Voroshilovgrad Read online

  Meanwhile, nervous shuffling and whispering could be heard down the hallway—some of the other patients were standing at their doors, frozen and suspicious, trying to catch bits of our conversation. I didn’t like this one bit—I wanted to escape from this crematorium as quickly as possible.

  Olga was trying valiantly to change the subject to our paperwork problems. She complained to the old-timer about the corn guys making trouble for us, told him about the old Spanish women, and the corruption-ridden local government. Every time, however, Mr. Petrovsky would veer off topic, pretending he hadn’t caught what she’d said, drinking his pirate rum, pinching Natasha ferociously, and gobbling down these pills that turned his eyes happy and pink, like those of a fighting dog in a bad photograph.

  “Mr. Petrovsky,” Olga said, finally breaking down. “I’m asking you to do me this one favor, please.”

  “Do you a favor?” The old timer looked legitimately surprised. “But you don’t need this favor—he does,” he pointed at me. “That businessman of yours does.”

  “Yes, Mr. Petrovsky,” I hastened to add. “I’m also asking.”

  “Why the hell should I?” The old-timer seemed to be trying to provoke me. “Sonny boy, what do you want me to do, exactly?”

  “Mr. Petrovsky,” I moved closer to him. “You know my brother, don’t you?”

  “So what?” The old-timer was holding his ground. Hope just about gone, Olga stood there pursing her lips. Meanwhile, Natasha placed the mug filled with rum off to the side.

  “I just thought,” I continued, “that you could help me out, since you once worked with my brother and all.”

  “Sonny boy, you’re not answering my question: why should I help you?” Mr. Petrovsky took his horn-rimmed glasses out of his jacket pocket, rested them on his nose, and looked at me long and hard.

  “Well, we’re in the same business after all.”

  “Sonny boy, you’re the one doing business,” he said. “There’s no ‘we’ here. And I’m the one who has pull with the government. You got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “Just so you know, I’m an honored retiree. I’ve been working for the Party since ’52. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Roughly.”

  “And you say you’re a businessman . . .” The old-timer calmed down, snatched at his mug, and sucked its contents down past his dentures. Then he kicked back on his pillows smugly and cast a languid look at Olga.

  I realized that this engagement wasn’t quite going in my favor. I had to do something, and fast.

  “Mr. Petrovsky . . .” I approached him and sat down next to him on the bed. He wasn’t expecting such familiarity, so he tucked his legs back anxiously. “Please give me five minutes of your time. I’d like to say something, okay?”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, shifting back toward the wall, pressing the empty mug up against his chest.

  “Could I have a sip?” I reached for the mug. This softened the old timer up immediately and he willingly handed it over. “Pour me a little?” I held out the mug for Natasha. She looked at the old-timer inquisitively; he ignored her, but she poured me some rum nonetheless, and I gulped it all down. It caught in my throat like a hairball. I swallowed hard and started talking, leaning in for an intimate word with the old timer: “Mr. Petrovsky, let me say just one thing, then we’ll be on our way. You know, I haven’t actually been in the business for long. I mean I only just took the reins. Frankly speaking, I have no experience managing gas stations. I couldn’t even say I especially like the job. All that gasoline—it’s toxic, after all, which you know as well as I do. So, what am I getting at? If I were the only one involved I would just sell the station and get as far away as possible, you see what I mean?”

  The old-timer nodded.

  “But it just so happens that I’m not the only one involved, and one way or another, I have to sort this whole mess out. Because, no matter how you slice it, we’re not just talking about me. What we’re talking about is much more important. I’m not even sure why yet. But Mr. Petrovsky, I’m looking at you now, and I feel that there’s something at the station that I can’t just walk away from.”

  Mr. Petrovsky clicked his dentures loudly.

