The Good Life Elsewhere

by Vladimir Lorchenkov

  “From the collective budget, the community has decided to buy a trolley, build a track, and pay the trolley driver’s salary,” they announced in Larga.

  A month later a trolley, with a completely insane driver from Chisinau, was rolling through Larga, which was all of two miles long. The driver had been exiled to the provinces for comporting himself poorly at party meetings. There were three stops on the trolley line, and at the end they built an improvised trolley park comprising a massive barn, a booth for the dispatcher and bookkeeper, and benches for the controller and the conductor. The “bus with horns”—that’s what they called the trolley—ran strictly according to schedule. Once every half hour. The dubiousness of the situation didn’t bother anybody.

  “It is marvelous that in the villages of the Republic the people are pushing toward progress in every sphere,” they announced in Chisinau.

  Little by little the villagers got used to the trolley. In 1976, the first trolley pickpocket appeared in the village! The “asocial element” Petra Ivantsok specialized in the theft of valuables at rush hour. Since everybody knew that Petra was the only pickpocket in town, the passengers gave him a daily beating, dragging him from the trolley at rush hour. Thanks to which, Petra went to pieces, became a physical and spiritual invalid, and in 1980 he wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union requesting recognition as a “veteran of labor,” along with an honorific and a larger pension.

  Surprisingly, they granted his request. Petra received an increased pension for nearly two years before the Department of Letters at the Central Committee got smart to the situation. And when they did figure it out—in order to avoid drawing attention to their mistake—they decided to increase Petra’s pension yet again.

  Little by little, Ivantsok, the only resident of Larga whose fate had been improved by the trolley, fell into senile dementia and started telling the village teenagers all sorts of tales about his heroic past; he started believing them himself. He took over the reins from Dygalo, the village idiot who moonlighted as an agronomist with a PhD in Agricultural Sciences. Dygalo had died five years earlier; he was never able to bounce back from the injury of hearing about Ivantsok’s personal pension. So Petra gradually took Dygalo’s place in the life of the village.

  In 1980 the region became the all-Moldova champion in tobacco harvesting, surprising even itself. For this, the government of the Republic awarded the region twenty million rubles. The chairman, his hair gone grey thanks to this second blow of fateful luck, again went to the people.

  The telegram was quivering slightly in his hands like a lone, fallen leaf at twilight on the autumn plow lands along the Dniester.

  “Twenty million rubles,” said the chairman, “and nearly two million of it is earmarked for Larga …”

  If it had taken place today, the villagers would have immediately decided to spend the money on relocating themselves to Italy. But back then life was merely bad, not terrible. And so the people went back to their homes despondent. Solving the problem would be even thornier than last time. After all, they already had a trolley. What to spend the money on? And how to do it without ruffling any feathers?

  Nobody objected at the meeting when Petra Ivantsok, the village idiot who moonlighted as the former pickpocket of Larga and personal pensioner of the government of the USSR, suggested the following:

  “Hey, why don’t we build an amusement park in the village with a huge Ferris wheel?!”

  Thus, Larga acquired its second major attraction.

  In time, of course, both the trolley park and the amusement park fell into disrepair. People carried off the passenger cars from the Ferris wheels to their homes, turning them into outdoor pavilions. Old Man Tudor enterprisingly installed the horse from the children’s carousel as a weathervane on the roof of his house. Never mind that the horse was heavy and didn’t turn with the wind. The chains from the chair swing ride were snatched up by mechanics from the surrounding villages for use on their farms.

  Girls whispered into each other’s ears, giggling and turning red: “You wouldn’t believe what goes on at night at the top of the Crazy Biker ride …”

  After the Soviets lost power in Moldova, a priest was assigned to the village. Father Paisii cursed the rides as the devil’s playground and placed an ironclad ban on Orthodox Christians entering the territory of the former amusement park. He grandiosely set fire to the remains of the Ferris wheel. Seeing how the passenger cars had already been carried off, nobody missed the wheel …

  “As for the trolley park,” decided Paisii, back then still entirely content with his Elizaveta, her milky thighs showing through the slit of her chemise, “we’ll let it be, if you please. We’ll adapt the trolley for the needs of the Almighty.”

