Nikifor Rosanov, Chief Janitor of the Russian Republic, knelt on the marble floor of the Mausoleum, trying not to listen to the dead man. Yet the words—or maybe  thoughts—seeped through Nikifor’s baseball cap worn backward, through his curly blond hair and Socratic forehead right into his brain. They could come from one and only source. They came from his charge, his pain, his idol. They came from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whose mummified body rested in a glass sarcophagus on the pedestal above.
    Lenin had been doing it for months now, relentless and merciless as the angel of death, a KGB officer or a Mafia man.
   The first time Nikifor saw Lenin’s body up close was back in 1991, shortly before the USSR fell apart. Nikifor, a freshly minted graduate of the Sheremetyevo Janitor Academy, and valedictorian of the 500-strong class of Cleaning Ladies and     Cleaning Lords, had just arrived at the Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square.
    He knew everything that there was to know about his new job and a bit more:  Lenin’s sarcophagus was to be kept at a temperature of 16 °C and humidity of 80-90 percent. His face and hands needed to be moisturized with special balsam, a mixture of glycerin and potassium acetate, daily. The first Mausoleum was made of wood. Its present incarnation, designed by Alexey Shchusev—red granite, porphyry and black labradorite—was erected in 1930. Joseph Stalin shared the Mausoleum with Lenin between 1953 and 1961, until Khrushchev kicked him out and buried him.
    Nikifor could repeat this info in his sleep, and he often did, annoying his wife Praskovia.
    Nikifor didn’t expect Lenin to look so waxy and fake, and he shared his opinion with his buddies The Arbuzman and Mitya that very same day. The Arbuzman said that Lenin was a mannequin. Mitya said that he didn’t care as long as the waitress bent lower over their table when she brought them more beer the next time. Nikifor said that neither of them knew anything and questioned aloud their sanity and intellect. He ended up with a black eye.