Voroshilovgrad Read online

  Bolik was sitting in his office, working on some documents; folders containing the results of some surveys were spread out on the table in front of him. Seeing us, he clicked over to the regional government website in case we peeked at his screen.

  “Hey there, you two,” he said cheerfully, like a real boss ought to sound. “Well . . . How are things?”

  “Bolik,” I started in, “we want to visit my brother. You know him, right?”

  “Yea, I do,” he said, examining his fingernails.

  “We don’t have anything planned for tomorrow, do we?”

  Bolik thought for a bit, took another look at his nails, and abruptly hid them behind his back.

  “You have the day off tomorrow,” he replied.

  “That means we’re going,” I said to Lyolik, and turned toward the door.

  “Wait up,” Bolik said, and I turned around. “I’m going to come along.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked, a bit incredulous.

  I didn’t want to drag him along. I could see Lyolik tightening up too.

  “Yeah,” said Bolik, “Let’s all go together. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Lyolik kept quiet, clearly unhappy with this turn of events.

  “Bolik,” I said, “why would you want to go?”

  “Just because,” he replied. “I won’t get in the way.”

  I figured Lyolik wouldn’t like the idea of going on a trip with his cousin along—his cousin who was constantly monitoring him, who didn’t want to let Lyolik out of his sight even for a second.

  “But we’re shipping out really early,” I said, trying to put up some last ditch resistance. “At five or so.”

  “At five?” Lyolik asked incredulously.

  “At five!” Bolik exclaimed.

  “At five,” I repeated, and headed toward the door.

  I figured I’d let them sort it out among themselves.

  In the afternoon I called Kocha again. Nobody picked up. “Maybe he’s dead,” I thought to myself, and then realized that I actually hoped it was true.

  In the evening, Lyolik and I were sitting at home in the kitchen. “Hey man,” he piped up, all of a sudden, “you think maybe we could just stay here? Maybe you can call them again?” “Lyolik,” I said firmly, “we’re only going for one day. We’ll be back home on Sunday. Chill out.” “You chill out,” Lyolik retorted. “Okay,” I said.

  But what’s okay about all this? I’m thirty-three years old. I’ve been living on my own for a while, and quite happily, too. I rarely see my parents and have a good relationship with my brother. I’ve got a completely useless degree. I’ve got a dubious job. I’ve got enough money to support the lifestyle I’m used to. It’s too late to get used to anything else. I’m more than happy with my lot. If something’s not going to make me happy, I don’t bother with it. A week ago my brother disappeared. He disappeared and didn’t even warn me. I’d say my life is just grand.

  The parking lot was empty, which made us look a bit suspicious. Bolik was running late. I suggested we take off, but Lyolik insisted on hanging around for a bit. He went in to get coffee from the vending machine, and struck up a conversation with the security guards who lived right there in the large, well-lit supermarket. The bright and airy morning gave the display cases a yellow tint. The building resembled an ocean liner resting on the rocky bottom. Every once in a while, a pack of dogs would run across the parking lot, scornfully sniffing the wet asphalt and lifting their heads proudly toward the morning sun. Lyolik sprawled on the driver’s seat, smoking one cigarette after another and anxiously calling his cousin over and over. They had been talking on the phone a lot lately, exchanging muttered accusations and complaints; whatever pretense to mutual trust they’d maintained till now seemed to be falling away. Lyolik ran into the store one more time for coffee, only to spill it all over himself, leaving him to painstakingly clean himself up with wet wipes and curse his cousin out for being late. That’s how it always went with Lyolik—he was uncomfortable year round, either sweating buckets or shivering and sniffling; he was uncomfortable behind the wheel and equally uncomfortable in a suit. His cousin made him feel tense yet had sucked him into another dubious business venture. I told him to keep his distance, but Lyolik wouldn’t heed my advice. The possibility of making an easy buck mesmerized him. All I could do was sit back and watch their shady transactions, taking comfort in the fact that I hadn’t let myself get wrapped up in this new scheme of theirs.

