Stargorod

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  “Wisdom!” the deacon’s bass thunders, the last thing the man in the raincoat hears.

  He has made certain: his mother is here, in church, and she will be praying for a long time. She will pray for him, too, among other things. Usually, he doesn’t care one way or the other, but today he wouldn’t turn down a bit of protection from the higher powers, even if he doesn’t believe they exist.

  The man checks his watch. Everything is going exactly as he has planned, perfect. He’s got plenty of time. He looks at the street, the side alley. The alley is empty. Behind? There’s no one behind him either. Excellent.

  Through backyards he knows so well, through nooks and alleys, avoiding the brightly lit boulevard, the man makes his way to a large barrack-like apartment building that belongs to the railroad. He grew up here; here he knows every in and out. The man pauses for a moment behind a woodshed, checks his approaches: there’s no one around. He runs up the stairs, leaping over the fifth and the seventh step – they’ve been creaking for years now. He slips into his mother’s little room, and closes the door behind him. Just in case, he locks it.

  He is home now.

  The man takes off his raincoat, pulls his machine gun off over his head and places it neatly on a bedside table. He opens the pantry, pushes a sack of potatoes aside. Here’s the floorboard he had cut out, and below it: his secret cache. There, wrapped in a rag, is a revolver and a half-dozen wonderful little bullets. The man unfolds the rag carefully, checks his weapon, strokes it affectionately. He opens the cylinder and slips in the bullets, pressing each hard with his finger: six gleaming capsules, six exactly – he counts them with a gravity that befits the occasion. The revolver is also short-barreled, foreign – it took him forever to hunt it down. The boys from Petersburg helped. Those guys are gold – they never let him down.

  The man slips the revolver into a holster, and adjusts it under his arm, next to his heart. He can’t deny himself a moment of joy: he whips out the gun, pretends to aim it – Bang! – spins it on his index finger and throws it smartly back into its nest. Everything will go just fine! He’ll pay them back for everything. He checks his watch again: plenty of time until show time.

  Now, the machine gun. It’s a splendid piece, just splendid, but it’ll have to wait its turn, it won’t speak today. From looking at it, you’d never know it was homemade: it’s small, compact, and it cost, let’s be honest, a fortune, but money means so little when you remember what the goal is. And Petrovich is an ace! An expert! He just studied the drawings (that was a separate story, how he got those), named his price, and voila! – two months later, he had it made! Excellent.

  The man stroked the steel of the barrel, pulled out the cartridge, and laid them both out on the rag. Then he wrapped it up, tied it with a rubber band he brought with him specifically for this purpose, and rested the bundle at the bottom of his cache. He put the board in place, swept some potato dust over it, and finally dragged the sack back into place. No one would ever think to look here. And even if someone did – the board looks no different from all the other floorboards around it, he made sure of that.

  Suddenly, the man thinks about his mother. Let her pray, what else has she got left to do in her old age? What was it they said in church? Rejoice and be glad! That’s right – watch out now, you sons of bitches, he’s about to go do some rejoicing! He’s spent a long time planning it, and he’s got every second laid out.

  The man puts on his raincoat – a wonderful piece: so large, it hides the revolver even better than it conceals the machine gun. Not machine gun – his “little toy.” That’s how he likes to think of it.

  Retreat, through the yard. And he’s lucky again – there is not a soul anywhere. And it’s beginning to drizzle. And dusk is seeping into the air.

  He is lucky! Lucky!

  The man is now walking down the main street. He is walking calmly, confidently. He doesn’t care that the street lamps are bright – it’s even better that way, it’ll be easier to take aim.

  The man checks his watch – everything is going according to the plan. Excellent!

  And here’s the Park of Culture and Leisure, which people simply call “the spot.” Some are already beginning to gather at the spot – the open-air dance floor on Merry Hill. The man crouches, ostensibly to tie his shoelace – and dashes into the bushes. The bushes are wet – it is drizzling – but the man can’t think about that: it’s now or never!

  Holding his breath, he sneaks up closer to where the police patrol usually stands. There they are: two policemen in raincoats next to a traffic-police Moskvich sedan. They stand with their backs to him, smoking, talking about something.

