Часть I, где рассказывается о том, как, по мнению автора, начинался проект "Путин".
***
Part II. Summer Dream
It takes place in the Kremlin, Moscow. Let me then describe the incident happened to me while there. I was not surprised to find out in the dream that Putin is me. Frankly speaking, he looks like me in some ways, he wears watches on right hand as I did while I was wearing it, his name is the same, and he walks as I sometimes do when holding his right hand near his right leg, as if there were a sword or a gun. In addition, both he and I are almost lawyers – in terms of having jobs different from the degree, and he and I are connected to an intelligence service, yet he is still there, while I was refused to join.
He was me when - no matter in speaking or keeping silence - constantly playing and having himself under control on TV. I was seeing lonely divorced me when on Red Square for Victory Day, at this moment of personal triumph, when you are eager to be with your lovely wife and children, you are surrounded only by strangers with their wives and children instead. So I have been almost always looking at him as at myself. It just so happened - he was born earlier, while I am a couple decades late. Perhaps that is why he is a president and I am a student. However, it is not clear which of the two should be envious more, given the next events.
So Putin is me, and I'm talking to a woman, yet knowing that this is not just a woman, but Russia. She neither sits, nor stands - I know that she is in front of me and presents everywhere else at the same time. I am in front of Motherland just a little boy Putin who for some reason pinned this big European suit and absurdly expensive watch at the time when Russia’s soul living in its countryside, giving it to God*. I understand that Russia sees right through me knowing that I am just an alter ego, and I am ashamed for bluffing people into believing I am Putin. We do not talk, and our dialogue does not take place through opening my mouth. I understand that I am just a pawn in someone else's game and I am almost out. I have got and almost lived another’s life. I wanted to lie and say that I did not know that, but this lie dissolved not even reaching the center through which I wanted to say this. Then I just listened to Russia speaking to me magically, feeling sound waves everywhere as if I am inside a huge bell.
"And why do you get to think you are the same now who came from der Rhein* (there was a German accent on this two words, for sure), entering the Kremlin in December 1999? Who are able to recognize you, maybe your dog Connie, yet where, by the way, is she? Or maybe your wife, but where is your wife?
One of the secrets of Russia is that the place makes the man, and you were chosen for your name as it was similar to Rasputin*, who is still well known in Eurasia, and which potential was not fully displayed then. Rasputin was welcomed by the Tsar Nicholas II’s family and influenced on the political decision-making. Yet there was Dmitry* in your circle, who was devilishly alike to Nicholas II. It was the sign, but Putin came first as people were not ready for monarchy at that time. "
"I will end up as Stalin, being poisoned by my own as him then in 1953". I was not sure it was me who said or thought this, but then, suddenly, I became easy. Maybe it happened because I will not be scolded by my father anymore, or, maybe for being similar to Stalin, whom I respected. "Dmitry will shift after" - continued, apparently, Russia, but maybe I was just repeating her words - "then events will sweep him as Nicholas." Well, okay, I thought, with some regret for that. But, on the other hand, he did well, thanks to me…not me as I was told today though, but all the same it is a pity. He played his role well and was even loyal enough. "Michael* wants to become president then, and perhaps even there is a success, but his fate is also unenviable." "Yeah, Michael, apparently as Lenin of the 21st century," I thought out it loud and found my idea very funny. "Now I even know who is the next, - a Caucasian," and I even have seen this word in the air. "Yes, said Russia, it will be so due the rule of repetition of history, and it is like an alarm clock, set by somebody else. The Caucasian will be as the Terrible*. Yet one can intervene as a thought once uttered is untrue...” "That's where I wanted to catch Russia on the contradiction, because I did not set up the alarm clock, and hence have no power to stop it, but then it dawned upon me - "Of course I can! I did it many times when in Germany, or ..." Suddenly, the Kremlin chimes sounded muffled in a strange way from beyond the stone wall, and I wanted to see why it was so, and turned at once toward the sound...
I woke up. Weird rattling sounds were coming from a construction site near my house. I was badly shaking all over. I casted my mind back to my dream and I’ve got everything that’s happened to me there. I found a pen and wrote an unknown word «der rhein» that I’d heard in the dream. "Yeah”, I thought, “if I had money, I would have probably go now to speak to some Dr. Katz*, yet Don Juan* would understood me better though. But they say he's no longer here." "Yes, Vladimir Vladimirovich*, it's high time ", echoed somewhere inside. I said some bad words in Russian that my father used to say formerly, and went to the bathroom to take a cold shower.
1. a path - Russian: путь /put'/
2. giving soul to God - dying in Slavonic culture
3. der Rhein (German) - English: the Rhine River
4. Rasputin - Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant, mystical faith healer and private adviser to the Romanovs
5. Dmitry - Dmitry Medvedev, served as the third President of Russia
6. Michael - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian businessman and former oligarch, or Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire
7. The Terrible - Russian: грозный /grozny/, the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia, or Ivan IV Vasilyevich, Tsar of All the Russias, 1547-1584, or
8. Dr. Katz - Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, an American animated series
9. Don Juan – Don Juan Matus, Yaqui, Indian Sorcerer, from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge book, by Carlos Castaneda
10. Vladimir Vladimirovich - Putin