Moskau
by G. Zotov
Part One
The King of Dwarves
Valhalla,
the Gods await me,
Open
wide Thy gates, embrace me,
Great
hall of the battle slain
With
swords in hand!
Manowar, Gates of Valhalla
Prologue
“You don’t think all those
things really exist, surely?”
She smiles — not a grin but a
small smile, just baring her little white teeth as if she's about to sink them
into you. Her eyes glisten; her fingers clench the stem of her wine glass.
Women love to argue. Not because they want to get to the truth but out of cheer
stubbornness: they hate to admit defeat. I bet she feels aroused at moments
like these.
I take a theatrical pause,
pretending her question has caught me unprepared. The black curtain embossed
with a runic pattern quivers in the little current of air from the aircon. The
silence is absolute. The closed windows don’t let through the groaning of cars
stuck in the traffic jams. The candles flicker like wolves’ eyes in the dimmed
light.
You might mistake my room for
a hunter’s abode. Wherever you look, its walls are lined with the twisted horns
of wild ox and deer skulls bleached with time. The dinner table rests on a bear
hide of a deliberately crude tanning. A boulder I brought from the Norwegian
marshes sits at the center of the room. It’s a gorgeous item: a monolith chunk
of granite.
“Absolutely,” I reply calmly.
“I don't doubt it for one single moment.”
She sips red wine from her
glass. Her cheeks begin to glow. She’s about to launch an offensive.
“Very well... I agree, to a
point,” she says. “Let’s presume that our planet was formed in place of the
primordial chasm of Ginnungagap that used to divide the two realms of ice and
fire. For millennia the two kingdoms drifted toward each other until they
finally united, producing the athletic giant Ymir and Audumbla the cow.
Personally, I tend not to agree with what was supposed to happen next but... I
might just suspend my disbelief that much. The first man and woman emerged from
Ymir's sweat while his two legs copulated with each other, giving birth to a
son, which was how the ice giants were born into the Earth’s stormy night. I’m
not laughing at you, oh no. If our historians still argue over the intricacies
of the Great Battle, who would take it upon themselves to claim the knowledge
of what happened a million years ago? How did humanity come about? Did it
emerge from the ocean, drop from the sky or crawl out of underground tunnels?
All this is guesswork.”
She sets her glass down.
Flirtatiously she rearranges a feathery strand of hair. “But as for the rest...
you’ll excuse me if I interrogate you extensively,” she continues. “Let’s
examine it all in every detail. So, high in the sky we have the hovering
Asgard, the heavenly dwelling of the gods, which is perfectly normal. All
cultures place their gods up high. The Christians billet their God among the
clouds; the Greek gods used to dwell on top of Mount Olympus, and the Hinduist
God Shani actually impersonates the planet of Saturn, or all places. Deities
are obliged to live in cloudland: if they dwelled amongst us, they'd lose their
wits within a week. Now let’s make an effort and imagine one of Asgard’s
buildings — namely, Valhalla. Odin’s banquet hall, a place of unending orgies
of bingeing and lovemaking. There, dead soldiers gorge nightly on the meat of
Sæhrímnir the boar and drink themselves senseless on the mead produced by the
udder of Heiðrún the goat. And once they’ve eaten, the dead enjoy the services
of beautiful maidens. Five hundred and forty doors — and a roof thatched with
gold shields supported by a colonnade of spears. You have to agree that an
unwashed medieval Viking warrior must have taken this idea of heaven quite for
granted in the wilds of their fiords. But what about us? Us, living in our
cynical age of e-funks and the world wide Shogunet network? Us who can’t watch
television without our 3D goggles? We can’t even shift our backsides without
being assisted by a machine! The office rat responsible for the invention of
remote controls must have made a fortune! Do you still think that the Vikings’
heaven is any good for the men of today? Well, I don’t. You, just you
personally — do you believe in Valhalla?”
