“Oh-hoh-ho!” he sighed, like a horse, and shook his head. “Are you sure you won’t give it back to me?”
“Nope. Be strong, Gramps, you got what was coming – you shouldn’t have gambled it.”
“Oh, come on, Olezhek. You always think of something.”
By this point, the whole room is watching this show – they want to know how he’ll trick the coat out of me. Except Mitryunchev is really worked up about it: he’s already pictured his coat cut into pieces, and he doesn’t see or hear the room around him. I’m sorry for him, but I know better: if I just give him the coat back for nothing, he’ll have had no fun. He might even get mad at me.
Then it came to me:
“Gramps,” I said, “I bet you couldn’t stick your naked ass out into the hallway and sing a couplet.”
“Would you give me the coat back if I did?”
“I would.”
“And the medals with it?”
“You’re pushing it, Gramps.”
“What do I care – I can strip naked.”
“We’re not in a banya, Gramps. All right, I’ll give you the medals too.”
You should’ve seen him – he was so happy! Quickly, before I could change my mind, he dropped his pants, stuck his ass out the door and bellowed out a couplet so loud the light bulbs above our heads rattled. Naturally, Nadezhda ran up and yelled at him that she’d throw him out, but you could see she was fighting her face not to laugh. And so Gramps got to be the room’s hero again.
He took his coat and his pants, too (on the sly – we didn’t say anything about the pants), climbed back onto his bed and sat there fingering his medals; he didn’t put it on right away – was enjoying the moment. He sat there like that for a bit, and then suddenly – splat! – threw his suit on the floor, dove face-first into this pillow and started sobbing. I rushed to pull him up by the shoulders.
“Gramps, please, don’t! I didn’t mean to insult you!”
And he looks back at me and – just picture it! – chokes back laughing through tears.
“Man, are you stupid! What are you talking about, insult me. I’ll show you now – you’ll never even dare set foot in my village!”
I, believe it or not, felt my knees buckle when I realized what he meant.
“You old bare-assed weasel!” I yelled at him, and gave him a noogie, and rolled him around on his bed a bit, and, of course, promised – even swore – to come visit him in his village.
Soon after that, Tanya took me home from the hospital; really, what good’s the hospital for, if you can take the same pills at home. Next, she took me to see this guy all the way down in Taganrog – now you’d call him a fancy word, “chiropractor,” but I prefer the good old Russian “bone-setter.” He was the one who cured me once and for all, and without any drugs, pills or compresses, but I tell you, if I’d known ahead of time what his curing would look like I’d never have gone there – it was a trip to a Gestapo dungeon, not a doctor’s office. Once I got in there, I really appreciated my gramps Mitryunchev. He was the one who taught me: it is only those who are tired of living that die, and the ones who want to go on for a bit longer and hold on with their teeth – they always survive. He must have said that five times a day at least.
So picture this enormous dude, close to seven feet tall, with arms to scale and fists like a Clydesdale’s hooves. He puts you on your stomach, runs his finger down your spine, and then all of a sudden – whack! – slaps you flat on the back. You hear your bones crush and it hurts like hell! I’m lying there screaming in tears, and the son-of-a-bitch just chuckles.
“Go ahead, scream your heart out. I like it even better – makes it easier to figure what’s where.”
And again – crack! I blacked out. Came back – I can’t get up, and if I’d had any energy I’d have at least bitten his finger off. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs though.
But you know – I felt better when I got to the hotel. I took a long warm bath, and you know, I felt better! For the first time in forever, I felt I could bend my back. Two days later I went to see the dude again, willingly. He had me go to a different room, and the set-up there was quite simple. You ever read about the Inquisition? So, picture this: I’m stripped to the boxers, and they tie me to a huge wheel, and this damn gorilla starts slowly pulling my feet towards my head – and all very calm, with a smile. I figured this was it, and bid farewell to my old bones, this world, and my wife; I screamed and blacked out again. When I came round and rested a bit, you know... Words don’t do it justice. I was born again. I took him flowers, that bonesetter dude, to thank him, but he only chuckled at me – he knew what he was doing.
