Skirmish on the Steppe

A gang known by the name of "Madonna's Squad" carried out a raid on a little town lost in the steppe. Sparing no one, they set the town ablaze and, with their plunder tied to their saddles, galloped away on their swift horses, off into the open steppe. The long shadows of horses and riders raced ahead of them like black paths running across the grass, reddened by the distant fire. All the riders, with blood and soot on their faces, lit by the glow, were smiling, rejoicing in the plunder and the wind.
At the head galloped the squad's leader, Maria Luisa Ciccone, known in these parts by the nickname Madonna. Not fear but sheer savage terror was struck by that pious name in these lands. Her face in the night wind, washed by the reflections of the fire, seemed beautiful: it was at once drunken, doll-like and stern, that ecstatic face. Madonna's body, short and sturdily built, held firmly to the saddle, the graceful muscles quivering beneath the tender skin of her bare forearms. On her breast hung an icon of her patroness - the Blessed Virgin - embroidered in scarlet beads, in a frame of tiny live white roses.
To her right, on a raven stallion, galloped the terrible Michael Jackson - once he had been a black man, a little black boy even, but since then battle scars had covered his face, and he concealed them beneath a layer of snow-white paint. His name was used to frighten children in all the surrounding villages, and not without reason: he knew how to be dreadful and to bring death, he had a real knack for it. In battle he twirled like a deadly little monkey, scattering knife-strokes the way a firecracker scatters sparks, but in the saddle he kept the stillness of a little idol: black glasses, a snow-white plaster face, a snub little nose (they say the tip of his nose was cut off in prison), tangled, long, black hair flying behind him in the wind - everything recalled death, as sharp and narrow as his knife.
To the leader's left galloped the lean, old bandit David Bowie; one of his eyes was glass, while the other seemed lost in a daydream of outer space, his small uneven teeth bared in an ostensibly bashful and sadly pensive smile that would appear on his handsome face in response to waves of mysterious premonitions foaming in the whirlpools and depths of his brain. Lagging a little behind galloped his faithful battle comrade Mick Jagger, with a coarse and fearsome face, his head tightly bound with a kerchief soaked in blood.
Young and tender Britney Spears sped along on a light-footed white pony. This girl had kept on her sweet body (for a laugh or for sentiment) the little school skirt and the jacket with the college crest, where she had diligently studied only a couple of years before; now both the skirt and the jacket were stained with the blood of her victims, while she herself boasted that she had not yet shed her own maidenly blood and remained a virgin.
There were other beauties here too, for instance Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera, bloodthirsty creoles, whose caressing fingers stroked the hilts of their daggers as they rode, keeping them roused. The young, sturdy lads Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin galloped grimly beside their battle girlfriends, while the cheerful, low-life and carefree Robbie Williams whistled a little tune. The curly-haired mulatto Richard Prince, nicknamed Pushkin, was dressed in a tailcoat taken from a murdered banker, his fingers glittered with rings, and his nails were long and sharp.
There were still other lads and girls here, some quite young, like splashes of milk, others older, the ornaments of old gangs, hardened in robberies and raids.
Every face shone with the rapture and happiness of a job well done, all were proud and frighteningly beautiful. An optical effect, like a concave mirror, arising from the combination of speed, great fire and open steppe, made them enormous, spreading each of them out and stretching them, and it seemed that terrible gods had descended to the earth and were racing across its empty face, revelling in their strength, destroying all and sweeping everything from their path.
Ahead, where they were racing, the dark horizon merged with the dark sky, and one could make out a long ravine, overgrown with low, crooked trees, a steppe gully whose depths the reflections of the fire did not reach. And suddenly some other band emerged from the darkness of the gully and barred the way of Madonna's squad.
Madonna raised her hand: her squad halted. The two squads stood in the steppe, facing one another. The noise, the clangour and the neighing leaps - all fell quiet, and suddenly the silence and the chirring of the steppe became audible, and its spicy, mysterious scents. Madonna's people studied those who had unexpectedly barred their way. Gradually, astonishment mixed with disgust settled upon their faces.
The band that had emerged from the gully was strange. Madonna's lads had never before seen such a gang and such folk in these parts, nor had they ever heard that anything of the kind existed here. The unknown band was also led by a woman, plump, no longer young and strange; she sat heavily in the saddle, gazing into Madonna's radiant face with an incomprehensible look from beneath half-lowered lids. In her mouth she held a little piece of amber, worked by a skilful jeweller to look like a little curl of shit. The chieftainess rolled it about in her mouth, and at times parted her rather thin lips in an unexpectedly playful smile, to show the little amber curl on the tip of her tongue. Her teeth were white and even, and on each tooth a skull was painted. Her dress, utterly unsuited to riding, was white with huge daisies against a dark background, the pony beneath her was short, black and shaggy, and she sat astride it man-fashion, confidently spreading her plump legs in red, wrinkled boots. In her hand she held a little gold cup from a coffee service, filled with some liquid - this was her weapon.
To her right sat astride a plump man in glasses. His shirt was torn open at the chest down to the navel, and he looked out with such bored squeamishness, such habitual revulsion, that it seemed living dust lay before him. Through the plump male nipple on his chest was threaded a gold ring, from which hung a little black box, and out of it seeped an indifferent, doubling, free-flowing voice, singing:
You live on one bank,
And I - on the other,
On the high bank, on the steep one...
In his hands he held an axe.
To the chieftainess's left sat on a horse a swarthy, fat lad, his long black hair, plaited into a thousand little braids, spilling over his shoulders, his black bulging eyes flashing insolently like slippery mushrooms in the grass; his clothing consisted of a red eighteenth-century camisole and pink tights beneath the camisole. His lace-cuffed hands toyed with a saw.
Beside him sat together on a single horse, tightly embracing, two little girls - still quite small: one dark-haired, close-cropped, with a white, inspired little face, the other red-haired, freckled, resembling an English schoolgirl who had hastily fled out of a window. In their hands they gripped together a wasp-stake, sharpened keenly at both ends.
There was also a toothless lad, all in furs, with a pistol, then several large women armed with razors, and some other people - one flaunting a striped sailor's vest, one in a brocade cap, one in a soldier's tunic, one utterly naked. There were some in little fur coats or smeared with lard...
All this seemed strange. Out of what depths and by what force had this bubble been squeezed to the surface?
But Madonna's people were not in the habit of marvelling for long. Hands reached for weapons.