I reach for a slice of pork
and chew on it, slowly and neatly. The wheat beer in a misted glass cheers my
eye; I watch it weep. I don’t drink wine. I don’t consider it patriotic. She?
Well, she... she can do whatever she wants. It’s all peanuts compared to what
she’s already done.
“I’d rather believe in
Valhalla than in the Biblical heaven,” I answer in a syrupy voice just when
she’s about to lose her patience. “It’s much better organized. Every person in
the Reichskommissariat, from babies to old women, has a military rank. This is
perfectly logical, considering that only an Einherjar
can enter Valhalla: a warrior who has died in combat, sword still in hand.
Admittedly these rules can sometime have the most funny consequences. Even bus
conductors are considered a military unit and have their own system of ranks. A
bakery manager receives the rank of a Subaltern Baked of Products and wears
special black collar insignia shaped as ears of wheat. Even gynecologists have
been made into a Sonderkommando unit complete with a coat of arms depicting a
naked Valkyrie revealing her heart in her hands.”
“This is something I could
never understand,” she interrupts me. “Why heart?”
“What else should she reveal?”
I reply meekly.
She turns red, pretending to
play with her wine.
“Everyone wants to go to
heaven. This is a prerequisite for our existence,” I press the napkin to my
lips. “Behave, and you’ll be rewarded. Valhalla makes it so much simpler. No
need to fast and pray. All you need to do is kill and die in battle. This isn’t
just what the Vikings think. Muslims believe this too. Or are you uncomfortable
about Heiðrún the goat? She doesn’t need to be there after all. I’m quite
prepared to allow the existence of a modified version of Valhalla. In this day
and age it can be refurbished and turned into anything. Even a sushi bar.”
She empties her glass in one
gulp. The twinkle in her eyes expires. “In any case, the Führer isn’t in
Valhalla!” she enunciates. “If he's anywhere, then he’s in hell!”
Unhurriedly I dunk the meat
into sweet mustard and drag it around my plate. “Our whole life is hell,” I
explain with a polite smile. “And the only way to escape it is by dying. If our
priests are to be believed, the Führer is busy enjoying Sæhrímnir steaks even
as we speak. I know, I know. He didn’t die sword in hand. But what difference
does it make? At the moment, the Führer is a trademark, not the nation’s
leader. His pictures on mobile phones, lighters and condoms — all this is a
marketing ploy. No one’s going to sacrifice their lives for him these days.
They might do so if the price is right, provided it’s in yen. Or even Reichsmarks.
Alas! All these office rats are unlikely to ever see Valhalla.”
I give the wurstsalat its due:
the good old combination of sausages, potatoes and a dash of mayonnaise. I
increasingly get the impression that there’s something perverse about our dinner
— indecent even. Still I like it. And so, I believe, does she. The Führer? It’s
not so simple, either. Even the wisest of our priests admit it, those who were
interned in Norwegian caves. The Führer died on October 20 1942 during a parade
at the Nibelung Square celebrating the first anniversary of his armies’
victorious entry into the capital of Russland. A lone terrorist driving a
truckful of explosives smashed it into the stands by the walls of the Kremlin.
Instead of a sword, the Führer was holding a small stack of paper as he
delivered one of his fiery speeches. Within a split second, the entire upper
echelon of the Third Reich disintegrated in the blast. There wasn’t as much as
a single molecule left of them. The Führer took a fast train to Valhalla in the
company of Himmler, Bormann, Muller, Goebbels and Goering. I remember a little
blond guy in the Higher Theological College ask simple-heartedly, “Do office
workers like Reichsleiter Bormann go to Valhalla too?” They kicked the kid out
of school on the spot. From what I heard, he became a street sausage vendor.
