by Oleg Pavlov
Pavel Pavlovich was content. ‘So he’s out of sight. Huh, could have brought us a hunk of bread… Well don’t hold your breath. You think he’ll bring it, seeing as he’s hungry himself?’ He looked Alyosha over with a smirk. Kholmogorov resembled a looter, in his moulting ochre coat, the corpse’s tunic missing its white lining at the collar, the lacquered orchestral boots, which were pointy like a pair of ladies’ heels. Pavel Pavlovich said in a melancholy singsong: ‘Hey, Commando, loosen up. So you’re wearing a dead man’s things; so what? You’re alive.’
Alyosha hovered at the entrance to the shed until the craftsman called him into the warmth and began talking to him as he shifted his coffins. It turned out that deep inside the workshop, sitting alone on a stool, there was another old man, bespectacled and beardless but in all other respects a wrinkly copy of the man who was single-handedly shifting the coffins. This man had the same shape of bald patch on his head and he too was dressed in a padded jacket with a number on the chest, but even without that, his entire physiognomy showed him to be a prisoner: he kept a grave and resolute silence, the kind that expresses either agreement with everything or complete denial and dissent. His lips were closed tight and puckered, as though he was about to spit. His plastic glasses were bulky and resembled fish bowls, and the cantankerous old man’s face had something of the aquarium about it too: his eyes were two colourless little minnows, his moody lips looked like a snail and his shaven cheeks were all wishy-washy. His lean, lonely figure was bent into a question mark so that his large balding head fell onto his puny chest. He was sitting like a schoolboy with his legs tucked under the stool and his elongated shrivelled hands on his knees. But when the bearded craftsman had finally picked out a coffin suitable in all respects, hugged it like a child and carried it over to the workbench, the prisoners began squabbling about God, whom the coffin maker kept on stubbornly bringing up – and the shed shook from the din.
‘Our homes, those little dens of ours, they’re full of fear. Oh, why did our dear mothers bring us into the world, may God forgive me, if all we’re ever doing is looking for a place to hide, trying to get back into that little den of ours… Amadei Domianovich, what do you make of it all?’
‘Disgraceful!’
‘If you say so, Amadei Domianovich. I bow to your fine intellect, the nobility of your soul and your squeaky-clean conscience, but it’s just your pride that’s talking, my love. You practically live here; you sit in the corner on that stool spitting at everything you see. I don’t know what it is you’re eaten up with. So we’ve done a lot of people in, well let’s at least try and rescue our own souls.’
The frail old man’s teary eyes flashed piercingly and he pursed his lips even harder and more disgustedly than before. At that moment, the coffin maker turned around, looking straight ahead, and banged into Alyosha. They found themselves so close to each other that it was as if they were comparing heights: the burly old man barely came up to Kholmogorov’s shoulder. Cutting straight through his forehead was a scar that looked as though it had been gashed out by a giant chisel. The man’s diminutive size and the close-up sight of this tender-as-a-baby scar made Kholmogorov’s heart ache with involuntary pity. The craftsman looked up in surprise and immediately marvelled, his face brightening and opening up: ‘Oh what a strapping young man! Seeing as you’re so big, you can give us a hand. My assistant’s gone on strike, you see, but don’t get the wrong idea, son – there are only one or two minds like him on the entire planet. They brought him to me from the barracks as a scraggy little body wanting a coffin. The doctor had certified his death. I began putting him in the casket – when suddenly he was alive! He looked at me like a saint, all disapproving, then he puckered his lips and spat right in my eye. I don’t know what kind of force was at work, but it just so happened, miracle upon miracle: the guards got tired and popped outside. Right, so I quickly slipped some bricks into the coffin, nailed down the lid and hid Amadei Domianovich in another coffin I had here – and I nursed him back from the brink till he’d mended. This whole time he wasn’t talking to me; all he’d do was look at me like he was wagging his finger. He wore me to a frazzle, I confessed all my meanness to him. Later, though, he found his voice. And how finicky he was! I fed him with a spoon, and he’d only have warm food, so I gave him warm herring – a delicate constitution. When he was pulling through, I tried to drive it home: you’ve been through death, you should consider yourself blessed with eternal life; now stay here in this coffin, live and rejoice! But he wouldn’t have any of it, too proud he was… He sat on that stool in the corner and refused, so in the end we got spotted and they added to his sentence and he’ll never get out now. They treated it not as an attempted escape but as making preparations for an escape. But I’m happy: me and Amadei Domianovich, we’re birds of a feather. I’d be lost without his opinions, like a lid without a coffin. No question about it, we’re like soulmates. If it hadn’t been for me, he’d have rotted in the ground ages ago, but because of me he’s risen from the dead!’
