Russian (Re: Jagger, Mick) (Paperback or Softback)
Rozukas, Vytenis
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Add to basketRussian (Re: Jagger, Mick).
Seller Inventory # BBS-9781425183899
authors: a Spaniard, a Lithuanian, a Pole, an Englishman, an Arab, a Jew, a Russian, an American, a Georgian, a German and again — two Lithuanians (male and female)
(8. Beauty, terror, imagination) (Written by the Spaniard)
— How's that? I never told you about Annette? She is outrageously beautiful. She is the fuehrer of the Empire of Art, with two heads and two legs, like a girl, an American prototype. Very pretty, she won the university beauty contest (no other Siamese twins presented themselves). Her grandfather was the Germans' holy martyr — Rudolf Hess. And this is not dreamed up just because it sounds interesting.
— And who are you, to think that you have the right to speak? — asked the girl, approaching the campfire in the night.
— I'm Keith Richards. And what are you doing here?
— I'm travelling the world looking for horror. I'm enjoying this campfire. Look at those two sets of gallows with sexy-voiced creatures; the gallows creak, shadows flicker in the light of the campfire, all around are corpses, like that one in the coffin there — warming up by the fire, jaws moving, like he doesn't want to rot, moulder away ... Spectres with worm-eaten lips. It's great, but do you have any stories that would really scare me? I mean, the whole world knows about McCartney's special olfactory talents. Tell me something about that.
Keith Richards patted the girl's head and said:
— I have an idea how to earn millions from art. We have studied the idea carefully and set some guidelines. Me, Jagger and Watts, and Bill Gates.
— On your right is the Russian-speaking Grim Reaper, it won't let me lie. I'll tell you about the Siamese twin Annette. A horror story. It will be both painful and easy to contemplate. Let's have a plaintive chorus of mezzo-soprano witches to accompany the rock stars' and philantropists' journey; and as for this medley of rock stars and philantropists' — let's use it to convince everyone that only talented and very rich people can change the world. If Paganini were alive now as a rich person, he would use his talents, his wealth and his passion for the violin to solve the problem of emigration; trust me, the problem would be solved. The ideology of a hundred fun movies would change people's attitude to emigration. I'm getting worked up like a Metropolitan Opera debutante. Let's have some flamenco music to accompany my story, while you try to shave with the blades of my text's fantasies.
Annette
(Re: 8. Beauty, horror)
A church. Doves against a background of a black sun. A priest is reciting prayers and joining in matrimony the young German Siamese twin Annette Hess with both Mick Jagger and olfactory superman Paul McCartney. Special dispensation has been obtained from the Pope (a German). P. McCartney smelled some asbestos in the church, and the scent of the priests interred there, remnants of the Catholic network, and Annette's pleasant, sharp scent, the scent of the dust of eternity and a good aura.
— Enough horror? — Keith Richards asked the girl. The campfire crackles and warms those nearby. The corpses are very interested in it.
— Yes, — said the girl. — It's ghastly. But not unbearable. I want more cause for oohs and ahs in the rest of the story. I want to be scared out of my wits. That's why I left home.
* * *
The English Club
(Re: 10. Good reputation) (Written by the Lithuanian)
Fencing practice. This type of physical training activity is a prestige sport nowadays, and Charlie Watts, the drummer of the Rolling Stones, is crossing rapiers with his boss — Mick Jagger. One smells blueberries, and the other (M. Jagger) — a bit of manure from the spring manuring of the fields that is going on. This is a smell he recognises, reminding him as it does of excessive accolades.
— The shit is good this morning and the day has started well, — says Jagger. — I think I'll win. Charlie, you're no match for me.
— It's a scandal, truly a scandal, — says Prince Charles in the dressing room with his sparring partner Paul McCartney, as they rested after a good workout.
— You, Paul, can feel as proud as a Vatican cat. You sense the world through your nose. Doing battle with a left-hander is a difficult and tricky matter. You were born for the rapier. Your magnificent sense of smell has trained you to get the scent. After a bout of this sport, some remarkable smells come to you, and through the cracks in your thoughts many ideas fall through, a good half-kilogram of idea-raisins.
