Voroshilovgrad Read online

  So what do we have here? We have some motherfuckers that were roughing Kocha up, and if it weren’t for Injured, they could very well have started on me. After all, on paper, I was the owner of the gas station. Five years ago, my brother had gotten nervous about something, so he quite sensibly signed the deed over to me. We trusted one another. He knew that I couldn’t hurt his business even if I tried, so he told me not to worry, just sign on the dotted line. Eventually he learned how to forge my signature, so I didn’t even know how he was doing, how much he was paying in taxes, what kind of profit he was making. He had his own problems to deal with, while I hadn’t had any to speak of, at least up until the last few days. Now it turned out that I had a boatload of problems, and I had to solve them, somehow. (Well, actually, I guess I could have just said, “screw this” and hightailed it to Amsterdam.) What bothered me the most that my brother hadn’t told me a thing. I had no clue where to go from here. Just a few days ago I had been a supposedly free and easy independent expert, fighting for democracy against God knows who. Now I had some property hanging over my head—and I had to do something with it, because my brother was out of the picture and there was nobody to forge my signature anymore.

  One way or another, I would have to pay this Olga of theirs a visit to get some kind of information. No matter what, I wouldn’t be getting home today. It’d be best to give Lyolik a call and let him know. I stepped into the booth and picked up the phone hanging on the wall.

  “It’s not working,” Kocha said, standing in the doorway and looking at the receiver in my hands. “I already told you.”

  “You got a cell?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not working either,” he said.

  “Does Injured have one?”

  “He does. But he won’t let anyone use it.”

  “My ass he won’t.” I wasn’t about to take Kocha’s word for it, so I headed for the garage, pushing the old man out of the way.

  Injured had already changed into his dark-blue work uniform and pulled on a black beret. Some hunk of junk was elevated on a jack; Injured caressed it like a butcher handling a cow carcass.

  “Injured,” I said, “give me your cell. I’m staying here until tomorrow. I have to let my guys know.”

  “You’re staying?” Injured replied, looking straight at me. “Okay, fine. But there’s no money left on my phone, so you’re shit out of luck.”

  “So where can I make a call?”

  “Go over to the TV tower, right over there. And quit fuckin’ bothering me, okay?” he yelled as I was leaving.

  I walked around the booth, hugging the trailer and following a path. I descended into a gully, climbed a small hill, pushed my way through some raspberry bushes, and popped out onto an asphalt road leading off the main highway. I approached the fence that looped around the TV tower. There was a prominent “Do Not Enter” sign on the gate, but it was open, so I stepped inside. A path led up to a one-story building. It must have contained the control panel, or whatever you call it. The actual tower stood off to the side, buried among flowers and wrapped in barbed wire. An old German shepherd ran out from around the corner, came up to me, sniffed my shoes lazily, then went off in another direction. There was no one in sight. The dog, presumably responsible for guarding the local broadcasting services, had been flagrantly neglecting its duties. I stood still for a bit, waiting for someone to come out. Nobody did, so I went up the rest of the way to the building. The doors were locked. I knocked. Nobody answered, not that my hopes were high. I walked up to the window and peered in. There was nothing to see on the other side, but then someone’s face emerged from the darkness. I stepped back, startled. The face disappeared instantly, feet pattered across the floor, and the doors opened. A girl of about sixteen stood at the doorway. She had short black hair, big gray eyes, and was wearing plastic earrings. She had on a short, bright T-shirt, a jean skirt, and light sandals.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said, “I’m Herman, from the gas station.”

  “Herman? Yura’s brother?” she asked.

  “You know him?”

  “We all know each other around here,” she said.

  “Do you have a phone? I have to make a call, and ours was disconnected. Kocha claims we didn’t pay this month’s bill.”

  “Oh, that Kocha,” the girl said, stepping to the side and letting me pass. I walked down a hallway and reached a room with a bed at one end and a desk at the other. There was a phone on the desk. The girl followed me and stood in the doorway, watching my movements with interest.

  “Do you mind?” I demanded.

  “Not at all,” she said, but she didn’t move an inch.

  I picked up the receiver and dialed my home phone number.

  “Yeah,” Lyolik said curtly.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m at my brother’s, everything’s all right. How was the ride back?”

