Pushkin Hills (13 page)

“I’ve been a guest at the big house. The diagnosis is chronic alcoholism!”

I tilted the bottle in friendship. A glass materialized miraculously in his hand.

“Much obliged,” he said. “I trust all this was bought at the price of moral degradation?”

“Quit it,” I said. “Let’s drink instead.”

In response I heard:

“I thank you and
I accede, like Shepilov…”*

We finished the wine.

“Honey on the wounds,” asserted Markov.

“I have,” I said, “about four roubles. Beyond that, the outlook is foggy…”

“Money is not a problem!” exclaimed my drinking companion.

He jumped up and darted to his abandoned table. When he returned he was holding a crumpled black envelope for photo paper. A pile of money spilt onto the table. He winked and said:

“You can’t count diamonds in caves of stone!”

And further, with an unexpected shyness in his voice:

“It doesn’t look good with the pockets bulging…”

Markov patted his hips, in skin-tight jeans. His feet were shod in patent-leather concert slippers.

What a character, I thought.

Next thing I knew, he started sharing his problems with me:

“I make a lot… The minute I’m off a bender, I’m rolling in dough… One snapshot – and I got a rouble… One morning – and there’s three tenners in my pocket… By nightfall I’ve made a hundred… And zero financial control… What am I to do?… Drink… We’ve got ourselves the
Kursk Magnetic Anomaly* here. A day of work followed by a week of drink… For some, vodka is a celebration. For me, it’s hard reality. It’s either the drunk tank or the militia – it’s pure dissidence… Needless to say, the wife’s not happy. We need a cow, she says… Or a child… Provided you don’t drink. But for now I’m abstaining. In the sense that I still drink…”

Markov stuffed the money back in the envelope. Two or three notes fell on the floor. He was too lazy to bend down. His aristocratic behaviour reminded me of Mikhail Ivanych.

We walked up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Agdam. I reached out to pay. My companion raised his voice:

“Hands off socialist Cuba!”

And proudly threw three roubles on the bar.

A Russian drunk is a fascinating creature. Even when he has money, he still prefers poison at a rouble forty. And he won’t take the change. I myself am the same…

We returned to the window. The restaurant had filled up. Someone even started to play the accordion.

“I recognize you, Mother Russia!” exclaimed Markov, and added, lowering his voice: “I hate it… I hate these Pskov buffoons! Beg your pardon, let’s have a drink first.”

We had a drink. It was becoming noisier. The accordion was piercing the air.

My new acquaintance was yelling excitedly:

“Just look at this progressive humanity! At these dumb faces! At these shadows of forgotten ancestors!… I live here like a ray of light in the kingdom of darkness… If only the American militarists would enslave us! Maybe then we’d live like people, of the Czech variety…”

He slammed his hand on the table:

“I want freedom! I want abstractionism with dodecacophony!… Let me tell you…”

He leant over and whispered hoarsely into my ear:

“I’ll tell you like a friend… I had an idea – to get the hell out of here, and go anywhere. Even to Southern Rhodesia. As far away from our backwater as possible… But how? Our borders are bolted! From morning till night they’re under the watchful eye of
Karatsupa…* Go overseas as a sailor – but the local council won’t let me… Marry some foreign tourist? Some ancient Greek slut? And where am I going to find her? This one character said they were letting out the Jews. And I
said to my wife: ‘Vera, it’s our Cape of Good Hope…’

“My wife is from the simple folk. She scoffed at me. ‘Your mug alone demands punitive action… They barely let your type into the movies and you want to go to Israel!’

“But I had a chat with this guy. He suggested I marry a Jew for a short while. That’s much simpler. Foreign tourists are few and far between, but Jews – they do come across once in a while. There’s one at the tourist centre. Named Natella. She looks Jewish, only she’s fond of a tipple…”

Markov lit up a cigarette, first ruining a few matches. I began to feel drunk. Agdam was spreading through my blood vessels. The shouts were merging into a measured, swelling din.

My drinking companion was no drunker than before. And his madness seemed to have abated a little.

Twice we went to the bar for more wine. Once some people took our seats. But Markov made a scene and they left.

He shouted at their backs:

“Hands off Vietnam and Cambodia! The border is locked! Karatsupa never sleeps! Persons of Jewish nationality excepted!”

Our table was covered in candy wrappers. We flicked our ashes into a dirty saucer.

Markov continued:

“I used to think I’d make for Turkey in a kayak. And I even bought a map. But they’ll sink me, the scum… So that’s over. My past and thoughts, as they say… Now I’m counting more on the Jews… One time Natella and I were drinking by the river. And I said to her, ‘Let’s get married, the two of us.’ And she said, ‘You’re so savage, so scary. The black earth is raging
inside you,’ she said… In these parts, by the way, no one’s heard of black earth. But I didn’t say anything. Even squeezed her a bit. And she started screaming, ‘Let go of me!’ I guess… So I said, ‘This is how our Slavic ancestors lived…’ Anyway, it didn’t work… Maybe I should have asked her nicely? Should have said, ‘You’re a person of Jewish nationality. Help out a Russian dissident, regarding Israel…’”

Once again Markov took out his black envelope. I never got the chance to spend my four roubles…

Now we were talking, interrupting one another. I told him about my troubles. To my chagrin, I discoursed on literature.

Markov addressed the void:

“Off with your hats, gentlemen! Before you sits a genius!”

The fans chased clouds of tobacco smoke around the room. The sounds of the jukebox were drowned out by the drunken voices. Workers of the state lumber mill made a bonfire on a porcelain platter. Dogs wandered under the tables…

Everything was beginning to blur before my eyes. I managed to catch only some random bits of what Markov was saying:

“Forward to the West! Tanks moving in a diamond formation! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!”

