The Gardener from Ochakov

2

IGOR DRANK A mug of coffee, then sat down at the computer and merged the photos together. He zoomed in on the composite image, zoomed out again, rotated it this way and that, but the blurred tattoo remained incomprehensible.

‘All right,’ Igor murmured to himself, ‘I’ll go and see Kolyan in Kiev. If he can’t do anything with it either, then I’ll have to admit defeat. And I guess I can forget about that bottle from the gardener!’

He downloaded the photos onto a memory stick and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘Ma, I’m going into town,’ he said to Elena Andreevna. ‘I’ll be back some time late afternoon. Do you want me to pick anything up?’

Elena Andreevna looked up from her ironing. She thought about it.

‘Some black bread, if they’ve got any fresh,’ she said eventually.

The sun was climbing into the sky. The pleasant, warm smell of summer lingered in the air. It didn’t feel at all like autumn – it was as though the seasons were deliberately disregarding the calendar. The grass was still green, and even the leaves still clung to the trees.

The minibus taxi to Kiev picked Igor up about five minutes after he reached the stop. It set off again as though it were being piloted by a Formula One racing driver, rather than an unshaven old man wearing a cap who happened to be the husband of the local pharmacist.

The driver turned on the radio, which was tuned to his favourite station, and looked in the mirror to see whether any of his passengers would object. It did happen. The former head teacher at the school, for example, couldn’t bear Radio Chanson. But she obviously had no business in Kiev today, so he could listen to whatever he liked.

Igor started thinking about Stepan’s tattoo, and he was seized by a sudden moment of doubt: maybe Stepan was lying? Maybe the tattoo was some kind of prison ‘badge’ and he’d tried to get rid of it himself to cover up his shady past? Igor should have asked Stepan whether he’d been inside himself. Didn’t he say that his father had been imprisoned three times? Well, the apple never falls far from the tree, or so they say… Although come to think of it, what did Igor know about his own apple tree? Enough to hope that he wouldn’t turn out the same way.

Coincidentally, and rather appropriately, the song that came on Radio Chanson at that moment was a prison ballad about a mother waiting for her son to come back from a labour camp. It distracted Igor from his thoughts, and he continued his journey in a blank reverie, just staring out of the minibus window and not thinking about anything. He arrived in Kiev half an hour later and took the metro to Contract Square.

His childhood friend Nikolai, otherwise known as Kolyan, worked as a computer programmer in a bank. Well, maybe not a programmer but an IT specialist of some sort – he was responsible for troubleshooting, or monitoring the programs, something like that. Like many computer experts he was distinguished by certain idiosyncrasies, as though he himself had been infected at some point by a computer virus. He had a tendency to change the subject at the drop of a hat, and instead of answering a specific question he would often start rambling on about something completely irrelevant.

He’d been the same ten years ago, and he’d been the same twenty years ago. The two of them had grown up together and attended the same school. Even the army hadn’t separated them – they had ended up in the same military unit just outside Odessa. Military service had been like a holiday for Kolyan. The unit commander had just had a computer installed in his office, and Kolyan taught him how to play games on it. From then on the colonel would send Kolyan to Odessa once a week to fetch new games. Kolyan wasn’t stupid – he never brought back more than one game at a time.

Igor often went to see him when he was in Kiev, just to catch up over a beer. Kolyan’s working hours were pretty flexible. Only once had he been summoned back to the office, when one of the programs had frozen.

Kolyan emerged from the depths of the bank holding an umbrella.

‘It’s not raining,’ said Igor, looking in surprise at the umbrella.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Kolyan, unperturbed. ‘But in half an hour’s time, who knows? The weather’s like the dollar exchange rate at the moment. It can change several times a day.’

They walked to Khorevaya Street and sat down at a table in a small, cosy cafe.

‘What are you having, then?’ asked Kolyan. ‘I’m funding the refreshments today.’

‘You’re a banker – funding things is your job! Let’s have a beer.’

‘I’m not a banker, I just work in a bank. So don’t get any ideas about a side order of caviar.’

After taking a sip of draught lager from his old-fashioned pint glass, Igor took the memory stick out of his pocket and put it on the table. He told Kolyan about the tattoo, and about Stepan.

‘Can you do anything with it?’

‘I’ll try,’ nodded Kolyan. ‘The computers are all behaving themselves today, so I haven’t got much on. Why don’t you hang out in Podil for a while? Stay local, and I’ll call you on your mobile if I have any joy. If not, well, I’ll call you anyway!’

As they left the cafe, it began to drizzle. Kolyan shot a triumphant look at his friend. He opened his umbrella, waved goodbye and walked off in the direction of his bank.

Igor didn’t feel like wandering about aimlessly without an umbrella, even though it wasn’t raining very hard. He headed for the Zhovten cinema and got there just in time to see Shrek the Third. The film made him laugh out loud. Part way through the film, he noticed that there wasn’t a single child in the cinema – only old people.

When Igor came out into the foyer after the film had finished, he saw a notice on the wall that explained the strange audience demographic: ‘Free admission for pensioners and disabled individuals of all three categories on Tuesdays at 11 a.m.’

It had stopped raining, but the sky was still full of heavy clouds. Igor started walking towards Kolyan’s work. As soon as the bank sign came into view, his mobile rang.

‘Right, you can come and meet me at the bank,’ Kolyan said cheerfully.

‘I’m already here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m standing outside,’ explained Igor.

Kolyan came out a couple of minutes later. Igor noticed that he was holding a piece of paper rolled up into a tube.