— Prince, — says P. McCartney, — our grandchildren will see the day when war and weapons such as cannons, rockets, pistols and machine guns will all be just sport, a harmless and safe mode of self-expression. In the time of D'Artagnan people died in duels, but not any more. Similarly, after a few centuries, death in battle will be pushed right off the menu of civilisation by legislation and social fashion. The billions now wasted on weapons will be saved to be spent on the poor and the weak, because the strong will look after those in a lower social category. I smell the future. It smells like a girl getting her first period.
— It's a nail in the coffin still on the coffin upholsterer's lips, — says the prince, — such being the blight of our time, which you can see from the newspapers. I'm talking about the emigration issue. The immigrant has to answer. Did we invite you? Are you our guest? If not, go home and get off our backs. The English Club should solve this problem. It's a fact that Jagger is more capable than Blair, the hired British problem-solver, whereas Bill Gates, who started off in life with the seat of his trousers wearing thin, is more capable than George Bush. They are more capable and cannot be bribed. All we need is for them to be interested. I'll give 20 million, to be spent on art and ideology, because I am convinced that only IQ determines success in matters that require intellectual prowess.
Jagger too, having finished his duels, goes to join the tea-drinkers. Likewise Charlie Watts.
(9. Leading the field, prestige)
— I have an idea how to milk some millionaires, says Watts. — I smell big money. It's the smell of the big porker that is going to feed many people, the smell of her pigpen, also the smell of a swallow that has flown over and shit on the brim of a Jew's homburg. The English Club is a gathering of top experts, and with an injection of 20 million in funds, it could earn billions. We have seed money, ingenuity and contacts. We can achieve. Politicians — they're like apes trying to play chess.
— They do not have a rich experience of life, not to mention education or the ability to think independently.
(10. Good reputation)
— Your offer,- said Mick Jagger to prince Charles, — stuck to Watts and me like chewing gum on the seat of an economy class railway carriage. I smell an old good-quality leather valise, and the smell of the captain's cabin on an ocean liner with ten decks. What better to invest in than the creation of the Empire of Art? All we need to do is choose a place. Today it would cost about four hundred million. In fifty years its value will double. We will resolve the issue of good reputation once and for all. After a couple of centuries Jagger's name will not be Sarah Bernhardt, but Socrates, which is three stars higher in the catalogue of good reputations. The aroma will be of rose petal essence — the Bulgarians used to make perfume like that. It reminds me of a similar smell I have in my memory: the aroma of a village milkmaid smelling like milk.
* * *
Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Near the entrance is a raised platform for the duel with rapiers. All month long the media has been talking about the forthcoming duel between Bill Gates and Paul McCartney, and bets are being placed. Most people bet on P. McCartney. It is being emphasised that P. McCartney is left-handed.
The area was fenced off and tickets were being sold. The TV companies have paid millions for the rights to film the event.
— Gentlemen, — says Bill Gates after the duel, — both I and P. McCartney have earned our money honestly, without speculation or fraud. We have collected a couple of million, and as much again will be contributed by Gates and McCartney, and all the money will go to children suffering from cancer, so that their short lives could at least be happier.
(8. Beauty, fantasy)
— Maestro, — says Jonas Mekas, godfather of John Lennon's son Sean and creator of the movie "Imagine" at the banquet after the duel, on the subject of the Empire of Art. — I know where a good location for it would be. Jews from all around spend their holidays in Druskininkai. Jews are the world's thermometers. They have a particular nature and aura. The collection of sanatoriums and rest homes in Druskininkai would really suit people in my line of work. Their talents would work for the benefit of humanity and for the benefit of their own quality of life. Druskininkai is easy to fall in love with. That is no lowbrow holiday resort. The Jews realised that long ago. Geniuses like Jacques Lipchitz, Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Chaim Soutine. In Druskininkai there is a Spring Poetry Festival, and an Autumn Prose Festival ... Druskininkai — it's a ten-carat diamond, a gem of nature. The "Father of Lithuania" — the Nemunas River — flows through it, as does the feisty young Ratnycele River. Ciurlionis "Forest" symphony epitomises in music the essence of a forest. And what is art? In my opinion, it is attempting to transmute into gold the morning dew on a blanket left out all night. The trumpets of the golden sun sparkle on the dewy grass on the banks of the Nemunas, where the distant past reverberates through the haze of time.
