Off the Beaten Tracks

by Irina Bogatyreva

  “So which are the best bands in Tyumen, then?”

  It was no great surprise when Vadim tried to persuade Squire to stay up a bit longer.

  “No way, man. You can stay up if you like, but I’m ready to hit the sack.”

  “Me too,” interjected Nikita. “Vadim, we’ve got an early start tomorrow…”

  “Yeah, OK,” said Vadim, ignoring him. “Squire, where can we get more beer round here?”

  “Well, it’s your call. Personally, I wouldn’t go wandering round the streets at this time of night. It’s pretty rough out there, what with the gangs of kids, the local hard-nuts, and all that… But if you’re determined to go, there’s a little kiosk not far from here. Turn left when you get outside, then cross the road. Leave the door open on your way out.”

  “Don’t be long,” added Nikita.

  “We’ll be back in no time!” Vadim picked up his discarded T-shirt and went into the living room. A moment later came the cheerful request, “Squire, can I borrow some socks?”

  7

  Navigating the spit-covered communal hallway, where even the cats were asleep at this hour, they emerged into the fresh air and the freedom of the night.

  It was pitch dark. There were no lights at any of the windows, unsurprisingly, but for some reason the street lamp was also out. Our young couple was swallowed up by the impenetrable darkness, so that only their voices were audible. The front door banged shut. The treetops were stirring anxiously in the wind.

  “Oh, lilac!” said Nastya. She could see in the dark, like a cat.

  This was followed by the rustling of branches. Obviously Vadim had taken her words like a call to action. You need to watch what you say to inebriated young men.

  “Oh, how romantic!” Nastya’s voice was full of sarcasm. “A boy and a girl, a moonlit night… He trespasses on the grass to bring her a stolen bouquet…”

  “Oh yeah, a moonlit night! Not a single bloody light-bulb… I nearly broke my leg just then. Here!”

  “Well, thank you, kind sir… Charmed, I’m sure!” Nastya burst out laughing.

  They continued walking. They weren’t sure which direction they were supposed to be going. In the middle of the courtyard they stumbled into a pile of tar, which was probably intended for roof repairs. At least there was something even blacker than the night!

  “Hey, have you ever found a ‘lucky’ lilac blossom? You know, one with five petals?”

  “Yeah, loads! Not in the middle of the night, though.”

  Vadim grinned.

  “I’ve never even found one, can you believe that? It used to really upset me when I was little. It was a constant source of entertainment – whenever anyone brought a big bunch in from the garden the others would look through it until they found one, then they would make a wish and eat it. And they kept finding them. They were always chewing, like cows. I never found a single one! My mum used to feel sorry for me, so she would collect ‘lucky’ flowers for me to eat… But it wasn’t the same.”

  “Ah, poor little Vadim.”

  “I’ve never seen a lucky omen. One night I was standing out on the balcony, just thinking about stuff, and suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw a star fall from the sky! I started frantically trying to think of a wish to make… But then the star landed on the grass and disintegrated in a scatter of sparks. It was a cigarette butt! Someone had thrown it from one of the floors above.”

  “You, young man, are quite the Lord Byron! However, I feel I should remind you that we haven’t come out for a stroll in the moonlight… We’re supposed to be finding a kiosk, to buy more booze.”

  They both laughed. Vadim knew exactly how to react. He should just make light of it all, feign indifference to her barbed comments – that was a weapon against which there was no defence.

  “I’ve seen loads of shooting stars since, though. Real ones. Out on the road.”

  He really has. Russia’s not like Belgium, where they have floodlights on the motorways so it’s brighter at night than it is during the day. Over here, the highway can be a pretty bleak place at night, without another living soul for miles around. At least, no lights to indicate their existence. It’s just you and the stars – an infinite celestial backdrop, untouched by artificial illumination. This is eternity, in all its immutable desolation. If you tip your head back and look up at the sky when you’re out on the road on a clear night you sometimes feel as though you’re suffocating, choking on the stars. I say no more.