We came back home and I got back into my UAZ. I actually enjoy the job now – I can ride on any road without pillows, and I’m not the least bit sorry that I left Zagotskot when I did. Over the year that I was sick, the new power squeezed my old buddies so hard, they’re scared of their own shadows. Funny: I was getting meat through my job now without all the old headaches, and when you’ve got meat, what else do you need? So I figured I was ahead all around.
I went to visit Gramps Mitryunchev too. I flipped the siren on as soon as I got to the village – you know our cars are special, with flashlights and everything – so I made a show of pulling up to his door. Gramps dashed out, made a huge fuss – he was happy as a pup. I brought a bottle with me; we sat together for a while, drank some. And you know, he kept holding my hand and didn’t want to let it go. Such a funny old man, I swear: it’s not like I could vanish into thin air after I drove all the way over to see him.
He went right back to work, picking mushrooms and berries, and stuff; he loaded me up, and when I offered to pay for it, he naturally took offense. But I turned him around quick – I just reminded him of the couplets he sang in the hospital, and he gleamed like a new penny. Before I left, he asked me to give him a ride to the village store. He said it as if it weren’t a big deal or anything, but I could tell – he had a plan, Mitryunchev never does anything just because he needs to.
Well, that’s no hair off my back, so I gave him a ride. He climbed out at the store, turned, and winked at me, very importantly – there were people around, of course, folks stopped to stare – and ducked into the store looking purposeful. What a clown.
Nowadays, before he turns himself over to Vdovin for the winter, he always comes to stay with us, and every September Tatyana and I go to visit him – they have more mushrooms and berries there than you could mow with a scythe. Especially cranberries. So I had this idea – and talked it over with my guys – if it all works out, we’ll start a co-op, and make the Gramps our main cranberry buyer. He’s too good to just slave away at the kolkhoz, and he’s not that kind of man, anyway, our Mitryunchev!
You’ll say, “What is this, Oleg, are you after easy money again?” Nope. This is a whole different ballgame. First, it’d be my own business – I’m getting fed up driving someone else’s cash around, to tell you the truth. Second, you do have to think ahead. I’ll save up a bit and build myself a house at the Lake, it doesn’t have to be big, I’m not greedy. All I want is a place of my own and no one sticking their nose into my business. What’s wrong with that? So. Laugh all you want, but it might work – cranberries are all the rage these days.
Gramps’ village – that’ll make you laugh for real. Whenever I show up, I can tell folks are eyeing the car like it came from the organs, you know. I couldn’t care less, of course, but I know the old geezer had to have told them all kinds of stories, so they’d mind him better. Folks in the village don’t like him all that much, because he’s like me, you know – always been his own boss – so he never misses a chance to pull their leg and laugh about it. And I’d do anything for him – I like to see him go at it; some say you can get a sort of a second wind in your old age, enjoy life all over again, and nothing’ll bother you. But he’s not much to look at it, that’s for sure – just a little wrinkled gnome is what he is, a funny old gnome. I like his sense of humor th
ough – it’s what keeps you going, right?
* * *
17. Penal battalions in World War II were comprised of convicts who were given the choice of fighting or serving their sentences (including receiving the death penalty). They were thrown into the fray in the worst of conditions, underarmed and with machine guns at their backs, to keep them from retreating.
Lukeria’s Hill
“And his whole body was covered with camouflage film, and underneath it – wrapped with antennae wires.”
“Come on now, Katka!”
“No, girls, I’m telling you! And when they went to load him up into the truck, this stuff came out of the bullet-holes – in little clumps, like jelly, and some green hairs came out too. They sealed them up in zinc boxes and sent them off to Moscow.”
“Well, I don’t know... it could be true. In America they’ve been keeping a couple of humanoids on ice for years, and that journalist who found out about it disappeared without a trace.”
“Of course he did! They just whacked him quietly, so he wouldn’t go around sticking his nose where it don’t belong.”
