Offended Sensibilities by Alisa Ganieva

Author:Alisa Ganieva
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

CHAPTER 10

IT WAS MARINA SEMYONOVA’S FIRST BIRTHDAY without Andrei Ivanovich. Her living room seethed with activity; hired waiters in snow-white shirts and bow ties dashed about, gesturing dramatically like orchestra conductors. Lids were swept with great flourishes from enormous serving plates, revealing entire sides of pike perch on beds of onion lined with lemon slices, beef tongue in walnut sauce garnished with feathery cilantro and parsley, baked pork with red potatoes. The dishes breathed steam, like dragons.

Gilded plates and bowls were laden with small open-top pastries with herring and red caviar, rolled crepes, marinated garlic cloves, pickled cucumbers, carrot stars, stuffed tomatoes, eggplant rolls, and all kinds of salads—French bean, pine nut, and roast pear, imported Parmesan.

The guests held out their porcelain sectioned plates, rotating them to receive a variety of hors d’oeuvres. Aged wine bubbled in champagne flutes. Conversations were born and died; loudest of all were the voices of Ilyushenko and a little man who always turned up at this kind of occasion. He had been an adviser to the former governor but now headed some utterly obscure public institution. His hair bristled in a graying crew cut, and a GTO “sports and country” badge gleamed on the lapel of his jacket. As usual, they were arguing about Russia.

“Peter, Peter, at what point did you turn revolutionary? One minute you’re living your life, happy as a clam, espousing ecumenism. There’s a slight turn of the screw, and suddenly you’re leaping up onto a tank! What you’re saying is just ridiculous: autocracy … what kind of autocracy do we have here?”

“But why did they come after me?” Ilyushenko frowned.

He had been unable to get his bearings after a recent surprise visit by goons from the Internal Ministry’s Counter-Extremism Directorate. They had come to question him about appeals for all-Christian unity he had posted on the internet.

“So you’re saying that we have to bow down to the Western church?” the goons had pressed.

“What do you mean, b-b-bow d-d-down?” Ilyushenko stammered. “This is about unity of faith among equals under God’s commandment.”

“But you do understand that they are our enemies, don’t you?” the goons persisted. “What you are calling for is collusion with the enemy.”

At the end of the conversation they had strutted around his apartment with their elbows stuck out; they complimented the silver clock that hung over the doorway (a present from Marina Semyonova), then made their exit, leaving Ilyushenko in a state of abject terror.

“They came to sort things out,” replied the little crewcut man. “What if you’re spreading heresy? Stirring up the masses? It’s their job; they have to maintain security. Especially with the sports festival about to start.”

“So now I have to sit all night long in fear and trembling, ‘awaiting dear guests, rattling like shackles the chains on the doors’?”

Hearing the familiar lines from Mandelstam’s poem, the crew-cut man winced and leered, drumming his patent-leather dress shoes on the parquet floor. “Oh, no. I can’t stand it! This is the last thing we need. Please,

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