Marilyn Monroe’s Russian Resurrection

Pekinese duck was served, and when waiter girl closed the door Rebrov asked, “So what’s happened to our money, Leonid? How are things?” By Levko’s carefree grin, familiar to Rebrov for twelve years, he guessed that it was too bad.

“So-so. But one bank promised me to help with credit. Don’t you worry; we’ll break through as usual. Don’t worry.”

“Very bad, and I am sick of it already. It’s so shaky, Leo.”

“In two weeks you will be billionaire. It suits you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Ivan, I just ask you to be honest with me. You know where we’re heading, and we should stick together as one fist. And please, don’t you trust this Communist maniac.”

“Did he find a madman for this job?”

“I don't know and I don't want to know. That homicidal part is strictly your business, and don’t you ever talk with me about it.”

“Since when did you turn into such a saint?”

“Long enough, and please never even mention these things to me.”

“OK, Leo, and don’t you worry too. They say he hired some private detective. I guess for this job.”

“Did you see him?”

“Not yet. Perhaps, I’ll see him tomorrow at the funeral.”

“Probe him, talk to him, we don’t want this sniffer dog spoil us everything.”

They ate the duck in silence. Rebrov just pecked his plate with the spoon.

“Why don’t you eat? Does it hurt?” Levko asked going on with his duck, not even looking up.

“No appetite.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you really question him?”

“When I die? Not yet.”

Levko knew better than his partner when he will certainly die, because he consulted this matter with a renowned doctor. With the symptoms of the cirrhosis of the liver that Rebrov told him once, with the bleedings from the bowel veins, he was already on the last stage of the decease and could live no longer than half a year, but perhaps even less. When Levko was told about it he wasn’t much distressed. He wasn’t glad too, because he considered himself a decent man, but certainly he was not distressed. Levko was afraid of Rebrov for a very long time. He often had nightmares with this man doing something cruel to him. He even called him in his mind nelud, werewolf in Russian, or devil. Twelve years ago, as it was apparent now, he underestimated Rebrov. He thought then that he could easily get along with this illiterate village lad, or bend him down, or at least do away with him any time he wanted to. Levko was wrong. This youngster happened to be much cooler than anyone he ever met before, and very clever. Since then Levko never felt himself a total boss in his bank. The only argument his new partner and security chief ever proposed for all business conflicts was death. In fact, that was quite a common argument in the business circles during those wild ninetieth years.

Rebrov didn't stay for a dessert, and Levko didn't implore him to. The moment he left Levko rushed to his computers and peered into figures appeared there during his absence. Today these figures, or maybe the stars in the sky, were favorable to him. With the eyes on the screens he familiarly groped for a long brass chain with the key of his Porsche, and whirled it around his finger. This cheap brass chain was very special for Levko, because it was bringing him luck. He noticed it twenty years ago when he was a black market money changer on the street. That’s when he bought his first car, secondhand Lada, and since then, standing in the street, waiting for customers, he whirled this brass chain with a car-key around his finger. Car-key was visible sign of his rising status, and a long brass chain was a clear warning to anybody who would approach him with malicious intentions. Many thugs and trumps had such intentions on that street.

Keeping his eyes glued to the figures, Levko quickly and cheerfully twirled the brass chain with a Porsche key in front of the computer screens.

5. The Funeral

Because of the heavy rain that showered me on the motorbike, I came to the crematorium later, and at once had to go the men’s room to wash my spattered with dirt face. When I found the assigned ritual hall, all the mourners were there, with bunches of flowers waiting for the doors to be opened.

I saw many familiar faces there and solemnly nodded them. Those were twenty or so men and women I saw in the corridors of the party headquarters, all of them colleagues of the deceased. Although, there was nobody who looked like his relative, or fan, or lover. That seemed quite unnatural to me. After all, this Sergey was a poet, and not just another unhappy poet, but someone bearing striking likeness to the great, long dead Russian genius. One person there attracted my attention, because he wore a red turban on his head. Apparently, he was the Indian Consulate official, to testify the transition of his compatriot to another world. At last, the doors were slowly opened, and the solemn crowd was let inside the ritual hall.

