Stargorod

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  So transpired the first round of the Stargorod vendetta: the inspector won an easy victory and Grigory got a traffic violation on his record. Grigory threw the license onto his wife’s lap, and said to the lieutenant, quietly but very clearly:

  “Tell your guys the butcher Grishka said hello, and told you to tell them that the only meat they’ll get from me is a dead ass’s ears.”

  He pulled away, but just couldn’t get over how bold and rude his blood enemy was. At home he let off some steam by yelling at his family.

  Stepan Kandyba, when he returned to the station, reported the incident, and was immediately dragged over the coals, with much cursing. It was not among his duties to quarrel with the only butcher shop in town. At home, his wife also had some very unpleasant things to say to him. They fought, and as a result, the young Ms. Kandyba put her foot down on the subject of conjugal relations, and banished her spouse to the couch for a week. Ragged and unloved, poor Stepan began to contemplate taking his radar gun out to the highway, but inside him there was a feeling, something like pride, that kept him from breaking his oath for the time being.

  On Friday, his boss Terebikhin ordered Stepan to ready a car.

  “We need to buy some meat, bro. Let’s go see Grishka at the market.”

  Kandyba was in urgent need of meat. A good roast would be just the thing to appease his wife, but the memory of Sunday’s encounter made him deeply uncomfortable. He determined not to go into the store with his boss, but Terebikhin ordered him to follow, and the order, together with the irresistible pull of flesh, both the pieces of it hanging on the butcher’s hook and his own, starved for a woman’s touch, won.

  “Aha! Here you are, my friend. You came yourself,” Grigory greeted them from the manager’s office.

  “Greetings, Grigory Vasiliyevich!” Terebikhin either forgot all about his officer’s misstep or was pretending that he knew nothing of it.

  “I’ve no meat for you.”

  “Grisha, my dear, whatever is the matter with you?”

  “Ask your lieutenant there why he put a thing on my record.”

  Given such an occasion, Grigory told the heart-rending tale of how he was hurrying home, with his wife fresh from the hairdresser’s, and how he was suddenly and rudely stopped, and fined, his pure record violated for nothing.

  “Oh, Grisha, he’s new here. What’s the problem? Give me your license. Stepan, fix it!”

  While the meat was being carved and weighed and packed for his boss, while soothing, respectful conversation was being had in the butcher shop, Stepan Kandyba sped in the station car to the DMV, clear at the opposite end of the city, to get the hated butcher’s record corrected. He fixed it, and he returned, and he gave the license back to the butcher, and... unable to stand it any longer and blushing like a boy, he asked, with a stutter:

  “It’s done, Grigory. Are we... good, then? Could I, by any chance, have some meat?”

  Grigory roared with laughter, and his mighty voice bounced off the arched ceiling of the old butcher shop, much like the legendary roar of the heroic Opanas Perebey-Gora, the kind of roar you don’t hear these days.

  “Come, come, my friend, I’ll cut you some. But mind you, Terebikhin pays three rubles, but for you it’s five-fifty, so you’d know your place.”

  Grigory prodded Stepan to a door, and he went down the stairs into the basement, with a shamed little smile on his face. Behind him, Grigory Panyushkin whistled a prison tune as he walked and played with his heavy dummy – a short-handled butcher’s hatchet, razor-sharp.

  A lump of pork was hacked off in a blink. Weighed. Wrapped. An excellent cut from the back side, from the leg’s very pink, tender center. The bill came to 52 rubles. The poor Kandyba had no such money on him, and was forced to request a loan from Terebikhin’s fat wallet.

  The entire uncomplicated procedure was accompanied by such nasty snickering (performed by Terebikhin himself, the store’s manager, and Grigory, who snickered while he wiped his glistening blade on his apron) that poor Kandyba cracked: he took his boss home, stopped by the station where he stuffed the meat into the fridge, grabbed the radar gun and went out on the highway.

  That night, slightly tipsy from the vodka his wife poured him at dinner, and with his flesh appeased (to his wife’s own satisfaction as well; she, too, was tired of fasting), Stepan Kandyba cried quietly into his pillow next to his wife’s blissful, soft snoring.

