Siberian Education (45 page)

I looked at Mel: he was walking behind Gagarin. He had two pistols in his hand and his ugly face was twisted into a cruel scowl.

I grasped Grandfather Kuzya's Nagant and cocked it with my thumb. The drum turned and stopped with a loud click. I felt the trigger rise under my index finger: it was ready, taut.

In the other hand I had the Stechkin. Using the reloading technique I had been taught by Grandfather Plum I gripped it, released the safety catch with my index finger, pushed the rear sight against the edge of my belt and heard the mechanism move, pushing the fixed part forward and loading the bullet into the barrel.

As I concentrated on the four-by-four, trying to decide which bastard to shoot first, Gagarin, without any concluding speech or warning, opened fire with both his guns. Immediately – almost simultaneously – the others fired, and I realized that I was firing too.

Grave fired with his eyes closed, and very fast. He emptied the magazines of his Makarovs before anyone else and stood there motionless, still holding the two pistols raised in the direction of the car, watching how those five guys were taking all our anger as it hit them in the form of lead.

Gagarin, by contrast, fired relaxedly, calmly, letting his bullets find their own route, without aiming carefully.

Mel fired, as he always did, chaotically, trying to reproduce the effect of a burst of machinegun fire with his pistol and sending lead in all directions. As a result no one ever dared to stand in front of him during a gunfight, except Gagarin, because he had a natural trust in Mel which was like a sixth sense.

Cat fired with such dedication and concentration he didn't realize his tongue was sticking out; he was trying his best, putting everything into it.

Gigit fired well, with absolute precision, without hurrying; he would take aim carefully, fire two or three shots, pause, then calmly take aim again.

Besa fired like the gunfighters of the Wild West, holding his guns at hip level and shooting with the regularity of a clock; he didn't hit very much but he looked impressive.

I fired without thinking too much about it, adopting my usual Macedonian technique. I didn't take aim, I fired at where I knew the guys were, and watched their dying convulsions.

Suddenly one of them opened a door and started running desperately towards the warehouse, then dashed down a corrugated iron tunnel, a narrow passage through which the daylight filtered, a kind of lighted street in the darkness. He ran with such energy that we stopped, rooted to the spot.

Mel fired a few shots after him but didn't hit him. Then Gagarin went over to an Armenian boy, a teenager, who was holding a Kalashnikov in his hands, and asked him if he could borrow his rifle ‘for a second'. The boy, clearly shocked by what he had seen, passed him his Kalashnikov, and I noticed his hand was shaking.

Gagarin put the rifle to his shoulder and fired a long burst in the direction of the fugitive. The guy had already covered some thirty metres when the bullets hit him. Then Gagarin set off towards him, walking as if he were out for a stroll in the park. When he got close he fired another burst at the body lying on its back on the ground, which gave another twitch and then lay still.

Gagarin grabbed him by one foot and dragged him over to the car, putting him next to the other two bodies which had been there since the beginning of the massacre.

In the car there were four corpses disfigured by wounds. The four-by-four was riddled with holes and the air was slowly hissing out of one tyre. There was blood everywhere: splashes, pools spreading out on the ground to a radius of five metres, drips that fell from the car onto the floor, mingling with the petrol and becoming rivulets which ran towards us, under our feet.

There was total silence; none of those present said anything; everyone stood motionless, looking at what was left of those men.

We left the four-by-four and the bodies in the place where we had performed that act of justice.

Afterwards we went to old Frunzich's house. Paunch had to leave, but before going he said goodbye to us warmly and respectfully, saying we had done something that needed to be done.

Frunzich said the corpses would be disposed of by Armenians belonging to the family of the man who had been hurt in the attempt to stop the car; it would be a kind of personal satisfaction for them, and he assured us that ‘there won't be so much as a cross over those dogs'.

Frunzich wasn't his usual humorous, cheerful self. He was serious, but in a positive way, as if he wanted to show us that he supported us. He didn't talk much; he brought us some bottles of excellent Armenian cognac.

