The Gardener from Ochakov

28

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Igor went out for a walk. His initial plan was to walk to the bus station and back, but he changed his mind on the way. He was curious to know exactly how far away Stepan would be living and decided to time the journey to his new house. Before Igor had even reached the familiar turning, Stepan himself appeared. He’d changed out of his suit into a pair of black trousers, a jumper and a red shirt, the collar of which was just visible.

‘Are you going to our house?’ Igor asked him.

‘Eventually,’ nodded the gardener.

They continued on their separate ways. When Igor reached the corner he glanced over his shoulder to see whether Stepan was watching him, but he had already disappeared.

Igor walked past Stepan’s houses and on to the end of the street. On the way back, he slowed down again and scrutinised the gardener’s new properties in the gathering twilight. Igor was still having trouble making sense of everything that had happened over the last month. An old man, who was not exactly a tramp but a bit of a vagrant, met a young man who helped him to decipher an old tattoo on his shoulder. This tattoo led them to Ochakov, where they discovered suitcases full of surprises, gifts from the past. Now the man had bought two houses for himself and his daughter, whereas the young man who had helped him was still stuck in a rut, drifting aimlessly through life. All he had to show for it was a knife wound in his side and an unhealthy obsession with the fate of a fish seller from old Ochakov. So what if he knew the path to the past like the back of his hand? Igor’s ‘achievements’ did not even come close to Stepan’s!

Igor found himself near the brightly lit kiosk at the bus station, although he had no idea how he’d got there. He bought a cup of instant coffee and drank it outside the kiosk.

On the way home he bumped into his mother’s friend Olga. She was hurrying towards him in a state of considerable excitement.

‘What’s the matter?’ he called out.

She stopped to catch her breath. ‘I’m just going to the shop,’ she said.

Igor could tell by the look on her face that she wanted to say more. She obviously had some news that she was bursting to share.

‘Guess what,’ she said, pausing for dramatic effect. ‘Stepan has just made me a proposal!’

‘Lucky you,’ smiled Igor.

Unimpressed by his reaction, Olga waved her hand dismissively and went on her way.

When Igor got home, the house was unusually quiet. The atmosphere had changed somehow since Stepan had left. It had been nice having his daughter to stay too, even though it had only been for a couple of days. Now, as he walked down the hallway, Igor couldn’t even hear the television.

He found his mother in the kitchen. She was sitting quietly at the table with a glass of home-made wine, looking pensive but calm.

‘Can I join you?’ asked Igor.

‘If you like,’ nodded Elena Andreevna. ‘Sitting here by myself isn’t helping… It’s just going round and round in my head.’

‘What is?’ asked Igor, pouring himself a glass of wine.

‘Stepan proposed to me,’ she said, looking closely at her son.

Igor’s mouth fell open.

‘It took me by surprise too,’ admitted Elena Andreevna. ‘Of course, he’s a respectable man –’

‘You think so?’ asked Igor, glancing at the scales on the windowsill. ‘He proposed to your friend Olga too, you know. I’ve just seen her on the way to the grocery shop, quite beside herself with joy!’

He regretted his words as soon as he saw the effect they had on his mother. Her face fell, she turned pale and her hands started shaking. She stood up and went into the hallway, and Igor heard her putting her coat on. The front door slammed behind her.

It’s all going to kick off now! he thought, imagining his mother storming round to Olga’s and the two of them having an almighty row.

Igor picked up his glass of wine and took a sip. He didn’t particularly feel like sitting there waiting for his mother to get back, so he took Iosip’s book from the windowsill and went to his own room. He moved the reading lamp to his bedside table and settled down on his bed with the book. He was soon absorbed in the eccentric ramblings of Iosip Sadovnikov, avowed enemy of Soviet canteen food. Igor found himself noting with regularity how easily the handwritten text overcame his scepticism, making him look at certain culinary issues in a new, more serious way.

He found the chapter about salt and sugar completely fascinating, for example – so much so that he didn’t even hear his mother come back. He didn’t hear her throw her coat angrily at the coat stand, or the way the coat slipped off and fell to the floor.

His mother glanced into the kitchen, then opened the door to Igor’s bedroom. She marched over to his bed and raised her hand as though she were about to slap his face, but she managed to restrain herself. Only her eyes, aflame with anger, fell on her son’s face.

‘You stupid fool!’ she exclaimed. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack!’

‘I didn’t do anything!’ protested Igor. ‘I only told you what I’d heard!’

‘What did you hear, exactly?’ cried his mother. ‘He didn’t “propose” to her, he “made her a proposal”. Don’t you get it?’

‘What’s the difference?’ asked Igor, recalling that Olga had indeed told him that Stepan had ‘made her a proposal’.

‘When you “make someone a proposal”, it means a business proposal. He asked her to be the manager of his cafe. But he proposed to me in the other sense of the word… He asked me to marry him!’

‘I wonder if he’d consider making me a proposal too,’ remarked Igor, his lips curling into a smile.

