ripping her fluffs of cotton into sanitary pads and Pavel’s soupspoon making regular contact with the bottom of a porcelain bowl.
    Tenseness overtook the air. Vova quickly made up an excuse about having “affairs to attend to.” Since we hadn’t seen each other in a longtime, Pavel convinced me to stay for a while. We saw Vova off, and he promised to call me soon.
    Pavel was smallish, cautious, and quiet to the point of being meek. With no higher education, he nonetheless exuded a professor’s aura. Perhaps he would have become one had he not done a short prison stint. A few years back, a friend had smashed a store window and stolen a pack of audiocassette tapes. Pavel had known about the theft. He hadn’t taken part but was