Poet lay in casket dressed in a black suit, with a white strip of cloth and a small wooden cross on his forehead. The wreaths and bouquets of flowers were heaped around, and still more was being laid, covering up the polished wood of the coffin.

Just behind the head of deceased his portrait was placed on adjoining pedestal. It was black and white, and extraordinarily enlarged. When I looked at it closer I was just dumbfounded. “My God,” I thought in amazement. “What a bad-taste spectacle!” Because it wasn’t a portrait of the unfortunate poet Sergey from India, but it was the portrait of great Sergey Yesenin himself, his widely known photograph that was made a hundred years ago, with his blond hair parted in the middle. In a deep amazement and shocked to the core, I looked around at the mourners: “Why don’t they notice it, they look like educated people!” All of them now silently and mournfully stood around the coffin, looking at the pale face there, at the portrait, and apparently awaiting for some speeches.

I was also surprised yesterday, being introduced to the subject of my job in the party. Whatever I asked seemed to be the top secret no one had authority to disclose. All the day I was taken care of by the party official of high rank, comrade Myacheva. She was a tall and massive woman with a shock of a blond hair, in a bland dress and with a loud voice. Most noticeable about her were long and red shining nails, warning perhaps of some danger. I was put in some kind of a library, and Myacheva had brought me a pile of their election leaflets, flyers and a complimentary textbook on the history of the Communist Party in this country, and asked me to acquaint myself with it. I think that was a standard procedure for all new members of this party, because she wasn’t sure of my function here. With a feeling that I'm wasting my time in vain, I honestly flipped through all these glossy papers, and even read some pages of textbook, though I knew this embellished party history from my college years, and there was nothing new to me.

Finally, when Myacheva was passing me by in the aisle, looking like a stern school teacher, I addressed her very politely, “Madam, I have acquainted with all these, thank you, but I was invited to work here. I was told there would happen something extraordinary very soon. What’s that? Who will tell me?”

At first her eyes widened like angry teacher’s, then looked warily sideways, right and left, as if checking foes, and then her hand jerked with frightened gesture to her lips.

“Who, who told you that!”

“Your Secretary General told me that.” I said. It seemed as if I unintentionally offended her because her face turned red.

“I am not authorized to discuss it with you.”

“Who is authorized? Let me see that one, because I waste my time here.”

“I’ll find out. You study meanwhile.” She turned around and almost ran out of the room.”

To the end of a day I sat being bored at the table waiting for somebody with enough authority to introduce me to my job. Sometimes I left the room to stretch out and walked through the corridors, observing the colleagues. Finally, with no one coming to me, I gave up waiting and went home.

At the head of the coffin, besides the portrait, was standing the Poliburo of this party: Fomin, Myacheva, and others that I had noticed yesterday. First was to speak Fomin, the Secretary General.

“Comrades, friends! This is a sorrowful day for all of us, because we pay tribute to our young colleague, ardent Communist, the faithful Leninist Sergey Yesenin.”

“Oh, my God,” I thought, “Why drag in the last name of the great poet, that’s over the top! He is out-of-time twin, a poet, a namesake, he got the same portrait at his head, but why Yesenin?” Of course, I did not know then that his last name by his Indian passport was also Yesenin.

“He gave his life for our common righteous cause!” roared Fomin. “He fought to the last moments of his life. His words and verse in the leaflets and media publicity materials will long live, they will guide whole our nation to the Leninist goals. Duma elections are coming, and no doubt we will win. But Sergey will not rejoice with all of us, we shall never see again his disarming smile, nor hear his delicate voice. But you, Sergey, did not in vain live your short life, not in vain you came to us from far away India. You’ve struggled honestly and courageously.”

That was a recurring and lengthy speech, and I observed the people around the coffin. The sorrowful faces of men and women were now brighter, and chins were up, eyes glistening. Drizhinniki, party militia with red bands on the sleeves, drew closer from their post at the doors, their faces shining blissfully.

I noticed also four new mourners who just entered the doors and were standing behind. These were altogether different: in expensive black suits, with grim and bored faces, one of them with his hands in the pockets. It was easy to guess: professionals, sponsor-bank’s Security. One of them was huge and powerful like a hog, another two tall muscular athletes, and the fourth was strangely both sinewy and thin, with a dead face as if cut of stone.

