THE BARGAIN, Part 1
THE EYE OF THE STORM
I caught a cold on the plane from Los Angeles to London on July 2, 2016, while on a special assignment. The UK voted to leave the European Union and I went to “report from the eye of the storm,” said our travel blog editor. Our senior blogger broke her leg. Other people were out for the summer. That was my chance for a big breakthrough.
“Travel through seven European countries and report on the political climate and local attractions. All expenses covered.”
I threw dresses and sun screen travel bottles into my backpack, dancing to Queen — “I Got to Break Free.” A historic event waited for me. Maybe a scoop. On the plane I read articles about Brexit and daydreamed about Europe as the frozen air blasted into the back of my neck. At the protest, I got drenched by a sudden icy shower — in stuffy heat. My head buzzed but I followed “The March for Europe” — thousands of people — down Park Lane. On a lawn in front of Hilton London, pretty girls slapped blue and gold glitter on the protesters’ cheeks and foreheads.
I wanted to paint my face, too, but I didn’t. The observer is an observer.
Coughing and shivering, I took pictures of punks — all black leather, eyeliner and pins, —
moms with toddlers asleep in strollers,
dogs wrapped in EU flags, rainbow banners, and posters: “YOU FUCKED OUR FUTURE” and “LIES, LIES, LIES.”
The crowd stopped, clapped, whistled, stomped, sang “La-la-la, EU” to the Beatles tunes and kept marching.
I took a photo of the real-size elephant falling out of the sky into the arms of a giant naked clown.
I had a fever. Everything around had a slightly hallucinatory quality.
By the Marble Arch a stray red balloon “I AM IN!” flew into my open arms.
At the Westminster Abbey, I took a photo of a bronze Churchill holding a giant blue balloon-shaped as “EU,”
tore my skirt and scraped my shin against the fence while snatching a shot of the poster “THE MOTHER OF ALL CLUSTERFUCKS.”
My camera ran out of memory. I stopped at a corner to delete photos when something hot, wet and rough smudged against my leg. A small dog licked my bleeding shin. “Do Not Take My European Passport Away” sign dangled from its collar.
“Jackie, no!”
A young woman with a sticker “I”M IN!” ran out of the crowd and grabbed the dog. She laughed, kissed the dog on the shining black nose and said, with an American accent, “I am so sorry! Jackie loves people.”
“No problem,” I said. “Can I take a picture of you? I’m covering Brexit for an American blog.”
“Sure! Hey, I’m from LA!”
“Me, too! How long are you here for?”
“Oh, I live here. My husband’s from Manchester.”
A tall young man in a bright lavender shirt and pearl-grey suit jumped out of the crowd, “Eva, where are you? The lads are about to leave.” The dog squealed, wiggled his way out of the girl’s arms and threw himself on the man.
“Adam, she’s from LA, a journalist!” said the girl. “Hey, would you like to join us?”
The poodle looked up at me, eyes like charcoal. The clock on Big Ben struck three.
ASSASSINS
After the protest, we all decided to picnic. We got some blue cheese, fresh blueberries and cheap white wine at a corner store. In line, Eva told me that “the guys” — Adam and his two friends — just graduated from a prestigious Masters program, in history and politics.
She danced at Covent Garden. Just started, she added, rehearsing for La Sylphide. She and Adam just got married — it was a love at the first sight, and, obviously, was meant to be, with the names and all, haha.
We settled in St. James Park by Buckingham Palace, on a green, perfectly square lawn, in a circle. I sat on a Spectator newspaper that said “DON’T PANIC.” One guy immediately stretched on the grass and closed his eyes. The other one, square, with a round face, in a neon-violet top hat and a green kilt, opened the wine.
“You know, we’ve been drinking a lot lately,” said Eva. “On the Brexit night, we watched the poll results. We first joked around — then we just drank and drank and went to bed. In the morning, when we turned on the TV — ”
“Fucking unbelievable,” said the guy in the kilt. “Here’s to all of us getting a great job soon! Someplace else!”
“What kind of job?” I asked.
He took off his top-head and rearranged his man-bun.
“A legal accountant. Or an accounting lawyer. International audits. What is your accent?”
“I grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. How about yours?”
“Scottish and Greek. I am from Athens but studied in Scotland. St. Petersburg, eh?”
He pulled on his orange-red beard and announced, “My grandmother was from St. Petersburg, too. She was the daughter of Count Usupov.”
Across the lawn, behind the bushes, an orchestra started Ode to Joy.
“Count Usupov?” I asked. “Rasputin’s killer?”
Everyone — except for his friend on the ground — turned to him. Jackie stopped running in circles around us.
“Wow,” I said. “I just wrote an article about Usupov! About his modeling agency in Paris, for a fashion blog!”