  “I realize that you probably don’t like me very much. Look, Mr. Petrovsky, I can see why you might not want to trust me—I’m not a businessman, after all, I have zero experience, I’m a total stranger, and I’ve never had anything to do with the Party. But, goddamn it, Mr. Petrovsky, is it absolutely essential to have worked for the Party to keep yourself from fucking up something that really matters? Tell me, do you really need to have worked for the Party?”

  “Give me my mug back,” Mr. Petrovsky responded quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, give me my mug back,” he repeated.

  He hid the empty mug under his pillow and took off his glasses pensively.

  “You seem like a decent guy,” he said after a short pause. “I’ll be honest with you—I underestimated you. All right.” He clapped his hands, apparently signaling his readiness to begin an important task, and that odd twinkle appeared in his eyes again. “I’ll help you out.”

  “Thank you,” I said, relieved, though my relief proved to be short-lived:

  “Under one condition,” he added. “You have to play a game of Gorodki with me.”

  “A game of what?”

  “Gorodki,” Mr. Petrovsky repeated, deriving great satisfaction from seeing me so bewildered. “Gorodki. Ivan Pavlov and Tolstoy’s favorite game. What’s your take on Tolstoy? You like him?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Excellent. If you beat me, I’ll help you out. If you lose, then you go your merry way and let me get back to recuperating.”

  “Uh . . . how about you just help me out, and we skip the game of Gorodki?” I asked, just in case.

  “Nope, sonny boy,” Mr. Petrovsky said severely. “There’s no way we’re skipping Gorodki.”

  I looked over at Olga. All she could do was roll her eyes. Behind her, the patient holding the newspaper was relishing our anguish. The third, unidentified man was still decaying steadily off in the corner. I had to make a choice. “Gorodki it is,” I thought. After all, I was probably easily a match for this old-timer. I had youth and vigor going for me; all he had was Party discipline. I decided to take the risk.

  “Okay,” I said, “I guess let’s play some Gorodki. You’re not going to cheat me, are you?”

  “Sonny boy, you really think I’d do that to you?” Mr. Petrovsky answered resolutely, hopping onto the floor and scurrying across the room. “Gorodki!” he yelled enthusiastically. “Gorodki!”

  His sudden transformation was remarkable. He was all fired up now, really strutting his stuff, like a fight dog, zooming around the ward. He took a pair of golf shoes and a black T-shirt with NY on the front in white letters from underneath the dead patient.

  “Gorodki!” he shouted again, his rubber sandals forcing open the door with a powerful kick. “Let the games begin!”

  All the doors in the hallway flew open, and a crowd of patients who had clearly been eavesdropping on our conversation and anticipating some really riveting entertainment, which was presumably a rarity here, spilled out of their rooms toward Mr. Petrovsky. He was the hometown favorite; they were undoubtedly putting their money on him. Me they regarded with openly mocking and skeptical expressions. The whole boisterous pack was dressed identically, in hospital robes and tracksuits, though one of them was covered in army medals, while someone else was wearing a battle-worn Soviet-era tunic. Men on crutches gnashed their brittle yellow teeth, while the women, whose arms were almost all in casts, smiled effusively, their thick lipstick making them look like sadistic clowns. This whole cluster of chronic ailments on legs limped on outside and over to the sanitarium’s recreation area, past the older buildings, through a well-trodden courtyard between apple trees. Olga, Natasha, and I rushed out behind them—Natasha carrying the old-timer’s inh
aler in one hand and in the other the iron bats that would allow us to settle this matter once and for all. Any hint of competitive drive had quickly dried up and fluttered away. Judging by how she was looking at me, Olga wasn’t optimistic about my chances; she kept quiet, however, probably because she didn’t want to scare all of the fight out of me.

  Mr. Petrovsky was already warming up in the recreation area, putting his leg behind his head and crouching like a cat in the thick grass, showing off how limber and energetic he was, clearly trying to intimidate me. I probably don’t have to say that I’d never played this Gorodki thing before. All I knew about this game was that Lenin, as well as Tolstoy and Pavlov, were all avid players, which didn’t really do much to lift my spirits.