Suddenly mourning silence that was strained by General Secretary's firm echoing voice was pierced by shrill hysterical cries. I heard some strange sounds some minutes before, but I thought they come from adjoining ritual hall: nervous breakdowns and hysterics were commonplace here. The sounds seemed muffled at first, but then they rang out closer, and I could make out two arguing shrill female voices. Suddenly the door of our ritual hall banged open, and I saw in the doorway two women that were nearly fighting. One of them was breaking her way forward to the hall, and another one was pulling her backwards trying to stop her. Finally the first one freed herself, and with shrill “A-ah!” pushing everybody aside ran to the coffin. Dark shawl slipped from her head, but being caught by the collar flapped on her back like a black bird.

I was standing near the coffin, at the feet of the deceased, in the aisle, and she ran nearby. I closely saw the curled and luminous hair of this young blond. She ran around the coffin, scattering the flowers with her feet and fell, prostrated, on the chest of the dead man, covering his face with the kisses. In a moment her shoulders began to shudder with silent sobs. Secretary General Fomin broke off his speech in a mid-sentence and anxiously stepped aside.

I looked back. The second woman stayed at the open doorway, with a horror on her face, but all the four of the sponsor’s Security moved forward, closer to the coffin; no more boredom was seen on their faces, but acute alarm. Suddenly the blond girl rose to her full height and turned to the hall. I was standing some three yards away from her, and when I saw her face, her hair and bright red lips, I thought I was losing my mind, or already lost it. “Jesus Christ!” I thought feeling cold shivers on my spine, “She is a dead spit of Marilyn Monroe!"

Maybe something strange was happening then to my mind, but undoubtedly that was Marilyn Monroe who was standing at the coffin with gleaming eyes. Yes, that great American actress, a singer, the eternal icon of western pop culture, genuine and everlasting sex-symbol of America. When she was still alive, some fifty or sixty years ago, any man – as it was in the papers – without doubt would give his right hand for just one night with Marilyn. That was excess, but popular one and very close to the point. She was delightful, charming and most beautiful woman in the world, who, alas, committed suicide half a century ago, taking as a nightcap an over-dose of barbiturates. I saw this fascinating woman in a dozen of old movies, I viewed her risky sexy photos, and I did vividly remember her velvety voice, when she sang “Happy birthday to you” for President Kennedy, who without doubt loved her. I adored this woman. I loved Marilyn Monroe from my adolescence.

Shocked and fascinated, I looked with awe at these three faces, jumping from one to another: pale one in the coffin, black and white oversized face of the great poet on the portrait, and indescribably lovely one, sweetest in the world – and beyond all the questions very alive – the face of Marilyn Monroe. I felt there was some incomprehensible, inaccessible to my mind link among three of these – mysterious, monstrous. Nothing of it coincided neither in time nor in logics, or in common sense. The dead man in a coffin, whom Marilyn Monroe was kissing now, and whose portrait was put beside as quite appropriate, should have been in a grave for ninety years. This blond actress Marilyn Monroe was born two years after his real death, and by no means could sob here, but abide half a century at the heavens. The natural chances of such freakish doubling and a crazy performance were zero.

“He didn't die! He couldn't die!” suddenly yelled the blonde girl in Russian, though with a distinct British accent. “You killed him, you – the Communists! God damn you, killers! He couldn’t commit suicide, he loved life! Oh, Sergey …”

But they didn’t let her yell any more. One of those four in expensive suits, who reminded me of a hog, leaped over to her, grabbed her arm, and rudely dragged her away from the coffin. But this girl happened to be surprisingly lively and fast, she managed to slip out of his grip, then seized from under her feet a bunch of flowers, and then went on lashing with it his fat red face. That bouquet was of roses with the thorns, and the “Hog”, clutching his face and protecting the eyes, backed away from her. This moment the fourth of the sponsor’s Security, sinewy one, with a stony and somewhat sickly face, jumped to them, grabbed the girl’s hand and twisted it so hard that she briefly screamed, then he pushed her back, and rudely dragged her down the aisle to the doors, with mourners hastily stepping aside ahead of them.

