Voroshilovgrad Read online

  “You here for long?” Kocha asked, whistling a bit as he spoke.

  “Heading back tonight,” I answered.

  “Why ya leaving so fast? Stay for a few days. We’ll go fishing.”

  “Kocha, where’s my brother?”

  “I already told you, in Amsterdam.”

  “Why didn’t he tell anyone he was leaving?”

  “Herman, I don’t know. It wasn’t planned, you know. He just up and left. He said he wasn’t coming back.”

  “Was he having problems with the business or something?”

  “What problems could there be, Herman?” Kocha replied testily. “We don’t have any problems here, or any business either—it’s just a mess. You can see that.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “I don’t know. Do whatever you want.”

  Kocha put out his cigarette and tossed the butt into the bin labeled “No Smoking.” He tilted his face toward the sun and didn’t say another word. “Damn,” I thought. “What’s going on in that head of his? He’s probably hiding something—sitting there cooking up some scheme.”

  Kocha was fifty or so. He was pretty energetic for his age, had lost most of his hair, and was decidedly off the grid. The remains of his formerly luscious locks, now surrounded by bald patches, were sticking out every which way. Back when I was a kid, he still had a full head of hair; I remember seeing Kocha a lot back then—he was the first living thing my consciousness registered, aside from my parents, relatives, and our other neighbors. As I grew up, Kocha grew old. We lived in adjacent buildings in a new neighborhood that was constantly expanding, so I felt as though I grew up on one big construction site. Our neighbors were mostly workers at the small nearby factories (there weren’t any big industrial concerns in our city), and then a few railroad men, all kinds of white-collar dipshits (teachers, office workers), military personnel (like my father), and members of the Communist Youth League—the leaders of tomorrow, as they said. As far as I can remember, Kocha wasn’t there to begin with; he moved to our street after we did; but it still felt as though he’d lived in our neighborhood his whole life. He had joined the leaders of tomorrow, grown up without any parents, and gotten himself into some trouble with the law, gradually becoming something of a local menace. It was in the ’70s that our neighborhood really started expanding, so Kocha’s wild adolescent years coincided with intensive infrastructure growth—Kocha held up our new grocery stores, cleaned out the newly opened newspaper kiosks, and broke into the newly constructed civil registry office; simply put, he was keeping up with the times. Acknowledging their helplessness, the authorities handed Kocha over to the Communist Youth League, hoping they would straighten him out. For some reason, they didn’t consider Kocha a hopeless case, so they got right down to molding him into a model Communist. For starters, they enrolled him in the local vocational school. Kocha stole a lathe during the second week of classes, and they were forced to expel him. After a year and a half of hanging around the neighborhood, he finally got hauled off to the army. He served in a construction battalion by Zhytomyr, but he came back home with paratrooper tattoos. These were his glory days. Kocha made his rounds in full uniform, beating up anyone he didn’t recognize. All the guys, myself included, worshipped Kocha then since he was such a bad example. This was when the Communist Youth League made one last, pathetic attempt at winning Kocha over by giving him a one-room apartment in the building next to ours. He moved in and immediately made his home a pit of debauchery. In the early ’80s, all our neighborhood’s young overachievers passed through his apartment—boys became men and girls gained valuable experience. Kocha started hitting