“I’ve driven across Siberia,” said the driver, breaking the silence. His voice sounded muffled. “One night it was really, really dark. Pitch black. Then suddenly I saw something…” He flashed his headlights for emphasis. “Something lying in the middle of the road. I thought it was a sack that had fallen off a lorry, so I slammed on the brakes and swerved… At least there was no one else on the road. I just missed it, thank God. It was a man’s body! Someone must have hit him, then just driven off and left him there. It can be pretty wild in that part of the world. So I just started the engine and drove off.”
This was followed by another silence. Nastya gave a bitter laugh. That was a pretty depressing story. A pretty depressing attitude, too. But hey, that’s life. Memento mori…
They continued their journey along the nocturnal highway of the Urals, breaking the silence only rarely to make the occasional remark, but always aware of one another’s presence in the dark cabin.
The kilometre markers – a constant reminder that they were on a federal highway – floated out of the darkness, reflecting the headlights. It was strange to see these flashes of glowing blue light emerge from the night, like a series of spectral apparitions. Each one seemed to approach slowly, then in a flash it was gone, taking its number with it. Four hundred and twenty-three… Four hundred and twenty-four…
4
The days are long in July, and the evening sky feels enormous. It’s all that exists. It’s easy to ignore the city sprawled out beneath it, strung with chains of barely perceptible street lamps. But the sky… It keeps changing. First it’s a curious peach colour, then it glows red and then… it goes out altogether, and the precise outlines of the buildings form a stark contrast against the background of the recently extinguished sky. Charcoal on metal.
People hurry home from work, calling in at the shops before storming the buses. Windows light up, some more invitingly than others.
Turning awkwardly, the trolleybus scatters sparks over the roof of a car. I wonder whether they’ll leave scorch marks.
Squire was sitting in the middle of his room on the broken and slightly singed sofa, mending his jeans. Actually he wasn’t mending them so much as ‘restoring’ them by going over the drawings and signatures that had been scrawled all over them a long time ago in red and black marker pens. A very long time ago, judging by their sorry state.
The apartment itself merits a detailed description, even if you’ve been in one like it before. It’s a studio apartment sublet from the legal tenant, and it hasn’t had any work done on it since… Well, it’s probably best not to think about that. The wallpaper is torn and faded and has witnessed a great deal over the years. There’s hardly any furniture, just a few items left there by the owners to be ‘run into the ground’ – an ancient chest of drawers, a couple of shelves (used more for CDs and cassettes than for books), the aforementioned sofa… No TV set. Such a luxury would be completely out of place here.
As is often the case in such apartments, the kitchen is not for the faint-hearted. Well, it’s hardly surprising when you’ve got a gas cylinder and a gas stove competing against one another in a confined space, year after year, and the resulting soot and greasy sediment and methane deposits are cleaned up only rarely and with great reluctance. Wheezing and panting, the decrepit old fridge adds to the atmosphere of filth and neglect.
It might sound like some kind of squalid dump unfit for human habitation, but it’s just a typical apartment and it suits Squire down to the ground. Not to mention his numerous friends, all the overnight guests, the passing hitchhikers from all over Russia… Actually, there’s one of them here right now.
Our friend Vadim from St Petersburg came out of the bathroom. He was naked from the waist up, and he was drying his long hair carefully with a towel. Long hair isn’t really compatible with hitchhiking. You can tie it back to stop it getting too dirty, but even so… You can’t wait to wash it whenever you get the opportunity.
“I’ve washed my socks and hung them in there on the line. Is that alright?”
“Yeah, no problem. They’ll be dry by tomorrow.”
“Are you redoing the colour?” Vadim nodded at the jeans that Squire was working on. “Have you just washed them?”
“Yeah, right – they’d fall apart if I washed them! I haven’t washed them for two years.”
“You’re kidding. How come?”
