The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works by Giorgio De Maria

Author:Giorgio De Maria
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945863646
Publisher: Talos
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part I: Sashka’s Diary

MY NAME IS SASHKA AND I AM A SLAVE; I’M A SLAVE EVEN TODAY when I’m no longer a slave, and I’m now past the age of seventy-eight, and since March the fifth, 1953—or rather, since the day of my Master’s death—I’ve been able to count myself a “free man.” For whose beck and call could I stand at now, when nobody in my great, boundless Motherland watches over me? I can live out the rest of my life as I feel and please: circulate through Moscow, queue up outside Lenin’s Mausoleum and—sciatica permitting—trundle around the Father of the Revolution, look at him with his fist half-raised, and imagine how fine it would be if one day Muscovites and tourists alike saw that fist suddenly take off and smash the glass above his bedding to smithereens. Even Pravda would give it a mention, you can swear on it . . . “Come on, Ulyanov!” I say under my breath, whenever I make that Sunday-morning trip. “Fire that fist! Show them what a Bolshevik mummy can do when a bit of holy distemper shakes him from his eternal sleep!” But stepping back out into the Red Square, I brood. Ulyanov wasn’t like Dzhugashvili. Ulyanov was bold, full of spirit. Once I saw him ranting to a crowd from a makeshift platform; he looked like an electric generator, he did. That bald cranium of his . . . Those whiskers of his, and that pointed beard, like a mass of tiny dark nervelets . . . Those sharp eyebrows and flaming eyes . . . And then that fist! That fist, good God, how well I remember it! An unforgettable sight for a youngster like me back then . . . But I’m sure that fist is in no mood for punching now! An unseemly gesture, just to give people the shivers? Unthinkable for a man like Ulyanov! No—we’d have to be talking about Dzhugashvili instead! Oh yes! You could always expect something from him! That’s why they “retired” him in the end! I’ll bet the reason the ancient Pharaohs got bandaged up and crammed deep into their pyramids was so they wouldn’t have been able to curdle your blood with the bat of an eyelash. Certain people, at certain times, can draw spurts of vigor from the Realms of Death and . . . best not to think about it. There’s already somebody thinking about it, even if he’s alive. A kitchen services assistant at the “resting place for the elderly” where I eat, sleep, and perform my bodily functions. He happens to be a Georgian too, who, I suppose, has caught wind of my past and wants to have some daft amusement with me. He serves me at the cafeteria in the most showy, ceremonious way you can imagine. He treats me like I’m one of the old Petersburg aristocrats from the days of the Tsar; he kowtows before he ladles out my bowlful of soup; when

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