  Everyone took their places. Mr. Petrovsky, Olga, Natasha, and I stood behind the line, gearing up for the game, while our audience spilled across the recreation area, gathering up the pins and setting them up in the correct order. All business, Mr. Petrovsky walked up to Natasha, grabbed a handful of acidic hard candies, tossed them into his metal-filled face, ground them between his armor-piercing dentures, and started explaining the rules.

  “Listen up, sonny boy,” he said, waving one of the bats, “it’s simple. There are fifteen shapes made out of pins, or Gorodki. Whoever knocks all the pins out of the square first wins. Whoever loses gets audited.”

  “Spot me a few points?” I suggested, hopefully.

  “No way, no how,” Mr. Petrovsky shot back. He stepped up to the line. “First round—cannons!” he yelled out.

  Like rats, his cheerleaders scurried around under the apple trees on the far side of the court—the rickety old fossils were shuffling through the grass, stacking the pins into the shape of cannons for us to knock down.

  “All right, sonny boy. Godspeed,” Mr. Petrovsky said, stepping out of the way.

  I picked up a bat. “Well now,” I thought, “let’s see who’s top dog.”

  My first bat plummeted into the ground, far short of my target. The crowd squealed with joy, anticipating a quick victory by the home team. So when I threw my second bat, I let myself be guided by their voices more than anything else. The projectile soared into the sky and came down hard on one of those rickety old dinosaurs with a satisfying thump—right in the back of the neck. He grunted and collapsed into the sand. His fellow patients immediately dragged him under the apple trees, glaring at me.

  “Well then,” Mr. Petrovsky said dryly. “Not a bad start.”

  He nimbly whirled his first bat up into the air. It made a miraculous half-circle and knocked down the cannon. Now that some of the pins were out of the square, he could move up to the closer throwing line and finish off the cannon with his second bat; he gave Natasha a triumphant look, and yelled out into the June sky:

  “Second shape—fork!”

  The fork was quickly assembled. The game followed the same pattern—I continued to harass the patients with my throws, as well as knock down tree branches, forcing my elders and betters to roam through the tall grass in search of my missiles, while the old-timer effortlessly knocked down each of his figures, becoming more exhilarated after each throw. Occasionally, Natasha would come over and he’d inhale some magical vapors from his inhaler, making his hands firm and his eyes razor-sharp. There was some sort of elixir of youth in that thing; our distinguished citizen was scattering those pins like they were a neighbor’s chickens in his garden. No matter how I tried, however, no matter how much I strained and cursed myself, I couldn’t bounce back—my bats were flying every which way, just not at my target. Shortly thereafter, I lost the first set, utterly disgraced.

  “Second set, second set!” Mr. Petrovsky crooned joyously, and the patients chimed in, repeating his chant and setting up the figures once again.

  I walked over to Olga. She sighed and refused to make eye contact.

  “Herman,” she said, “for a Soros, you sure are a loser.”

  I didn’t have a good comeback, so I picked up a bat for the next set. Which I lost even more quickly than the first. The old timer was happy as could be, doing a little victory dance—his fellow patients were now forming a circle around him, yelling out their congratulations. I walked up to Mr. Petrovsky despondently. He was wiping off his sweat with a Mickey Mouse towel, trying at the same time to swallow some oblong, light green pills.

  “Well then, sonny boy,” he said, squinting playfully. “I won, fair and square.”

  “Yep, fair and square,” I was forced to admit.

  “Come by again some time.”

  I shook his hand, leathery from years of service to the Party, and turned around to leave.

  “Hey,” Mr. Petrovsky called out. “You really are a shitty businessman. Are you actually just gonna dust yourself off and leave? What about your documents?”

  “Well, I lost.”

  “Come over here,” Mr. Petrovsky ordered.

  I did.

  “What have you got there?” he asked.

  “Headphones,” I said, not sure what he was getting at.

  “Do they work, or you just wear them like that?”