  It’s quiet in the park, only once in a while does someone walk by – the bigger crowd flows down the main street: back and forth, fat on its free feed, dumb as cattle. Trucks thunder by.

  The man pulls out his gun, raises it, aims with both hands, knees slightly bent, back leaned back just a bit.

  Pss! Pss! Pss!

  Damn it! God damn it! All six – misfire!

  Were the bullets wet? Did Vityunya let him down? Oh, you just wait, you bastard!

  Disappear – right now! Everything’s been planned!

  Through the park, past the kremlin. Stay calm. Those two didn’t even hear anything – the street noise swallowed the sound. Double-up, come back. Just like that. Now, go past the post, take a look.

  Everything is fine: the pigs are standing where he left them, suspecting nothing. And only five minutes ago... All right, let it go.

  His nerves are strung so tight they seem to hum.

  Now go, mix with the crowd, vanish. Get on a bus. Go home!

  At the door – hug her, so warm, cozy, and also tense, worried, she’s been waiting. Kiss her on the lips, pull her close, hold her tight.

  “Did it... did it work?”

  “No. Vityunya, son of a bitch, slipped me bad bullets – either they were wet, or the caps didn’t fit the firing pin. But they seemed fine when I tried them at his place!”

  The man, defeated, shrugs off his raincoat, drops the holster with the toy Italian revolver, but doesn’t let it hit the floor – he catches it and puts it carefully on an armchair. It’s a nice piece, really. Four-hundred and fifty rubles kind of nice. His wife comforts him:

  “That’s alright, Valya, don’t worry about it now. Everything went as you wanted, didn’t it? So you just think of it as done. Go wash up, quick, I’ve made pancakes with cheese and honey, the way you like.”

  He goes to the bathroom, and splashes ferociously in the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror, and makes a face, like a fearsome gangster. Screw it!

  “You know,” he shouts to the kitchen, “Petrovich did make me a machine gun. Wait till you see it! I’ll go to Petersburg on the weekend and show the guys, they’ll flip! Even Semyonov’s Parabellum is not as good, and he had it made at the Kirov factory.”

  “You’ll have a great time, Valya!” his wife has come into the bathroom, put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re such a boy, really. Thirty-seven, and you’re still playing at guns.”

  Valya turns and grabs her – the whole smooth, warm, delicious bundle of her – but the wife struggles free:

  “Oh no, not right now. Off to the kitchen, Mr. Secret Agent!”

  “Oui, mon général!”

  The two scarf down the pancakes; each thinking about his or her own. The wife is happy that the not-entirely-safe game has ended well, that no one got into any trouble. Let him go to Petersburg for the weekend, hang out with his guys at the dacha, and shoot to his heart’s content. They call themselves “Scouts.” When they were little, they played Indians, and now they spend hours chasing each other in the woods and shooting paint at each other. She doesn’t mind, though – he needs to let off some steam, anyone would after sitting at a desk all week, drawing boxes at the architecture office. And the main thing, of course: it’s long been clear they won’t have a little one of their own to play with, but it doesn’t mea
n you can’t play at all, does it?

  “Hey! I’ve got an idea,” Valya perks up suddenly. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “What if I buy Semyonov’s bow, like he offered, and you and I go duck-hunting at the lake? He’s had new arrows made too, from bamboo, just like Thompson Seton wrote, exactly. They are awesome. And he only wants 500 for the lot.”

  “That’ll be fun!” the wife agrees in advance.

  “You know, we could go, make a fire, maybe we’ll even catch a fish to cook. Spend the night there! Nights are still warm. What do you say?”

  “I’d love it, Leatherstocking!”

  “Katya, come on, I mean it.”

  “I mean it, too. We should go to the Senga, to the channel, there’s never anybody there.”

  “And you don’t have to worry about the money – there’s a bonus coming at work.”

  “I never do – what’s money, if you can’t buy anything anyway?”

  Valya gives her a peck on the cheek, goes back to the room and turns on Vremya on TV. While he watches the news, Katya clears the table and washes the dishes. Then she joins him, sits in the armchair and picks up her knitting.

