Voroshilovgrad (19 page)

Concluding his speech, Ernst tipped the canister right over.

In the evening, he led me out to the gate. He could hardly stand up, but he had a sly twinkle in his eye. He clearly realized that his whole performance with the wine and the tank had hooked
me, not to mention his little digression about emptiness—a grain of interest had worked its way into my heart, and now it was only a matter of time before it would ripen and he would reap his harvest. Ernst patted me on the back and shoved me off the compound. I took a look around. The road leading out to the highway was drowning in twilight and darkness had swallowed up the stars hanging over the gate. Just as I was getting used to the dark, a harsh light struck me right in the face; I shielded my eyes with my hand. The black Jeep was there, parked off to the side of the road. I headed toward it. The wine sloshing around in my stomach gave me a sense of carefree anticipation, like when you take your seat on a Ferris wheel—after all, what's the worst that could happen? Even if you get sick at the top, nobody will give you a hard time, because it's an amusement park—and if throwing up on a Ferris wheel isn't amusing, then what is? So I walked up to the Jeep, opened the rear door, and hopped in, uninvited. Nikolaich, sprawled out on the wide backseat, was taken aback by how willingly I'd climbed in. Still, he more or less managed to compose himself, stretching his face into a delighted smile.

“Herman!” he began in his most polite tone of voice.

But I didn't let Nikolaich finish, since I was already giving him a big bear hug, outwardly demonstrating how great it was that they'd found me here. The wine was sloshing around in my head now.

Nikolaich was completely bewildered. Maybe he had pictured today's meeting differently. Maybe he had rehearsed some tough talk—but my gregariousness had thrown him for a loop.

“We've been looking for you,” he said finally. “Well, shall we?” he added, pushing me ever so slightly away.

“Let's go,” I said lightheartedly.

“Doors!” Nick yelled back at me from the driver's seat.

“Go fuck yourself,” I replied just as lightheartedly.

Silence. Nikolaich curled up into a ball, Nick started breathing heavily, and I smiled generously, trying to convey just how delighted I was to see them.

“Nick!” Nikolaich exploded.

Nick got out of the car, walked around to my side, and slammed the door without saying a word. He got back behind the wheel and we headed out. We pulled onto the highway, turning toward the city. That was a good sign—it meant they weren't planning on burying me in the cornfield by the airport.

“How are things?” Nikolaich began.

“Excellent,” I answered. “We beat the gas guys yesterday.”

“Really?” He frowned. “When are you heading home?”

“Not sure,” I said. “I'd like to stick around a bit longer.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. I've got some paperwork to take care of.”

“Really?” Nikolaich was trying to ape my good-natured tone. “Herman, do you really need all that hassle? Why not just go on home?”

“Nikolaich, were you bullied as a kid?”

“Now why would you think that?” Nikolaich asked with a hint of anxiety.

“Well, your build . . . you don't exactly look like you've done a lot of fighting, you know what I mean? What size shoe do you wear?”

“Nine,” Nikolaich answered apprehensively. “Nobody bullied
me,” he added. “I could always get them to cooperate.”

“I got beat up a few times,” I admitted, “by this bunch of guys. I mean, I also beat some guys up myself. But the thing is—I have no hard feelings about it all. I don't hold any grudges. Because when you're duking it out with a guy, you take a few punches, that's just how it is, right? There's no reason to hold a grudge. You catch my drift?”

“Yeah,” Nikolaich said. “So, you don't want to cooperate with us?”

“Nope.”

The Jeep pulled up onto the railroad crossing. The tracks were shimmering in the moonlight.

“Nick!” Nikolaich called sharply.

Nick slammed on the brakes and turned off the engine. We were stopped right in the middle of the tracks. A railroad man wearing an orange jacket hopped down out of his booth and ran over to us. Nick stuck his head out the window and said something, which was apparently enough to make him slink right back to it.

