Stargorod

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  On the other hand, Paip’s relations with the Kremlin were, at the time, highly neurotic. The General, while letting Paip outbid him, instantly conceived of a plan to present Paip’s new purchase in the most unfavorable light to the Powers That Be. The oil magnate’s company won the auction, and the fact was covered by the news the same evening. The General departed to feast at the governor’s guest house, and stayed the night.

  In the morning, strange howling was heard outside his door. The General stuck his head out into the hallway. Walking on his knees along the tufted carpet towards him was Kim Volokitin, naked to the waist, flailing himself unmercifully with a lash and whining monotonously: “Have mercy, it’s my fault, the rats ate the wiring!”

  A curt order to explain followed. With the lash held up for the distinguished guest in his outstretched arms, the head of Stargorodian culture recounted the misfortune: rats sniffed out the organic-rubber wiring under the hood of The General’s Mercedes and gnawed it to shreds. The car now would not start, and for this he, the idiot who could take care of it, is asking to be whipped.

  “I’ll forgive you if you tell me who sent you to trick me,” The General looked the trembling official straight in the eye – an experience few could bear. The General had a chance to make a few inquiries.

  “General, sir, I thought of it myself, the fool, I thought it was for the better – ten investors already went bankrupt with the place, the foundations are built on quicksand.”

  “Fine work!” The General barked and went to get dressed.

  History, as we all know, repeats itself. In 1767 Catherine the Great stopped in Stargorod in the guest palace on her way to the First Throne. Local yokels had an argument with the Tsarina’s drivers, and beat them up. Someone instantly reported this to the monarch. An imperial order was issued: to whip every tenth man in the city. Then the city head with his entire cabinet prayed to the Mother Empress on their knees and gained the Most Benevolent’s clemency for their wayward citizenry. Ever since then, on the feast day of Our Lady of Kazan (when the discomfiture originally transpired) they gave a thanksgiving service in the city hall. They did so every year, until the Soviets stopped it. This, however, did not save the Stargorodians from receiving, from the surrounding towns, the moniker “whipped”; still, it’s no worse than the historical name given to the residents of Tver – “the goats,” or the inhabitants of Torzhok – “crooks and snoops,” or those from Kashin – “guzzlers.”

  I doubt Kim Volokitin was aware of his city’s history. The General took his complaint to the governor, who was compelled, in the name of making amends, to let him have the above mentioned guest palace. It is now being converted into a boutique hotel with all the trappings of heavenly repose. This actually worked out well for the city: the school for mentally handicapped children that had been housed in the palace was moved from downtown to the edge of the city, but only time will tell how well the renovators will get along with the conservationists.

  Kim Volokitin did not remain the head of the culture department for long: The General appreciated his acting talent and took him to Moscow. They say he is managing a super-secret garage there now, has been awarded his long-awaited colonel’s rank, and could not be happier.

  The Cursed Place

  The first thing a tourist has to deal with in Stargorod is our bridge. This is a cursed place for city fathers as much as it is for motorists, everyone knows that. The chronicler chose to record for posterity that, in 1011, boyar Kuksha, Stargorod’s founder, drowned a Komsi priest here at the ford, and the pagan, in his last breath, cursed the boyar and all subsequent governments.

  In 1696, Peter the Great, in a great hurry to Voronezh to supervise the building of his ships, arrived at the steep shores of our river, and, twisting his mustache in irritation, stood there waiting for a ferry. Right beside him there stood two old women – grocery peddlers.

  “How much for the greens?” the tsar inquired.

  “We let it go for half-penny, and the ferry costs a coin.”

  Two copper half-pennies at the time added up to a coin. The tsar, without wasting any more time, summoned the city head and ordered him to erect a bridge. Half a year later, returning from Voronezh back to the capital, the Tsar observed that the bridge hadn’t even been started. He ordered the city head brought before him again.

  “What, no money’s been given you?”

  “No, Your Majesty, they sent us the money, but we’ve no wits to puzzle out a thing like a bridge.”

  “Then here you go!” Peter exclaimed and slammed his fist on the poor man’s bald skull so hard he almost died. And the city finished the bridge in no time.