  “They work.”

  “Let’s make a deal.” Mr. Petrovsky’s eyes had lit up like the proverbial kid in a candy shop. “You give me the headphones, and I’ll help you out.”

  I removed my headphones, took out my MP3 player, and gave them both to the old-timer. He fondled them in the palm of his hand.

  “What’s wrong with you, sonny boy?” he asked. “Why do you give up what’s yours so easily?”

  “But you asked me to . . .”

  “And what if I were to ask you to suck my dick—would you do that too?” Mr. Petrovsky asked, intrigued.

  I didn’t know what to say. The old timer was really rubbing it in.

  He handed back my MP3 player. “You need to protect what’s yours. Otherwise, you’ll be left without any headphones, businesses, or Party experience. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I answered, trying not to look at Olga.

  “All right then, let’s go,” Mr. Petrovsky said wearily. “The documents are in my ward. Let’s go save that damn business of yours.”

  8

  The rain and the twilight were running together, currents of water were moving in fat, coarse strands, weaving themselves into the air. It was as though we were riding along the bottom of the river when its surface was suddenly blanketed by darkness. Shadows and rays of light moved all around as invisible water dwellers rose up from the silt and came dangerously close to us, two drowned fishermen on a scooter. The rain was warm, like water at a river’s mouth. Waves were crashing down on the scooter, and we nearly skidded off the road a few times. Olga stopped and desperately surveyed our surroundings. “We gotta get out of the storm!” she yelled. Sheets of rain were breaking over her face, and I could hardly hear a thing, but I knew what she was getting at—we had to stop somewhere, the storm was too heavy to go back or push through. “How?” I yelled back. She thought for a second, then: “There’s a turn up ahead, we’d better try it!” she yelled, and we forged on, fighting through the waves and scaring away the river ghosts. Occasionally, the scooter would get bogged down and stop—still wearing her sunglasses, Olga could barely see the road ahead, so we were moving blindly. Nevertheless, she made the right turn, and we found ourselves on a side road. The narrow, overgrown asphalt track slalomed between clumps of pine trees. We continued deeper into the forest; the scooter’s wheels kept getting tangled in the grass, and it was slow going, but Olga now appeared to know the way, so she was able to dodge bushes and potholes with confidence. We soon found ourselves in front of a dark fence.

  I hopped off the scooter to open up the gate, which was just a metal sheet held in place with wire, and Olga pushed her scooter inside. The rain had flooded everything in sight, so we were standing in water up to our ankles. Evidently this was an old Young Pioneers camp from the Soviet days. Off in the distance, I could just make out some old metal buildings—sheets of rain were falling on the
m too. There was a little square with some sort of peeling monument in the center; pine trees stood tall above it, with the rain presiding over everything. We rolled the scooter up to the nearest building and rested it up against the front wall. Olga, who had been here before, ran under the cover of the next building over, the largest of all of them, and turned the corner, passing under a line of windows. There was an entrance there, covered by a patch of soaked, sprawling flowers that almost completely concealed the doors. She hunched over the lock, started spinning something, and the door popped open. We sprang inside, as if we were diving into a tin cookie jar while kids happily drummed on it with sticks. The rain beat loudly on the building’s metal walls, a sweet rattling sound that shook the entire structure. We couldn’t even hear ourselves breathe over that constant, wet drumming. We walked down a hallway and found ourselves in a spacious room. Shelves of old books stretched along walls covered with children’s pictures; dark vases of dried flowers rested on the windowsills and a tattered couch had been dragged out into the center of the room.

  “This is the Lenin room,” Olga said and walked over to the bookshelves resolutely. She browsed for quite some time, but couldn’t seem to find anything interesting.

  “How do you know?”

  “I worked at this camp for a few years. We had counselor meetings in here. Nobody used the library, from what I remember. Listen,” she turned toward me, “I have to do something about my clothes. I’m absolutely soaked. Would you be okay with me hanging up my stuff?”