Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin

XIII

WHILE MEFODY GREW, KARPOV, keeping Mefody as a potential investor in his mind, of course, followed his original plan, which meant storming the gates of heaven should begin with the most insignificant step. Though, in reality, however, there were even more necessary steps than Karpov could have foreseen, and he had already managed to curse himself repeatedly for the decision to walk and not just take a cab.

The town where Karpov settled with Marina was officially not even a real town, but rather a neighborhood district that was part of the small city. When Karpov would come here as a child there was no city yet, it was just a village, and city status was assigned to it the day after his grandfather’s death; Karpov, who was then, as you would expect, a cynical teenager, joked that this had been done only to ensure that if his grandfather decided to return he would get lost—he would search for the village but there wouldn’t be any village left. Now, fifteen years later, his own joke no longer seemed funny to him, but Karpov had still not come across any other explanations for the redesignation of the village into the city—a village it had been and a village it remained—and this was quite convenient for Karpov—the rural lifestyle of the local inhabitants was to provide him with important support. But he was able to quickly see that peasant ways of life have both pluses and minuses, and one of those minuses was before him right then in the form of a young, unsympathetic woman sitting at the desk for the classified section of the local paper, Our Life (in Karpov’s childhood it had been called Communist Beacon). Blinking, she explained to him that if the service wasn’t officially certified, then no one would place the classified, and if he didn’t like it, then he needed come back after a month and complain to the editor, but for now the editor was on vacation, and as it is I’ve already talked with you for too long.

Having mentally characterized his interlocutor as a rural Soviet relic, Karpov asked her if she had a copy machine. The rural Soviet relic didn’t have a copy machine, but she showed Karpov how to get to the post office. At the post office he took a government-issue ballpoint pen and wrote out that if someone had a piglet, calf or lamb, then for five hundred rubles he’d like to borrow this animal; and then the piglet, calf or lamb could be exchanged for a large sheep, cow or pig as payment upon receipt a week later. He paused to think whether he should include his phone number, and then decided it wasn’t worth it; he simply indicated the location of his shack and the time—tomorrow morning at nine o’clock—and, pleased with himself, made twenty copies, and at the same time bought a tube of glue and headed home, at every turn pasting his ad on poles and fences.

Surprisingly, the next morning Karpov encountered around eight local residents by the shack who looked as if they had been specially selected for a photo shoot of the “The Common Peoples of Rural Southern Russia.” They included a timid, suntanned grandmother in a snow-white headscarf and a clearly intoxicated man in a dusty jacket and cap (he had most likely taken the calf without asking his wife, and a week later he would steal the money from her and sell the cow too) and a teenager with a fishing rod and a young goat (Karpov had not mentioned goats in his ad, he forgot)—basically, a feast for the eyes, but without any audience. Having recorded in his notebook to whom each animal belonged, Karpov gave each of his clients his cell number and told them to come back for their animals in a week’s time. On the one hand, Karpov didn’t feel any particular confidence from these people, but on the other hand they did come to him of their own volition, bringing their piglets and the calves—so he didn’t feel sorry if each of these visitors would spend the whole week in masochistic certainty that—clearly by the will of some evil external forces—they had become the victim of a cunning deception.

Having dismissed the visitors, Karpov began giving injections, cursing himself as a dilettante—surely there must be some sort of special veterinary syringes more useful than these one-off “users” that he had bought back in Moscow at the pharmacy chain 36’6. It was also good that Gennady was around; he at least knew something about agricultural practices, and without his help the test animals would have scattered.

Karpov and Gennady found places for the piglets in the barn, tied the young goat up outside the barn, and Gennady led the calves to the town park where there was an overgrown playground with a gated fence, and he even volunteered to keep watch over them until evening with a shepherd’s vigilance. Gennady was already aware of the fact that Karpov was using his injections to grow these young animals into fully-grown adults, but he was so skeptical that he didn’t dare say anything to anybody about them for fear they would just laugh at him. But the animals grew, and then a week later, checking his notebook, Karpov returned to their owners the pigs, cows, and the one goat, and then, standing in front of Gennady, in embarrassment counted out the money, yes, exactly four thousand (he handed a thousand to Gennady, who was offended, “Give me five hundred, what’s this thousand about?!”). The military pensioner understood that he was witness to an amazing event that had the potential to radically change, among other things, his, Gennady’s, life.