5
The building began life as the stables on a stud farm owned by a landowner who was killed by revolutionaries in the winter of 1917, a local detachment of them using it as a temporary billet for several weeks whilst they denounced, drove out, rounded up and eventually shot the local gentry. For a while it was abandoned then altered to be used as a fodder store for the village. With communisation, it was further adapted to become the local grain store.
It is a wooden building with a steeply sloping shingle roof, two small windows which are perpetually shuttered and a barn door set in one end. The only part of the structure made of brick and stone, for even the footings are constructed of seasoned oak as hard as iron, is the stove and chimney which are original: the stove is massive and once kept the stallions warm through the deepest of winter.
When the unimaginable happened and the universe moved on, the red flag lowered from the flagpoles of the entire nation, if not removed from the hearts of all the people, and the barn was no longer communally owned but put on the market, Trofim and Tolya bought it.
As young men, Trofim and Tolya were conscripts together in a tank regiment in the Soviet Army. Whilst serving their time in the far-flung corners of the kingdom of the red bear, they were trained as battlefield mechanics and engineers, learning every skill from stripping a gearbox to heavy duty welding. By the time they were released back into civilian life, there was little they did not know about the various incarnations of the internal combustion engine and the vehicles into which they were put.
Both returned to the village of Solntsevo, the other side of Zarechensk, whence they had come, and were employed as mechanics: Trofim was sent to work in the bus garage in the town, Tolya assigned to the agricultural vehicles depot just outside it. In the exogamous tradition of their village, they sought a bride from ‘over the arches of the bridge’, as the saying went, from the neighbourhood rather than from their own village, and ended up marrying girls from Myshkino.
For years, as they travelled into Zarechensk every day, as Tolya laboured in the dusty wheat fields of summer repairing a combine and Trofim stood in an inspection pit under a leaking sump, they jointly entertained a dream of which even their wives were ignorant. It was a fantasy without hope of fulfilment for there was no chance for it to ever realise itself in a world of collectivised farming and state control. As Tolya put it when he knew there was no one around to shop him, the Party not only ran the farmers and the farms, it also told the crickets when to chirp and the birds when to sing.
Yet their day came and their offer for the old barn was accepted by the state. Now they are the proud proprietors of a garage, repair shop and forge which they have grandiosely named Myshkino Motors. Not only that. The sign which hangs above the barn door is painted in both Cyrillic and English alphabets. It was Pavel, Tolya’s brother, who persuaded them to have a bi-lingual sign in a part of Russia where the chances of there ever appearing a Westerner – apart from myself, who does not count – were about as slim as finding a toad on a mountain top. Pavel had emigrated to America at the first opportunity after the end of Communism and, returning with wild tales of life in Detroit where, having been a vehicle mechanic in the Soviet air force, he also worked in a garage, he filled their heads with capitalist plans of expansion and development. As Russia grew richer, Pavel insisted, it would become a vehicle owning meritocracy, which is how he described Detroit, and every town would need a dealership. It was his plan to set up a chain of such franchises across Russia, selling both Russian and foreign cars to the newly motorised driving classes. Those who got in early would make a killing. It was time to prepare, to be ready.
Trofim and Tolya had spent all their money on tooling up their former barn and had scant reserves to squander on a further fantasy, but they agreed to hang a sign out in readiness for Pavel’s Vehicular Revolution.
At first, the villagers scoffed at the sign. It was a waste of paint. Over the months, however, the garage became known far and wide because of its idiosyncratic notice. Curious farmers brought their tractors in for servicing or their bent ploughs for straightening and welding. Car owners in Zarechensk drove over. When Father Kondrati commissioned a new wrought-iron cross for the arch over the graveyard gate, the word got out. Myshkino Motors was the place to go.
Within two years, Trofim and Tolya took on an apprentice to train up and help them with their increasing work load. They also employed a part-time smith who operated an old forge and even shoed the occasional farmer’s nag, filling the barn with the stench of horse shit and scorched hoof. Pavel kept their hopes, and his own, alive by periodically sending them showroom brochures of the latest American cars from which they tore the pictures to pin on a notice board next to the tool racks. Where some garages have pin-ups of semi-naked girls, Myshkino Motors had Chryslers, Fords and Oldsmobiles hanging from the wall. The most recent they have received shows a highway patrolman standing by the side of a shining Buick saloon, his revolver slung low like a cowboy’s, his eyes almost insectile behind close-fitting sunglasses.
