Stargorod

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  A strong arm opened the door; Vladik entered – no, rather, Vladik filled the frame, closed the door behind himself neatly, then marched, heels clacking, the 15 feet from the door to the lecturer’s desk and stood to attention.

  “Permission to address, Comrade Major!”

  “Yes, of course. Go ahead,” Borodin said, making it clear he had no desire to continue this game.

  “Comrade Major. Comrade Lieutenant Colonel Peredisty asked that I inform you that your spouse has called. She requested you call home subsequent to finishing the class. Permission to leave?”

  “Thank you. You may go.”

  Only when the thunder of Vladik’s boots faded completely at the far end of the hallway, did the Major dare ask, “Who was that?”

  “Kuznetsov!” the class barked back as one.

  “Well, well,” the Major said, shaking his head, and continued his instruction.

  ✵ ✵ ✵

  We could tell many, many more stories like that about Vladik, but that’s the tragedy of our situation – we cannot, no matter how tempted we might be to do so, allow our narrative to slip into anecdotal levity; we are here to convey true information about a historical person, and we must pursue our goal with the seriousness it commands. Thus, we shall attempt to be brief. Vladik’s biography, however, is rich in uncommon incidents and occurrences; we have a myriad to draw upon, and it would be impossible not to tell you about the training camp.

  What wealth of amazing folklore has come out of that venerable summer institution, the military reserve training camp where students earn their officers’ stripes and prove their mettle! Take just one song, the immortal We are for Peace, but Our Guns Keep Reminding Us We’re Soldiers – this alone, a tune born somewhere in a deep trench to the accompaniment of the approaching IFV of the ‘blue’ team... Oh the songs, the old songs – they are all parts of the system.

  But let us return to Vladik. Let us recall the story of Vladik being late to the training camp. He had both the right and the permission to be late! He and a group of his ancient-history colleagues was dispatched to strengthen the ties of Socialist Internationalism with theater students in Leipzig. The occasion was so important that the military department gave our guys permission to report to training three days late, but of course Vladik could not tolerate that. Instead, he snuck away from the Leipzig train and made his way back to the training camp, at its location in the middle of nowhere in the country. He wanted to be there on time. He was in such a hurry, he didn’t even stop to visit his grandfather or to look for a barber; instead, he shaved his head himself, with a safe razor, balancing in front of the tiny mirror in the rickety toilet of the village train. He didn’t have any water either. Try to repeat this Spartan feat! Vladik Kuznetsov’s head, when he arrived to camp, looked like... Suffice it to say that when sailor Dyakovenko, in the midst of the barracks’ howling mirth, took it upon himself to finish the job, the old sea wolf’s hand shook as it came near Vladik’s head and there was cold terror in the big man’s eyes, terror mixed with disgust and deep pity. Vladik ground his teeth, but didn’t make a sound; the sailor’s hand shook, but did not make any new cuts – it was surprisingly gentle, that calloused hand.

  But on, on with our story – we can feel you begin to doubt the veracity of our claims, dear reader, but there are witnesses, a whole battalion of them, more! For word of Vladik’s determined pursuit of the mailman position spread far beyond his own battalion – everyone at camp knew it. Everyone knew Vladik rose first, before dawn, and ran to the camp’s gate, so that he could pick up the rolled-up newspapers and run them back to the officers’ quarters. He did this because – if you haven’t guessed it already – the mailman’s job came with a rank, and Vladik longed for the right to put a lance-corporal’s stripe on his new shoulder-straps and become equal with the camp’s veterans. It didn’t matter to him that after the training everyone would receive their lieutenant stars; Vladik did as his grandfather taught him, and who could blame him? Who wouldn’t admire his persistence and resilience, so uncommon among young people today? Stargorodians are a special tribe, you know?

