The Year of the Family

Att the end of November, Vladimir Snegurkin, chief editor of the weekly paper, Friend of the House, phoned his special projects editor, Kolya Malakhov, and, in a joyful voice, asked him to drop in. Malakhov, immediately understanding that the chief editor had been visited by an idea, gave a deep sigh and went downstairs to the second floor.

Snegurkin, a former Komsomol bureaucrat, was a short, fat epicure, a connoisseur and devotee of Russian banyas and beach volleyball. He greeted Malakhov as if they were best friends, even offering him a rather revolting liqueur, which the paper received in barter from one of its advertisers. Malakhov waved off the shot glass with a look of disgust and steeled himself for the next special project.

“We have become too distant from the needs of our readers,” Snegurkin began. “Why, recently, when my filter gave out (the editor drove a Renault), I took a ride on the metro. Listen to me – such inspirational faces... so many newspapers! The conversations! And this in our times! When we, you could say, find it difficult to get by, what about these simple people...?” The chief waved his hands. “Look now. Look here. We need to spend a year following the lives of a single, simple family. I see it under the heading, ‘Year of the Family.’ A family from the dregs, you know. Well, so that they are not quite workers or drunkards, but more or less our audience: they have a dacha, a Zhiguli, there is some sort of babushka with recipes for every sort of marinade... After all, these are the sort of people who hold everything together, not us. They built this country.” (To this day, the chief often forgot himself, acting as if he were in a regional Party meeting.) “In short, go and find me such a family. So that we can do a story on them each month, with a photo spread.”

Malakhov was horrified at the prospect of searching for a family. Generally speaking, Snegurkin, like most in his orbit, was only visited by ideas that had occurred to the majority of the world’s journalists 20 years before. A similar family chronicle in the U.S. (in which cameras were placed in the kitchen and living room of a large, friendly family) had played out daily on some cable TV channel and done fairly well. The audience grew something like five-fold, because who wouldn’t like to watch strangers fight, convinced that their own lives are not nearly so pitiful? True, in the successful reports of the magazine Amerika, an article on the new TV genre did not mention that the family split as a result of the show (one TV camera was reportedly destroyed by the head of the family in a fit of rage). Malicious authors of Soviet telejournalism textbooks, however, did not fail to exploit the saga as an example of the pursuit of excessive profits. 

It was not, however, excess profits that Snegurkin sought. Malakhov knew quite well what he was after. He wanted his magazine – which lived off of ads for Euro-renovation and expensive furniture – to get perhaps one step closer to the People. Then, in the event of a Bolshevik coup, he – Snegurkin – would not be the first up against the wall. 

Malakhov more or less understood the sort of family in question: a husband with a beer belly, holes in the knees of his sweatpants and political sympathies in line with the Communist Party; a wife with an experienced face, constantly wringing her hands as she worries about the future; a clownish brute of a son who is a soccer fanatic, and a daughter who reads Cool Girl – both of whom, in answer to any question can only offer, “Fine,” or, “I dunno what you are talking about.” For color, of course, there should be a grampa with meek eyes or a babushka who performs culinary miracles and is full of jokes and funny catchphrases. It all bored him.

“They will never agree to do it for free, Vladimir Sergeyevich,” Malakhov said, staring at the floor.

“What do you mean ‘free’?! We understand these things!” Snegurkin responded willingly. “A hundred bucks a month, eh? ‘Not a bad pensioner’s bonus!’” He chuckled, as he always did when quoting an advertisement.

“OK, so... best if they were not in Moscow, of course,” Snegurkin continued. “But not too far out, or we’ll go broke on train fares. Definitely monthly, and with a photo spread... Hmm, it would be good if the husband were military, the wife a teacher or a doctor. There’s gotta be a babushka, two kids, preferably one of each... Um, and the husband should drink, but in moderation.”

“Military? And a moderate drinker?”

“What, of course some of them drink!” Snegurkin hotly exclaimed, perfectly understanding Malakhov, only bassackwards. “Um, the apartment should be your basic two- or three-roomer; there should be a garage, and a dacha or a house in the country... Yeah, there are millions of families like that – knock on any door!”