“Herman,” Nikolaich said coldly, evidently trying to recall the threatening speech he had prepared. “You know, I'm a businessman, so I'm used to dealing with all kinds of clients. But I just can't stand people who . . .”

The lights near the booth flickered, indicating that a train was coming. The metal barriers dropped, shutting the Jeep in on both sides. Nick let out a gasp. Nikolaich tensed up too, but he tried to keep his composure and continued:

“. . . who don't want to find common ground. Do you see what I mean, Herman?”

“Huh?”

“You don't see what I'm trying to say?”

“Not exactly.”

“I'm trying to explain . . .”

“Nikolaich,” Nick interrupted.

“The thing is . . .” Nikolaich continued, trying to ignore him.

“Nikolaich,” Nick said more assertively—I could hear the growing alarm in his voice.

“Nick, go fuck yourself,” Nikolaich snapped, irritated at losing his momentum. He turned toward me again, trying to pick up where he'd left off. “It's just . . . What I'd like to say is . . .”

“Sorry, but could you give me a sec?” I asked.

I hadn't been feeling too hot for the last few minutes—now the wine was rushing upward through my body like natural gas shooting up from the depths of the black Ukrainian earth. I'd been trying to block it out and listen to Nikolaich, but the sensation was getting worse by the minute.

“What?” Nikolaich asked, going for a steely tone again but still failing to pull it off.

“Give me a sec,” I said, opening the door and leaning outside.

I threw up, instantly. Then I was gasping for air. It was over, but I decided to wait a bit longer, leaning out the door, just in case.

Nick was cursing me up and down, while Nikolaich was looking tensely out the window—the Moscow train could pop out of the twilight any second now. As he stared, Nikolaich seemed to be going back over some phrases he had rehearsed especially for this conversation. When I finally caught my breath, I flopped back on the leather seat, utterly exhausted, and closed the door.

“So, Herman,” Nikolaich said, starting his speech once again, albeit a bit faster than before. “I do business—”

“Give me a sec!” I yelled again, opening up the door frantically and leaning out.

“Motherfucker!” Nick cursed desperately, while Nikolaich curled up like a hedgehog.

Soon I flopped back onto the seat again, gasping for air and favoring Nikolaich with a whiff of wild grape. To our left, a train rolled out of the fog. It was still a few hundred meters away and, from afar, its joyous light was flashing in the evening air.

“I'm fuckin' out of here!” Nick yelled, starting up the engine and putting the pedal to the metal. The Jeep jumped forward, miraculously circumventing the barrier before flying down the asphalt.

Nick stopped the car and turned around:

“Nikolaich,” he barked, “get rid of this fuckin' faggot! Kick him the fuck out of the car!”

“I can get out myself,” I said and stepped into the air. But before taking my leave I leaned in toward Nikolaich. “I don't think this is going to work out. This isn't the way to do business. Good-bye.”

I closed the door, leaving nothing but rich grape fragrance behind me.

7

Even though one look at me must have made it clear what I'd been up to, even though you could see the treachery of homemade wine glistening in my eyes, even though my clothes and
hair still had a wild grapevine scent, Kocha didn't say a single word to me. He just paced around timidly, like a cat in someone else's house, taking in the new smells. He brewed tea and fended off the wasps that circled my head like seagulls hovering over a sunken tanker. He was talking the whole time, more to himself than to me, telling stories about his wife. These stories continued to haunt him, and they haunted me, even though I was hearing them for the nth time.

“Women, Herman, fuckin' women, at the end of the day it's always their fault,” he said, with his usual audio feedback.

“What do women have to do with it?” I asked, but Kocha simply shrugged disaffectedly, drinking his oil-black tea.

“I see exactly what's going on here,” he added. “Herman, buddy, you're a mess and it's all because of them.”

I shook a few pesky wasps out of my hair and grabbed hold of them, but they flew out of my rather anemic fist as Kocha went on and on, soothing away my headache.