  And the story with the General? The General who came to inspect Vladik’s camp; the General for whose arrival the whole division had been preparing for two days and two nights straight? Vladik spent both those days, the hottest mid-afternoon shifts standing watch at the entrance checkpoint – Vladik volunteered for this, he felt compelled to bear his share of the soldier’s burden. He did it because he dreamed of being noticed. His dreams kept him at the checkpoint, until – alas! – his stomach played a dirty trick on him, and Vladik had to ask someone else to take his place so that he could dash off. He was gone a mere five minutes, no longer, but it was enough. Vladik had to watch from the bushes as the General’s convoy pulled up, and as the General, surrounded with his retinue of officers, conversed with Arthur Melkonyan, the weasely Armenian who’d agreed to relieve Vladik from his post because he’d lost to sailor Dyakovenko the night before and had to take Dyakovenko’s midday turn at the checkpoint. Vladik watched from the bushes and, according to witness accounts, chewed his nails.

  Someone reported Vladik’s suffering to the higher-ups, and the Drill Sergeant singled Vladik out at the final parade, so on the train home Vladik was a bit overexcited.

  And what about the time Vladik punished Academician Kombatov’s boxer? That’s a Greek tragedy right there! In his last year at the university, Vladik adopted a homeless mutt he’d found next to the One-Armed Man pub one day. The little dog was a comical creature, accustomed to lapping up beer from unfinished bottles left behind by kind patrons of the establishment; he could also stand on his back legs and do a few other tricks, and must have been tangentially related to poodles. Nonetheless, Vladik gave the dog a manly name, Ace. Those who tried to puppy-talk to Ace and address the little thing as Acey or Asik, were cut off at the spot by Kuznetsov’s powerful throaty roar, “The dog’s name is Ace. Is that clear?”

  Following this, Kolya Bolshoi usually popped up from behind Vladik’s back and everything ended peacefully, or not – depending on the circumstances.

  So Ace became Vladik’s faithful companion, following his owner everywhere in his mincing gait and waiting for him patiently on the lawn of the Humanities’ Building until he returned from class. Man and dog were inseparable. They rode the train to Lyubertsy together; Vladik fashioned himself a special backpack for the express purpose of transporting Ace. Ace’s shaggy face, popping out of the backpack, looked so endearing that everyone around fell under his spell, and no one, ever, had a single unflattering thing to say about the friendly little mutt.

  And then a terrible thing happened.

  One day, Vladik was walking next to Moscow State University’s main building with Ace, as usual, trotting at his side. On a parallel course with them, but in the opposite direction, Academician Kombatov was walking his dog, a boxer named Prana. The Academician was credited with founding Soviet Indology, which he did by tracing the Slavic people’s roots to ancient Hindustan. Kombatov found rich evidence in support of his theories; we refer those with a more-than-passing interest in this question to the full list of Academician Kombatov’s publications available from the commemorative edition of Academician Kombatov: 80 Years of Soviet Indology. Nothing at the scene foretold disaster. The men and their dogs aligned; suddenly and without any warning, Academician Kombatov’s giant boxer rushed at poor Ace, and – imagine! – snapped the little dog’s front paw in half. Vladik, as eyewitnesses told us, didn’t lose a second. He dashed to the university’s fence, ripped out a cast-iron rod (whether it was loose or badly attached, we don’t know) and, wielding it like the Roman legionnaire he’d been brought up to emulate, struck the Academician’s dog, piercing it through and causing it to expire on the spot, in the shocked Academician’s arms. Then Kombatov had to run for his life, abandoning his pet’s lifeless body on the scene – Vladik, like a heavily-armed hoplite swinging a bloody spear, pursued him to his door. Later, in
a fit of righteous vengeance, the spear smashed an innocent telephone booth.

  What else can we say? Vladik had enough of his wits about him to evade the police, and Ace was gone when Vladik came back for him, so the little mutt’s ultimate fate remains unknown. We only know that Vladik took the loss of his companion very hard and for a while nurtured plans of setting the Academician’s dacha on fire.

  It was a rough year for Vladik. Right before his thesis defense, his old grandfather passed away in a veterans’ hospital. Vladik was left without a soul in the world, alone in the two-room apartment in Lyubertsy. His grandfather’s death affected him deeply; that summer, he built a memorial marker on the grave, topped with the Red Star, as is proper for veterans of all Soviet battles. There was no priest, of course, but still, for some reason, Vladik requested prayers to be said for 40 days straight at the church in Vagankovo Cemetery. Vladik defended his thesis and graduated, but only ‘just’ – people said, he drank heavily after his grandfather’s death. He was assigned to the Lyubertsy school,22 and worked there for a few months, but was eventually fired on the grounds of “professional ineptitude,” a charge painfully familiar to any free thinker at the time.

