by Oleg Pavlov
‘Give back the hat! It’s not yours!’ barked Pavel Pavlovich.
‘I won’t give it back! I won’t!’ said Institutov loudly.
‘Do you need your hat, Dad? Well, do you?’
‘I don’t need the hat,’ the man replied in a limp and listless voice. Pavel Pavlovich slackened, shivered, and something shot through him like lightning.
‘My friend, you are heading straight for the prison camp – what do you think you’re doing?’ Institutov bleated piteously. ‘No, wait, stop! I agree, I agree! We’ll go to the station and then we can go wherever you want; I accept the invitation too! Stop, you’re forgetting we have the ambulance. I order you to stop. Where are you going? Think about what you’re doing, you’re signing your own death sentence… And you’ll rot behind bars… And as for you, you’re sticking your head in a noose…’
The last person whose fate was foretold by the head of the infirmary, though no longer with any hope of calling him back, was Alyosha Kholmogorov. He was running clumsily along the platform, trying to catch up with the men who were slowly disappearing into the pitch-dark distance. Institutov suddenly thought of something as he registered the running figure and, whether in joy or envy, he called after him, ‘And you’ll never see your teeth!’ The two servicemen assigned to the funeral team shuddered. ‘Comrade Head of the Infirmary, everybody is running – what about us?’ the simple-hearted warrant officer pleaded all in a fluster, ready, if need be, to run too.
ON THE ROAD
While they were still on the platform loading the coffin, Kholmogorov had recognised the intruder as the citizen who had turned up that morning at the infirmary. He hadn’t known him by his face but by his hat, when the drunken man had slumped against the wall, dropping his head to his chest, his face hidden to the chin behind the hat’s wide-brimmed halo. Alyosha was afraid that the drunken man might raise his head, glance at him and recognise him too. At one point he had indeed stopped, turned around and asked in surprise: ‘Who are you? Are you Gennady’s comrades? There isn’t enough room for you all…’ But then he had lowered his head and strode on.
Mukhin’s father was leading them away irrevocably into the depths of this terrain, which in shape and content resembled a cemetery and ran along the endless bony roads of the train tracks. The remains of rails and sleepers kept showing up underfoot, overgrown with grass or almost levelled to the ground.
The hum of express trains sounded unearthly, as if from some distant world. Pavel Pavlovich had travelled the length and breadth of Karaganda but he could not remember any hotels in this vicinity. The station stood by itself on the edge of town, at the spot where the streets filled with high-rise apartment blocks ended and wooden houses began swarming like hives. The thought flashed through Pavel Pavlovich’s mind that the drunken little guy no longer knew where he was going. But he could not muster the courage to stop and interrogate the man leading them into the unknown. ‘Maybe I should snuff someone out,’ he said suddenly through his teeth, as though nothing were amiss, then he called out loudly over his shoulder, ‘Hey, skin-and-bones, have you really been demobbed, or were you just saying it to act flash?’
‘No, it’s true. Tomorrow I’m catching the train and going home,’ Kholmogorov rushed to say but he faltered on the last word. The two runaways nursed their own silence.
Signal lights suddenly glimmered across the mute expanse, whither the railroad track flowed like a river of paths before scattering to the four winds in a hundred directions. Mukhin’s father swung down from the embankment and found himself on the tracks, stepping across the rails in sweeping strokes like a swimmer. No sooner had he entered the territory of the fathomless steel lines than a commuter train swept ruthlessly along a set of them, slashing the darkness with its blade of light. It passed some way off, but as though it were rushing to kill somebody. While they were crossing the rail tracks, which were almost invisible in the gloom, it seemed as though two tiny balls of lightning were rolling down from a height. Their racing light was expanding inexorably and all around the rails were sparking like fuses. The entire expanse was streaked with rectilinear lightning, each bolt tracing its own path; these, too, were racing along underfoot. Feeling queasy and frightened, Pavel Pavlovich grabbed Alyosha and dragged him onto a narrow island. The little man was calmly pacing along a blade of steel lightning. ‘Stop! You’ll get killed! There’s a train coming! Get down!’ a bloodcurdling shout rang out. Mukhin’s father halted, he even turned around – but the rushing roar and light dazed him, rooting him to the spot.
