Kostich was one of the Authorities involved in the trial, and was trying to understand why Hook had behaved like that.
‘What’s this boy like? You know him well, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Uncle, he’s a good friend of mine, we’ve been through all kinds of scrapes together. He’s always behaved very well to me and the others – like a brother.’ I was trying to save his face at least before one of the Authorities, hoping that Uncle Kostich would then influence the others. But I couldn’t go too far and give my word; besides, my word as a minor didn’t count for much.
‘Do you know why he behaved dishonestly towards good people?’
Kostich had asked me a question which we call ‘the one that tickles’ – that is, a direct question that you can’t not answer, even if you have nothing to do with it. I decided to express my opinion, irrespective of what had happened:
‘Hook’s an honest person; three years ago he got stabbed three times in the fight against the people of Parkan, because he covered Mel and Gagarin with his body. Mel was still a child – he could have been killed. Sometimes it’s hard to talk to him because he’s a bit of a loner, but he’s good-hearted and has never shown disrespect to anyone. I don’t know what happened with the Georgians: Hook was on his own, there was nobody with him. Maybe that’s partly why he felt betrayed. Three strangers – and guys from Caucasus, at that – attack you almost in front of your own house, in the heart of your own district… and none of your friends is there to help you stand up to them.’
I had told that story deliberately, about Hook’s sacrifice in defence of Mel, because I knew that these things count far more than many others. I hoped Kostich thought so too; after all, he was still a simple man and a terrible troublemaker.
‘Do you think he behaved rightly? Wouldn’t it have been better to settle the matter in words?’
This question was a trap laid specially for me.
‘I think it just happened like that. You know better than I do, Uncle, that every time is different. Until it happens to you, you can’t know how you’ll react.’
‘If he was right, why didn’t he want to appear before the others, to give his side of the story? He must think he’s in the wrong, he can’t be sure he behaved honestly…’
‘I think he was just scared of being attacked a second time. The first time outside his house, with knives, the second through the justice of the Authorities. He lost faith in Authority, he felt betrayed: they granted the Georgians’ request even though they knew he’d been knifed like that, three against one, and in his own district.’
At last I’d succeeded in saying what I thought.
Kostich looked at me for a moment expressionlessly, then smiled at me:
‘Thank goodness there are still some young delinquents in our old town… Remember this always, Kolima: it’s wrong to want to become an Authority, you’ll become one if you deserve it, if you were born for it.’
*
The question of Hook was settled three days later. The Authorities decided that the Georgians, by their request, had offended the honour of justice, and they proclaimed them ‘stinking goats’, an expression of extreme contempt in the criminal community. Those three quickly disappeared from Transnistria, but before leaving they threw a hand grenade into Hook’s house, while he was having supper with his old mother. Luckily the grenade came from a batch that was intended for use in military exercises: it had a red circle drawn on it with ink and there was no explosive charge, so it was about as dangerous as a brick. The Georgians didn’t know that; they’d bought it thinking it worked.
Although nobody had been killed, the people of our district had taken it as a grave insult to the community. And one evening Grandfather Kuzya said to me:
‘Watch the news; you might see something interesting.’
Among the latest headlines was a report from Moscow: seven men with criminal records, and of Georgian nationality, had been found murdered in the home of one of them – brutally shot while they were having their evening meal. The pictures showed an overturned table, furniture riddled with holes, bodies gashed with wounds. On the lampshade, a hand-painted Siberian hunting belt, and hanging from the belt the fake hand grenade. The journalist commented:
‘… a brutal massacre, no doubt a revenge attack by Siberian criminals.’
I remember that that evening, before going to bed, I took my hunting belt out of the cupboard, looked at it for a long time and thought, ‘How wonderful it is to be Siberian.’
After the conversation with Uncle Kostich I woke Mel up with a couple of slaps on the cheek. We thanked Aunt Katya and went on our way. She, as always, came out onto the steps outside the restaurant and waved to us till we disappeared round the corner.
Mel started pestering me; he was desperate to know what I’d talked about with Uncle Kostich. The idea of having to summarize the whole content of our conversation was almost unbearable, but when I looked at his innocent expression I couldn’t say no.
So I started to tell him the story, and when I got to the part where Uncle Kostich had asked me about Hook, he stopped and stood as stiff as a lamppost:
‘And you said nothing, didn’t you?’
He was angry, and this was a bad sign, because when Mel got angry we often ended up fighting, and since he was four times bigger than me I always came off worst. I only beat him once in my whole life, and we were only six years old at the time: I hit him with a stick, giving him a nasty gash on the head, taking advantage of the fact that he’d got his arms and legs trapped in a fishing net.
Now Mel was standing there, stock still on the road with a scowling face and fists clenched. I looked at him for a long time, but just couldn’t guess what might be going through his mind.
‘What do you mean, nothing? I said what I thought…’ Before I could finish the sentence he’d thrown me down on the snow and was pummelling me, shouting that I was a traitor.