  “Come here, Katya,” Valya says, patting his knee. His wife slips out of her armchair and nestles in his lap, and he presses his face into her hot chest.

  “You are such a miracle! I just don’t know what I might have done to be so blessed.”

  “So am I, sweetie, so am I,” she says, stroking his hair. Eventually, she says, “Why don’t we turn in now.”

  “Yes, I’m tired... You know, it was quite a rollercoaster today, nerve-wise. It’s just a game, of course, but still... it takes its toll. You’d think it was for real.”

  Katya turns off the TV.

  Mashenka

  This story dates back to the fondly remembered bygone days of old when one could still buy something at stores like Balaton or Yatran without special sale coupons and when some of our Stargorodian girls still went to Moscow in search of husbands. It wasn’t like they all enjoyed unmitigated success there, but some got lucky, and a few got really lucky: Marinka Kuzmina, for example, now lives in Detroit and sends her old friends from Stargorod’s telegraph office sentimental letters about her little boy Christopher and her little girl Natasha.

  Mashenka G., unlike her proactive girlfriends, resisted the idea of going to Moscow for a long time. Trapping some poor slob in a shotgun marriage, to be completely frank, rather disgusted Mashenka, and, being an honest and pure-hearted girl, she naturally dreamed of a mate who would be both an intellectual and young and handsome, and if he absolutely had to happen also to be rich, then only a little, because everyone knows money can’t buy happiness. So it was that all her friends from the bookstore where she worked had already made their pilgrimages, but Mashenka kept holding back, waiting for something. Of course, she was tempted by the stories of Moscow theaters and beautiful stores. Some girls even managed to meet apparently good guys, and the way they told it, things sounded perfectly simple and not at all shameful as some impotent prudes would have it, but... Mashenka was a dreamer; Mashenka wore her hair in a long braid and was a bit old-fashioned.

  Lyudka was another story – Lyudka the whirlwind, Lyudka the lucky one. She ruled over the bookstore’s glamorous fiction section, while Mashenka was supposed to guide potential readers to “political literacy.” Lyudka seemed to know every other person in Stargorod, and still, somehow, she had cast Mashenka G. as her best friend, and it was Mashenka who was the first to hear about Lyudka’s adventures and suitors, it was with Mashenka that Lyudka shared all her plans and aspirations, and it was Mashenka from whom Lyudka came to ask permission to have an abortion (it’s not like she could ask her parents). Better than anyone else, Lyudka knew how to have fun in Moscow: she had some family connections (kept active with regular doses of hard-to-find titles that gathered dust on Stargorod’s provincial shelves) at the Soviet Hotel (no less!), so she always had a place to stay, albeit not a cheap one. But who counts money on a trip to Moscow? The whole point is to save up and then blow it all, so you have stories to tell!

  It was Lyudka, of course, who finally convinced Mashenka to go. The girls secured a pair of advance return tickets for Sunday (two French novels for the railway ticket office), met at the station on Friday night, and early on Saturday morning were inspecting their “luxury” singles at the Soviet Hotel (which used to be “The Pit,” where, as Gilyarovsky4 assures us, the rich Russian merchants so loved to burn their money in the old days).

  The girls spent the day shopping. They didn’t find the biggest items on their respective lists (Mashenka was after a winter coat and had 300 rubles set aside for this purpose in her make-up case, and Lyudka wanted a pair of crème-colored Austrian boots), but there were other bits and pieces – Moscow always makes a dent in one’s budget. They wrapped up their shopping excursion with a meal at the “Crystal Room” restaurant on Kalinin Prospect, where two rather persistent hucksters attempted to insinuate themselves into the girls’ company but were told, in no uncertain terms, to get lost by the fearless Lyudka. Happy and well-fed, the girls rolled out into the frosty Moscow air, where the swirling flakes of the first snow only added to their celebratory mood, and, despite the fact that 150 rubles had already been spent, it was decided to go hunt for tickets to the Bolshoi.

