A Kyiv urban fantasy about how real reform must involve fists, as well as a mustache and a long nose, even if it's removable.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko slipped into the Kyiv City State Administration building unnoticed. Upon seeing his gigantic figure in a torn and scorched black robe, his hood pulled low, falling almost to his chin (the hood itself had a large hole burned through it, through which the champion's furious eye glared), and holding a chipped cane, passersby quickly averted their gaze and hurried away, pretending to be rushing about their business and oblivious. The pretty saleswomen at the Roshen stores in the foyers turned pale and simultaneously hid behind the cash registers, a smattering of shoppers scurried out of the doors, and the alarming word "pogrom" hung in the air.
Vitaly resolutely approached the retail outlets and politely raised his hood with a stick in greeting, casually revealing a swollen eye and a split eyebrow. The saleswomen under the counters squealed muffledly and buried themselves in their candy. The mayor lowered his hood and blindly walked toward the elevator. The "KLITCHKO" sign on the back of his robe was adorned with the imprint of someone's dirty shoe.
“Let them think I had a fight with my brother,” he thought sadly, pressing the button for the ninth floor.
His brother had nothing to do with it, of course, but the morning was off to a bad start again. At dawn, Vitaly was awakened by a deafening noise: something was rattling, cursing, and scraping with a bucket outside the windows. Removing the pillow from his face—his wife had apparently been jokingly trying to strangle him with it again in her sleep—the mayor saw the boom of a crane moving against the clouds.
"Fuck!" someone shouted cheerfully from below. "Vira, fuck! Maina, fuck!"
“Vitalik, don’t get worked up this morning,” his wife muttered sleepily.
After mechanically tickling her jaw, Klitschko stepped out onto the terrace and discovered a huge pit surrounded by a green fence beneath his windows. Near the pit, an excavator smoked, and men with shovels, wearing blue and orange jackets with the strange inscription "OPERA-PLAZA ELITE SLOBODKA," were smoking. A little further away, a baseball team wearing eight-piece caps was warming up.
Frowning, Klitschko threw on his robe, went downstairs, and, striding resolutely toward the fence, knocked on the gate with his foot. The foreman stuck his head out.
"Fuck!" he said. "You're wearing a robe like Klitschko."
"I am Klitschko," Klitschko said sternly. "The illegal construction under my windows in the center of Kyiv is illegal! Everything here must be removed immediately, not to mention the National Opera House next door!"
"Klitschko in the ass," the foreman waved his hand. "We've got everything cleared with the mayor's office. Get out of here, drunk, before I call the police."
"A drunkard?" Vitaly was confused.
A baseball team member's batted face peeked out from behind the foreman and unexpectedly struck him in the eyebrow with a bat. Vitali tried to skillfully dodge it, but he got tangled in his robe and fell. The team came running out of the gate with joyful shouts and tried to kick him, but Klitschko threw them all aside with one mighty jerk, stood up, and said with suppressed fury:
— I warn you, the fists of the world heavyweight boxing champion are equal to...
It then became inconveniently apparent that someone had shoved a smoke bomb into his hood. The bomb exploded, engulfing Vitaly in smoke and causing him to thrash. Gasping for breath and feeling a sense of athletic rage, the mayor began to swat at random, but it was a poor effort. Furthermore, his opponent had brought up an excavator, and if the champion hadn't happened upon a young tree, which he promptly uprooted and used as a means of self-defense, he would have been in dire straits.
Vitaly had already guessed that this wasn't a baseball team, but real titushki, and was already mentally saying goodbye to his brother, but then the police arrived and, not recognizing him in his lab coat, beat him with truncheons, then unscrewed him and took him to the station. On the way, Klitschko remembered he had a hundred bucks stashed in his sock and offered the officers a deal. The officers happily agreed, stopped the van, took the hundred bucks, and tried to beat Vitaly again, but he had already seized the trunk of a young tree, which had been entered into the case as evidence, and, having broken the spine of a young sergeant, he escaped his pursuers through the courtyards...
"Do you have any iodine?" he asked the secretary from the doorway, bursting into the reception area.
"No, Vitaly Vladimirovich," the secretary replied, frightened. "But Shkiryak came by this morning and gave you a fire extinguisher."
"Just don't even think about putting anything out with it," Klitschko said sullenly. "Who the hell knows what's inside."
Entering his office, the mayor took off his hood, washed himself with cold water, went to the closet and carefully knocked on its door with a stick, holding it in his outstretched hand.
"Hey, is anyone there?" he asked cautiously.
"And how would you like it?" they said grumpily from the closet.
“I would like illegal construction to stop in Kyiv,” Klitschko admitted, “at least near my house.”
"Ha," said Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groysman, emerging from the closet. "Wishful thinking isn't enough. We should at least install free Wi-Fi in the trams."
Groysman brushed a non-existent rat off the sleeve of his immaculately ironed jacket and casually sat down on the windowsill, having first spread a snow-white handkerchief on it.
"It's kind of awkward here," he said, looking around the office greedily. "And you look a bit unkempt yourself, you were in a fight again. You had a fight with your brother, I bet? Are you drinking?"
"Don't pry into my soul," Klitschko snapped, fiddling with his stick. "It's none of your business. Why did you even come here?"
"I want to help you," Groysman said, pressing his hands to his chest with feeling. "By God, I do. The burden of being Kyiv's mayor is too heavy for you, Vitaliy. I watched you suffer, and then I thought: that's it, I can't watch anymore, I have to help our champion. Let our champion, I thought, go back to big-time sports to beat the punching bag, or to the ATO, for example, with the UDAR battalion. Sounds good, huh?"
