The Gardener from Ochakov

6

KIEV WELCOMED THE returning travellers with pouring rain. The sky hung dark and low over the train station. Wearing his rucksack on his back and carrying one of the old leather suitcases, Stepan walked briskly towards their suburban commuter train. Igor was carrying the other two suitcases as well as his own bag, and he struggled to keep up. At least the suitcases weren’t heavy. Though this did call into question the value of their contents.

The puddles in the streets of Irpen reflected the autumn sun. It had obviously rained there earlier in the day.

‘Let’s take a taxi,’ suggested Stepan, looking around. They were not exactly inconspicuous with their three large, old-fashioned suitcases. Igor also noticed a few passers-by looking at them in surprise.

There were five or six cars waiting for passengers in front of the little station. Stepan and Igor chose an old brown Mercedes. The journey to Igor’s house took less than five minutes. The driver, who had a moustache and was wearing camouflage hunting overalls, helped them to unload their luggage from the car. They took the suitcases straight into Stepan’s shed.

‘Why don’t you go and have a little rest?’ said the gardener solicitously. ‘Come back in half an hour. Then we’ll open them up and see what’s inside.’

Igor looked at Stepan then glanced cautiously at the suitcases, which were standing on the concrete floor next to the old wooden shelf unit. Then he turned and left.

‘So, how did you get on?’ asked his mother, as soon as she saw him. ‘Did you see much of the town? Did you find anything? I bet you’re hungry!’

‘Put the kettle on,’ said Igor, ignoring his mother’s questions. Not that she seemed to be expecting any answers.

Igor went into the bathroom and washed his hands and face. His face was pale and swollen from the rough train pillow. He ran his hand over his prickly, unshaven cheeks, and his eyes fell on the little shelf beneath the mirror, where toothbrushes and disposable razors bristled out of a plastic cup.

Igor had a shave and brushed his teeth. Now he felt a little more alert, but at the same time he couldn’t help wondering what Stepan might be up to in the shed.

‘Tea’s ready, son,’ his mother called from the kitchen.

Igor poured a second mug of tea and put a spoonful of sugar into his own, and two into Stepan’s.

‘Oh, thanks!’ the gardener exclaimed in surprise, when he saw Igor at the door of the shed.

Igor noticed that Stepan was holding the crowbar from Ochakov. Before taking his mug from Igor he put the implement down on the concrete floor. They drank their tea in silence, sitting on stools with the door half shut. The light hanging from the ceiling seemed unusually bright. Igor kept glancing nervously at the suitcases. He was dying of curiosity.

Eventually Stepan picked up the crowbar again and bent over one of the suitcases, although it wouldn’t have taken more than a screwdriver to prise open the two weak locks.

The first suitcase opened without a sound. Inside were two packages wrapped in thick brown paper and tied up with string. They were about the same size as those boxes that women’s winter boots came in – the kind his mother kept in her wardrobe, full of photographs and balls of wool with knitting needles sticking out of them.

Stepan picked up one of the packages and gauged its weight, biting his lip in concentration. He turned it over and stared at the three large letters that were written on the back in indelible pencil: I.S.S. Stepan gave a heavy sigh, although it was not tiredness that showed on his face but a kind of reflective contentment, as though he’d found what he’d been searching for his entire life.

‘Iosip Stepanovich Sadovnikov,’ he said after a pause, stroking the initials with the forefinger of his right hand.

Squatting down, he placed the package on the floor and began to unwrap it. Inside was a large bookkeeping ledger. Stepan grinned self-consciously, as though he didn’t quite know what to do next. There was an inscription on the front, handwritten neatly in fountain pen. Stepan read it out: The Book of Food.

He put the book on the floor and took the second package out of the suitcase. The look of calm contentment had left his face, as though he knew the pleasant surprises were over. The second package was marked with the same initials and contained about a dozen small paper packets. Stepan opened one of them and caught his breath. He tilted the packet, and Igor watched in astonishment as a number of transparent faceted crystals fell into his palm.

‘Are they diamonds?’ whispered Igor.

Stepan tore his eyes away from his hand and looked up at Igor.

‘No idea,’ he said, tipping the little stones back into the paper packet. He opened another of the little packets and looked inside. ‘We’ll have to ask an expert.’

