The Good Angel of Death

by Andrey Kurkov

  But at that moment it was quiet in the storeroom, and the only rat I had seen that evening had virtually tiptoed across the floor, moving silently and quietly.

  I clicked the switch to change channels and found myself halfway through a martial arts movie. I started staring at the screen and realised that one and a half films would be enough before I went to sleep.

  The phone rang again.

  ‘Hello?’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Can I speak to Victor Ivanovich?’

  ‘You have the wrong number,’ I replied calmly, without taking my eyes off the fight on the screen.

  ‘Well, who can I speak to?’ the woman asked gaily.

  ‘Is that some kind of joke?’

  ‘Listen, you!’ a harsh man’s voice suddenly said in the earpiece. ‘I don’t give a damn what your name is . . . If you want to stay alive, open your door and scram, quick. Got that?’

  I instinctively put the receiver down and immediately switched off the television.

  The silence allowed me to gather my thoughts. I realised there had been a reason for Grishchenko’s call. There was something going on there, outside the storeroom. But as long as I was inside, I had nothing to be afraid of.

  Even so, I was frightened. It actually seemed rather odd that just the night before I had been hit over the head with a spade, and what had I been doing? Digging up a grave, even if I was using someone else’s hands to do it. And I hadn’t been afraid. But now this was a quite different matter. Here I was sitting in a room like a fortress, but I was afraid.

  I shrugged and listened a while. It was quiet.

  A minute later the phone rang again, I picked it up and put it straight back down. It started again. This time I raised the receiver to my ear.

  ‘Kolya! Is that you?’ Grishchenko wheezed hoarsely.

  ‘Sure . . . What’s going on?’

  ‘Don’t open up for anyone! They’re scum! I’ll come round in the morning! Goodbye!’

  And he hung up.

  I laid the receiver on the desk, thinking that I’d had enough telephone chatter for one night.

  While I was dozing on the chairs lined up against the wall, someone knocked on the door. Loudly and aggressively.

  I lay on my back without moving, feeling tense. Just lay there waiting for silence. It came after about twenty minutes. But I was restless all night.

  8

  SHORTLY AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK, feeling shattered after a sleepless night and all the shocks to my nerves, I made some tea and switched on the television. I performed all my actions very cautiously and quietly, at the same listening for activity from the street outside. Of course, not much sound penetrated into the baby-food depot. I could hear cars driving past. Then one of them drove up and fell silent somewhere close by – as far as I knew, there was another storeroom on the other side of the wall, but I didn’t know what was on the upper floors of the building.

  I drank tea and waited for nine o’clock – the time when Grishchenko usually came. Nine o’clock soon arrived. An advertisement for toothpaste appeared on the television and I turned it off, as if that could speed up the passage of time.

  But Grishchenko didn’t come. I looked at the pieces of paper weighted down against the top of the desk by a sheet of plexiglas – business cards, some kind of waybill. There was also a list of the phone numbers of all the nightwatchmen, including me, and at the bottom was Grishchenko’s own number. I phoned him, but no one answered at the other end.

  At ten o’clock I began feeling uncomfortable. I walked round the storeroom a few times, glancing at those cardboard boxes. I started thinking about the commotion during the night that had left me with a slight headache. Why would anyone break in here? Surely not for out-of-date baby food?

  I went up to one incomplete pile and put the top box down on the floor.

  After overcoming my qualms, I tore off the sticky tape with which it was sealed along the joint and glanced inside. The box was full of tin cans with blue labels showing some foreign infant smiling light-heartedly and rather stupidly. I picked one of them up and shook it. I heard some heavy mass shifting up and down like flour – the can was not full, but there was nothing particularly surprising about that.

  I carried the can back to the desk and plugged the electric kettle in again. Glancing at the label, I realised that the can contained infant milk formula. I felt a sudden desire to drink coffee with milk. I had instant coffee, and I had dried milk.

  I opened the can, tipped some yellowish-white powder out of it into my cup, added a spoonful of ‘Nescafe’ and then poured in the boiling water.