Kholmogorov had the sensation that he had experienced all this before – both this kindly old man with his broad forehead and the very same story about a man who was dead and suddenly came back to life. The coffin maker called him over to help: ‘Hold the coffin for me, son, while I nail the fabric to it. Hold it nice and tight and turn it the way I tell you.’
The lids for the coffins lining the walls had been taken off and slipped like coats or jackets over the caskets’ shoulders. Alyosha began to grasp that he was helping the craftsman and his face lit up: ‘Tomorrow, Granddad, I’ll be catching the train and going home. I’ve done my fighting…’
‘And what war was that, son, that you were fighting in?’
‘One where they were firing at me with assault rifles, sniper rifles and RPGs!’
‘Well then, God bless you, keep up the fight. Now, can you turn it on its side. Ugh… Look at the cloth they’ve given me. You can’t stretch it taut: it needs darning.’
Before their eyes, the smooth-planed stray boards that had been knocked together were swaddled in red fabric. The craftsman gently strewed the bottom of the coffin with shavings which he scooped up from right beneath the workbench. He ripped an old white bed sheet in half, fiddled about with it, hammered it in place, and Alyosha saw within the coffin something resembling a featherbed that was raised at the head. But the moment the last nail had been driven in and the remaining folds smoothed out, the coffin became lifeless and all the good work done by human hands took on a different cast: the quilt of shavings on the floor of the coffin grew stony; the beautiful smoothness of the cloth began to torment the eye.
The craftsman went out and, a few minutes later, returned with a trolley carrying a long box made of dull metal that looked like a large trough. He lowered the still empty coffin into this box as though into a pit. ‘Amadei Domianovich, can you get us a fire started, stoke up some embers, while we put this new one into his coffin. Well, what can you do? He won’t say anything – he’s on strike! All right then, I’ll do it myself, and you, love, can go and call one of the guards. Tell them Pankraty Afanasevich wants them. They need to come and inspect what we’re putting in the coffin. Ugh, I wouldn’t mind jumping in there myself, God forgive me… And can you give your boss a shout, the client, wherever he’s got to. There’s still a packet of tea owing from him!’
Pavel Pavlovich set off to find the head of the infirmary. But he couldn’t have given a hoot about listening to people, going anywhere or doing anything: slipping his hands deep into the pockets of his padded jacket as though feeling chilly, he casually went off into the drab haze, like a sailor pacing about on deck. The prison camp – hungry for human lives, bristling with row upon iron row of barbed wire and cut through with narrow paths spread so thickly with gravel that as his boots trod on them, they twisted in with a crunch like screws – did not frighten Pavel Pavlovich. It didn’t even jangle his nerves, which were suddenly as muffled as the gravel beneath him. He soon returned a
nd in a strikingly different mood. He was greedily and rapturously gnawing on a large firm green apple. As he did so, he was wincing and clacking his teeth; the apple was so sour that he even sucked in his cheeks. But he tolerated it – and he chewed and chewed, clearly delighted. ‘I put my hand in my pocket, and there was this apple! It was like it dropped from the heavens into my pocket! Must be about three years since I last saw an apple close up. You don’t believe me? I swear on a loaf of bread!’ he burbled loudly with his mouth crammed full, acting as though he’d gone deaf. ‘Here, go on! Take a bite, you skin-and-bones! It’ll bring you luck… Take a bite, it ain’t stolen!’ And he bossily thrust the fresh juicy half-eaten apple at Alyosha. Kholmogorov smiled, so as not to offend, but, dodging the apple, he offered a cheek instead of his mouth and so the fruit slid across his face, leaving a damp and oddly pink frothy trail. Pavel Pavlovich had bloodied his mouth. Perhaps he had bitten his lip or his gums were bleeding. He laughed indulgently at himself when he realised that he had injured himself on an apple, and that very instant in one slick movement he drew from inside his boot something resembling a knife: it was an iron spike that had been flattened and sharpened, around the size of a pencil.