Having heard the outlines, Malakhov recovered himself and bitterly took stock of the situation. He could surely look for such a family among his contacts – he tried hard not to make friends with ‘New Russians’ or other déclassé types. But Moscow was off-limits, and outside Moscow his only close acquaintances were his wife’s relatives. But she was born in Krasnoyarsk, and that was off-limits too, for being too far away. True enough, he did have a classmate from journalism school... It had been a quick and happy affair, after they both flung themselves at one another in their sophomore year. But, after the year was up, her boyfriend from home suspected something and stirred up a scandal. Zhenka was a serious girl and protected her boyfriend. In the end, Malakhov didn’t want to fight for her: sleeping together in the dorm was unbearable, and young Malakhov didn’t have the guts to bring her to his house. She also proved better as a friend than as a lover. He cracked open his little contact book and made a call to Bryansk.

“Mi-li-ta-ry?” Zhenka dragged out the syllables after a round of tender greetings. She seemed hardly surprised by his call and spoke as if they had only seen each other yesterday. “Kolenka, where are we gonna find military guys here? There is just one unit in the whole city, and it is sort of half-military. Might a surgeon work?”

Zhenka worked in local television and mainly rubbed elbows with the Bryansk elite – the city surgeon, the city poet, the city cabinetmaker... And yet, a classmate of her son – who, Malakhov realized, to his horror, was nine years old – had come over to play computer games and mentioned something about his papa the captain. But Captain Papa recently left the service and went to work in a car repair shop.

“That would work,” Malakhov said, suddenly excited. “And what sort of boy is he? Normal? Not handicapped?”

“No, not handicapped, so it would seem,” Zhenka replied with surprise. “What, do you need a handicapped kid?”

“No, no, Heaven forbid, no. Zhenka, little sunshine, would you perhaps be able to prepare them emotionally for me? We will pay them monthly for the right to report on their lives – visiting shops, going to the dacha, the kids swimming, whatever...” Convince them, dear. It’s a complete disaster here when it comes to typical families!”

“Agreed,” Zhenka said confidently. “For $150, if you like, you can come every week and write about me and Vadik. Lately, all he does is sit in front of the television and fall asleep. So we are a typical, healthy family.”

Bryansk was abominably cold, dirty and grey.
The city was like a hundred others that Malakhov had been cast into by the whims of journalistic fate. It could well be that it was a quite beautiful city – with clumps of gardens and cozy old trolleybuses, with the sandbars and gently sloping banks of the shallow Desna river, with affecting lamps, shaped like tulips, outside the train station. But Malakhov had traveled here very reluctantly and, on top of that, had been assigned the photographer Korolev – a specialist in covering hot spots. 

Korolev was normally assigned exclusively to mountainous regions, where he would calm his nerves with huge quantities of local vodka. His bravery was the stuff of legend. Once, having drunk his fill of Karabakh chacha [homebrew], he did not wake at all when the armored transport vehicle in which he was traveling drove through the extremely dangerous Lachinsky Corridor. Another time, he feasted and drank so well with one friendly Chechen, that he slept through a nighttime shelling and, getting up in the morning to relieve himself in the yard, could not for the longest time figure out where the wall and door – blown away by an explosion – had gotten to. Now he took pictures of famous people’s interiors for Friend of the House... and he started drinking the minute the train began to move. When he got drunk, he sang of some friend. As a result, Malakhov slept all of two hours. 

The train arrived in Bryansk at five a.m. and Malakhov and the irrepressible Korolev trotted briskly through the cold morning toward the best local hotel (it was directly across from the station, and the taxi driver wanted just 25 rubles to haul them there with all their photo gear, but they preferred to economize). While the night receptionist cautiously copied down their passport information, Malakhov thrice cursed Snegurkin and all his ideas, jumping about because he was terribly in need of a bathroom.

They planned to visit the family at two, toward lunchtime. The visit was specially planned for Saturday, so that everyone would be gathered around the family table. The family lived in a far-flung region with the panic-stricken name of Bezhitsa [“Runaway”]; a dirty, rattling bus was the only way to make the long haul out there. 

