The Senility of Vladimir P (23 page)

Sheremetev tucked a napkin under Vladimir's chin, put the plate of sandwiches on a table next to his armchair, and brought over a chair to sit beside him. He picked up half of the ham sandwich and put it to Vladimir's lips.

‘Come on, Vladimir Vladimirovich. This is good. Eat.'

Vladimir's lips parted and mechanically he took a bite.

Sheremetev waited until Vladimir swallowed, then put the sandwich to Vladimir's mouth again. He was conscious of feeling a kind of unreal detachment as he watched Vladimir eat – not empathy, but not antagonism, either. Almost a kind of numbness.

Again, he wondered, how could he stay in this place – but how could he leave? He had begun to think that he hated this man, and yet he couldn't bear the thought of the confused, fearful look that Vladimir got in his eyes and the trauma he would inflict on him by leaving.

Vladimir ate only half a sandwich. Eventually, Sheremetev took the food to his room and finished the other pieces himself. Then he took the tray downstairs. The atmosphere in the house was tense. The guard in the hall watched him come down without a word. Three more security guards sat in the staff dining room having a conversation in low voices. They stopped as soon as Sheremetev came in.

‘How's Artyusha?' he asked.

The guards glanced at each other.

‘Alive,' growled Lyosha, Artur's shaven-headed deputy.

‘Is he going to be alright?'

Lyosha looked at Sheremetev suspiciously and then shrugged.

Sheremetev found Stepanin brooding in the staff sitting room, smoking and nervously tapping the ash of his cigarette into a saucer.

‘What's going on, Vitya?' asked Sheremetev.

‘You heard about Artyusha?'

Sheremetev nodded.

‘What fuckery!' Stepanin drew deeply on his cigarette and the smoke billowed from his nose. ‘I got a note today from Barkovskaya saying she has suppliers for everything, and I should tell my guys to stay away. All of them! She's gone mad, Kolya. Shooting Artyusha? What the fuck is that about?'

Sheremetev refrained from pointing out that it was Stepanin himself who had described this as a war and had remarked sanguinely that in a war, people get hurt.

‘Does she know who he is? Does she know what's going to happen now? What a piece of fucking fucked-up fuckery! Fuckery with a cock on top! This is going to be bad, Kolya. I'm telling you, this is going to be bad.'

Stepanin took a final drag on his cigarette, then ground out the butt on the saucer, pushing down hard with a snarl on his face.

‘Vitya,' said Sheremetev, ‘it's enough, don't you think?'

‘What's enough?' retorted the cook.

‘With Barkovskaya.'

‘Enough? It's enough, alright! This is it, Kolya. She wants everything. The whole lot! What am I going to do? Walk away?'

‘Maybe you should.' It occurred to Sheremetev that there was no alternative for Stepanin now, and at least if he walked away, no one would get killed.

‘Sure, and let her win, huh? Is that what you want? I've only got half of what I need, Kolya. What am I going to do? Open half a restaurant? Serve my diners half a dish?'

Sheremetev thought of the watches. In that one cabinet upstairs was enough to satisfy everyone. Enough to get Pasha out, enough for Stepanin to have his restaurant, and enough, surely, even for Barkovskaya.

‘What is it?' growled Stepanin. ‘I'm not walking away, so don't say that again. Have you got any other ideas?'

Sheremetev shook his head.

The cook poured himself a vodka and threw it down.

‘Vitya, what are you going to do?'

‘It's me or her, Kolya. Isn't that clear? It's not my fault. I didn't start this thing. Everything was fine until she arrived. This is it, Kolya! The finish, the finale, the end game.'

‘Vitya, don't do anything rash.'

Stepanin laughed, almost choking on his hatred.

It seemed to Sheremetev that the cook was like a hog on a spit, roasting and blackening in his own caustic juices. Sadly, he remembered the jovial, garrulous cook of days gone by. He stayed for another couple of minutes, then got up, leaving Stepanin throwing down another drink.

Upstairs, Vladimir was sniffing suspiciously and muttering dark imprecations about the Chechen.

‘There's no Chechen,' said Sheremetev, trying to get him into his pyjamas. ‘There's only me, Sheremetev.'

Vladimir looked probingly at the short, balding man who was standing in front of him with a pyjama top in his hands. Suddenly the Chechen's head poked out from behind him – then it was gone.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, let's get your shirt off.'

