Y.T.

by Alexei Nikitin

  ‘Now remember … No, you’d better write it down. Reinettes include the Baumann, Canadian, Cassel, Champagne, English, Kursk golden …’

  ‘He’s reciting them in alphabetical order,’ Kurochkin whispered into my ear. ‘He must have memorized them his first year in college and won’t skip a single letter.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘He’s counting them off on his fingers behind his back. So that he won’t forget.’

  ‘Landsberg, Orleans—that’s your red saffron—paper—same as Champagne—Pisguda, sery—or grey—and …’ Here the gardener made a fist ‘and the Simirenko.’

  Then, behind his back, he stuck out an index finger and began brooding. Something was wrong.

  ‘And the Simirenko,’ he repeated, ‘is before you.’

  Politely Mishka Reingarten reminded the gardener that he had forgotten about the Bergamot. Mishka said, ‘The Bergamot Reinette was invented by Michurin who grafted the bud of an Antonovka seedling to a pear. It’s medium in size, rounded and has a long storage life.’

  ‘I give him a C,’ pronounced Kurochkin, sentencing the gardener mercilessly.

  ‘Correct,’ said the gardener. ‘The Bergamot. In all there are twelve varieties of Reinette.’ Then, for some reason, he made a victory sign above his head. ‘How did you know that?’ he asked Mishka.

  ‘Research,’ said Mishka firmly.

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked Kurochkin an hour later. Mishka smirked craftily. Mishka often smirked craftily. He was working on a GTE—Global Theory of Everything. Einstein’s theory of relativity fitted within the GTE as a special case. To stop the other students on the course and the residents of the dormitory from disturbing him Mishka worked on his GTE at night. And, so that he would not disturb them, he worked in a cupboard. He would put on a hooded anorak, grab a fat all-purpose notebook with dividers and a reading lamp that he secured to his neck and would spend hours at a stretch in his cupboard. He slept during the day, and he didn’t go to classes at all.

  ‘Have you ever opened up The Great Soviet Encyclopedia?’ Mishka asked Kurochkin.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘At the letter K?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Kurochkin didn’t get it.

  ‘Have you never even looked up your own last name?’

  ‘I don’t know—maybe. Kurochkins are as common as muck.’

  ‘Maybe so. But Reingartens are few and far between. So I was flipping through the encyclopedia looking for other Reingartens—’

  ‘Misha,’ Kurochkin said politely, ‘I’m talking about apples.’

  Mishka sighed heavily. ‘Use your head, Kurochkin. “Reingarten” and “Reinette” are on the same page of the encyclopaedia. Comprenez-vous?’

  ‘Oui,’ said Kurochkin.

  Kanyuka and Korostishevski had been assigned to the Antonovs. I saw them being lectured by another mustachioed gardener about Antonovkas. He also kept his hands behind his back and carefully counted on his fingers. What he was counting I don’t know. Natasha Belokrinitskaya ended up with the Antonovkas. Kurochkin and I acted like nothing had happened.

  Greater Apple was a two-party village. Antonovs picked Antonovkas—which they moistened and sent to the confectionery factory in Zhytomyr—and they ate apple- flavored jelly and pastilles. They were proud that their apple was the people’s choice. The Antonovs worked the orchard in three brigades called ‘Antonov the Aviation Builder,’ ‘Maksim Antonovich the Democrat,’ and ‘Antonov-Ovseenko the Unlawfully Repressed.’ The Antonovs always nominated their own candidate for chairman and intrigued in every conceivable way against the Simirenkovs. This included filing complaints against the Simirenkovs with the district and regional committees of the Party. The Antonovs thought the student brigade might call itself ‘Fyodor Antonov the Artist,’ but our ladies reacted with unexpected alacrity, shooting down the artist and giving their brigade the highly original name of ‘Antonovka.’ Touched, the Antonovs appointed Kanyuka as brigadier.