Madonna spat, and her holy thief's spittle crashed down into the grass. In each of her gobs of spit one could see a little Christmas house with luminous windows, upon which snow was falling, or else a church just after a feast day, out of which people were coming, all in flowers, joyfully kissing and congratulating one another...
But Pugacheva, who was still standing before Madonna, raised her heavy lids and with ponderous coquetry looked into her adversary's face. The gazes of the two leaders met - the way the gazes of commanders always meet when two squads come together in war.
The chieftainesses stepped away from their gangs to settle the score (to measure their strength) in a swift solitary duel.
Nothing was reflected in Pugacheva's eyes, they were opaquely brown, some sort of mist splashing within them; in the mist a snowy road was taking shape, daring, a blizzard, anguish, distance... Someone was making their way somewhere in a sleigh along that road, but the storm and the murk gave rise to troubled dreams: and now a huge and terrible peasant with a black beard was emerging from the murk and barring the sleigh's way, and pointing with his great hands at his body clad in but a single shirt, freezing in the cold wind...
Pugacheva raised to her lips (which were painted like two dark cherries) the little gold cup and drank its contents. At once her plump body began to tremble, went rippling in swift waves, her legs in the red boots seemed about to break into a dance. And indeed, she slowly turned about her own axis, spread her arms, bowed her head, gave a folk-style shrug of her plump shoulders... And her gaze, turned upon her enemy, became utterly pornographic.
Suddenly she sharply tore off herself something like a short little fur coat that she was wearing, and flung it at Madonna's feet.
- A little hareskin coat, - she uttered hoarsely. - A little coat... It came down to me from my forebear. See, it's all come apart at the seams. Sew it up, daughter, the little coat.
Madonna glanced at the little coat. It lay torn, sprawled in tatters of filthy fur. From it wafted the stench of ages, and wild abandon, and frenzy. Pugachikha was already shaking all over with a great shudder.
- Sew it up, daughter, sew up my ragged little coat. I'll never forget it, I'll pray to God for you for all my days...
In her hoarse, low voice ever more distinctly could be heard shrieking, hypnotic notes. A terrible menace and power emanated from these entreaties, from this fur.
Madonna looked at the little coat, and upon her stern face there unexpectedly appeared a softening, even tenderness. She took the little white rose from the icon of the Blessed Virgin that hung on her breast, and cast the flower onto the dark old fur. In that same second the fur blazed all over with light, fell apart into large tufts - the light was so bright that it seemed the fur would burn up and dissolve in it, but the scraps of fur curled up into something like dumplings, folded up into little envelopes... and suddenly the light went out, and there, where the little coat had lain - there now a throng of live leverets jostled and hopped in the grass. The leverets flashed their little eyes, scattered, ran off, and vanished into the dark night grasses. Madonna saw them off with a smile in her gaze. Then her face turned to stone again, and a weapon flashed in her hand. She fixed her radiant eyes on her opponent, and her voice rang out, likewise hoarse and thuggish, but steeped in the cold of holiness:
And now - be gone!

Moscow, 2004
To be continued...