Zhenka, taking pride in her role as intermediary, arrived to wake Malakhov and the photographer at eleven. Upon seeing her, Malakhov asked himself in horror what he had turned into, if the cheerful, lightly-freckled girl that Zhenka had been through their fifth year had, in ten years, turned into this greying woman with no outward signs of her previous mischievousness. Her voice was little changed, however, and, after she sized him up, he could detect in it some faint sounds of her former hooliganism. Otherwise, it was easy to imagine her not so much on television – even in Bryansk – as in a line somewhere, or at a bus stop. 

In her sweet voice, unchanged by time, Zhenka informed them that the former captain’s family refused to meet with the journalists, because the captain’s car business had some sort of criminal connections, or at least was not fully legal; yet his neighbors had happily agreed, since they were experiencing financial difficulties. As an added plus, they had an outstanding babushka.

“What about children?” Malakhov asked, his voice falling. He so did not want to start searching for someone else, thanks to the foolish whims of an auto mechanic!

“Yes, there is a child – four years old.”

Korolev, swearing loudly, stepped into a cold shower – nothing else was available. Malakhov only shaved, cutting himself twice.

“Are they at least normal people?” he asked Zhenka along the way.

She shrugged her shoulders, “I think so, yes. Truthfully, I don’t know how typical they are...”

 

The rather tense family met their guests with

cautious smiles. Malakhov sized up the situation and the residents of the three-room modular apartment with a predictable mixture of tenderness, empathy and squeamishness. Their honest poverty was obvious. The bookcase was full of good books, acquired in better times. The head of the family was a senior foreman at an impoverished local machine-building plant. His daughter – the oldest child – had a degree in philology, but worked in a childcare facility; his son had just returned from the army and had not yet found work. The mother of the family was a kind-hearted woman of about 50 who clearly shouldered the entire burden of taking care of the household, somehow managing to avoid depression. Of everyone gathered around the table, she alone had a more or less healthy glow about her. As to the babushka, Malakhov did not hazard a guess. She was a small yet tough and venomous old woman who sized up the visitors with a sarcastic glare. They called her Galina Mefodiyevna, and she was the only one who lacked a sense of servility.

“God has brought us some guests,” she said with a smile that could as easily be interpreted as either an insult or a welcome. 

Malakhov surmised that the first thing to do was to place the envelope of money on the table (the first $100 monthly payment of 12 to come) and quickly review the situation.

“Zhenechka told us everything,” said Darya Petrovna,
the mother, “but we really don’t see what is so interesting about us...”

“We will find something,” Malakhov replied firmly. “In the worst case, we’ll think something up.”

“Yeah, we don’t object,” replied the senior foreman quietly. Ilya Fomich cast his eyes downward, as if he were agreeing under duress to something embarrassing.

“May I use your phone to make a quick call?” Malakhov asked, fearing that this family would change their minds and he would have to search the devil knows where for a replacement. He had agreed with the chief that he would promptly call him at home to report on their results. 

They showed Malakhov to the kitchen, where there was a red, rotary-dial phone of Czechoslovak manufacture, and delicately left him alone. The telephone sat on the windowsill; outside the window was a grey landscape of newish apartment blocks that, after a first glance, forced one to look away.

“Vladimir Sergeyevich, they have agreed,” he breathed into the receiver.

“Suitable?” Snegurkin asked.

“Apparently so.” Malakhov quickly listed off the family members, noting each of their ages and professions.

“Gimme the number there,” Snegurkin fairly improvised. “Perhaps I will call you back with some advice. Look here. Look now, I just recalled that the 60th anniversary of victory is coming up. So it would be good for us if their grampa was a veteran. And this old babushka, you know... maybe she was a partizan? That was a partizan region, after all.”

“I’ll ask,” Malakhov said, grinding his teeth. He went back out to the family with a white-toothed smile.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, as if revealing the most wonderful surprise. “Galina Mefodiyevna, I don’t suppose – begging your pardon – you were a partizan?”

“Why?” the old woman asked in a voice laced with distrust.

“Well, for the upcoming victory anniversary... you know... in order to better illuminate...” Malakhov fumbled.

