e drank down the tumbler of vodka laced with tobacco. He held his
breath for a long time. Then he let it out with a blast. Fortunately, he
was sitting down, or he would have fallen down. The moment before he had
found the seat of his chair with his big back side. He was heavy and noisy
like a buffalo; but at times, he could be nimble as a flea. V. V. Podly
had the black curly hair and dark skin tone of a gypsy. His nose was broad
and flat, his cheek bones high. High, too, was the forehead, and
well-shaped. The lips were simian thick. There was a heavy look in the
eyes accentuated by their shiny blackness. The eyes hid a virus of a
consciousness that could contaminate by their very presence. His hairy
hands had the character of power; and massive shapeliness - with the huge
knuckles, and the long sinewy thickness of the fingers. Sweat seemed to
continuously stand out on his brow and temples. His teeth were sound, but
black from constant cigarette smoke.
"The sweet smell of buckwheat, cut in the meadow of my birth
place." He suddenly sang out the lyrics to an old song in a clear tenor
voice.
"Ex-cuse me?" Olga Shpion asked incredulously.
"Excuse me, Olga Borisovna, but I was just reminiscing, so to speak."
Podly got up from behind his cherry desk. The office of the Moscow
Housing Ministry was on the first floor of the Senate Building within the
Kremlin. Shpion had been called down from the third floor of the Education
Department to discuss a case with Podly.
Vasily Viktorovich Podly was one of the most powerful men in
Moscow. Whether or not an individual or family lived comfortably in a
clean apartment or room; or whether they lived piled on top of five other
people in a closet - was entirely the decision of V. V. Podly. His day was
spent on "cases", pondering the movement of cases; strategically moving
cases from one dwelling to another within his district; or "prosecuting"
cases, which was his pet phrase for throwing people out of their homes, or
moving people into already overcrowded or intolerable situations. Podly
thought of Moscow as a huge chessboard. The inhabitants of his region were
either pawns (mostly pawns) Rooks, Knights, Bishops, Kings or Queens. He
had a marble chessboard set up on a table to the right of his desk. He
played with nobody but himself. It was to help him visualize the cases he
was currently working. He took great pride in knowing his cases
thoroughly. He was interested in furthering his own interest by case
manipulation. With the Rooks, Knights, and Bishops - money; valuable
goods; in some instances job opportunities; and sexual favors were items
that furthered Podly's interest. Usually, the Kings and Queens made their
demands on behalf of themselves or their associates. He did their bidding
in exchange for "considerations in the future." He in effect, worked for
these chess pieces. All the other chess pieces were at his mercy. The
pawns, in particular, were disadvantaged. Unfortunately, they usually had
nothing to offer Podly from the above categories except sexual favors - for
Podly himself or for the future considerations of Kings and Queens.
odly was born in 1873 in the rather large village of Bolshoeselo,
a little over 40 miles north of Novgorod. His mother and father were
former serfs. He was the third of five children, and the only boy. When
he was of age, unlike the offspring of so many other former serfs, he
declined to attempt to go to a university, instead, an innate proclivity
for obtaining work, and obtaining money, and being independent led him to
pursue his fortunes outside of the confines of the halls of Academia.
He was a bright young man, who seemed to realize that money and
power grew out of the ownership and manipulation of land and the properties
on that land. He began working in that area of his own village of
Bolshoeselo. Since land had begun to be redistributed after the abolition
of serfdom in 1861, many peasants owned land. Some of them had limited
business sense, and limited intelligence, were not shrewd, and often too
trusting. They were often helpless prey to those who were unscrupulous, or
even criminal. V. V. Podly had a masterful nature, and he knew - and as he
aged, he grew better at knowing - how to secure obedience to his will. He
was also a physically powerful young man, a fact which he used frequently
to futher his interest.
When his father, Viktor, died in 1894, after surviving his wife,
Katya by two years, Vasily Viktorovich secured his first land, followed
soon by the takeover of two holdings formerly owned by this older sisters.
In the next six years, Podly increased his acquisitions and constructed
residential and commercial buildings. People worked for him, people
kowtowed to him, people feared him. As the new century approached, Podly
felt he possessed enough knowledge, power and money to try his hand in the
city of Novgorod.
It was in Novgorod - from 1900 to 1912 that Podly's rough surfaces
became smoothed-out as his fortune and power grew. He entered the civil
service ranks and steadily began to climb. Peter the Great had established
The Table of Ranks of Service in 1722. It was in these years in Novgorod
that Podly was able to work within the government housing bureaucracy to
multiply his interests. At the same time, he linked himself with the power
of the Russian Orthodox Church by becoming increasingly involved with the
great Cathedral of St. Sofya. His fine tenor voice, a love of the old
Church Slavonic Liturgy and old folk songs made his membership in the men's
choir in 1904 a natural part of his life in the city. He soon became the
first tenor of the choir. By 1908, the old choir-master of the children's
singing ensemble had retired, and Podly was handed the position by the
Cathedral hierarchy in return for certain favors regarding land and housing
that he could provide.