A door slams – it’s Ninka from the grocery store.
“Girls, put in your orders – we got in a shipment of sour-cream, who wants some?”
Everyone does, of course.
“What about that thing you promised me? They haven’t brought it yet? Do me a favor, Lukeria Ivanovna, do remember what I asked – when my Andryukha brings some fish, I won’t forget you either.”
Ninka runs out again; Katya and Svetka renew the argument they suddenly remember having.
“I’m telling you, salmon fights with its head! Ask Lukeria Ivanovna.”
“Lukeria Ivanovna, have you heard of this from your Aslan?”
“Leave me alone, girls!”
“Yes, Katya, you leave Lukeria Ivanovna alone now, she is now our Khokhloma painting specialist...”
It goes on like this all day. A habit. No spite. Only their tongues get a bit tired by evening. And their feet. But you can’t compare this to working at the restaurant – there you’re running around in a lather the whole time, it’s mind-numbing, and here you just get a headache sometimes. But you’ve got troichatka to help the headache – doctor Vdovin sends some from the hospital. Not for free, of course, the first leather jacket that ever came went to him.
The consignment store is not the restaurant, not a buffet even, but if you got brains, you can make a living here too. Again, 45 is not 17, you don’t need so much. But still. You need to pay at the garage – for body work and a coat of paint, then you need something for Terebikhin at the Traffic Police – to get the accident off your record... Vitenka, son of a bitch, finally crashed the poor old car. As she goes through her mental to-do list, Lukeria thinks of her Vitenka. The thought makes her smile. It makes her stretch behind her counter. Even though you wouldn’t think there’s much to smile about – Valya’s words are also stuck in her mind. But that’s the kind of woman Lukeria is – these things are not mutually exclusive.
“Here’s what I’ll tell you, girls: no one can replace my Aslan, but when the pickings get slim, Vitenka’s pure gold, it’s worse without him, isn’t it, girls?”
Katya and Sveta smile knowingly: they have husbands and children, too, and it’s quite a load to pull, you don’t have much time for yourself, so all they’ve got are their little smiles, their giggles and jokes, and their dreams and memories of how things were when they were young. It’s quiet at the store – middle of the day, no customers. Lukeria stretches again, intentionally seductively and makes an obscene gesture with her hand. The girls chuckle into their fists. But again without spite or envy – how could anyone be angry with Lukeria?
The woman at the cash register, Terentieva – an almost-retired grandmother – looks up from the till and sighs.
“Lushenka, sweetie-pie, you’ll get into trouble with your appetites. When are you going to settle down, huh?”
The question hangs in the air. The thick sugary silence holds for a bit, and crumbles again – the women move on to the subject of a child’s outfit with a picture of Tom and Jerry on it. For this one item they have received three requests: from the laundry and dry-cleaners, the bakery, and Orsov cafeteria. The bakery wins – the feast of the Trinity is around the corner, and everyone is running short on yeast.
Lukeria drops out of the conversation – she has to think some more. Try as she might to get Valya’s words out of her mind, she can’t stop thinking about what she said about Vitya. Valya, from the campground, stopped by this morning, took her aside, and told her in a whisper that the night before Vitya rented a boat and took a girl from the conservation department at the Museum for a ride to the island. He’s quick like that...
Lukeria goes to the pantry to make lunch for everyone. She’s alone. She can think. She peels potatoes.
✵ ✵ ✵
She came to Stargorod as a 15-year-old from the Lake Country. Having dropped out of the technical school, she went to work at the Riflemen Izba where she spent five years living with the director and by the age of 23 rose from a waitress to the buffet manager. The director procured himself a new one-room apartment and went to jail.