  I went into the store for coffee, chatted with the security guards, and treated the dogs to some chips. It was time to go, but Lyolik just couldn’t leave without his cousin.

  He tore around the corner, helplessly scanning his surroundings while shooing away the stray dogs. Lyolik beeped; Bolik saw us and ran over to the car. The dogs trotted along behind him, tucking their ragged tails between their legs. Bolik opened up the rear passenger door and hopped in. He was in his usual suit with a green and noticeably wrinkled dress shirt underneath.

  “Bolik,” said Lyolik, “what the fuck?”

  “Goddammit, Lyolik,” said Bolik, “don’t say a word.”

  Bolik said hello to me and took a few CDs out of his jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I burned us some music,” Bolik said. “So we’ll have something to listen to.”

  “Well, I’ve got my MP3 player with me,” I answered.

  “No problem, Lyolik and I will listen to my CDs.”

  Lyolik’s face contorted at this.

  “Lyolik,” I said, starting to laugh. “What’s the deal, your cousin decides what music you can listen to?”

  “He doesn’t decide a thing,” said Lyolik, offended.

  “Well at least tell us what music you got,” I said.

  “Charlie Parker.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yeah. Ten CDs of Charlie Parker. I couldn’t find anything else worth listening to,” Bolik said.

  “Jackass,” Lyolik retorted, and we set off.

  The music made the Volkswagen tremble, like a glass jar someone was drumming on with a stick. Bolik, sitting in the back, loosened his tie and peered out the window at the outskirts of the city, his face tight with apprehension. We passed the tractor factory and some little bazaar, and then we finally broke out onto the open road, heading southeast. Highway patrol officers were sitting at the checkpoint. One of them lazily looked over at us, but failing to see anything of interest, he turned away and walked over to his partners. I tried putting myself in his shoes. A black, used Volkswagen; clearance-sale suits; last year’s dress shoes; discounted watches; the kind of cheap lighters your colleagues give to you as gifts; and supermarket-aisle sunglasses—reliable, inexpensive things, not too worn, not too flashy; nothing superfluous, nothing special. No reason to pull these guys over; it’s not like you could shake them down for all that much anyway.

  Green hills stretched out along both sides of the highway. It had been a warm and windy May; flocks of birds were flying about from field to field, diving noisily into new air currents as they went. White high-rise apartment buildings were shining ahead on the horizon, just below the sun that burned red like a fiery basketball.

  “We have to fill up,” said Lyolik.

  “There’s a gas station coming up,” I answered.

  “I could go for a drink,” Bolik piped up.

  “Have some antifreeze,” Lyolik suggested.

  We pulled into the gas station, and Bolik and I went into the mini-mart for some coffee. While Lyolik was filling up, we made our way over toward a bunch of plastic tables. A cornfield began on the other side of the metal fence. The sticky, ubiquitous May greenery was burning my retinas. A few trucks were bunched together in the parking lot. The drivers were probably catching up on sleep. Bolik approached the far table, picked up a plastic chair, wiped it clean with a napkin, and took a seat, cautiously. I also sat down. Shortly after, Lyolik came over.

  “All right,” he said, “w
e can go now. How much ground do we still gotta cover?”

  “About two hundred kilometers,” I answered. “We’ll get there in a few hours.”

  “What are you listening to?” Lyolik asked, pointing at my MP3 player resting on the table.

  “A little bit of everything,” I told him. “Why don’t you get yourself one?”

  “I have a CD player in my car.”

  “And that’s why you can only listen to what your cousin burns for you.”

  “I burn him good music,” Bolik said defensively.

  “I listen to the radio,” Lyolik chimed in.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust the radio’s musical taste,” I told Lyolik. “You need to listen to the music you love.”

  “Whatever you say, Herman,” Bolik said, unconvinced. “But hey, we need to trust each other, isn’t that right Lyolik?”

  “Uh-huh,” Lyolik said timidly.

  “Good,” I said, “I couldn’t care less. Listen to whatever you want.”