  But the Simirenkovs were also serious. Over the past forty years they had given the Antonovs just as good as they got and would offer no quarter in future either. They, too, always had their own candidate for chairman and their own people in the district and the region. Simirenko Reinettes from Greater Apple were sold all over the Soviet Union—from Murmansk in the north all the way to Nakhodka on the Sea of Japan. There was a cock-and-bull story going around Greater Apple that before Khrushchev opted for corn, he had been ready to plant Simirenkos the length and breadth of the country—apparently he had loved them since childhood. But then the Antonovs had sent a courier to Moscow to tell Nikita Sergeyevich that certainly the Simirenko is a good apple, but it can’t withstand mange. They recommended the Antonovka. It was the same old story—the Antonovka was the people’s choice. Nikita Sergeyevich could not have cared less—ever since Lysenko’s day he’d had his fill of Antonovs—so he dashed off a few lines of invective verse to the gardeners and flew to America. But, as history tells us, he came back a changed man and decided to plant corn. Evidently it was all the same to him what the country grew. And there had been the Americans with their corn. So much for the people’s apple and Lysenko.

  The Simirenkovs also worked in three brigades: ‘Lev Simirenko’ (the vigilant instructors from the regional committee forbade ‘Levok Platonovych’), ‘Platon Simirenko’ (publisher of the 1860 edition of Taras Shevchenko’s The Bard) and ‘Vladimir Simirenko the Repressed’ (the son of Levok Platonovych, first director of the Institute of Pomology). They were ready to find a fourth Simirenko and a fifth for our brigade, but we were planning to make do with the humble name of Reinette. The Simirenkovs were aggrieved by our lack of discrimination—it scarcely mattered to us which of their precious Reinettes we chose. In order to please them without losing face, we compromised and called ourselves ‘Reinette—S.’ The S was a capital letter, never ever to be written lower-case s, so that, God willing, it wouldn’t be confused with the sery variety … Kurochkin headed up the brigade, and its general management fell to Associate Professor Nedremailo.

  At long last assigned to brigades, the brigades given names and schedules drawn up for kitchen duties and visits to the bath house, we were launched into battle against the harvest of this rose-family fruit tree … or that is what ought to have happened, but they were in no hurry to let us loose on the apples. Now it was time for theory. After all, how can you pick apples without knowing how to lay a garden, graft and regraft, properly keep cuttings in winter and shape the crown of a fruit tree? Drawings of seedlings crowded the blackboard along with examples of the right and wrong way to plant and how to prepare the garden for winter. Quotations from Columella on yellowing cardboard signs were stuck to the classroom walls.

  The time passed. They fed us, let us bathe once a week and showed us a film every other day. But they wouldn’t let us at the apples. The rains passed, and it was the middle of September, a warm and golden time of year. I regarded the treetops and rooftops of Greater Apple with longing, unable to comprehend what the problem was.

  Not that I was itching to get into the orchard and fill wooden crates with apples. But there ought to be a reason for everything. Here I couldn’t see it.

  As it turned out, there was a reason. In Greater Apple Antonovkas were harvested in late August and Simirenkos in early October. They needed students in August and in October. Two applications went out to the district. The district replied that they would send students only once, either in August or October. Take your pick. But it was impossible for Greater Apple to pick one or the other—the interests of the Antonovs were blocked mercilessly by the Simirenkovs, and any proposal made by the Simirenkovs was taken by the Antonovs as a personal slight. Yet Greater Apple couldn’t refuse the students. If they refused them once, next time they wouldn’t be offered at all. Which is how we ended up there in September. So as not to upset the Antonovs nor wound the Simirenkovs. But in September there was no work for us in the orchard.

  When I heard this st
ory in all its marvelous simplicity I grasped why the village didn’t have a small canning facility of its own, and why—at the loss of time, money, and face—the apples were still being shipped to Zhytomyr the same way as forty years before.

  It doesn’t matter where I learned this, and I can’t remember anyway. On the other hand, I distinctly remember how one day in class, languishing from boredom and inactivity, Kurochkin sent Korostishevski a message via pneumatic tube.

  Dearest Prince Korostishevski of Zhytomyr and Volodar-Volyn, Magistrate of People’s Pomology

  It has come to our attention that even now the Principality of Korostishev has not mastered the daubing of branches with garden pitch or oil-based paint after pruning. It has also come to our attention that even now you have not yet been trained in the summer topping of trees. We, Princes Kurozhski, Belozhski and Krasnozhski, are prepared, at absolutely no cost to you, to distribute our new technologies throughout your backward principality. In so far as you clean your guns with bricks to this day, we shall entrust the training of your gardeners to a battalion of Kurozhski sharpshooters. For bricks, please contact our manufacturer, Kur & Co. Home Building Supplies.