His mother turned round and left without another word, slamming the door. Igor moved the reading lamp to the edge of his bedside table and opened the manuscript again at page 48, which bore the heading ‘Man and Food’.

Igor looked up from the manuscript, deep in thought. The words he had just read made perfect sense. He automatically thought about Stepan. Was he a gardener or a forester? A gardener, it would appear. Igor thought about himself, about his own culinary preferences and, if truth be told, about his growing indifference to food and to the world around him.

‘I don’t seem to be either a gardener or a forester,’ he concluded sadly. ‘Neither fish nor fowl… But I used to build such beautiful sandcastles on the beach in Yevpatoriya when I was little! So, I could have become a gardener.’

Igor smiled at his memories, then shook his head.

I’m taking it all far too seriously, he decided. It’s not a psychology textbook, it was written by an ordinary man of the people… He might not even have finished school!

But Igor wasn’t convinced by his attempts to dismiss the book’s significance. It sounded unnatural and insincere, like a second-rate actor whose gestures do not correspond to the spirit and sentiment of his lines. He turned his attention back to the page he had been reading.

‘That’s like Valya and me!’ Igor was struck by the revelation. ‘So I must be a gardener after all! At least, more of a gardener than a forester.’

Igor was too nervous to read the rest of the page. As he flicked forward through the manuscript he saw a chapter entitled ‘Reducing Natural Products – Dish of Buckwheat and Barley Flour’. He cleared his throat and flicked forward another couple of pages. Then turned back – page 72 featured two recipes: ‘Foresters’ Stew’ and ‘Gardeners’ Stew’.

Igor carefully closed the manuscript and placed it on the stool by his bed. He switched off the reading lamp and lay there for another half an hour, looking at the ceiling and thinking about gardeners and foresters.

He spent the whole of the following morning with his nose buried in The Book of Food. When he got to page 150, he realised he was hungry. He went into the kitchen and prepared himself a bowl of buckwheat. While he was eating it and marvelling at his new-found enjoyment of such a simple dish, his mother looked into the kitchen.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, surprised. ‘I was going to make borshch.’

‘Good idea,’ said Igor, looking up at her. ‘Borshch is a natural dish. Don’t put too much salt in, but be generous with the pepper. I’m sorry about yesterday, by the way.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said with a shrug. ‘So, what shall I tell him?’

‘It’s up to you,’ said Igor. ‘Gardeners are basically good people… You just need to control them.’

‘In what way?’ His mother was surprised again. ‘He doesn’t drink or play cards!’

‘I meant in general. It doesn’t matter.’

Elena Andreevna gave a deep sigh and went out.

Igor finished reading Iosip’s handwritten book at about 6 p.m. and took it straight back to Stepan. Returning the book was a perfectly valid reason to visit, but Igor was also hoping to see Alyona. He wanted to see if he could work out whether she was a ‘gardener’ or a ‘forester’.

Igor rang the doorbell of the old house first, but there was no answer. Turning towards the new house, Igor noticed that the lights were on in the ground-floor windows and the front door was wide open. There were big plastic sacks full of rubble and other building debris piled up outside.

‘Hey, Stepan, are you there?’ Igor called into the house.

‘Hang on!’ answered Stepan’s voice. ‘Don’t come in, it’s really dusty!’

A dust mask hung around Stepan’s neck, and his old tracksuit bottoms and striped sailor’s undershirt had turned an unappealing shade of grey. As he came outside, he brushed his vest down vigorously and a dusty cloud rose up around him in the evening air. He brushed his tracksuit bottoms with equal vigour, and they were soon restored to their original dark blue.

‘Here you go, I’ve finished it,’ said Igor, holding the book out to Stepan. ‘I thought it was really interesting. Especially the bit about gardeners and foresters.’

Igor felt that Stepan was now looking at him with greater respect.

‘How’s the wound?’ asked the gardener.

‘I can hardly feel it.’

‘Are you still having trouble remembering who stabbed you?’ There was the trace of a smile on Stepan’s lips.

‘No, I’ve remembered,’ Igor said quietly. ‘It was a “forester”. You promised to show me the right way to stab someone. Can you show me now?’

‘There’s not much to it,’ Stepan said with a shrug. ‘If you’re facing your adversary you have to strike upwards, or directly from your stomach to his stomach. If you’re coming at him from behind, then you have to strike downwards, and get him in the back or the neck… But that’s not really advisable.’

Igor raised his hand to his stomach and then, gripping an imaginary knife in his hand, thrust it forward sharply, stopped just to the left of Stepan.

‘Like that?’ he asked.

‘Like that,’ said Stepan.

‘Where’s Alyona?’ Igor looked behind the gardener, towards the brightly lit doorway.

‘She’s gone to an Internet cafe, to check her emails,’ said Stepan. He made a vague gesture with his right hand as he spoke, apparently indicating the direction in which she had gone.

‘Do you need any help?’ asked Igor, nodding at the plastic sacks.

‘Come back tomorrow,’ said Stepan. He took the dust mask off over his head and looked at it. ‘We’re fine for today!’