The Gardener from Ochakov

11

A CREAKING, CLANGING noise started up outside the window just before 6 a.m. the following morning. Igor opened his eyes and immediately looked around to see where he was. His eyes took in the high wooden back of the sofa above him, the mirror, the shelves and the black leatherette that was fastened to the sides of the sofa.

Igor was just contemplating the two porcelain figurines of children that stood on the shelves when the door opened and Vanya came in, already dressed. He was splashing cologne onto his cheeks.

‘Good morning!’ he greeted Igor brightly. ‘So, are you ready to go to the market?’

Igor threw off the blanket and stood up. He brushed out the creases in the uniform and pulled on the boots, which were standing on the wooden floor next to the bed.

‘Where’s the toilet?’ he asked Vanya.

‘Outside, at the back of the house.’

‘And the washroom?’

‘That’s outside too, just round the corner. There’s a sink on the wall of the shed.’

Igor cleared his throat and glanced at the peaked cap.

‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

‘She’s already at the market. People get up early here. They’re at work by six… and drunk by three,’ Vanya answered with a grin.

Emboldened by the knowledge that there was no one else at home, Igor went out into the yard and immediately spotted the sink. He washed his hands and face. The sour taste of the wine from the night before lingered on his tongue. Igor rinsed his mouth out with water, but the sour taste refused to go away. He looked at the little wooden shelf that was fixed to the wall of the shed next to the sink. It held two slivers of soap, a small tin box and several frayed toothbrushes, but there was no toothpaste.

Igor moved the toothbrushes to check underneath them, but there was definitely no toothpaste. He opened the tin box. It was full of white powder.

‘Is this what they use instead?’ he wondered, vaguely recalling something he’d once heard about people in the olden days cleaning their teeth with powder rather than paste.

Igor selected the least frayed toothbrush, rinsed it under the tap and stuck it into the powder. When he took it out, the brush felt noticeably heavier. He brought it to his mouth and was surprised to discover that the powder didn’t taste of anything at all. He brushed his teeth, rinsed his mouth out again and noticed that the wine taste had disappeared. Not the slightest trace remained.

‘I’ve made you some cocoa,’ said Vanya, meeting him in the hallway with a white enamel mug. ‘Here.’

The cocoa was far too sweet. Igor sat down with the mug at the kitchen table and looked out of the window, which was hung with a fine lace curtain. The delicate fabric featured exactly the same pattern as the cloth – either a serviette or a tablecloth, Igor couldn’t tell – that was arranged neatly over the large radio on top of the chest of drawers.

‘I, uh…’ Vanya sat down opposite him. He looked like he was wrestling with his thoughts. ‘You’ll have to go to the market on your own. If I went with you… well, it wouldn’t look good. Our police officers only accompany people to the market when they’ve been robbed. They go there to try and recover the stolen property.’

‘But how will I recognise Red Valya?’

‘Easy,’ Vanya Samokhin waved his hand. ‘You can’t miss her. She’s the only redhead there. You’ll hear her first, and then you’ll see her!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Her voice is loud and distinctive,’ explained Vanya. ‘Perfect for the market.’

‘How will I find my way back? Have you got a map?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A map of Ochakov, showing the streets and the market, so I can find your house.’

‘There aren’t any maps of Ochakov. You must know about the military aircraft, and the port… It’s all very hush-hush. We’re not allowed maps.’

‘All right, in that case draw me a map showing the way to the market, and I’ll work it out from there.’

‘I can do that,’ nodded Vanya. He fetched the exercise book and a pencil and busied himself with an elaborate sketch.

‘Keep it simple, so I can understand it,’ remarked Igor.

‘All right,’ murmured Vanya, without looking up.

When he eventually finished his sketch, he carefully tore the page from the exercise book and passed it to Igor. ‘There, you see… that’s my house, there’s the street… you have to go past the park and turn left, then keep going straight and you’re there.’

‘Write down your address, just in case,’ said Igor.

Vanya took the piece of paper, added his address and gave it back. Igor studied the map and found it reasonably comprehensible. He finished his cocoa and looked at Vanya.

‘Are you going to stay at home?’ he asked.

‘I’m on the second shift today. I’ll be at home till midday, then at the factory.’

‘What do you actually do there, apart from steal wine?’ Igor asked with a smile.

‘I’m a general worker,’ said Vanya, lowering his eyes. ‘They’re going to send me to the Nikolaev College of Trade and Industry in the spring, to study wine-making. When I graduate, I’ll be a wine technologist.’

‘All right, stay here. I’ll be back before twelve,’ said Igor. He went in to pick up the peaked cap, put it on and looked in the mirror. Then he nodded goodbye to Vanya and went out onto the doorstep.

