June 9th 2024
Lenin
One evening two men dressed like bodyguards, that means dark suits still keeping inelegant and menacing manners, reached the concierge desk of the hotel. It was not unusual tha oligarchs anticipated their coming, or even reserved a table by sending out their minions. The art dealer received them with a smart smile and some courteous greetings that were not exchanged. The two men asked whether it was possible to order a complete selection of Lenin’s special dishes as a take away. As food delivery couriers, they were already carrying with them a thermic container and explained that they did not care how long it could have taken to prepare the food. It was important that the chef de cuisine worked at his best and kept focused on his task. The art collector found the whole conversation humorously paradoxical. Many others had advanced similar requests without such a strange mix of arrogance, anxiety and rudeness. He had however been properly trained, in the art gallery in London, to cope with the most improbable buyers, to contain his facial expression and proceed with the order without disappointing the two gorillas. On the contrary he even spent some effort on how the food was prepared, mentioning the qualities of the ingredients. Since he was totally ignorant of such details, he relied on his inventiveness to put together a mesmerising and plausible monologue. As he had expected, the two trolls did not show any interest in his words, but he enjoyed making fun of them while waiting for the order to be ready.
Two days later the same men who had played the role of food delivered in a black suit, came back to the hotel. This time they were accompanied by a more distinguished person who introduced himself as a high rank employee of the Kremlin. The former business consultant served him a cocktail because he wanted to linger in the bar before proceeding with his business. The man felt apparently no hurry and scrutinised any angle of the room in which he was sitting. He even began a short conversation with the former business consultant, asking her information about the novelties of the Italian and French vineyards. The young lady, who was reading specialised magazines to better play her part, successfully found enough answers to convince the anonymous guest to rely on her advice. He wanted to know the best combination of wines, to be enjoyed with one of those dishes that had recently appeared on the menu of the restaurant. Eventually he asked if they could be delivered to his office by the following day. He however did not proceed to the Restaurant, even trying to justify himself that he had already dined. The business consultant was surprised by such a long ceremony and began to wonder whether there was nothing more that such a mysterious bureaucrat could desire. She wished that the art dealer could appear beside her, sustaining her discussion. It was like to hold an important presentation in front of a large public of C-Levels, for a project that should have not been lost.
The concierge, or better to say, the art dealer, had however not missed the intriguing comedy taking place in the bar and had alerted his good comrade Lenin. A long trained intuition had suggested to him that a main deal would have been quickly sealed. The leader of the Red Revolution, dressed like a cook, approached the man in the bar, supported by the concierge for the first introduction. The Kremlin bureaucrat stood up and congratulated himself with the chef de cuisine as if he were meeting a celebrated artist. “Whoever you are, your name shall be the most popular one at the Kremlin. Beside that of our President”, said Putin's emissary. “Of course”, replied Lenin who found the sentence irresistibly funny. The thinker of the Soviet Union did not need the praise of a petty bureaucrat, whatever his rank could be. Moreover his name had been celebrated long enough in the Red Square. “How could I help you, Mr..” The man gave him a business card and showed him at the same time the identifier of the intelligence. He was at the same time a distinguished intermediary and, if occurred, a dangerous policeman. Lenin understood him quite well. The communist leader had personally conceived that way to operate, around one hundred years before. He was even proud of his achievements and proved that the czarist regime could have never done better. “You are invited to follow me. You cannot refuse, an important appraiser of your culinary creations is waiting for you”. Lenin found the explanation unnecessarily long, but contracting his lisps, followed the man and the two bodyguards with the complacency of a cat.
