Monumental Propaganda by Vladímir Voinóvich

but for your own.”
    She had taken the doctor’s advice seriously and more or less tried to stick to it, but at the sight of Baldie’s portrait she was unable to control herself, and once again she began shaking as though she was having a fit, although she realized that she was only harming herself. If only at least a part of her feelings had actually reached Baldie, he would probably have been incinerated, reduced to ashes on the spot, but there was no chance of that. She felt upset and wanted to leave. But at the very moment she started to get up, the lights in the hall went out, the stage was lit up by the beam of a spotlight and Shubkin appeared wearing crumpled trousers and a gray wool cardigan. He stood in the center of the stage looking out into the hall and squinting against the beam of the spotlight, then after a long pause he said quietly, “I have been around almost all the world . . .” And fell silent.
    â€œHe’s lying,” Shaleiko whispered to Aglaya. “He went around the camps, not the world.”
    â€œAnd life is good,” Shubkin continued thoughtfully, “and it is good to live.”
    â€œIt’s a poem,” said Aglaya.
    â€œHe’s lying all the same,” said Shaleiko.
    Shubkin said nothing for a moment, then suddenly began speaking abruptly, sawing the air with his right hand.
    â€œBut in our combatant exuberant commotion, it is better still.”
    Aglaya began to feel bored. Stalin had said that Mayakovsky had been and still was the best, the most talented, poet of our Soviet era. She didn’t dare to argue with Stalin, but she didn’t like Mayakovsky. She was much fonder of Demyan Bedny and Mikhail Isakovsky, whom she knew from his songs. She listened to Shubkin with only half an ear, gazing straight past him.
    And Shubkin said: “The snake-street twists and turns, the houses in a row along the snake.”
    At these words the boys and girls of the preschool group came running out from the wings, lined up in single file and began to run around the stage in a sinuous winding line, representing the snake-street.
    â€œMy street!” cried Shubkin. “My houses!”
    The children surrounded Shubkin, and he flung out his arms, as though gathering them all in to protect them, and all of them together began shouting out triumphantly:
    â€œThe shops stand with their windows open wide,

Showing off the foodstuffs, tasty fruits and wine . . .”
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    Aglaya felt something touch her and looked down to see Shaleiko’s knee rubbing against her own. At another time she might have enjoyed it. But now she wasn’t in the mood. Onstage, Shubkin was behaving as though he was celebrating his victory over her. She looked into Shaleiko’s face and said: “No.”
    He asked her in a whisper: “Why?”
    She answered him: “Because.”
    He snorted in offense and began watching the stage, where the junior schoolchildren were performing a Red Navy sailors’ dance. After that the intermediate-age schoolchildren performed the songs “Grenada” and “The Brigantine,” and the senior pupils performed extracts from some play about Lenin, which Shubkin had apparently written himself and in which he had given himself the leading role. When he came back out on stage wearing makeup and a beard, everybody simply gasped at how much he looked the part! He ran quickly around the stage, gesticulating wildly, screwed up his eyes cunningly, burred his
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’s French-style, slapped Stalin on the shoulder (he was played by Sveta Zhurkina in a false mustache) and called him “old chap,” pointed out his mistakes and shook a finger under his nose: “Wemember, old chap, legality is one of the supwemely important features of socialism.”
    Aglaya watched the stage, clenched her fists and, forgetting the doctor’s advice, she thought, I hate him!
    Shubkin took over the second part of the concert