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The Ivan Aufulich Papers
19. Lyudya Kruss
In a tragedy that horrified the audience at the Moscow Circus, clown Lyudya Kruss ("Lyudya" is a diminutive for "Lyudmilla") was mauled to death by the trained bears. Lyudya was a favorite of children wherever the circus travelled, and all in attendance were in tears. Performers were devastated, and the bears' trainer, Nadya Averejbayr, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Muscovites with access to police reports noted, before the reports were classified (and that itself was significant) that the wound appeared to have been made by a Krasny Molot ("Red Hammer") 9mm, a favorite of the NKVD, rather than her own American Colt .45, rather more suited to stopping an angry bear. The more reflective among them recalled that some months ago V. R. Nahtamyuzd was seen *not* applauding the trained bear act. They are now considering (strictly to themselves, of course) just whose control the bears were under at the time of the tragedy; or rather (since it is a distinctly esoteric specialty) whose control *that* person was under. The answers would go a long way to explaining the bullet wound -- and no doubt would result in more such wounds did word get around that anyone was so speculating.
Nadya Averejbayr, attentive readers may recall, was awarded the Stakhanov medal (for exuberant overproduction) and promoted to supervisor of her forest rangers' station, and eventually received the coveted appointment to the circus, after the untimely demise of -- no, best not to bring that up; simply recall that some people plot deep indeed. She undoubtedly would have felt great gratitude for such a move to the capitol from an isolated and frigid outpost; and who knows how far her gratitude would have gone? Far from the rumors swirling around the Kremlin, she may not have realized that it is not safe to return a favor by committing an act that, were the details to become know, might be embarrassing to someone in a position to see that the details did *not* become known. (Nor, of course, is it safe to decline to return a favor to such a one. Best to remain a mediocre -- hence unnoticed -- ranger of the Kamchatka Oblast.)
Lyudya Kruss herself was hardly in a position to run afoul of any of the arch-plotters. Rather, we can assume that her death, so horrible and so public, was intended as a message. Just to whom the message was intended is obscure to all but the recipients; much will become clear from observed retirements, sabbaticals, and disappearances during coming weeks. Never-the-less, it is already plain that melon shipments from Soviet Georgia will be extremely sparse in the year ahead, and so will be public readings by the dissident poets in Kazakhstan.
©1997 Grant Schampel