  “Shitty. Bolik got carsick, he barely made it.”

  “Well, now everything’s okay, yeah?”

  “Yeah, we’re okay. When are you getting back?”

  “Listen brohan, there’s some stuff I gotta take care of here. I’ll be staying for another day. I have to meet up with the accountant tomorrow.” I heard the girl chuckling behind me. “So I’ll be home on Tuesday. Make sure to tell Bolik, okay?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. Maybe you should tell him yourself?”

  “You’re shitting me. Back me up here, all right?”

  “Why don’t you just talk to Bolik, huh? So there won’t be any problems.”

  “Get the fuck outta here! What problems could there be, Lyolik? We have to trust our friends, don’t we?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Next time I’ll bring you a chick. A blow-up one.”

  “Bring me a drive shaft instead.”

  “So that’s how you swing these days?”

  “Shut it, douchebag,” Lyolik said and hung up.

  The girl saw me out. I thanked her.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said. “And tell your brother ‘hello’ for me.”

  “He’s gone. He took off somewhere.”

  “And what about you? Are you going to take off somewhere?”

  “Why, you want me to stick around?”

  “Like I need you,” the girl said, completely unruffled.

  “You aren’t scared up here, all by yourself?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “Now get out of here, or I’ll sic my dog on you.”

  I went up to the gate and then stopped. She was at the window again, keeping an eye on me, probably thinking I couldn’t see her. I waved. Realizing I’d caught her spying on me, the girl started laughing and waved back. Then she flashed me, showing off what she had under that T-shirt. She evaporated the very next instant. I just stood there, dumbfounded, waiting to see whether she’d reappear in the window, but no, she was gone. “What a strange girl,” I thought, then went on my way.

  Work was in full swing at the station. Kocha, sprawled out on the catapult chair, was sleeping soundly, his right hand clamped between his skinny legs. I went over to the garage. Injured, shirtless, sweaty, constantly grumbling about something, was circling around that elevated hunk of metal, occasionally rubbing his stomach up against it. He waved when he saw me, wiping beads of sweat off his forehead and deciding then and there to take a smoke break.

  “You get through?”

  “Yep. I’m heading out tomorrow.”

  “Sure, sure,” Injured said, giving me a severe look.

  “Look,” I said, “who’s that high school girl over there, at the TV tower?”

  “Katya?” A warm, dreamy haze appeared in Injured’s eyes immediately, and a paternal smile broke out below his thick mustache. “What’d she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, really. She’s a good . . . modest girl.”

  “Keep your distance,” Injured warned. “It wouldn’t go an
ywhere good.”

  “Does she work over there?”

  “Her dad does. She brings him lunch.”

  “Just like Little Red Riding Hood.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Herman,” Injured asked, “what do you actually do for a living?”

  “I’m an independent expert,” I said.

  “And what exactly does an independent expert do?”

  “How should I put it? Nothing, really.”

  “You know, Herman,” Injured said, “I don’t trust you. Don’t take offense—just let me tell you how I see it.”

  “Go for it. Lay it all out for me.”

  “Simply put, I don’t trust you. You’re going to hang us out to dry—you don’t give a fuck about any of this, and Kocha doesn’t give a fuck either. You don’t even know what you do for a living. Your brother, on the other hand—he’s completely different.”

  “Well, why’d he leave then?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Sure it does. Who were those guys in the Jeep?”

  “You scared or something?”

  “Why? Should I be?”

  “You’re shaking in your boots, I can see that. Kocha’s scared of them, too. Everyone is. Your brother wasn’t, though.”

  “Your brother this, your brother that. Enough already.”

  “All right, take it easy,” Injured said, putting on his jacket and getting back to work. He started up a car. The noise made my ears ring.

  “Injured!” I yelled over to him. He paused and looked over in my direction, leaving the car running. “I’m not afraid. Why should I be? It’s just that you’ve got your lives, and I’ve got mine.”

  Injured nodded. Maybe he couldn’t even hear me.

