Voroshilovgrad Read online

  Kocha usually took a while to wake up, and he felt lethargic in the morning, like a kid dragged out of bed when his parents are running late. He’d get up, walk around by the garage, feed the dogs some black bread, gaze pensively down into the valley, and then eventually wake me up. He’d flop down on the couch next to me and tell me long, random, fragmented stories about his ex-wife, taking out old pictures and digging his old army photo album out from under the couch. I’d fend him off feebly, trying to fall back asleep, but that wasn’t too easy to do after looking at the army photo album. Eventually, I’d get up, wrap myself in an itchy hospital blanket, and start listening. Kocha would tell me about love, about dating his wife-to-be, and about sex in the front seat of an old Volga car. “But why didn’t you just do it in the back seat?” I asked him. “Buddy, everybody did it in the back seat,” Kocha explained. “There’s a joint seat in the front of old Volgas, just like in the back, so it makes no difference where you do it, you dig?” “I sure do, Kocha,” I answered him, “it makes no difference.” He nodded appreciatively, as if to say, “Buddy, you know what’s up.” And then he went to brew up some super-concentrated Chifir tea to start off our day with a swift kick in the head.

  A bit later the first car pulled up to the station, beeping its horn. Irritated, Kocha threw on his glasses and rushed outside.

  “Kocha, let me help.”

  “Forget about it, Herman,” he said, waving me off. “You’re not my idea of good help.”

  “Well, I’m all you’ve got.”

  “All right, fine, you can come along,” he said, standing by the doorway and waiting for me to find my clothes. “Just put something else on. What are you doing wearing those jeans? I’ve got some old clothes over there under the bed. Try to find them, okay?” With that, he went outside.

  He had two suitcases stuffed with ratty clothes. They gave off a strong smell of tobacco and cologne. I rooted around squeamishly in the first suitcase and found some black army pants that were patched at the knees and stank as badly as everything else. Nevertheless, they still looked presentable. I opened up the second suitcase and pulled out a camouflage Bundeswehr coat, wrinkled, but not yet ripped. I pulled it over my shoulders. The coat was tight on me—that’s probably why Kocha, who had roughly the same build, didn’t wear it. But I didn’t have much choice. I looked out the window. The sun broke up my reflection and shredded it into scattered rays. I could only make out some outlines and shadows, but I must have looked like a tank driver who still had a lot of fight in him, though his tank had long since gone up in flames. With those thoughts rolling around in my head, I set off to start work.

  Injured showed up at nine. He cast a judgmental glance at my work clothes, harrumphed, and took his post in the garage. I tried to help, but I basically just got in the way. I spilled gasoline a few times, talked at length with a truck driver heading to Poland, and was constantly bumping into Kocha, keeping him from performing his duties. Finally, the old-timer couldn’t take it any anymore, so he sent me over to Injured, who caught on right away: he gave me a gasoline-soaked rag and instructed me to scour some piece of metal caked with silt, rust, and oil paint. I was decisively bored thirty minutes in; I hadn’t done any manual labor in years, and it showed.

  “Injured, let’s take a smoke break,” I said.

  “You can’t smoke here,” Injured responded. “This is a gas station, in case you hadn’t noticed. But all right,” he went on, “go take a break, and then come back.” Which is just what I did.

  They turned the phone back on around twelve. I called Bolik. His voice sounded wrong, he was agitated.

  “Herman! How are you doing down there?”

  “Fine,” I said, “it’s like a resort. There’s a river nearby stocked with pike.”

  “Herman!” Bolik yelled over the static. “We’ve got the convention coming up this week, and you’re fuckin’ going on about pike. Herman, screw the pike. Listen, bro we’ve got so much fuckin’ work to do—we actually really need you back at the office. When are you getting back?”

  “Oh, Bolik!” I yelled back. “That’s just what I’m calling about. Looks like I’m going to be hung up here a bit longer.”

  “What? Herman, what’d you say?”

  “I said I’m gonna be hung up here a while.”

  “What do you mean hung up? For how long?”

  “A week, max. No more.”

  “Herman,” Bolik asked, suddenly serious, “are you doing all right down there? Maybe we can help somehow?”

  “Nah, man,” I said, trying to affect a carefree and convincing tone, “relax. I’ll be back in a week.”

  “You aren’t going to stay there for good, are you?” Bolik sounded concerned, or suspicious, or maybe just hopeful.

  “Nah, what are you talking about?”

  “Herman, I’ve known you for a long time . . .”

  “Right, so quit talking nonsense.”

  “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

  “Don’t worry about it—I just told you I was coming back.”

  “Herman, think twice before you do anything stupid, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Think about us, your friends.”

  “I am, I’m thinking about you guys.”

  “Before you do anything stupid.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Think first, Herman, okay?”

  “Obviously.”

  “All right then, bro. We love you.”

  “Bolik, I love you guys too. Both of you. But I love you a little more.”

