Voroshilovgrad Read online

  I walked over to the bar, feeling more self-assured. The dude nodded at the empty stool next to him. I sat down.

  He was roughly the same age as me. He was giving me an angry, prickly look, but it was somehow detached from his personality, as though he was wearing anger-tinted contact lenses. He was clean-shaven, actually so clean-shaven that he had a few red cuts on his neck. He didn’t have too much hair, but he had slicked back what he did have fastidiously; everything about this guy was slick, combed, and washed. I noticed his jacket immediately, a long Milan jacket—the same one One-Eyed Tolik had been wearing, the only difference being that I could instantly tell that the one he had was authentic. One of his sleeves had been stained by blood . . . or, maybe, red paint. Under his jacket was a dark, expensive suit, a mellow-colored tie, and a snow-white dress shirt. The best of the Russian financial press was laid out on the table in front of him. Eventually he finished whatever he was reading abruptly folded it in half, tossed it onto the bar, next to all the other printed matter there, and clamped down on it with his small hand. As he did so, I saw that his nails were finely trimmed like those of a surgeon. I also noticed how clean his dress shirt was.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Herman.”

  “Herman? You got your passport with you?”

  I reached into my pockets, silently thanking Injured once again.

  “Korolyov,” he said after examining my papers. “Sounds familiar. How’d you get in here? How’d you get pass the security guard?”

  “Dunno,” I answered. “I missed my train, so I hopped on this one. It was dark.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said without believing a word I was saying. “And you came here on business?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, maybe you want something from me?”

  “Nope, not a thing.”

  “Yeah? Everybody always wants something from me.”

  “Nah,” I tried my best to sound reassuring, “I don’t need anything from you, not one thing.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “You bet.”

  “It’s a good thing I wasn’t asleep,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “If I had been, they would have thrown you right off the train without waiting for a stop. You know, I just can’t seem to fall asleep while I’m out here,” he complained. “I don’t like this place. Where do you live, Herman?”

  “Not too far from here.”

  “You’re a local?”

  “Yep, you could say that.”

  “Why haven’t you gotten the hell out of here yet?”

  “Why should I?”

  “So you could get a good night’s sleep,” he said.

  “I sleep just fine. Slept the whole night through in the next car. And I own my own business out here now. Kinda stuck here.”

  “You own your own business?” he asked, suspicious. “That’s good. It’s nice to have something that belongs to you. But . . . are you positive you don’t need anything from me?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Wanna have a drink?” he suggested out of the blue.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He slid off his stool and went behind the bar. The selection was a bit weak—the bar evidently wasn’t used all that often. The bottles stood in sparse ranks, some vodka, wine, and one bottle of cognac, which was what he grabbed. He took out two glasses originally meant for serving tea on passenger trains, tossed their spoons off to the side, and poured us a round.

  “Haven’t had time to restock the bar,” he said, handing me a glass. “Every time I come back I promise myself I’ll get a good bartender and buy some decent booze on the walls— ith adults— me.w . . .ure. Not that this couldn’s--but es, I think they do--remember fy its purpose?ues ...d prob. Too busy,” he said, downing his drink.

  I followed suit, not knowing how to answer. There he was, pouring me drinks like a bartender, but that didn’t make the slightest difference—it was still his cognac, and he wasn’t being hospitable for its own sake. The scornful way he was looking at me kept me uneasy.

  “Do a lot of folks take this train?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Just wondering? I’m the only one who takes this train. Well, me and the security guards. I don’t even have a bartender, see?”

  “And you don’t have any car attendants either?”

  “Nope, no car attendants either.”

  “Who checks the tickets then?”

  “Herman, this is my train, so I check all of the tickets.”

  “It’s your train,” I said, a bit surprised. “So, you’re like Trotsky—you’ve got your own train and all.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where am I going?” he parroted, thinking for a bit. Maybe he was deciding whether or not he should tell me. “Nowhere really. I’m just checking my sites.”

  “But how do they let your train through? I mean, how do they announce you at all the stations? Do you have a train number?”

  “Do you even know where we are right now?” he asked.

  I looked out the window. A strand of pink light was warming the fog; it was impossible to make anything out.

  “Nah,” I said, “I haven’t been here before.”

  “You sure haven’t. These tracks lead to a dead-end. They were built in case a war broke out, to move the factories east. Down there,” he said, pointing somewhere into the fog, “the tracks just stop. So, I’m the only one who takes this route.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Uh-huh. This is a strange area. I really don’t like coming down here. It’s just kinda empty. You’re going, going, going, and there’s nobody in sight. Just cornfields. You don’t actually like it around here, do you?”

  “What do you mean by ‘around here’?”

  “In your hometown.”

  “Yeah, I like my hometown.”

  “You guys are an odd bunch,” he said, pouring another round. “You’re happy to keep jerking me around forever, but you never really want to find common ground. You can’t even imagine how many problems I’ve had. Somebody always wants to screw me over, or stiff me. This one guy, a local, was so damn stubborn—he just wouldn’t fuckin’ budge.”

  “Maybe you were part of the problem?”