There! He saw it again for an instant before it disappeared, the huge slimy black slug of a tongue lolling from the mouth, the lips stretched in a teeth-baring grin.

Vladimir let Sheremetev unbutton his shirt, glancing surreptitiously around the room, trying to spot the Chechen while he was off his guard. He put one arm after the other through the sleeves.

‘Now the trousers.'

Again! There it was! Vladimir snapped into a judo pose and launched his attack.
Tai Otosh
i
!

The blow swept Sheremetev off his feet and sent him sprawling on his back. ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich!' he cried.

Vladimir looked down at him in confusion. What was that man doing on the floor? But he couldn't afford to be distracted. He peered carefully around the room. The Chechen was so cunning and so quick. He'd do anything to get his death tongue onto his face.

Sheremetev hauled himself up and hurried off to get Vladimir's tablets. If he got them into him quickly enough, he thought, he might be able to avoid using an injection. He caught sight of himself in a mirror – the laceration on his cheek, which had been healing well, was bleeding. He took a closer look. The scar had opened between a couple of the sutures when Vladimir had thrown him. Sheremetev pressed on the cut to staunch the blood, remembering what Dr Rospov had said about making sure the wound stayed closed to prevent it scarring. Eventually he went back and warily handed Vladimir a glass of water, then his pills, standing as far back from him as he could.

‘Take them please, Vladimir Vladimirovich. They're good for you.'

Vladimir swallowed a couple.

‘Also the others . . . Good.' After what he had just seen, Sheremetev had added an extra sedative.

He took Vladimir to the bathroom. Vladimir looked suspiciously around the room as he led him back to bed and helped him in. He left Vladimir staring up, as he always did, and prayed that the sedatives would soon kick in and do their job.

Sheremetev didn't go back downstairs that night. The atmosphere in the dacha was poisonous. He had a pain at the base of his spine, where he had landed after Vladimir's judo attack, and his cheek was throbbing where the scar had been opened.

How much longer could he bear to stay here? In the last couple of weeks, the dacha, where he had thought he would stay until Vladimir died, had become like some kind of hell on earth. So why not leave? Perhaps not tonight, or tomorrow, but in a few days, so they had time to find a nurse to replace him. That wouldn't be abandoning his patient. That's all that Vladimir was to him. A patient, and he was just a nurse. Another nurse would be as good.

But Vladimir would never find the same familiarity with another nurse as he found with him. He had reached a stage in his disease when traces of recognition could never again be created – only forgotten. And even though he asked ten times a day who Sheremetev was, underneath it, that familiarity, that ease, was still there, as Vera had discerned. That was why he could resolve the look of fear and confusion in Vladimir's eyes with a word, a touch, when no one else could. If he left, that look would never be dispelled.

What if Vladimir died? The thought came into his head. Families of some other patients who had reached this stage had even said that they thought it would be for the best, occasionally going so far as to ask for his help. What kind of life did Vladimir have? There was no dignity or quality in it. And if Vladimir died, he could leave.

It had to happen sooner or later. Maybe it would be best for everybody if it was sooner.

He drove the thought out of his head.

His mind drifted. He thought of the money under the mattress on which he was lying. Thirty-two and a half thousand dollars, including what he had got for the first watch and what he had got for the second two. He was glad now that he had sold them, even if the other watch by itself was enough. There would be something for Pasha when he got out, something he could take with him from Russia to start a new life.

What if he sold more watches? What if he swallowed his distaste for Vladimir and stayed on at the dacha for a while, after all, and built himself up a nice nest egg? Sell a watch each week, for example, on his day off. Not always to Rostkhenkovskaya. There must be others who would buy. Mix it up a bit so no one would be suspicious. After a few months, he would have a fortune.

Be like Goroviev. Gouge Vladimir back for all the gouging he had done.

He grimaced, disgusted at himself.

And yet the thought persisted. Why not? Maybe give some of the proceeds to Stepanin, so he could leave his hopeless feud with Barkovskaya before it killed him. Who would know? Who would ever miss those watches? Why leave them for others to have after Vladimir was dead, people who almost certainly already had so much wealth that the whole cabinet of watches would add barely a speck to the mountain of their riches?

The
whole
cabinet of watches . . .

Again, Sheremetev tried to put the idea forcibly out of his mind, dismayed at the way it kept coming back. First things first. Tomorrow, he had to get the three hundred thousand for Pasha. Right now, that was all he should be thinking about: how he would safely carry the watch, how he would get to the shop, how he would transport the money to Oleg.