“Did you know her?” he asked. “My wife, I mean.”

“Yeah, I knew her—she was dark-skinned and a lot of fun, yeah?” “Yep, that was her.” Kocha's hoarse voice seemed cheerier. “She was five years younger than me. But I would a never thought she was younger than me. She was seventeen when we met . . . but damn, she knew her way around in the sack . . .”

“Where'd you meet?”

“At the athletic fields,” Kocha said after thinking a bit, “in the summer. She moved to the city to study to become a doctor. I met her for the first time by the medical college. They always have
the same skin color—I mean women from down south. They don't really tan, you know?”

“I didn't realize she was from down south.”

“She was from Georgia. She had these long, long legs . . . And she had black hair back then too.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” I said.

“And when she was studying at the medical college she would always wear that snow-white coat . . . Tell me, Herman, do women doctors turn you on?”

“Nah, I'm afraid of doctors.”

“Well, they sure turn me on. One time I was getting a check-up at the health center, and . . . well, I was so turned on I could hardly stand it. But look, I wanted to tell you about Tamara. Buddy, I'm going to tell you the whole story.”

But I don't think he actually told me that much. It was more that I started remembering things as he talked, or when I thought back to his story later on. I'm always genuinely surprised by how much a typical person's memory can store, and yet how difficult it can be to find anything worthwhile in there. How does a memory really form? What did Kocha actually tell me? Something about her clothes, yeah, something about her clothes. Long hair, dark skinned but not tanned, and her clothes. Not tanned—what did he mean by that? And then I saw her: she had this black dress—nobody else in the city wore that kind of dress. When you saw her, your heart skipped a beat—that's what happened to all of us guys from the crappy apartment blocks on the edge of town. Her dress was so black that her skin looked pale by comparison, even when she was
wearing her snow-white coat. But how could we know anything about her tan or lack thereof? Kocha had seen much more than us—he'd seen all of her, with clothes on and without, so he was the man to ask. And I remembered the evening twilight, the warm sand on sidewalks turned red by the mulberries, and Kocha. He was dragging two Azeri guest workers by the hair, shoving their faces into the fence in front of some endless factory wall; and there we were, standing off to the side, not interfering—Kocha had to fight his own battles. Tamara was yelling something, shrilly, anxiously, trying to stop him. She was yelling that nobody had laid a finger on her, and the Azeri guys were also yelling that they hadn't laid a finger on her, but Kocha continued banging their heads against the fence. Then she ran away and vanished into the darkness. Kocha ran after her. We helped the Azeri guys up and treated their wounds with vodka, because we knew that they really hadn't laid a finger on her.

“Uh-huh,” Kocha said, bringing me back to reality. “Buddy, you know, when we met she was only seventeen, but let me tell you—I'd never seen some of the stuff she could do, not even in brothels.”

“And you've been to a lot of brothels?” I asked skeptically.

“Well, not a lot,” Kocha said, a bit offended at having his heroic biography questioned, “I was a paratrooper, Herman. We could have any girl we wanted.”

“Gotcha.”

“I fought for her for three years,” Kocha continued. “I couldn't leave her alone, not even for a second, not even for a second. Can you believe that?”

“I can.”

“Finally she just decided to run away. Her parents wouldn't let her marry me, no matter what. Mountain people—they've got their own rules.”

“Well, did she run away?”

“Over my fuckin' dead body,” Kocha said, rather self-satisfied. “I found out about her plan and got on the same train as her. The same exact car, too. The two of us bounced around, from station to station, from here to Rostov. She tried hopping off a few times, but I caught her. We slept at train stations, drank champagne in dining cars, and fought like cats and dogs—can you believe that?” Kocha was kicking back in his chair and peering out the window now, enjoying this talk of his glory days. “Then she gave up, came back with me. That's life. We stayed together, though her parents never stopped giving us trouble. They just hated me. But then we told them she was pregnant, so they gave up too, and we got married.”