There’re always heavy curtains, hanging uselessly in the room, with those tassels. The fucking tassels that you compulsively want to stuff into bodily orifices. The orifices of your parents. Even if they’re dead. Also indispensable: an interior designer who buys up old engravings to be resold at a steep markup and sticks them in equally steeply marked-up antique (according to the seller) frames. Hanging things salon style gives the space a sort of eyebrow-raising flair. Interior design is a recession-proof job. Design apps will never be able to miss the tasteful mark to the absurd extent a real person can. Even in a decade of decline, there still needs to be gilt work in a flat. Gold, the immortal burial gift on the voyage to the next life. If it would just come already. The constant stress is no good for the nerves. Peter’s mother is constantly afraid. Of having her cover blown. Of being traded in. Of having to go back. But where?

Peter’s mother’s story of being an oligarch’s girlfriend features tedious triviality and humiliating dependence. It consists of blowjobs that Peter’s mother gives the Russian upon waking up. She looks for a moment into his slightly bulging eyes, then slides down his well-defined, shaved body, takes a deep breath, and sticks his genitals into the space within her mouth, which has taken on an unpleasant taste overnight. She read somewhere that according to Jerry Hall, the secret to a long marriage is to constantly blow your husband. They love it. Peter’s mother does her job. Sucks the appendage. Laughs effervescently. Throws her head back coltishly. Her sex life involves shit-and-piss games. With piercings and diapers which the Russian wears. But their home is top-notch.

It’s a beautiful villa. Peter’s mother works out, keeps herself fit, squeals delightedly at the Versace dresses the Russian buys her. And the quiet contempt with which he regards her. She wears size 2 or 4. That’s, well, that’s not a size 0. The old idiot’s forgotten that you simply can’t get silicon D cups into a fucking size 0. Peter’s mother. Squeals with delight at the Russian’s jokes. Which mostly have to do with humiliating the staff or making derogatory remarks about Poles. She thinks: I’ll get you. She doesn’t think. Of her son.