Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

The Horizontal and The Vertical

The other day, Styopa Morozov, director of Timber Concern No. 2, and I were summoned to tea at the home of the retired vice-mayor of Stargorod, Sergey Pavlovich Triflin. A short man, with intent, avian eyes that looked forever hungry, he had been the terror of the city in the early days of democracy. It was whispered in town that he very well might be a witch. Having outlasted two governors and three mayors, this 65-year-old man was finally fulfilled: he retired, and now spends his time doting on his prized German pointer Rida and taking an active part in the city’s social life. Triflin is also a passionate photographer; his album Wildflowers of Russia’s Middle Zone was published by a Moscow art-house. He is waiting for primroses now – spring is almost here. “I dream,” he says, “of flowers in the snow.”

We met three years ago, because of an old English rifle. I was the one who told him back then: it’s a rare piece, a pre-Revolutionary W. W. Greener, with an elephant stamped on it and the safety button on the left side of the bed.

While we drank tea, the news on TV showed the former mayor of Vladivostok being arrested. Triflin commented on the story, then pulled a thick volume out of his bookcase and read to us an order by Peter the Great. In the year of our Lord 1719, on the 24th day of March, it was so ordered: “Smolensk vice-governor and associates to dispatch due statements of income and expenses. And if ye shalt not execute said errand the May of this year, then all ye, vice-governor as well as other subordinates, to be shackled at the ankles, chained by the neck and kept in the Chancellery until ye the above-mentioned duty fulfill.”

“Now that’s how they used to keep the vertical strong in the old days – and this here clown got flown by plane, and without a chain on his neck like a Gypsy bear. The progress is obvious!” Triflin smiled. “Charged with mismanagement of a million rubles – what kind of money is that! They’ll find more, you can be sure, because you should remember the vertical, of course, but you must also keep a grip on the horizontal. We here, of course, figured this out back in the nineties.”

And that’s when Styopa asked how exactly one was different from the other. Triflin glanced at Styopa, quickly sized up his jeweled ring, as if snapping a picture of it, and began:

“It’s simple. I had this lad under me, former military. One day, I pull up to work, and see this hot-pink Humvee parked right in front of city hall. No one around here ever had one of those. I barely made it to my office, and my phone’s ringing. The mayor, Veslo Vasyl Petrovich, is on the line.

“Whose beauty is that out there?”

“I’m on it,” I say, “post-haste!”

I asked around – turns out it’s my own deputy’s! I called him in.

“What happened?”

“Sergey Pavlovich,” he says, “I admit I couldn’t resist it – it’s a gift.”

“You,” I said, “watch out – the mayor himself doesn’t have wheels like that.”

Next thing you know, our mayor is rolling around in style, in a pink Humvee. It didn’t do much for him, though – he lives in Argentina now. And this lad of mine, the deputy, has gone far and climbed high in the capital, sends me cognac regularly, to thank me for having taught him about life. My other deputy, Khokhlov – he turns his nose up now, rules his own kolkhoz and drinks moonshine. So, as far as the horizontal went, we got that leveled out all right, and if Veslo couldn’t take care of the vertical, I’m not one to judge him.”

We sat for a while longer, drank tea with jam. Styopa, I noticed, was very nervous. Finally, we took our leave.

Outside the gate Styopa breathed a sigh of relief:

“I think we’re all right now... That rifle he had you look at – he took it from me.”

“You hold a grudge?”

“What’s to grudge? Back then he signed over so much land, we logged for a year.”

Styopa left in his beat-up jeep with the all-terrain wheels, exactly what he needs for driving around his logging plots. I stood for a minute at the fence, looking at Triflin’s house, one of the first built in the village by the lake – people call the place “The Count’s Ruins”: A low-slung building in the shadow of cottonwood trees, with an inconspicuous second floor and a large basement (banya, garage, storage room), it stands in sharp contrast to the fashionable turreted castles surrounding it. Modestly extended horizontally, it is simple and comfortable inside. A tall antennae tower with a lightning rod pierces the sky; the national tricolor flag beats in the wind at its top.

And then I saw a magpie fly out an open second-floor window – a dart of black-and-white, and it was gone into the woods. Soon the bird returned and alit on the windowsill. In its paw, it held a brilliant object. I recognized Styopa’s diamond ring. The bird seemed to admire its loot, then slowly turned what looked like a scrunched-up human face in my direction: it was Sergey Pavlovich looking at me. Reason failed me, for an instant, and when I could see clearly again, the magpie was gone.

All kinds of wondrous things happen in Stargorod. The actress Katya Kholodtsova, for instance, because of unrequited love drowned herself in one of Stargorod’s channels and turned into a mermaid. Afterwards, many people saw her bathing there in the moonlight, and I am inclined to believe them. Now I also understood the fear Triflin inspired in local businessmen. No one seemed to know where he came from, but it only took him a year to take over the city.

I sighed, crossed myself, and went back to my local history museum, to work on the “G-whiz!” exhibit planned to mark “The Year of the Russian Language.” The exhibit was why Triflin had called us in the first place: he decided to show his series Thunderbolts of Our Native Land. He charged me with preparing the catalogue and hanging the pictures; Styopa would be responsible for matting and framing.