“Yup. I once went back to St.Petersburg, to our palace: it’s a museum. Fucking beautiful. The Usupovs were the richest family in Russia. They had more money than Tsars.”
“We went there in the second grade!”
The wax figures display scared me so much I still remembered them: Rasputin’s creepy eyes, filthy beards, sweet cakes with cyanide and fake blood puddles. I also remembered Count Usupov’s photographs: a woman’s mink coat, a sable hat, diamonds, pearls and painted lips.
A bisexual dandy, a royal cross-dresser, “a sinful cherub” — his official nickname! A ruthless murderer… I stared at the orange beard and the fur purse around the guy’s big belly. A cherub he was not.
“Count Usupov and his wife escaped to Paris, right?” I asked. “I watched an interview on Youtube. ‘Prince, you killed Rasputin?’ ‘Yes!’”
Jackie whimpered and started to circle around us again.
“Oh, the Usupovs lived, yeah,” said Usupov. “The Bolsheviks shot the Tsar and his wife and all the kids. We were related.”
He chugalugged his wine.
Was I drinking with the descendant of the Tsars? With the last Usupov?
That didn’t happen every day. But that was an unusual day, all right. I gulped my wine, too. I felt really sick.
“Why did your Grandpa kill Rasputin?” asked Eva.
“Oh, everyone hated Rasputin,” he said. “Imagine a drunk from Siberia who totally controls the Tsar, takes all the decisions. Politics, war, everything. Count Usupov wanted to save the royal dynasty and Russia, that’s why.”
“Why would the Tsar listen to a drunk?!” asked Eva.
“He hypnotized everyone.”
“To be honest, if Rasputin lived he would get Russia out of the World War I, the workers and peasants wouldn’t rebel and there would be no revolution and no Soviet Union. The history would be different,” I said. “If Usupov didn’t kill Rasputin.”
“Bullshit!”
The other guy sat upright. Until then he just lay in the grass, silent, and I forgot all about him.
“One person can’t change the course of history!” he said. “The social conditions influence the course of events. Not individuals. The oppressed masses rebelled against the imperialism. The empires would have collapsed, regardless.”
He looked like Rasputin — a jet-black peasant spade beard and intense eyes — and sounded American, “I hate imperialism. I hate America! A prison hell house! A Gulag!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you know what Gulag means?”
“You are a white person of privilege. You know nothing about America. The torturing police state. I’m not even going to go into private prisons. Capitalism!”
I wanted to tell him that I lived in America for twenty years, but Adam spoke first.
“I like capitalism,” he said, laughing. “I’m intending to make lots of money and buy my pretty wife a nice house. We’re going to have kids and enjoy it. What’s wrong with this?”
He put his arm around Eva’s shoulders and kissed her. The black-bearded guy frowned and looked away.
“And you are not a white person of privilege?” I asked him. “Who are you?”
“I am Serbian-American. My parents emigrated from Serbia but I’m going back!”
“My mom’s family ran away from Romania,” said Eva. “I’m not ever going to live there!”
The Serb looked at her, turned purple and said nothing. I realized that he probably had a huge crush on her. A red bug climbed along the blade of grass. I looked closer: it mounted another bug and froze. I wondered if it felt good for them.
“You know, Gabe, you’re wrong,” said Usupov to the Serb. “One person can change history! My great-grandfather did! He killed for the love of Motherland. He was a hero.”
“I’m not arguing with that. Gavrilo Princip loved Serbia and assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” said Gabe.
“He was a national hero, granted, but without him, the imperialism would have collapsed, anyway.”
“Are you kidding? These guys were not heroes!” I said. “Just killers, terrorists. What if I kill Putin or Trump now? Just because I love America or Russia and want to save the world? The end does not justify means. And you never know what your action can lead to — Princip started World War I!”
“I disagree! Princip was not a terrorist!” cried Gabe. “He was a nationalist! He wanted to free his country from the foreign occupation!”
“You are not related to him, are you?” asked Adam.
“I am! Gabe is short for Gavrilo. I am named after him! I am his great-great-nephew.”
This time, everyone stared at him.
“Yeah, and my uncle was married to Churchill’s second cousin. Churchill loved his poodle,” said Adam. “Whatever. Everyone should just mind their own business. Live and let live.”
Cacophonic music boomed from behind the bushes. Eva put her hands over her ears.
“Bloody hell!” she said.
“At your service,” said a strange voice from the grass.
(to be continued. Read part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here.)
Netta Yampolsky is a staff writer for WanderingStars.com and a freelance travel blogger based in Venice Beach, California. When she is not busy exploring the unknown, she drinks too much gas station hazelnut coffee, smokes Vogues, reads Goethe, Dostoevsky, Kundera, and works on a film script “The Fall of Empire.” When she doubts her destiny she meditates on her last tattoo: “I do not bargain.” You can reach her at neya666@gmail.com.
