Read Online The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig - Free Book Online Page A

bring a car around. ‘Put your shoes on please, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said as he waited for the guard to call back. When the phone rang, the guard told him that Eleyekov had said that the Mercedes in which Vladimir was supposed to travel, a bulletproof S class, had broken down and wouldn’t be ready for use until late the following day. Sheremetev told him to tell Eleyekov that they were only going to the lake and they could take the other car that was kept at the dacha, an armoured, bespoke Range Rover. The guard, sounding doubtful, said he’d call again and ask.
    Vladimir sat gazing vacantly at the floor, one shoe on and the other in his hand.
    Sheremetev prompted him, but Vladimir looked up at him in confusion.
    Sheremetev eased the other shoe onto his foot and watched as Vladimir tried to tie the laces. He completed the bows for him. Then he handed Vladimir the watch that he had selected. Vladimir stared at it, a slight frown coming over his face.
    â€˜What is it, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ said Sheremetev. ‘Would you prefer another watch?’
    Vladimir looked up at him. ‘What?’
    â€˜Would you like me to help you with the watch?’
    Vladimir looked at him as if he was an imbecile. ‘I can do it!’
    The phone rang. The guard told him that the Range Rover was unavailable too.
    â€˜They’re both broken down?’ said Sheremetev incredulously.
    â€˜And Vadim Sergeyevich just told me that the Mercedes – you remember I said it would be available tomorrow afternoon – he just got a call and now it won’t be ready until the following morning.’
    Sheremetev put the phone down in disbelief. Both cars broken down? What if they really needed them? There should be some emergency plan, he thought. Well, luckily, going to the lake wasn’t a matter of life or death.
    â€˜No lake today,’ he said to Vladimir Vladimirovich. ‘Let’s go for a walk instead.’
    â€˜Where?’ said Vladimir.
    â€˜Wherever you like.’
    â€˜The seafront.’
    â€˜Well, let’s see how we go,’ said Sheremetev, and he took the watch, which Vladimir was still holding, and fastened it on his wrist.

5
    The notion of going to the seafront didn’t stick long in Vladimir’s mind, not long enough to make it down the stairs. Sheremetev took him outside. Immediately surrounding the dacha was an area of lawn, and beyond it, in one direction, some of the birch forest that had originally covered the land. When Sheremetev had first arrived at the dacha, the rest of the estate had been a stately, landscaped expanse of meadows, rockeries and arbours, with a stream and a pond and couple of ornamental bridges, but the land had since been dug up and flattened and then covered with ugly long sausages of plastic greenhouses in which grew fruit- and flower-bearing plants alien to any Russian field. The stream had been diverted into pipes to irrigate them. Every thirty metres or so along the tunnels stood a giant steel installation with a huge pipe that fed hot air inside the plastic. The heaters weren’t operating yet, but in the winter, if you walked between the tunnels, their low, vibrating thrum went straight to the stomach. Here and there amongst the tunnels stood a bench that survived from the time before the greenhouses had been erected, as if a reminder of what had been before.
    Sheremetev usually left it up to Vladimir to decide which way they went. Today he marched straight up to one of the greenhouses. Inside, the air was warm and moist. Large-leafed plants were staked into the soil of raised beds on either side of the tunnel, thickly hung with dark, glossy aubergines ripening on the vine. A pair of labourers was working at each of the beds, weeding and picking off snails and slugs.
    The workers stopped and stared as Vladimir approached.
    Vladimir beamed at them, airily bidding them continue their work. The pickers smiled back at