“Had I not believed in
Valhalla, I’d have never become Odin's priest,” I continue, looking her in the
eye. “Spirituality is unpopular there days. It’s easier to put the Führer’s
portraits on lighters — Japanese tourists buy them like they’re going out of
style. Or get a job at the Institute for the Research of Aryan Origins, that’s
something quite popular with girls your age. You spend five years as a hermit
at the Mount Kailash archeological digs in Tibet searching for the first Aryan
sites. Barley cakes, yak butter tea and tons of enlightment. But personally, I
wholeheartedly believe in Viking rituals — and not just because they make part
of the Reich’s official religion. Go see Trondheim, it’s no less impressive
than Jerusalem. The goat is nothing, after all. Not when you think of all
Christianity’s goofs.”
She doesn’t say anything. She
doesn’t even look my way. She must have taken offence. How are you supposed to
talk about anything with the Schwarzkopfs? They're not open to discussion. The
moment you say something that contradicts their point of view, they sulk and
pout their lips.
The girl reaches for the
remote she’s so passionately condemned just a moment ago and thoughtlessly
clicks the TV on.
A commercial break. Whenever
you switch it on, it’s always advertisements.
“Konnichiwa! Want to be sure you’re part of the master race?” a
juicy kimono-clad blonde inquires from the screen. “Our Sony computers know if
you’re an Aryan. They require a DNA sample to boot up. Our Sakura Operating
System is now available in Russisch.”
Unfortunately, the only two
things the Reich is good at making are sausages and missiles. All the rest is
made in Japan. White goods, brown goods, fountain pens even. The Nippon koku is so popular that every
Fräulein[i] worth
her salt has had an eyelid job to give her gaze an Asian slant. Japanese food
is everywhere. You get served wasabi even with your beer and sausages. Outdoor
advertising has more fancy Japanese characters than normal Gothic letters.
Slowly and smoothly, the Reich is being devoured by the Teikoku — the Empire. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day we began
addressing the Führer as the Mikado!
I sense it’s time to break the
silence. “You need some rest. Allow me to accompany you.”
She lays the napkin on the
table.
We head for the bedroom. A
black color scheme. The wallpaper pattern is that of crossed battleaxes. The
interior designer sought inspiration in Viking caves. Well, admittedly he
succeeded. I can even sense a whiff of dampness in the air — but most likely, I
have the aircon to thank for that. The girl doesn’t like it here, I know. The
Schwarzkopfs don’t appreciate living in style. Well, I’m sorry. She has no
choice.
I tactfully turn away from the
king-size bed while she removes her dress and dons pajamas. I’m sure she wants
me to turn round; but I can control myself.
“Good night,” she whispers
listlessly and slides under the quilt.
“Sleep tight,” I say as I cuff
her wrist to the headrest.
She doesn’t react. Her
eyelashes are lowered.
“You need to understand,” I
heave a sad sigh. “This is for your own good.”
Quietly I close the door, lock
it and place the key in my pocket. A camera eye glows in the room. I may not be
there but I can see everything my prisoner is up to. I’m not talking about
masturbation. Whenever this happens, I switch off the monitor — you can’t even
imagine what a woman can do with only one free hand — and listen to her groans
in the speakers. Sometimes I get the impression that she does it not so much
for her own pleasure but in order to seduce me. Which woman would refuse to
spend a night with a priest — even a pagan priest? At first, when her two
shoulder wounds were still raw, the girl tried to free herself but only managed
to scrape her handcuffed wrist. Now she’s okay but still I shouldn’t be too
lax. She’s wrapped herself in the quilt — asleep, hopefully.
Excellent. I have terrible
vertigo.
It takes me a quarter of an
hour to heat up the Norse boulder with red-hot embers. It’s so hot I feel like
a kitchen cook. I reach for the knife. Its steel is cool against my skin. I ran
it across the flat of my hand. Blood drips onto the granite, sizzling and
bubbling, streaking the runes brown. My nostrils quiver, taking in the pungent
smell of a slaughterhouse.
Pain enters my head. My skin
prickles with electric discharges. My eyes fill with white flashes. I can see
something but I can’t quite make out what it is. Just some spine-chilling
outlines.
