Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stone Soup

Folks have been working fields around Stargorod for centuries, but every year, new boulders come up from under the ground. The pagan Komsi tribe that used to live on these lands believed that a fire-breathing dragon lived in the depths of the earth and the boulders and rocks were the petrified tears he shed mourning the people’s hard lot. The Soviet government, when it arrived, explained everything: our region lies at the foot of a large plateau and for that reason is rich in highly valuable construction materials – they started quarries everywhere and caravans of trucks loaded with high-quality gravel began crawling daily to the Stargorod’s railway station. They even began building a narrow-gauge line to the quarry in Kozhin, the local army unit engineered bridges for it and raised a levy, but then perestroika happened, and the unit was disbanded. The rail line soon disappeared in thickets of wild raspberry and mushrooms; carps found their way into the quarry’s flooded pits.

For a long time, no one had any use for the abandoned piles of gravel and cobblestone, until a man named Rashid arrived in our lands – the fourteenth son of an Azerbaijani farmer, he had wandered to Stargorod in search of a better life. Rashid turned stone into money: he hired cheap trucks and had hobos load them up in exchange for booze, then sent his cargo to Moscow and sold it there on the Rublyov market. Rashid paid Musa the Chechen “for protection,” and his trucks made their way to Moscow without any trouble. One day, Musa introduced Rashid to a hot-shot Muscovite.

“So, you’re in the gravel business?” the Muscovite asked Rashid.

“A little.”

“The kolkhoz has been divided into individual lots – get me the whole package for Kozhino, and I’m especially interested in the lots that border the old quarry. A hundred and forty hectares altogether, ten owners – get me the lot, I’m paying triple.”

“Five times, and I’m getting the signatures,” Rashid said sternly and glanced at Musa. Musa nodded silently.

The Muscovite shook his hand – they had a deal. In the kolkhoz administration, a bottle of cognac and a box of chocolates produced the records Rashid needed. He copied down the owners’ names and drove to Kozhino. He was not a stranger there: every fall he came to buy sheep he supplied to Stargorod’s Muslim diaspora. After two neighbors got ten thousand in cash each, the rest lined up to see Rashid by themselves; Rashid told them he wanted to build a pig farm in Kozhino. He had eight deeds in a blink. Simple math showed that at the price of 1800 rubles per hectare, each 14-hectare lot made him 152,000 rubles in profit. But to get the ninth lot, Rashid had to face the old witch Alevtina Pimenova. And she wouldn’t budge.

“My father wrung this lot out of the kolkhoz. It used to be my great-grandfather’s way before the revolution. Father said we could make soup from these stones for the next hundred years.”

They sat there for four hours, bickering; Rashid went hoarse, Pimenova, without him noticing, got him to agree to pay 40,000 more than he’d started with. Her lot was right next to the quarry, Rashid could not let it slip.

Cursing the hag under his breath, Rashid paid up, grabbed the deed, and went to find the last address on his list. Kolya Piklov, also known as Pickle, was waiting for him.

“You’re after the stone, aren’t you?” he inquired of the entrepreneur.

“I’m building a pig farm.”

“Don’t play with me, pal. There’s a dragon guards our rocks – you gotta give him something, or else there’ll be trouble. We the Komsi know how to do it. And as far as selling the land – I’ll sell, why not, what do I want with it.”

Pickle went to the pantry and returned with a strange-looking rock with a hole in it.

“Here, put this rock under Pimenova’s deed; she’s my cousin once removed, I’ll do spells for our blood. And you, here, have some beer in the meantime – we, the Komsi, don’t do deals otherwise.”

Being a well brought up Azerbaijani, Rashid did not dare violate the ancestral law and took a sip of the beer. The world spun around him, and he fainted. When he woke up, it was night, and he was sitting in his car parked somewhere in the middle of a forest. He counted the deeds – there were eight. The ninth one, Pimenova’s, was gone.

Musa, when he heard Rashid’s story, said simply:

“You got conned. You don’t have the whole lot – the Muscovite won’t give you the money.”

Then he offered Rashid a hundred thousand rubles for the eight deeds that he did have. Rashid was afraid of Musa and did not refuse. The quarry, of course, in due time opened anyway. The Muscovite’s corporation bought out the last two lots, for a totally different price. Alevtina had long been living with Pickle, and now they used their money to buy a small cottage at the edge of Stargorod. With gas and hot water.

Pickle still drinks his homemade beer, same as always. Alevtina grumbles, but she knows – he’s a Komsi, and Komsi can’t go without. The other folks in Kozhino drank through their cash in a week, had themselves a grand ol’ time, spent another week hung-over, and went back to living their lives as they had before. They never bore a grudge against Pimenova and Pickle; quite the opposite – the Kozhino folks take great pride in them, and whenever they make their way to town, come to visit and stay until either Alevtina or Pickle throws them out.

Rashid, soon after, ran into Pickle in the market, offered him his hand, and gave him a slap on the shoulder, “You’re a wily son-of-a-bitch, but whatever, I’m not angry.”

Pickle shook the hand of the Azerbaijani farmer’s fourteenth son and said, “The dragon, Rashid, is crying under the ground there, mourns us every day, wails and sobs, and we live like we’re not brothers – that’s our problem.”