He lay in bed, resting on the mattress with the money hidden underneath it, his back aching, his cheek throbbing, torn between disgust for himself and hope for Pasha, thinking about tomorrow.

The next morning dawned
grey and drizzly. The atmosphere in the dacha was oppressive. In the staff dining room, the security guards ate their breakfast gloomily. Stepanin's assistants came out of the kitchen to refill the
kasha
pot and went back in without uttering a word.

Just before ten o'clock, the drizzle petered out and the clouds parted for a time, allowing through rays of weak, watery sunshine. Sheremetev took Vladimir out for his walk. Goroviev passed by with a hoe in his hand. He stopped and asked how Vladimir was. Vladimir ignored him. The gardener walked with them for a few minutes, but Sheremetev had nothing to say to him, and eventually Goroviev went away.

At around the same time, in the staff wing of the dacha, Stepanin knocked on the door of Barkovskaya's office. ‘Come in,' called out Barkovskaya's voice. The cook entered and closed the door behind him.

Vladimir's lunch came up
at one o'clock: vegetarian stew with polenta cakes. Sheremetev fed Vladimir in his sitting room, then took the tray away and finished the leftovers himself, not wanting to go downstairs. Vera was due at three o'clock. A few minutes before she arrived, Sheremetev left Vladimir watching footage of himself on the television and went into the dressing room. He retrieved the Patek Philippe from the cabinet and slipped it into his pocket.

Eleyekov drove him into town, where a client had scheduled a pickup for three-thirty. Sheremetev had toyed with the idea of paying Eleyekov to drive him all the way to Moscow and wait for him while he settled his business at Rostkhenkovskaya's shop, then take him to Oleg's, thus avoiding the risk of carrying the watch and later the money on the metro. But it occurred to him that if an inventory of Vladimir's watches actually existed, and if the ones he had taken were ever missed, the last thing he needed was for Vladimir's driver to recall that he had taken Sheremetev to a watch shop in Moscow. Even getting him to wait out of sight, so he didn't know exactly where Sheremetev was going, would have been a risk.

Once he had the money, Sheremetev thought, he would get a taxi. There were always taxis around Arbatskaya station.

‘Guess what's for dinner tonight,'said Eleyekov, glancing at Sheremetev with a knowing smile on his face as they cruised down the drive of the dacha.

‘Fried air?' suggested Sheremetev. Air was all Stepanin had left now if he persisted in refusing to cook anything that Barkovskaya's suppliers were bringing.

Eleyekov laughed, pulling up in front of the security barrier at the gate. ‘Fried air! That's good. No. Guess.' The barrier rose as Eleyekov waited for Sheremetev to reply. ‘Chicken fricassee!' he announced, glancing at Sheremetev to see what he would make of such momentous news.

‘Chicken fricassee?'

Eleyekov grinned and drove out of the gate. ‘Stepanin's made it up with Barkovskaya.'

‘No!'

‘Yes! This morning. He finally bit the bullet and went and talked to her. It's all okay, apparently. He'll get something. Not as much as before – in fact, between you and me, reading between the lines, I think it's quite a lot less – but still, something is better than nothing, right? If you can't have the whole loaf, at least make sure you get a few crumbs from the table.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Barkovskaya's won. That's clear to him now. The fricassee is his surrender. She loves it, you know. Well, she'll eat this one with double pleasure! She's a tough one, Barkovskaya, there's no doubt about that. But that's what it takes to get ahead, right, Nikolai Ilyich?'

Sheremetev was amazed at what the driver had just told him. After what Stepanin had said yesterday, he would never have imagined that the cook would capitulate. But in reality, what else could he do? One person beaten up, two places firebombed, another person shot . . . What next? Burn down the dacha? It couldn't go on. Barkovskaya held the trump card, that was what all of this had proved, and finally Stepanin himself had had to accept it.

‘If he had done it earlier,' said Eleyekov, ‘he would have got more. I told him. Vitya, I said, talk to her.'

‘So did I.'

‘You know, at the start, it might really have only been her cousin with the chickens that she was trying to help. If he'd accepted that, she might not have gone any further. Still . . . Who knows? Maybe he was right to fight it. She's so tough, maybe she would have given him even less if he had simply given up.' The driver frowned, considering the conundrum. ‘Hard to say.'

‘And what about this business with Artur?'

