Stargorod

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  The evening’s most illustrious guest – Pal Sanych Koshel, chairman of the legislature, former lieutenant governor to the currently imprisoned former governor – took the celebrating Nebendov aside.

  “A new Medici? Congratulations! So how come you got the churches painted but didn’t pay for new crosses – you bought the factory and the land, didn’t you?”

  “Let the diocese take care of the crosses. The churches are right across from my windows, they spoiled the view – so I had them painted.”

  And, without answering the legislator’s other question, Anton Porfiriyevich left the party and went outside.

  “Cosimo Medici,” he said to himself, savoring the sound of it and looked at the graceful old churches on the other side of the river.

  He bought the factory a week ago, but the news of it hadn’t spread through the region yet. He’d have to rebuild the factory, of course, to accommodate the new manufacturing line he’d already ordered from Spain, but it wasn’t a big deal. Pal Sanych himself had long had his sights set on that factory, but he beat the chairman to it, and didn’t even pay that much for the property. Come to think of it, why did he have the churches painted? Because he was the only one who could afford to do it? Or was it because he knew the gesture would appeal to the factory’s owner, and he’d offer him a deal? Or because every newspaper in the region ran a story about it? Or was it because of that time when he was telling his granddaughter how people used to white-wash their old mud-walled houses in the villages around Poltava before Easter, and the girl glanced at the churches outside their window and asked him, “Why are those so dirty – will you paint them for Easter, too?” – and he didn’t know what to say to her?

  Nebendov took another deep breath of fresh air and went back inside his hotel to entertain his guests. Someone’s drunken voice mumbled behind his back: “Had the churches painted, fucking millionaire! Couldn’t do something for the children instead.”

  Anton Porfiriyevich recognized the voice as belonging to the director of the diocesan social services, to whom he recently donated a truckful of computers for the orphanage.

  Anton Porfiriyevich knew decidedly nothing about Cosimo Medici, but determined to make a trip to Florence and learn about the man. He was curious, after all.

  Candy

  About 15 years ago, in the last days of the old hippie “system,” when its founding fathers – like Doughnut, Cockatoo, Noodle and Jimmie Mixer – were still around, and the various tolkienists, bikers, reconstructionists, gopniks and other sundry tribes were only beginning to emerge, a crew of very hairy people who called themselves “pipl” pitched its tents at the river a dozen miles from Stargorod. There was an excellent beach there, and a village with a grocery store nearby, but, most importantly, there was an expansive karst cave with labyrinths of corridors and passages that went on seemingly forever. The hippies meditated in a large black hall not far from the entrance, where they attempted to rid themselves of passions by letting the void into their souls.

  Pipl also believed that it was here that the cave’s guardian, She of Two Faces, found Dao. In pipl’s memory She was a girl who went into the cave with her boyfriend, and fell into a crevice. The guy left her three candles, water and some bread, and then abandoned her, to his eternal shame. The rescue team found the food and the candles intact, but the girl disappeared. Now She sometimes appears to tourists in her old visage, and sometimes in the guise of an old hag. Those who meet the girl are advised to ask her to make one heart-felt wish come true. Her other shape is dangerous – those who see Her as a hag risk remaining underground forever.

  In the year of this story, three people of interest joined the hippie slam: the legendary Noodle with his girl Olesya, and a photographer referred to as Botan, who held on to his brand-new Nikon camera even in his sleep. Pipl greeted their arrival with loud exclamations of “Wow!” Botan didn’t get bent, didn’t trip and didn’t shoot the breeze – he didn’t have Noodle’s storytelling gift, and when he wasn’t staring at Olesya, with whom he’d been in love since high school, in mute adoration, he could be seen in nearby fields and meadows taking pictures of clouds and bugs. Any form of art was respected among the pipl, but Botan remained outside the “system” – they suffered him out of altruism.