We drank in silence; I was beginning to feel a heavy, overwhelming weariness.

Gagarin took out the bag with the money and told Frunzich he deserved the reward. Frunzich got up from the table, disappeared into another room and came back clutching a wad of money – five thousand dollars. He put it in the bag with the rest of the money, saying:

‘I can't give any more because I'm a humble old man.

Please, Gagarin, take it all to Aunt Anfisa and ask her to forgive us all; we're sinners, wicked people.'

We finished the third bottle in silence, and by the time we left Caucasus it was already dark; I almost fell asleep in the car. A lot of things were spinning round in my head, a mixture of memories and unpleasant sensations, as if I had left behind something unfinished, or poorly executed. It was a sad moment for me; I felt no satisfaction. I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened to Ksyusha. It was impossible to feel at peace.

Some time later I discussed this with Grandfather Kuzya.

‘It was right to punish them for what they did,' I said, ‘but by punishing them we haven't helped Ksyusha. What still tortures me is her pain, against which all our justice has been useless.'

He listened to me attentively, then smiled at me and said I should retrace the path of my grandfather's elder brother, go and live on my own in the woods, in the midst of nature; because I was too human to live among men.

I handed the Nagant back to him, but he wouldn't take it; he gave it to me.

A month or so later we heard that Pavel had been killed, along with three of his men who had participated in the plot against the criminal community. Their executioners had tied them to trees in the park, opposite Tiraspol police station, and hammered nails into their heads.

It was rumoured that the plot had in fact been hatched by the police, in an attempt to weaken the criminal community of our town.

They finally succeeded in doing this five years later, when they set many young criminals against the old ones and sparked off a bloody war. That was the beginning of the end of our community, which no longer exists as it did at the time of this story.

Grandfather Kuzya died of old age three years later, and his death – in addition to other events – caused an upheaval in the Siberian community. Many criminals of the old faith, unhappy with the military and police regime that had been established in our country, left Transnistria and returned to Siberia, or emigrated to far-off lands.

My father went to live in Greece, where he spent five years in prison. He still lives in Athens today.

Old Plum is still alive and still lives in his bar; he has gone deaf, so he shouts when he talks. His granddaughter, the one who made the best apple cakes in town and who was a good friend of mine, married a nice guy who sells accessories for personal computers, and together they went to live in Volgograd.

Uncle Fedya was strongly opposed to the advent of the government regime in Transnistria: he put up a stubborn resistance, trying as hard as he could to persuade the criminals to fight, but eventually he gave up and went to live in Siberia, in a small village on the River Lena, where he continues to perform his role as a Saint.

Barbos, meanwhile, has become a very important person in the criminal community: he made a deal with the police and now holds enormous power in our town. In fact, Black Seed is the only caste that is protected by the police. They are hated by everyone else, but no one can do anything about it. They are in charge now; they control all the prisons and all criminal activities.

In the Georgian community there has been a bloody war with the Armenians, which brought the young to power. They are still at war with them now. Mino was killed in the course of the fighting. He arrived with a gunshot wound at the hospital where his wife had just given birth to a son. He never got to see his baby.

Grandfather Frunzich decided to leave Bender, also because of the war between the Georgians and the Armenians. Like many old men of both those communities, he went to live in his homeland, where now he does some small-scale alcohol trafficking.

Stepan still runs his street kiosk, but no longer sells weapons; the criminals of Black Seed have stopped him, so he now makes his living by selling cigarettes and the occasional batch of counterfeit vodka. His daughter has finished her studies and found a job in an architects' studio in Moscow. Nixon helps Stepan as loyally as ever; he still hates communists and blacks but has finally made friends with Mel, although to achieve this Mel had to sacrifice his Game Boy.

Mel says, though, that Nixon has grown a lot more white hairs lately and is ageing too quickly.