  On the other end of the city, Grigory Panyushkin tossed and turned in his own hot bed. He should have been happy, he should have been enjoying his victory, but for some reason all he could do was turn from one side to the other and whisper a curse at someone. He finally realized he would not be able to fall asleep, and so he got up, went to his son’s bedroom and stood there for a while, looking down at the sleeping boy. Then he ran his heavy hand gently over the boy’s fuzzy hair and went to the window: the moon hung, large and orange. The sight of it so captivated Grigory that he stayed at the window, not moving, unable to take his eyes off of it.

  “Just look at that,” he whispered, utterly mesmerized by the moon’s alien, frightening beauty.

  He had never before seen such a moon, even in prison, where such things can claim a man’s attention to a degree that is truly extraordinary.

  * * *

  8. His last name literally means “break a mountain.”

  9. Kozak is Ukrainian for Cossack. The Sich refers to the independent military republic that existed on the Dnieper in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  10. The attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918 accelerated the Red Terror. Solovki is Solvetsky Islands, the White Sea monastery that was transformed into one of Soviet Russia’s first political prisons.

  11. Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  Two-Hats

  Take Vanka Grozny – who was he, really? Little old ladies had him for a holy fool, priests all were afraid of him, cops let him be. To be sure, there was something to him, a colorful character, but nothing more. Back during the war, when he was a partisan, people scared kids with his name. “With a name like mine,” he used to say, “what else could I do?” In ‘46 he was still a bit of a hot-blood, straight from the woods, and he whacked one cop who was thieving – just walked straight into the station one day and shot him point-blank with his Luger. “That’s the only way to deal with you,” he said, “bitch.” Given his service record, they only gave him 10 years, but he wasn’t about to become a changed man just because he was sent to a camp in Komi – he started a war with the old cons, and you know how it goes with the real convicts, they’ve got simple ways. They dropped a fir tree on Vanya. He lived, but they had to saw his legs off at the hip.

  He rolled back into Stargorod on a cart: beard wider than a shovel, shirt forever unbuttoned, another beard’s worth of hair sticking out on his chest, and in that nest – a copper icon that shined from a mile away (while bumming around the tundra, he managed to learn the Bible almost by heart – he’d rattle off whole chunks of it if the spirit moved him), and a padded vatnik in all weather, a backpack on his back, and two iron-shod pedals in his hands, to push himself around. An invalid of war, and his leg don’t hurt, coz’ it’s chopped off at the root – pay up if you look, that was his gig.

  First he set himself up by the telegraph office, and that’s where they started calling him “Two-Hats”: he wore a cap on his head, you see, and had a flop-eared hat for coins on the ground before him – that’s how it was in summer, and the other way around in winter. Then they chased him away from there – you’re not supposed to beg in our country – so he moved over to our Electropower plant. He’d sit there at the gate (and he never begged – people gave him money anyway), speak kindly to some, bicker with others, especially if it were a woman – he was big on trash-talk. And little ol’ ladies – that’s a separate story with him, he took a shine to them. He’d see one going to church past the factory, roll up next to her, and bark – loud, so the whole street could hear: “Rejoice, daughter c
opulative, the cup shalt reach you too, and drain ye thou shalt and bare yourself drunken!” Or something like that. We’d be standing in the bushes with our cheap port and laughing our heads off, and the old ladies always took it very seriously, bowed to him, and gave him a dime or two. And the thing of it was – we never saw him set foot in church, but if he were going by one, he’d always cross himself. But for priests he had no love whatsoever.

  “Vanya, hey Vanya,” we’d bug him, just for fun. “Sell your icon.”

  “No way – it’s a gift, from a good man.”

  “Then why is it, Vanya, that you wear your icon, and read your Bible, but never go to church?”

  “No way, I can’t: if I see a priest, I’ll kill him, and I’ve sinned plenty already.”

  “What’s a priest ever done to you, Vanya?” and the guys are already giggling.

  “They’ve all turned greedy, only think of money.”

  “You must be jealous, Vanya, you only got a million in that hat of yours!”