  In the Great War, the Germans bombed the bridge to smithereens. Under Zhukov’s orders, the Red Army soldiers were trying to secure the crossing under heavy enemy fire. Right in the very thick of it, bullets and shrapnel pouring down, a jeep speeds up to the pontoons – and the soldiers, the ones still alive, are all hiding in the trenches. Zhukov, with a cane, jumps out of the car. Bullets whiz past him – he pays them no mind: he was charmed, you see.

  The marshal yells at the colonel, “God damn you, how much time were you given already?!” and smack! – whips his cane at the man’s face; teeth fly!

  “You!” Zhukov yelled at the first Captain he saw. “Make the crossing by nightfall, or I’ll bury you alive!”

  By nightfall, tanks were rolling across the pontoons, the enemy fled, the colonel was sent to Vorkuta, and the captain got a medal.

  After the war, the job of rebuilding the bridge fell to the much-decorated Engineering Corps Lieutenant Colonel Shelest. Shelest was born a builder; he set to repairing the ruins with a team of soldiers who had fallen behind the front and stayed and a crew of German POWs. Eventually, the time came to send his soldiers home. Shelest’s officers drafted a new crop of recruits from places no one had ever heard of. They finished the bridge, but then the draftees’ term of service ended, and they, too, went home. Shelest, just for the heck of it, wrote to the appropriate authorities, asking for new soldiers. Instead, Cheka motorcyclists with machine guns rolled into town, but the war hero was gone. They never found him. Turns out, his unit had been disbanded right after the war – how did he manage to keep it working? Whatever he did, everyone – his officers and soldiers – served in the non-existent unit completely legitimately, and got due credit for it. People told many other stories about Shelest after this, but this one, at least, is true: he conned Stalin’s regime all right, but he got the bridge built.

  Since then, the bridge has gradually fallen into decay. Every new head of the city spared no asphalt on it, but somehow the potholes only grew bigger and deeper.

  When Mikhail Yefremovich Nozdrevatykh – a Stargorodian born and raised, a retired air force general, and a chopper-pilot hero of the Afghan war – became the head of the city administration, he solemnly pledged to undertake a fundamental reconstruction of the bridge to bring it into tip-top shape. His old mother, people said, counseled him to have the bridge blessed with holy water and forget the crazy idea, but he did not listen.

  Instead, Nozdrevatykh sent a request to the governor: a hundred million. The Governor right away countered: six hundred million, and not a penny less, or else it’s not even worth the effort. That’s where The General came in – an important man from Moscow, he had developed a big construction business in Stargorod. The General cut out the governor, got the contract himself, and procured three hundred million straight out of the federal budget. The ministry sent the money, but something happened to it somewhere along the way.

  Exactly what transpired then between The General and Nozdrevatykh, we do not claim to know. However, there are others who witnessed their conversation, and here’s what they report.

  Mikhail Yefremovich is playing pool at the Old Tymes Club. Suddenly, The General, profoundly drunk, barges in and starts yelling, “You son of a bitch, what do you think you’re doing? You stole the money, didn’t you!”

  “People,” N
ozdrevatykh replied, “shot Stinger missiles at me in Afghanistan and I wasn’t scared. Get out of here. I’m not one to rob my own hometown.”

  In response, The General whispered something into the city head’s ear – it had to have been a jinx – marched right out and climbed into his Mercedes, but didn’t go very far. He slammed into the bridge’s parapet – the car was totaled, and it was a miracle he himself didn’t fall into the river below. And Nozdrevatykh was paralyzed on the spot – his legs folded under him and he couldn’t feel them.

  The money eventually turned up, albeit not all three hundred million – only a hundred. People said the governor found a way to skim off his cut after all. The General fudged and schemed, and paid Moscow back, but there was very little left for the bridge – just enough to roll on a new layer of asphalt using German technology. In the spring, the logging trucks came across and made the first dents in the road. Now, in the middle of the summer, traffic here crawls as usual – at a snail’s pace, everyone worrying about their suspensions. Mikhail Yefremovich, for his honesty and forthrightness, gained great respect from the locals, but it hasn’t given him his legs back. The bridge itself is holding up just fine – Shelestov with German POWs built it and that’s, I tell you, something – not just some new German technology. I do wonder sometimes, though: would it have been better to sprinkle the bridge with holy water, and let it be?