(Re: 10. Good reputation)
Lithuanian girls are beautiful, part of Lithuania's natural beauty. The warriors of the past fought to defend that beauty. They occupied Russia as far as Smolensk, and reached the Black Sea. They were not usurpers: they gathered the tribute, but allowed the Slavs to live the way they wanted to. On the other hand, when the Russians occupied Lithuania they gained a dreadful reputation. Take a swab from history and you will know a nation's mentality. A shaft of sunlight plays on dust specks in the air; the blood-like smell of newly mown grass stimulates those who enjoy life.
— Lithuanians don't like Russians, - says prince Charles. In yesterday's newspaper I read about a Russian getting done in, here in London. They cut off his head and left a message: "Holidaying in Vilnius". Today another Russian corpse and another note: "Holidaying in Vilnius".
(Re: 2. One of us, not one of us)
— In a public toilet in Palanga, - says Jonas Mekas, — I saw written on the wall [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] — a Russian message suggesting that those who say "Labas" [Lithuanian for "Hello"] should be crushed. Lithuanians ingest a dislike of Russians with their mother's milk. If you don't eat the wolf, the wolf will eat you. I will ask Sean to organise a massacre of the Russians. There will be a scandal, an outcry in the press, and the message will be out that Russians needn't try to come to Lithuania, because the people there are odious Mongol — Tartars. After implementing this idea we can put out the word that it was just a joke, just a bit of black humour.
(10. Good reputation)
— Gentlemen, — Bill Gates told BBC television, — listen to what my Lithuanian friend Jonas Mekas has to say, he may know something about the murder of former Russian KGB agent Litvinenko in London. I don't get involved in politics, but it does surprise me to see the Russians murdering each other, and it would be interesting to know what the true background to these events is. I also send my greetings to the Head of the Russian Secret Police.
At this point Bill Gates dropped his trousers and bared his behind. There were guffaws and applause to accompany this scene.
Meanwhile, Jonas Mekas said:
It's really true that personal self-expression is like nationalism, with the difference that a good reputation is not necessarily earned by exercising force. There are various highways and byways that one can travel on the road to building a good reputation for one's nation. Limit force to sport, avoiding the criminality of militarism. I am against knocking off Russians in the capital cities of the world. But maybe it will frighten off the uninvited guests. In Latvia and Estonia the Russians were colonisers and they continue to be.
Yesterday a KGB man expounded to me: "Take medicine — half the nurses in Lithuania are Russian. They wouldn't so much as help a Lithuanian cure a wart on his finger. A Russian doctor's heart is filled with joy when she can do some harm to a Lithuanian." Hatred begets hatred. You post something from the Post Office, the KGB man who has been working there since time immemorial inspects it. He'll confiscate your letter if he detects in it anything that portrays Lithuania in a good light to other Europeans.
The taxi drivers in Vilnius are all Russians. They keep an eye on the more talented people. A colleague of mine in the Writer's Club had a run-in with a KGB spy, "Mary the Snitch". She collected the information, and if necessary, the victim would be assassinated. Jurga Ivanauskaite, a writer, because she wrote a daring novel about Russian fifth columnists — she was irradiated, got sick with cancer, and died. Beresnevicius was also murdered just as soon as it become clear that he had great talent. He was murdered on his way home from the Writers' Union café, where, by the way, the owner, a KGB spy, and his Russian barmaids were insisting on playing loud Russian music although it was Lithuanian Independence Day, 16 February.
In the hospital, in a café, these mysterious 'friends' appear who want to chat you up. They are secret agents. A Lithuanian is afraid to speak freely, he trembles at the thought that the Russians might return one day.
I worked it out for myself: half my mail never gets to me.
The only concept of 'good reputation' a Russian understands is if you praise them, kowtow to them. All that dates back to the Tsarist era.
My brother's flat was carpeted by a builder who is a former Security official. He mixed arsenic into the glue.
The politics of brute force, a criminal outlook, contempt for those who keep their self-respect — these are the Russians' achievements. To them a person is like a fly: squash it if you have to.
We know what secret police collaborators are like in those places where there is no democracy and the press is muzzled. That is the spirit of the foetid jail. For some reason that's how Russians understand 'a good reputation'. Tell me, what's the background of their current President? He comes from the KGB, more of all the cunning rats and lowlifes.
That Russian, the KGB man with a limp, he threatened me. He accused me of having knowledge about who was organising the decapitation of Russians.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from RUSSIAN (Re: Jagger, Mick)by Vytenis Rozukas Copyright © 2008 by Vytenis Rozukas. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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