“I was not, sonny, I was not,” the old woman happily answered. “I was not a partizan and I did not live through the occupation. We moved here from Sverdlovsk.”

“Is there no grampa? Or maybe a relative of some kind... someone who fought...”

“Well, there is one who might propose marriage,” the old woman smirked. “Keeps coming around... But who knows anything about him, what he is after? A good old guy, almost 80 already, but in good condition. He can take care of himself. And he’s got medals, sonny, medals...”

“So maybe you’ll get married, mama?” the mother of the family asked hopefully. “After all, these guys need it, and we could use the help...”

“Don’t get your hopes up, dearie.” Galina Mefodiyevna replied with her previous venom. “Whether I get married or not, register with him or not, I’m not moving out. Don’t even start dreaming about that!”

“Mama, we thought no such thing...”

At that moment, to Malakhov’s good fortune, the phone rang.

“It’s for you,” said Marina, the dismayed, child-care-laboring, philologist daughter and rather unhappy single mother. 

It was the indefatigable Snegurkin. His editorial ideas were boiling over.

“Look here. Look now,” he cried in ecstasy. “Tell me... those there... this daughter of theirs... is she married?”

“Divorced, apparently,” Malakhov said as quietly as possible. 

“Not good. That’s not typical. An incomplete family. What the hell kind of family is it without a breadwinner? Who will there be to work at the dacha? Find another family there, with a father... Kids need a father,” Snegurkin for some reason exclaimed, once again imagining himself at a Party meeting.

“I’ll find out,” Malakhov promised and put down the receiver. “Comrades, I don’t suppose you have a little something to drink? I’m quite chilled through.”

“Right away, right away... go sit down!” the mother of the family said, and Malakhov swallowed 100 grams with great delight. He needed all 100, in order to loosen up a bit, to not feel overcome with guilt before these generally pleasant people.

“Marina,” he said, crunching down on a homemade pickle. “The thing is this... our chief editor is a rather resourceful person... a creative type, you understand... well, he would like to know, whether you have a husband?”

“No,” Marina replied, extremely embarrassed. “That is, I did have one, but he and I split, because he... in general, he got involved in business and, how do you say, was caught by the money. He had to go into hiding, so we hid... Then he left the city and we stayed behind. To this day, he has not made any contact, and I don’t know if he is living or dead.”

“You understand, Marina...” said Malakhov, tossing aside all etiquette, angry at everyone for his own discomfort. 

Of all the members of the family, he pitied Marina most, since her parents had clearly spared nothing to give her an education. But, in the end, the education had turned out to be of use to no one, and she was doomed to serve out her days in a world she had outgrown and which was suffocating her. Such was the fate of all first-generation intelligentsia, as Malakhov knew from his parents’ experience. It was not difficult for him to imagine how it was for Marina: barely having escaped from her good, but essentially rather simple parents to a new husband, then having to return to this milieu after her new family split. They likely still reproached her. But he did not allow himself any sentimentality, concluding that Marina herself was a fool, if she had let herself fall for some worthless jerk.

“You see,” Malakhov continued, “it would be better for us if your family was complete. In the sense of a good example for our readers, you understand. Perhaps you have your eye on someone... a young fellow with whom you could get together... well at least temporarily, simply so that we could do our reporting?”

Marina felt, obviously, that the money was floating away, and she knew that, to earn $100 a month in the childcare center, she would have to work quadruple shifts. Since such a schedule was not permitted, she saw no other way to bring in that kind of money.

“As a matter of fact, there is one classmate,” she said uncertainly. “Honestly, we haven’t seen each other for a long time... since about 10th grade... but I’ll give him a call.”

She dialed the number.

“Hello, can I speak to Seryozha please?... moved?... where to?” She suddenly went pale, but then smiled happily... “Oh, that’s right nearby. I feared he had moved from Bryansk... Can I please have his new number?”

Malakhov caught Zhenka giving him a strange look – perhaps egging him on, perhaps condemning him. Or perhaps he was just condemning himself and had begun to see contempt floating up all around him.