  According to Paisii’s plan, they could transport miracle-working icons across the village on the trolley and ask God now for rain, now for sun, depending on which catastrophe at any given time was preventing the peasants from gathering their imaginary harvests. Many grumbled and said that under the Soviets, there was no prayer, but a harvest there had been.

  “That’s because under the Soviets we sold our souls to the devil. In return he granted us the devil’s harvest,” the young and ambitious priest explained.

  The argument was flawless and self-assured and nobody raised an objection. The trolley bore three Cross Processions, after which it became clear to everyone that besides the devil’s harvest, the accursed Soviet powers had also provided the village with electricity aplenty. Without that, it turned out, the trolley couldn’t run.

  “Then we’ll push it,” said Paisii enthusiastically, since in any case, he wouldn’t be the one to roll up his sleeves. “The Lord will help!”

  The Cross Processions became a tradition in Larga.

  Paisii, who hated taking walks since childhood, was put out. True, nowadays he’d agree to a hundred, two hundred, a thousand Processions a year. If it would bring his wife back, he’d get a gardening job in Italy. With only a remote idea about gardening, Paisii thought it would be breezy, no-sweat work, and plus he’d have his wife and kids at his side. Where? In Italy, of course. After all, so the gossip went, it was paradise. Now, if he could just figure out how to scrape up the four thousand euros he needed. For the only valuable item in the church, the miracle-working icon of Nikolai the Passion Bearer, the priest had gotten just five hundred euros. The Chisinau pawnbrokers wouldn’t accept the church building as a deposit. The fact that it was a church wasn’t what gave them pause. Paisii knew for certain that others had pawned churches for credit towards a vacation, apartment, or their education. A few banks had even pooled their resources and started an advertising company aimed at extending credit to Moldovan men of the cloth.

  Paisii keenly recalled his humiliation as he went from pawnshop to pawnshop, and repeated to himself the argument the brokers had made when refusing him. Standing at the window, black with despair and nighttime, he whispered:

  “The church, you see, has no liquidity …”

  8

  NOT FAR FROM THE AMUSEMENT PARK, A PAIR OF STORKS rested atop the roof of a house and calmly looked each other over. Nearby sat two men: a stovemaker and the owner of the house.

  “Put your hand on the chimney” said the stovemaker.

  “It’s hot! I’ll burn myself,” said the owner reluctantly. “The smoke …”

  “Touch it!!” shouted Eremei.

  The owner cautiously brought his hand close to the chimney. Gathering his courage, he made contact. Then, laughing with surprise, he thrust his hand inside the chimney all the way to his elbow.

  “It’s cool!” he blurted out in amazement. “The smoke is completely cool!”

  “Like ice,” smiled Eremei. “Like real, cold ice. There it is. Put your hands on it, feel it. If you can touch it, it means it’s real.”

  For Eremei, the stovemaker from Alexeevca, the world was divided in two halves: the real and the invented. Alexeevca, Eremei himself (who
m he could touch with his own hands), his tools, tile stoves, his wife Lida, his daughter Evgenia, the grass in the fields, the land, the well where the sun went down in the evenings and in the morning struggled out to dry off and spin in the sky – all these belonged to the first category. In the category of invented things, Eremei, who didn’t much go for philosophy, placed what he considered to be paranormal phenomena. Things like ghosts, honest state agronomists, an Olympic victory for the Moldovan team in the upcoming games in China in 2008 and … Italy.

  “It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as Italy,” he categorically declared as he made his rounds. He’d dramatically smack his trowel against the clay, keeping rhythm with his own argument. “The whole thing was invented by international swindlers!”

  “What do you mean?” the educated folks would ask in surprise. “Italy’s right there on the map.”

  “Give me a map, I’ll draw anything you want on it,” coughed Eremei. “Of course the country exists. But it’s obvious they don’t need our workers there. It’s all just an elaborate scheme.”

