The Gardener from Ochakov

9

IGOR WOKE UP with a headache. His head wasn’t actually aching so much as buzzing, as though several bees had flown into it and were unsuccessfully trying to find their way out, bumping repeatedly into his temples, the back of his head and his forehead.

He opened his eyes and wiped a hand over his sweaty brow. He forced himself into an upright position and sat on the edge of his bed. Everything outside his window was grey, and he could hear the monotonous murmur of television voices from the living room.

‘Ma!’ called Igor, and immediately the sound of his own voice intensified the painful buzzing in his head.

Elena Andreevna looked into her son’s bedroom.

‘What’s up, son?’

‘Have we got any aspirin? I’ve got a splitting headache.’

‘Did you have too much to drink yesterday, or is it the old pains?’ asked his mother, with a mixture of disapproval and sympathy.

‘Too much to drink,’ Igor nodded.

She went into the kitchen, where they kept all their medicines in an old shoebox in the cupboard.

Igor stood up and walked over to the window, then turned and looked back into the room. His eyes fell on the police uniform, neatly folded in a pile, and the old-fashioned peaked cap.

That was a pretty strange dream! Or did it really happen? thought Igor.

He sighed and took a tracksuit out of his chest of drawers. As soon as he was dressed, he called Kolyan.

‘Hello there!’ Kolyan sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Listen,’ Igor said slowly, carefully choosing every word to try and avoid sounding stupid, ‘did I… did I turn up yesterday?’

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that!’ Kolyan burst out laughing. ‘Can you really not remember? Must have been a good night then! Of course you turned up. You were wearing some old military uniform and had obviously been drinking before you got there. You were really winding up the bouncers, you know! We managed to drag you away from them just in time. They wanted to throw you out, and it was chucking it down outside.’

‘Right, I see… What were we drinking, in the club?’

‘What weren’t we drinking! You were on the brandy, mainly. You must’ve had a bottle and a half, maybe even two… We had to flag a car down to take you home. You were in such a state, we gave the guy two hundred hryvnas. So you can pay me back when you get the chance!’

‘Right, I see,’ Igor repeated slowly. He couldn’t hear his own voice properly because of the buzzing in his head. ‘What happened before that?’

‘In Petrovich? You’re kidding! Can’t you remember any of it?’

‘No,’ admitted Igor. ‘And I’ve got a splitting headache.’

‘We were just drinking, having a laugh, dancing to old music…’

Igor suddenly felt the sharp, sour taste of cheap white wine on his tongue.

‘Did I drink any wine?’

‘Wine? Yeah, right at the start. You tried some French Chablis, then announced that it tasted like cheap vinegar and washed it down with some Armenian brandy.’

‘All right, I’ll call you again later,’ said Igor, with a weary sigh.

‘Take it easy, old man!’ Kolyan replied cheerfully.

Igor’s head was feeling calmer by the afternoon. His thoughts had finally gathered themselves into something resembling order. He went through his memories with a fine-toothed comb, searching for the slightest grain of truth or credibility. In the interests of soothing his agitated soul he was equally keen to find proof that it was merely the fruit of his drunken, and consequently overactive, imagination. But however many times he played back the evening’s events, however closely he examined the details, everything still felt incredibly real – and remarkably plausible. The watch that had suddenly started ticking and showing ‘Moscow time’, Vanya Samokhin, the Ochakov Wine Factory, the glass of white wine… And, perhaps most significantly, Vanya’s suggestion that Fima Chagin might be the reason a policeman from Kiev had been sent to Ochakov. The only thing on the other side of the scales of Igor’s common sense was the brandy he’d been drinking before Kolyan had called. Yes, and there was something else – the party in the Petrovich club in the Podil district! Igor couldn’t remember a thing about the birthday celebrations. He couldn’t remember where the club was, or even where he’d seen the poster advertising the ‘Retro Party’.

Igor put his hand into the pocket of the policeman’s breeches and took out the gold watch. He brought it to his ear. Silence. He opened it. The hands had stopped at half past one. Igor sighed, utterly perplexed. Exhausted by his own unanswered questions, he drank a cup of coffee then went out into the yard. The shed door was still shut and padlocked. Stepan was obviously still not back.

Sparse but heavy raindrops were falling from the sullen sky. When Igor looked up he saw a black storm cloud hanging low over Irpen, ready to unleash its contents at any moment, and he hurried back inside. The rain began hammering down on the slate roof the moment Igor entered the house.