  Korostishevski read the note and vanished. A reply came in the evening. Not from Korostishevski but Kanyuka.

  The Order of Teutonic Orchard Lovers wishes to know more about the new garden-trimming techniques in widespread use in the Kurozh Principality. The Order’s delegation of 900 knights and 5,000 armored infantry are packing their suitcases. We propose a rendezvous and exchange of knowledge and experience on the banks of the Antonovka River. Please accept the chivalrous respects of the Grand Master of the Order KNK.

  PS—Prince Korostishevski sends a brotherly kick up the ass and is detailing 800 horsemen and seven siege towers to the conference.

  ‘You’re an aggressor,’ I said to Kurochkin once I had read Kanyuka’s letter. ‘So how are you going to reply?’

  ‘What’s to stop me saying I’ll meet them with tactical nuclear weapons?’

  ‘And how is the Kurozh Principality going to get hold of nuclear weapons?’

  ‘How are their knights going to get hold of suitcases?’

  ‘They’re having their little joke.’

  ‘Well, so am I.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not the same thing.’

  Kurochkin shrugged. ‘Well, I like it.’

  ‘I’d better write them myself or you’ll spoil it all.’

  And I wrote:

  The Zaporozhian Brothers, along with their allies the Tartars, Bulgars, Magyars and Khazars—countless in their numbers for no one has ever counted them—propose to meet Princes Korostishevski and Kurozhski and the Grand Order of Teutonic Garden Lovers for a friendly discussion of the urgent issues of pedigreed gardening. Potatoes, herring and tea to be furnished by your Zaporozhian hosts. Do not bother showing your face without horilka and mead.

  At your service

  Khan of the Zaporozhian Encampment, Davidov

  That evening we drew up the Greater Apple Accord and divvied up everything that could be divvied up. Korostishevski claimed Western Europe; Kanyuka took Asia; Kurochkin, Russia; and I fancied the rather barbarous title Khan of the Encampment of Zaporozhye. Then we concluded several further agreements. We applied a common algorithm to determine army size, population growth and technological development. Later on I discovered that the game of Civilization is very similar. But how could we have been playing Civilization in Greater Apple in 1983? We were just playing a game. There was nothing else to do. You can’t just drink vodka all the time. It gets boring.

  There were four of us, which made voting awkward. We kept coming to an impasse, two against two. We called in Reingarten for a fifth. Not so much for the game as for an uneven vote. Mishka took Mongolia, named Abakan his capital, dubbed himself Lama Undur Gegen and issued a decree that all of Mongolia should plunge itself into a state of nirvana.

  ‘Tell me, Alex,’ he would begin, gripping my wrist in a show of urgency, ‘how did you ever come up with such a strange game in the first place? Where did it all come from? Where did you find all these emperors, khans, caliphates? You’re Soviet students. You’re at university in the capital. Who gave you the idea? Go ahead and tell me everything you know. Don’t be afraid. You know you can be straight with me. We’re not going to hurt you.’

  What did he want me to say? ‘Where did we get the idea? Someone planted it, Citizen Boss. Your secret agent and informer of many years’ standing, Associate Professor Nedremailo.’ Was that it? And what about the rest of them?

  ‘Do you remember The Black Book and Shwambraniya? That’s where we got the idea. Lev Kassil …’

  ‘Of course,’ nodded Sinevusov. ‘So you’ve said.’

  I said this to him every day. No less than five times a day.

  We were leaving Greater Apple—faces well fed, in fine health and with horticultural theory tucked under our belts—but we hadn’t picked a single fruit. September was drawing to a close, and the rains were beginning. And the denizens of Greater Apple were making ready for the advance on the Simirenkos.