the bottle harder and harder, so he barely noticed when the USSR collapsed. At the end of the ’80s, when a serial killer went on a rampage in our city, the authorities pointed the finger at Kocha. The neighbors too—everyone was convinced that Kocha was the one raping the girls coming home from the milk factory on starry, perfumed nights, and then stabbing them with a long jagged piece of scrap metal. Nevertheless, no one had the guts to do anything about it—they were too scared of him. In time it seemed he’d earned all the men’s respect and the women’s affection. Then, at the beginning of the ’90s, the authorities had to take matters into their own hands once again, absent the now-defunct Communist Youth League: at the end of a solid week of partying, Kocha burned down a billboard advertising a newly formed joint stock partnership, and this wound up being the final straw. The powers that be had already been at their wits’ end; but then they busted into Kocha’s own apartment and put him under arrest. A small protest had been organized by the time they led him outside. The guys and I (we were grown-up by then) all backed Kocha, but nobody gave us the time of day. He got a year, and did his time somewhere in the Donbass, where he hooked up with some Mormons. They gave him a bunch of pamphlets, as well as some cologne and cigarettes, at his request. After a year in the can he returned home a hero. Shortly thereafter, the Mormons came around looking to save his soul. They were three young missionaries wearing cheap yet sharp suits. Kocha let them in, listened to their spiel, took a shotgun from underneath the cushions on his sofa, and herded them into his bathroom. He kept them in there for two days. On the third day he rather imprudently decided to wash up regardless, opened up the bathroom doors, and let the Mormons break free. After running over to the police station they tried filing a report; however, the cops quite rationally decided it would be easier to lock up the Mormons for an identity check instead. Over the next few years, Kocha tried, unsuccessfully, to get his act together. He got divorced three times. Moreover, it was the same woman every time. Clearly, his love life was a mess, and Kocha’s youthful energy was slipping away from him. It finally slipped away completely in the late ’90s, when he wound up in the hospital with part of his finger bitten off and his stomach punctured. His wife had done the biting, during an argument, but Kocha flatly refused to say who was responsible for his stomach. Around that same time, my brother started helping him out by giving him some odd jobs, a little money, and whatever else he needed. He and Kocha went way back, apparently; my brother hinted at this a few times, although he never wanted to get into it. He just said you could trust Kocha—he’d be there if you got into a jam. Some Gypsies forced Kocha out of his apartment a few years ago, so he moved up here, to the gas station. He lived in the trailer, led a calm, serene existence, spent most of his time reminiscing, and wasn’t even thinking about getting his apartment back. He was a mess—his balding head had a soft pink tint to it, and his glasses made him look like some insane chemist who’d just discovered the formula for an alternative, environmentally-friendly form of cocaine and decided to test it out on himself, with some very promising results. He wore orange work overalls and old, beat-up army boots; most of his clothing came from military surplus shops, in fact; he even had foreign socks labeled R and L so you couldn’t confuse the right and the left. His wrists were wrapped in handkerchiefs and bloody bandages and his face and hands were always scratched and cut up. His hands were generally so red he looked as though he’d been eating pizza with them.

