Vladimir Lenin Grown Weary
Emily Glossner Johnson
After theories and revolution, illness and the denouement of a new order, after still nights of vigil and fits of sleep in the encroaching darkness, Vladimir Lenin has found himself in a small American town intersected by railroad tracks and populated by affable, oblivious people in dungarees. A murky canal long ago abandoned by commercial ventures runs through the town, a place for tame ducks and picnic luncheons in the weedy haze.
Every morning, Vladimir Lenin takes his exercise by walking briskly to the center of the town and briskly back home again. At the midpoint of his walk is the Bombast Diner where, on occasion, he stops for a cup of tea. It's never an especially enjoyable cup, being as it is from a large cardboard box of mediocre teabags, but it's tolerable and warms his innards. In fact, he's become accustomed enough to it in recent days that a strong brew of loose black tea might be vaguely disagreeable.
On a sunny morning in May when he has reached the Bombast Diner, he hears the mechanized knock-knock-knock-knock of a woodpecker. He turns, eyeing his surroundings carefully to see if he can spot the bird. Squirrels, sparrows, a crow digging into a tufted brown smear in the street, but no woodpecker.
"Elusive creatures," Lenin mutters.
His eyes fall upon his own reflection in the front window of the diner. Angular features, defiant, proud, the intense gaze and the strong shape of his brow and jaw, but there is something irritating in it. Something hackneyed, an overstated quality that is hard to pin down, the quality of a caricature perhaps. He sighs and strokes his beard.
"Yes, it is so," he says in answer to a question that has played in his mind for several days. "This wee beard has become ridiculous to me. I have grown weary of my own face."
There is a barbershop across the street. Deciding, he nods once and makes his way toward it. "I will have a shave," he says.
A young man approaches on an Italian scooter with a purple leather saddlebag over its gleaming fender. He pulls to the curb, parks the vehicle, and stares at Lenin.
"Say, you look familiar," he says.
Lenin inclines his head. "Perhaps I do, yes. Perhaps to you I bear a resemblance to Lenin."
"Lennon?" The young man frowns and shakes his head. "No. No, not at all, really. George Harrison, if I had to say, but not even that. Hmm."
"Yes, then," Lenin says, "I bid you good day, my friend."
"Right, yeah," the young man says. "Have a good one!" He crosses the street halfway, but stops and turns back to Lenin. "Hey, I think I remember. You were a weather reporter, right? Would have been when I was a kid. One of the local channels."
Lenin shakes his head. "I have never been the weather reporter," he says.
The young man shrugs and continues on his way.
The sun is shining hotter when Lenin emerges from the barbershop a short while later, pink and smooth, his face smarting. A sudden swirl of color and a vigorous flapping dizzy him. The woodpecker has flown into his face and landed on his head. He reaches up tentatively and feels taloned feet, a wing, the thick weave of feathers on the bird's chest. The creature hammers on his skull: knock-knock-knock-knock. On it goes, knock-knocking in the sun on Lenin's head, industrious and painful.
EMILY GLOSSNER JOHNSON has had stories published or forthcoming in Lynx Eye, Literary Brushstrokes, and by Musa Publishing in their Erato imprint. She has a B.A. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo and an M.A. in English from the State University of New York College at Brockport. She taught writing for ten years at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. She lives with her family and two cats in Baldwinsville, New York.
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