  A dull sugary syrup; a cloudy, cloying swill; a sweet dross like that bottled and sold by my current employer—that’s what my memory now dredges up. As different from what really happened as a glass of brown cola named for an apple is different from the apple itself—from the firm, fragrant, fresh apple, its yellow skin shot through with red. This Greater Apple tale harbored masses of nuances, inconsequential subtleties only just perceptible and all but indescribable. It was chock full of details that were insignificant but no less vivid for that. Such as the cottages we stayed in. We didn’t stay in a school or together in a dormitory where we would have been supervised but scattered around the village. Antonovs with Antonovs, Simirenkovs with Simirenkovs. Kurochkin and I got a big room and an old man in a green velvet tunic as our host. I think his name was Petro. He had a wife and children long grown-up whom he regarded with such contempt that they just tried to ignore him. Which wasn’t easy. Petro loafed around the village for days on end in a pair of ossified trousers, a Tyrolean hat so soiled it shone and the green velvet tunic with a pipe in the breast pocket. In the evening we played him at Preference for kopecks while drinking something vile and guffawing at his tall stories. His distant pre-Apple past crept repeatedly into his views and observations. Although his past was his own business. We only listened to the old man and didn’t try to catch him out. Why ruin a good story? A little later, after the Greater Apple Accord had been signed, the countries parceled out and the game under way, Korostishevski and Kanyuka started dropping by. They were Antonovs. Petro didn’t like Antonovs. And he took a dislike to Korostishevski and Kanyuka. Kanyuka interfered in his yarns—clarifying, correcting, asking questions big and small. Just to show what was obvious. The thoroughly embittered Petro managed to sit them down for a game of Preference and stripped them of their shirts—Korostishevski lost seven roubles, and the impudent Kanyuka lost nearly fifteen, all he had. Petro cheated, that was clear, but how he did it we couldn’t figure out. Of all of his children only his youngest daughter didn’t sneer and turn away when he came into the house. She spent the evenings with him in our room, listening to his fables and silently watching Mishka Reingarten. She watched Mishka, and Mishka, like the rest of us, watched Natasha Belokrinitskaya. Was I really supposed to tell Sinevusov about Natasha? How much a trifling, fleeting morning conversation with her meant to each of us, and her attention, and her indifference? Surely without Natasha there never would have been a game. Rather, the game would have ended in Greater Apple. There, that’s enough about Greater Apple, or I’ll never finish the story.

  1984

  ‘So when did you figure out they were playing along?’

  ‘Almost immediately. We’d explained the rules—’

  ‘And they got interested?’

  ‘Sure. What else were they going to do? Interrogate us? Bang on for two months about the same thing? They understood perfect
ly well without our help. I mean, really, was someone suddenly going to blurt out that he got the rules to the game from a cousin who’d moved to Boston five years ago? Just as an example.’

  ‘No one could have said that.’

  ‘I said it was just an example. That would have given them something to root around in. But as it was … Well, I suppose they could have manufactured a trail leading to the Mossad and given us mind-altering drugs so we’d have told them any old crap … only they didn’t want to.’

  They let us go at the end of May. Already the lilacs were in bloom and the chestnuts had nearly finished flowering. It was a lush Kiev summer. Kurochkin and I sat on Castle Hill, the oldest of the hills overlooking the Dnieper. In the authoritative opinion of the academic Peter Tolochko, this is where it had all begun—Olga, Vladimir, Yaroslav, Yuri Dolgoruki, Muscovy and the Tsardom of Muscovy, Russia and the Soviet Union—although the cautious Tolochko did not look as far ahead as the present day. He contented himself with Vladimir and Yaroslav.

  We were sitting in the high grass of Castle Hill. The sky above us, not yet leached of color by the summer heat, was like a weightless sail full of wind; while down below bulldozers were excavating the ancient potters’ and tanners’ district of Gonchari-Kozhumyaki, turning entire streets into heaps of broken brick. Some of the brick and debris was carted away, the rest simply mashed into the boggy, shaky soil of the historical terrain, adding yet another cultural layer. Whatever the culture, there was the layer. But at the time we weren’t up to Gonchari-Kozhumyaki. We’d been set free exactly the way we had been arrested—suddenly and unexpectedly. It was all we could talk about or think about. What had happened and what would happen next.

  ‘So, then, Alexander …’ Sinevusov had begun the evening before, his forehead dry and smooth. The Bakin air conditioner drove a powerful stream of cold air into Sinevusov’s office. ‘Don’t you think you’ve outstayed your welcome?’