The girl did not really walk: her legs were trailing behind, she was carried away. Sinewy one dragged her from the side that was closer to me, and the “Hog” dragged from another. I could not stand it, not because she was a pretty blonde, but because when I see anybody weak being offended or hurt, I take it as a personal offense. That's all. When the girl’s shoes scraped the floor just in front of me, I seized the sick-faced man’s hand.

“Hey, easy with the lady!” I shouted, and heard my voice echo in the silent hall.

That man didn’t even look at me; he just hit my arm with his fist, on the biceps. His blow was so quick and painful that I let the girl’s arm go, and both of those proceeded to drag the blond girl to the doors. Something flashed in my mind, and everything around me turned crisp and clear. I grabbed the shirt’s collar of that man from behind, jerked it back, and in the frozen silence of the hall rang the ripping sound of his shirt. The man let the girl’s hand go, though also losing his balance and falling back. I jerked his collar down, and sinewy man fell, with a swing, to the base of the coffin stand, with back of his head into the heap of the flowers.

The hall was silent, the only sounds heard were the rustling of flowers under the coffin. I didn’t even notice beside me the second man, the “Hog”, because I looked to the right at the fallen man. Then I heard the calm voice of the sinewy man, rising from under the coffin, “Don’t touch him.”

I looked at my left and saw the “Hog” with a raised fist ready for the blow. He was really huge, taller and heavier than I, and he was all ready. I wouldn’t have had even a chance to raise my arm for protection. I stepped back, but the “Hog” with indifferent air obediently turned away from me, stepped to the coffin, and helped his boss to get up.

I looked around for the blond girl, and saw her standing with her arm held by comrade Myacheva, party-official already well-known to me. And I heard her saying softly: “Marilyn, stop it! Behave yourself!” She said it in Russian, and then repeated in English with a terrible accent.

“My God, what I hear, she called her Marilyn!” I thought in amazement. ”The dead twin is a double namesake, and this grieving lover here, who is strikingly Marilyn Monroe in her looks, is also Marilyn!”

Marilyn was led away to the doors. She was calm now and did not resist Myacheva. At the doorway she suddenly stopped and turned around looking for someone in the crowd. I was staring at her, as all silent mourners did, and I saw her eyes running from face to face. When our eyes met, she stopped her search. Seconds were passing, and as I looked into her eyes I felt I was drowning. All of a sudden she smiled, barely, with just a stir of her lips, but her eyes sparkled – for me only, I was sure.

6. Marilyn’s Dad

Around five that day after the funeral Fomin walked nervously around his private office on the second floor of the cottage. Previously he cancelled funeral repast, solemn feast after the burial, customary in Russia. He told his comrades that such a feast has an ecclesiastical nature, and therefore alien to the true Communist spirit, and also it was absolutely inappropriate now because it could slacken them on the eve of the great days coming. Every time Fomin approached the window he looked down at the neighboring cottages, at the farther yellowing fields, then turning away and walking back, tousling his hair.

This cottage in the elite suburbia, as they call prestigious high-end settlements in Russia, was his party’s property, and was bought just a month ago with sponsor-bank’s money. However, these last weeks before the elections Fomin lived here, moving here alone from his family’s city apartment. In this cottage, besides him, lived his guests from India. Actually, this house was bought especially to accommodate them with appropriate class and luxury.

Ten minutes ago Fomin called by phone the adjacent room, but when a girl there heard his voice she immediately hung up. However now, after walking around the office, he stopped at the window and dialed her number again. When long beeps ended Fomin clearly and emphatically said into the phone:

“Marilyn, dear, your Dad will get very upset. Daddy would cry. We should go to him at once, right now, your Dad is already crying!”

Because a girl didn’t reply immediately, Fomin guessed that she, having recognized his voice, had thrown in anger her cell phone, but then with a great relief he heard her quiet voice, “Yes, I’ll go to see my daddy.”

Fomin immediately dialed Myacheva’s phone. This party deputy of his was waiting for his call on the first floor. Calmly he said, “Marilyn has agreed to go. Pick her up in ten minutes.”