‘Ah, that's something else. If I was Barkovskaya . . . I told you yesterday, I'd be shitting in my pants. But maybe she knows something we don't know. Maybe she has protection. You know, Stepanin's lucky it's Artyusha in the hospital and not him.'

‘How is he?'

‘Artyusha?' Eleyekov let out a long breath, shaking his head. He took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced at Sheremetev. ‘Not good. They're not sure if he'll walk again. From what I understand, one of the bullets hit his spine. That's not good, is it?'

‘They're saying he might end up in a wheelchair?'

‘I think so.'

Sheremetev still didn't know quite how to think about Artur. On the one hand, personally, he had always found him polite and thoughtful, by far the most amenable of the security contingent, and he couldn't deny that he had taken a liking to him. On the other hand, he ran a protection racket that apparently had all of Odintsovo quaking in its boots, and although Sheremetev was no expert in the arts of intimidation and punishment, he knew enough to imagine that this must involve a fair helping of violence, as the breaking of the arms of Barkovskaya's cousin demonstrated. Still, somehow, the idea of Artur being in a wheelchair for the rest of his life was appalling.

‘What are things coming to?' murmured Sheremetev.

Eleyekov laughed. ‘That's what each generation says as it gets older. Do you think things were better when we were young? They've always been shit. Shit piled on shit piled on shit. That's Russia, Nikolai Ilyich. It was the same in the days of Ivan the Terrible and it was the same in the days of Stalin and it's the same now. What do you expect? Every so often you get your head above the surface for a second and that's when you realise it, there's nothing around you but shit. After that – you're in again.'

Sheremetev didn't reply, wondering glumly if the times they were living in were really no better than those of the two terrible autocrats Eleyekov had mentioned.

The driver stole a glance at him. ‘Tell me something, Nikolai Ilyich. Seriously . . . Vladimir Vladimirovich . . . How long do you think he'll live?'

Sheremetev closed his eyes, revolted by the question. They were all the same, every single person in the dacha. The only thing they cared about was how long the feast would go on, like fish gorging themselves on a whale's flesh even while the whale was still alive.

Then Sheremetev thought of why he was in this car and what he carried in his pocket and of his thoughts last night: week by week, sell a watch, build up a nest egg . . . How much better was he?

‘You're a nurse, Nikolai Ilyich. You've seen this before. How much longer? What do you think? Six months? A year?'

‘You never know,' murmured Sheremetev. ‘He could go on for a long time.'

‘Really?' said Eleyekov, a note of relief in his voice. ‘Because I had a friend who told me, once they lose their marbles, it's quick after that.'

‘No. It's all about how strong the heart is.'

‘And how strong is his heart?'

Sheremetev shrugged. ‘Any one of us could go at any time, Vadim Sergeyevich. You or me included. That's all I know.'

Eleyekov glanced at him for a moment, then laughed.

Sheremetev gazed out the window. Already they were at the outskirts of the town. He watched the first apartment blocks pass by on either side.

He really was amazed that Stepanin had given in. But in the end, what else could he do?

Well, the feud between the cook and the housekeeper was over, and in another couple of hours, he would have the money to set Pasha free.

The ritual of pressing
the bell, hearing the click of the lock and then pushing open the door was becoming familiar now. From the back of the shop emerged Rostkhenkovskaya, this time wearing a black pinafore dress and a silver brooch in the shape of a bird of some sort.

‘Good evening, Nikolai Ilyich,' she said. ‘I'm glad to see you.'

Sheremetev reached into his pocket, produced the usual ­handkerchief-wrapped bundle, and laid it on the counter.

Rostkhenkovskaya unwrapped it. A smile played on her lips as she examined the Patek Philippe. ‘Just wait a moment please.'

She left the watch on the counter and disappeared into the back of the shop. When she returned she was accompanied by a large man with brown eyes and wavy dark hair in a well-cut, pinstriped suit.

‘Nikolai Ilyich, this is Aleksandr Semyonovich Belkin. He's an expert in Patek Philippes. Given the sum of money we're talking about, I felt I needed a second opinion. I hope that's alright.'

‘Yes,' replied Sheremetev. ‘It's alright.'

‘Good evening, Nikolai Ilyich.' Belkin extended a fleshy hand, but his eye was already on the watch. ‘Is this it?' Without waiting for an answer, Belkin dropped Sheremetev's hand and picked up the watch. He adroitly slotted a loupe in his right eye socket and proceeded to examine the Patek Philippe minutely, handling it as gently as if it was a newborn child. ‘Hmmm . . .' he said. Then another ‘Hmmm . . .' in a slightly higher register.