Igor thought about the money he’d spent on the trip to Ochakov. The money he’d been saving towards the cost of a motorbike. He hadn’t spent that much, as it turned out, but without his money they wouldn’t have been able to go at all. Meanwhile, Stepan put all the contents back into the suitcase and put it in the corner of the room. Then he turned his attention to the remaining suitcases.

The second, which yielded as easily as the first, contained several little parcels wrapped in white cloth. They were also signed with indelible pencil. Each parcel was marked with different initials, but the handwriting was the same.

‘Those aren’t your father’s,’ Igor said warily.

‘So what?’ answered Stepan, forcing a smile. ‘My father had a son, maybe this lot didn’t.’

Ripping one of the parcels open along the seam, Stepan pulled out a cardboard box. He shook it, but it didn’t make any noise. He opened it to find five antique gold pocket watches, carefully wrapped in handkerchiefs.

‘Choose one,’ Stepan said to Igor. He still had a furtive, scheming look about him, but he was noticeably more relaxed.

Igor froze. He didn’t know whether the gardener was genuinely offering him one of the watches or whether he was joking.

‘Go on, take that one,’ urged Stepan, prodding the largest watch.

Igor picked it up and opened the protective cover. The watch really was quite beautiful. He turned the little dial on the side and lifted the watch to his ear, but it was silent.

‘It’s not working,’ he said despondently.

‘So take it to a jeweller and get it fixed. Let’s see what else is in here…’ Stepan picked up the second parcel.

Igor was closely observing Stepan’s every move. He watched as the gardener opened the parcels one by one, taking out gold coins, signet rings set with precious stones and gold bracelets studded with emeralds. Once Stepan had familiarised himself with the contents of the second suitcase, he put everything back again.

Sensing that Stepan was sneaking sideways glances at him, Igor suddenly felt quite depressed. It was obvious that the treasure they’d found in Ochakov was really worth something. The contents of the suitcases were valuable enough for men to fight over, valuable enough to cost lives. Being in possession of, or even in proximity to, so much gold was potentially fatal in any era.

But when Stepan opened the final suitcase, his expression changed to one of bewilderment. Inside the suitcase lay a neatly folded old-fashioned police uniform, together with a pair of leather boots, a leather belt and a peaked cap. Stepan stuck his hand underneath the uniform and rummaged about in the depths of the suitcase. Suddenly he paused, his hands still hidden, a triumphant smile hovering about his lips – the smile of a child catching crayfish from the riverbank with his hands.

When Stepan finally took his hand out of the suitcase, he was holding a gun in a holster. Then he pulled out two bundles of Soviet banknotes, which looked enormous in comparison to the contemporary currency.

‘That’s it, then,’ he declared, with a sigh of disappointment. He threw both bundles of money back into the suitcase, on top of the uniform, and placed the gun and its holster down carefully alongside them. ‘You might as well have this lot. A little souvenir of our trip to Ochakov!’

Igor stared at the gardener. Does he really think he can buy me off with a moth-eaten old uniform and a broken watch? he thought. To be fair, the watch was probably worth more than he’d spent on their trip… But what about everything else they’d found? The contents of the first two suitcases must have been worth a fortune! And even if they split the bounty as Stepan had jokingly suggested, if Igor received only a third of what they’d found, that would still be a huge amount of money. Igor smiled and felt a rush of adrenalin.

But the gardener’s thin smile, which could easily have been mistaken for a grimace of pain, seemed to exude bitterness.

‘I’m going to go and lie down for a bit,’ whispered Igor.

‘Take it, take the suitcase. Don’t worry about the locks, I’ll fix those later.’

Igor took the suitcase containing the police uniform and the gun and went out into the yard without another word.

When his mother saw the suitcase, she clasped her hands together in surprise. ‘We used to have two like that at home, about fifty years ago. Did you buy it at a flea market?’

‘No, someone gave it to me,’ Igor answered curtly and slipped past her into his room.

The autumn evening fell early and surprisingly quickly, catching Igor unawares. They’d only got back that morning, and they didn’t seem to have spent that long examining the contents of the suitcases, but it was already getting dark. His arms were aching and he felt like yawning.

Without bothering to wait for the supper that his mother was already preparing, Igor made himself a sandwich. Then he went into his room and lay down on his bed. He was assaulted by exhaustion and thrown into a realm beyond normal sleep, a realm beyond dreams of any kind.

When the beef and vegetable casserole was ready and the potatoes were boiled Elena Andreevna looked into her son’s bedroom, but she couldn’t bring herself to wake him up. Noticing the gold pocket watch lying on a handkerchief on Igor’s bedside table, she picked it up and examined it with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. She gave a deep sigh.