Vanya’s hand-drawn map was surprisingly easy to follow. The closer Igor got to the market, the more people he encountered, and the air was filled with a joyous chirruping, twittering noise, like a chorus of human birdsong. Several young army officers cycled past, and one of them waved to Igor. He was overtaken by a brand-new brown Pobeda car with a chubby, red-faced driver at the wheel.

Igor really wanted to stop for a few minutes to look at the world around him, to watch the people and study their faces, to let it all sink in. Everything seemed slightly strange, natural and unnatural at the same time, as though old black-and-white newspaper images had been scanned into a computer and digitally coloured. Nevertheless he managed to suppress this desire and his curiosity and kept walking at a steady pace, rhythmically measuring out each step on the pavement.

Finally he noticed the gates to the market, through which a steady stream of cheerful humanity flowed in both directions – some holding baskets, others with bags. To the right of the gates two men wearing dark blue quilted jackets were gluing a colour poster to the noticeboard. The poster appeared to show a flying ball with four knives sticking out of it. A little further along a woman wearing overalls in the same colour blue, with a broom at her feet, was pinning the day’s newspaper into a flat, glass-fronted display unit designed for the purpose. As Igor approached she closed the window and started wiping the glass with a cloth, enhancing its transparency in order to render the contents more accessible to the curious public.

Stopping in front of the poster, Igor realised that the ‘ball with knives’ he’d seen from a distance was actually the first artificial satellite in space. Several other people gathered around the noticeboard, and Igor took advantage of this legitimate opportunity to observe them more closely. He noticed a couple of police officers nearby, wearing exactly the same uniform as him. Alarmed by the prospect of a possible encounter with ‘colleagues’, he strode decisively into the market and instantly felt as though he’d fallen into a beehive.

‘Hey, comrade lieutenant, try one of my apples!’ An ample saleswoman with plump, painted lips immediately started making eyes at Igor. ‘Sweet as a peach!’ she cried, holding an apple out to him.

The seller’s voice was also as sweet as a peach, and sticky too. Igor could almost feel it clinging to his ear and trickling down his cheek. Smiling self-consciously and shaking his head, he walked away from the woman and continued down the central aisle of the market.

The noises, sounds, voices and words began to revolve slowly around Igor’s head, making it spin. He screwed up his eyes and stopped walking, then opened his eyes again. It felt like he and all the other people at the market were in a giant aquarium, except instead of water this aquarium was full of a strange, dense air, in which bodies moved slowly and words were stretched and drawn out. As they reached your ears the words became louder then gradually faded again into silence as they receded into the distance, like aeroplanes high up in the sky.

Igor tried putting his hands over his ears and contemplating the world without sound. Everything looked perfectly normal, including people’s faces and their expressions. The only indication that he was in the previous century was the way people were dressed – that and a few other details, such as the old-fashioned scales.

‘Comrade lieutenant, can you change fifty roubles for me?’ A woman turned towards him holding a banknote between her chubby fingers. She had a plump face and curly chestnut hair pulled into a chignon.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Igor, increasing his pace.

He noticed that he was in the vegetable section. Someone bumped into him accidentally and apologised. Igor began to feel claustrophobic. Spotting a passageway between the stalls, he quickly moved into the adjacent trading aisle. This aisle was less crowded, and the sellers seemed to have a calmer approach to business. They stood patiently at their stalls, waiting for customers to come to them rather than calling out.

Igor approached an old woman selling bunches of succulent, freshly washed carrots. ‘Where’s the fish section?’ he asked.

‘That way,’ she gestured further down the row, to the right. ‘Before milk and cheese.’

The air began to smell of fish, both pickled and fresh. The smells mingled together, and there seemed to be a salty sea breeze in the air.

Igor heard a woman’s voice up ahead, loud and melodic. ‘Sardines and herring, from Astrakhan and the Don River! Take a look, they’re delicious!’

It’s her! he thought. He almost broke into a run but stopped himself just in time.

Then there was the fish section, right in front of him. The peaked roofs of the stalls were decorated with clusters of dried gobies and sea roaches. The sun shone in and the flies buzzed about deliriously, luxuriating in the fish-saturated air. The woman whose voice continued to resound throughout the entire section stood behind four open barrels of salted herrings. She was using a little bundle of birch twigs to swat away the flies, but she was doing it almost gracefully, without even looking at the fish. She only had eyes for potential customers as she repeated her mantra, the same words over and over again: ‘Sardines and herring, from Astrakhan and the Don River! Take a look, they’re delicious!’

‘Three herring.’ An old woman had stopped in front of her, holding a string bag. The string bag already contained several beetroot, a head of cabbage and a jar of horseradish.