  Night is completely different in the city, and not just because of the megawatts of electricity obscuring the sky. At night, when it’s fast asleep, the city is an extraordinary sight, almost absurd. It offers quite different images of eternity, desolation and solitude. After seeing the city alive during the day, swarming with a million inhabitants, it’s strange to see it so dead at night – a nocturnal wilderness of deserted avenues and empty courtyards, all bathed in the eerie glow of security lights and street lamps, each more unnatural and lifeless than the last.

  Do you want to know why it’s absurd? Have you ever walked through a deserted city courtyard at 3.00 a.m.? It makes you want to run. Not because you’re worried about being attacked, though… When everything around you is so dead, even the sight of your own shadow and the sound of your own footsteps are enough to drive you mad. It’s even worse knowing that there are people nearby. There must be… Somewhere… But all the windows are dark. So you start to run, scurrying about frantically like a tiny insect. Is it paranoia? Maybe. But still…

  “It’s my own stupid fault. I overslept and didn’t get out onto the road until lunchtime. I only made it as far as E-burg on the first day, so today – or was it yesterday? Whatever – I didn’t want to waste any time!” Nastya laughed. “I went straight through Chelyabinsk and made it to Ufa.”

  “Cool. I hope we have a day like that tomorrow!”

  “I want to get to Nizhny Novgorod tomorrow. That’s probably about as far as I can hope for… And I can always sleep in the woods if I have to. The wildlife’s pretty harmless round there.”

  “You’d probably scare it all off anyway!”

  Laughing, they stepped into the circle of light cast by a street lamp. Somehow they hadn’t noticed the gang who were now swaggering towards them.

  There are certain situations you can read immediately. Humans do have a kind of ‘sixth sense’, a way of silently detecting a subtle change in atmosphere. This sixth sense is what tells you it’s no coincidence that these thugs decided to get up from their bench and stretch their legs just as you approached… In any case, our young couple realised it straight away.

  They stumbled and hesitated, but they weren’t about to run away. Maybe it would all blow over. Maybe their ‘sixth sense’ was mistaken. Maybe…

  “Stay on my left,” hissed Vadim, through his teeth.

  Nastya didn’t move.

  The gang of thugs moved into the light and stopped, evidently challenging them to follow suit. They certainly looked the part. One of them was even wearing a flat cap, the trademark of Russian street thugs. I’m sure you don’t need me to describe their shaven heads and fat, thuggish necks.

  “Whoa mate, what’s the hurry? Where’re you from?”

  “St Petersburg.”

  The thugs had a problem processing this piece of information. They’d been expecting him to name one of the other districts in Ufa.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  The thugs thought about this.

  “Is she with you?”

  “Yes.”

  Now they would ask about his hair. Vadim knew this scenario off by heart. God, he was so sick of it… Did none of them have a brain? Or was it the herd mentality? Either way, the first thing any street gang would ask about was the long hair. Or the earring, if you happened to be wearing one.

  “What’s with the long hair, mate? Are yo
u some kind of hippy?”

  With that, the ringleader put his hand up and touched Vadim’s hair. He even rubbed it between his fingers, as though he were selecting vegetables at the market! That was the final straw.

  Now, Vadim was no superhero. He would not have been capable of the kind of intrepid exploits they showed in old Soviet films, like spitting in a Nazi face. His response was more of a spontaneous reflex. Vadim was very protective of his hair and didn’t allow anyone to touch it (except girls), so without even thinking about it he knocked the youth’s hand away. This was the trigger they’d been waiting for.

  “You f-f-f…”

  (I’m not using ellipses to replace a swear word here, by the way. Those street thugs actually talk like that. It’s a kind of reductive language, if you like. They use it in those ‘prison slang’ songs too.)

  The exclamation was accompanied by a swift and effective punch in the face.

