by Josh Weil
Pressing the feather against the wood, so its arc bent away from the table, he angled the blade carefully against the bottom tip of the stem. Kartashkin had just begun to cut when Yarik shoved back his chair and rose, the table creaking beneath his hands, shaking as he left it. The old man lifted away the blade, steadying the feather as Yarik strode to the saddlebags, hauled them up, back to the table, heaved them on it and, yanking their buckles loose, turned them over and shook. The stacks of rubber-banded roubles tumbled out. They mounded in the middle of the table and filled it and mounded higher until Yarik had emptied every last note from both saddlebags, and then he dropped them, buckles clattering, and pushed out his chair again and sat.
“Ten million roubles,” he said.
Kartashkin looked from the pile to Yarik. Then back down at the feather in his hand. With the tip of the knife, he began his careful cut again. Yarik stared at him, watched the old man make his cut and turn the feather and make a smaller cut from the other side, and the whole time he could feel Kartashkin’s wife standing in the room staring, too.
“Stepan,” she said.
The old kulak raised a hand to hush her. “This is the tricky part,” he said. “You squeeze the tip like this and press it flat until you hear . . .” From the quill beneath his fingers there came a quiet crack. He held the tip up, as if for Yarik to see. “Just a small slit. Just enough to guide the ink . . .”
“Styopa,” his wife said.
“ . . . into the nib.”
She took a step towards him, towards the table, and he whipped around. “Go outside,” he told her.
“Styopushka . . .”
“Get your coat on and go outside.”
“Styopushka, it’s a lot of money.”
“Go into the goddamn shed and feed the goddamn roosters and don’t come back until I call you.” He watched her until she was gone and then he put down the feather and he put down the knife and he looked at Yarik. “She’s right,” he said, “it is a lot of money. It’s probably about as much as a reasonable man could expect in reasonable times.”
“It’s more,” Yarik said.
“But let me ask you something. How long do you think a reasonable man would live like this?” He swept a hand at the room, the house. “How long, if he was sitting on land worth ten million roubles?”
“You couldn’t—”
“And at my age?”
“You couldn’t sell it until—”
“You think other sons of other kolkhozniki didn’t try?”
“Not with ten million roubles.”
“At my age!” Kartashkin said. “What in the world do you think I’ve been waiting for?”
Yarik reached down and lifted the saddlebags off the floor. He set the leather on his lap, opened a pouch, reached to the pile of money. The old man’s hand was on the back of his before he’d closed his fingers around the first stack.
“Then let me ask you something else,” Kartashkin said. “Do you think you and I are living in reasonable times?” His hand still gripping Yarik’s, the old man stood. He tugged at Yarik’s wrist. “Come,” he said, let go, patted Yarik’s knuckles once, and, in his unsteady gait, shuffled to the window.
The air in the room was so filled with smoke that, from a distance, the glass had looked fogged, but stepping beside Kartashkin, Yarik could see it was just old glass, wavery and flawed, but clear.
“Look,” Kartashkin said, as if out there existed the answer to everything the old man had asked: the brown slush of the yard; the old woman in her coat and curled hair hauling a heavy bucket of feed; the privy with its dark ditch at the back; the vast white field marred by all the scrub; the lone blue roof and plywood windows out in the distance; the church spire and the chimneys of town beyond that. And just on the other side, just a little farther, the long slit in the sky: a strip unending from one edge of all that could be seen to the other. “Half a year ago,” the old man said, “we couldn’t even see it from here. Half a year before that, it seemed a rumor.” He turned, his face close enough Yarik could smell the smoke on his breath. “How long do you think it will be before it reaches the village? How long after that before it gets here? That”—he jabbed a finger at the window, the tip pressed pale against the glass—“is what I’m waiting for. Because sooner or later that rich bastard is going to need this land. And if he needs it, he’ll find a way to buy it, or his lawyers will, or whoever he hires to get around the rules that other people can’t. I’ve set my price. And I’m sorry, Yaroslav Lvovich, but it’s twice what you have there. Twenty million roubles. Unreasonable? To a man like you, maybe. Even standing here now, saying it, it sounds unreasonable to me. But to Boris Bazarov? It’s nothing. If The She Bear wants it, he’ll pay for it.”
Yarik nodded. Then turned away from the window, went to the table, took a cigarette out of the cigar box. He struck a match.“Except,” he said, “The She Bear doesn’t want it.”
From the window Kartashkin made a noise that Yarik couldn’t tell for a cough or a laugh. “Except,” the old man said, “he told me already that he does.”
Yarik drew in, listened to the crackle from the cigarette’s tip. Breathing out the smoke, he turned to Kartashkin. “How long ago did he tell you that?”
“Why even ask?”
Back at the window, Yarik spoke as close to the old man’s face as the man had to him before. “Let me ask you something now,” he said. “How much closer has the Oranzheria come in the past few weeks?” He let the smoke leak out on his words, cloud a little between them, and when he spoke again, his breath cleared it. “And while you’re thinking about that,” he said, “try to think of any time ever before, even one day since it first appeared, that you’ve seen its expansion stop.” He held the glowing tip of the cigarette between them, shook it a little. “Why do I ask?” he said. “Why don’t you ask me how I know that Mr. Bazarov isn’t interested in your land anymore.”