  Noodle had picked up Olesya on the street, right after prom: the girl was walking away from the party, crying – she’d just broken up with Botan, who was stupid enough to confess to her that he loved photography more than anything else in the world. An old-school hippie, Noodle chatted up the girl and later gave her “candy” as the hippies call their woven bracelets. There’s something else they call “candy,” too, though – and Noodle got Olesya addicted. For the pipl, an exchange of bracelets is a sacred ritual – they believe the gift tunes the receiver into the mind of the giver.

  So, one night, the whole tribe decided to go to the underground room. There, they sat on their towels and began getting in touch with the void.

  Naturally, the conversation turned to Dao, and then someone brought up She of Two Faces. Doughnut said that if you took the bracelet of someone who wanted to get off the needle and gave it to the cave’s guardian, the person would instantly kick the habit, without any withdrawal pains. Olesya took off her bracelet right there and then and looked at Noodle. He shrugged indifferently. Before anyone could say anything, Botan snatched the bracelet from her hand, grabbed a single candle, a flashlight and his camera, and went underground.

  He was gone for three days. On the fourth day, the pipl decided to call in the rescue squad, but right then, at dusk, he came to the campfire – the way a drama lead comes out from behind the curtain when the show is over and he’s carried the day. Botan’s underground wanderings left their mark: he was exhausted and worn, but utterly serene; he regarded the pipl with a calm, commanding gaze, his eyes pale like a pair of washed-out old jeans, and told them that he had seen She of Two Faces and given her Olesya’s bracelet. Many, of course, did not believe him, but Olesya came up to the hero and took his hand. He looked straight through her, took his hand away, went to his tent and fell asleep.

  The next morning, Botan went to Stargorod, printed his picture and brought it back to the pipl to prove his story. The picture showed a large cave with an arched ceiling. In the far corner, a softly outlined figure floated above the floor. Of those who knew the cave best, none had ever been to this room. And then suddenly – those who were there remember this clearly – the shape in the print began to vanish slowly and soon disappeared altogether, as though it had never been. The same day, Botan packed his things and left. Olesya also left, a few days later, and without Noodle. Pipl attributed her depressed mood to withdrawal, but that was just the thing: she didn’t feel anything; she’s got clean as easily as Doughnut had promised.

  The hippie “system” soon collapsed – as did countless cultures of tribes and peoples who before seemed eternal. The story of Olesya’s bracelet became part of local lore. These days, special guides take people to the cave for a fee, and at the entrance old ladies sell beaded, woven bracelets. In the room where the pipl used to seek Dao, drug addicts and tourists from all over the country leave the bracelets they’ve bought outside as an offering to She of Two Faces. Speleologists are looking for “Botan’s room,” but they haven’t found it yet.

  The photo editor of the Stargorod Herald likes to say, that if a photographer loves life more than he loves photography, he’ll never get anywhere. Botan now shoots for GEO and National Geographic; he’s traveled the world. Nothing is known about Olesya, but it is rumored among professionals that Botan still sleeps with his camera – and nothing else.

  The Mermaid

  Katya Puck became Katya Kholodtsova after she married a man named Nikolai. He studied at the same drama school Katya entered after she ran away from Sakhalin. After her parents died, she was placed in an orphanage there, where she grew up reading books and dreaming of playing Ophelia.

  By the time Katya joined Stargorod’s theate
r company, she was alone. She starred in children’s parties; her cropped hair and petite build doomed her to travesti roles. She spent the next five years playing principal boys, squirrels, and Thumbelina.

  For five years, nothing changed in the one-room apartment the city had found for her: there were the same bookshelves with the same books, the same vanity, the same bed, and in the corner – a large wardrobe of Belorussian provenance. The model was called Sakhalin and Katya had bought the thing purely for its name. At nights, Katya thought about her Sakhalin childhood, when she still believed in miracles. On the island’s beaches, after the storms, the sea leaves pieces of raw carnelian – a semi-precious gemstone; she remembered how, when she held the stones up to the sun, she could see through them.