  And, of course, he’d fly off the handle, and start cursing at you – he was a pro at that, better than an old Gypsy woman – and we had fun. He kept calling us “bus-tards,” but we knew he loved us – always came with a clean glass, and shared if he had any food, and never said no if we invited him. It’s only lying he never stood for.

  This one time he spotted two of our guys at the railway station: tipsy, naturally – and when they’re tipsy, they’d do anything – and the cops’ van pulling up. He grabbed them both by hand:

  “Quick, take me to a cab!”

  “Uncle Vanya, you don’t have any money.”

  “None of your business, do it!”

  They roll him up to the curb – and there’s only one car there, everyone knows the guy, he’s always there.

  “Put me in the back, boys!”

  So they start loading him into the back seat.

  The driver, of course, recognizes who it is – he’s an old rounder, too.

  “I’m not driving that stinking bastard anywhere,” he says.

  But Uncle Vanya tells him:

  “Don’t worry, son, we’re not going far, just over this way, to Lomonosov Street.”

  “I said, I’m not taking you.”

  “I’ll pay you well.”

  And everyone knew – Grozny had a coin-purse on his belt. So at this point, he pulls it out, reaches into it, and pulls out a whole wad of cash.

  “See this?”

  “Thirty!” the driver declares.

  “No problem, man, just take us.”

  They get there. The guys get out, pull out Uncle Vanya. He rolls up to the driver’s window – to pay. Then starts looking around, digging at his belt, and says:

  “Son, d’you have a light? Looks like I forgot me purse on the back seat...”

  The cabbie puts two and two together, steps on the gas, and is gone – figured he can find the purse later. Only, of course, it was right there, hanging off Uncle Vanya’s belt, where it never left. The whole town made fun of that cabbie after that: “Found Grozny’s purse yet?”

  He was fearless too. Our Boss, he never rode to work, always came on foot – that was his way of promoting democracy back then. That’s how they ran into each other on the bridge one day: Vanya Grozny rolled one way, and Himself was walking the other. The Boss saw an invalid and decided to show how he cared.

  “What’s your name, grandpa? Do you need..,” and stopped mid-word when he saw the icon on Vanya’s chest.

  And the next second Vanya howls:

  “Lord Almighty, take pity on us! See what befell us: our wealth has gone to others, and aliens took our homes!” and so on. That was his favorite act. Whenever he drank a bit, he would rattle the whole spiel off to us, like a poem.

  The Boss’s eyes went all glassy on the spot; he turned and marched off at his best commanding gait, but Grozny wouldn’t let him get away – rolled behind him and hollered:

  “They whip us like cattle, we work and see no rest!”

  The Boss’ security team freezes: people are staring at the scene from everywhere, and the old man’s a cripple, it’s kinda’ awkward to go chasing him off, so they decide to ignore him. The Boss – he tries to walk faster – but Vanka keeps right up. The security’s hissing at him, but he pays them no mind, and just keeps piling it on thick: “Slaves have come to rule over us, and no one will deliver us from their hand!” – he’s having a ball. He heckled the Boss all the way to the government building. And got away with it. And the Boss, they say, rode in his car for two days after that, but then started walking again.

  He gave our priest the same treatment. They sent us one from the capital – he must’ve messed up somewhere, a fat guy, round as a barrel, and greasy as a tar-pit. When one of those gets sent to Stargorod, it’s the end of the line for them – can’t jump any higher or fly any further from here. So, you know, he got bored in a hurry and started ripping off old ladies and drinking vodka with the government types on their boats. You can’t keep anything a secret very long around here. Word got to Vanya Grozny – and it wasn’t long before he decided to set things right. Vanya – he never could stand things being messed up for long. So, he ambushed the priest right at the church, went up right into his face and took off: “You, bloody sell-out, stinking money-bag...” The priest was so shocked he couldn’t move from where he stood. Vanka just kept going: “Repent, my son, for ye do not have much longer to live – know that the snake shall gnaw ye liver!” And it was like he was reading it from a chart, you know? Six months later, the priest kicked the bucket from cirrhosis, right in Dr. Vdovin’s unit. Now that got the old ladies whispering for real. Come to think of it, it could be he had a feel for those things – it wasn’t just that priest whose death Vanya predicted, and now they’re talking about biofields and auras on every corner.