Then some intoxicated character with an accordion approached me. Its bellows blushed pink, intimately. Tears streamed down the accordion player’s cheeks. He asked:

“Why’d they dock me six roubles? Why’d they take away my sick days?”

“Take a swig, Tarasych.” Markov pushed the bottle towards him. “Drink and don’t be upset. Six roubles is nothing…”

“Nothing?” suddenly the accordion player got angry. “People break their backs and for him it’s nothing! For six years these hands drudged away for nothing doing hard time…
Article 92, without an instrument…”*

In response, Markov trilled soulfully:

“Stop shedding tears, girl! The rains will pass…”

A second later, two lumber-mill stable hands were prying them apart. With a painful howl the accordion collided with the floor.

I wanted to stand up, but couldn’t.

Then a Duralumin stool flew out from under me. As I fell, I took down a heavy brown curtain.

I couldn’t manage to get up, even though I think Markov was taking a beating. I heard his tragic cries:

“Let me go, you beasts!
Finita la commedia!
”*

It’s not that I was thrown out of the restaurant. I crawled out on my own, sheathed in the drapery fabric. Then I hit my head on the doorpost and everything went black…

I came to in a strange room. It was already light. The clock was ticking; it had a chisel for a weight.

I was still covered by the same brown drape. On the floor nearby I discovered Markov. Evidently, he had given me his bed.

My head hurt. I felt a deep gash on my forehead.

The sour odour of a peasant home made me a little sick.

I groaned. Markov raised himself up.

“Are you alive?” he asked.

“I think so. What about you?”

“Status: heading into the storm! How much do you weigh?”

“No idea, why?”

“I barely managed to drag you here…”

The door opened and a woman with a clay pot entered.

“Vera,” shouted Markov. “Hair of the dog! I know you’ve got some. Who needs this road to Calvary? Bring it to us now! Let’s bypass this interim period of developed socialism…”

“Drink some milk,” said Vera.

I said hello with dignity. Markov sighed:

“And I had to be born in these boreal backwoods…”

Vera was a pale, tired woman with large, calloused hands. Cantankerous, like all wives of alcoholics, without exception.

A look of deep and utmost sorrow was etched on her face.

I also felt awkward because I was occupying the master bed. What’s more, my slacks were missing. But the jacket was on.

“I’m sorry to have put you out,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” said Vera. “We’re used to it.”

This was a typical village abode. The walls were flecked with reproductions from
Ogonyok
magazine.* A TV with a blurry magnifiying lens hid in the corner. A faded bluish oilcloth covered the table. A portrait of
Julius Fučík* hung above my headboard. A cat sauntered between the chairs. It moved soundlessly, like in an animated film.

“Where are my trousers?” I asked.

“Vera undressed you,” replied Markov. “Ask her.”

“I took off the trousers,” explained Vera, “but I felt awkward about the jacket.”

I felt too weak to process the meaning.

“That’s logical,” quipped Markov.

“They’re in the hall, I’ll get them.”

“Better get us a drink first!”

Markov raised his voice a little. Arrogance and self-abasement constantly alternated in him. He said:

“A Russian dissident has got to have hair of the dog, don’t you think? What would
the academic Sakharov say?”*

And the next minute:

“Vera, give me some cologne! Give me some cologne with the seal of quality.”

Vera brought me my trousers. I got dressed. Then put on my shoes, after shaking the pine needles out. With disgust I lit up a cigarette…

The heavy taste of morning blocked out the shame of yesterday.

Markov felt great. His groaning, I thought, was only for show.

I asked:

“Where’s the envelope of money?”

“Shhh… In the attic,” said Markov, and added at full volume: “Let’s go! We should not await favours from nature. To take them – that is our task.”

I said:

“Vera, I’m sorry for the way things happened. I hope we meet again… under different circumstances…”

“Where you going?” asked Vera. “Again? Do keep an eye on my fool.”

I gave her a crooked smile, so as to say that I myself don’t set a very good example…

That day we paid a call on four drinking joints. With apologies, we returned the brown curtain. We drank at the boathouse,
at the film projectionist’s booth and by the monastery fence.

Markov drained his sixth bottle and said:

“Some are of the opinion that a modest obelisk should be erected here!”

And he stood the bottle on the knoll.

We lost the envelope of money several times. We hugged it out with last night’s accordion player. Were seen by every senior worker at the tourist centre. And according to Natella, claimed to be Pushkin and
Baratynsky.*

Even Mikhail Ivanych preferred to keep away from us. Though we invited him. He did say:

“I know Valera. You knock back a few with him and find yourself sobering up at the precinct.”

Thankfully, Mitrofanov and Pototsky were away on an excursion in Boldino.

We fell asleep in someone’s hayloft in Petrovskoye. In the morning, this nightmare started over. Even the stable hands from the lumber mill recoiled from us.

What’s more, Markov was going around with a lilac lampshade on his head. I was missing a left sleeve.

Loginov came up to us by the shop and asked:

“How is it that you’re without a sleeve?”

“I was getting hot,” I said, “and threw it away.”

The keeper of the monastery mused over this and then made the sign of the cross over us both. Markov said:

“You shouldn’t have… Instead of God, we now have Lenin’s Central Committee. But there’ll come a time when these bitches have their own great terror…”

Loginov looked uncomfortable, crossed himself and rushed away.

And we continued to stagger around the Preserve.

I made it home towards the end of the week. And spent the next twenty-four hours in bed, without moving. Mikhail Ivanych offered me wine. I turned to face the wall without saying anything.