Kartashkin made the phlegmy sound again, but it came out quieter, and in the quiet after, Yarik could see that something different had entered the man’s eyes. “Go ahead and finish the cigarette,” Kartashkin told him, turning back to the table, “but, please, put your money away by the time you’re done.”
Yarik turned, too, shrugged, started doing exactly that.
The old man stood at the table’s edge, watching him. He opened the cigar box and took out a cigarette and held it and didn’t light it and said, “Why should I believe you know anything about it?”
“Because I work for him.”
The phlegmy cough again. “Who doesn’t?”
“Not for the Oranzheria,” Yarik said. “For him.” He paused in filling the saddlebags, looked at Kartashkin. “Don’t act like you haven’t seen the billboards. The ads on TV.”
“We don’t get TV,” the old man told him.
“On the sides of the buses, then. Next? You’ve seen it. It’s everywhere.”
“So?” the old man said. “They paid you to be in their advertisements. Maybe they paid you ten million roubles. You still just—”
“You think they would pick just anyone to put up there? You think Mr. Bazarov wouldn’t use someone he trusted?”
“They’re just advertisements.”
“They’re me,” Yarik said. “He trusts me.”
“Well I don’t,” Kartashkin told him. “Everything is just talk.”
“Just talk?” Yarik tossed one of the stacks of bills at the old man. It hit him in the chest, and Kartashkin fumbled to get a hand on it before it fell to the floor. “Is that just talk?” Yarik asked him. “Is this . . . look at . . . Now I want you to look at something.” He reached inside his suit jacket, brought out the letter Bazarov had given him, lay it on the table next to the cash he hadn’t repacked. Sticking his cigarette in his mouth, he unfolded it and smoothed it out and stood there with his hands still on it, while the old man shuffled forward and stooped over and read it. Yarik held it so that the pages behind the letter of introduction—the contract
folded in with it—stayed pressed flat, held it just long enough that the old man could not help but make out the letterhead and the signature, the words confidence and full power of attorney and emissary and on behalf of Boris Romanovich Bazarov and when the old man was done, he folded it back up and slipped it back in his jacket pocket and took the cigarette out of his mouth. He said, “You know those men you talked about, the ones The She Bear hires to get around the rules that other people can’t? You want to know what they look like? I’ll tell you. They wear old suits and new ties and”—he flapped open his jacket just enough to show the butt of the gun jutting out of his pants’ waist—“they walk around like that.”
The cigarette was still unlit in the old man’s hand. He made to take a drag, stopped just short of his mouth. “That money”—he gestured with a small tip of his head—“you said it was more than I could ever get from your brother and from you.”
“Yes,” Yarik said.
“Combined,” the old man said.
“Yes.”
“Then where did you get it?”
Yarik stood there smoking, silent.
“Whose,” Kartashkin said, “is the rest?”
Yarik took another drag on his cigarette. Then another. Then he took the half-smoked thing out of his mouth and ground it out in the sand in the baking pan next to the feathers, and left if there, and said, “Whose do you think?”
The old kulak reached for the matches then, and for a moment held his hand over them, as if surprised to find the cigarette in its fingers, and then he simply put the unsmoked cigarette down beside the matches and left it there and said to Yarik, “I don’t understand.”
“I know,” Yarik told him. “I’ve been trying to explain it to you.”
“If it’s Mr. Bazarov’s money,” the old man said, “I need to—”
“To what?”
“To call him.”
Yarik tried to make the sound that came from him seem like something he’d meant to do instead of something his throat had done to him. “You think you can get through to him?”
“I’ll try until I can.”
“No,” Yarik said.
“You take your money and let me call and come back—”
“You want to call? I’ll call. I can get through. I’ll call if you want, but you know that if you talk to him you say good-bye to this.” He gestured at the money.
“Why?”
“Because it’s his,” Yarik said. “And I’ve told you: he doesn’t want to spend it on your land. A month ago, maybe. A month ago, you might have sold it to the Consortium. You might have gotten your twenty million roubles. If they had found a way to get around the contract.”
“You,” the old man said. “You could have bought it for them, transferred—”
“But a month?” Yarik cut him off. “A month the way the world works now?” He shrugged. “You said it yourself: we don’t live in reasonable times. Look at what’s happened the last few weeks. Even without TV, you must have seen the papers. The collapse of the glass, the strike, the trouble the Oranzheria is in. Did you hear the rumors that the Consortium could go under? Have you seen all the crops dead beneath the glass? You must have read about the panic of the other business partners. It was all over the papers: they won’t put money in. You know this. You knew it. So, why is it even a surprise to hear me tell it now? The expansion is over.” He went back to the window, pointed where the old man had pointed before. “That’s as far as it’s going to go. You want to understand why I’m here? It’s simple. Because I’m in a position to know all this before almost anyone else. Because I know that what this land was worth a month ago doesn’t matter anymore. And a month from now, when everyone else knows? It will be worth so little even the sons of the other kolkhozniki will be able to buy it. And I don’t want that, because I want it. For me. My brother. The memory of our Uncle Avya. Our father’s grave. Which is why I’m offering even more than what the land is worth right now. That, Stepan Fyedorivich, is why I’m here.”
