Voroshilovgrad Read online

  “Here’s a little something for you to remember this night by,” she said.

  Then she shoved me forward, right into the happy, bustling crowd, which immediately spun me around and carried me along, out into the night, past the glimmering firelight. They were all celebrating, embracing each other, hopping on each other’s backs, and running into the thick, low-hanging blanket of smoke that was settling around them. I looked back, but Karolina had vanished. In her place there was only the wind, fluttering the EU flags, kicking up dust, and clearing the way for happy men with copper voices who circled around me and sang incomprehensible songs with incredible energy. Children raced by us, slipping through the men’s legs and dodging the women’s embraces, screeching and laughing. They plunged down into the dark void, churning the fog, knocking stars out of the sky with their long, bony fingers, and the stars, spilled down, thudding onto the tents’ canvas roofs, falling into the fires like chestnuts, where they produced spark after spark, gliding into pockets and falling on men’s hats, where each one burst with a splash of cold, bright juice. The herd, distracted by the racket, moved lazily through the camp and down into the valley, with its serenity and water barrels. Lethargic cows ducked away from the women trying to tie ribbons and shawls around their horns and lowed as they descended those insane hills. Sheep and goats trotted along after them, and the children, true nomads that they were, rode on their backs, barely visible, like ghosts, a unit of devilish cavalry that would forge on through the rainy season and the long drought alike, into the most fertile valleys and farmlands. The women danced gracefully by the campfires in their robes and raincoats, slipping into a trance drawn together by as they shared movements that imitated the birds of the air and the beasts of the land.

  I was already tired out from all the festivities, so I cut through yet another drove of children and headed back to the Karolina’s tent. I crossed the threshold. The television was still pumping the nighttime air full of its soft, weightless glow. Karolina was lying on a sleeping bag, passionately kissing some muscular blonde woman in orange overalls. She had already taken off Karolina’s sweater and was now kissing her dark, heavy breasts, while Karolina was ruffling her short hair and unbuttoning her overalls. I pretended I was watching the TV, but Karolina noticed me at once and became even more passionate. I tried slipping out of the tent as unobtrusively as possible.

  “Herman,” Karolina called, sounding amused. “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t mind me,” I answered. “Keep doing your thing.”

  “Don’t be scared,” Karolina said. “Come over here.”

  “I don’t want to disturb you.”

  The blonde swiveled her head and started looking at me too.

  “You’re not disturbing us.”

  “You’re really getting us going,” Karolina added and started laughing again. “All right, just go to bed.”

  They just lay there entwined, waiting for my next move, intrigued. I figured it wouldn’t be right to just get up and leave. “Everyone celebrates in their own way,” I thought. I found my sleeping bag, slid inside it, and closed my eyes, turning indignantly to face the wall. I could still hear them kissing when I fell asleep.

  5

  “. . . she said that you’d be still be here, that you decided to stay.”

  “Decided to stay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t she wake me up?”

  “She said she couldn’t bring herself to do it, you were sleeping like a baby.”

  “Like a baby? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, that you were sound asleep.”

  “At least she didn’t take my passport.”

  “. . .”

  “That EU commission . . . they’re just a bunch of frauds.”

  “. . .”

  “Why did they leave me here?”

  “Herman,” Tamara said wearily, “what do you want me to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, dissatisfied with the whole situation.

  Recalling the past and piecing it all together isn’t a pleasant task. Up above, the sun’s bronze torso coasted by like an airship, drifting through warm currents of air. I’d woken up around noon and now I thought back to yesterday and last night, the night that lasted for an eternity. I thought back to the songs, names, and faces, imbibing all the while the scents of the dwelling in which I found myself, taking in a silence so profound as to be incredible. The silence scared me. “Are they all still sleeping?” I asked myself. “Maybe they celebrated all night and now they’re resting up for the long, arduous trek to come.” I slipped out of my sleeping bag and saw that neither Karolina nor her blonde girlfriend were in the tent. In fact, there was nothing there, no sleeping bags, no clothes, no ancient black and white TVs, no books, bags, maps, or socks. It had all just disappeared. Expecting the worst, I went outside.

  There was nothing left of the camp except ruins and piles of ashes. Black, skinny strands of smoke stretched toward the sky like hungry cobras. The well-worn paths the nomads had tramped into the ground during their stay formed an odd, incomprehensible pattern now that pilots and birds could use to reconstruct the route taken by wild eastern tribes heading who knows where and who knows why. I couldn’t tell when they’d managed to pack up and move out, how they could possibly have gotten away without my noticing. The only things left were two big tents, inflated by the afternoon air, and those poles with the EU flags flapping on them in the middle of the field—while off in the distance, down in the valley, I could see a few soldiers circling around the blue portable toilets, about to load them onto an army flatbed truck. Next to the truck, where the barrels of water had been, I saw the shimmering, white, church-issued Volga. I went on over.

  Tamara looked despondent. She wasn’t in the mood to talk, but I had to get her to explain the whole situation to me. She said that Karolina called her that morning, asked her to drive over and pick me up, explaining where we were, saying she was sorry for being such an inconvenience, and assuring Tamara that taking me along with the tribe was out of the question, since the Mongols believe it would bring them bad luck, and were basically threatening to sever all ties with the EU Commission if I were to continue on the trip with them.