  Healing – yes, Vanya would try to heal, too, but he couldn’t fix everyone. One time Kostya Terentyev came to him with a finger – Vanya packed him off straight to the hospital, said: “Chop it off right now, or else you’ve got a month to live!” Kostya freaked out – and for a good reason, Grozny only missed it by three days. He’d seen enough gangrene for ten men in his Siberian days – he told us stories. And another time, these guys brought an old lady to see him, she was their mother-in-law, and a snake had bitten her. I saw it with my own eyes – her leg was swollen up as big as a coffee table and so blue it was going black. Vanya rubbed and massaged it for a good long time – must’ve been pushing the lymph around – and after a week, the swelling all went away and the old lady pranced like a new nanny-goat. So, if I see something, I ain’t gonna deny it. Like Grozny himself used to say: “Yes – then yes, no – then no,” he was full of sayings like that. But he never healed anyone just by looking, although he had an eye – oh, man – could go heavy as a pick-axe in a blink. Once, I remember, we were drinking beer at Veterok, and this hot-shot from out of town started talking big, like, “I been places, seen things” – and Grozny just rolled up, glanced at this guy once, and he was gone with all his talk, like he’s never been. Vanya’s eyes could gleam like he was mad, sometimes, and other times, he’d just be sitting there staring into space, and wouldn’t even see you – it’s true, he could be weird like that, but no weirder than you or I. One thing I can tell you for sure – he’d never whine about his hard life, as guys like to do when they’ve had a bit, and you should’ve seen the hole he lived in – one old hag let him stay with her. But he went on living!

  So there he was, rolling around on his cart, and we got used to him.

  One day (his old lady later remembered that he had said that morning, “I’ve lived beyond my time, old girl, time for me to rest”) these two guys from the chemical plant happened by. They spotted his hat, and there was just enough in it for a bottle: the first shift had just come to the factory and dropped change in there. So they took it from him. Vanya Grozny shouted after them: “You bloody goats, what’ve you done to my legs!” So they came back and asked:
“Who’s a goat here, you stump?” and he said: “Well, it’s not me for sure!” So they shoved a fillet knife through his throat, and that’s that.

  At least Lyudka Selivanova, from the electrolysis department, saw it and came running to our workshop: “Guys, they killed Uncle Vanya!” Whatever we had in our hands, we all ran out carrying it. We caught them boys, alright: one kicked it right there, the other made it to the hospital. Vanya’d be proud of us.

  Then we buried our Uncle Vanya. Old ladies came out in droves, paid Pashka Smolin to set the little icon Grozny wore on his chest in a stainless steel frame and make a cross around it. He did a heck of a job – no one’ll ever pry it out – and only asked a hundred for it from the old ladies. And actually it wasn’t the old ladies who paid – turned out Grozny had about three thousand put away, and the girls used it to pay for everything, a proper fence and a headstone. We were the ones who did it all too, and we worked hard for Uncle Vanya – he even thought to buy us a round from beyond the grave. And the old ladies – there ain’t nothing you can do about them, they’re all nuts. They hung a little lamp like in church on his cross, and ever since then, line up to get to the place – they do their repenting or whatever it is there, bowing, kissing the icon, and spreading rumors like you won’t believe – like this Stargorod’s holy fool heals everyone.

  It could be that some actually get relief: first, the copper itself from which the icon is made can be good for people – it’s got negative ions that slow down our fields’ vibrations, and second, don’t forget the element of self-delusion – focusing hard on one thing can relieve stress. I’ve read all about it; it’s interesting, but whatever’s going on there, one thing’s for sure – Uncle Vanya was a whiz at healing us from boredom. He’d roll up to our bushes, greet everyone, and holler like it’s the Judgment Day: “All right, pour me a drink, you pagan seed!” and things would all of a sudden look up, just by virtue of him being there. We’d snicker and chuckle, but then his stories would make you think – man, he’d really seen things in life that few men had seen.