The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

22

TANYA FLEW OUT OF THE HOUSE AND RAN ALMOST AS FAR as the Savelovsky train station, then veered off to the right, then to the left, passing through a confusion of alleyways and courtyards, and stopping to look around only at the back entrance to the Minaevsky Market: a dilapidated wooden counter they’d not yet burned and mountains of market trash—everything from rotten vegetables to broken glass.

The sun blazed with its last presunset force. Both her tears and her rage had subsided. Tanya sat down alongside a shed. Nearby three boys of about age seven were playing cards. One of them had a cleft lip; the second—a stump instead of a right hand; and the third, more or less normal, had a face full of enormous pimples. They slammed their cards and cursed. Tanya felt awkward even looking in their direction. In the opposite direction sat a pair of drunks. These unimaginably filthy and strangely joyful beings were dressed too warmly for the summer, in sweat pants and winter shoes that were splitting into parts. Their gender was indeterminable. An empty bottle stood between them. They felt good. A gray loaf of bread and a piece of processed cheese lay on some cardboard, and their satisfaction veritably streamed above them in a pink cloud. They looked at Tanya and exchanged words.

One of the indeterminate beings beckoned to Tanya, and when she set off in their direction, extracted an unopened bottle of cheap wine from a scruffy bag and winked . . .

Their woolen ski hats of a color faded by dirt were pulled over their foreheads so that their hair was not visible, and only after peering at them more closely was Tanya able to determine from the unshaven face of the smaller one that he was a person of the male gender.

“Come on, I’ll pour you some,” one invited Tanya. Now it became clear that the second creature was a woman.

Her face was pitted, and the shadow of an old bruise lay beneath one eye.

Tanya stepped closer. The woman painstakingly wiped a glass with her black hand and poured almost to the top. Tanya took the glass and drank to the bottom. The woman chuckled with satisfaction.

“Ain’t it the truth: he say you woun’t, but I say nawbody don’t say naw!”

Tanya felt like the object of an experiment and laughed joyfully in reply. The wine seemed very tasty, hit her immediately, and for the first time since she had walked out the door of the laboratory a week ago she experienced a sense of relief . . .

“Kind of you, it’s very good wine.” Tanya thanked them, returning the glass.

The drunken woman started. “Dawn’t you drink naw wine, girl!”

She spoke a dialect not from Moscow, with strong “aw” instead of “o.”

“I don’t really drink,” Tanya responded. The man, who had seemed good-natured at first, for some reason turned surly.

“Yah, we know how you don’t drink. Chugged down the whole damn glass without chokin’.”

“Pay naw ’tention to him, he a fool.” The woman winked again, but her companion grew even surlier, slowly pulled out his bluish hand, tried to form it into a fist, but couldn’t—his swollen fingers would not bend and just stuck out to the sides—and thrust it under the woman’s nose . . .

With an unexpected coquettishness she slapped him on the hand.

“Aw, I’m scared now!”

“Watch out or I’ll teach you a lesson . . . ,” he threatened.

“Here,” the woman pulled back in reconciliation and with nimble hand filled the dirty glass and handed it to the little man.

“That’s more like it!” He took the glass with his gnarled hand and drank. Then with a pensive, slow movement he placed the empty glass alongside the untouched food and turned to Tanya.

“Whaddya sittin’ there for: go get some more.”

Tanya obediently got up.

“Of what?”

“Of what!” he teased. “Fine champagne! Get whatever you have enough money for . . . You know where to go? All the stores are closed; you need to go to the wooden house.”

First Tanya bought a bottle of dry Gurdzhaani, but her choice turned out to be wrong, and the little man flayed his arms in indignation. They still drank it, though. Then, almost not making it, just before the kiosk closed, she went back and bought two more bottles of port wine, which turned out to be exactly right. Between the Gurdzhaani and the port a militiaman showed up and chased them all off. They settled down not far away in a cozy blind corner of the courtyard overgrown with burdock between three crumbling structures for which the word “building” would have been a misnomer . . .

Grace streamed down upon them. The couple no longer paid particular attention to Tanya. Over the entire time, except for interjections, the little man uttered only three articulate words: “Summer’s good. Warm . . .”

A luminous bathhouse sweat poured over their filthy faces from under their wool ski caps, while the summer day lingered. This was neither laziness nor idleness, but repose.

For all of her almost twenty years Tanya had never found herself in so happy a place, where work, cares, duty, and haste had been annulled. This alcoholic couple possessed such a wealth of freedom that they could share it with Tanya.

The woman took off her shoes, egesting her filthy bare feet from the remains of her foot rags. Spreading her legs, she set her feet into the warm grass. It felt good . . . Then she took a couple of steps to the side and dropped her pants. Her backside gleamed with an unexpected whiteness. The man commented serenely on the event:

“Piss, bitch . . .”

Then he got the urge himself. He stood up, rolled back the elastic of multiple pairs of sweat pants, and pulled out his tiny tackle. The burdock shook under his healthy stream.

Tanya felt good, better and better as her inebriation increased, until she finally fell asleep right there in the shade of the soaked burdocks.

She was awakened after dark by an acute attack of nausea. She did not immediately realize where she was. She tried to move. She got up on her knees. She vomited violently. Then she wiped her mouth with a piece of rough burdock leaf. The couple was gone. She had to make her way out of there. She moved and was once again overcome by nausea. This time the vomiting spurted violently, and it seemed as if her stomach were ripping apart. Having emptied her stomach, she set out across dark courtyards illuminated only by the weak light of windows. She crossed one, then another, then a third. A tram clanged not far away, and she headed toward its recognizable music. The street was familiar. Tikvinskaya. Quite close to her house.

She felt better again, as if something wonderful had happened to her. Oh, the vagrants . . . Nice people free of all cares . . .

How wonderfully simple life is! I did something to myself . . . Snip! Snip! No more. No more pregnant rats, hydrocephalus, or developing capillaries!

A serene tranquility came over Tanya, the heavenly moment of contentedness and joy that had shone over the drunken pair of vagrants . . .