  When evening came, Injured gave the rest of us a mute farewell and went home. Kocha was still sitting on the catapult, covered in orange and blue dust. He seemed to have gotten stuck in some sort of odd torpor; neither Injured’s departure nor the various passing truck drivers’ repeated requests that he fill up their tanks made the least impression on him. Injured had shown me how to work the pumps, so I was the one who waited on the three larger-than-life tractor-trailers that came by, looking like huge, weary lizards. The sun had floated over to the other side of the highway, and the twilight burst open like a sunflower. Kocha came to life just as the evening did. Around nine he stood up, locked the booth, and wandered listlessly over to the far edge of the lot. With a heavy sigh, he looped around the truck cab I had slept in last night, squeezed himself inside, and sprawled out in the driver’s seat, extending his legs through the shattered window. I crawled in after him and sat in the passenger seat. Down below, darkness was enveloping the valley. To the east, the sky was already covered in a dim haze, while to the west, right above our heads, red flames spilled across the whole valley, heralding the arrival of night. Mist rose off the river, concealing the little silhouettes of fishermen and the surrounding houses, rolling out onto the road and drifting into the suburbs. The fog that hovered over the valley the city sat in was white. The valley was fading away into darkness, growing more and more indistinct, until it resembled a riverbed, though up here, in the hills, it was still light. Kocha, wide-eyed and stupefied, was staring down at it all, unblinking, his gaze fixed on the advancing night.

  “Here,” I said, handing Kocha my MP3 player.

  He put the earphones on over his balding head, tapping some buttons to adjust the volume.

  “What is this, anyway?” he asked.

  “Charlie Parker. I ripped ten CDs’ worth.”

  Kocha listened for a bit, and then put the ’phones down, off to the side.

  “You know why I like it out here?” I asked him. “There aren’t any airplanes going by.”

  He looked up. It was true; there really weren’t any planes. There were still some lights, though: just reflections, maybe, shooting across the sky; green sparks glowing here and there; golden balls spinning along; clouds massing to the north, giving off little sparkles.

  “But there are always satellites up there,” Kocha answered finally. “You can see them very well at night. When I’m not sleeping I always see them.”

  “And why aren’t you sleeping, old-timer?”

  “Well,” Kocha said, every consonant still coming out with a screech, “the thing is, I’ve got sleeping troubles. Ever since the army, Herman. You know how it goes in the paratroopers—those drops, the adrenaline . . . it sticks with you, for life.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “So I bought some sleeping pills. I asked for something that would really knock my socks off. They gave me some kind of weird artificial shit. God knows what they’re putting in pills these days. Anyway, I started taking it, but it didn’t do a thing. I upped the dose and I still couldn’t fall asleep. Thing is, though, I’ve started sleeping during the day now. It’s a real head-scratcher . . .”

  “What have you been taking?” I asked him. “Can I have a look?”

  Kocha rooted through his overall pockets and took out a bottle; the label was a poisonous-looking green. I took the bottle and tried reading it, but I didn’t even recognize the characters on it.

  “Maybe it’s some sort of cockroach repellent. Who even makes these pills?”

  “They told me the French do.”

  “But look at these hieroglyphs—does that look like French to you? Okay, okay—how about I try one?”

  I twisted off the cap, took out a lilac-colored pill, and popped it into my mouth.

  “Nah, man,” Kocha said, taking back the bottle. “If you only take one you won’t even feel it. I take at least five.”

  Kocha dumped a few pills down his throat, as if to validate this statement.

  “Gimme that.” I took the bottle back, poured out a few pills, and downed them. Then I just sat there, trying to focus in on my own sensations, waiting for the pills to kick in.

  “Kocha, it doesn’t feel like they’re doing anything.”

  “I told you so.”

  “Maybe you need to wash them down.”

  “I tried doing that . . . with wine.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. My piss just turned red.”

  The twilight thickened, slipping through the tree branches and reaching out into the warm, dusty grass wrapping around us. Flaming orange balls hung in the valley, their sharp citrusy light burning through the fog. The sky was turning black and distant, the constellations showing through like a face appearing on a negative. But the night’s most salient feature was the fact that I didn’t have the slightest desire to sleep. Kocha put on my headphones again and began swaying softly to an inaudible beat.

  Then I noticed movement somewhere down below. Someone was coming up from the river, ascending the steep slope. The hillside was buried in fog; I couldn’t make anything out, but it sounded as though somebody was herding skittish animals away from the water.

  “You see that?” I asked Kocha warily.

  “Yep, I sure do,” Kocha replied, nodding happily.

