The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories

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I am an artist first, a censor second.

I had to remind myself of this two years ago, when I trudged to the third-floor flat of a communal apartment block, where my widowed sister-in-law and her four-year-old son lived. She answered the door with a thin frown of surprise. She wasn’t expecting me. We had never met.

“My name is Roman Osipovich Markin,” I said. “The brother of your husband.”

She nodded and ran her hand along the worn pleat of a gray skirt as she stood aside to allow me in. If the mention of Vaska startled her, she hid it well. She wore a blond blouse with auburn buttons. The comb lines grooving her damp dark hair looked drawn on by charcoal pencil.

A boy was slumped into the divan’s mid-cushion sag. My nephew, I supposed. For his sake, I hoped he took after his mother.

“I don’t know what my brother has told you,” I began, “but I work in the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. Are you familiar with the job?”

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