  One night she was so homesick, she decided to hide from her longing inside her wardrobe. Katya stepped into the thing – and suddenly found herself on a Sakhalin beach – on the shore of the Tartar Strait, at the foot of the Aniv lighthouse. She didn’t feel in the least alarmed and walked toward the town – her favorite Aunt Lida Puck lived there. The aunt welcomed her with open arms, fed her a feast and put her to bed. In the morning, Aunt Lida gave Katya a gallon bucket of caviar, for the trip back.

  The theater paid little; Katya climbed back into her room through the wardrobe and took the caviar to the market. In the fish rows, she saw Nodar – he was standing there, eating sunflower seeds. Katya fell in love at first sight. Nodar began selling her caviar for her.

  He would wash down a bite of a caviar sandwich with sweet coffee and teach Katya about life, “One grain of caviar is nothing; a bucket of it is money. Money – that’s freedom, and you keep talking about some miracle of art, phew, no one pays for that. I can’t go through the wardrobe – I’m not allowed – but you can. There you go – that’s your miracle right there. Now I’ll eat the last piece of this sandwich and then I’ll want a piece of you – isn’t that a miracle, too?”

  Nodar was wild, but passionate; Katya loved him.

  In the meantime, the theater got a new director. He was young, and he staged Hamlet. Katya played Ophelia. Overnight, she became famous; she was even elected into the city’s Cultural Council. Nodar stayed with Katya for a year, and then began disappearing for a week or two at a time. He told her he was busy expanding his business, but someone in the theater crowd started saying that he had gotten together with Lilya, the bartender from the Lyubava. At first, Katya didn’t believe the rumor. She did, however, sit for long stretches of time at the beach. When she went through her wardrobe she’d hug herself in her sable fur-coat and linger, no longer hurrying to see her aunt. A very long time ago, back at the orphanage, she and her friend Alya used to read to each other their favorite story – Andersen’s The Little Mermaid – at night. It made them feel warm inside, and wanting to cry.

  In Stargorod, meanwhile, things changed again. The young director got an offer from the capital and left. His replacement put on a production of Ostrovsky’s The Storm; it didn’t have a part for Katya. Katya threw a fit in the dressing room, which prompted a jealous colleague to mock her: “Well, you’re not gonna jump off a cliff over this, are you? Your caviar will feed you.”

  That evening, Nodar came home drunk, groped her and swore he loved her. Katya threw him out. Then she found an axe and chopped the wardrobe to pieces.

  The next morning she got called to a meeting of the city’s Cultural Council. The Mayor told them the Transportation Ministry decided to build a bypass, which meant a death sentence for Stargorod, which lived and died with the federal highway that went through it. A PR expert flown in from Moscow told them to come up with a local attraction immediately, something like the Mouse Museum they have in Mousino.

  Not long after that, Stargorod celebrated its Founding Day. Katya played Thumbelina in the open-air production on the park’s playground. In the crowd, she could see Nodar with the bartender; they were hugging each other, and did not look at her. After the show, Katya walked through the strolling public to the canal. She climbed one of the granite slabs that lined the embankment and leapt into the water.

  Katya turned into a mermaid. We know this to be a fact because one famous photographer, when, for reasons unknown, he found himself in Stargorod, captured on film something that looked very much like an undine floating on the moonlit surface of the river. The uncanny picture was reprinted all over the world. Now, people reserve rooms in our hotels well in advance and at nights, packs of tourists stalk the embankments in the hopes of seeing the mermaid. Katya, however, is not very kind to them; in the past three years she’s only showed herself twice.

  A group of Japanese scientists offered to pay the city big money for the permission to study the phenomenon.

  “How could we sell Katya – after she’s saved our city?” the Mayor said, shaking his head. And then asked his deputy: “What’s that Nodar character up to these days, anyway?”

  “Selling nails in the market. Lilya broke up with him.”

  “Serves him right!”

  The Stargorod Herald ran a story saying that the Moscow PR consultant got paid three million rubles for hyping the mermaid brand, but who believes a rag like that?

