Life Stories Page 16

  This third missile, unlike the others, was called "crazy," even though, by missile logic, the crazy one was the one that merely caused a slight disturbance in the Pacific.

  That was the damage. (According to France-Presse.) Plus, of course, gas- and oil-deprived, freezing Russia.

  Horrified by the Chicago disaster, Americans blamed their President. They impeached him—honest taxpayers of all ages repeated the same thing to every newspaper and camera: "How could he? How could he?"

  Very quickly, he was run out of government. Now he was an ex-President.

  On top of that, they rushed him to court. Across the country, petition after petition gathered signatures: to court with him! To court! A war that lasted one day couldn't change people in their essence. Rather, as those mean-spirited philosophers maintain, the most important crowbar in the democratic process has always been the citizens' proclivity towards indicting eloquent old men at the end of their careers.

  Say what you will, this is the only manifestation of Judicium Dei on Earth—and its only equal.

  They prosecuted Pinochet, they prosecuted Honecker, they got Kim Yes Yes and Kim No No, little old man after little old man—sent to the corner, one and all! Without an ounce of sentimentality (instead, the cold of self-righteous discipline), the TV screen broadcast their sad, pathetic faces to the whole world. All of it was done for our sake. Publicizing the defeat (Look at him! Just look!) of yet another little old man—is this not our humble civil triumph? And isn't this, seriously, our daily (or nightly) spiritual food? And why not the answer to our prayers? Our brief, frightened prayers about the future (our own future)—our prayers in front of the blue candles of our televisions. We're only human, and our TVs are our humble churches. We stand on our knees in front of the television and we pray.

  They even took former chancellor Kohl to court! The number one German, the fatty, the one with the great big jowls! They didn't end up convicting him, but they beat him up rather good, anyway. Perhaps, they were in a bit of a hurry. They rushed it with him just a little bit—then they let him off. The most important part of an indictment (this must be kept in mind) is to wait for the helplessness of old age. Why tear at the healthy? Who needs their big fat rosy cheeks? Instead, we must await feebleness, flabbiness—show us the impotence—and (the minute a man is pitiful) off to court with him! The moment of truth is the moment of impotence. Otherwise, the truth of truths isn't just. (And, we must admit, it isn't very fun.)

  It's important to get to the bottom of things. After all, it's specifically this man's sickly gaze that we need to see. We need his spittle out of the corner of his mouth... his lawyers... his relatives. Hobos with placards—all of this is part of the process, it hypnotizes us, already gaping in front of the screen—it's a ritual. They're carting him, who was once so powerful (in front of screaming crowds), around in a wheelchair! At least once, on a weekend (towards the evening) we need this—to sigh and turn our spirits to this, to have a look...

  In Warsaw, a local crazy ran around town with a new monologue. (He found out that they were taking Jaruzelski to court.) "Panie! It's a trick! We keep on prosecuting the false ones! Take a close look at them, panie—you'll see right away! Mock-up men—imaginary dictators! Neither one way or another—we'd loved the real ones..."

  Of course, certain wiseacres believe that prosecuting old men at the end of their careers is only the petty revenge of a crowd that, unfortunately, has few joys in life. These very wiseacres (unwittingly, or even wittingly) defend the despicable little old men. They would never acknowledge the grandiosity, the sheer beauty of the process. They're only good for wanting Kantian ethics, duty and the stars. And where can you find Kantian ethics? Up your ass, is where. There's no such thing.

  We've learned to approach justice from another angle—the earthly one. We know everything we need to know. It (the truth) is very simple. No matter who our leader is, he's a bastard. And he'll finally get what he deserves.

  People freezing here and there (in Russia) also separated their leader from his presidency. It was time to call him to account. Yet Russia, in the One-Day War, by a mere second, ended up on the defending side. So the simplest thing to do was to continue pursuing the actions against former President R (Russia's "R" was the easiest thing to call him), in order to make him answer for the tanks and blood spilled in Kazan. There was nowhere to hide.

  Former President A (the American), aging, was left completely alone, expect for his dog.

  His wife died, his children had long since moved to opposite ends of the country. It couldn't be helped that the children became estranged: who'd like it if, day after day, their father was savaged in the papers. Not to mention the damned TV, where, in anticipation of the trial, everyday there were new lies—and malicious ones at that!

  President A's dog, on the other hand, did not read the papers nor sniff at the blue essence of the television. The dog was named Ivan. This was this custom—to name large and powerful dogs popular foreign names, preferably from enemy states. It was believed that Ivan was the most popular Russian name.

  Former President A (the American) would hardly touch his breakfast. The same went for the papers: glancing over the fresh headlines, it wouldn't have even occurred to him to read further. However, he would gladly get down on the floor and wrestle his formidable dog and scratch it behind its ears. Rolling around on the thick carpet, the aging ex-President would speak with easy bitterness to his dog, "Just the two of us, Ivan. You and I, and nobody else."

  But a little happiness crept into his voice. The dog had become a dear, familiar creature. It understood everything.

  Other than the long (and probably happy) games with the dog, former President A spent his days occupied with unpleasant affairs: he had to concern himself with his future. How little he wanted to do this! (He didn't even want a future—the hell with it!)

