On one side, mountains of tanks, years of work, trillions of rubles. On the other, ten pairs of gray socks. And the needle went the wrong way.
Waking to the alarm was hard: I’d dreamed of a lavish feast of heads of post-Soviet states. My office is like every double’s: several rooms, all identical. A mere six isn’t meant to command such self-made men as the cook Prigozhin, but it raises one’s self-esteem. I read three folders: security forces, economy, media. They advanced ninety kilometers, so nine. Burial payments withheld, we lose soldiers but for free.…
I’m somewhere. The case was opened for “discrediting the army,” though in fact for a word about Mariupol. No noble deed is done in absolute darkness. The cause of the war? “Socks.” A year and a half before the invasion, Ukrainian soldiers and fighters of the “separate districts” stopped hating each other: they tossed cigarettes, bread, and salo across the line.…
I reported the socks to my superiors as an outrageous fact. They went higher, and higher still. In the end the socks were sent by express mail to the Kremlin.
The printout Banquet Guy received turned out to lack its last paragraph: someone opened the page code and deleted it. He knew how it’s done. Anyone around could be a traitor. Yesterday the whole country had watched it live, and he needed to close the folder, tick a box, and not shift on the invisible stake. The next book will tell of one of yesterday’s viewers who sat before the same screen.