  The decaying waterfront has been restored, covered with new granite and lined with wrought-iron streetlamps. People in Stargorod feel very proud about Katya; girls throw pieces of paper with their heart’s desires written on them into the river. Some, they say, get what they wish for.

  Happiness

  Until he turned 40, Genka hunted herring all over the northern seas, and with great success. Misfortune struck out of the blue: while he was at sea, his wife left him, and a nefarious scheme, of the kind that had come to be common in his industry, came to light on shore. The skipper lost his boat. On top of that, his mother became gravely ill. Genka found a job at the Angler tackle store in Murmansk. He perused the manufacturers’ literature as meticulously as he used to study navigation charts, and became an irreplaceable expert in fishing and angling equipment. On weekends, he’d get away to one of the local bodies of water, and over the next ten years became so familiar with them that he was bored.

  For his 50th birthday, Genka gave himself a present – a trip to The Three Rivers resort, on a lake about 10 miles from Stargorod. Genka managed to book himself early in the season, a fact which later caused him great pride. For the next five years, he vacationed only and exclusively at The Three Rivers; he came three times a year and among the regulars earned himself the nickname Murmansk Genka, which distinguished him from the crowd of the common show-offs who came to swim and entertain their women. The regulars – retired special forces, GRU officers, military contractors and manufacturers – were decidedly more important and richer than Genka, but his tackle was just as good. He always left his room before dawn and came back by nightfall, having missed both lunch and dinner, and even when no one else had a single bite that day, Genka always managed to bring back a respectable catch. He was made to fish just like a bird dog is made to hunt.

  After dinner, the company usually gathered in the fireplace den, around the pool table. Genka would sit by himself, eyes wandering over the rooms’ walls: he played poorly and didn’t like losing. He drank little, and when he did, he would confess he could only think of coming back to The Three Rivers. It was Genka, by the way, who caught the record-setting 10.4-kilo pikeperch. He was well respected; men came to ask for his advice about equipment and ordered the newest and hottest items from him, which he sold to them at cost. There was only one thing that really irked him: the entire den was lined with photos of men with their trophies. His photo, however, was for reasons unknown missing, even though he broke Sashka Pugachev’s record the very first year he came, when he reeled in a 79-kilo catfish. A year later, Kasym and his buddy Beard pulled out an 84-kilo beast from Babka’s Dip and were instantly rewarded with three framed pictures right by the door.

  Genka no longer had any friends in Murmansk; the vision of The Three Rivers sustained him – wind in his hair, the
breaking waves at the lakeshore, the herons in the reeds, the quiet inlets and the deep, deep sloughs where the catfish sleep under the willows. Genka dreamt of catching a record-breaking 100-kilo fish; he knew where and how he would hunt for it, but he never told anyone of his dreams, afraid to jinx them. When he stood behind the counter in the Murmansk store, or took out his ill mother’s bedpan, he would close his eyes and revel in the visions of his future glory.

  Genka believed in his luck. Life, however, threw another banana peel under his feet. First, his mother died. Genka took care of the funeral, and felt out of sorts. He looked unwell – dark circles under the eyes, ghostly pale skin – and the store’s owner sent him to see a doctor he knew at the district hospital. The doctor found leukemia.

  “People live decades with this diagnosis,” the doctor told Genka, and then ratted him out to the store’s owner. The owner fired Genka on the spot, albeit with a 25,000-ruble bonus.

  The fired Genka went home, and as he walked, for some reason, he no longer thought about his record-breaking catfish. With nothing particular in mind, he wandered into a mall, saw a cell-phone-card vending machine, paid, for no reason he could identify, for more airtime, pushed the button for “Beeline,” and pulled out the receipt. He had no one and nowhere to call. Suddenly, among the familiar logos of service providers, he spotted a symbol he’d never seen before: a salmon leaping out of the water over a round sun. Under the logo, the unfussy serious-looking letters read: “Happiness.” Genka fed a bill to the vending machine and pushed the button; the machine smoothly pulled in his money, growled, and returned a receipt which said: “Payment received, thank you!”