  “Herman, you don’t trust people enough,” Bolik added. “You don’t trust your partners. You shouldn’t be like that. But you can still always count on us. Just tell me—where are we actually going?”

  “Home,” I answered. “Trust me.” Thinking, “It’d be better if we got there a bit earlier. Nobody really knows how long we’ll be stuck there, after all.”

  Bolik pushed some Parker CDs on me. I played them, obediently, one after another. Parker’s alto ripped through the air, exploding like a chemical weapon wiping out an enemy camp. He was blowing out a golden flame of divine wrath. His black fingers buried themselves deep in the toxic wounds of the air, extracting copper coins and the dried fruits of his labor. I threw the CDs we had already listened to into my tattered leather backpack. In an hour we passed the nearest town, popped onto a bridge, and found ourselves on the scene of a pile up.

  A tractor-trailer was stuck smack-dab in the middle of the road, completely blocking traffic in both directions. Cars were driving onto the bridge and falling into a craftily constructed trap—it was impossible to go forward or backward. The drivers were honking their horns. The ones who were closest to the action got out of their cars and walked ahead to see what had happened. There was an old semi-trailer caked in feathers and leaves and filled to the brim with poultry cages: there were hundreds of them—hundreds of these cages full of large, clumsy birds, flapping their wings and pecking away, all on top of each other. It looked like the driver had crashed into an iron barrier separating the pedestrian walkway from the road. The trailer had flipped over and formed an impromptu barricade. The top cages had spilled haphazardly onto the asphalt and now the bewildered chickens were chilling out around the trailer, jumping on car hoods, standing on the rails of the bridge, and laying eggs under the truck’s tires. The driver had fled the scene immediately, taking his keys with him, no less. Two cops were circling around the truck, not sure what to do next. They drove the chickens away furiously, trying to find any scrap of information about the missing driver. The witnesses gave them contradictory answers: one claiming that the man had jumped off the bridge, another saying he’d supposedly fled the scene in a waiting car, while a third witness stated in an insistent whisper that the trailer never had a driver in the first place. The cops were at a total loss, so they tried to radio in to the precinct.

  “Well, this will be a while,” Lyolik said, returning to the car after talking the matter over with the police. “They want to bring a crew in to clear the road. Trouble is, it’s the weekend, who the fuck is going to come?”

  A line of cars had already formed behind us, and it was getting longer by the minute.

  “Maybe we can go around?” I suggested.

  “How?” Lyolik answered sourly. “We can’t get out now. We should have just stayed home.”

  A plump hen hopped up on the hood of the car, took a few measured steps, and froze in place.

  “That means death is just around the corner,” said Bolik. “I wonder if there are any stores with fridges around here.”

  “You wanna buy a fridge?” Lyolik asked his cousin.

  “I want some cold water,” Bolik explained.

  Lyolik honked the horn. Frightened, the bird started flapping its wings and hopped off the bridge, soaring into oblivion. Maybe that’s the only way to teach them to fly.

  “All right then,” I said, finally cracking. “You two head back, I’ll hoof it from here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lyolik asked. “Just sit still. They’ll pull that thing to the side of the road soon and then we’ll turn around and head back home together.”

  “You two go. I’ll walk a bit and I’ll get there somehow.”

  “Wait up,” Lyolik said, concerned. “How the hell are you expecting to do that?”

  “I’ll get there,” I said. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Drive safe.”

  The cops were getting antsy. One of them picked up a chicken, held it by the leg, and toe-balled it. The chicken flew up into the air, soared over a few cars, then disappeared under the tires of one of them. His partner also maliciously grabbed a chicken, tossed it up into the air, and socked it with a right hook, sending it zooming up into the May sky. I hopped over the barrier separating the pedestrian walkway from the road, slipped around the trailer, slid past the drivers, crossed the bridge, and strolled along the morning highway.