Gagarin only lived for three years after this story: he was killed in St Petersburg because he had got involved in business with some people who enjoyed the protection of the police and the former KGB. We didn't hear about his death until later, when a girlfriend of Gagarin's contacted his parents to tell them he was buried in the cemetery of Ligovo.

Cat moved to southern Russia, where for a while he belonged to the gang of a Siberian criminal who robbed HGVs en route from the Asiatic countries. Then he met a girl from Rostov, a land of Cossacks, and went to live with her in the countryside by the River Don. Officially he is no longer involved in criminal activities; he has three children, two boys and a girl, and goes hunting and does carpentry jobs with his wife's father and brothers. Mel has been to visit him several times, and on those occasions Cat unsuccessfully tried to persuade Mel to marry his wife's younger sister.

Grave was arrested in Moscow during the attempted robbery of an armoured van, and sentenced to sixteen years in prison. In jail he killed two people, so was sentenced to life and transferred to the special prison of Ust-llimsk, where he still is. It's impossible to contact him because of the strict regime at the prison.

Gigit and Besa robbed a number of banks together, then the anti-robbery squad managed to track them down and kept them under surveillance for a while. At that point they fell into an elaborate trap. Acting on information provided by an informer who was being manipulated by the police, Gigit and Besa robbed a certain bank: that same evening, however, they were killed in their room in the Inturist Hotel of the town of Tver by the police, who walked off with the loot. Mel went on his own to bring their bodies home, and buried them in the old cemetery of Bender; hardly any of us went to the funeral – only Mel and a few relatives.

Mel still lives in Transnistria, close to his parents. We chat on the phone now and then. He no longer carries out any criminal activities, because he has no one to work with and can't manage on his own. For a while he worked as a bodyguard for an Authority from the new generation, but he tired of that. After doing a course, he tried teaching aikido to a group of children, but that came to nothing because he always turned up for lessons drunk. Now he doesn't do anything; he spends all his time playing on his PlayStation, goes out with the occasional girl and now and then helps someone collect their debts.

Ksyusha never got over it. From the day of the rape she didn't communicate with anyone; she was always silent, with downcast eyes, and hardly ever went out. Sometimes I managed to coax her out and took her for boat trips on the river, but it was like lugging a sack around with you. Previously she had loved going out in a boat: she would constantly change position, lie down in the bows and trail her hands in the water, lark about, get tangled up in the fishing nets, play with the fish we had just caught, talk to them and give them names.

After the rape she was motionless, limp; the most she would do was stretch out a finger to touch the water. Then she would leave it there and sit watching her hand immersed in the water, until I picked her up in my arms to lift her on to the bank.

For a while I thought she would gradually recover, but she got worse and worse, until she stopped eating. Aunt Anfisa was always crying; she tried taking her to different hospitals, to various specialists, but they all said the same thing: this behaviour was due to her old mental disturbance, and there was nothing to be done about it. At the worst moments Aunt Anfisa gave her vitamin injections and put her on a drip feed to keep her alive.

The day I left the country, Ksyusha was sitting on the bench outside the front door of her house. She was holding her game, the woollen flower, which in Siberia is used as a decorative detail on pullovers.

Six years after this sad story, one night I received a phone call from Mel: Ksyusha had died. ‘She hadn't moved for a long time,' he told me. ‘She let herself die, little by little.' After her death, Aunt Anfisa went to live in the house of a neighbour, who needed someone to help his wife with their children.

I left my country; I've been through many different experiences and stories, and I've tried to do what I thought was right with my life, but I'm still unsure about many things that make this world go round. Above all, the more I go on, the more convinced I am that justice as a concept is wrong – at least human justice.

Two weeks after we had handed out our own kind of justice, a stranger arrived at our house; he said he was a friend of Paunch's. He explained to me that Paunch had gone away somewhere and would not be coming back, but before leaving he had asked him to give me something. He handed me a little parcel; I took it without opening it, and out of politeness I asked him in and introduced my grandfather to him.