  “Maybe, maybe. Let me tell you, Herman. I think the whole reason you guys have to deal with so much shit is because you’re too attached to this place. You’ve got this crazy idea in your heads that the most important thing is to stay here, not give an inch—you’re clinging to your emptiness. There’s not a fuckin’ thing here! Not a single fuckin’ thing. There’s nothing to cling on to—how come you can’t see that? You’d be better off looking for a better place to live. You’d save me a lot of hassle. But no. You’re hunkered down in your foxholes and there’s no getting rid of you. And you’re always causing trouble!”

  “I don’t see what the problem is.”

  “The problem is that you underestimate the power of big capital. You all think that just because you were born here you automatically have the right to stay living here.”

  “Don’t we?”

  “Nope, you fuckin’ don’t, Herman,” he said, pouring us another round. “If you wanna get by, learn how to do business the right way. It’s really not that hard. Just try to understand that you’re not the only ones who have the right to be here, got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “You have to be able to compromise and give something up to get something back in return.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And you shouldn’t be so damn stubborn. Especially when someone makes you a really good offer, you got that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right then,” he said, downing his cognac and calming down. “You get that, but they don’t,” he motioned out toward the fog. “They don’t fuckin’ get anything. They’re alw
ays causing me trouble!”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe part of the problem is that you don’t give them much of a choice?”

  He looked even more scornful.

  “Herman, I do give them a choice,” he said. “I give them tons of choices. You think I like putting people in body bags? You’re all just fuckin’ crazy—it seems like time has stopped for you guys. You’re stuck in the past, hanging on for dear life, and there’s no dragging you back to reality. Ah, what’s the point in lecturing you, anyway?”

  The door to the sleeper car opened and the bearded man stepped in and stood silently by the door.

  “What’s up Nick?” the boss asked him, already sounding a bit tipsy.

  “You asked me to remind you about breakfast.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Slick said, “you see, we don’t have any bartenders, cooks, or car attendants. Okay, let’s go.”

  He headed down the corridor, swaggering like a sailor. Nick let him by, then let me by, and closed the door behind us.

  Something had changed since the start of our conversation; the air had become hot and turned the color of death—an intense, hopeless color. We were walking along the aisle when I heard some strange sounds coming from some of the locked compartments. I heard some chirping and some animals breathing apprehensively, sensing that there were monsters out in the corridor. Mr. Slick was banging his fist on the doors as he passed, and I could sense the bodies behind the walls, quivering and sighing in reply. The security guard was waiting for us at the end of the car. He was surprised to see me, but didn’t say anything, making it seem as though everything was just fine.

  “Well?” Mr. Slick said.

  The security guard opened the door hastily and stepped back, letting Mr. Slick slip by. Mr. Slick stood in the doorway for a moment, peering in.

  “Just like you asked for,” the security guard said.

  “Well, what do you want me to do with it?” Mr. Slick asked, irritated.

  Flustered, the security guard shrugged his shoulders. I looked into the next compartment. There was a table there, to which an unhappy black sheep had been tied with a long rope that looped all around its body.

  “Fuckin’ cunt,” Mr. Slick said. “Nick, couldn’t you buy some regular meat?”

  “We really couldn’t, boss,” Nick answered. “There aren’t any markets or anything around here.”

  “Well, you better get a move on,” Mr. Slick said. “You brought it, so you do the cooking.”

  “Me?” Nick asked, terrified.

  “Well I’m not gonna do it, obviously,” Mr. Slick answered coldly, stepping aside, taking out a toothpick, and starting to dig around between his straight, tiny teeth.

  Nick was at a loss. He was clearly afraid of his boss, so he nodded at his bearded partner, who had just come in. The latter got him a big bread knife, and they approached the animal together.

  The sheep was oddly submissive. They both grabbed it; Nick was holding the knife, but he was so anxious that all he could manage to do was stab ineffectually the poor animal, not kill it. The animal wasn’t happy about this, and it finally tried to break free. Eventually Nick stabbed like he meant it and the sheep began shuddering. Nick sank onto the floor, so his partner took over. He grabbed the still-struggling animal by the neck, like an American paratrooper capturing a Taliban fighter. He pressed the blade up against its throat and jerked the knife toward him. The sheep’s head lolled, but it was still kicking, and the security guard also fell to the floor. The knife skidded off to the side, landing at Mr. Slick’s feet.

  “You morons,” Mr. Slick said. “You can’t do anything right. Give me that,” he told Nick, gesturing at his holster.

  Nick gave him his Makarov pistol and stepped out of the compartment, humiliated. Mr. Slick zipped up his jacket, flipped off the safety, and fired wildly. Blood sprayed all over, dousing Mr. Slick’s jacket, but he was unfazed, continuing to fire bullet after bullet into the animal. Ringing, morning silence set in. I peered into the compartment. Mr. Slick, covered in sheep’s blood from head to toe, was standing there and examining his victim. Oddly enough, it was still alive. The compartment had acquired a strong smell of gunpowder and intestines.

  “Herman,” Mr. Slick said, without turning around. “Finish it off. Or are you too much of a pussy? I don’t want it to suffer anymore.” He handed me the pistol.