  “Quit blowing smoke up my ass, fucker,” Bolik said, finally hanging up.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I yelled, hearing the dial tone, “I miss you, too! Very, very much!”

  I called my brother again a few times after that. He refused to pick up. Sunlight poured into the room; dust hovered like river water disturbed by a passing fish. I looked out the window and felt the steaming guts of June settling on the surface of the tarmac, touching every living thing on the highway. What’s next? I could descend into the valley once again, try to find friends and acquaintances I hadn’t seen for years, chat with them, and ask them about their lives. I could hitch a ride out of here, extricating myself from this hellish place with its sunbeams and memories that clogged my lungs and blinded me. Naturally, the easiest thing would be to sell all of this, then split the money with my business partners. I doubt my brother would take it the wrong way. And if he did, what difference would it make anyway? He really hadn’t given me much choice. I could chill with Kocha a while longer, while it was still warm and the river was stocked, filling up trucks, and pretending I wanted to help. Still, soon or later I’d have to handle the documents, taxes, and all that junk that I’ve avoided my whole life. The whole episode where my brother registered the company in my name seemed odd and illogical now. My brother must have foreseen this scenario; unlike me, he always calculated everything well in advance—I just don’t get why he had to leave me in the lurch like this. Most importantly, why’d he disappear without explaining anything or leaving any instructions? He seemed to be saying, “Do what you want. Sell it and save yourself the headache if you want to, or donate it to the poor or some orphanage—let them fill up all these outlaws’ vehicles, or just torch the booth and throw the deed into the fire and head on home, where your real friends and an interesting job are waiting for you.” But no, he hadn’t left me any instructions. He just disappeared like a tourist from a hotel, dragging me out into these smoldering hills; ever since I was a kid I always felt out of place here, from early childhood up until that wonderful last day when my parents and I finally got away, when our father—a retired serviceman from a now-insignificant army—was given a house near Kharkiv. That was when my brother decided to stay; he didn’t want to leave—he didn’t even want to talk about leaving. He’d been planning on staying from day one, and it seemed as though he’d never really forgiven us for running away. He never came out and said it, but I always felt his coldn
ess, especially toward our parents, who gave up on this valley with all of its sun, sand, and mulberry. He stayed, hunkered down in the hills, and fought valiantly to protect his land. He was incomprehensibly stubborn. He would be capable of fighting to the death for this empty land, while I have no trouble letting go of emptiness, trying to rid myself of it. That was the difference between us. Life had its own plans, though—he’d run off to Amsterdam, and I was stuck on this hill from which you can see the end of the world . . . and I wasn’t liking the looks of it much.

  Kocha had worn himself out completely; he sat on his catapult and lazily fended off this truck driver, an old acquaintance, who was trying, just as lazily, to get Kocha to stand up and actually do his job, fill the truck up before a long haul. I went outside and relieved the old guy. The sun smelled of gasoline, it hung over our heads like a pear full of oil.

  Work diffused my confusion by giving my daily routine a defined rhythm and some semblance of order. When you’re keeping busy you think less about the corridors of the future that you’ll inevitably have to walk down. I helped my business partners, bobbing around under the orange June sky. In the evenings, Kocha would take out his canned food, roll a few cigarettes, and put on my headphones. We would sit under the apple trees, silent and relaxed, our skin telling us that the sun was sinking and the cool air was rising off the river. After dark, Injured would start getting ready to leave, washing his hands at the yellow sink and dousing himself with cologne. He’d put on his foppish white dress shirt and head down into the valley, toward the golden electric lights and lilac-colored shadows of the city’s alleyways—his lovers would be waiting there for him, opening up their windows into the cool black night.

  The colder air and sweet wool covers made our sleep deep and smooth, like an old riverbed; our skin, scorched by the sun, would cool off by the morning, but our blankets would retain the heat of our bodies for a while. In the morning Kocha would wake me up with some tall tales, make breakfast, and kick me outside to brush my teeth. Our routine reminded me of some kind of extended school field trip—I had lost all sense of time. I was on an unexpected vacation, a visit to a gas station, and now I was roaming these little hills in bewilderment, tangled in the grass, wandering between the field birds’ rusty iron hideouts. Injured continued to look at me with just as much suspicion, although he had softened up a bit; the next evening, on Wednesday, he took out the ball again, as well as the paint cans, put me in his makeshift goal, and spent a long while perfecting his left-footed shot. One of the drivers recognized me, said hello, and asked how I was doing, whether I was here for long and where my brother was. I avoided giving any direct answers, saying that everything was all right, insincere though this was. But what difference did it make?

  On Thursday, Olga showed up after lunch. She arrived on her scooter, carrying a large wicker basket over her shoulder. The basket was constantly swinging forward, hitting up against the wheel, getting in the way. Olga passed a truck gracefully, turned off the highway, darted toward the gas station, and pulled up in front of us. Kocha and I were sitting in our chairs, swatting away the pesky wasps, intoxicated by the smell of tobacco and cologne. Olga hopped off her scooter, greeted Kocha, and nodded at me.