  “Who’s down there?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kocha said, continuing to nod, contemplating the night that had pounced on us so suddenly.

  I froze, listening hard to the voices that were becoming more distinct as whoever it was drew nearer in the darkness that clung to everything like some thick, acerbic liquid. Lit by the valley below, the fog now seemed full of motion and shadows. I could see into the space above it, where some bats occasionally whipped by, making circles above our heads then abruptly darting back into the wet haze. The voices got louder, the rustling resolved into individual footsteps, and then, all at once, bodies started swimming out of the fog, gliding quickly across the thick, hot grass toward us. They moved easily up the slope—there were more and more of them. I could already see the first ones’ faces; new, distinct voices carried out of the fog now, and they sounded sweet and sharp as they soared into the sky like smoke from fireplaces. When the first ones drew even with me, I wa
nted to call something out, something that would stop them, but I was at a loss for words. I could only sit there and observe them silently as they came nearly face-to-face with us, only to push on, not stopping or paying any attention to us, disappearing back into the nighttime haze. I couldn’t understand what kind of creatures they were; they were strange, nearly formless; men with clumps of fog tucked away in their lungs. They were tall, with long, unkempt hair that they had pulled back into ponytails or else wore in Mohawks. Their faces were dark and scarred; some of them had odd painted signs and letters on their foreheads, while others had piercings in their ears or noses. Some of them had covered their faces with bandanas. Medallions and binoculars dangled from their necks, and they had fishing poles and guns slung over their shoulders. One was holding a flag, while another carried a long dry stick with a dog’s head on the end. Somebody was carrying a cross, and somebody else seemed to be carrying all his belongings in a bundle. Many of them had drums; they weren’t beating them, however; they were hoisted over their shoulders. The creatures’ clothing was striking but bedraggled—somebody was wearing an officer’s jacket, while others were decked out in sheepskins. Many were wearing long, simple white garments dotted with cow’s blood. One of them wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his extensive tattoos gave off a blue light under the glowing stars. Another one was wearing army boots, while somebody else had laced sandals on, though most walked along barefoot, crushing bugs and field mice and stepping on thorns, although they showed no signs of discomfort. Women, whispering back and forth in the dark, and occasionally bursting into laughter, followed the men. Some wore their hair in buns, and many of them had dreads, but the pack even included some bald ladies, their skulls painted red and blue. Icons and pentagrams hung from their necks, and they were carrying drowsy and hungry children on their shoulders, children whose eyes soaked up the darkness around them. The women’s dresses were long and colorful; it looked as though they had been wrapped in the flags of some unknown republics. They wore bracelets and baubles around their ankles, and one of them even had little silver rings on her toes. After they too had passed, more dark figures began to burst out of the fog, one by one. They were like nothing I had ever seen before. Some had rams’ horns on their heads wrapped in ribbons and golden paper, while other figures were covered in thick fur. Yet another group followed after them, with turkey feathers rustling behind their backs, while the last cohort, the darkest and least talkative, were deformed, each looking as though they’d been created by merging two bodies together—they walked along with two heads on their shoulders, two hearts in their chests, and enough life in them to die twice. Then weary cow heads poked out of the fog; it was unclear how this strange tribe had forced their animals to climb the steep hill, but there they were, plodding along, dragging harrows bearing blind snakes and dead fighting dogs. The harrows erased the tracks left by the incredible procession that had just passed us. Then we saw that the cows were being goaded on by herders in black and gray overcoats. They were moving the animals through the night, taking great pains not to leave any tracks behind. I recognized a few of the herders’ faces—the only problem being that I couldn’t remember where I’d seen them before. They noticed me too, but they simply looked me right in the eyes, forcing me to give up any last semblance of composure before they pushed on, leaving behind a scorched smell of iron and burning skin. The sky had already started to turn white over wherever they’d come from. As soon as they disappeared, the air was injected with an even, gray light, the new morning filling it up like water poured into a vessel. A red crack ran across the sky, and morning sunlight doused the valley. Kocha was still sitting next to me—he seemed to be sleeping . . . with his eyes open. I sucked in a sharp breath through my nose. Morning did come, but a bitter aftertaste of the voices that had been there a moment ago remained in the air. It felt as though death or a freight train had just come through.