It’s all right. I have these
fits sometimes. It’ll be over in a couple of minutes.
Chapter One
The airspace of Russland, near the city of Sochi
Pavel didn’t know what to do
with himself. The old Junkers airliner on a LuftStern flight from Hong Kong to
Moskau was packed solid and shuddered in the air like a streetcar. The
threadbare economy class seats; the stomach-wrenching stench of microwaved
meals; the air hostesses with martyr’s smiles on their faces, their unyielding
legs swollen from long hours of flight... he’d seen it all on his business trips.
He leafed through a magazine,
then listened to the music in his earphones. Doing nothing for ten hours on end
could be really exhausting. He couldn’t sleep: the seat was too hard and
uncomfortable.
Come to think of it, this time
he was really unlucky with his seat.
He’d got to sit in the middle.
The window seat (to his left) and the one by the aisle (to his right) were
taken by two elderly Japanese. An old man and an old lady. Both wearing those
panama hats so beloved by Japanese tourists worldwide, floral-pattern shirts
and matching pants. For some reason, they reminded him of two lapdogs, useless
and goofy. Plus the cameras, of course. They had even taken a picture of
themselves in the plane's bathroom.
The old boy absent-mindedly
opened a colorful leaflet and peered at its title through his glasses,
Visit
Lake Baikal, gem of the Reich!
Tourism operations to Moskau
had shrunk 50% over the last couple of years, and so had the reichsmark in
comparison to the yen. Japanese tourists were the only hope the Kommissariat
had left. Where else was it supposed to get the money from? Industry was on its
last legs. St. Petersburg (or should we call it Peterstadt now?) was flooded
every summer with groups from the Nippon koku, complete with their panama hats.
Tourist guides were run off their feet taking them from Salvador Dali’s statue
of the Führer all the way to Peterhof and street markets offering
swastika-decorated Easter eggs. No one really cared that Operation Barbarossa
of July 22 1940 had initially intended to raze St. Petersburg to the ground.
There had even been some sort of blueprint detailing the whole procedure. Never
mind St. Petersburg! The same Operation Barbarossa had planned to flood Moscow
and turn it into a water reserve. They’d had some sick imagination, really. No
one would admit this but in fact it felt like half the Führer’s entourage had
been high on LSD.
The Japanese guy turned the
page to the next picture. Palm trees and seaside. A girl in a swimsuit stood on
a sandy beach, cocktail in hand.
He turned to Pavel."Sumimasen," he grinned, baring a
mouthful of teeth. “Excuse me. Do you speak Russisch?"
At any other time Pavel might
have pretended not to understand the question. Still, the flight to Moskau was
going to be a long one. What difference would it make anyway, if you were stuck
in a confined space at thirty thousand feet with two old farts for company?
Even they were a Godsend to while away the time.
He smiled. “Konnichiwa, Sensei. How can I help you?”
The old boy pointed at the
girl on the picture, burying his fingernail in her ample chest. “Excuse me,” he
said, butchering the language. “My wife and I will be staying two days in
Moscow. And after that we’d like to go to the seaside. I can’t decide on a
destination. Is the city of Sochi (he pronounced it as Soci) good?”
The plane hit a turbulent
patch. The passengers clenched their armrests. Soci! Pavel chuckled to himself. This guy knows what he wants. Very well, then...
He pressed an armrest button.
His seat slid backwards.
“If the truth were known,
Sochi isn’t a place I’d recommend,” he said with a deadpan face, glancing at
the old man. “It’s part of the Caucasus Reichskommissariat. That area suffered
a lot during the Twenty-Year War. Service is rubbish. Hotels are refurbished
barracks. The sea is still full of drifting mines. Kidnappings of tourists are
not uncommon. The local tribesmen often leave their mountains to ambush tourist
buses and blow up funiculars. And food is too expensive for what it is. Even
corn ears sold by beach vendors — former members of SS Turkic legions — might
cost you a good hundred reichsmarks apiece.”