During the Novgorod period of his life, Podly decided to study the
art of poetry in order to choose a poet of his own. He became convinced
that every person needed one poet to turn to in time of spiritual need and
when "the supreme entertainment," as he put it, was called for. For "the
foreign element" portion of his education, Podly read Goethe's Faust in
translation, and was profoundly and lastingly affected. As for a native
poet, Podly chose Vasily Zhukovsky. Tutor to Tsar Alexander II, friend and
benefactor of Pushkin, Gogol, and the Ukranian poet, Shevshenko, Zhukovsky
was one of the finest characters of his time. He translated from the
German, English, and even Greek, a language he did not know. He made a
wonderful translation into Russian of Homer's Odyssey from a German text.
In his original verse, Zhukovsky was the first to expound a direct
expression of feeling. He died in 1852.
As the end of 1913 approached, Podly was poised for a major change
in his life. Nineteen-thirteen was the three hundredth anniversary of the
Romanov Dynasty. In 1911, he visited St. Petersburg and Moscow on both
government housing business and with the touring men's and children's
choirs of the Cathedral of St. Sofya. Podly decided to relocate to Moscow.
Podly fell under the spell of Moscow. For 400 years, up until Peter the
Great moved the capital to his new European-style city in the marshlands of
the north, Moscow, the third Rome, was the religious, cultural, and
economic heart and soul of Russia. It was the military force that drove
off the Tartar Horde in 1380, the Poles in 1612, and Napoleon two centuries
later. Soon after the Revolution, the Bolsheviks restored the captial to
Moscow, where log cabins still stood in the oldest winding streets hidden
by the 16th and 17th century churches and palaces. And within the Kremlin,
countless treasures existed - not only precious jewels and metals, but in
the ancient stone and brick of its walls and towers.
Podly was steadily climbing up the civil service ladder. His
reputation for power and influence in Novgorod preceded him to Moscow. And
he was considered a man to be reckoned with. He was 40 years old. Being
in government service, he was astute enough politically to sense which way
the nation was heading. In order to protect himself for the inevitable
upheaval, Podly severed his affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church.
He would no longer be a part of the choir. Politically, parties like the
Social Democrats, and the Social Revolutionaries were too radical for
Podly, in case anything went wrong with the revolution. He became involved
with the Union of Liberation, a party which began in 1903 and attracted
mostly university professors and liberal estate owners. Basically, all of
the parties were for an end to the Autocracy, and an introduction of
representative government elected by universal, direct, and secret ballot.
By the time the revolution was a fact in 1917, Podly was in
perfect position. He fit into the machinery of society like a bone slips
into its place, with a soft click. In 1919, the Bolsheviks moved quickly
to install the man who had the most experience, exerted the most power, and
was the most politically acceptable into the post of Commissar of Housing
for the city of Moscow. That man was V. V. Podly.
Podly sat down at his desk. He held a pawn in each of his hands.
"We were to speak of these pawns, here, I believe?"
Olga poured herself a vodka, drained the glass, and looked at the
pawns in Podly's hands in a peculiarly confused fashion. Then, as if
receiving insight from some source beyond Moscow, her mannish face took on
a look of strained and evidently bogus profundity.
"I pre-sume the ca-ses of which you spe-ak, you have them in the
palms of your hands, Hon-orable Va-sily Vik-tor-o-vich?!" She laughed
hideously.
Podly seemed not to hear her comment nor laughter. His eyes gazed
intently on the pawns, first one, then the other. His big black eyes
flashed, the shiny black eyes of a gypsy. After some moments he began
rubbing the white marble pawn in his left hand in the most lascivious
manner. Podly was carved out of the ancient substance of vileness.
"There's something within this pawn I've wanted to have, oh, 10 -
15 years now."
Olga snickered.
"Can you guess what it is, Olga Borisovna?"
Olga snickered and laughed maliciously.
"You share my desire, don't you, Olga Borisovna?"
Her look turned pathetic as she gazed longingly at the pawn. Podly
placed both pawns back on the board, on adjacent diagonal squares. He
captured the one pawn with the other, picked it up, and held it to his lips
with both hands. He whispered something to the pawn, which Olga did not
quite make out. He put the pawn on the table next to the chessboard in a
group with other captured pieces.
"You see what valuable pieces these lowly pawns can be, Olga
Borisovna? If my strategy goes well, playing them against each other will
give me what I desire."
Olga was shaken out of her state of rapture by the abrupt change in
Podly's tone of voice, which he made with suddenness of a thunderbolt.
"Dmitri Dumatskoy has petitioned a meeting with me. I will, of
course deny. I'll proceed with the Housing Decree for September 1 - to add
S. A. Ostavlyavich to 120 Novokirovskaya, First floor."
Shpion snickered, and laughed maliciously.