A short distance from the shed, already puffing and belching smoke into the wind, was a hot fire that had been kindled in a tin tub, posing no risk to the workshop. Pavel Pavlovich squatted down a short distance away and warmed himself by the fire, slicing almost transparent slivers from the half-eaten apple and blissfully popping them into his mouth.
In the tub where the neatly hacked chunks of wood were charring nicely, two weighty homemade soldering irons were heating away: iron rods with flat-irons welded to their ends. The coffin maker was stoking the seething fire with the iron that was not yet glowing, as he knowingly drew in the air with his rosy nose.
His thoughts, though, were not so much on the fire as on the drink that he was simultaneously preparing: hanging over the fire like a monkey was a sooty tin can holding on by its tail, its lid bent over the rim of the tub; inside it bubbled a tarry brew of thick narcotic-strength tea. It was beginning to steam, warming and delighting the craftsman’s lively, tender eyes. ‘There’s nothing worse than being condemned as scrap, going to waste as good-for-nothing material. When the carpenter’s found a use for you and the herbalist has too, then your time on earth keeps stretching on,’ he said, as though singing the fire a lullaby.
‘Sometimes I might pick up a rotten plank, and I’ll be all wrapped up in myself. Then I’ll think, “No, don’t worry, I won’t abandon you without finding some use for you. No matter how rotten you are, I’ll get some woodchips out of you and boil up some chifir tea.”’
‘I like the smell of that smoke,’ Pavel Pavlovich said to the craftsman. He swiped his jacket sleeve across lips that were sour perhaps from blood, perhaps from the apple he’d eaten, and held his calloused grey-blue hands to the fire. The sadness in his voice had a clean and simple ting to it, like glass.
‘Smells good? Then be my guest. Let’s down a gulp of this stuff to mellow out, we’ve time for a quick one.’
‘No, no, I’m clean now. The old discipline was getting a bit lax, so I’ve tightened things up; now I just stick to dried-fruit drinks. What’s that you were saying about planks? You reckon even rot can be of benefit if you put your heart into it? So where is that benefit? And who here has any heart? You’re saying people will just roll over like those woodchips and let you reap benefit from them? Like hell. Every man, every living soul is like a splinter. We don’t know how to forgive and let go, and even if we did, others wouldn’t drop their grudges against us – it’s just the way life is. Oh, the road is long! You can try to leave but you’ll never escape. Then again, any time and any place you can come unstuck and drop from view. I wouldn’t mind dropping from view myself… Turning up somewhere totally new. Ploughing the land? Or forging iron? Yeah, I can do all that. It’s all the same to me: factory or farm, they need drivers everywhere, and I’m a top-notch driver. I’m just mad about the road. Ha! Now that’s a lie, I couldn’t enjoy it if I wanted to. Work is a beast. Everywhere is the same: you spend your time buggering off, chasing the four winds.’ Then he spoke more softly, as though having a good grumble: ‘Nobody likes me.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘I mean all those people banding together, when you’re on your own in the world. People are a force. People can do whatever they want to you.’
‘But why don’t they like you?’ the coffin maker asked in surprise.
‘Because I don’t like them, but I’m rubbish at pretending, and I don’t want to apologise. And just for that, people won’t let you live in peace,’ he answered. ‘But the thing is I don’t like myself; every day I’m revolted by my own stench. I’ll never learn to like it. And I’m revolted by fear. See, I always do the things that make me frightened. On principle. So that I can be stronger than my fear.’
They were approached by some guards: two unarmed soldiers who had been sent by the guard commander in his place. The tall Central Asian one could not understand that he was nobody’s boss – perhaps with the exception of his small and grubby fellow guard, who respectfully kept his distance, enabling him both to be of service and to dodge any clips round the ear – and he looked about the place with a solemn expression. ‘Eh, who are you?’ For reasons known only to himself, he instantly decided to pick on Alyosha. ‘Go, you go away… Understand, eh?’
Pavel Pavlovich bared his teeth. ‘What you goggling at, you bastard? Can’t recognise fellow soldiers when you see them?’