The expert put the watch down. He disposed of the eyepiece by releasing the contraction of his facial muscles and letting it drop, neatly catching it in the palm of his hand and secreting it in a pocket. Then he glanced at Rostkhenkovskaya and gave her a nod. He turned to Sheremetev. ‘A beautiful watch, Nikolai Ilyich. You know, there are very few of this particular watch known to be made. We're talking about fewer than forty. Of those, I know who owns probably fifty percent – in Russia, probably all of them. If any of the owners wanted to sell, I'd be the first person they'd consult. But you, Nikolai Ilyich, I don't know.'

‘It was my uncle's,' said Sheremetev.

‘So I must know your uncle.'

Sheremetev didn't reply.

The expert watched him closely, a half smile on his face. ‘Anna says you sold her three more watches. Not quite in this class, but not bad ones. That's quite a collection, Nikolai Ilyich.'

‘My uncle was very generous.'

‘And still is, it seems.'

Sheremetev didn't say anything to that.

‘Listen, Nikolai Ilyich, what else do you have . . . or should I say, what else might he be inclined to give you?'

‘Nothing.'

‘That's it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ah. I thought you were going to bring more.'

‘No.'

‘Your uncle has no more?'

‘He has more but they're —'

‘But he has more?'

Sheremetev didn't like the look in the expert's eyes. ‘I don't know. This is what I've got. This is what I'd like to sell. That's it.' He glanced at Rostkhenkovskaya.

She smiled slightly.

‘The thing is,' said Belkin, ‘what you bring is of such high quality, and of such demand amongst our customers, that we'd like a little more.'

We, thought Sheremetev, increasingly uneasy. Who was
we
?

‘I only have what I have,' he said.

‘We could give you a commission,' continued Belkin, as if he hadn't heard him. ‘Say, ten percent.'

‘They're not my watches to sell.'

‘And this is?' Belkin looked at him pointedly.

Sheremetev reached for the Patek Philippe, but the other man's hand was quicker. He snatched the watch up and held it away from Sheremetev.

Sheremetev looked at Rostkhenkovskaya again. ‘Anna Mikhail­ovna, you told me you would pay three hundred thousand dollars for this watch. We had an agreement. All I'm asking for is what you promised.'

‘That was yesterday,' replied Belkin.

‘Anna Mikhailovna!'

She shrugged. ‘Aleksandr Semyonovich is right. That was yesterday.'

Sheremetev stared at her in disbelief.

‘Things change, Nikolai Ilyich.'

Sheremetev hesitated, but nothing in Rostkhenkovskaya's expression changed, and he finally understood that no help was going to come to him from her. Suddenly he lunged across the counter for the watch. Belkin batted him away with ease.

‘Well, Nikolai Ilyich, what do you say?'

Sheremetev was red-faced with anger. ‘Give me the watch back and I'll think about it.'

Belkin laughed. ‘Give you the watch back, and we'll never see you again. You need to decide now, Nikolai Ilyich. You need to decide now, and then we need to go.'

‘Go where?'

‘To the watches.'

Sheremetev stared for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Yes, Nikolai Ilyich. We need to go there now.'

Sheremetev glanced around the room, hurriedly considering his options. Taking these horological gangsters to the watches meant taking them to the dacha – which was impossible. Getting the watch out of Belkin's grasp also seemed impossible, or at least unlikely. All he could do, it seemed to Sheremetev, was walk out, leave the watch and let Belkin and Rostkhenkovskaya do what they wanted with it. The idea was offensive – but in the end, what difference would it make to him? True, that would leave Rostkhenkovskaya and this reptile holding a watch they had stolen and would presumably sell for many hundreds of thousands of dollars, but so what? Personally, he would have lost nothing, since he had never had that money to start with, and more importantly, there were another three hundred watches in Vladimir's cabinet, and surely in amongst all those others must be one or two more as valuable as this. Next time he might even look on the internet to see how much they were worth, as he should have done, he realised, from the start. And there must be other watch buyers in Moscow, and he wouldn't make the mistake again of letting anyone think he had more than he proposed to sell them. Or perhaps he would go to St Petersburg. He was supposed to be able to take four weeks holiday each year but he hadn't taken a single day since moving to the dacha three years previously. He could leave Vera in charge and head off for a week with a bag full of watches.