  After that, Vladik’s track grows cold. Someone who’d seen him told us that Vladik wanted to volunteer for the war in Afghanistan – he went to the recruitment office, suggesting his own plan of combat operations, but did not pass the medical exam. He somehow survived, year after year; he never worked as a historian. In the early days of perestroika, he was seen at Pushkin Square – alone, surrounded by a mob, arguing with the pressing human mass. People saw him, but were afraid to approach him.

  The last person who can be reliably said to have spoken to Vladik Kuznetsov was Kolya Bolshoi, who is now Deputy Facilities Director at the Tretyakov Gallery. If one believes his account, which resulted from a visit to the Church of Assumption, in Vishnyaki (actually, Kolya usually goes to All Saints in Sokolovsk, but his mother-in-law lives in Vishnyaki), Vladik works there as a bell-ringer.

  He has grown gaunt and pale; he wears a plain jacket and his apparently indestructible boots, does not shave, has let his hair grow long, and drinks only within reason (by Kolya’s own definition). He is planning to go to the monastery city of Pechora, to learn ancient bell-ringing from its masters.

  * * *

  22. In the Soviet system, university graduates were often assigned to hard-to-fill jobs according to their specialty.

  The Real Life

  1

  “Life, especially for those over 30, hurls forward increasingly fast, as if to match the speed of our day’s new technologies, and one hardly finds a moment to simply approach a stranger and, looking him in the eye, say something non-trivial and pleasant. No, we have no moments like that, and even when we find them, we do something entirely different with them than we imagined. We talk about being charitable and merciful, and many join the recently resurrected societies of Friends of Animals and condemn with righteous rage the cruel dog-catchers. But would they act? Would they do anything, even if the action was humble and inconspicuous? Would I, myself, extend a helping hand to a homeless stranger, or at least to someone lost in this city – say, to that red-faced fellow sitting with his boxes on the park bench?..”

  So, or approximately so, reasoned Rafa Stonov, a common office-worker, a road engineer. Rafa had always dreamed of erecting grand, leaping bridges and high-speed tunnels, but so far circumstances had prevented him from building any such thing, keeping him, for the time being, in the employ of the Asphalt and Tar Surfaces Department. To give him credit, he did develop a new method for laying concrete surfaces, and even defended a dissertation about it 12 years ago or so (his method is still being optimized for production at his research institute’s testing facility). But Rafa had faith in progress. He also had faith in humankind. And if occasionally he did fall prey to Russian angst, likely somehow associated with the state of the roads it was his job to inspect, such episodes were no more or less frequent for him than is common. In his dark moments, Rafa would think of something very complex. This feeling cannot be decently explained except perhaps by means of a penetrating joke – but it is likely to be familiar to many of our compatriots: it’s when life suddenly appears utterly unnatural and contrived, and one yearns for something hard to define, glimpsed once, perhaps, in childhood, through a crack in a fence.

  That’s why, as he was about to turn homeward during his Saturday walk, in a state of extreme inner anxiety, Rafa had to force himself to look closer at the random, red-faced fellow with his boxes, who had initially inspired in Rafa only aversion, diluted perhaps with small doses of curiosity and empathy.

  The fellow, whose clothes and carefully concealed sense of dignity immediately marked him as a non-Muscovite, looked about anxiously, exhibiting all the signs typical of the concussion that results from a sudden encounter with Moscow reality. He would attempt to stand up and grab all his cargo at once, which he could not possibly accomplish, despite his impressive dimensions, broad shoulders, and, even more importantly, his incredibly capacious paws, which called to mind stereotypical pictures of native Siberian bear-hunters, descendants of the peasants who had saved a besieged Moscow in the frigid winter of 1941. When he failed, he would curse fiercely at his load, fall back onto the bench and address the passers-by with the entirely rhetorical question of “So how are we supposed to go on living?”