  Sparks flew and the world began to spin. Vadim’s brain arrived at the logical conclusion that he was lying on the ground, although he couldn’t work out how he’d got there. He could just hear a ringing sound, and there was a high-speed train rushing straight towards him… He later realised that he’d just been looking up at the street lamp as Nastya tried to shake him back to life.

  After Vadim fell to the ground, the gang would probably have had a field day with their latest victim if it hadn’t been for Nastya’s resourcefulness. It would have been a waste of time to call for help – they might as well have been in a ghost town, and psychologically it was better to assume that was the case. Better not to expect any help from the local residents. So Nastya’s response was to pick up a stone from the ground and throw it through one of the ground-floor windows. She knew exactly what to do! She knew that people these days are only willing to step forward when it comes to defending their property and saving their own fat, complacent skins.

  It worked! The thugs dispersed. Retreating to their own courtyards to hide was not something they would normally consider, but seeing as the enraged owner of the window was going to come out any minute, seeing as the police were bound to turn up… They ran off, calling to one another, making plans for the rest of the night.

  Now our young couple had to make their own getaway, because the enraged owner wouldn’t be interested in their version of events. Nastya helped Vadim up, and they ran off in the opposite direction. In the centre of the courtyard, the bunch of lilac blossoms lay abandoned in the circle of light from the street lamp. There were probably some ‘lucky’ flowers among them.

  Everything was still and quiet once again. No enraged owner came rushing out. Maybe he was scared, poor bloke. Or maybe he was out. Or maybe… It sounds crazy, but maybe there was no one else in the whole city?

  The indifference of the empty avenues, buildings and alleys… The wind chasing a newspaper along the tarmac… This madness… There wasn’t a single soul anywhere, just endlessly unfolding panoramas, like something out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

  8

  Finally, there were the bottles of beer, the reason they’d come out in the first place. The shelves were full of them, all different shades of brown. The all-night kiosk smelled of smoke and the ice melting in the fridge.

  Nastya went up to the counter. The girl working there might have been younger than her, but her eyes had already lost their spark.

  “Excuse me, could you tell us where the nearest emergency clinic is, please?”

  They’d already forgotten about the beer.

  The girl looked Nastya up and down in search of obvious injuries.

  “Keep walking along the main road until you get to the second bus stop. Then cross the tram ring and follow the fence.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “Look at the state of her!” the girl thought about Nastya, amused rather than annoyed as she usually was. “Dressed like a tramp, and not a scrap of make-up on! Who goes out without make-up on these days? There must be something wrong with her…”

  She herself was done up as though she were going into battle. Effectively, she was.

  Coming out onto the kiosk steps, Nastya panicked, thinking he’d gone… But no, a shadow peeled away from the wall. Vadim was holding a paper napkin to his broken nose.

  “There’s no point!” He was still weakly protesting against the idea of the emergency clinic. “It’s just a broken nose! Feel it yourself if you like, it’s not even dislocated.”

  “Don’t be stupid. What if you’ve got concussion or something? You’re going to be out on the road tomorrow. You might die out there… in Systert or some other godforsaken hole.”

  “Oh, what delights await me!”

  He grinned, and Nastya grabbed his hand and started pulling him along behind her. Meanwhile Vadim kept up his protests.

  “OK, look, I’m not registered as an Ufa resident, am I? And I left my passport at home… I mean, at Squire’s place. My blood’s full of alcohol. And anyway, it was a fight! They’ll have to report it to the police!’

  “Oh, just be quiet!”

  There was a pause, then he laughed and said, “You’re dragging me along like a little boy!”

  “What choice do I have, if little Vadim doesn’t want to go and see the nice doctor? Oh, he can be a stubborn little chap when he wants to be. Look at him, digging his heels in and everything!” Nastya started laughing and Vadim played along, pouting and pulling a face like a toddler having a tantrum. Now they were both laughing, and the tension of the situation was diffused. Vadim didn’t put up any more resistance. It was just a shame, the way things had turned out in this damn city! He should have spent the night on the road.