Elena Andreevna didn’t want to sit and eat dinner by herself, so she decided to ask Stepan to join her. She put her shoes on and went out into the yard. She knocked a couple of times on the door to the shed and then opened it, coming face to face with a startled Stepan, who had clearly just got up from his bed.

‘I’ve made dinner, but Igor’s fallen asleep… Would you like to keep me company instead?’ she asked, looking directly into the gardener’s eyes.

‘Me?’ he asked, momentarily disconcerted, as though he’d been deep in thought and the invitation had been an unwelcome interruption. ‘Of course, it would be a pleasure. Thank you. I just need to lock up.’ He glanced around the room and his eyes fell on the shelf unit where he kept his things, and where all the tools were stored. He took a padlock from one of the shelves and put his jacket on.

Elena Andreevna watched, intrigued, as he closed the door carefully and padlocked it. She’d never seen him lock it before.

‘So, did you find any family in Ochakov?’ she asked, putting a plate of casserole and boiled potatoes on the table in front of Stepan.

‘Not quite,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But we found some people who remember them, which is something. And we found a few bits and pieces… things that used to belong to my father.’

‘You don’t say!’ exclaimed Elena Andreevna. ‘Someone kept them all that time?’

‘Indeed,’ nodded Stepan, wondering how best to change the subject. ‘So how are things here? What’s the latest?’

‘You’ve only been away for a couple of days.’ His landlady shrugged. ‘Nothing’s changed. Well, the kiosk near the station was robbed one night, and there was a fight near the Customs and Excise training academy, but that’s it really. Igor’s asleep… Should I wake him?’

‘No.’ Stepan waved his hand. ‘Let him sleep it off. Has he been out of work long?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Elena Andreevna.

‘Why? Can’t he find a job?’

‘He’s not even looking,’ sighed Elena Andreevna. ‘He had an accident when he was little. Five years old, he was. I told my husband to take him to the playground, but he met someone he knew and started chatting and Igor ran off towards the carousel. It was just slowing down, and one of the metal seats caught him on the head. He suffered what they call a closed head injury. He was in hospital for two months, and I never left his side. The doctor warned us to expect brain damage so we were prepared for the worst, but he ended up making a complete recovery… He just gets headaches every now and then. He was lucky. I spent years watching over him like a blade of grass, trying to protect him.

‘Then when he finished school I sent him out to find a job. One day he came home and said that he’d found one in a furniture factory, here in Irpen. He started leaving the house every morning, and he told me all about the job itself, what his friends were like, that kind of thing. He even brought some stools home once, said he’d been given them because they were slightly damaged. We’re sitting on them right now, in fact.’ Elena Andreevna paused and looked down at her stool. ‘About three months later, I needed to find him urgently during the day so I went to the address he’d mentioned, but there was no furniture factory there. Well, at first I wanted to challenge him about it, and then I decided I ought to take him to see a doctor, to a psychiatrist… In the end I just told him I hadn’t managed to find the factory, and he immediately stopped going. So, here we are. Things aren’t so bad – I get my pension money, and we manage to make ends meet…’ Elena Andreevna trailed off, lowering her eyes.

Now Stepan felt awkward too because the change in his landlady’s mood had been caused directly by his curiosity. But Elena Andreevna’s sadness didn’t last for long. She licked her dry lips, and when she looked up at the gardener her eyes were alive again.

‘Is the town pretty?’ she asked.

‘Ochakov? Not particularly. It was quite grey. It’s probably nice in the summer, but not now.’

Elena Andreevna offered Stepan a shot of vodka, but he politely declined.

‘Elena Andreevna, I’m going away this evening for a couple of days,’ he said after a pause. ‘It’s nothing to worry about – I’m just going to see some friends who live not far from here, on the way to Kiev. I’ll sort everything out in the garden and the vegetable patch as soon as I get back. We’ve got plenty of time to prepare for winter.’

‘Yes, there’s plenty of time,’ agreed Elena Andreevna.

She had the impression that something was bothering Stepan. He’d seemed tense over dinner. Elena Andreevna was pleased with her casserole – the meat and vegetables were particularly tender – but the gardener hadn’t said a word. On the other hand, he’d eaten everything on his plate and even scooped up the last of the gravy with his bread… Maybe he was the kind of man whose actions spoke louder than his words.