The old man nodded.
Apparently, he hadn’t understood half of it. Still, Pavel wasn’t going to
switch to German. From his experience, few of the Nippon koku’s denizens knew
any Hochdeutsch.
He cast a sideways glance at
the booklet. The blue sea, the palm trees, the cocktail glasses and the girl,
laughing out loud, in her Peenemünde swimsuit. This was a paste-up if ever he’d
seen one.
...Once again, the stench of
burning filled his nostrils. Pavel saw the dead cities; the black skeletons of
the buildings. The smoke drifted low over rivers overflowing with dead bodies.
Oh, yes. He still remembered it all.
By the summer 1984, when the
Reich’s flags were finally flying over the Urals’ defenses as well as both
African and South American jungles, the ruling elite of Greater Germany had
split. Nobody wanted to acquiesce. The SS wanted to have control over the oil
wells, the Wehrmacht wanted to lay its hands on the diamond fields while the
Gestapo claimed the U-mines. That would have made any history scholar laugh.
Money and luxury: this was every empire’s undoing. The hordes of Genghis Khan
had crossed the continent from the Chinese steppes to the spires of Polish
churches, but the Mongols’ imperium had crumbled to nothing. When a warrior is
loaded with gold like a donkey, why would he go into battle? All he can dream
of is wine and female affections. Similarly, the Reich’s military elite had
mutated, becoming a financial oligarchy. All of them had joined in the carving
up of world resources, even the Navy’s Chief Karl Dönitz in his wheelchair,
shaking with old age. It was a miracle that the Twenty-Year War hadn’t ended in
nuclear attacks: the Reich had tested its first A-bomb already in 1944 on the
island of Peenemünde. Unfortunately, the air raids had seriously damaged the
nuclear power stations. The air there was still buzzing with radiation and
Geiger counters were just as commonplace as aircons.
The old guy just wouldn’t give
it a rest. “I wonder if fishing is good in Soci?”
Pavel didn’t hear him. The
roaring of the plane’s turbines had nothing to do with it. He was far away,
reminiscing.
The Twenty-Year War had
flattened each and every one of the Reichskommissariats: East, Ukraine,
Caucasus and Turkestan. Some cities had been luckier than others, emerging
relatively unscathed. But Moskau, Kiev and Minsk had turned into battlegrounds.
The Reich was devouring itself from the inside while the Nippon koku was
getting richer, offering loans to both sides. And what was the result? The
empire’s economy was on its last legs. Moskau alone was still braving it out
while in the Caucasus, from what he’d heard, local highlanders were swapping
lynx pelts for butter. Japan, however, had ballooned like bread dough, its
skyscrapers bayoneting the sky, their walls covered in neon signs. Not just in
Tokyo but also in Shanghai, Manila and Sydney. The post-war accord had granted
Japan half the world. They’d received China and Australia, clipped off Alaska,
Seattle and Nevada, and invaded Russland’s Far East and Siberia. Oil, gold and
gas — the Japs had jumped at their chance then and they had it all now. In
1970s, the Emperor Hirohito had issued a decree gifting Lake Baikal to the
Reich. Moskau girls had wrapped themselves in kimonos; all you could see on TV
was manga and anime. This was the real enslavement of the planet, creepy and
inconspicuous — no need for tanks or airplanes, only fashion statements. Now
the Nippon koku was brimming with money while the only thing the Reich still
produced was weapons.
But who were they supposed to
sell them to if the world was already conquered?
“Fishing?” Pavel resurfaced
from his musings. “Plenty of fish there, Sensei. The lake’s seething with them.
Take my advice: forget the fishing rod. A machine gun is the thing. Did you
watch TV last week? About that mutant shark that attacked a speedboat near
Adler, just next to Sochi? Lots of victims that day. And the killer crabs...
too much radiation, you see.”