  Demons Possess Us

  Demons do possess us, that’s a fact. Old Father Artemon often spoke of being possessed in his sermons, but also never neglected to warn his flock against false healers.

  Not so long ago, in the Solombal district of Arkhangelsk region they found a body of an old woman who had died of multiple traumas – her ribcage was shattered. A certain Ms. Lagunova – a local self-proclaimed healer – apparently attempted to cast the demons out of the old lady’s body “by means of jumping on her chest,” as the police report put it. Such charlatans roam Russia in great numbers, no fewer than those of the demons that possess and torment us. Sometimes, however, the demons leave the soul of their poor victim when the fear of a greater force compels them.

  Mikhail Yefremovich Nozdrevatykh – the head of the city administration, a retired general and combat helicopter pilot – suffered at the hands of an evil-eyed Moscow businessman known around here as The General. He, people say, whispered a jinx into Nozdrevatykh’s ear, and the hero of the Afghan war was paralyzed from the waist down. This could not have transpired at a worse time: elections to the regional Duma were just around the corner, with our local philanthropist and millionaire Anton Porfiriyevich Nebendov running on the United Russia ticket. Anton Porfiriyevich badly needed a seat in the legislature: the region’s new governor, in contrast to the previous one, who was now serving time for illegally logging a swath of land the size of one-seventh of France, proved to be intent on putting the free-wheeling local entrepreneurs (like Nebendov) under his thumb. For instance, he forced guys who poured a unique brand of iron to switch to producing the cheap vodka brand “For Unity.” The metalworkers outwitted him though: they bottled the governor’s vodka into elaborate cast-iron bottles which cost and weighed so much that people refused to buy them, thus bankrupting the governor’s little home industry.

  Now Anton Porfiriyevich, he came to Stargorod from Poltava some 25 years ago. A recent Polytechnic University grad, he was given a job at a small plant that manufactured trenching tools. Once it was allowed, Nebendo (that was his name then) privatized the plant, added the letter “v” to his Ukrainian last name to show he had no intention of going back to Poltava, and set to work. Now his “Stargorodian” makes construction cranes, lightweight motorboats, pumps and hydrants, spades, Halligan bars and cisterns for firefighters, needles, nails and meat-grinders. Imagine then having this iron-works empire being ordered to begin producing toilet paper! Nebendov did not say “no” to the governor per se, but immediately departed for the capital where the Commander-in-Chief of all firefighters made him a card-carrying member of United Russia.

  The Stargorod’s campaign headquarters’ chief of staff – city head Nozdrevatykh – was supposed to ensure Nebendov’s victory in the elections. If Nebendov made it to the legislature, the governor would leave him alone, but, on the eve of the elections the campaign found itself suddenly beheaded, or rather, be-legged: Nebendov’s faithful lieutenants reported that Mikhail Yefremovich had fallen into a deep depression, locked himself up in his dacha, was seeing no one, and just sat with his old mother pouring holy water on his head and old Father Artemon in the corner mumbling prayers to cast the demons out of his paralyzed body.

  “The Afghan hero’s gone nuts, you say?” Nebendov shouted. “That’s nothing! We’ll fix him right up, my grandmother was the first witch at the Sorochynsky Fair – took off jinxes, evil eyes, and cast demons out too. Hitch up, boys!”

  Fifteen minutes later, the official Mercedes delivered Nebendov to the city administration head’s dacha. Inside, the paralyzed Nozdrevatykh sat in a leather armchair next to a big round table.

  “Trust me, Anton,” he said in a deflated voice, “it was easier for me in the war. I can’t bear it – people elected me, but it’s nothing but wolves and bloodsuckers out there.”

  “What are you talking about, Misha?! The war’s just begun! Get up and crawl around the table, that’s an order!” Nebendov thundered like an angel of the apocalypse, as he grabbed the armchair and pulled it out from under Nozdrevatykh. “Crawl three times around the table and you’ll feel your legs, or else – great woe to you! I’m spending all the magic powers I got from my witch grandmother on you.”