  Well, now he was sitting out in the sun, answering my questions rather unconvincingly.

  “Fine,” I said, “if you don’t want to talk, don’t. So who kept the books?”

  “Books?” Kocha answered, opening his eyes. “What do you need books for?”

  “I want to figure out how much dough you took in.”

  “Uh-huh. Herman, we got money out the fuckin’ wazoo,” Kocha said, starting to laugh anxiously, then adding, “You’ll have to talk with Olga. Your brother worked with her. She’s got her office in town.”

  “Who is she? His squeeze, or something?”

  “Squeeze?” Kocha asked, rather huffily. “I just told you—they worked together, that’s all.”

  “Where’s her office?”

  “You mean you’re going to go there right now?”

  “Well, I’m not gonna sit around here with you all day.”

  “
Buddy, it’s Sunday. She’s got the day off.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “What about it?”

  “Does she work tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “All right, Kocha. You handle the customers,” I said, surveying the empty highway. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Go sleep in the trailer,” Kocha replied.

  Light was poking through the shades, filling the room with sunny dust particles. Hot streaks spread across the floor like spilled flour. Some makeshift blinds made out of old tape reels were hanging over the doorway. It must have taken Kocha a while to put them together. I stepped into the room without shutting the door and took a look around. A draft disturbed the curtains, and they started rustling like cornstalks. Two couches, drooping in the middle, had been set up against the walls. A kitchen with a stove, an ancient fridge, and various appliances hanging on the walls was on the right. On the left, in the corner, stood a desk cluttered with all sorts of dubious-looking trash—I didn’t want to root around in it. An odd smell topped off the room. I had been absolutely certain that a room inhabited by Kocha would have to reek. Of what? Well, just about anything—blood, sperm, maybe even gasoline—but no, the trailer smelled like any other place where a man was used to bedding down in comfort—it was the same odd smell you always find in the rooms of contented widowers (if one can put it that way) who have no real insecurities. “Well, the Kocha I know has no real insecurities, obviously,” I thought to myself as I sank onto the tidier and least droopy-seeming couch. I flopped down, pulled off my sneakers, and suddenly the hassle of this whole trip hit me. All the stop-and-go driving, hitchhiking, drinking Karolina’s sweet beverage, seeing the black sky over the raspberry fields, and sleeping in a truck cab. This whole morning seemed like it would have no end to it. I had been operating some mechanism without even knowing it—and it had just malfunctioned. Something just wasn’t right. I felt I was standing in a spacious room into which some total strangers had been allowed just before all the lights went out. I had been in that room before, and knew its layout, but the presence of those strangers, who were standing next to me, silently, hiding something from me, made the familiar space foreign.

  “Whatever,” I told myself. “I can always just go home.”

  The wall above the couch was covered with old photographs, magazine clippings, and colorful illustrations. Kocha, just like a real serial killer, had pasted up fragments of faces, contours of bodies, and shreds of crowds with some eyes and mouths protruding at random. They were joyful collages; they also contained what appeared to be excerpts of different magazine stories pasted together—random glossy pages and then just plain paper, along with labels peeled from beer bottles, political pamphlets, pictures from fashion magazines, black-and-white pornographic shots, soccer team calendars, and someone’s driver’s license prominently displayed. From a distance the whole thing ran together into some bizarre pattern, as though someone had been painstakingly disfiguring the wallpaper. Up close, though, the eye was immediately drawn to a multitude of minor details—the faded yellow newspaper clippings, the mannequins whose eyes had been gouged out, freshly-spread glue, and dark crimson drops of strawberry jam resembling dried-up nail polish. A solid light-green, claylike background littered with letters and symbols, broken lines, and contrasting colors wrapped the whole construction together. No matter how intently I looked at the thing, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Eventually, I ran my finger down the wall until I caught a glimpse of Kocha’s army photo; I ripped it off. A capital U poked out from underneath. It was a map. Probably a map of the USSR—the Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus, and Mongolia were in sandy clay, the taiga and Caspian Lowland were in light green, and, apparently, the deserts were signified by a chalky dry area, where the sandy clay had hardened. The Pacific Ocean was dark, dark blue and the North Sea was light blue. A naked chick with a severed head took the place of the North Pole. Huh. Perfect for a school geography club. I sank into a deep silence.

  Some voices woke me up, voices that instantly rubbed me the wrong way. I hopped out of bed and went outside. The sound was coming from the gas station; there were a few people shouting all at the same time, but the only voice I could recognize was Kocha’s, and it was trembling.

  Two dudes wearing sport coats and jeans were sprawled out on the seats by the booth. One guy was wearing a tie, while the other, who looked like he was the boss, just had his top button undone. The former was in sneakers and the latter was in leather dress shoes. A third guy, though, wearing jeans and an Adidas jacket, had Kocha by the scruff of the neck and was shaking him roughly. Kocha was shouting something in protest, and the dudes sitting in the chairs were chuckling. “Uh-oh,” I thought as I moved toward them.

  “Hey,” I called out, “what’s the big idea?” Thinking, “I’ll punch the first fucker, and then I’ll make a run for it, if I have to. But what about Kocha?”

  Taken by surprise, the third dude released Kocha, dropping him onto the ground. The two guys sitting in the chairs gave me the evil eye.

  “Guys, what the fuck,” I said, choosing my words with care.

  “And who are you?” the surly guy who had been roughing Kocha up asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Hey, pansy,” the third dude said, giving Kocha—who was sitting on the asphalt and rubbing his neck—a kick. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Herman,” Kocha told him, “Yura’s brother—he’s the owner.”

  “The owner?” the main guy asked incredulously as he struggled to his feet. The other one, with the tie, followed his lead.

  “That’s right,” Kocha confirmed.

  “What do you mean, owner?” the boss demanded, “What about Yura?”

