April 28th 2024
Lenin
While sitting on the plane, the three companions did not speak a lot. The other passengers appeared frantic or extremely cold. Some spoke loudly about their families, who had seldom met after the sanctions and the Western involvement in the Ukrainian campaign. Nobody complained about financial losses, perhaps because the most affluent Russians, those targeted by the International authorities, did not use a common airline to travel. Lenin eavesdropped on some of the conversations, feeling to be for the first time after years among fellow comrades whose doom and faith had been decided during the days of the Red Revolution. He doubted that any of them had read Marx, nor even his leaflets, but he was sure that their mindset had been influenced by his writings and decisions. Even, or especially, those, who had never nourished an interest for politics and international diplomacy. The passengers were most probably middle-class professionals, even middle-upper class. The kitchen aides and common workers preferred to save all of their money to be spent once together with the family and avoided luxury solutions such as a direct flight. He closed his eyes and imagined buses and trucks delivering dissatisfied Russian immigrants back beyond their borders. Only those who had the privilege, or had been clever enough, to resettle with the whole family, had no intention to come back. The others must comply with the call of the new autocrat who was ruling the country. They had no choice than to come back, perhaps after having been already legally robbed by the Western sanctions. Lenin had met in Zurich the founder of a successful IT company, one of the few who really boomed during the Internet Revolution of late 1990s and early 2000s. Due to the sanctions, it was almost impossible for such a business genius even to open a book account and had to move to the Middle East, in a country more complacent to the new lepers of the financial world. The art dealer had fallen asleep. He was dreaming of fighting back to Ulser, wearing a balaclava with the Red Hand embroidered on the front, holding an AK-47 in his hands. That was the booty obtained from the corpse of an IRA soldier he had valiantly defeated on the battlefield. The image of the clash covered a long range of hills and plains. Unionists and Roman Catholics were facing each other in formations that resemble the fights of the classical age. The confrontation was now made of Romans against an Hellenistic Army. Elephants appeared on the battlefield and General Montgomery was leading the Roman Legions. He held firm in his right hand the baton of a field marshal and directed the movement of his army from the top of a hill. Around him there was nobody, the art dealer was alone. He began to move up the hill, now carrying on his back a huge framed printing executed by an anonymous portraitist a few months after the French Revolution had been ignited. The piece was heavy, but valuable and he was sure that General Montgomery would have rewarded him with a generous purse of gold and silver. The Briton however obtained only a reproach for having distracted the general from the most urgent duties. The art dealer was so dissatisfied that abandoned the portrait on the top of the hill. The painting depicted an old and unpleasant Lady, not even related to the general. The art dealer went back on the battlefield and fired with the AK-47 in the direction of the Roman legions, which quickly retreated and eventually rooted. Before the Greeks could take advantage of his exploit, the Briton quickly grabbed the golden treasure of the Romans and woke up while a stewardess served him a cup of coffee. Also the former business manager had fallen asleep, but she was not able to remember her dreams. She just felt relaxed, sustained by the structure of the airplane that was so fast moving in the direction of Moscow. The voices of the other passengers accompanied her relaxation, as the sounds of the words pronounced by her parents while driving to the Riviera, during the summer. She also felt asleep quite after and she had thus developed a confused idea of what connected Milan to Genoa. A few miles after Genoa she was woken up, because her dad wanted to stop for a break and have lunch in a restaurant he had attended since he was a child. The world had changed meanwhile so quickly that it would have been a wonder if the restaurant had survived even a decade. The young lady was also alone in the world, since both her parents passed away a few years before and she had no further siblings. Suddenly she felt lonely, as much as she did while working on a project by the main consultancies. Whenever she had to work in a team, she hardly connected with her colleagues who were able to sit in front of a laptop for twelve hours a day, waiting for the evening standard menu by Hilton and a gin tonic to conclude the day. Sometimes she had a good feeling for the employees working with the client, but after a few months of working experience, the business consultant had begun to learn that she could not trust them either. She now hoped to be able to trust a former, or failed, art dealer and Lenin. It sounded to her mind at least awkward and extremely unwise, but at that point there was no option to come back. She was aware that no failure was admitted and she would have survived only by recording a last success in her career. After which she could have got married and definitely retired from business.