  Neither the great heaving mass of people nor the buses filled with foreign tourists intimidated Lyudka. She parked Mashenka at one of the columns in front of the theater, and instantly vanished, gone to look for scalpers.

  Mashenka was standing at the doors of the Bolshoi theater! Natasha Rostova’s debutante ball was nothing compared to this. Of course, Mashenka dreamed of being inside, where everything swirled and gleamed, and she couldn’t take her eyes off the doors, which was why she did not hear it when someone addressed a question to her.

  He stood there with a bouquet of pale yellow roses, dressed in a double-breasted coat with a white scarf, and wore a large Seiko watch with a built-in calculator on his delicate wrist. His happy blue eyes openly sized up Mashenka, and were now inviting her to the theater.

  “You see, my girlfriend stood me up – would you mind taking her place?”

  Mashenka agreed on the spot, and he gave her the flowers. When Lyudka emerged from the crowd a second later, she instantly grasped the situation, nodded approvingly, winked, and cooed by way of blessing: “You go ahead, kids, I’ll head home – it’s not my night.”

  Lyudka was a real friend.

  The ballet was magnificent! The theater – everything there was magnificent! They had second-tier seats, not very far from the stage at all, and in the intermission Andrei (that was the young man’s name) bought her champagne. He was a person of style and manners, polite and solicitous, but Mashenka could also sense he could be passionate. He said he studied Philosophy at Moscow State University, but he wasn’t one of those nerdy softies – his Dutch suit (one of those with a tiny rooster on the pocket) fit snugly around his manly shoulders, and his handshake was firm, which is rare these days, and his blue eyes could go from piercing to bottomless in an instant, but never dangerous. It was easy to be with him.

  After the show they had some more champagne, then Andrei bought another bottle, “just in case” and they got a cab back to the hotel. And in the cab – they kissed!

  Andrei was duly impressed with their rooms at The Soviet, behaved graciously, and Mashenka made him come along to Lyudka’s room. There, they had a bite to eat – Lyudka prudently made a batch of sandwiches when she came home and bought some éclairs and mineral water from the buffet downstairs (she also had a bottle of cognac she had brought from Stargorod) – and spent the rest of the night talking and laughing. Andrei asked the girls to tell him about Stargorod, swore he’d pay them a visit the very next weekend, wrote down the address, and entertained them with tricks he could do with his electronic watch: it had a whole set of memory functions, and a phone book... and, heavens, the champagne went
straight to Mashenka’s head, and everything was just so easy and fun. When Andrei guided Mashenka into her room, God knows, she did not resist.

  Everything was easy and fun, and she didn’t even see her friend wink at her conspiratorially when they parted.

  In the morning, Andrei rose early, took a shower, dressed, then came and sat down at the edge of the bed, kissed Mashenka, and asked kindly:

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Of course!” Mashenka reached to touch him, but Andrei politely guided her hand aside.

  “And you know all good things come at a price, don’t you?”

  “Of course. And what’s the price?” Mashenka asked readily, going along with this new game.

  “300 rubles.”

  “All right, go ahead and grab my make-up case. There’s three hundred in there exactly, I was saving it to buy a coat.”

  She watched him as he opened her purse, dug in her make-up case, pulled out and counted the money and put it in his pocket.

  “Well, then – Ciao, principessa!”

  And he left.

  Lyudka found Mashenka at the edge of her wits. Who could blame her – a part of her still waited, hoped the joke would play itself out in some surprising, beautiful way, that he would come back... but another part knew what happened.

  Lyudka assessed the situation on the spot. She hugged the wailing Mashenka and shoved her, almost by force, into the shower. Then she packed them both quickly, and led her fooled friend out of the hotel. Lyudka hailed a cab, and they rode somewhere for a while, until they were in a shashlyk cafe in a small park somewhere. Only there did Lyudka allow herself to laugh.

  “So, Prince Charming cleaned you out, didn’t he!”

  “Stop it!” Mashenka wanted to jump up and leave, but her friend held her down.

  “You silly thing!” Lyudka just couldn’t stop laughing. “Look at this!”

  Next she produced out of her purse the super-computer watch Andrei had showed off the night before.