That’s when she found Vassily Antonovich, the head accountant from the conservation department at the museum. Lukeria moved into a three-room apartment, moved her mother in with her from the village, bought her first car and learned to drive – back then, a woman behind a wheel was big news in Stargorod. Vassily Antonovich together with the then Director Syromyatnikov (he was there before Zhorka Pronichev) were building the Bishop’s mansion and the dachas for the Oblast Party Committee. Lukeria, still working at Riflemen Izba, moved her sister and husband to the city and made sure her nephew passed exams into the Polytechnic. A bit later, however, Syromyatnikov turned Vassily Antonovich in: 120 cubic feet of imported lemon-tree lumber destined for the museum’s parquet floors, Finnish floor tiles, cement, brick, and an excavator given to some friendly moonlighters – enough for him and Lukeria to get close to seven years, plus confiscation of their property. They weren’t married, however – and that’s what saved her. A year later, Vassily Antonovich died in prison under circumstances that remained unclear. Lukeria was left with the bank assets and her freedom.
In the meantime, she turned 30. Children were not materializing. Somehow, the restaurant smoke congealed into a former boxer named Stas, who drank like a horse but played the guitar with great flair. Just after their one-year anniversary, he disappeared. Lukeria inherited his guitar, his debts, and his constantly muttering old mother, who scared Lukeria a bit. Lukeria loved her anyway. Four more men flew by barely to be remembered. She must have found them somewhere; she picked them up, dusted them off, cleaned them and gave them a new life, and then they vanished just like Stas, only remarkably faster.
Lukeria, to give her her due, when she crossed onto the far side of 30, did not get fat, like most, but preserved her narrow hips, straight back, and impressive breasts, desired by many. You could not find a bigger optimist among women over 30 in the whole of Stargorod. You could always ask her for a loan; she was always willing to go to the basement to fetch a bottle of vodka late at night after the register’s been closed out, and the head of the Traffic Police himself, lieutenant colonel Terebikhin who once a year, without fail, put on a blow-out for a hundred of his closest friends behind closed doors at Riflemen Izba, invariably greeted her with a peck on the cheek.
Lukeria’s courage would have done a Chechen rebel proud: whenever she interfered to break up a fight, the rabble-rousers in her presence faded and retreated to neutral corners in a blink. On a few very rare occasions, she’d taken a couple punches herself in the heat of the moment, but such perpetrators were forever banished from the Riflemen Izba, and those who owed Lukeria a favor (never few) made it their business to ambush such characters in a dark alley and give them a thorough ass-kicking.
It seemed things would go on like this forever: to her friends, Lukeria a
nnounced that she would choose her men herself from now on. The stories with the accountant, whom she had, apparently, loved, and Stas the guitar player whom she loved undeniably, made their impact; the four men that followed were temporary pets, profoundly needy, albeit endowed with the physical stamina Lukeria required. But nothing more.
It was Aslan Dzhioyev, a fiery Ossetian with gold crowns on his teeth and a map of deep scars on his forehead, once his division’s weightlifting champion, who threw everything out of balance. He knew how to live large, but he also knew the price of money, and never wasted any – like a gold prospector who’s hit it big. He could pay for everyone’s food and drink. Or he could let someone else do it. He was persistent and ardent, but gallant. He was like steel. He won Lukeria, as the waitresses whispered, right there in the pantry and she could not resist him.
He was a figure, of course. A king. Aslan didn’t care for jeans; instead, he appeared in English suits that made him look like an heir to the throne. The country girls at the Riflemen Izba coat check, its weary cooks and its independent director – they all smiled as soon as they saw him. No one ever observed an expression of contempt on Aslan’s face. He owned a gas station at a highway exit and a used car consignment business.
Polite and solicitous, but somewhat distant in public, Aslan, whose mountain upbringing did not permit public displays of affection, was at home as loving as a good child, and his filial respectfulness melted even the heart of Lukeria’s bitter old mother, who never called him anything but Aslanchik.
For five years this Ossetian prince became the source of bliss and passion in Lukeria’s life. His half-Ossetian, half-Chechen army confidently moved to acquire Stargorod’s remaining gas stations, then opened the first video-theaters in the city, and was eyeing the Cooptorg and the furniture factory when one dark August night Aslan, on his way to the restaurant, was gunned down by a boar-grade rifle wielded by a Gypsy he had crossed in some affair.
Stargorod Page 13