  His people would come, leftovers from his former team, the whole old royal guard. Over coffee, ice cream, and a little whiskey, they had a long and downright difficult talk about how to stall the court proceedings. They couldn't get around them, of course, just like they couldn't get around democracy itself. But maybe they could stall things... Make the process drag on interminably (maybe even torturously so, but nevertheless). This was the order of the day—it seemed to all of them that this was the most important thing they could do, their only chance.

  Even a small, professional team is a busy organ—it requires regular financial upkeep. The money that former President A had saved over the course of his life was going into these trusted hands, into their pockets, and being dispersed into the "pits" these hands were digging in the path of the Court.

  The last of his savings were something like ice cream, melting in his mouth. The money was like coffee at the bottom of the cup. Finishing up their discussion (and the coffee, the ice cream, the whiskey) the trusted people would leave him by noon.

  There was a computer screen at the ex-President's headboard with a graph of his life and a graph of his money. Both graphs reflected prognoses. Both lines were falling downwards with each passing second, as though racing against one another. The same kind of calculating device (so that it wouldn't get lost) could also be found on his desk. And another one was lying around on the carpet by his dog.

  "What do you expect? Once the money's gone, the trial will start. But will it happen in my seventieth—or my seventy-fifth—year?" the former President asked his dog, lying back down on the carpet and picking gray strands of fur off his great body as though it were a giant daisy.

  Ivan only turned his nose towards the window (in the direction of the unconquerable calculating machine).

  By this time, on the other side of the world, former President R (the Russian) was also elderly and completely alone. For health reasons, his wife lived in Crimea, where the air itself was full of iodine vapors, and (more importantly), it wasn't as freezing. His two adult sons had moved away, picking a small town somewhere in the Urals to raise their families an
d live the kinds of lives that least reminded them of who their father was. Sometimes the sons would meet on a Saturday or Sunday, get drunk and loudly (but not too loudly) complain of the ingratitude of their fellow countrymen:

  "They (the people) have forgotten everything good our father did for them."

  Or:

  "They (the people) remember every bouquet that they themselves ever brought him."

  But what is the point of breaking sons' hearts and lamenting the whims of the people when, century after century, they (the people) do not think on their situation without taking causality into account. They (the people), in their simplicity, lay the blame for all of Russia's present troubles on the shoulders of the ex-President—namely the destroyed electric lines and the oil and gas pipelines.

  The Hague—they couldn't give a damn about it! They (the people, the countrymen) were soothed and comforted, even a bit diverted, by the fact that the Hague tribunal was looming over their ex-President, as though it were a phantom, albeit an increasingly real one. More and more insistently, it was putting him at fault for sending tanks into Kazan ages ago. The grandeur of the self-propagating procedure! A decade and a half had passed, two Russian Presidents had come and gone, but still, The Hague, year after year, continued to accumulate more and more evidence supporting that old crime. The proceedings turned abruptly serious. Finally (by regular mail) a subpoena came summoning President R for questioning.

  Russia had been vaguely waiting for something and hadn't yet given up its ex-President into the hands of The Hague, though he had long been under house arrest and could not leave the St. Petersburg city limits. They were waiting for the diligent Hague to gather all of the facts. But even more so (and everyone knew this) they were waiting for the ex-President to become senile.

  Ex-President R was not a man of great means—his savings were melting away like ice cream, inching down like whiskey in a glass. However, he too had a team of sorts. A few devotees considered him a Great Man who had tried to restore Greatness to Russia. These passionate supporters were few in number and, of course, poor. But friends are friends, and these could spend hours on the phone with the ex-President, say, after breakfast, boosting his spirits.

  And the ex-President had breakfast completely alone, not counting his dog Jack. By Russian custom, dogs have popular American or German names. Whether the name is American or German depends on the winds of history.

  Breakfast was brought directly to the ex-President's table, since he was not allowed to leave the house to go to the grocery store or the deli. He drank tea with milk, ate two light rolls, cheese, and salami. As a former athlete, the ex-President limited the amount of meat he ate in the morning. He would eat the roll and the cheese while feeding the salami to Jack.

  Like many aging men, he did not stand on ceremony when talking to his dog:

  "Is it fun, Jack, to win the battle against cholesterol?"

  Jack didn't answer, but leapt to catch a slice of meat in his mouth.

  "Even idleness doesn't depress me anymore, Jack!"

  There was no treat for him and so the dog, with his mouth free, could hold up his part of the conversation. He joyously replied, "Ouu-ouu!"

  The ex-President reached out and scratched Jack behind the ear.

  While ex-President R was awaiting the Hague tribunal, ex-President A (the American) was waiting for the verdict of the American Supreme Court. Both Presidents fiercely resisted. Neither considered themselves guilty. And both, from newspapers and television, learned various details about each other's lives.