While he was hitting me, I slipped my right hand into the inside pocket of my jacket, where I kept a knuckleduster. I put my fingers right through the holes, then suddenly pulled out my hand and punched him hard on the head. I was a bit sorry to hit him right in the area where he already had so many aches and pains, but it was the only way of stopping him. Sure enough he released his grip and sat down beside me, on the snow.
I lay there panting, unable to get up, watching him closely. He was touching his head where I’d hit him and with a disgusted grimace he kept kicking me lightly with his foot, more out of scorn than with the intention of hurting me.
When I got my breath back I propped myself up on my elbows:
‘What the hell got into you? Were you trying to kill me? What did I say?’
‘You talked about Hook, and now there’ll be trouble. He saved my life, he’s our brother. Why did you squeal to Uncle Kostich?’
At those words I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, I couldn’t believe it. I got up, brushed the snow off my jacket and trousers and, before walking on, turned my back on him. I wanted him to understand the lesson properly.
‘I praised Hook, you idiot – I defended him,’ I said. ‘And God willing, Uncle Kostich will help us to get him out of trouble.’
With that I set off, already knowing what would happen. For well over an hour we would walk like a theatre company: me in front, looking like Jesus just descended from the cross, with head held high and a gaze full of promises which loses itself cinematically in the horizon, and Mel behind, with shoulders drooping, all humble, with the expression of someone who’s just committed a shameful crime, forced to lurch like the hunchback of Notre-Dame and repeat the same words over and over again in a whimpering, piteous voice, like a monotonous prayer:
‘Come on, Kolima, don’t be angry. We had a misunderstanding. These things happen, don’t they?’
‘Bloody hell,’ I thought, ‘bloody hell!’
And so we left the Centre and the last row of old threestorey houses. We now had to walk across to the other side of the par
k, where there stood a hideous and depressing building, a palace which had been erected two centuries earlier as a lodge for the tsarina of Russia on her journeys into the borderlands. I know nothing about architecture, but even I could see that the palace was an ill-assorted jumble of styles: a bit of Middle Ages and a bit of Italian Renaissance, clumsily imitated by Russians. It was coarse, its ornamentation was completely out of character, and it was covered with mould. This ghastly place, which I thought more suitable for Satanic feasts and human sacrifices, was in fact used as a hospital for people suffering from tuberculosis.
In Bender the hospital was known as morilka, which in the old Indic language means something that suffocates you. The doctors who worked there were chiefly military medics employed by the penitentiary system – prison doctors, in other words. They came from all over the USSR. They would move to Bender for a few years with their families and then go away; their place would immediately be taken by others, who in turn, before leaving would suggest new changes – trivial and pointless revolutions. Those poor patients had grown accustomed to being constantly moved from one floor or wing to another. They were forced to see their lives drawing to an end in the midst of absolute chaos.
The hospital was of the ‘closed’ type – that is, it was guarded, like a normal prison, because many of the patients were ex-convicts. It was surrounded by barbed wire and had bars on the windows.
Smoking was forbidden in the building, but the nurses secretly brought in cigarettes and sold them to inveterate smokers at three times the normal cost.
Among the patients there were many who were only feigning illness: Authorities of the criminal world who by exploiting their connections had managed to have false medical certificates made out for them which declared them to be ‘terminal’. So they stayed in a comfortable hospital instead of a cold, damp, stinking prison. Whenever they wanted they had prostitutes brought in from outside; they organized parties with their friends and even meetings of Authorities at a national level. Anything was permitted and covered up, provided you paid for it.
The person who guaranteed the Authorities a happy stay in hospital was a woman, a fat nurse of Russian nationality and of a perennially cheerful disposition: Aunt Marusya. She seemed healthier than Our Lord: she had red cheeks and spoke in a loud and extremely powerful voice. She was very popular with the criminals, because there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them.
The hospital was divided into three non-communicating blocks. The first and most pleasant was exposed to the sun: it had big windows and a warm swimming-pool; it was the block for the terminally ill, where every patient had his own clean, warm little room and received constant attention from the staff. This was where the Authorities stayed: they pretended to be moribund but were really as healthy and strong as could be; they spent their days playing cards, watching American films on video, screwing the young nurses and receiving visits from their friends, who supplied them with all they needed for an agreeable life full of delights.
Grandfather Kuzya was critical of those people; he called them urody, which means ‘freaks’: he used to say they were a disgrace to the modern criminal world, and we had the culture that came from America and Europe to thank for the fact that people like them existed.
The second block was intended for the chronically ill. They slept six to a room; no television, no fridge, only the canteen and a bed. Lights out at nine o’clock in the evening, wake-up call at eight in the morning. They couldn’t leave their room without the permission of the authorized staff – not even to go to the toilet. In case of need, outside the prescribed hours they could use an old mobile latrine which was emptied every evening. The food was reasonable and was delivered three times a day. This was the block where the genuinely sick were kept – criminals and non-criminals, and also many homeless people and vagabonds. The medical treatment was the same for everybody: pills and the occasional injection, inhalations of steam twice a week. The wards were cleaned by the nurses with a powerful disinfectant, creolin, the same one as was used for cleaning stables: it had such a strong smell that if you breathed it in for more than half an hour you got a terrible headache. In this block even the food smelled of creolin.