“Well, I don’t wear them much any more. When I do I try and look after them. So, like, I never wear them out when it’s raining, only when the weather’s good. And I wear underpants now. When I was younger, seventeen or so, I used to like going commando. But now, I’m an old man!”
They laughed. Vadim had never met Squire before (this was his first time in Ufa), and they had the whole evening ahead of them to fill with conversations and the mutual exchange of stories. It started predictably enough, with Vadim looking through Squire’s music collection. The ensuing exchange (“What have you got?”, “I haven’t heard this album before”, and so on) is unlikely to be of much interest to us, so let’s leave it there and resume the narrative at the moment the doorbell rang.
“Oh, that’s probably Nikita,” Vadim exclaimed happily.
“Is that the guy you’re travelling with?”
“Yeah. He’s always slower than me… I was worried he wouldn’t make it to Ufa tonight!”
“It could be anyone, you know…” Squire went to open the door. “It’s half nine, still early…”
From the stilted tone of Squire’s voice in the hallway, it sounded as though ‘anyone’ was an unexpected and unwelcome guest. Vadim was instantly on his guard. In theory, anything could happen here – normal rules didn’t apply, because a squat wasn’t like a home or even a real apartment. Everything has its price, including a free night’s accommodation. If you’re going to risk your life on the road, you might as well risk your life by dossing down in strange places. Vadim had spent the night with a bunch of drug addicts once. Well, they weren’t really drug addicts, just pot-heads, but they’d stayed up all night partying and he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Vadim wasn’t really worried now, though. He knew he could stand up for himself.
A police officer entered the room. A regular police officer, and evidently a fairly junior one too. Unlike many others of his age and generation Vadim had no automatic antipathy for the forces of law and order, but he did take an instant dislike to this particular individual. He was short, with badly pockmarked skin, and his grubby, ill-fitting jacket gave him a slovenly look. But what Vadim found most offensive was the fact that the police officer hadn’t removed his shoes. Of course, they probably weren’t supposed to – after all, they had to be prepared for anything. But still, he and Squire had bare feet!
“Right then, Mikhail… yes? Renting the room from a Mrs Hassanova… yes? Living in Ufa temporarily as a student, originally from Kumertau…”
“From Sibai. Please, take a seat.”
Vadim decided that he must be a divisional inspector.
“So, Mikhail… I was here in April, wasn’t I? Did I not tell you then that the rent… the renting… the rental arrangements of this apartment are incorrectly formulated?”
“You did. But you need to talk to Mrs Hassanova about that.”
“Fine… But what about these complaints from the other tenants?”
“What complaints?”
“Same as last time! Noise, disturbances, non-stop partying… Dodgy types turning up at all hours of the night. I’ve had four complaints already this summer!”
The inspector stared at Vadim. “He probably thinks I’m going to panic and make a run for it, or try and climb out of the window or something,” thought Vadim. He tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t help smirking. The inspector took exception to his smirk.
“Can I see your documents, young man?”
“No problem.” Vadim bent over his rucksack then turned to Squire. “The traffic cops here are as bad as ours. I’ve already had my passpor
t checked twice.”
“So you’re not from round here, then?”
“No.”
“St Petersburg!” declared the divisional inspector. “Are you staying for a while?”
“Just passing through.”
“Ah, I see. Another freeloader, sponging off other people… There’s something wrong with you lot. You’re all as bad as one another!”
Vadim shrugged. He wasn’t about to argue. The inspector carried on inspecting his passport. St Petersburg passports were quite a novelty! Eventually he put it down with a little sigh. He had no axe to grind with this visitor. The student, on the other hand…
With a triumphant air about him, the divisional inspector produced some forms from his zip-up document wallet. He straightened the crumpled corner of one of them.
“Alright, let’s draw up this report. I’ve had four complaints this summer. Gross infringement of the norms of communal living, committed by an individual living in violation…”
The inspector was having trouble finding the right words. He paused, then appeared to lose his train of thought.