As the small figure on the tracks froze, a rattlesnake freight train revealed itself and a moment later stretched out in its final pounce. They saw with their own eyes how the straight rails carrying the freight train were squeezing the man in a vice. His entire figure, standing a hundred odd metres from the train, became blacker than a shadow. The electric locomotive did not lose speed. The man did not climb off the track. But when the roaring, lights and whirlwind suddenly whooshed past, and a thundering, hurtling wall of wagons flowed in their turn behind his pathetic little figure, it became patently clear that the drunk had not consciously intended to fall under a train. The swirl of the speeding train had either horrified or deafened him. He clutched his head in his hands, then withdrew his hands and stretched them out as though fumbling for something nearby – moving closer and closer to the ground until he was kneeling. On the ground he continued to grope, agonising and crawling back and forth. His longish greying hair, a steely mother-of-pearl hue, tousled by the whizzing train, seemed to give his head wings, making it look like a mighty bird. But when the last wagon had flown by, his head flopped and his hair hung weeping and sad, leaving his face barely peeping out.
‘My hat’s gone… Where’s my hat?’ Mukhin’s father lamented as they lifted him from his knees.
Pavel Pavlovich said angrily, ‘Oh, who cares about the hat! You’re a ruddy hat yourself.’
‘Where’s my hat gone?’ the little man objected.
‘Forget about the hat. Quick, let’s go!’ barked Pavel Pavlovich.
‘Give me my hat back! Oh, why are you doing this to me, lads?’ Mukhin’s father implored.
‘Look, Dad, we don’t have your hat, can’t you understand? It’s gone wherever the train blew it.’
‘Ah, it’s blown away…’ He calmed down.
‘Here, have your suitcase. That didn’t get blown away.’
‘Thank you,’ Mukhin’s father said, and the heavy briefcase was hung from the arm of its owner. ‘Lads, may I ask you, on this occasion, to enter the reactor hall. It is nine days today since my son Gennady departed. I ask you all to commemorate the date with me. You understand people have expressed willingness to come out of their deep respect for me.’
‘We do, we understand,’ Pavel Pavlovich said with a grin, and he whispered furtively to Alyosha: ‘Looks like we’ve hit the end of the line. Well, what do you think? Maybe you should head back. Tomorrow you can buzz off to your freedom – so do it. You still gotta get some clobber from the doctor, give yourself a wash, comb your hair, while me and Dad can wander off wherever. Me and Dad have nowhere to hurry to any more.’
Kholmogorov whispered back, believing that he too was confiding something special to Pavel Pavlovich: ‘It’s ok, I’ve got plenty of time. But you left the ambulance back at the station… Maybe you better go back? Otherwise how will they get to the station without you?’
‘Won’t take them long to walk it. The main thing is the luggage has been handed in, they’re off the hook,’ said Pavel Pavlovich. ‘Now for us to make our escape… Maybe we could make a run for Moscow ourselves? Moscow’s big, there’s room enough for everyone.’
‘This hotel seems a long way away. Do you think he’s lost his way? What’s going to happen now? If all the guests are there already, they’ll think he’s gone back home or something, and they’ll all leave.’
‘Don’t fall behind, lads, people are waiting for us!’ Mukhin’s father piped up.
>
‘Don’t fall behind! There are people, people!’ Pavel Pavlovich called out, shaking with laughter. ‘People, I’m on my way to you! Oh, how I adore people!’
Oblivious to everything and everyone, he was driven on by his own insolent cackling laughter. Suddenly he stumbled on the rails. He fell. He went quiet; he got up. And he became ferociously lonely. With a muffled growl, he kicked the rails before crossing them. Once they’d received a bashing from his boots, they slipped from his attention. He vacantly threaded his way over the meridians of steel corpses with their narrow worm-like bodies. The lights of a train flashed. And now it was Pavel Pavlovich who remained standing right on the tracks, spewing swear words and curses. A passenger train whizzed past him. ‘Oh piss off, you dirty bastard, you son of a bitch!’ he yelled in anguish with all his might, seeing in the chain of carriages racing past a palpably hateful chariot of death.