  The napkin was wet through and he had blood all over his fingers. The blood had started clotting inside his nose, so he had to do a lot of sniffing and spitting to get rid of it.

  “Shit! That was bad luck, wasn’t it? Where did those bastards come from anyway?”

  “Just a street gang!” Nastya shrugged. “We should’ve stuck to the main road. You know what city courtyards are like at night… Never a good idea.” She paused. “I was attacked, you know, a few months ago, back home in Tyumen. They broke my nose too.”

  “Really? They attacked a girl?”

  “What’s the difference? Anyway, they weren’t after me, it was my bag they wanted. They came out of nowhere, punched me in the face and ran off. It was one of those drawstring ones, and I’d customised it… You should have seen it! It looked like a general’s uniform.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was covered with badges and medals. It started when I found a few vintage badges – you know, with revolutionary slogans on, stuff like that – and pinned them on. People noticed, and someone gave me a medal commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of Victory Day. It wasn’t actually that special, but I pinned it on anyway. And that’s how it started. It’s amazing how much of that old stuff people have lying around at home. They just kept bringing me more and more! My best friend Luda’s grandfather died. He was a really good bloke, you know… Anyway, she gave me some of his medals and even promised to give me his Soviet order, but… well, there’s no point now.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry you lost it… Maybe I’ll have a go at making one like that myself. But why on earth were you wandering about the courtyards on your own at night?”

  “I wasn’t on my own. That’s the whole point. That was the worst of it.”

  Nastya’s mood suddenly changed and she retreated into herself. They continued walking in silence along the empty avenue, which was flooded with toxic orange light from the street lamps. The only sound was Vadim forcefully clearing the blood from his nose. Finally they came to the tram ring, which was empty at 4.00 am, of course… The trams were all at the depot, sleeping companionably side-by-side, just like their passengers. There was a white fence on the other side of the ring. Excellent! They were nearly there. Intending to share this with Nastya, Vadim glanced at her then decided against it. “We might not appear to have anything
in common,” he thought, “but we’re in this together. A boy from St Petersburg and a girl from Siberia.”

  Tyumen! He’d never been there. Maybe he’d go there one day, maybe he’d make it that far… He tried to imagine the city – grey snow piled up along the sides of the roads in winter, minibus taxis, smoke from the factory chimneys a blurred trail in the frozen air. Rows of identical nine-floor apartment blocks, home to Nastya and her best friend Luda. And Luda’s grandfather, once a merry soldier.

  There had been hundreds, thousands of men like Luda’s grandfather – full of vigour, optimistic, ‘thoroughly decent chaps’. Who remembers now the military operations in which Luda’s grandfather was wounded and displayed his valour? He and his kind were immortalised affectionately in Soviet literature. Then he became a grandfather, proud and wise, with medals on his jacket and grandchildren on his lap. The same merry soldier. He even had a smile on his face as he lay in his coffin. It was an eerie and pitiful sight.

  Then his medals were pinned onto Nastya’s bag. She was even more of a hippy then than she was now… For example, like a lot of young people in Tyumen at the time she used to wear a swastika in her left ear. And the first badges to adorn the famous bag were also in the form of Nazi helmets, though over time they were hidden by the Soviet medals.

  You don’t think I’m criticising her, do you? It’s certainly not my place to say, “O tempora! O mores!” It’s more a case of Turgenev’s “eternal reconciliation and life without end”.

  Suddenly the emergency clinic swam out of the night – a squat breeze-block building, with its very own moon. Seriously! A flat, round lamp hung over the entrance, flickering weakly and casting as much despondency as the real moon. It was a lonely beacon in the night, attracting only big grey moths and other unpleasant nocturnal insects.

  “Looks like there’s a light on in those two windows,” said Vadim after a pause. They’d been looking at the building for a long time. “Huh! I thought there was no one there at first.”

  “I thought it looked like a morgue.”