  Eremei would explain himself to the gaping public who often gathered in the village to listen to the stovemaker. He was a well-respected man. “They say all sorts of things. They claim two hundred thousand Moldovans have already gone there, but tell me, has anybody here ever seen this place they call Italy?

  One of the listeners timidly spoke up. “My neighbor told me that his cousin’s son from Marculesti went to Italy. Every month he sends them two hundred euros!”

  But Eremei made a mockery of the bickering villager by suggesting the young man from Marculesti had long ago been sold for his organs. The group gasped and Eremei went about building the stove like an old hand. He loved to chat while he worked, like an ancient Russian storyteller singing a folk song.

  “It’s obvious. These swindlers, they make a heap of money selling dead bodies,” he said, lifting his trowel. “And one of the con men’s got half a conscience. So he sends some crumbs back to the boy’s parents.”

  “What do you mean, crumbs?” they said. They were trying to trip up Eremei with his own words. “We’re talking about two hundred euros!”

  “For us it’s a banquet,” Eremi laughed, “but for them, it’s crumbs.”

  The villagers became sadly silent, picturing the kind of wealth that makes two hundred euros seem like crumbs. Eremei put down his trowel and went to eat lunch. He always ate at home, but picked up his conversation when he returned as if there hadn’t been a nearly hour-long interruption.

  “Of course, I don’t think they sold two hundred thousand Moldovans’ organs in Italy,” he said, softening up after lunch like any man. “Some must have survived. I bet they’re being held in captivity and forced to work. Their captors are making millions off them … No, billions! And so they send some crumbs to the relatives.”

  “But why go that far?” asked the owner of the house where Ermolai was working. “The swindlers can exploit the Moldovans either way.”

  “This way, nobody asks too many questions,” answered the stovemaker. He’d already thought about it, and now he took a minute to bask in the effect his words were having on the villagers.

  And there really was an effect. Eremei was not only an unpredictable, witty and original orator,—the village teacher on his deathbed had called Eremei the Cicero of Alexeevca—he was also a superb stovemaker. Legends were constructed about his stoves. Everyone knew the smoke that came out of a stove made by Eremei always came out cold. This meant, he diverted all the heat from the fire inside the home. Many times his rivals tried to see exactly how the stovemaker complicatedly arranged the flue; each time they simply became confused, crying bitterly and gnashing their teeth at their own impotence. And why wouldn’t they? One stove cost nearly two hundred leu, or twenty euros. That was reason enough to consider Eremei a man of substance. Such substance, in fact, that thieves broke into his house on more than one occasion. But they never found anything and left empty-handed.

  “Where do you hide the money so well that nobody ever finds it?” the stovemaker’s wife asked him after one unsuccessful robbery attempt.

  “Look over here.” Eremei mysteriously beckoned to Lida and raised his finger. “Not a word to anybody.”

  It turned out Eremei kept all his valuables in the stove, directly underneath the flame. But he’d designed the stove so brilliantly that the place where the flame blazed was always cold. Lida, in awe of her husband’s intelligence, thanked God for sending her such a good man and went to work in the fields. Eremei counted his money one more time and laid it under the flame without burning himself. This was his second secret, which he never even told his wife: fire had no power over him, it only brushed his skin like a cat’s tongue licks the hand of a loving owner. Then the stovemaker righted himself, remembered Italy, which was the only thing people were talking about, and snorted. He heard footsteps.

  “Papa,” said his daughter, coming up behind him. “Lend me four thousand euros. I want to go work in Italy.”

  9

  AFTER THE STORIES ABOUT PLANTING TREES IN BALTI, THE shooting of homeless dogs in Soroca, and the prime minister’s press conference, it was time for a story about Italy on the local news.

  “According to information from the Italy-Moldova Institute for Cooperation and Growth, the number of Moldovan citizens working illegally in Italy could reach two hundred thousand. The chairman of the Institute, Doina Babenko, announced on Tuesday that they are undertaking measures to support Moldovans working illegally in Italy, but according to …”

  The nasal voice of the newscaster on Moldovan TV blabbed on.