  “I guess I’m too much of a pussy.”

  “Yeah? How come?” he asked. “Are you afraid of a little blood?” He turned to face me. “What are you going to have for breakfast?”

  “Dude,” I said, “there’s no way I’m having breakfast with you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yep, that’s right.”

  “You’re all a bunch of pussies,” said Mr. Slick. “Every single one of you. If you’re afraid of blood, you’re never gonna get anything fuckin’ done in life. That goes for you, too, Herman. You’re never gonna get anything fuckin’ done.”

  “Whatever,” I answered.

  “Whatever?” the drunken Mr. Slick asked. “Okay, whatever. So, you’re not going to have breakfast with us?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine,” Mr. Slick said. “Nick, call up the engineer and tell him to stop the train. One of the passengers will be getting off.” He looked back at me: “You aren’t gonna get anything done, ever,” he repeated.

  “You’ve got some blood on your chin. You might want to wipe it off. It doesn’t look too nice.”

  At first I thought they were going to open fire on me, but no, the ghost train rolled away down the tracks without a shot. Shortly afterward, the train disappeared, leaving only the smell of hot metal to remind me that it had ever existed.

  4

  At the beginning of October, the days are as short as a soccer player’s career; the oily sun flows past overhead, weighing down the shadows on the ground, bringing the grass to life, and warming the asphalt’s broken heart.

  I veered away from the tracks, heading down an old highway almost completely overgrown with cattails. Some bewildered wasps were buzzing along the road and sun-warmed spiderwebs grabbed at my face and clothing, sticking to my skin and getting caught in my hair. The highway stretched through boundless cornfields, and the landscape was featureless—no trees, no towns, no signs of life or death.

  Farther along, I found a fork in the road. To the right, the highway pushed on into a valley, looking just as endless, sun-drenched, and webbed-over as the portion I’d already crossed; I decided to bear left instead, following the sun and walking between bare fields where the harvest had already been gathered. The road here was well-worn, so it was easy going, though the sun, moving along the sky’s smooth surface, began to blind me. I stopped a few times to rest on the dry grass and look up at the sky, feeling the juice in the grass cooling and going still. “I have no idea where I am anyway,” I told myself, so it makes no difference where I pop out. Just keep heading west, away from the border.”

  The fog started rising again at dusk. At first it cropped up in the distance, out in the yellow fields, hanging there as thick as smoke, gradually expanding; soon enough I couldn’t make out a thing except the sun’s crooked rays cutting through this white film, filling it with light from the inside. My long shadow stretched out behind me like a crashed kite that didn’t want to fly anymore. The fog crawled out from the lowlands, and the sun was glimmering, chopping through it like an underwater flashlight. In time the sunlight faded and the fog went dark; I found myself in the middle of a great milky film.

  I stuck to the main road as long as I could, trying not to lose my way, but soon enough the fog became all-encompassing and impenetrable. All I could do was continue to move forward, slowly, pushing the heavy evening air aside with my hands. I couldn’t help but feel as though I was always about to collide with something or someone in that milk, at any moment I would run into some barrier, touch someone’s face or calf or pull some object out of the fog. When this feeling became too much t
o ignore, I stopped dead in my tracks in all that silence and dampness swimming around me, sent swirling by the west wind. But, after all that, I didn’t hit anything—something reached out for me. Someone’s hand, in fact. I leapt back, but quickly regained my composure. I touched the extended hand, and as I did so, three children emerged from the sheets of fog. The kids were wearing filthy tracksuits—the first in red, the second in white, and the third one in both red and white, though he was so filthy I could hardly tell. Two of the kids were obviously younger than the third; they were barefoot, while the older boy had wooden sandals. Judging by their Asian features, they were Mongols or Buryats, and they had coarse, black hair and dark skin—though, again, this might only have been because they were so filthy. There was a degree of apprehension in their intrigued eyes—they looked at me like I was a moose that had roamed into their backyard. At last the oldest boy grabbed my hand firmly and led me into the fog. I allowed myself to be pulled along, peering into the milky film, trying to make something out, but I couldn’t even see my own shoes

  Some soft lights were glimmering up ahead; they grew more and more intense as we approached, singeing the nighttime air. We ascended a hill, leaving most of the fog behind in the valley, and then found ourselves in the middle of a wheat field filled with faint noises. The lights were revealed as campfires drying out the damp gloom; this was some kind of camp, and a rather large one at that—there were dozens of military tents there with household appliances, dishes, old travel bags, and other miscellaneous bundles heaped around them. Sparks were rising into the black and white sky where the thick, dark void was mingling with the few patches of fog that had drifted this high; the men and children of the camp were mainly huddled around their fires, arguing and trying to keep warm, while the women were bustling out of their tents and disappearing into the disquieting twilight. The men were small in stature, and most, like their children, were dressed in tracksuits, though some also sported hats, and one or two were wearing camouflage. They sat around their fires, apparently arguing, while the women were calling back and forth. The children would run out into the darkness, come back with clumps of dry grass, toss them into the bonfires and dive back into the inky hole.