“Huh?” Klitschko asked, alarmed.
"Well, I was just saying that for effect," Groysman clarified reassuringly. "And I would, as they say, take on a heavy cross for you..."
"Are you planning to run for mayor of Kyiv?" Klitschko asked suspiciously.
"Me?!" the speaker was horrified. "No! I mean, yes. How did you find out?"
Klitschko grinned with the air of a man who has seen life.
"I have a new candidate crawling out of the closet almost every day," he said bitterly. "And they're all populists who don't understand the problems of a modern European metropolis, let alone how to see tomorrow from yesterday. Take, for example, the problem of illegal construction. What would the famous Mayor Giuliani do in my place?"
"Giuliani?" Groysman drawled thoughtfully. "Well, I think Giuliani and I would put a dancing fountain on Khreshchatyk and run a tram with Wi-Fi around it."
"Who would give you money for the fountain?" Klitschko pointed his stick sternly at him.
"And Pyotr Alekseevich Po... Po... would have given us the money for the fountain, so what, someone would have given it!" Groysman said uncertainly.
"You're all fighting the consequences, not the investigation," Klitschko shook his head. "A European city needs European reforms."
“I don’t know of a better reform than a dancing fountain,” Groysman said stubbornly.
"I know," Klitschko raised his finger. "That's exactly why I'm the mayor of the capital, and you're a shameful, downtrodden speaker who dreams of disappearing anywhere."
Groysman blushed, opened his mouth angrily, and then, after thinking, closed it. Klitschko gave him a condescending look.
"Do you know a Georgian?" he asked matter-of-factly.
"Georgian?" Groysman muttered. "Why?"
"I need a reformist Georgian," Klitschko explained patiently. "That's what everyone does. When you want everyone to leave you alone, you pick some Georgian, appoint him as a reform advisor, and then do whatever you want—beat him, steal him, fuck his geese... Well, I'm exaggerating, of course," the mayor corrected himself, embarrassed.
“Of course,” Groysman said, looking at Klitschko with a strange look.
"And the Georgian is developing reforms!" Klitschko concluded triumphantly.
"Did you come up with that yourself?" Groysman asked gloomily.
"Aha," Klitschko beamed. "So, do you have a Georgian in mind?"
"No, I'm looking for them myself," the speaker said even more gloomily. "You think you're the only one so smart? Where are we supposed to find so many Georgians?"
Klitschko scratched the bump on his forehead with a stick in disappointment.
"Damn, what can we do? No one but a Georgian can deal with these illegal buildings," he said in a dejected voice.
At that moment there was a knock on the office door and a Georgian entered the room.
The Georgian was armed with a huge mustache, a long, curved nose, an airport cap, and a dagger on his belt. In his hand, he held a ram's horn and a folder with the inscription, "Ryforma, huh?"
"Komarzhopa, genatsvale," he said joyfully. "Satsebeli-pirosmani! We're making fish forms, who needs fish forms?"
"Me!" Klitschko and Groysman exclaimed in unison.
"Oh, great!" the Georgian rejoiced. "We'll drink, we'll have fun, geese... No, I think we won't have geese, ha-ha-ha, Rkatsiteli-Rustaveli!"
"Sir, come see me at the Verkhovna Rada!" Groysman said hurriedly. "Shashlik-mashlyk, regulation reform, I really need it, I won't offend you, sir!"
"Regulations?" the Georgian grimaced contemptuously. "No, that's not a regulation, that's a sham, as my grandfather Katso used to say. I want a real regulation: legal construction, Nykolsky is weak, something like that. Is that your regulation?"
"Est, est!" Klitschko said excitedly.
"Well, that's good!" the Georgian beamed. "I really like, you know, legal construction, Saperavi-Gvartsiteli!"
Groysman gave Klitschko an envious look and silently left the office, slamming the door loudly.
“Go, go, you fucking competitor,” Vitaly said after him with glee.
Meanwhile, the Georgian, like a hostess, took glasses from the cupboard and began pouring chacha into them from a horn.
"Let's drink to the ryform, how your eyes are shining right now!" he proclaimed, loudly clinking glasses with the mayor. "Let a tear of joy drizzle over you, Kandelaki-khachapuri!"
"You're not Georgian, are you?" Klitschko asked gloomily.
"Well, I'm not Georgian," said Igor Nikonov, First Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration, looking down and removing his enormous silicone nose with a mustache glued to it. "But I know all about illegal construction, believe me, my dear!"
"I believe you, my friend," Klitschko said firmly. "Listen, I'm appointing you as my advisor on reformist plans. So what, Georgians? We've seen those Georgians before, all show and no action."
"Yes," Nikonov agreed, putting his mustachioed nose back on. "And you, my dear, please accept my first uniform as a gift."
"Great," Klitschko rejoiced. "Illegal construction?"
"Absolutely legal," Nikonov nodded solemnly. "The retail and office residential complex 'Khryshchatyk-City Hall Elite Plaza Roshen'!"
"Roshen?" Klitschko frowned.
"What kind of a reform is this without Roshen these days?" Nikonov shrugged.
Klitschko chuckled thoughtfully and, putting his hands behind his back, walked over to the window.
It was getting dark. A green fence had already been erected in the middle of Khreshchatyk. Beyond the fence, excavators were digging a hole, around which men with shovels were smoking. Nearby, a baseball team was warming up. Reforms were moving forward, slowly but surely.
Vasily Rybnikov, especially for KyivVlast
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