A.A. Brusilov
Grigory Zinoviev.
Only a few hours earlier he had been the worker delivering a speech from the Winter Palace—unruly hair like a lion’s mane, a single threadbare brown overcoat on his shoulders, leading the chant for proletarian solidarity. That modest costume had been his weapon, a living proclamation of I am one of you.
And now?
A deep navy tailcoat. A necktie embroidered with gold thread. Hair slicked back with oil until it shone. The factory-foreman look of the afternoon had vanished without a trace; only a bourgeois gentleman stood in his place.
“You said you came as Comrade Mikoyan’s proxy?”
Zinoviev toyed with a diamond-set cuff link while his eyes traveled the length of me.
“Svanidze… I don’t recall the name.”
He looked up at me with indifference. I bowed my head in the required courtesy.
“Yakov Svanidze. It is an honor to meet the Chairman of the Leningrad Soviet.”
“Yakov, is it…”
Zinoviev assumed a theatrical air of gravity and appeared to think hard.
“Forgive me—no matter how I search my memory, you are a stranger. Still… that southern accent of yours is unmistakably Georgian.”
The corner of his mouth curled.
“Southerners do turn up in Leningrad from time to time, but why insist on Leningrad of all places?”
“……”
“How amusing. Mikoyan’s envoy turns out to be a youth from Georgia who rather resembles Ryaboy—the pockmarked one.”
My heart lurched.
“Ah, pay no mind to the word Ryaboy. It’s merely a nickname among close comrades. I wasn’t speaking of you.”
He was right; Ryaboy was one of the jibes aimed at Stalin’s scarred face.
“Comrade Chairman, please don’t press him so hard.”
Just as the air turned poisonous, Pavel stepped between us. With an easy smile meant to loosen the tension, he casually stopped a passing attendant, lifted a glass of champagne from the tray, and pressed it into Zinoviev’s hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Comrade Svanidze here is a young man Comrade Mikoyan holds in particular esteem. Excellent marks—destined to become a first-rate political commissar.”
“…Comrade Pavel.”
Zinoviev glanced down at the glass without interest, then fixed his gaze on Pavel.
“So why, exactly, did you bring this youth here?”
The tone was pure resentment. Pavel wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
“He is, after all, Comrade Mikoyan’s representative. I could hardly turn him away at the door. I only meant to introduce him properly. Nothing more, Comrade Chairman.”
“Hmph…”
“For the sake of Comrade Mikoyan’s face alone, look kindly on the boy. He was sent by Mikoyan, so Mikoyan—”
“Mikoyan, Mikoyan…!”
—Crash!
“Aaaaaah!”
“W-what’s happening?!”
Zinoviev slammed the glass onto the table. Every head in the ballroom snapped toward us.
“Hoo… hoo…”
Golden champagne soaked Pavel’s cuff while Zinoviev glared, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Mikoyan, Mikoyan… Mikoyan!!! How many more times do you intend to wave that name in my face, Pavel?!”
At the roar, nearby guests looked away as though they had glimpsed something unclean.
“This is my city. Not Mikoyan’s!”
Zinoviev’s face hardened into something ugly.
“He shoves some rootless cub into my city under the pretext of a proxy. That is no olive branch—it is a deliberate insult!”
A thick finger jabbed at me.
“Is it not, Comrade Svanidze?!”
I received his rage without flinching.
“I believe the order of events is mistaken. Comrade Mikoyan did not place me in Leningrad; I requested the assignment myself.”
“…What?”
“He is blameless.”
Zinoviev’s eyebrow twitched.
“Is Leningrad not the second city of the Soviet Union and the cradle of the Revolution? How can asking to study in such a place be laid at Comrade Mikoyan’s door? If fault must be found, it is my own presumption—daring to set foot across so high and precious a threshold.”
“…What a slippery tongue you have, Comrade Svanidze.”
Zinoviev stared hard at me.
“The more I look, the more you resemble that Ryaboy bastard… the handsome face, the glib torrent of words—all of it…!”
Then he gave a short, dry laugh. His heavy cheeks quivered; the lids that had been raised in anger drooped once more into indolence.
“Of course that can’t be. Impossible.”
In the laugh lay a self-mocking answer: Why would Secretary Stalin send his own son to Leningrad? Pure fancy.
“Comrade Svanidze.”
Zinoviev stroked his cuff link again and looked me up and down.
“You have just offended me. In Leningrad a single word from me can exile a minnow like you.”
Offended him? The claim was so absurd I almost laughed. Which part, exactly?
“C-Comrade Chairman…?!”
“Do not stand in my way, Comrade Pavel.”
Zinoviev held Pavel back with one hand and continued.
“But of course you would rather avoid that outcome, would you not?”
“……”
“Very well. Then we shall do this.”
He stepped in close. The reek of expensive perfume washed over me.
—Thud.
…?
He thrust one foot forward. What was he playing at?
An arrogant smile spread across Zinoviev’s face.
“Kneel and lick my shoe. Perhaps then I shall feel inclined to be merciful.”
“…Comrade Chairman!!!”
Pavel’s face went white. Champagne spilled from the glass in his hand and soaked into the carpet.
“The joke has gone far enough. Even so—”
“Joke?”
Zinoviev tilted his head.
“Do I look as though I am joking, Comrade Pavel?”
He turned back to me and gestured.
“Comrade Svanidze. I will say it once more.”
I looked down at his shoe.
“Lick my shoe.”
Chandelier light caught in a tiny gleam on the black, mirror-polished toe.
Strange. I had been publicly humiliated without cause, yet my heart did not race; it stayed cold and steady. For an instant Zinoviev’s self-satisfied face flickered into that of Professor Park—the man who had stolen every page of my research and used his authority to crush me, who had dared me to go to the press if I felt wronged. That same shameless confidence must have come from the certainty that he would win in the end.
If I had known I would one day live as Yakov, I would have taken private revenge right there—something merciless.
I smiled inwardly. It would have felt good… but how could the man standing in that Korean university office have known he would wake as Yakov?
I shook the thought away. What mattered was this moment, not the dead past.
“Comrade Svanidze—choose.”
Zinoviev dangled his foot in front of my face. That the first man of Leningrad could sink to so crude a provocation left me almost speechless.
Overturn the table?
…Or endure?
A moment later I decided.
—Thud.
I chose the latter.
“C-Comrade Svanidze…!”
I dropped to my knees, took Zinoviev’s shoe in both hands, and chose the humiliation myself.
Why are people so unwilling to lower themselves?
Revenge and success grow sweeter the longer one endures. If a man put out another’s eye, let his own eye be put out. If a man break another’s tooth, let his own tooth be broken. As a believer in the Code of Hammurabi, I had no intention of forgetting anyone who insulted me. Even if the one who harmed me were my present father—Stalin—I would never simply let it pass.
Therefore both Zinoviev and Professor Park would be chewed up and swallowed whole, without remainder. When that day came, tonight’s humiliation would not even register as humiliation.
—Ssshh.
I lowered my head and slowly brought my face toward the shoe. Just as Zinoviev prepared to laugh his loudest and mock me to the full—
—Clack!
Another door of the ballroom swung open.
—Thud. Thud. Thud.
Brusilov walked straight toward us.
“Your temper remains as foul as ever, Chairman Zinoviev.”
He delivered the dry rebuke without raising his voice… leaning on the arm of Katerina, who wore the uniform of a Red Army officer.