  Their being old men inspired a special kind of curiosity in them: which one of them would get trapped first? There was no getting around the fact that their names were inextricably linked in History, with its One-Day War—the blame was theirs to share—but each one of them had their own dues to pay: so which one of them was more guilty? Of course, this was an empty question, and put rather sportingly—neither one really had any hope of absolving themselves of any responsibility. On both sides of the Atlantic, a grand process had set slow-moving and angry packs after them—but who would be caught in the chase tomorrow? Who, with fur flying, would be caught by his weak aging calf?

  If the Russian ex-President were to fall first, would the American be able to feel somewhat justified? (Of course not, unfortunately. A brief illusion). It'd be the same thing vice versa... However, no one wanted to be put on trial first. Thus, the ex-Presidents were again competing, albeit indirectly. Both considered this fact with a smile. Both understood very well what nonsense these thoughts were—how little it all meant! But human lives (especially the lives of elderly humans) consist of insignificant things.

  Both waited... Each one of them suddenly remembered their health. It was essential to stay in good shape for as long as possible.

  The Hague tribunal finally got the evidence it had long sought—that during the unrest in Kazan, the President had called Moscow three times from the summit he had been attending. Some special services operations were found (paid for) that could accurately confirm (though not in writing) the contents of those phone conversations—the date, the time, even the very minute they happened! The Russian President spoke—but what could he have spoken of in those days if not Kazan? What else could he offer his powerful support staff but the advice to send tanks in reaction to the unsatisfactory outcome of the talks?

  Like clockwork, the leading newspapers of the world again lit up (in red) with images of Kazan— with the orange sunflowers of tanks burning in the streets, and with the red buds of self-immolating students...

  Blow for blow, ex-President R (or rather his team photographer) answered the challenge with haste. The photographs they had to offer perhaps were not as flashy, but they too meant war.

  The ex-President's devotees, the same three or four of them, saw to it that the ex-President got a second, simple, one-bedroom apartment in the same Petersburg building. (They weren't able to get one at the same entrance as the guards, but they got one nearby.) Not of significant means, they'd all pitched in the money to rent the apartment for the ex-President so that he could practice his former favorite sport—martial arts. In that small apartment, they set up a very small gym with tatami mats. Once a week, on Tuesdays, he would train. His faithful followers were trying to raise his spirits, reminding him of his former days. One of the devoted agreed to be the "dummy," a weak sparring partner, whom the ex-President would throw over his hip onto the mat. The ex-President had once been capable of executing this move with some skill (everyone knew this), but now, his loyal friend had to more or less throw himself onto the mat headfirst of his own volition. The faithful man risked his neck every Tuesday.

  After the training session, the ex-President would be so weak that he had to be taken back to his room in a wheelchair. The exit with the wheelchair was executed with the utmost precaution, lest it be observed by the greedy eyes of the press. The ex-President was wheeled out in the thick of dusk. Rolling him from building to building, his helpers would dress, or rather bundle, the ex-President in a gray, nondescript cloak with a large hood that hung over his face.

  The newspapers were chomping at the bit to get a picture of him looking weak, but still alive—millions of people had to see for themselves how much better were their lives (their millions of lives) than the life of one who had been above them.

  He's being rolled to court in a wheelchair! This has and always will inspire great satisfaction in TV viewers. It's best if he also has a tick of some sort—all the better if his glass eye is shaking from terror. Not bad at all! And there's the strand of saliva dripping right on the blanket the security guards have swaddled him in (out of pity)... and from the blanket, the silvery thread reaches right to the floor.

  However, the faithfully devoted, the three or four of them, disseminated photos in which the aging ex-President, in a fighting pose, threw a well-built opponent down onto a mat. It was impressive. The man, with a glassy look in his eyes, was flying somewhere far into the corner. The n
ewspapers printed the pictures, but not eagerly. The readers were only irritated by such photos—life is short, how long can a person read the newspaper and watch justice be postponed again and again!

  The Hague, after a few of these pictures were published, slowed down their procedural rush. The judges shrugged. Of course, the Russian Ex wouldn't be going anywhere. Time and Democracy stop for no one. However, one still had to wait until the President stopped throwing his sparring partners into corners. What a sight it was! The caption under one of the winning pictures of the Russian ex-President, slamming his dummy onto the mat with the greatest of ease, read simply: "Who's next?"

  In the prolonged biological one-on-one with Time (and the implicit one-on-one with the Russian ex-President), the American Ex was also strategically placing photographs in newspapers, and, more effectively, on TV. His Texan friends (also only a handful, the last ones left) made it seem that the ex-President, donning a cowboy hat, was barreling down the dustiest local road on horseback. This happened a half-mile from any curious onlookers. He himself couldn't sit in the saddle anymore. A dependable corset-harness was constructed for him out of parachute wire—it went from the saddle right up to the armpit of the rider on his left side—the rider, presumably, was filmed and photographed from the right.

  The ex-President galloped for nearly ten minutes, during two of which he looked passable. After his ride, however, he shut down. The only reason he didn't actually collapse was that he was strapped in so tightly. He was carefully removed from the horse and carried to the car. All day at home, they carefully blew dust off of him. He was completely out of it for a day and a half, not recognizing his friends, sitting in his chair with his mouth agape.

  However, the two minutes of his brave ride lit up television screens worldwide.