The two tourists’ panama hats
rustled as they exchanged anxious whispers. The fact that they had to lean over
him to do so didn’t seem to bother them. They hadn’t even thought of asking him
to swap places. He watched their wrinkled faces: they looked like two Shar-Pei
dogs sniffing each other. Oh, well. They were the master race. As simple as
that.
“Arigato gozaimasu,” the old man finally managed. “Thank you very
much for your help, Sir.”
His wife nodded
enthusiastically. It didn’t look as if she’d understood what the conversation
had been about. She sneezed and reached into her handbag — apparently, to get a
handkerchief. She rummaged through it, rattling its contents, but never
produced anything. Her husband exploded in a bout of dry coughing and pressed a
hand to his mouth.
Old age ailments! Now they
would start taking pills by the handful. Time to bid his Auf Wiedersehen.
“You’re very welcome,” he
sighed. “Excuse me, may I squeeze past?”
He walked down the aisle. It
felt like being stuck inside a giant bee: a buzzing in your head, a stuffed
feeling in your ears. The economy class bathroom was as comfortable as a
coffin. He'd have liked to know how porn actors managed to make out in places
like these. It was too small for two guinea pigs to fornicate.
The tap produced a weak
trickle of hot water. Pavel splashed some onto his face puffy from lack of
sleep. He glanced into the mirror and cringed. Not the best version of him. On
the other hand, how are you supposed to look like when you live, eat and sleep
your job while the top office is too stingy to afford a business class seat for
their expert? Sunken cheeks, receding temples, a hooked hawk nose and eyes
transparent like jelly. Pavel still remembered what he used to look like while
a little kid. He'd never been beauty pageant material, and as for his height...
never mind. The Führer had made short men popular. All things considered, not
too bad.
Pavel reached into his pocket
for a disposable razor and gave himself a good shave.
When he returned to his place,
the plane was descending. A viscous lump of nausea blocked his throat. The
Japanese’s seats were empty. They were off on some business of their own.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please
fasten your seatbelts,” the metallic voice of the air hostess resounded
throughout the cabin. “Our flight will land in half an hour. The weather is
fine. The air temperature is 95 degrees. According to the local weather report,
radiation levels are within safe limits. No need to wear face masks on leaving
the airport.”
Pavel didn’t look in the
window. He was fed up with cookie-cutter views.
Two men awaited him on the
ground. Despite the heat, they were wearing gray raincoats.
“Welcome to Moskau,
Sturmbannführer,” the first of them clicked his heels.
The other one reached out to
take Pavel’s suitcase. Pavel didn’t mind.
“Once again, our apologies for
having to summon you all the way from Hong Kong,” the first one continued. “It
must have been a long flight. You need to get some sleep. We’ll take you to the
hotel.”
Pavel shook his head. “Oh, no.
Plenty of time at night to do that. Let’s go directly to the Gestapo.”
A middle-aged air hostess — a
peroxide blonde with the LuftStern logo on her beret — sprang to attention,
watching the three men climb into an executive-class Opel Admiral. She struggled
to suppress the desire to shoot her arm out in the party salute. The Sieg Heil! had been abolished as the
result of the Twenty-Year War. Together with the party, that is.
Chapter Two
Moskau, Sakura Hotel
A sixth floor office, three hours later.
From a classified audio
transcript,
“I’m highly disappointed in
you, Itiro san,” a male voice said bitterly.
“And so am I, Onoda san. Allow
me to write a poem on the subject, followed by my performing seppuku. I will be very careful in
ripping my belly; I won’t soil the floors. I’ve brought a waterproof cloak and
twenty feet of plastic film specifically for the purpose.”
“And what am I supposed to do
with your body? Cut it into pieces and burn them in the fireplace? Thank you
very much! As far as I know, you and your wife received two million yen for the
job. The imperial Kommandatur in Hong
Kong made sure you boarded the plane without being checked. No, don’t start.