‘What’s up with you?’ shouted the craftsman. ‘So he’s decided to act flash, but then the man’s landed himself some power, how could he not gloat about it? Though it’s not like one of life’s big shots has turned up, is it? Take a look at him… When he was a wee nipper in his village I bet he never ate his fill and all he had to bring him joy was the blue sky above! So now he goes strutting about like a rooster… And let him, why not, he’s not doing any harm! Well, no need to answer him back; we can make way, step aside for him – now where’s the harm in that? You’d let a small kid go on ahead, you wouldn’t take offence if he stamped his little foot. So show him pity like you would a child, if you’re the one who’s stronger. And if you’re weaker, like I am, then give him some respect, ennoble him!’
Pavel Pavlovich took all this in and became cool-headed and stern. ‘Nobody touches Alyosha when I’m around. The only person here who can tell me what to do is him,’ he said as forcefully as though he could decree who would live and who would die.
By now the Central Asian guard was frightened and began making submissive gestures – he offered his hand in a brotherly way and mumbled something emotional. Changing the troubled tone of the conversation, the craftsman got back to the business at hand and brought up the subject of the missing head of the infirmary. His sighing over the fragrant tarry chifir tea, bubbling away with its promise of warmth and rest and gratuitous joy, gave way to a fear of being frozen to the spot. He flew into a flurry of ant-like activity, forcing the guards to take their places at the zinc trough and Alyosha and Pavel Pavlovich to fetch the body.
The woollen blanket that had hidden the unlovely cargo throughout the journey had been stripped away, crumpled up and shoved in a corner reeking of petrol.
They brought out the stretcher and in a flash they were back in the barn, having run nimbly as though it were raining and they were shivering with impatience to shelter. Everything they did felt effortless and liberating, their load did not weigh down their arms and the sight of it did not prey on their minds. As Alyosha hugged the body by the legs at the other end, he felt a surprising fluidity and airiness. Afterwards they all paused, realising that some kind of final and important moment had arrived for the stranger’s dead body. ‘Look how skinny he is, the clothes have gone all baggy on him,’ the craftsman said with a sigh. Pavel Pavlovich grew quiet and wistful. ‘I know they’re a bit big, but they’re new and only been
worn twice,’ said Kholmogorov, suddenly feeling guilty. The craftsman did not catch his drift. ‘Yes, he’s really withered. It means he was a good man. The good ones, see, they dry out and they might be dead but they don’t give any stench, they just smell of straw.’ He paused, noticing the plaster patch and realising it hid a fatal mark on the forehead. ‘I see he’s had more than his fair share of suffering. May God give his soul sanctuary. So that’s how it is… Why did he have to go and do that, the poor dear? He must have lost all hope and faith.’
‘Ah, but maybe he didn’t put a bullet in his forehead all by himself? Maybe he was helped by someone higher ranking… Maybe it was even your God that did it! Or the guy might have been dead set against it – he was aiming for the sky but hit his forehead? I can smell a rat, oh what a rat… Huh, what am I saying! I can’t just smell it – I know it. See, I know something that your God doesn’t know, or that He’s pretending not to know. I know it and I’m keeping my gob shut. Because each to his own. Every man for himself. Because that’s how it has to be. But I’m not God. You know who is, though? The guy who pulled the trigger – he’s God, because he has drawn the curtains on a life,’ said Pavel Pavlovich.
‘Now where’s your boss got to? Forever hurrying, tells me to do the job within the hour, the next minute he’s vanished in a puff of smoke,’ said the coffin maker.
‘He’ll come running back when all the hard work’s done; he’s got a sixth sense for it – that’s why he’s the boss.’
‘So it’s farewell and God bless, then?’
‘Too right it is. You’ve got a way with the bosses, like a wolf sussing out a sheep’s hide, so why didn’t you climb your way to the top? Too frightened, eh? Well then, Mukhin, so long! Afraid you lost in this life, sucker.’
‘He’s called Mukhin, as in “flies”? Then flies must run in the blood! The poor dear must have had family who flew around the place or buzzed about like pests. All of us living in God’s bosom, we’re flying around the place like flies, and the spot where the Grim Reaper wallops us becomes our heaven.’