  After I took a few sips I immediately started feeling better, my tiredness disappeared and my mood improved. I’d never tasted coffee with milk like this before, and I immediately had the criminal idea of taking home several cans of the infant formula. It might be out of date for children, but it was just right for coffee.

  After that cup of coffee I lay back down on the row of chairs, no longer thinking about the events of the night, or about Grishchenko, who had still not shown up. I felt a strange sensation come over me, as if I were flying, and in a couple of minutes I was soaring through a boundless space full of bright colours and fantastic shapes. Meteorites went rushing by, some yellow, some red; comets swirled past, leaving convoluted, fiery tails fading in their wake. My body obeyed my thoughts with ease – I only had to think that I needed to turn right in order to avoid a collision with some flying object and my body was already turning right. It was the first time I had ever experienced the unity of soul and body so distinctly, and my body itself felt weightless, it was no burden, it was light and easy to control. It didn’t require any effort, it didn’t require any work by the muscles. I was flying, and I didn’t even look back at the earth that I had left far below. By this time it must already have been lost to view among dozens of other small heavenly bodies.

  9

  MY FLIGHT LASTED for at least two full days. And when I ‘landed’ and found myself in my original position, lying on my back on the row of chairs set against the wall, the first thing I wanted to do was scream out loud. Apart from a feeling of savage hunger, my entire body was racked with pain, filled with a stiffness that was transmitted directly from my bones and joints to my thoughts and emotions. With a struggle, I raised my hand to my face and looked at my watch. It said half past one. And the first question that came into my mind was: Which ‘half past one’ is that? Night-time or daytime? To find out, I had to get up, open the door and look outside – to see if it was light yet. However, this extremely simple decision proved difficult to put into effect. I managed to sit up on one of the chairs, but that triggered such a searing wave of pain in my waist that I immediately lay back down in my original position. About five minutes later, I repeated the attempt, and with an effort of will like I’d never made before, I remained in the sitting position, despite the pain. I began slowly moving my arms, performing micro-exercises, tensing the muscles and stretching the joints. I finally got to my feet about an hour and a half later. I stood there for a while, feeling slightly dizzy. I took my first steps – towards the office desk. Eventually I sat down on that desk, staring stupidly at the phone with its receiver off the hook and lying beside the electric kettle. Looking at the phone awoke the memory of that sleepless night. I also remembered that soothing cup of coffee with ‘milk’, and my gaze shifted to the can of ‘infant formula’.

  ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘it’s more like rocket fuel than dried milk.’

  After sitting there for while, I went across to the metal door and listened. Outside it there was silence. ‘So,’ I thought, ‘that means it’s night . . . Now what am I going to do?’

  Should I sit here until morning? Or try to slip out straight away? Yes, and why hadn’t anyone come here for the last two days? After all, Grishchenko had the keys! But then even with the keys he wouldn’t have been able to get in – the door was locked from the inside with two bolts. Only I could have opened them, but in a certain sense,
I hadn’t been there to do it. Maybe he had come and knocked, tried to phone . . .

  Anxiety began invading my thoughts. Being inside that storeroom made me feel like someone who had been buried alive in a crypt. But, of course, I could leave this tomb. I just needed to be lucky enough to get out of the place without being noticed and forget everything, as if my flight through space had never happened. But my flight had happened. I could remember it in the most minute detail, and if I had been an artist I could have drawn some of the meteorites and comets I had encountered in the void.

  There was a small mirror hanging on the wall above the sink and I went across to it to rinse my eyes and take a look at myself. My face reminded me of newsreel footage from Auschwitz. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but I had never seen such huge greyish-blue circles under my eyes before or my nose looking so sharp, like a dead man’s.

  I washed my face with cold water and went back to the desk. With some squeamishness I ate the healthy sausage sandwich that I had brought with me. The bread had turned as tough as wood, and the sausage was as far from being fresh as I was from feeling satisfied.

  I switched on the electric kettle and looked at the jar of instant coffee again, and then – automatically – at the ‘infant formula’.