I’ve heard all your excuses. But somehow I doubt they’ll convince the others.”
A heavy sigh. “I understand.
What am I looking at?”
“Nothing good, really. The
Mikado Bank account where you placed the money has been frozen. Your family
isn’t getting it until the job is complete. Excuse my being so blatant, Itiro
san, but how much time have you got left until your meeting with Amaterasu, the
solar goddess?”
The other voice paused. “About
a week, according to the doctors. I appreciate your concern.”
An expiring cigarette hissed
against the ashtray. “In this case, I have the displeasure to state that you
have seven days to complete your mission. In any case, the government will pay
for your funeral. Out of pure respect of your past services, Itiro san.”
“I do not deserve a single
crumb of respect, Onoda san.”
“Excellent. In this case, try
to retrieve it, as well as your money. This is the only way to secure adequate
living standards for your children. I’ll make sure that you have everything you
need this week, including reichsmarks. The reichsmark isn’t as stable as the
yen, but at least you can use this Monopoly money all over Europe — both in
Moskau and in the Reichskommissariats of Norway, Ukraine and Netherlands. Italy
is the only country now not accepting the reichsmark. They prefer their
hand-soiled liras. What a joke of a nation! They still exploit the bygone glory
of Cesar's legions while in fact they struggled to conquer those barefoot
Abyssinian savages. War just isn’t their thing. They should stay at home and
eat spaghetti. All those weekly Hello
Duce! TV shows! Romano Mussolini is just as eccentric as his father was.
He’s eighty, for crissakes, and he’s prancing around like a college student.
All that drunken sax playing of his at the Axis countries summit; his courting
the ancient Sophie Loren... the man is a joke. You should rent an apartment by
the day. Hotels are crawling with Gestapo agents. You know, don’t you, that
this so-called empire of theirs is a rather loose structure? It’s not a single
state but some sort of hostile competing Reichskommissariats. Even their
capital is alternating. Last year it was Amsterdam. This year it’s Moskau.”
“I thank you, Onoda san. The
diamonds of your thoughts enrich the poverty of my mind.”
A lighter clicked. “I swear by
the Mikado, you won’t find it easy. Yes, you do speak a bit of Russisch, that was
part of your profession... still, theory and practice aren’t the same thing.
The Russlanders are a very peculiar nation. They’re terribly xenophobic — but
they love all things foreign, especially with some well-targeted promotion. You
know, don’t you, that Japanese food is extremely popular in Moskau? In less
than ten years it has become a sensation."
The other man coughed. “Please
accept my admiration for your work, Onoda san. I always found it strange that
the Third Reich eats nothing but sushi, considering them a national Japanese
dish and the ultimate in health foods. If this is the work of the promotional
department at the Mikado’s court, they deserve being immortalized. Turning
Japanese cat food into the local jetset hors-d’oeuvres!”
“Oh, yes! Thanks to this idea,
the Nippon koku has no problem getting rid of raw fish leftovers. As for the
rest, it’s all the same. Did you notice the abundance of blond people in
Moskau?”
The voice paused again. “I
did. Everybody’s either blond or a redhead. Not a single dark-haired person.”
“Exactly. Itiro san, this is
something you need to understand. In Moskau, being Aryan is considered cool. The Führer’s initial doctrine
considered the inhabitants of Russland as an inferior nation of untermenschen, as they called them.
Substandard people. But closer to September 1945 the Reich's generals realized
they weren’t going to defeat the guerrilla movement. Which was when the
opposite idea prevailed. Reluctantly they recognized the Russlanders as an
Aryan nation which allowed them to recruit them into the SS. Moreover, the
Berlin racial department officially recognized all Slavs as Aryans, including the Bulgarians. Everyone but the
Poles, that is. From that moment, Russland women started receiving alimony for
the children born from German soldiers[ii].
