Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

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Vovochka charmed Rafa’s family instantly, and soon Rafa’s twins were racing down the hallway to fetch the teapot, then the saucer, and then more water for the chickens, and everything in his two-room apartment oohed and delighted. And with good reason.

Have you ever heard of the black Bramah, feather-footed like a prize tumbler, barrel-chested and decorous, meek and serene like a village priest? Or of dwarf Cochins, those chick-sized, full-grown birds that had squeezed themselves into a clamoring clump under the armchair? Or of the fuzzy, high-stepping, crested and coquettish Paduas, which are more like a cross between a midget heron and a carrier pigeon? Or of the piebald, long-legged, muscle-rolled Orlov fighters – the pride and glory of any truly Russian chicken-man? Most people have no inkling whatsoever of their existence, and it was the same for Rafa until he beheld the creatures in his own home.

It’s true, the air in the apartment was filled with something unimpeachably birdy, the parquet floors and rugs were covered with a fine dusting of wet sawdust, and tiny feathers flitted around in front of one’s nose, but it was all worth it. It was a shame they couldn’t open the window for more than fifteen minutes (strict instructions!) and they accidentally shattered the wife’s favorite cup in their urgency to grind up an anti-stress powder of calcium and ascorbic acid, which the girls brought, running, from the pharmacy… and after all, they didn’t get to marvel at the chickens for as long as they wanted: Vovochka, having performed his stress-reducing ministrations, all with winsome tenderness, settled his beauties into their boxes, tied them carefully shut and moved them to a dark corner.

And it was then, right after he ushered a chiseled pair of Orlov fighters into a box, that he suddenly grabbed the third Orlov hen and dashed to the window with such purpose as if he fully intended to jump, with the bird, from the seventeenth floor.

“Rafa, Rafa, send the girls out, I’m gonna’ curse bad,” he hollered, turning the uncharacteristically-meek avian princess in his hands and inspecting her claws, beak, head and crest. The girls burst out laughing, tactfully covering their mouths with their hands, and ran to the kitchen. Vovochka, gasping, explained his fit to Rafa:

“He conned me, that bitch-gutted Moskalev, conned me clean – slipped me a sick one. He must have switched them when I went out to flag a car. Now I can’t breed them – two’s not enough, you know, you have to cross them out. You viper, just you wait! And people told me, gave me fair warning – he’s born into chickens!”

He stomped his feet and swore to find a way to send the whole Moskalev farm to chicken heaven with arsenic, and afterwards lay spent in the armchair trying to console himself somehow. Finally, the sense of pride and the dream-come-true feeling about the other birds won out. After all, the pair of the Orlovs he did get was excellent. And then, maybe, he’ll soon have a chance to buy more; he knew for a fact that there were Orlovs in Riga, because just this morning at the Bird Market another expert told him so in exchange for news about the availability of some Dutch Kilzummers in Leningrad, as best Rafa could follow the story.

Vovochka pulled out his piebald hen and rooster, stroked their necks, admired their marbled wings and sighed ruefully:

“Did you see, they only have two colors – the third, the emerald green, the peacock green disappeared, except in tail feathers here and there, that’s all they have left from their ancestors. But these few feathers give me the hope, no, not just hope – certainty! – that I will get it done, I’ll bring back this vanished Russian breed. Rafa, Rafa, you keep smiling – don’t laugh, mate, you don’t know: last year at an auction in Italy a nest of stable Orlovs fetched two and a half million dollars! You ever heard of that? No? That’s my point! I’m not talking about the Orlov trotters, about prize-winning horses – I’m talking about four hens and a rooster, and there’s no wonder, just look at them, look at them, you philistine! A real bird – it’s better than books that you traded for paperbacks, it’s a symphony! A living being. The Orlovs are our national pride, they came from Count Orlov’s own farms – yes, the same Count who created the trotters – and they were stronger and gamer than any Kokand or Bukharan. And now there aren’t any left, even in Asia – I mean, the real, tricolored ones – and you say, he’s crazy. Any man worth his salt is ‘off’ – and I have no time for the other kind.”

He got up from the chair, flicked one girl and then the other on the nose, and together with Rafa went to move the dining table to the middle of the room. Next, the bulging briefcase made an appearance, and a half-liter bottle of “Russian” was extracted from it. The other, with a screw-on cap, was only briefly displayed.

“That one’s for the conductors on the train, mate. People diplomacy,” he said as if to explain that he wasn’t hiding or holding anything back, but needed it for business.

Rafa nodded sympathetically, and Vovochka added:

“Don’t worry – you’ll have enough, I hardly drink any.”

“Me either, really,” Rafa confessed.

“Good deal, then,” Vovochka nodded. “But surely you can get 150 down?” he roared and put his paws around Rafa to express his love, and smacked his lips enthusiastically in anticipation of a feast.

Galya fried a whole chicken for the occasion, opened a jar of pickled mushrooms, sliced some salted lard… and there they were, seated around the table, with Vovochka officiating, carving the chicken, pricking the sour-cream-baked crust, and serving the bird, in equal portions to everyone, with his bubbling chit-chat:

“Eat it up, eat up, you poor bastards, next time I’ll bring you one of my Kholmogor geese, we’ll bake it with apples!”

He poured the vodka into crystal shot glasses for Galya and Rafa and, after some hesitation, poured himself a whole glass.

“To our meeting and to take the edge off,” he explained. “I just can’t get that spider Moskalev out of my mind. He conned me good, didn’t he? All right, my dears, ahead we forge!”

He raised his glass and drained it, in one great gulp.

“That’s it!” Vovochka made a creaking noise somewhere inside and put the glass back on the table, upside down. “Gala, you forgive me for drinking like a truck-driver, usually I don’t drink at all. It’s all nerves.”

Rafa and Galya clinked their crystal. God, Rafa thought, how lucky I was to pick him up! It was a fool that said no good deed goes unpunished, an honest-to-goodness idiot!

His thoughts jumped from one thing to the next; Vovochka’s tales flowed like honey as he sat like some Emperor at a feast, refilled his hosts’ glasses and told stories that made them laugh. We couldn’t possibly not reproduce his tales here.