  The sight of him was terrifying: he stood short, disheveled, with his tie askew and his eyes burning like hot embers, arms spread wide. Nozdrevatykh tried to crawl, but his legs would not obey him. One way or another, groaning and creaking, he circled the table three times.

  “You didn’t get it? Well, this’ll be the end of me, but you won’t live either!” and with these words, the Ukrainian exorcist whipped out a small firefighter’s axe from behind his back and charged at his jinxed comrade. The battle-tested general howled like a Chinook at lift-off, jumped to his feet and leapt out the window.

  Nebendov caught up with him only at the dacha’s gate.

  Two weeks later, the two were dining at the Olde Tymes, celebrating Nebendov’s new seat in the regional legislature.

  “You gave me quite a fright back then, Misha,” Nebendov said.

  “Shut up, I still get flashbacks of you with your axe,” the city head admitted.

  From the jukebox, a cracked voice began singing “Say You’ll Haunt Me.”

  “Are you saying I haunt you?” Nebendov asked. “Nonsense. I’m the one who was haunted. And then today the governor congratulated me with victory – and not a word about toilet paper!”

  And he slapped his comrade’s exorcised knee – good and hard.

  Medici

  Our city’s historic waterfront spent the Soviet years slowly dying. The buildings – an old hotel and nearby merchant villas – looked like the moth-beaten eighteenth century kaftans on rickety mannequins in the local museum. The once-proud street was unsightly, as though it had been recently bombed by the Germans and was good for nothing except maybe making movies about partisans.

  With the arrival in Stargorod of Anton Porfiriyevich Nebendov, who steered the ne’er-do-well Stargorodian shovel factory to prosperity with an iron grip, the situation changed dramatically. Of course, the Poltava-born philanthropist could not be suspected of knowingly imitating the famous banker Cosimo Medici – instead, Nebendov acted instinctively. Cosimo, when he came to Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, poured hundreds of thousands of florins into good works, and, by sponsoring ambitious church building all over the city, secured his position among the city fathers and enshrined his name for posterity. True, Cosimo’s pious image was somewhat undermined by certain actions he took, but one can’t repent unless one sins, can one?

  Cosimo once said
that he should designate himself the Lord’s debtor in his accounting books, and if the Good Lord can wait for payment, he’d return the debt with interest. I think Anton Porfiriyevich would sign his name under those words had he had a chance. He bought up the crumbling buildings along the waterfront and restored them. A respectable restaurant materialized in the old hotel, together with hot running water, which had never before made an appearance there. United Russia’s campaign office moved into the building adjacent to the hotel; the villas were given (charitably), one to the Stargorodian workers’ union, another to the city itself, and even the architect who oversaw the renovations received a free studio in one of them. Then, Nebendov developed the vacant lots nearby, filling them with single-family houses in the “neo-Catherinian” style. He moved his family into one of these, but never entertained at home: the hotel and “the guest house” with a pool table, sauna, full bar and VIP suites accommodated all his social needs. The notoriously demanding Federal Preservation Committee gave the development its full and instant approval, and overnight the street became a textbook example of historically-sensitive construction – a turn which even Anton Porfiriyevich, with his truly Renaissance thirst for glory, could hardly have predicted.

  Uplifted by his success, Nebendov put new roofs and a new coat of paint on the two churches on the other side of the river – both designed by the famous architect Barsov. People immediately began whispering that Nebendov had bought the bankrupt little factory on whose land the churches technically stood.

  Naturally, the philanthropist’s 50th birthday party became the social event of the year for the district and region. The lieutenant governor made a speech celebrating Anton Porfiriyevich’s contribution to the revitalization of our community; his party comrades presented him with a statue of a bear carved of larch (he already had four), the game commissioner draped forty sable pelts atop the mountain of presents, and the local banker pinned the furs down with a gold nugget, which promptly made an appearance in the speech by the director of diocesan social services, who compared Nebendov himself to the precious metal. The city architect in his speech called Nebendov a new Russian Medici, which only added to the chagrin of the jealous audience.