It’s been half a century since. The European nations have all cross-bred: it’s
a true melting pot here. These days you’d be hard pressed to guess the origins
of anyone. But here, Aryans are obliged to dye their hair blond. It’s not a
trend even. More of a necessity.”
“You don’t want to say
there’re no dark-haired Russlanders left, do you, Onoda san?”
“Oh, yes. Plenty of those
around. But they either wear wigs of shave their heads. Those who have the guts
to be seen with their natural hair are called the Schwarzkopfs — Black Heads. It’s the slang word for dissidents. I
told you already that Russland is a very peculiar area. It eagerly soaks up any
foreign filth — but by the same token, it resists any foreign invaders. The guerrilla
movement is still going strong all over the Reichskommissariat of Moskau. They
control entire areas in the Urals, in St. Petersburg suburbs and around
Yekaterinodar. You won’t want to go picnicking in the woods, oh no! Even in
Moskau, Resistance is quite active. Two months ago they killed the city’s
Oberkommandant Gruppenführer von Travinsky.
“This is crazy," the
other voice burst out coughing. "Overzealous fanatics.”
“You would think so, wouldn't
you? But this is simply a local tradition. The Russlanders have lots of habits
they inherited from the Mongols. Corruption, for one. An Oriental love of
creature comforts. Sucking up to the authorities. Cronyism. And with all this,
they resisted the Yoke for two hundred years until the Golden Horde gave up and
left them well alone. The Russlanders’ ties with the Germans are much stronger
than you might think. They were ruled by Kaiserins,
Empresses of German blood, like Katharina I and Katharina II who is also known
as Catherine the Great, the best queen in Russland’s history. Every Kaiser of
Russland starting with Peter the Great married a German princess. The very
first Royal Russian dynasty was the Rurik, descendants of Danish princes. They
were followed by the Mongols followed by the Germans. After the Bolsheviks had
seized power, Jews came — followed by the Georgians followed by the Germans
again. Basically, Russland has always been controlled by a foreign power. So
there’ll always be some who hate it. Unfortunately, neither the government of
Russland nor the Schwarzkopfs have noticed that the Wehrmacht is long gone.
They’re at war with themselves.”
“How can I express my
gratitude to you, Onoda san? All this is highly informative.”
“Don’t mention it. What a
shame that Amaterasu is in such a hurry to summon you. You won’t have time to
get a feeling for Russland. I’ve been working here for ten years already. You
can’t imagine some things I’ve seen — even in the Siberian cities of Uradziosutoku and Habarosito which are
thriving in the Mikado’s care. You can make the locals take Japanese names but
they’ll still drink moonshine instead of sake!”
The
other voice trembled. “How truly awful...”
“I haven’t told you half of
it. No one wants to study Japanese. Women are the only ones who agree to wear
geta sandals and kimonos. No one makes rock gardens over here. They prefer to
dig the ground up and grow those wretched cucumbers, of all things! The only
things that took were yakitori and
right-hand drive cars. Oh, they love them in Uradziosutoku! This is something
they won’t let you take away from them! I completely agree with the Mikado’s
position: in order to ensure our empire’s world leadership we do need natural
resources. And still sometimes I wish that our acquisitions didn’t go beyond
taking the second half of Karafuto Island.”
“I completely agree with you,
Onoda san.”
“Sorry for keeping you so
long, my dear Itiro san. Here, take these reichsmarks," the voice said,
accompanied by the rustle of paper notes. "I’ll give you the address in a
minute. Go to the first street kiosk and buy yourself an oxygen mask and a
Geiger counter. Do you have the Hong Kong equipment with you? Excellent. But be
careful. Don’t use it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“If you don’t mind me
asking..." the other voice shook with anxiety, "could you issue me a
handgun, please?”
“You don’t need it. Whatever
you do, you can’t shoot him.”
Moskau by G. Zotov, release - October 20, 2016
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