Free Mother Russia by Robert Littell

weatherman with the handlebar mustache, is telling a group, “everybody should have a hero. Lenin perhaps. Or Marx. Or Engels. Something to give you a standard against which to measure your own performance.”
    “My hero,” Zoya says sweetly, “is that darling little misfit Voltaire.”
    “I don’t believe I know the name,” ventures Master Embalmer Yan Makusky.
    “The Frenchman Voltaire,” Mother Russia explains. “He had to struggle with pain every single day of his life. But he produced more work than any other ape on this planet, with the possible exception of an agrarian reformer named Mao Tse-tung. You have heard of Mao Tse-tung, I take it? Unlike Mao, Voltaire led an active social life while he was doing all this. And I might add,” she says with a wink, “an active sexual life.”
    “Ah.” The weatherman’s mouth falls open. His fingers twist the tip of his mustache into a point. “Sexual life, you say?”
    “Nowadays our insane hyenas of psychiatry, those pimply führers in white coats, devote whole books trying to define that superior genital love-object, but my darling Voltaire did it in one neat sentence when he wrote his ugly little niece, ‘Both my heart and my prick love you!’ “
    Porfiry Yakolev almost chokes on his mineral water and Mother Russia has to pound him on the back to help him over the crisis.
    Threading the brim of a fedora nervously through his fingers, Master Embalmer Makusky notes, “You seem toknow a great deal about psychiatry. Do you have a background in the discipline?”
    “In a manner of speaking,” Zoya allows. “I was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic by a malevolent ass when I was a textbook example of what schizophrenia and paranoia are not: warm, loving, outgoing, uninhibited, funny, sexy, bawdy, lively, happy and life-loving.”
    “In a word,” the weatherman, recovered from his coughing fit, offers, “you were innocent.”
    “Waak, help.” Vladimir Ilyich lifts on his claws, beats at the air with his wings, settles back onto the curtain rod.
    “In our epoch,” snaps Mother Russia, “innocence is no longer pertinent. But that’s another story.”
    Mother Russia hooks her arm through Ludmila Sera-fimovna’s and pulls her into a corner. “I sent off another zinger to Singer today,” she confides in her friend. “My fingers are swollen from typing the copies-to. I don’t know how long he’ll be able to hold out against me.”
    “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.” Ludmila Serafimovna laughs. The two women giggle conspiratorially, and Zoya’s friend demands: “What did you hit him with this time?”
    “I told him,” Zoya boasts triumphantly, “that Singer ruined sewing.”
    “Oh dear,” Ludmila Serafimovna cries excitedly, “that should give him something to think about.”
    Ophelia Long Legs switches off the naked overhead bulb just as Pravdin emerges from the kitchen carrying a birthday cake with lighted candles. The guests cluster around Nadezhda, whose eyes sparkle in the candlelight. Ludmila Serafimovna counts the candles. “Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—but my dear, you don’t look a day over nineteen!”
    “She looks young,” Pravdin mutters, “but she talks old.”

    Nadezhda takes a deep breath and blows out all the candles but one. Pravdin moistens his primitively long, broken, badly set thumb and his forefinger and extinguishes the last flame between them.
    “Leave everything,” Mother Russia instructs Pravdin. ‘We’ll clean up tomorrow. I enjoyed your friend Friedemann T. What does he do for a living?”
    “Anything,” replies Pravdin.
    “Not funny,” groans Zoya.
    “Not meant to be,” says Pravdin.
    “Dear Robespierre, you look like a man of the world.” Zoya drops into a seat across the kitchen table from Pravdin. “I need some advice on how one goes about getting an import license.”
    “What don’t we manufacture in this socialist paradise that you need an import license for?” Pravdin