Marina quickly connected with her classmate Sergei and invited him around. She blushed heavily and stammered. Her four-year-old daughter crawled around under the table and gleefully grabbed at guests’ pants. Seryozha, who obviously had nothing better to do on the weekend, was unexpectedly willing to stop by, and soon the doorway was filled with a fellow of Malakhov’s age who was built like a wardrobe, was fat, horribly awkward and shy. He incessantly wiped his hands on his pants (as if compensating for the complete absence of this habit in his host), giving himself away as a person who was accustomed to working with grease.

“You’re not military, are you?” Malakhov asked hopefully. He had already gulped down two 100 gram shots and felt completely unhinged.

“Nnn...no,” Seryozha responded, stuttering. “I served, of
c-c-course, but I am a fitter.”

“That’s too bad,” Malakhov noted honestly. “Perhaps you might consider changing professions? Not now, but in time... Military guys are becoming our nation’s heroes.”

This could have carried on further, but suddenly the phone started ringing.

“Allo,” said Ilya Fomich, picking up the phone. “It’s for you,” he said to Malakhov, without any trace of surprise. Apparently, he was being visited by journalists of great significance to the State, given that they were getting phone calls every half hour from Moscow.

“Look now,” Snegurkin called out. “Look here! Please ask: is the son really just returned from the army?”

“Yes,” Malakhov answered.

“Not in Chechnya, was he?”

“No, thank God.”

“That’s too bad,” Snegurkin said, truly chagrined. “He’s not wounded, is he?”

“Absolutely healthy.”

“Even worse,” Snegurkin said darkly. “Well, maybe at least he was damaged psychologically... perhaps on some sort of special mission there?”

“No, no, he is a good, healthy boy.”

“Oh, alright! Then ask him, does he have a girlfriend?”

“Probably,” Malakhov said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Did she wait for him while he was in the army?”

“How would I know? In passing, they just said that he is getting married soon, so probably—”

“That cat-e-gor-i-ca-lly will not do!” Snegurkin shouted down the line from Moscow. “Understand, there is no drama in that! Can we make it so that she breaks up with him? A guy like that will have all our women readers writing him letters! Then we can put on a contest to get him married, buy them furniture! I know we can get ‘Suchok’ to give them a bedroom set.”

Suchok was what Snegurkin called his favorite company – the paper’s main advertiser. It was headed up by some kind of former OMON officer who knew very little about furniture, but who succeeded in doing away with his three main competitors in six months. Their furniture was so expensive, it would be cheaper to have furniture made out of elephant tusks. Yet, it had become very trendy to furnish one’s home “with Suchok.”

“Misha,” Malakhov said to the younger sibling, who seemed to be taken aback by all that was happening. He was, in general, a rather dim-witted boy – obviously a good sergeant. “Tell me, do you have a girl? That is, I – perhaps we can talk informally, as ‘ty.’ After all, I am quite a bit older than you [he wanted to insert the word ‘young pup’ here, but thought that the youth would not get the reference]. Are you planning on getting married?”

“Well, yes,” Misha answered, amazed that this information was of interest to anyone.

“Alright, then, Misha,” Malakhov finally said, inspired. “Did this girl wait for you while you were in the army?”

“No, I met her afterwards,” the youth answered, hurriedly helping himself to some salad. 

“Ahh... so you haven’t been together very long!” Malakhov cried shamelessly. “Well, then you are colossally lucky, Misha! You will thank us forever. How would you like to marry a Muscovite and receive a bedroom suite from Suchok as a wedding present?”

“Marry who?” the recruit frowned.

“There will be a competition of some sort! We will find you a bride in Moscow, with an apartment, and for your wedding you will get a bedroom suite from Suchok. Understand?”

It took Misha a long time. His mother was much more quick-witted.

“That’s right, that’s right, what they say, Mishuk! You should have run her off long ago, that bimbo,” she blurted out. “And now, look: Moscow, an apartment, this suchok... Suchok, huh?” she said, glancing over at Malakhov for support. He nodded.

“Oh, ma...” Misha grumbled.

“Yes, run her off, I’m telling you! She is holding us back,” the sergeant’s mother jabbered. “Call her up right now and say, ‘Masha, I no longer want to see you! You have nowhere to live, and she has just two rooms and one dress for any kind of weather! No, you need to say it right now!”