  “All right, fine,” I said, already sitting in the back seat and counting the October poplars as we drove by. “But how did she know to call you?”

  “It’s a long story,” Tamara answered reluctantly. “She and her team did some work with us back in the day. Some charity work for the church. They had a good relationship with our presbyter; he was always helping them out with paperwork or just saying a kind word. Who else could she have called, anyway? Just think about it, they can’t have people poking around their camp.”

  “That’s for sure. I guess dumping on the church looked pretty appealing.”

  “Right.”

  “But they could just have taken me along, too.”

  “No, they really couldn’t have,” Tamara said. “The Mongols were worried you’d latch onto them. They don’t need outsiders—they’ve got a code. You should be counting your blessings. It’s a good thing they didn’t turn you in, or just get rid of you. Where do you get off wandering around like that?”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “.What’s going on back home? Are they still looking for me?”

  “Yep,” Tamara answered. “They even stopped by the church and talked to the presbyter.”

  “What’d he tell them?”

  “Nothing,” Tamara assured me. “He said he didn’t know anything.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?”

  “Nothing,” Tamara said. “Now you just gotta wait it out. What are you getting so worked up over?”

  “What am I getting so worked up over? Let me tell you what I’m getting so worked up over! Have you ever slept in a tent with two lesbians?”

  “Yeah, I have. And I didn’t like it one bit.”

  “Can we make a pit stop here?” I asked. “I’m
thirsty.”

  A little green food truck was set up on a brick foundation. Long benches stained with ketchup and butter stood off to the side under some trees. It was a kind of rest stop, a safe haven with amiable female dancers, children’s songs, and soft-spoken birds, where travelers could share the latest news, warning their fellow sojourners about upcoming traps and danger.

  We were the only customers right now, though. A heavyset woman with pink hair and red nails came out of the food truck, gave us a deeply skeptical look, took our order, and disappeared back inside. Tamara and I were sitting on the bench in tense silence; Seva had decided to stay back in the car, but he asked us to bring him back a hot meal. The sun was warming up the autumn fields the best it could and the warm eastern wind brought us the smells of smoke and dry grass. Barren black soil spread out around us, and out on the horizon red-tinted pine trees soared upward.

  The air seemed to be woven out of varying smells and shades of color, like the fabric of burning flags still flapping in the October wind. The emblems on those flags were long, sticky vessels made from spiderwebs and thin bundles of fatigued plants cut and assembled by women’s hands. There were birds too, flying over vast expanses, heading south, deserting the thick, stagnant air that drifted along over our hair. Lethargic autumn insects crawled over the cloth flags, blending in with the earth and sky. The ragged banners smelled of silt and wet sand—there was a river flowing nearby carrying leaves and severed plant stems downstream.

  Tamara was wearing her usual cherry-colored sweater and long dress, hiding her eyes behind big sunglasses, which made her look like some mobster’s widow; her heart still belonged to him, how could she ever move on? She sat there, smoking a lot, drinking tea out of a plastic cup, refusing to eat, and watching the butterflies gravitating toward the sugar cubes on our table.

  The sun and the autumn air made the rest stop feel ghostly and unwieldy, as though the whole place was liable to collapse and fall to pieces any second now. The last few days were like a sugar cube that had been left outside, and now that sugar cube was flashing in the, blinding us, agitations our imaginations, reminding us that any moment might hold unexpected and unforeseen events.

  “You’ll stay at my place for now,” Tamara said. “They probably won’t look for you there.”

  “It’d be better for me to just go home. What could they really do to me? At least that way I’ll figure out what the problem is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Why stick your neck out? Wait it out for a few days at my place and then you can go back home. I told Injured about my plan—he’s fine with it.”

  “Well, as long as Injured’s fine with it.”

  “You’ll go back in a few days. All right?”

  “Okay,” I said. And then I asked, “Tamara, why haven’t you gotten out of here yet?”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Anywhere. I don’t know . . . you could have gone abroad. Why did you stay?”

  She took off her glasses. It struck me again that she was already well over the hill—she wasn’t as young and carefree as she had seemed in the Volga at twilight after two days of celebrating. Her face was pale, and she had a troubled and uncertain look about her. Her cigarette was quivering ever so slightly, right between her two big black and silver rings.

  “You must have wanted to leave at some point. What could be keeping you here?”

  “What do you mean?” she answered after a second’s thought. “There always are things that keep us in a particular place.”

  “Listen, isn’t it the future that keeps you somewhere? I mean, the idea that you’ll have a future there? Do you really think there’s a future for you here?”

  “No,” she admitted, “but there’s a past. The past can also make you stick around.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s hard for me to explain,” Tamara said. “Let’s just go home.”

  I hadn’t been to Tamara’s place since her mom’s funeral. Remembering how everything played out that night, I crossed the threshold of her apartment feeling rather uneasy, would everything that went down that night make being here together uncomfortable? But Tamara was walking from room to room, too preoccupied to pay any attention to me, so that uneasy feeling soon passed. It was replaced by a newborn sense of confidence and an odd touch of melancholy, clearly caused by sweet memories and aching anticipation.