  “Yura’s gone,” Kocha said.

  “Well, where is he?” the main guy asked.

  “He’s taking some continuing education courses,” I said.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a car pulling in off the highway—I was really banking on it to save the day.

  “When’s he getting back?” The main guy had also seen the car and was talking with a lot less confidence now.

  “Once he finishes his course,” I told him, “he’ll come back. What’s it to you?”

  The car rolled onto the patch of asphalt by the gas station and screeched to a halt. The dust settled, and Injured got out of the car. He glared at the group of us and headed right over. He stopped at the booth without saying a thing. He was keeping a close eye on everyone.

  “So, what’s the deal?” I asked again, trying to assert myself.

  “Your gasoline is diluted,” the main guy replied spitefully.

  “We’ll sort that out,” I promised him.

  “You do that,” the guy said, then headed off toward their Jeep, obviously dissatisfied with how our conversation had gone. His two cronies followed suit, though the guy who’d been restraining Kocha wound up to give him one last kick before taking another look at Injured and deciding to back off.

  The Jeep had left a black trail across the asphalt. Maybe they’d slammed on the brakes when they arrived. The trail dropped off before the pumps. Apparently, they’d never had any intention of filling up. So the dudes took their seats, put the pedal to the metal, and sped off toward the highway. Kocha got up and started dusting himself off.

  “Who were those guys?” I asked him.

  “The local gang,” Kocha answered anxiously. “The kings of corn.”

  “What’d they want?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” Kocha said, putting on his glasses, slipping by me, and disappearing around the corner of the building.

  “Hi, Herman,” Injured said, coming up to me and shaking my hand.

  “Hey,” I asked him, “what’s the hell’s going on around here?”

  “Can’t you see?” he replied, nodding his head at the highway. “And your brother’s gone, you know.”

  �
�But why’d he leave?”

  “I know exactly why,” Injured said sharply, “I think he was fuckin’ fed up with all this shit, so he just packed his bags and left. I’m getting out of here too. I just gotta finish up this carburetor for this one motherfucker from Kramatorsk, and then I’m gone. Why shouldn’t I go?” He looked around dejectedly, but after failing to find a sympathetic listener he turned around and stalked off to the garage.

  Injured’s mood came as no surprise. He was always dissatisfied with something, and always seemed to be spoiling for a fight. It was probably just some kind of defense mechanism. Injured was ten years older than me. A living legend, the best striker in the history of Voroshilovgrad soccer. In the early ’90s, we wound up playing on the same team, so I caught the tail end of his career. Retiring from the big leagues really hurt his pride—Injured got spiteful and heavy. With his small stature, his foppish mustache, and his substantial gut, he looked less like a striker now than some kind of team massage therapist or sports commentator. When it came time to start a new life off the field, Injured quickly earned recognition as a top-notch mechanic, but he never wanted to work in someone else’s garage. My brother was the only one who managed to find some common ground with him—he took Injured on as a full partner, staying out of his hair professionally and refusing to get involved in his personal problems either. Injured was happy with their arrangement. He came and went as he pleased and did what he liked. Still, he had one passion that manifested itself outside of working hours. Since his glory days as a star forward, Injured had always been a skirt-chaser. That’s why he’d never married—when you’re sleeping with six women at a time, how are you supposed to settle down with any one of them? Curiously enough, the number of his partners hadn’t decreased after his athletic career came to an end—actually, it was just the opposite: As Injured aged, he’d honed his charm, meticulously cultivating and maintaining a unique aura, that of a chubby, forty-year-old ladies’ man. Women adored Injured, and that son of a bitch knew it. He always kept a metal comb in the breast pocket of his snow-white dress shirt; occasionally he’d use it to straighten out his little mustache. Bottles of cologne and tapes full of romantic melodies—or the “music of love,” as he called it—were always on hand. And yes, Injured took the occasional beating from aggrieved husbands on account of his amoral escapades. When that happened, he’d lock himself up in the garage and tinker for days on end. He was a kind man, all in all, if a bit reserved, and he was always a bit of a jerk to everyone. I was used to it, though.