  The passers-by, naturally, gave him a wide berth. All except Rafa, who plucked up his courage and took a seat on the fellow’s bench. The fellow greeted him instantly, “I’m stuck, you see, with my girls here. I’ve got a return for tomorrow and nowhere to spend the night. Help us out, mate, or we’ll perish just like the Swedes at Poltava.”

  Rafa smiled without saying much, and did not rush to offer customary Russian hospitality, although a small voice inside him already began to assure him that the fellow was not at all as dangerous as at first he appeared.

  “Let me explain the disposition here,” the red-faced man continued, slightly calmer. “I’ve come to the capital on chicken business. You’d be surprised, mate, but we chicken-breeders are a bit off, all to the last man. If I as much as catch a whisper that, say, somewhere in Tallinn someone’s fixin’ to sell some Cochin-chinas, I’m there in a blink. Bukhara, Vladivostok – the money’s no object as they say. So, I got my return ticket well in advance, but now I’m stuck, after the deal went through lightning-quick. You go ahead, look, look into the box – I see you don’t get it, not at all, it’s written all over your face!”

  He lifted a small flap cut into one of the boxes, like a window, and Rafa obligingly bent lower to see. A coquettish head popped up, attached to a creature that looked like a cross between a midget heron and a carrier pigeon. The head turned coyly, displaying itself, and hid back inside the box.

  “Have you seen anything like this? Have you? In your eyes I can see you have not!” The fellow’s face melted into a boyish smile that scattered the last shreds of Rafa’s hesitation.

  “So you’ll put us up for the night, for real? The girls and I are quiet – no worries, guaranteed not to make a mess. I have a bottle with me, just in case, but I don’t drink myself – I quit,” the fellow patted his bulging briefcase as a manner of proof.

  Then he rose from the bench, but instantly turned and slapped his hand on his forehead, “What a fool! I forgot – I’m Vovochka.”

  Rafa extended his hand and introduced himself informally, “Rafa.”

  He did not like his full name, Rafael. Being by education and upbringing a very modern person, he frequently begrudged his parents for giving him the distinction of such an old-fashioned name.

  “Jew, are you?” Vovochka instantly asked, not especially politely but with great glee.

  “No, why should…” Rafa began to say in his defense, but his new friend slapped him on the shoulder and explained with a giggle, “Why I asked? It’s because your name’s Jewish. I don’t care – Greek, Tatar or Jew – I’ve seen a
ll kinds of people, mate. For me – as long as the man’s alright! So, shall we?”

  Flattered with the amazing congruence of their views and immediately reassured, Rafa bravely grabbed the boxes.

  It was strange: he was absolutely certain that his wife and daughters would gladly welcome the unannounced guest – he had never had an adventure like this before.

  2

  Vovochka charmed Rafa’s family instantly, and soon Rafa’s twins were racing down the hallway to fetch the teapot, then the saucer, and then more water for the chickens, and everything in his two-room apartment oohed and delighted. And with good reason.

  Have you ever heard of the black Bramah, feather-footed like a prize tumbler, barrel-chested and decorous, meek and serene like a village priest? Or of dwarf Cochins, those chick-sized, full-grown birds that had squeezed themselves into a clamoring clump under the armchair? Or of the fuzzy, high-stepping, crested and coquettish Paduas, which are more like a cross between a midget heron and a carrier pigeon? Or of the piebald, long-legged, muscle-rolled Orlov fighters – the pride and glory of any truly Russian chicken-man? Most people have no inkling whatsoever of their existence, and it was the same for Rafa until he beheld the creatures in his own home.

  It’s true, the air in the apartment was filled with something unimpeachably birdy, the parquet floors and rugs were covered with a fine dusting of wet sawdust, and tiny feathers flitted around in front of one’s nose, but it was all worth it. It was a shame they couldn’t open the window for more than fifteen minutes (strict instructions!) and they accidentally shattered the wife’s favorite cup in their urgency to grind up an anti-stress powder of calcium and ascorbic acid, which the girls brought, running, from the pharmacy… and after all, they didn’t get to marvel at the chickens for as long as they wanted: Vovochka, having performed his stress-reducing ministrations, all with winsome tenderness, settled his beauties into their boxes, tied them carefully shut and moved them to a dark corner.