  I chided myself for thinking of those memories as sweet. It was a funeral, after all—we’d buried Masha, who was a stranger to me at the time, but who was someone’s mother nonetheless. I continued chiding myself, thinking, “Go thank her for picking you up and taking you away from that Tatar-Mongol haven of debauchery, for taking care of you and not turning you over to the cops or the local gangsters. Lay low for the next few days until everything blows over, and then go back to your gas pumps with a clear conscience. Make sure not to traumatize her by bringing up her mom, and—above all—don’t promise to marry her.”

  “Hey Herman,” she said, bringing me out of my reverie. “I’m gonna head out. You’ll be in charge for the day. Don’t open the door for anyone, don’t answer the phone, and don’t walk past the windows.”

  “Wait—where are you going?”

  “I’ve got stuff to do, Herman. Were you thinking I’d just sit around here all day with you?”

  “Well no, not really,” I answered, my feelings a bit hurt. “All right, I don’t wanna keep you . . . but when should I expect you back?”

  “Why should you be expecting me?”

  “Well, I’ll have to open the door for you.”

  “I’ve got a key,” Tamara said, matter-of-factly. “So, don’t wait up. I’ll be back late.”

  “Well, what should I do all day?” I asked.

  “Do some reading,” Tamara said. “There are a bunch of children’s books over there.”

  I found a packed bookcase in the living room; there were indeed a lot of children’s books there, bearing stamps from the factory library, as well as musty collections of fairy tales and science fiction stories, books about heroic Soviet pioneers, and historical novels. I started flipping through the books, coming across the occasional dried flower or old birthday card serving as a bookmark. Pages had been ripped out in places, and sometimes I’d find odd doodles or grim pentagrams drawn in the margins. None of the books really interested me, though. I fumbled around the shelves for a while until I found some magazines, LPs, and a hefty photo album all stacked in a bottom corner.

  The majority of the photographs in the album had been glued meticulously onto its pages, but a whole pile hadn’t made the cut, apparently, and had just been left stuffed between the front cover and the first page. I went into the bedroom, taking the album with me.

  A large sofa bed with a dozen or so soft pillows and cushions on it, was sitting by the wall; in true Soviet fashion, there was a rug hanging on it. It was synthetic and looked to be Chinese, judging by the stylized figures—it was a picture of some sort of tea ceremony, and there was something familiar about the profiles of the figures sitting in the foreground. I had seen these faces before and they had said something to me. Two men were passing each other saucers, thick currents of steam coming off them, and a pregnant woman was sprawled out in the center of the image, between the men, her eyes fastened intently on their nimble hands. In the background, I could see yurts and campfires, smoke drifting up and connecting the earth and sky, as well as herds of cows walking between the columns of smoke, bearing milk inside them like bitter truth.

  I flopped down on the bed and opened up the album.

  Caught, like birds in a net, their eagle eyes stared up at me—both still and attentive, not knowing what to expect from me. Grown men and women, children and old people, students, soldiers, blue-collar workers, high school seniors wearing white graduation aprons, the deceased in coffins with silver coins placed over their eyes, and infants with their favorite toys—they were all waiting for someone to meet their eyes, some color,
some black and white, to ascertain what it was that kept them together, what they were living for and why they’d passed on.

  The loose snapshots clearly hadn’t been organized according to any principle. The faces there looked unfamiliar and somehow alien. I know that kind of picture, the ones that are always kept; nobody wants to include them in their family photo albums, but that they don’t dare throw out, perhaps because throwing away pictures of the living is frowned upon . . . so they begin to collect, these old photographs—given as gifts, sent by mail, or just taken for no particular reason by camera enthusiasts—and wind up in a pile surrounded by other nearly forgotten relatives and family friends. I glanced through them briefly, then and set them aside.

  The rest of the prints, however, had been treated with love, and sorted fastidiously; they told the story of Tamara’s family and even projected its future to a certain degree. The first pictures, mostly black and white, a little bent, scratched, and ink-stained, featured some insane southern landscapes, as well as the white caps of mountain ranges, roof tiles, high windows, stone walls, beat-up roads, and other exotic things interspersed with self-assured men and young, prideful girls with tar-black hair and white teeth. Some of them looked at me gloomily, some were laughing and carefree, while others were clearly worried or upset about something. I tried finding Tamara’s features in her relatives’ faces, but she was completely different—something separated her from her fellow mountain dwellers; it may have been her weary eyes or her sunglasses. Nevertheless, these people were undoubtedly close to her; they were related somehow, something kept them together, and I tried capturing some seemingly inconsequential details that might help me solve the riddle of this family, studying their clothing and combing through whatever notes or dates had been written in; scrutinizing young women with puffy hair as they strolled down wide boulevards, men wearing old-fashioned swim trunks standing still on a seacoast, old Soviet cars, silly children’s toys, factory entrances, university lecture halls, school hallways, and train compartments filled with happy faces looking straight at the camera, peering into the other side of time and space.