The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig

me.’
    â€˜Listen,’ said Eleyekov reluctantly. ‘We can’t do it, alright?’
    â€˜Why not?’
    Eleyekov coughed.
    â€˜ Why not ? ’
    â€˜Look, Barkovskaya had a word with me.’
    â€˜What did she say?’
    â€˜She said I can’t do it.’
    â€˜I’ll pay you.’
    â€˜It’s not that. If I want to keep my job, I can’t do it. It’s as simple as that. I’d like to help you, Vitya, but I’m not going to lose my job for you.’
    Stepanin nodded bitterly to himself.
    â€˜I’d like to help, but I just can’t. And I’d suggest . . . Put it like this: anyone else who helps you out with this will discover pretty soon that they’re not wanted around here.’
    â€˜What fuckery!’ yelled Stepanin. ‘Fuckery with a cock on top!’
    â€˜Vitya, come to an arrangement with her. She doesn’t want everything, just a piece.’
    â€˜And she doesn’t already have a piece? She’s getting exactly as much as Pinskaya got. Why should she get more?’
    â€˜Be sensible.’
    â€˜She can’t get rid of me, you know. My situation isn’t like yours. I don’t answer to her.’
    â€˜Vitya, all I’m saying, is you’ve got to be reasonable.’
    â€˜ Sh e ’ s the one not being reasonable. For three years, it worked with Pinskaya. A good Russian arrangement. She had her share, I had mine, everyone was happy. Now this bitch comes along and decides it’s going to be different. Did she talk to me, Vadik? Did she even ask me once?’
    â€˜Would you have said yes?’ replied the driver. ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, Vitya, she’s getting a cut from me too, more than Pinskaya got.’
    â€˜How much?’
    â€˜Thirty percent.’
    â€˜Well, she can fire you, Vadik. She can’t touch me.’
    â€˜But she pays the bills, right? Whoever you buy your provisions from, if she won’t pay them, they won’t bring them.’
    â€˜That’s why I have to fight this thing.’
    Eleyekov sighed. ‘Listen, I don’t like her any more than you do. Thirty percent, she’s costing me.’
    â€˜That’s what you tell me, Vadik. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to water the wine.’
    Eleyekov conceded the point with a shrug. ‘Well, it won’t be nothing. Do you think I’m happy about it? But the reality is the reality. Vitya, come on, let’s have chicken on the table again. I love the way you do chicken wings with that hot sauce of yours.’ The driver licked his lips. ‘Come on, Vitya. Sort it out with the old bat. I’m sure you can come to an arrangement.’
    Stepanin slammed down the phone and went back into the kitchen, fuming. The chicken carcases lay on the bench. For a moment he wondered how much poison you would need to put in a fricassee to kill someone.
    One of the potwashers walked past.
    â€˜You!’ he shouted. ‘Get rid of these!’
    â€˜These, Chef? They just arrived.’
    â€˜Get rid of them.’
    â€˜Where?’
    â€˜I don’t know where. Dig a fucking hole in the garden for all I care!’
    So that was what the potwasher did – just what the chef said, as he was always being ordered to do. He went behind the dacha and dug a hole and threw the carcases in.
    The next day more chickens arrived. And the day after that, more. Stepanin wouldn’t touch them. Each morning, the potwashers went outside, enlarged the hole, and threw the chickens in. And each night, the foxes came and took them out, leaving the area behind the dacha littered with chewed chicken carcases, where they began to rot in the grass.

7
    Just as the ugly plastic tunnels of the greenhouses had destroyed the beauty of the dacha’s grounds, now the stench rising out of the chicken pit sullied the air around it. Inside, it was the tension between Stepanin and Barkovskaya that