As I approached the garage, I could hear the sounds of mechanical activity. Someone was using a grinding wheel, the whine rising and falling as he moved it to and fro across a metal surface. When the noise dropped, it was replaced by hammering and the shrill of music on a cheap radio with a tinny speaker.
The day being bright, the interior of the garage was cast in deep shadow and I could not make out what was going on inside until I was quite close. In the centre of the work area was a distinctly derelict, old-fashioned Russian limousine of dubious provenance. The bodywork was black, the doors wide enough to accommodate the fattest of Party secretaries, the back windows darkly tinted and still hung with threadbare curtains stretched from chromium-plated rails. Dents in the driver’s door and front wing ringed with rust bubbles were evidence of an accident in the distant past. The windscreen was cracked right across and starred by stones. The vehicle was raised on axle stands, a pair of legs projecting out from under the engine over which the bonnet had been removed.
Perhaps, I considered as I stood for a minute at the side of the entrance to observe the occupants at work, the car was evidence of the veracity, extant after so many decades, of Dmitri’s story of the onion seller at the railway crossing.
Nearest the entrance was the apprentice who, standing before a workbench, was hammering seized bolts out of a chassis member from, I presumed, the limousine. With every strike of the hammer, flakes of mud and rust dropped to the floor.
The apprentice’s name is Romka and he was once a pupil of mine. A studious child of eleven when I retired from Myshkino school, he was always polite, quiet, unassuming and diligent but never all that bright except, that is, at music. Give him anything with strings on it and he would be able to bow or pluck a tune out of in it hours.
At another workbench at the rear of the garage, sparks shot out from the grinding wheel. The air smelled of hot metal, cold oil, gasoline and the sun-warmed timbers of the walls.
‘Shurik!’ a voice shouted out. ‘Happy 80th.!’
The grinding wheel stopped screeching and hummed, the pitch dropping as the power was switched off and the motor slowed. The legs protruding from under the old heap started to scrabble and Trofim began to appear, wriggling out on his back. His face was besmirched with oil, his hands blackened. For a moment, I felt an unpleasant stab of nostalgia: he might have been a miner.
Tolya walked briskly past the car, avoiding the handlebars of a motorbike and tugging off a pair of metal-worker’s safety goggles.
‘Good morning, Tolya. How’s business?’ I enquired.
This is my customary greeting for Tolya, like any boss around the world, loves to have an interest expressed in his company.
He put his finger and thumb together and kissed the air a few centimetres from them. To put his fingers to his lips would have been to have had the taste of oil and metal filings lingering in his mouth for the rest of the day. In a vain attempt to clean his hands, he wi
ped them on a cloth hanging from a nail on the wall then inspected them. They were no cleaner.
‘Well, you know I want to shake your hand, Shurik. But…,’ He shrugged. ‘How’re you feeling today?’ He made a fist and punched the air. ‘Ready for battle?’
‘As I feel every day,’ I replied. ‘A little older, a little wiser.’
‘So what wisdom have you learnt today? Or has it yet to come?’
‘I have had my lesson for today,’ I told him. ‘Just now, in Komarov’s shed. I discovered that spiders do not tackle wasps but deliberately cut them free from their webs to avoid a confrontation with a more powerful enemy.’
‘And these were Russian spiders?’ Tolya asked with a feigned incredulity. ‘From the country that took on the wily Afghans? And would have tangled with the Yanks if the chance had arisen?’
‘Indeed, Russian spiders,’ I confirmed.
‘Ah, yes!’ Tolya retorted, as if coming at last to his senses. ‘Of course, they are Russian spiders. Not Soviet spiders.’ He laughed aloud, throwing his head back. ‘There you are, Trofim. Proof we do live in a new world. Even the spiders have wised up.’