  Annoyed, Eremi turned off the set and paced the room, hands stuffed in his pockets. It was a little awkward these days for Eremei to debunk the myth of Italy. His daughter, after all, was working in Bologna. It was surprising, but Zhenya had made it to Italy, called once she got there, and said she’d been set up with a job. She was slowly paying back the debt to her parents. As it turned out, Italy did exist. At least that’s what Eremei wanted to believe. Otherwise, he’d have to admit that the international mafia of human organ traffickers was sending him money after they’d sawed his daughter to pieces. Besides, Zhenya called regularly to report on what she was eating, how she was living, and to assure her parents that she wasn’t smoking and everything was great. Eremei was happy—he loved his daughter—but since her departure he’d withdrawn into himself and become gloomy. It wasn’t the separation from his daughter that was to blame.

  “So, Eremei, there’s no such thing as Italy, eh? Isn’t your daughter there now? Maybe she doesn’t exist either, ah?”

  The stovemaker was badgered by friendly heckling. In his distress, he not only lost weight, he even stopped sleeping. His work was uneven, nervous. Eremei wasn’t making mistakes, but a lot of people noticed that the smoke from his stoves had started coming out a bit warm. The stoves weren’t retaining all the heat for the houses and the people inside. Some spiteful critics even conducted an experiment. They drove to the regional center and stole a thermometer from the local medical clinic. Then they slipped the device into the chimney of a house where Eremei had built the stove after his daughter’s departure. A day later they fished out the thermometer.

  “Thirty five degrees,” announced the village’s other stovemaker, Anatol Tkachuk, grandiosely.

  The smoke from Anatol’s stoves still came out seventy degrees Fahrenheit, as hot as a June afternoon. Clients didn’t exactly flock to him. But everybody in town understood that Eremei was getting old. The master was losing his skills.

  “Listen, Eremei,” Postolika the farmer said to his friend Eremei sympathetically. “Why not just admit you were a bit off the mark when you said there’s no such thing as Italy. I mean, people aren’t animals. They’ll understand. They’ll forgive you. They might stop teasing you, too.”

  “People aren’t the problem,” admitted Eremei. “I’m the problem. You see, it’s as though everything around me is collapsi
ng. It turns out all these years I’ve been telling people tales …”

  The townsfolk became more convinced about Eremei when rumors started circulating that Zhenya, his daughter, was coming from Italy to visit her parents. It was a special event. Up until now the most contact there had been between Moldovans in Italy and their relatives back at home were telephone conversations and money transfers. Eremei painstakingly prepared for his daughter’s visit and even built a portable fireplace in her honor. True, the smoke came out—just a little—on the warm side.

  Lida, the stovemaker’s wife, exited the house on tiptoes and set off to drown herself. But Eremei knew the nearby river was a half-meter deep at its max and that his wife, a strong swimmer, could never drown in it. Too bad. “I wouldn’t mind drowning, either,” thought the stovemaker, but I haven’t got the strength.” He had reason to despair. Their daughter had arrived at the train station like a princess, all decked out and with loads of cash. But after meeting Zhenya there, her parents couldn’t rejoice over her visit. Not after she told them what she’d been doing. And to all her mother’s howling and the unspoken anger in her father’s glance, she shouted maliciously, “So what? All of our people over there are doing the same thing. At least the younger ones. And even if you don’t sell yourself openly, either way you’re going to sleep with your boss if he says he wants it. What else am I supposed to do? Go home? To where? You call this a home? You’ve never seen a real home. This isn’t a home – this is trash, a hole in the world, eternal humiliation! Moldova! Chisinau’s alright enough, but if you want to live there you’ve got to have money for an apartment, right? And where are you going to find that here?”

  She was just like her father: she spoke every harsh word with painstaking precision, the way Eremei would fit a tile onto the stove so that it was solid and plumb. And with each of his daughter’s words, his spine stood straighter and straighter, though he realized there was no escaping the shame.