Fourth World - Ivan Aufulich

1. Ivan's description

Ivan Aufulich is, or was, an adroit apparatchik. His official title is Third Deputy Assistant Undersecretary in the Ministry for Woolen Underwear, but that is not how he earns his living -- and it is not how he will earn his dying. Ivan is an information broker, in a country where the only legal, public information is *disinformation*. One day he will learn too much, and it will cost him his life. In the meantime what he learns, and parcels out so judiciously, keeps him afloat in the ever-shifting tides around the walls of the Kremlin.

Ivan is short, maybe 5'4", and wide. Ten years ago he was "beefy"; ten years from now (if he lives so long) he will be "portly". In between he is, well, in between; call him "fleshy", though still not to his face. He has a large head with a not particularly high forehead. wide cheeks and jaw, a moderately large nose, folds that are not quite yet dewlaps and wattles, bushy black eyebrows , thick but short black hair, clean-shaven chin and lip, and a short neck that bulges outa bit over his collar. His shoulders seem a little hunched even when they are not. His teeth are large but bad, and stained by the really terrible Russian cigarettes that he doesn't quite chain-smoke. His legs are what make him short, with thick thighs but thin calves. He can still scurry and scuttle, though not as far or fast as he used to; he has not run since his teens. He has the beginnings of a kvass (a beer-like beverage) belly, masked by his overall thickness.

He wears a traditional Russian suit: stiff, wrinkled in ways different from those in the West, ill-fitting (too tight in the shoulders and waist, too loose in the chest, a little lopsided when buttoned), with wide (but not zoot suit) lapels. His coattails do not reach quite far enough over his hips (which are bulky but not yet gross). His pants are very baggy, and have massive breaks below the knees when he stands, but are still too short of his shoes when he sits (one a little more short than the other). His shoes are large and old enough to crease over the instep and turn up a bit.

He gives the impression of being furtive, except when he is on the hustle, which is not quite as often as formerly. He is still not safe to gain status by attacking, except by those so powerful that they do not need such status. He can even protect his proteges, a little. But any who choose him for a patron these days are marked as losers. He tries to protect his own hide by knowing secrets, and to accumulate more secrets (the coin of the Soviet bureaucracy) by cultivating the semi-powerful whose peer he once was; and at the same time to ingratiate himself with foreigners, who might eventually afford him a haven in the West, by leaking a few of those secrets. In short, he is on the slow way down; and in in the wee hours, he knows it, and wakes sweating and drowns the rest of the night in a bottle of cheap vodka.