Trofim balanced a monkey wrench on the radiator of the car and slid his hands up and down his sides.
‘Happy birthday, Shurik,’ he greeted me.
‘What did they give you, Shurik?’ Tolya wanted to know.
‘They bought me a very old icon of St. Basil. How much it cost, I dare not think.’
‘But do you like it?’ Tolya demanded.
‘It is exquisite,’ I replied and smiled at Trofim, ‘but you should not have spent so much.’
‘What use are dollars?’ he responded, ‘if you don’t spend them?’ He picked up a ball of cotton waste and rubbed it between his palms. ‘Have some tea with us. I’m losing my patience with this old bitch.’ He slammed his hand against the side of the limousine so hard that the monkey wrench fell off the radiator to chime on the concrete floor.
Romka provided an old steel framed office stool for me to sit on and drew four mugs of tea from a samovar they keep on the go at the back of the garage. This, too, is an indication of Pavel’s influence for he has told them that American garages always provide refreshment for customers waiting whilst their cars are attended to in the workshop. Tolya leaned on the end of the bench, Trofim cleared a space and hoisted himself onto the work surface. Romka sat on the motorbike.
‘What is this car?’ I asked, pointing at the dilapidated limousine with my cup.
‘It was the official Party car in Zarechensk,’ Trofim explained. ‘When the Party office was shut, it was given to the town mayor who used it for a few months but he did not take to it.’
‘For a start,’ interrupted Tolya, ‘he is a liberal reformer and the car had connotations with which he did not wish to be associated. It was unreliable and broke down frequently, embarrassing him in front of other mayors. When the back seat broke free from its mounting and he found a condom down the back of the upholstery – that was it! He sold it to a farmer who couldn’t afford to run it. It does only five kilometres to the litre. With a tail wind.’
‘The farmer kept it in his barn,’ Trofim took up the narrative, ‘where hens nested and his dog whelped in it. He sold it to us last week.’
‘The condom, by the way, was as second-hand as the car,’ Tolya cut in again. ‘It seems the last Comrade Secretary had a busy extra-governmental life.’
‘And a deaf, dumb and blind chauffeur,’ Trofim suggested.
‘But what are you going to do with it?’ I asked. ‘It’s a wreck.’
‘We are going to restore it,’ Tolya declared with more than a hint of optimistic pride, ‘and use it as a taxi. The Myshkino Cab Company. That’s what we’ll be. Romka here is going to be the driver, on commission.’
‘Will you paint it yellow?’ I wanted to know.
‘We’ve not decided. Black is out and so is red, for obvious reasons. We were thinking silver…’ Tolya stopped. He caught up with my thinking. ‘You’re a vicious, irritating old bastard!’ he exclaimed.
I affected an air of hurt innocent and said, ‘What do you mean?’
Trofim broke out into a peal of laughter. Romka cottoned on, too.
‘This is Myshkino, not Manhattan!’ Tolya retorted but with good humour.
We sipped our tea. A swift swooped into the garage, circled over our heads and swung out into the sunlight once more. From the samovar, a thin plume of steam rose up to the beams which, for a brief moment, looked less like the supports of a barn roof and more like transverse pit props. Tolya embarked upon a comparison of the new Ford Mustang, of which he has recently received the latest sales brochure, with a BMW convertible. He favoured the American car for style, ingenuity and what he termed the fun factor, which phrase he spoke first in English with an American, Pavelian accent before translating it into Russian: Trofim preferred the German for its superior engineering and build quality. I paid little heed to their esoteric conversation and it was not until Tolya addressed me that I was jolted back to the present.
‘You’ll like this story, Shurik,’ he said. ‘I heard it in Leontiy’s bar. You know it? The one by the market in Zarechensk. They serve good coffee there and Andryukha’s little minion pushes his wares round the table. Andryukha’s walnut cake…’
‘Are you going to tell us it? At this rate, the preface will be longer than the novel,’ Trofim remarked.
