A Lubyanka Conversation

“Vladimir Ilich is a superman. It was only two months after...’

‘Really? Two months? I could write a play in two months.’

‘If you had a pen.’

‘And paper.’

‘And an idea.’

‘I have plenty of ideas, why do you think I’m here?’

‘Ah… I was thinking fraud. Middle-aged ladies' savings spent on gambling and young mistresses.'

‘Of course not, I said I was redistributing wealth on behalf of the proletariat. The charge was dropped in exchange for Olya Smetanova’s address. ’

‘I see… and then he arrested you for being a Kot?’

‘What? No. Of course not. Mrs Smetanova is a bandersha.’

‘Aha! So in exchange for the denunciation of a panderess...’

‘The Kommissar was interested in specialised services, you dolt.’

‘Anyway, that Vladimir Ilich, just two months...’

‘Did you read the newspaper? Or just the headlines, before you wiped your arse?’

‘Of course I did, that’s what I meant.’

‘What about this bit then?

“Yesterday, 7 November 1918, Lenin, who has made a remarkably prompt recovery after being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt some two months ago, managed to give several speeches in different parts of Moscow.”’

‘Yes, isn’t it marvellous?’

‘What?’

‘That he recovered so quickly and so well.’

‘Idiot!’

‘I’m not a fool. I know 3 doctors and a hundred pretty nurses will have run around after him for all of those two months.’

‘Well, of course they did. I happen to know that they were not flesh wounds that they were treating.’

‘See? A superman!’

‘Where were the speeches, Igor?’

‘Red Square, and one in the city centre.’

‘I wish “krasnyj” still meant beautiful…’

‘What have the speeches got to do with anything?’

‘Even in one of their stupid automobiles they could not have got from one to the other in under two hours. The streets were full of fools’.

‘We have the tram.’

‘And you have to allow for the time spent speechifying. Why are they all such windbags?’

‘I still don’t see what...’

‘I wrote that article.’

‘They put you in jail for pointing out what a superman Vladimir Ilich is?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘They put me in jail for writing “remarkably”...