‘Come on then, show me,’ he said, burning with curiosity.

‘Ha! As if I’m going to show you straight away!’ retorted Kolyan. ‘No, you’ll have to be patient – you owe me now. And it just so happens that I’m hungry. And hunger makes me mean – well, at least, not very cooperative.’

Kolyan dragged Igor towards a cafe. On the way, they passed the Petrovich nightclub.

‘Oh, look! “RETRO PARTY here every third Friday”,’ he read from a poster. ‘“Come in retro fancy dress for a chance to win a guided trip to North Korea, a holiday to Cuba or an excursion to Moscow, including a night visit to the mausoleum.” Cool!’ Kolyan turned to his friend, his eyes ablaze with excitement. ‘Can you imagine? A night in the mausoleum! You, alone in the dark… with Lenin! Eh?’

Igor shrugged. His mind was elsewhere.

‘Can’t you just show me?’

‘No, I’m not going to show you anything on an empty stomach,’ insisted Kolyan. With a final glance at the poster, he started walking again. Five minutes later they arrived at Cafe Borshch.

‘So, what are you having?’ asked Igor, knowing that Kolyan was going to take pleasure in keeping him in suspense, watching his growing irritation and milking the excitement and impatient curiosity that were written all over his face.

‘Let’s see now… I’ll have a Russian salad, okroshka soup and some fruit cordial,’ said Kolyan.

Igor relayed this information to the waitress and sat down opposite Kolyan, without ordering anything for himself.

‘Aren’t you having anything?’ asked Kolyan, surprised.

‘I’m already full with curiosity. Anyway, your appetite’s enough for both of us.’ Igor gave a forced smile. ‘So, are you going to show me or not?’

‘All right, here you go.’ Kolyan held the tube of paper out to him.

Igor opened it up. The printout was black and white – or rather, grey and white – but perfectly comprehensible. Stepan’s shoulder was no longer visible, but there were words and an image. The letters looked unsteady, shaky, ready to dissolve again at any moment into a random agglomeration of dots.

‘“Ochakov, 1957, Efim Chagin’s House”,’ read Igor. There was an image of an anchor beneath the words. ‘Where’s Ochakov?’ asked Igor.

‘Don’t you know?’ asked Kolyan, surprised. ‘On the Black Sea, somewhere between Odessa and the Crimea. Berezan Island is just off the coast… You know, where Lieutenant Schmidt was shot. Or haven’t you ever heard of Battleship Potemkin either?’

Igor nodded, picturing the approximate location of the little town on a map of Ukraine.

‘Did he seriously not know what the tattoo said?’ asked Kolyan.

Igor smiled. Now his friend was the one itching to know more.

‘He had no idea,’ said Igor, shaking his head.

Half an hour later, they went their separate ways.

‘Hey, don’t forget it’s my birthday in two weeks! I’m expecting a present!’ Kolyan called after his friend.

‘I’ll be there,’ promised Igor, turning round for a moment. ‘As long as you remind me nearer the time!’

Igor bought a loaf of Darnitsky rye bread before getting the minibus back to Irpen. On the way home, he kept looking at the printout of the reconstructed tattoo. His imagination was on fire, and even Radio Chanson could not tear his thoughts away from the words and the anchor. He had gone to Kiev with one mystery, and he was coming home with another. Well, it was essentially the same mystery, but knowing more about it only made it more fascinating.

Igor went through the gate and straight round to the back of the house, to the shed. Stepan was inside, sitting on a little stool up against the wall. He was reading a book.

‘What are you reading?’ asked Igor.

‘Just something about the war,’ answered Stepan, getting up.

He closed the book and put it on the stool with the cover facing down, as though he didn’t want Igor to see the title or the name of the author.

‘Well, I’ve managed to decipher your tattoo!’ declared Igor, with childish pride.

‘Have you now?’ the gardener asked in surprise. ‘What does it say, then?’

Igor held out the piece of paper.

‘“Ochakov, 1957, Efim Chagin’s house”,’ Stepan read aloud slowly. Then he froze, his eyes fixed on the words.

Igor stood waiting for the gardener’s reaction.

‘Go on now,’ said Stepan, his voice suddenly cold. ‘I need to be alone for a while, to think about everything.’

‘Such a thinker,’ Igor muttered scornfully, as he turned away. He went into the house. As he left the bag containing the loaf of bread in the kitchen, he glanced at the old set of scales that stood on the windowsill. One pan of the scales held the weights, which ranged from 20g to 2kg. In the other, elevated pan lay the electricity pay book, which was held down with a weight as if to stop it flying away. Not only did his mother use them to weigh out ingredients when she was cooking, even though she was probably more than capable of cutting 100g of butter or scooping out 200g of flour by instinct alone, but she also kept all her paperwork and important documents in the pans. The scales were like her office desk.

Igor poured himself a glass of milk and went into the living room to watch television. There was a detective film on the New Channel. Under normal circumstances Igor would have sat happily and watched it to the end, but today nothing seemed to hold his attention. Nothing, that is, except the enigmatic printout. After sitting in front of the screen for about quarter of an hour, Igor put his shoes on again and went out into the yard. He walked over to the shed and glanced inside, but Stepan wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the garden either, or the vegetable patch.

Igor went into the shed to see if the gardener’s things had disappeared. They hadn’t – his rucksack was hanging on a nail above the bed, and his clothes, folded as though they’d just been ironed, lay neatly next to the woodworking tools on the old wooden shelf unit.