‘Now that the Cold War is over,’ Tolya began, ‘there was held a joint military exercise between the Americans, the British and the Russians. On a survival course, there were an American CIA officer, a British MI5 spy and a KGB operative. The three are sitting down round a fire on the edge of the forest. CIA says, “I bet I could go into the forest, catch a rabbit, skin it and have it cooking in fifteen minutes.” “That’s a long time,’ says MI5. “I could do it in ten.” KGB looks at them and says, “five minutes for me.” So the challenge is made. CIA goes off into the trees. Fourteen minutes later he returns, pulls the rabbit inside out, discards the pelt and sets it cooking on a stick. MI5 goes off. Nine minutes later, he’s back and his rabbit’s in the pot, boiling. KGB goes off. Twenty minutes later, he hasn’t come back. CIA says to MI5, “So much for the Russian threat! These rabbits are nearly cooked. Let’s eat them.” They eat the rabbits and then, lying back, they have a little doze.’
Tolya took a swallow of his tea and I swear I heard Dmitri’s voice. Looking out of the garage door and across the road towards the river, there were some men standing down by the bridge, where the bus to Zarechensk stops. They were in a knot, talking to each other, and I should not have been the least surprised had one of them waved to me.
‘Two hours later,’ Tolya continued, ‘KGB still hasn’t come back. MI5 says, “Maybe he’s in trouble. Bears. Wolves. Vipers. I think we should go and look for him. After all, we’re all friends now.” So CIA and MI5 set off into the forest. They follow KGB’s trail. Eventually, they come to a clearing. Across the far end, KGB is standing. He has caught a fox which he has tied by its hind legs from a branch. As they watch, he beats the fox with a stick and shouts, “Come on, you bastard! Talk! Where are the rabbits?”’
Both Trofim and Romka laughed aloud at this tale which, ten years ago, would have had them rubbing shoulders with a team of benighted zeks in a mole hole or breaking stones on the Trans-Siberian railway. I also chuckled but, as I did so, I wondered where Dmitri is now.
It is twenty years since we parted, shaking hands in the rain on the steps outside the barrack hut in which we ate and slept and snored and farted and argued and occasionally fought with men who had been caught with their hands in the till, or their fingers on the trigger, or simply fallen foul of a system they thought protected them from pain, injustice and the corruption of power.
‘So, Shurik, your time’s come,’ Dmitri said.
‘I’d rather stay a while,’ I replied. ‘Go in the winter.’
‘Why?’ he questioned. ‘The snow’s gone now.’
/>
‘It’s the rain,’ I said. ‘I hate walking in the rain.’
‘Stay then. The office is dry,’ he argued, using that old euphemism of the bad, red years: wherever you worked was your office, be it a tractor factory or a collective farm. Or a mine.
‘Maybe not. I have no secretary,’ I countered. ‘What can a man do without a secretary? I have had enough of typing my own letters. I am,’ I straightened my shoulders with false pride, ‘going up in the world.’
‘How far?’ Dmitri asked.
‘About two and half kilometres,’ I said.
‘Find me a place in your new office.’
I looked into his eyes and saw, way back in his soul, a terrible sadness.
‘You will always have a place in my office,’ I replied. ‘A desk in the corner by the window, overlooking the park with a black telephone at one elbow and an in-tray at the other.’
‘Made of…?’
‘Steel?’ I offered.
‘Wood. Mahogany, polished, tanned as the skin on the breasts of a Burmese princess!’
‘Consider it done,’ I promised.
‘And a calendar?’
‘What are the pictures of?’
He thought for a moment then decided, ‘The natural wonders of the world. One picture for each month. January will be the Grand Canyon.’
He leaned forward, embracing me and kissing me on both cheeks and I kissed him in return: then he took my hand, removing his work glove so that our palms might touch.
‘Go carefully in the world, Shurik,’ he advised.
‘Good-bye, Dmitri,’ I replied. ‘You have my love.’
We did not shake each other’s hand. We just held it, like sweethearts reluctantly parting on a railway platform, the train getting up a head of steam and a porter walking down the line of carriages, slamming the open doors shut. I even thought I heard the ticket inspector calling All aboard! but it was a guard yelling at me to move my arse over to the administration building.
The Industry of Souls Page 10