At that moment, the phone rang again. It was for Misha, and Malakhov saw for the first time with real clarity what was meant by the expression, “opposing feelings battled with one another on his face.” Clearly, from the heights of the Moscow-Suchok perspective, the girl Masha, with her singular dress, seemed faded and dull to the boy Misha. But he had no idea how he could tell her this. Not wanting to force events, Malakhov lost himself in his open-faced sandwich of half-cured Belarusian sausage.

“No, well... I, uh, can’t today. Naw, whazzat? Whattya mean ‘we agreed’?” Misha sputtered to the person he was talking to, from which Malakhov concluded that he was not the only one inclined to be angry at others because of his own petty swinishness. “‘Agreed,’ and so what? So I’m not s’posed to have n’thing like my own life?” And he slammed down the receiver. The matter could be considered half-completed, as long as this bimbo did not show up tomorrow and declare that she was pregnant.

Misha returned to the table and Korolev, who also had already heaved down a few drinks (apparently to make the situation seem more like combat) began to take his first photos. “Subjects, no subjects...” he muttered under his breath. After the first five flashes – which the unaccustomed family shied from like a herd in a field, frightened by thunder – Korolev leaned to Malakhov’s ear and hotly whispered: “Listen, there really is nothing to shoot, Kolya! This is not a photo shoot, but a portrait gallery in the display case of master Khaymovich from Berdichev! Can you find a subject?”

“Where am I supposed to find one? Why don’t you ask Marina and Sergei to undress and cavort about?”

“Dufus,” muttered Korolev, aiming his lens at the frightened girl who had stolen an apple from the table. “So, do you do any sort of sports?” he suddenly asked the head of the family.

“In his youth, he was city sword-fighting champion,” the woman of the house proudly replied on her husband’s behalf.

“No, I had more in mind something extreme. Like hang-gliding or ice-swimming.”

“I never did ice-swimming,” Ilya Fomich answered quietly but firmly. 

“No problem,” Korolev answered. “You just jog outside for a sec, I’ll snap a picture, and you run back inside! Then a few vodkas...”

“I’m not running anywhere,” the senior foreman said. “I’ll be 60 soon. People would see me.”

“Ilyusha, let’s go!” his wife entreated, casting an especially worrisome glance at the envelope still lying on the table. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.”

A tense silence reigned in the room. Harsh voices could be heard from the kitchen, and now and again the host cried out, “I am not a clown!” Which was followed by the murmuring of the hostess’ calming whisper. Ten minutes later, Ilya Fomich came out of the kitchen to where his family waited. 

“I’m ready,” he said.

 

 

Korolev took a long time selecting the angle of his
shot at the apartment building entrance. 

“It would be good if you were running right toward the doors, as if flushed after a morning run,” he whispered. “Just please, you should be running only in shorts.”

The head of the family quickly undressed, baring his flabby, pale blue body. Like nearly all working men of his age, he had a small paunch, thin, wiry legs and equally thin arms.

“The shirt as well,” Korolev said ruthlessly. “No, you can keep the glasses on.”

Of course, Korolev was only satisfied with the pictures after the third take. Amazed neighbors watched from their windows: Bezhitsa had never seen a half-naked, far-from-young fellow jogging around the courtyard at the end of November. 

Ilya Fomich had barely had a chance to warm up with some vodka before the phone started ringing in the apartment. It was like the sound of thunder pealing across a clear sky. 

“Look now. Look here,” Snegurkin yelled. “What are you doing there?”

“Photographing exercises in the courtyard,” Malakhov explained through gritted teeth.

“Ah... well, that’s okay. Sport is a good thing,” the editor approved. “But you know what I thought up? They have this ad they are plastering up everywhere here: ‘Furniture for persons suffering from obesity.’ Is anyone there obese?”

Snegurkin was yelling so loudly that everyone in the room could hear him. Malakhov blushed.

“It would seem not,” he answered.

“Oh, no matter,” Snegurkin cried out. “No matter, we’ll fatten them up! Getting fat is not a bad thing, am I right? Only it would be best if it were a redhead, since that would coordinate best with the furniture.”