Fomin, chewing his lip, looked again at the yellowing fields in the window. Even yesterday he was sure he could keep this crazy girl in check at least last few days. He badly needed only these three or four days, and after that all this would be insignificant, including this whore. But the death of her dear Sergey made her wild. “I had to foresee that! I had to!” He thought with a pain. “They were lovers from the age of fifteen! What else could I ever have expected?”

He and his party could formerly cope with Marilyn’s hurt feelings, her grief, her hysterics, and silent suspicions, but things cardinally changed today after her screams in the funeral hall about Communists. After that everything has changed radically. This woman, having cried out those words, became a dangerous and unpredictable enemy of his party.

Fomin felt with the fingers his chin checking the bristle, and began to dress up: a fresh shirt, tie, black suit. Fifteen years ago, when Gorbachev’s perestroika started, when "indestructible" Soviet Union, as it was named in the national anthem, began to shake and tremble, Fomin was the Second Secretary of the District Committee of Komsomol, the youth Communist organization. That was a very high post for twenty-five year old graduate of Komsomol University. As a member of Communist party from age of nineteen, Fomin took all the innovations of the new Secretary General of his Party as the forced measures, apparently obligatory at the moment, in a hostile imperialist encirclement, with a sharp drop of the world oil prices that fed his country for a quarter of century. He did not know, as all of his countrymen, that without a providential gift of nature – their plentiful oil and gas – and its exorbitant prices at the global markets, their country of triumphant Communism would have had immediately go broke, with population starving and dying in millions, as it already happened in the time of Stalin who destroyed the agriculture repressing most of hard working farmers in gulag camps.

Fomin, making frequent speeches at the young Communist’s meetings at the factories and construction sites, explaining the “political moment”, always told his young comrades: “Do you remember from the school-course, what our great Lenin once said about his New Economic Policy? He said, we should use capitalistic methods for some more years, or else bourgeois would strangle our young Socialist republic. Now it’s the same, and it’s just for a few years. We’ll never give up undying gains and victories of the great October revolution; we’ll never surrender to the bunch of greedy crooks and profiteers. That will never happen: we are not to sacrifice our holy principles! All as a one, shoulder to shoulder, we unanimously support far-sighted and smart policy of our party, under the wise leadership of Secretary General! Glory to our party!”

But a year later his friend and his party boss had organized in the rooms of his district committee a trading cooperative. That was the time when the government, after seventy years of strict ban, permitted their citizens a free private enterprising. They bought vodka in rusty casks made of toxic technical spirits from some criminals, and sold it oddly bottled at food markets. Their firm was registered, of course, as a cooperative for the introduction of new technologies. Every day Fomin passed in the corridors of his district committee the high stacks of plastic crates full of bottles of odd shapes and colors without labels. The piles were so high they blocked slogans and photographs of leading Komsomol members of their district hung on the walls. But the business was to grow. With documents of the mutilated veterans of Afghan-war that were coming back from the battle-fronts by echelons, who were granted then many privileges, Fomin’s young comrades founded a foreign trade co-operative. They brought into the country fake Polish liquors, counterfeit cigarettes, unmixed alcohol “Royal” in two-liter bottles; all of it was tax-free, thanks to mutilated veterans. Money the comrades now earned were fantastic by all the standards of the half-hungry country. Although Fomin did nothing in connection with that dirty profiteering, his special bank account was growing every month as of a senior comrade. All those years Fomin never took a cent of that money. One year later all of it, enough to buy a house and several cars, just vanished during “shock therapy” in the nineties when the account in the state saving bank was simply frozen at first, and then a three-digit inflation annulled it.

Nevertheless, all Fomin’s committee comrades were getting rich, and fully enjoyed it. The country was still locked inside of iron curtain; nobody had a freedom of crossing the borders, and the foreign currency could be only bought from murky street moneychangers risking a fraud or a plain robbery. That’s why all those crazy by the lean Russian standards money were mostly spent on no less crazy orgies. They added a sauna to the committee building, and every night drinking sprees, with flocks of women, disturbed the neighborhood till daylight. Competing with inflation, they bought badly made but unavailable for ordinary people flashy cars, heaps of bartered clothes made in China and similar vulgar luxuries of newly rich.