City of Thieves

The loneliest sound in the world is other people making love

An hour before sunset the company halted beside a forbidding redbrick schoolhouse, one of the People’s Projects built during the second Five-Year Plan, the lead glass windows narrow as medieval embrasures. Two-foot-high bronze letters above the front door spelled out Lenin’s famous line: GIVE US THE CHILD FOR EIGHT YEARS AND IT WILL BE A BOLSHEVIK FOREVER. One of the Russophone invaders had scrawled a rejoinder in white paint that had dripped before the words had dried: GIVE US YOUR CHILDREN FOR EIGHT SECONDS AND THERE WILL BE NO MORE BOLSHEVIKS

“All the Frenchmen with balls died on the way home from Moscow in 1812. You think I’m joking? Listen, one hundred and thirty years ago they had the best army in the world. Now they’re the whores of Europe, just waiting to be fucked by whomever comes along with a hard cock. Am I wrong? So what happened to them? Borodino, Leipzig, Waterloo. Think about it. Courage got blasted out of their gene pool. Their little genius Napoleon castrated the whole country.”