“I’m living in violation?”
“You do not have the correct paperwork relating to your tenancy of this apartment. So we’re going to draw up a report in Mrs Hassanova’s name. We’re going to have to draw up a report in your name too, unless…”
The inspector paused, pen in hand. Squire chuckled, stood up and shuffled into the kitchen. It took Vadim a while to figure out what was going on. He didn’t get it even when his host returned carrying a large can of beer, dark and heavy.
The divisional inspector looked from the beer to the report form, to the beer and back to the report form. He wasn’t weighing up his social responsibilities, though. Oh, no! It was just that he’d already started filling out the form. Eventually he capitulated, declaring, “Damn, I wrote the wrong date!” He screwed the paper up into a ball and threw it into the corner, as though he lived there. Social responsibilities, indeed.
Before leaving (with the beer under his arm) he seemed to cheer up a bit. He even attempted a few friendly remarks, although they came across as rather patronising.
“So you’re from St Petersburg, are you?” he asked. Then he smiled, although neither of the others had said anything. He almost seemed to be talking to the passport, which was lying where he’d left it on the sofa. “So what’s going on up there?”
“Nothing special,” Vadim answered with a shrug. “Same as always.”
“Mmm, I went to St Petersburg once, on a school trip… Or Leningrad, as it was back then. Nice place! Yes, I remember it well… The Hermitage, the Aurora…” His face suddenly changed, becoming sad and pensive. After a pause he added, “You’re still young… You can travel… Ekh!”
At the door, he reverted to his stern official look.
“Sort the paperwork out properly with Mrs Hassanova!”
“I will.”
Vadim expected Squire to be angry. He can’t have been happy about giving away his beer like that! He felt a bit guilty, too. Although the situation with the inspector wasn’t directly his fault, it was because of others like him… So Vadim was quite surprised when Squire came back into the room and burst out laughing.
“What a leech! That’s the third time he’s been round here. Last time I got off with a bottle of vodka, and now… You saw what he was like, didn’t you? Looking around to see what he could get his grubby paws on. Typical Tatar!”
“I thought everyone here was Bashkir.”
“Yeah, right. As soon as drivers find out I’m from here they always ask, ‘So, are you a Bashkir?’ There aren’t many proper Bashkirs here, you know. It’s mostly Tatars. Anyway, who can tell the difference?”
Squire went into the kitchen. Should he put the kettle on? Where was it, anyway?
“Well, that bastard has left us without any booze! I’ll have to nip out to the kiosk. It’s only a couple of blocks away. Have you got any money?”
“Yeah, of course, but… Well, not much. And I hadn’t really planned on spending any of it in Ufa.”
“I don’t need much! I know the girl who works there. She sells me out-of-date beer for ten roubles a litre. Better than dying of thirst, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, of course! Great…”
“Excellent. I’ll be able to buy my student record book back too!”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s had it for six months. I left it with her as credit for something, I can’t remember what… Ha, what am I saying? It must have been beer!”
They both laughed.
“So what’s so important that you have to get to E-burg for?” Squire grumbled half-jokingly. “Stay here for a bit! We can go out, have a few drinks… It’ll be a laugh.”
“I can’t, sorry!” Vadim laughed. “We’ve got loads of online friends there, and they’ve lined up a whole programme of events for us. I might even meet a girl there…”
As he pulled his customised jeans on, Squire started complaining that he couldn’t wear them in the winter, because dirty jeans are no good in cold weather. Why was that? When they were both dressed and putting their trainers on, there was another ring at the door.
“That’ll be Nikita. About time!”
“Let’s see…” Vadim heard Squire turn the key, then he called from the hallway, “Wrong again! This time it’s a beautiful stranger!”
“Are you Squire? Hi, I’m Nastya from Tyumen. Remember? We exchanged emails earlier this week…”
“Oh, yeah. Come in.”