He had believed this restless journey along the rails could only have one purpose: to cross the tracks. But the little man was leading his sluggish companions further and further in the same direction as the trains.
It was becoming inexplicably quieter and darker. The noise and lights were drifting into the distance. Issuing from the night like lost souls were individual carriages and entire trains, standing motionless on the tracks, severed from their fiery, racing electric heads, as though they had been slain by somebody one jump ahead. There was not a sign or sound suggesting human presence. Mukhin’s father fearlessly entered the labyrinth of carriages. Having quietened down, Pavel Pavlovich looked about like a child amid the discarded, seemingly giant rail carriages, which harboured no life inside, no doubt thinking he had awoken in his own personal hell. Identical round-cornered windows glinted with darkness, as though he were peering into a well. Suddenly popping into view, set here and there in the windows, were white plates with carriage numbers – 2, 12, 6, 9, 3, 10, 8. The numbers resembled those found on tear-off calendars and were as surprising to find there as faces, inspiring dread each time they appeared.
The two trains they passed on their narrow, well-trodden path also had placards reminiscent of the street signs found in any suburb. It was as if each carriage were a house in its own street.
Little bluish houses stretched on down one side, with signs that read ‘TSELINOGRAD–NOVOKUZNETSK’. On one placard the letters were squashed up with sadness, while another had been effaced by time, then with a sudden jolt of realism there would be a spanking new one, lively and conscious, on which the letters would not even allow themselves to be read, as though it meant being stripped naked. On their other side stood a sombre bog-coloured train, the Turkestan: its single-humped roofs were the carriages, coupled together like camels in a caravan. And beyond them were some raddled ones, no better than minecarts, with the nameplate ‘KUSHKA–VORKUTA’.
No sooner had they passed a train than the next began. At one point Mukhin’s father turned off into a gap between them, but there was no end to the carriages. They stood like walls, scattered all over in a giddying labyrinth. The trains stretched on, one after the other, giving the impression almost of genuine towns – too numerous to count or remember.
It might have been an apparition seen by desperate men were it not a reality: on the tracks, peaceful, lively lights were shining, and there was the smell of wood smoke from stoves. Tucked away in a dead end, and thus lending the scene a typically rustic feel, a train stood on the rails, overgrown with ancient life, like a tree stump. From the russet-coloured carriages’ tin chimneys, whitish smoke was ascending in earnest into the night sky, and from the simple wooden steps put up to provide entrances to the vestibules, warm tarry light spilled onto the ground. Opposite each carriage lay a mound of anthracite and a puddle shimmering like anthracite in the moonlight; washing hung just like in a backyard, even if the line did stretch from carriage to carriage: underwear, sheets, trousers, dresses and shirts. Almost every window, with drapes tied back in the manner of stage curtains, seemed like a puppet theatre – one where bottles, vases and glasses were acting out joy and sadness as though they were alive. Along the entire length of the train, daubed in white paint, were the words HOTEL, HOTEL, HOTEL, HOTEL. A dog was barking somewhere. A baby could be heard crying; there was the smell of cooking.
A housewifely woman with a bucket came out onto one set of steps and tossed her dirty water into the darkness. She glanced at the people walking through the yard and said in a singsong, ‘Ooh, hello there, Albert Gennadievich, I hope I didn’t splash you or your guests.’
‘Not at all, Galya, my dear. Earthly dirt doesn’t affect atomic scientists. I have everything under control. Background radiation levels are within the normal range,’ reported Mukhin’s father loudly.
‘Oh, Albert Gennadievich, what’s happened to the hat you were wearing?’
‘There was an emergency, my darling, but we’ll talk about it in private. You’re always hard at work, pottering away. Doing the family washing are you?’