  “You’re still here?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I decided to take a vacation. An unpaid vacation.”

  “Oh, I see,” Olga said. “How are your buddies doing?”

  “What buddies?”

  “The guys in the Jeep.”

  “Ah, those guys. Excellent. They wound up being awfully nice people.”

  “For real?” she asked.

  “They played me some music and they want to be friends.”

  “And?”

  “The music? It was shit.”

  “What about being friends?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” I admitted.

  “Sure you are,” Olga said coldly. And then, “Kocha, this is for you,” handing him the basket and heading over to the garage to visit Injured before Kocha could even get out a thank you.

  The basket contained fresh bread and milk in a plastic Coke bottle. Kocha eagerly broke off a piece of the bread and sank his teeth into it; they were yellow and robust, like an old dog’s teeth. He offered me the bottle of milk. I turned him down. The scooter’s white sides were reflecting the light, heating up quickly under the sun’s rays. The valley was quiet; the birds roamed between the trees, looking for cool spots to settle down in.

  Olga came out of the garage a little later. Injured, huffing and puffing, wearing his work clothes and wiping the sweat from his neck with a snow-white handkerchief, followed behind her. He was holding some papers. Clearly, Olga had just given them to him, and he was waving them around, trying to explain something to her. She wasn’t even listening to him.

  “Injured,” she said, “what do you want me to do about it?”

  Injured crumpled up the papers, stuck them in his coat pocket, and vanished back into the garage, waving his fists.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Olga answered curtly. She hopped on her scooter, started it up, stood still for a second, and then shut off the engine. “Herman,” she said, “are you busy now?”

  “Generally speaking, yes,” I said, a bit flustered. “But at this particular moment I’m on break.”

  “Let’s go for a swim in the river,” she suggested. “Kocha,” she asked the old-timer, “do you mind?”

  Kocha expressed his consent with a big gulp of milk.

  “Well then, are you coming?” Olga asked, hopping off the scooter once again and charging down the hill. All I could do was get up and follow her.

  She took the lead, searching for the trail between thick blackthorn bushes and unripe mulberries. The path dropped sharply; blades of grass were getting in her shoes, butterflies and wasps were flying off stems, and little emerald lizards were scurrying around beneath us. Exhausted from running through the scorching air, I could hardly keep up with her. There was more greenery here, we only could see the valley though the gaps between the branches. The trail simply disappeared a few times—when that happened Olga would just glide over into the grass and push on. Finally, my legs gave out, and I tumbled down onto the bitter wormwood, cursing cruel fate.

  “Hey, what’s going on over there?” Olga called out from down below. “You doing all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I answered mutinously.

  I didn’t like that she had picked up on how tired I was, my skidding into the tall grass, my inability to keep up with the pace she’d set at the top of the hill. “Well,” I thought, “come on back and give me a hand then. Why’d you drag me down this overgrown trail anyway? Come on back here.”

  But she wasn’t even considering coming back for me. She was standing down below, somewhere beyond the branches; I couldn’t see her, but I could sense the heat of her blood pumping from her short run. I could feel her waiting, so I had to pick myself up, empty the sand out of my pockets, and move forward, following the sound of her breath. We walked on in silence. The river wasn’t actually that close to the gas station; it would have been easier to take the highway down, but Olga stubbornly forged on, dodging trees and bushes, fighting through weeds, and leaping over burrows and ditches—and then the trail dropped off abruptly into the river shining below us. Olga advanced; skidding down the steep chalky incline, she stepped softly into the water. Resigning myself to following her obediently, I too skidded into the water. The bank had a small patch of sand surrounded by reeds.

  “Just don’t look,” she said. “I’m not wearing a swimsuit.”

  “I can see that.”

  She slid out of her long dress, exposing a pair of white panties, and stepped deeper into the water. I really did want to turn away, but I’d missed my chance.

  “I don’t know how to swim, by the way,” she said, standing in water up to her neck.

  “Me either,” I answered, slipping out of my tank driver getup and wading throu
gh the water toward her. The river was warm; the chalky hills reflecting the sun’s rays had heated it up, so I just felt sleepy and lethargic.

  “I used to be a camp counselor. At a Young Pioneers camp about fifty kilometers from here. My partner and I had to pull kids out of the water every day.”

  “Dead kids?” I asked, a bit confused.

  “What? No, regular, alive kids. Nobody drowned, but they’d swim out to the reeds and hide out until the evening. They knew we couldn’t swim. Can you imagine the kind of pressure I was under?”

  “Sounds like no fun,” I said. “My friends and I used to go dynamite fishing in this river.”

  “There are fish here?”

  “Nah, but we still tried blasting them.”

  “I see,” Olga said, droplets shining like copper in her red hair. Her skin was wet and warm, which made it look smooth: the wrinkles under her eyes had disappeared. “Do you have a lot of friends here?”

  “Yeah, a lot of childhood friends.”