“I agree,” Zhenka said, after he hung up. “No one here is obese. But I am quite suitably plump. And a redhead. So why should we fatten someone else up needlessly, right Galina Mefodiyevna?”

“Right, right,” nodded the old woman, smiling sarcastically with her toothless mouth. “We’ll say you are our daughter... I’ll adopt you, my dear, in my old age.”

“Shoot, you idiot!” Malakhov whispered into Korolev’s ear. “A superb tableau: the happy family gains a new member! A father finds a daughter lost in an orphanage 30 years before.”

Zhenka, with her previous hooliganism momentarily reawakened, leapt into the hug of the lightheaded Ilya Fomich, still reddened from his falling temperature. Marina reservedly kissed her new sister. Korolev successfully snapped off two rolls of film. For his sake, the little girl had been specially cleaned and made up, and they had brought a scraggy cat from the dump. No other animal could be captured, and, while the journalists were still in Moscow, Snegurkin had asked about the possibility of ensuring a domestic pet – “for our readers,” he explained, “our bleeding-heart readers are terribly fond of animals; they will waste wads of money in their businesses, but never neglect animals.” The cat flatly refused to leave the apartment after the photo shoot, so the family kept him.

“Heavens,” Malakhov thought, affectionately observing the picture before him. “How many changes I have introduced into the life of one simple Russian family... and all in the space of three hours! The father is taking up extreme sports, the daughter is getting married, a second daughter was discovered after a 30-year separation... a fake daughter, of course, but still... the son left his fiance and will marry a Muscovite, receiving a bedroom suite in the bargain...”

Marina squeaked with excessive – but authentic – horror in the iron hug of the suddenly playful Seryozha, who obviously had not spent any time with women since school. 

“No big deal,” Malakhov thought, ignoring logic. “Do we have it so easy? Is it so easy for journalists to earn their daily bread? Knocking about in Bryansk or wherever, on your weekend, when you should be at home with your wife. So just let them earn their money. It’s a hundred bucks, after all, and what do they have to sacrifice? What, I ask you?”

It was six p.m. Korolev had already donned his coat and Malakhov had gathered some colorful details of the family’s biography (whose main landmarks were financial crisis, monetary reform and the purchase of a Zhiguli), when the ringing of the phone once again despoiled the comfortable atmosphere of the apartment in Bezhitsa. 

“Look now. Look here,” Snegurkin said gloomily. “Here’s how it is. A certain fellow phoned me just now... In sum, on Monday Suchok will go belly up. They are quickly liquidating all their business and have hit rock bottom. So, we really can’t finance this project. We have to look after every kopek. You tell them... that family there... that we have no resources. And bring back the money, please. Still, you should apologize. And get on back.”

This time, Snegurkin spoke quietly, and no one heard anything. The family stared at Malakhov in dumb fright. What did these good people expect – these people who built the country, as Snegurkin put it, but who in reality lost both their minds and the ground under their feet? Did they fear that they would be asked to jump through a flaming hoop? Were they imagining a demand for incest? Where they hoping in secret that, for all they had lived through, they would be issued an additional 50 bucks? Or were they mentally calculating – as all our people have become accustomed to doing in recent years – what additional humiliations they would be willing to suffer for this sum, so as not to sell themselves short?

Malakhov knew what to do.

“The chief asked me to thank you,” he said cheerfully. “You will without fail read about yourselves in the next issue of our publication.”

 

Malakhov took 100 dollars from his personal reserve and gave it to the editor on Monday. Korolev sold the photographs of the naked Ilya Fomich to some Americans for a profit. He claimed they were of a Bryansk yurodivy [holy fool], greatly respected by locals, who each morning ran around his local block, thereby protecting it from evil spirits. The girl Masha, meanwhile, swore to punch Malakhov in the nose, and even traveled to Moscow especially for this purpose. But once there, she met the photographer Korolev instead and realized he was her dream come true. They married and the editorial offices gave them a rocking chair (Pufik brand) for their wedding.

Malakhov now works in the family and marriage section of the magazine, Hearth. He has had his fill of special projects, but it turns out he has a special talent for arranging other people’s fates.   RL