‘Family washing, not likely – it’s for them refugees: they’re spreading their filth everywhere. Just like gypsies, I tell you. They don’t work, get everything dirty and they’re rude to you. Go around killing each other, burning and ransacking everything at home, and then they turn up here with their grime. We could be catching lice from them soon. And the authorities in their wisdom just had to put refugees in the same hotel as passengers! We have to cough up for our compartment, but they get theirs for free – just because they’re refugees, should we all be made to suffer?’
Tormented by her voluptuous hankering body, the woman was not so much objecting or complaining as flaunting herself. She knitted her brows, threw her arms up in the air, swivelled as if she were on a pedestal, inviting glances from all angles. But Mukhin’s father had already turned gloomy and he eagerly put her wise as to what was happening: ‘The country is undergoing thermonuclear disintegration. According to my forecasts, it will take fifteen years for the situation to change. Not all of us will live that long, but I have faith in atomic energy. We have enough uranium reserves. We’ll have light and warmth, and that’s the important thing. Nuclear workers will never let you down.’
‘Oh, Albert Gennadievich, you make it all so easy to understand. It immediately seems so logical: such logic for the heart! Thank you, I’m much calmer after that; had rats gnawing at my heart before. Oh, I keep nattering on about my own stuff, but you were taken to the site of your son’s heroic deed today.’
‘With two generals in a black Volga. These are Gennady’s comrades-in-arms accompanying me. I’m not at liberty to say any more. I signed a non-disclosure agreement. The circumstances of my son’s death will only be declassified in forty-three years’ time.’
‘Ooh, what an important mission he must have performed, seeing as it’s all so hush-hush. Maybe they’ll give him a posthumous award, Albert Gennadievich, maybe even a Hero medal! Oh, of course you can’t get your son back, well that’s life for you. The heroes have to die, they don’t even get to live a little bit.’
‘The coffin’s being sent by train to Moscow. And I, my dear nuclear scientists, will be catching a plane in the next few days. Today it’s nine days since Gennady passed away. Galya, love, I’d like you to mark this occasion with me. I’ve invited only trusted and reliable persons. May I ask you to enter the reactor hall…’
‘Yes, yes, I know… I’m coming. I’ll bring my pancakes, eh, Albert Gennadievich!’ she said in a singsong.
‘Lads, I’m ready.’ Mukhin’s father turned glumly to the young men in uniform, as though he were under their protection. But when they left, he said matter-of-factly and with a certain lusty admiration: ‘What a woman – a real Arabian steed! She’s the wife of a colonel in the Space Forces. Her husband’s serving in Baikonur, a personal friend of Yuri Gagarin. She was fearlessly unfaithful to him in her search for true love. He threw her out with the two kids. She’s on her way to her mother in Ulyanovsk, just waiting for the tickets. Size four bust. Buys her flour on the bla
ck market. Her pancakes with egg and cabbage are out of this orbit. They make a first-rate hors d’oeuvre.’
The drunken man had come to life – he had even sobered up a bit, perhaps at the prospect of some booze. Fatigue had not seriously hit him during the entire walk there. ‘May I ask you to go straight into the reactor hall,’ he said for the umpteenth time with extravagant generosity, inviting them up the steps of one of the russet carriages. The huge metal door with its porthole, which opened onto the vestibule, was locked. But no sooner had Mukhin’s father banged on it boldly with his fist than a clear and simple face greeted them from the other side.
‘Reporting to Albertych: all persons are assembled and the table was spread ages ago! We were worried about you. Some of us even thought you weren’t coming. But I knew you’d be back, you’d keep your word,’ the deft man said admiringly. It seemed in his dosshouse-on-wheels he was still working as a conductor and had even dressed for the evening in full uniform: a peaked cap with railway insignia, a suit, shirt and tie.
‘Who are the people? Are they trusted? Reliable?’ the little man asked anxiously.
‘They’re trusted and reliable. The table is laid, everybody’s assembled and waiting. Albertych, don’t you worry,’ said the man in the dark blue transport-ministry uniform.
‘Do you realise what date it is today? We need to get the reactor operating at full capacity. Today, nuclear engineer Albert Mukhin is paying his last respects to his son.’