Once she was in the apartment Nastya dropped her heavy rucksack to the floor with a thud. Finally! She’d made it to Ufa before nightfall. That in itself was a minor victory, and everyone knows that they lead to major ones.
She had brought with her the smell of the road, or rather, the rank smell of the cabins inhabited by Russian lorry drivers.
5
Nikita Marchenko was twenty years old. When he was ten, half his lifetime ago, he wrote the following entry in his diary: “Today I went shopping with mum and dad. We bought wellies made in 1991.”
Yes, Nikita was a bit odd. He was also a straight-A student and came from a family of St Petersburg intellectuals with an illustrious scientific pedigree. Grandfather Marchenko, a physicist and member of the Academy of Sciences, was still mentioned in school textbooks. He had died in the late 1980s, and all that Nikita could vaguely remember was the prickly feel of his beard. His father was also a famous physicist – not as famous as his grandfather, but a professor and Head of the Department of Physics at St Petersburg University, as well as director of the university’s scientific projects. The mantle of academia had long since been exchanged for the respectable suit of a state functionary. And so what if it had? He had a good salary, status, an office with a secretary, and even a black Volga to take him to work in the mornings.
In July the Volga would overheat in the sun (being black, of course – it was physics at work!) A mini-hell on wheels! The sun would beat down mercilessly on the roof, the bonnet and the windows, reflecting off the surfaces like a scuffed and faded version of itself. Professor Marchenko would overheat too, in his official suit, but he could not dress otherwise.
Nikita’s mother worked at the same university, although she was only a senior lecturer in philology. She was renowned for her short temper and her long hair, which she wore in a plait. Nikita had never thought of his family as a happy one. It was a long story, but basically since childhood he had been accustomed to living in an atmosphere of… unpleasantness. This wasn’t helped by the fact that his father’s first wife lived in the same block as them. There was nothing they could do about it – the apartments were owned by the university, and they were all colleagues. He went back to her once and lived a few floors below them for about six weeks, about the same time that Nikita’s mother had to go into hospital. If only this first wife had never existed! Even if she hadn’t, things still wouldn’t have been right. Every morning the black Volga would dr
op them off at St Petersburg University and they hurried to their respective floors, desperate to escape from one another. It goes without saying that Nikita was a student at the very same institution.
This atmosphere of oppressive formality, the home library, the glances exchanged over dinner, was what Nikita Marchenko, at the age of twenty, was running away from at any available opportunity. He didn’t care where he went, he just had to get away. He ran to the highway and beyond, across the vast expanses of his native land.
He was currently jolting along in the cabin of a loaded MAZ truck, nearly two thousand kilometres from his home town of St Petersburg. They were already in Bashkiria, as he had realised when they passed the town of Tuimazy and the village of Serafimovsky. The landscape was increasingly rugged, and quite beautiful. They were driving alongside the enormous Lake Kandry-Kul – in some places overgrown with reeds, in others an impressive sight to behold – and the water seemed to be lapping the edge of the road. It was a warm, sunny evening and there were rows of cars lining the lake, while their passengers enjoyed a swim. How Nikita envied them! After all day on the road he was hot and sweaty and covered in dust… But he couldn’t risk losing this ride. If Vadim had been here, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it – it was just the sort of thing he would do. Nikita peered at the bathers. Was Vadim there? He couldn’t see him.
There were some wind turbines on one of the hills, obviously imported. They were brand new, gleaming white and graceful. Symbols of austerity and power. There was something surreal about the sight of the turbines slowly turning against the backdrop of the sky as evening fell…. It was like a modern version of all those old paintings of Dutch windmills. New Holland… Come to think of it, there was a district by that name in his home city.
The truck was struggling up the hill. Nikita suspected that it might be quicker, and less stressful, if he were to walk. The truck was fully loaded with various food products, stewed meat or something. The driver had told him, but he’d forgotten.
Off the Beaten Tracks Page 3