The seller took a brief respite from her sales pitch, but this made no difference to the general noise levels.

Suddenly Igor heard another voice, a little further on. ‘Black Sea flounder! Black Sea flounder!’ This voice was stronger and more melodic than the first.

Igor stood on tiptoes, peering in the direction of the voice. He saw a queue of about five people ahead of him. As he approached the head of the queue, Igor spotted the striking red-haired young woman behind the stall. She was tall, maybe even taller than Igor himself. He wondered if she were wearing heels.

‘Black Sea flounder! Caught this morning! You won’t find fresher unless you catch them yourself!’ she continued, her penetrating gaze sweeping over the passing shoppers. ‘Hey, Brown-Eyes! Take a look! Your wife will thank you for it!’

Brown-Eyes was a bald man of about fifty, wearing glasses and a suit and tie and holding a bulging brown briefcase. He stopped and approached the stall obediently, like a tame rabbit.

‘How much?’ he asked.

‘For you, I’ll sell them at a loss,’ said the seller. ‘Five for five roubles!’

‘But that’s more expensive than herring!’ Brown-Eyes was disconcerted but made no move to walk away.

‘The market’s awash with herring! Barrels of them, everywhere… But only a handful of fresh flounder! You should try catching them – it’s not easy!’

‘All right, I’ll take five,’ said the man, nodding his assent.

The seller took a newspaper from under the counter and spread it open. She tossed a flounder into the air, catching it deftly in her other hand.

‘See how beautiful they are!’ she said.

She wrapped five fish up in the newspaper and took the money. Brown-Eyes regarded the newspaper parcel with suspicion.

‘It’s bound to leak,’ he said. ‘And my accounts are in there.’

The seller smiled. She produced another newspaper and wrapped it tightly around the parcel of fish, before holding it out to her customer again.

‘It won’t leak now!’

The man opened his briefcase and hesitated, considering the matter, then clicked it shut and walked away, holding the newspaper parcel in his other hand.

Igor moved closer to the stall and pretended to be interested in the flounder as well.

‘Go on, treat yourself,’ the seller said to him. ‘You won’t regret it! Your wife will thank you!’

‘I’m not married,’ replied Igor, looking boldly into the young woman’s pretty freckled face. Now, standing in front of her, he had the impression that they were the same height.

‘In that case your mother will thank you,’ she retorted cheerfully. ‘Women like fish more than men do!’

‘How much?’

‘To an officer of the law, five for ten roubles!’ A mischievous smile lit up the seller’s face.

‘Why so expensive?’ he asked, returning her smile.

‘You’re a figure of authority,’ she replied, spreading her hands. ‘A pillar of the community. Is ten roubles really too much to ask?’

‘Fine,’ said Igor, feeling his latent machismo awaken. He took out one of the bundles of hundred-rouble notes in such a way that his affluence was visible to her and her alone. He peeled a note from the bundle and handed it over. The smile fell from the seller’s face, but this didn’t detract from her beauty. She looked anxiously at the note.

‘Haven’t you got anything smaller?’ she asked.

‘Figures of authority don’t carry small change,’ joked Igor, still looking directly into her green eyes.

‘I’m going to tell my husband he ought to join the police force,’ she declared, the smile returning to her face. ‘You get paid well, and you get a gun!’ She glanced at the holster.

‘You get a gun,’ nodded Igor. ‘But not everyone gets paid well!’

‘Only the bosses?’ The seller’s voice was playful, teasing. She seemed to have forgotten all about the fish.

‘What’s your name? It wouldn’t by any chance be Valya, would it?’

‘Why “by any chance”? Cats are named by chance, not people! So, five Black Sea flounder, was it?’ she asked briskly. Her face had lost its light-hearted look.

Igor nodded. The seller wrapped the fish in newspaper and took the note from Igor’s hand.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she said.

Igor watched her walk to a neighbouring stall. He saw her friends change the money for her and listened to her laughter. When she came back she put some coins and a pile of notes into Igor’s hand, placing two ten-rouble notes on top.

‘If you enjoy them, come back for more!’ she said. Her eyes were already over Igor’s shoulder, looking for new customers.

‘Would you like to go for a coffee?’ Igor asked cautiously. Her green eyes immediately looked back at him, wide with surprise.

‘Go where? What do you mean, for a coffee?’

‘Or tea, or cocoa,’ stammered Igor, growing flustered. He could feel his cheeks burning in the heat radiating from her eyes. ‘Or champagne?’

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, temporarily nonplussed. ‘Why?’

Igor spread his hands helplessly.

‘So we can talk… Get to know one another…’

‘Is this part of your job?’ she asked warily.

Igor shook his head. ‘No! I’m… new here, in Ochakov… I don’t know anyone.’