  Then I stopped and stood under the warm sky for quite a long time; the empty highway resembled the metro at night—it was every bit as desolate and every minute there felt just as interminable. After the intersection at the city limits, there was a bus stop that had been intricately vandalized by anonymous sojourners. Its walls had black and red patterns scrawled on them, the dirt floor was thoroughly littered with broken glass, and dark grass grew from underneath the brick foundation where lizards and spiders were hiding. I decided against going inside. I just stood in the shadow cast by the wall and waited. I had to wait a good while. I saw the occasional truck making its way north, leaving dust and utter hopelessness in its wake, while nobody was heading south at all. The shade gradually ran out from underneath my feet. I was already thinking about giving up. I calculated how long it would take and where my friends could be right now, but then a blood-colored Ikarus bus, desperately spewing exhaust as it barreled down the highway, appeared from among the rocks and meadows along the riverbank. It rocked a bit, riding on two wheels momentarily, then stood on all fours like a dog shaking itself dry after a swim. Barely able to catch its breath, it switched gears and crawled toward me. Shocked, I froze and stood staring at this clunky vehicle coated in dust and smeared in blood and oil. It rolled over to the bus stop slowly. The door opened. I caught a whiff of its insides that reeked of death and nicotine. The driver, shirtless and panting from the stifling heat, wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and shouted:

  “Well, sonny boy, you getting in?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, and did so.

  There were no empty seats. The souls who inhabited that bus were a languid bunch. There were women in bras and sweatpants with bright makeup and long fake nails, tattooed guys with wallets hanging from their wrists, also in sweatpants and Chinese-made sneakers, and kids in baseball caps and athletic uniforms holding bats and brass knuckles. They were all sleeping or trying to fall asleep, so nobody paid any attention to me. All of this was accentuated by blasting, crackling Indian music that sounded like a flock of hummingbirds fluttering around inside the bus and trying to escape this sweet death chamber—but the music didn’t seem to bother anyone. I went up and down the aisle searching for a seat, but I couldn’t find one, so I went back toward the driver. The windshield was covered top to bottom in Orthodox icon stickers, and all sorts of sacred things dangled and flashed there. These seemed to be the only things keeping the bus from falling apart once and for all. Teddy bears and clay skeletons with broken ribs, necklaces made out of rooster heads and Manchester United pennants had been hung all over the place. Pornographic pict
ures, portraits of Stalin, and Xeroxed images of Saint Francis were Scotch-taped to the window glass. There were also maps outlining various routes on the dashboard, along with a few issues of Hustler that the driver used for swatting flies, and then flashlights, bloodstained knives, worm-infested apples, and small wooden icons of the great martyrs. The driver, clutching the wheel in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, was panting in the heat.

  “Well there, sonny boy,” he asked, “are all the spots taken?”

  “Yep.”

  “Stand here next to me, otherwise I’ll fall asleep too. It’s all right for them—they can pass out, but I’m the one that’s responsible.”

  “Responsible for what?”

  “The goods, sonny boy, the goods,” he said in a confidential tone.

  He started telling me some sob stories about small-fry entrepreneurs from the Donbass region and their families. Two days ago they picked up the goods (athletic gear, Chinese-made sneakers, and other shit like that) in Kharkiv and headed for home. As soon as they got outside the city, the poor old bus broke down. “Sonny boy, the suspension is always giving me trouble—the last time it got fixed was before the Moscow Olympics, back in 1980! So we spent the night on the side of the highway.” The driver slithered back and forth between the tires while the small-fry entrepreneurs set up camp, lit a fire, sang songs, and played the guitar. They even managed to enjoy themselves. In the morning, the driver went to the closest village and brought some farmers over with a tractor. The farmers hauled them over to the train depot. They spent the next day and night there. The entrepreneurs doggedly stayed up all night, protecting their goods and singing songs on their guitar. They only ran over to the train station once to buy booze and get some new strings. Eventually, the driver fixed the suspension, loaded up the entrepreneurs the best he could, and set off on the ill-fated road back to his beloved mining town in the Donbass region. When he saw the pileup near the bridge, he didn’t lose his cool; he cut a quick U-turn and got over to the other side of the river by taking some back roads. Now nothing could hold him back—well, at least that’s what he said.