The old man stood still as the feathers stuck in their sand, looking at their plumes. He reached out and brushed a palm slowly over the soft ends, brushed it back.
In the quiet, they could hear the old woman outside: her shouts and swears, her banging in the shed, the shrieks of the roosters muffled by the walls.
“Ever since they turned the zerkala’s light on us,” Kartashkin said, “the roosters have been crazy. At first, they crowed all day, all night. Now they don’t at all. They don’t seem to know what has happened to their world. Maybe they’re just confused, or scared, but you can’t go in there without them trying to tear you apart. You can’t get close without boots and gloves.” He stopped brushing the tips of the plumes. His hand hovered. He looked up at Yarik. “I heard all the night animals have gone to the city.”
“It’s dark there,” Yarik told him. “They turned the mirrors away.”
“I heard,” the old man said. Steadying himself against the table, he shuffled to his chair, lowered himself into it.
Yarik sat back down across from him. The money between them, the feathers. He reached out and picked up the one that Kartashkin had been working on. “Dyadya,” he said, addressing him out of respect, the way he used to years ago when he and Dima were still small and the old man wasn’t yet old, “how much do you sell these quill pens for?”
Kartashkin shrugged; his eyes were on nothing, his thoughts not there.
“It can’t be much,” Yarik said. “And I don’t know how much the birds out there are worth, but I know it can’t be enough, you can’t sell enough of them, not to live on for long.”
“Why would they do that?” the old man said. “Why would they take the zerkala light from the city and put it out here?”
“They’re desperate,” Yarik told him.
“And what about us?” the old man said, his voice loud again. “They’re desperate.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“What about us?”
“It’s all going to hell.”
“Fuck,” the old man said. He said it with such vehemence that Yarik jerked back, and Kartashkin said it again. “Fuck.”
“Dyadya—”
“Fuck that.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Fuck it’s not.”
“If it’s so bad,” Yarik said, “what’s all this?” He lifted one of the stacks of bills out of the pile that remained, let it fall back to the table with a quiet thump.
“Come back tomorrow,” the old man said.
Yarik shook his head.
“Let me think about it,” Kartashkin asked him.
“I won’t have it tomorrow.”
The old man looked at Yarik, and his eyes came back from wherever they’d been, and Yarik could see them starting to pinch down and grow hard again. “If it’s his money,” Kartashkin said, “then what are you willing to spend of yours?”
“Of mine?” Yarik said.
“Ten million roubles for the land,” the man said. “But what about the house?”
“This dump?”
“And the barns,” Kartashkin said. “And the new house.”
“It’s not even finished.”
“The Consortium would just knock it all down. But you’ll use it. How much is it worth to you?”
“I think,” Yarik said, “I’m offering enough.”
“Of his money.”
“Of my risk.”
“That’s your decision,” the old man said. “That’s the choice you’re making. It concerns you. I’m talking about my property, my houses, my barns.”
“How much,” Yarik said, “do you think they’re worth?”
“A million and a half,” the man said. He said it without even thinking, a number that had been in his head for a long while now.
And Yarik knew a little further and it would be done. He could feel the muscles in his back start to loosen with the thought, and he forced them tight again, forced his face still, thought o
f how much he could get by that afternoon—how much he had saved in his account, in his and Zinaida’s joint one, what the largest amount was that he could lose. “I can pay you almost half of that,” he told Kartashkin. From the way that the old man took that in and showed nothing in return, not even an attempt at faking indignation, not even a smirk, Yarik knew that Kartashkin was thinking the same thing he had a second ago. And as if that was enough, it was done. The old man’s eyes lost their hardness. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, even soft.
“What are you going to do,” the old kulak said, “when he finds out?”
“Like you said,” Yarik told him, “that’s my concern. You’ll have the cash. It’s right here. I can drive you into the city right now and we can go to a notary and write up the contract and you can take this home with you tonight.”
The old man looked at him. Outside, the door to the shed smacked shut. Yarik glanced behind him out the window. Mrs. Kartashkin had overturned the empty feed bucket, set it down, and he watched her sit on it and wrap her arms around herself and watch him back through the window, waiting. Behind her, closer than he had remembered, he saw them: the two gray stones showing through the matching mounds of snow. When he looked again at her husband, the old man was still staring at him.
“You know what you’re doing?” Kartashkin said. “You know we’ll be gone by tonight?”
Yarik tried to smile and felt his lips stick. He knew he should tell the old man yes, should say something to make Kartashkin believe it, maybe lift the feather in his hand, make a quip—we can even use one of your pens to sign it—but his throat was closed, and all he could do was hold the quill, hold it there between them, trying not to let it shake.