‘Where do you usually work?’

‘In Kiev, mainly. I’m here on business.’

‘Well, people don’t go for coffee round here,’ she smiled. ‘Or cocoa. And as for champagne – you have to go to a restaurant for that, and I don’t go to restaurants.’

‘All right then. Never mind,’ replied Igor, desperately wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him. ‘Goodbye… and thanks for the fish!’

‘I’ll pass your thanks on to my husband. Come again!’

Igor made for the exit, feeling a surge of awkward emotion. He felt as though he’d behaved inappropriately. Was it the feisty redhead who had made him feel so unsettled? He walked quickly and restlessly, full of pent-up energy, as though he were trying to get away as fast as he could without breaking into a run, but he let his feet lead him back to the street where Vanya Samokhin lived. Igor recognised certain familiar landmarks on the way – a particular house, a dark blue fence, the ‘Fashion Studio No. 2’ sign affixed to the cracked plaster of an imposing building that extended right out onto the pavement, while the other buildings stood modestly back from the street, behind fences and front gardens where traces of green still remained.

When he spotted Igor lingering by the gate, Vanya went out onto the front porch and beckoned him inside.

‘I thought you’d get lost,’ he said, closing the front door behind Igor. ‘What have you got there?’ he asked, nodding at the newspaper parcel.

‘I bought some fish,’ said Igor. ‘Can I put it in the fridge?’

‘We don’t have a fridge,’ grinned the lad. ‘This isn’t a meat-processing factory! I can take it down to the cellar, if you like?’

‘No, don’t worry about it,’ Igor replied. He looked pensively at Vanya. ‘Is your mother here?’

‘Why would she be here? She’s still at the market.’

‘In that case, I’m going to lie down for a bit,’ said Igor. ‘But first, we need to have a little chat. Can you put the kettle on?’

‘Wouldn’t you prefer wine?’

‘I thought you had to go to work this afternoon.’

‘The whole factory smells of wine. They never smell it on us!’

‘All right then, why not?’ agreed Igor. ‘After all, you usually drink it before you go to bed, don’t you?’

They sat down together in the little kitchen. Igor took a hundred-rouble note from the bundle in his right-hand pocket. He laid it on the table between them. Glancing at Lenin’s portrait on the banknote, Vanya immediately tensed up.

‘Do you have a camera?’ asked Igor.

‘Why would I have a camera?’ Vanya shrugged. ‘I’m not a photographer.’

‘How much do cameras cost in Ochakov?’

‘Same as where you’re from, I expect.’ Vanya scratched his forehead with the fingers of his right hand. ‘They’re not cheap. Maybe five hundred, maybe a thousand… I don’t know.’

‘Do you know how to use one?’

‘I can learn, if you want me to. It’s not complicated, is it? You just have to focus, then press a button. My friend showed me once.’

Igor took ten more notes from the bundle in his pocket and placed them on the table.

‘There, use that to buy a camera and a film.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then, when you’ve got some free time, find yourself somewhere to hide near Chagin’s house and photograph all the people who come and go. I’ll pay you for every photograph. Understood?’

‘How much?’

‘If the person’s face is visible, then… twenty roubles.’ Igor paused, checking Vanya’s reaction to his proposal. Vanya was nodding gravely, indicating his acceptance of the terms. ‘And if not, then nothing. I need faces.’

‘I could take a picture of you and Red Valya, if you like?’

‘Good idea,’ agreed Igor. ‘Get one of her husband too!’

‘Why do you want one of him? That would just be a waste of film.’ Vanya gave a condescending smirk.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he’s just a fisherman. Belarussian Petka calls him an “old rag”. He’s not a real man. He’s always ill, never drinks—’

‘I see,’ Igor interrupted his garrulous host. ‘Well, to your good health!’ He raised his glass, which Vanya had filled generously with wine.

They drank.

Igor stood up. ‘Right, I’m going to bed,’ he announced.

‘You won’t be here when I get back, will you?’

‘No, I’ll be gone by then,’ Igor confirmed. ‘But I’ll be back in a couple of days. What’s your mother’s name? Just in case?’

‘Aleksandra Marinovna.’

Igor left the kitchen and went into living room, where he put the parcel of fish on the floor next to the bed and began to undress. He folded the uniform neatly and put it on the stool, placed the belt with the holster and the peaked cap on top of it, and lay down under the quilted blanket. He still had the trace of a sour taste in his mouth from the local wine. He saw an image of Red Valya, her green eyes ablaze. Her voice rang in his ears. Unable to find a way out, the warmth of Igor’s body began to accumulate under the heavy blanket. Once his energies were restored he would emerge like a butterfly, full of life, ready to make the most of the new day.