Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

The Cursed Place

The first thing a tourist has to deal with in Stargorod is our bridge. This is a cursed place for city fathers as much as it is for motorists, everyone knows that. The chronicler chose to record for posterity that, in 1011, boyar Kuksha, Stargorod’s founder, drowned a Komsi priest here at the ford, and the pagan, in his last breath, cursed the boyar and all subsequent governments.

In 1696, Peter the Great, in a great hurry to Voronezh to supervise the building of his ships, arrived at the steep shores of our river, and, twisting his mustache in irritation, stood there waiting for a ferry. Right beside him there stood two old women – grocery peddlers.

“How much for the greens?” the tsar inquired.

“We let it go for half-penny, and the ferry costs a coin.”

Two copper half-pennies at the time added up to a coin. The tsar, without wasting any more time, summoned the city head and ordered him to erect a bridge. Half a year later, returning from Voronezh back to the capital, the Tsar observed that the bridge hadn’t even been started. He ordered the city head brought before him again.

“What, no money’s been given you?”

“No, Your Majesty, they sent us the money, but we’ve no wits to puzzle out a thing like a bridge.”

“Then here you go!” Peter exclaimed and slammed his fist on the poor man’s bald skull so hard he almost died. And the city finished the bridge in no time.

In the Great War, the Germans bombed the bridge to smithereens. Under Zhukov’s orders, the Red Army soldiers were trying to secure the crossing under heavy enemy fire. Right in the very thick of it, bullets and shrapnel pouring down, a jeep speeds up to the pontoons – and the soldiers, the ones still alive, are all hiding in the trenches. Zhukov, with a cane, jumps out of the car. Bullets whiz past him – he pays them no mind: he was charmed, you see.

The marshal yells at the colonel, “God damn you, how much time were you given already?!” and smack! – whips his cane at the man’s face; teeth fly!

“You!” Zhukov yelled at the first Captain he saw. “Make the crossing by nightfall, or I’ll bury you alive!”

By nightfall, tanks were rolling across the pontoons, the enemy fled, the colonel was sent to Vorkuta, and the captain got a medal.

After the war, the job of rebuilding the bridge fell to the much-decorated Engineering Corps Lieutenant Colonel Shelest. Shelest was born a builder; he set to repairing the ruins with a team of soldiers who had fallen behind the front and stayed and a crew of German POWs. Eventually, the time came to send his soldiers home. Shelest’s officers drafted a new crop of recruits from places no one had ever heard of. They finished the bridge, but then the draftees’ term of service ended, and they, too, went home. Shelest, just for the heck of it, wrote to the appropriate authorities, asking for new soldiers. Instead, Cheka motorcyclists with machine guns rolled into town, but the war hero was gone. They never found him. Turns out, his unit had been disbanded right after the war – how did he manage to keep it working? Whatever he did, everyone – his officers and soldiers – served in the non-existent unit completely legitimately, and got due credit for it. People told many other stories about Shelest after this, but this one, at least, is true: he conned Stalin’s regime all right, but he got the bridge built.

Since then, the bridge has gradually fallen into decay. Every new head of the city spared no asphalt on it, but somehow the potholes only grew bigger and deeper.

When Mikhail Yefremovich Nozdrevatykh – a Stargorodian born and raised, a retired air force general, and a chopper-pilot hero of the Afghan war – became the head of the city administration, he solemnly pledged to undertake a fundamental reconstruction of the bridge to bring it into tip-top shape. His old mother, people said, counseled him to have the bridge blessed with holy water and forget the crazy idea, but he did not listen.

Instead, Nozdrevatykh sent a request to the governor: a hundred million. The Governor right away countered: six hundred million, and not a penny less, or else it’s not even worth the effort. That’s where The General came in – an important man from Moscow, he had developed a big construction business in Stargorod. The General cut out the governor, got the contract himself, and procured three hundred million straight out of the federal budget. The ministry sent the money, but something happened to it somewhere along the way.

Exactly what transpired then between The General and Nozdrevatykh, we do not claim to know. However, there are others who witnessed their conversation, and here’s what they report.

Mikhail Yefremovich is playing pool at the Old Tymes Club. Suddenly, The General, profoundly drunk, barges in and starts yelling, “You son of a bitch, what do you think you’re doing? You stole the money, didn’t you!”

“People,” Nozdrevatykh replied, “shot Stinger missiles at me in Afghanistan and I wasn’t scared. Get out of here. I’m not one to rob my own hometown.”

In response, The General whispered something into the city head’s ear – it had to have been a jinx – marched right out and climbed into his Mercedes, but didn’t go very far. He slammed into the bridge’s parapet – the car was totaled, and it was a miracle he himself didn’t fall into the river below. And Nozdrevatykh was paralyzed on the spot – his legs folded under him and he couldn’t feel them.

The money eventually turned up, albeit not all three hundred million – only a hundred. People said the governor found a way to skim off his cut after all. The General fudged and schemed, and paid Moscow back, but there was very little left for the bridge – just enough to roll on a new layer of asphalt using German technology. In the spring, the logging trucks came across and made the first dents in the road. Now, in the middle of the summer, traffic here crawls as usual – at a snail’s pace, everyone worrying about their suspensions. Mikhail Yefremovich, for his honesty and forthrightness, gained great respect from the locals, but it hasn’t given him his legs back. The bridge itself is holding up just fine – Shelestov with German POWs built it and that’s, I tell you, something – not just some new German technology. I do wonder sometimes, though: would it have been better to sprinkle the bridge with holy water, and let it be?