The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig Page B

small sitting room that the staff used on the ground floor.
    â€˜Something smells here,’ said Oleg. ‘I noticed it as I was coming up the drive outside.’
    â€˜Chickens,’ said Sheremetev. ‘Behind the house.’
    Oleg looked at him in bemusement.
    â€˜Don’t ask.’ Sheremetev closed the door behind them. ‘So? What is it?’
    â€˜Pavel,’ replied his brother.
    Sheremetev gasped. ‘Pavel? What’s wrong? Is he ill?’
    â€˜He’s in jail.’
    Sheremetev slumped in a chair. Pavel, Oleg and Nina’s only child, wasn’t exactly like a son to him – after all, Sheremetev had his own son, Vasily – but he sometimes wished he was. While Vasya was streetwise, cocksure and cunning, Pasha was sensitive, thoughtful and caring. Not that Sheremetev didn’t love his own son as a father should, it was only that he might have found the task of loving him easier if he had turned out more like his cousin.
    â€˜What’s he done?’ asked Sheremetev.
    Oleg drew a stapled pair of pages out of a pocket and wordlessly handed them to his brother. Sheremetev read the title.
    In Honour of Konstantin Mikhailovich Lebedev on the Day he Received the Blessing of our ex-Master and Czar
    â€˜It’s a blog,’ said Oleg. ‘Something Pasha wrote on the internet.’ Oleg sighed. ‘There were photos of Lebedev with the ex-president in the papers.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Sheremetev. ‘I was there when they were taken.’
    â€˜Obviously Pasha wasn’t impressed. He doesn’t like either of them, it seems. Seeing them both together was the last straw for him.’
    Sheremetev looked at the page again.
    In Honour of Konstantin Mikhailovich Lebedev on the Day he Received the Blessing of our ex-Master and Czar
    Yesterday, our new president, Konstantin Mikhailovich Lebedev, met with our ex-Master and pres . . . I was about to say president, but he was really our Czar. The old Czar Vladimir gave the new one, Czar Konstantin, his blessing. And what could be more apt? One presidential term may have lapsed since Vladimir Vladimirovich went into retirement (and who can doubt, if the rumours about his mind are right, that it is only his senility that got him dislodged from the Kremlin, and if not for the merciful degeneration of his mind we would still have him with us?), and the useful fool Gena Sverkov may have been the official successor, but the truth is that it is Konstantin Mikhailovich who is his true heir.
    Who in Russia is a bigger crook than our new president, a bigger taker of bribes, a bigger buyer of votes? These, ladies and gentlemen, are the skills of a president in the new Russia. And where, I ask you, did Konstantin Mikhailovich learn these necessary skills? Where, I ask, did he learn his craft? Who was his role model and his mentor, if not the old Czar himself?
    So as Konstantin Mikhailovich evolves into the next despot to oppress us (and despite his warm words today, oppress us he will, mark my words, just like the bear in the story), is it really him we should blame? Or should we go back and point the finger where the blame lies? Would such a man as Konstantin Mikhailovich even be possible if not for Vladimir Vladimirovich? As clouds are the precondition for rain, so Vladimir Vladimirovich is the precondition for Konstantin Mikhailovich, the rabid pup of the mad old war dog. In other countries, he would have been strangled at birth. Only in the Russia that Vladimir Vladimirovich made could such a creature live to manhood, let alone flourish.
    Officially, our old Czar has retired to enjoy the richly deserved leisure of his old age. Unofficially, we know he is senile, and had become such an embarrassment that his own henchmen had him removed. But I ask you, when did this senility begin? Was it at his last presidency, or the one before that, or the one before that? Or was it at the very first? Was he demented already, a