The third block was for patients suffering from tuberculosis in the acute phase, those who were infectious. The block was entirely in the shade, facing the trees of the park, with small windows which were always misted over; it was so damp that the water dripped from the ceiling. There were three floors, with fifty rooms to a floor and about thirty people to a room. For sleeping there were wooden bunks like those of the prisons, small mattresses, sheets that were changed once a month and rough blankets made of synthetic wool. Not everyone had a pillow. In these over-crowded rooms people were constantly dying. It was disgusting in there. Many couldn’t even get to the toilet on their own, and since nobody helped them they did everything over themselves. What’s more, many of them spat blood when they coughed; they spat it continually, straight on the floor. They had no television, radio or any other form of entertainment. They received no treatment, because it was deemed to be pointless. And they were given little or nothing to eat, on the grounds that since they were going to die, food would have been wasted on them.
The nurses’ market, of course, didn’t reach the patients of the third block, so they had invented an ingenious system for getting hold of cigarettes. They used young boys, people like us, in the street. The patients would throw out of the windows a heavy bolt with a double fishing line tied to it. When the bolt landed over the wall, the boys would hook a little bag containing the cigarettes onto the thread, and the patients would fix on another bag containing the money. By pulling the thread you propelled the two little bags, which thus began their journeys in opposite directions – the money towards the boys and the cigarettes towards the patients.
The boys sold the cigarettes more or less at market price, but they made a profit anyway because the cigarettes were stolen and hadn’t cost them anything.
The patients were always hungry for cigarettes, always. The hospital administration, in an attempt to stop this kind of trade, had spread a story to scare the street boys, giving them to believe that they might fall ill and die if they touched the patients’ money. But the boys, as always, had found a solution: they quickly ran the flame of a cigarette lighter around the banknotes to ‘kill’ the mortal bacterium. And besides, the idea of doing something forbidden and dangerous attracted them even more.
The hospital guards were under orders to intervene. Many turned a blind eye, but some bastards took pleasure in thwarting the exchange at the very last minute: they waited for the moment when the patient stretched out his hand to take the packet and – snip! – they cut the string. The cigarettes fell to the ground, accompanied by the despairing cries of the patient. The guards had a good laugh: they were scum that deserved to be slaughtered like pigs, in my opinion.
By now Mel and I had crossed the park. Mel continued to apologize to me, and I continued to ignore him and walk on as if I were alone.
Suddenly, as we were skirting the wall of the block, a bolt fell between my feet. I stopped and picked it up: it had the fishing line tied round it. I looked up: leaning out of a window on the third floor was a middle-aged man with a long beard and unkempt hair. He was staring at me with wide-open eyes, making the gesture of smoking, as if he held a cigarette between his fingers.
I made a sign to him that I would see to it at once. I turned towards Mel, who hadn’t even realized why I’d stopped, and asked him to give me all the cigarettes he had.
Mel eyed me suspiciously, but I said to him disgustedly:
‘Oh come on! These people haven’t got anything to smoke. You’ll be able to buy yourself another packet in a minute.’
‘But I haven’t got any money on me!’
I felt a terrible anger rising within me, but anger didn’t get you anywhere with Mel, so I calmed myself down and told him:
‘If you give me your cigarettes, I’ll forgive
you and I won’t tell the others.’
Without a word, Mel took two packets of Temp – the Soviet Marlboro – out of his pocket.
I pointed to the area of his jacket where he kept his cigarette lighter.
‘But you gave it to me, don’t you remember?’ he said, trying to save at least that much, but even as he spoke, he was already putting his hand into his inside pocket to get it.
‘I stole it from a kiosk at Tiraspol. I’ll steal you another one – a better one, with a naked woman on it…’
‘Oh, all right, all right…’ The ploy of the naked woman had worked, and Mel thought he had made a great bargain. ‘But remember, Kolima, it’s got to have a naked woman on it, you’ve promised!’
‘I always keep my promises,’ I told him, taking the lighter from his large but gullible hand.
One of the packets had already been opened and a couple of cigarettes were missing. I slipped the lighter into it and then wound the string all round the bundle, tying it up with a bow like a gift. Finally I added the only thing I had on me, my clean cotton handkerchief, slipping it in between the two packets. Then I started pulling the string. When my bundle reached the window, the man’s hand stretched out through the bars and the shouts of joy carried right down to us.
I was left with the patients’ little bag in my hands. I opened it: inside was a banknote, torn, dirty and wet. One rouble. Next to it, a scrap of paper with a message: ‘Sorry, we can’t afford any more.’
I didn’t even touch the rouble; I closed the little bag again and moved the two strings, to alert the patients. The man at the window pulled the string towards him, took back his rouble and shouted to me:
Siberian Education Page 16