5. TAPE/VIDEO RECORDER

A man in one of the windows outside your house will be watching you.

SELECT A MEDIUM

If you can find your way to Russia’s red-light districts of distraction tall with vodka and smitten, look for the women cooing “ooooh” in dark paneled rooms, safe-housed and exhausted enough to channel Death. Look for the woman lifting an uncoupled breast to the camera in a room without windows. If you can hear the mechanical hum of the soul seeping out of her body, she’s the medium you should use.

SUMMON THE SPIRIT

Begin by joining hands with the people on either side of you and closing your eyes. (A certain nobility is implicit in saying what I don’t believe and hoping you believe it.) No door will open without creaking. Drugs help and are easy to use but hard to acquire. I have two hands and they are not as similar as they seem.

POSSIBLE PASTIMES OF VLADIMIR IN THE AFTERLIFE

VLADIMIR COUNTING PAPER CLIPS

VLADIMIR DRIVING A NIGHT ROAD IN A WINDSTORM

VLADIMIR DREAMING OF ARROWS

VLADIMIR READING A BOOK ABOUT FLYING

VLADIMIR AT THE FOOT OF A MOUNTAIN

VLADIMIR IN A TIME MACHINE

VLADIMIR IN A STEEL MILL

VLADIMIR EAVESDROPPING ON CHEKHOV AND ARISTOTLE

VLADIMIR LEANING ON A TELEPHONE POLE

VLADIMIR AS A MATRYOSHKA NESTING DOLL

VLADIMIR WITH A GUN IN HIS MOUTH

VLADIMIR HAUNTING YOUR MOTHER

IF YOU’RE LUCKY

Six hours later Vladimir might say hello. [Vladimir’s voice is thin and breathless as though he has just run up a steep flight of stairs.] The light on Vladimir is thick and elegiac. You are, indeed, in the company of the dead and chatting with the dead.

[Enter Vladimir in a trench coat. He fishes in his pockets for something, removing assorted articles: a beer bottle, a wristwatch, ticket stubs, at least half a dozen keys, a drumstick, eyeglasses, a tube of toothpaste. When his pockets are empty, he removes the coat and scratches his head, pondering in the nude.]

Vladimir may appear to have been drinking. The glow of his jaws may suggest he has a burning lightbulb in his mouth. A little red ribbon of blood may run down his forehead like a little red ribbon.

Some Vladimirs may come with props and predisposed poses. Nabokov, for example, may open his mouth to reveal a beautiful trembling butterfly. Tretchikoff may come wearing a kimono and makeup. Chertkov might insist you call him Leo Tolstoy, his spiritual twin. Refusing to speak plainly, Lenin will likely sing his news and conjectures. “Capitalism lives on the witless blood of the young,” he will likely sing in a gruff, operatic falsetto.

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS FOR VLADIMIR

What do I love, and why should I love?

Who do I know named Vladimir, and who will care to hear about Vladimir?

Will touch be necessary in the future?

If the chief faith of my people is the chief business of my people, what is the chief flaw of my people?

If the chief obsession of my people is the chief business of my people, what will be the chief downfall of my people?