  ‘No,’ I thought, ‘we’ll leave the coffee alone for a while – one more flight like that and I’ll die of physical exhaustion.’

  I brewed myself some tea. I looked at my watch – it was five to four. And it was quiet. Not even the rats were giving any sign of their presence.

  After finishing my tea, I put three cans of the ‘dried milk’ into my bag. Why did I take them with me? Perhaps I wanted to shoot off into orbit again sometime. Then I went across to the door, listened again and, when I didn’t hear anything, cautiously drew back the heavy iron bolts. After that I paused, then I opened the door a little and the fresh night air came rushing in through the narrow gap – it was pleasantly cool, like a gin and tonic with ice.

  ‘Right, I’m off!’ I said to encourage myself, opening the door wider and slipping through the gap. Then I closed the door just as quietly, took out a key and turned it in the lock. The heavy lock grated softly. I put the key away in my trouser pocket, hunched over and set off on tiptoe along the wall of the building. When I had almost reached the corner, someone suddenly switched on a car’s headlights and the beam of light struck me on the back. I jerked forward as fast as I could, flung myself round the corner and started to run, without bothering to head left or right into the darkness. I heard a motor start up, and at one point I even thought the sound of it was overtaking me, but when I finally stopped, panting hard, everything was quiet.

  ‘I got away!’ I thought delightedly, but I couldn’t manage a smile.

  Not only had I got away, I had brought a bag with three cans of dried milk in it. I hadn’t dropped it, despite the horror inspired by the real or imaginary pursuit.

  And once again, when I got back to my new flat by the light of early dawn, I started the day by washing my clothes and taking a bath.

  After soaking myself thoroughly and finally restoring my wits, I felt the pangs of profound hunger even more keenly and I didn’t even bother to dress before I left the bathroom. I just rubbed myself down with the towel and went straight to the kitchen. In the fridge I found a tail end of healthy sausage, a can of sprats and a well-chilled piece of black bread. As my stomach was gradually filled with food, I began feeling the cold. It wasn’t really cold in the flat, but my body was evidently adjusting to the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere after two days in orbit.

  Before I drank the tea I threw on my dressing gown. In the dressing gown even the tea tasted sweeter. The sensation of comfort somehow enlivened me and I was already glancing in the direction of the windowsill, where Gershovich’s manuscript was lying in its grey-green folder. I looked at it differently now, after my unexpected adventures. But my interest in the thoughts and ideas of the deceased amateur philosopher had not faded. If anything, quite the opposite.

  I leafed through the manuscript, but I didn’t have the strength to struggle with the small handwriting. And then I remembered that my black bag with the three cans of dried milk was lying in the corridor of the flat. I brought the cans into the kitchen and put them in the tiny locker. After all, whatever they had inside them, it was certainly very edible!

  Then I went to bed, obeying the summons of my body, which was tired after all the flying.

  The next day came, fresh and sunny. And to my delight, I woke early, at about seven. I brewed some coffee.

  ‘Well now,’ I thought, ‘no job any more. And whatever it was that happened there, I’m not interested. It’s not worth risking my life.’

  I raised the little cup of coffee to my lips with an aesthetic gesture. I held it balanced there to catch the aroma of arabica, but my nostrils were assailed by the stubborn smell of cinnamon, which returned me to a state of perplexity. Yet again the smell of my hand had overpowered the smell of coffee.

  I shook my head. I took a gulp of coffee. Its taste was the real thing, rich.

  ‘Life is for living!’ I thought (optimistic thoughts are usually quite stupidly banal). I was never going to be a teacher of history. That was such a thankless job! I would have to look for another job as a watchman. I was in good health – after eight years of swimming and three years of fencing. That made some kind of impression on employers. If only I could find work one night in three again. So that there would be time left for solving philosophical riddles. Life ought to provide pleasure – unto each according to his needs.

  Outside the window the spring sun was shining and I could hear booming fragments of phrases from a megaphone – there was yet another rally taking place on St Sophia’s Square.

  I felt like going out for a walk. I left the house and walked past the people involved in the rally, who had red-and-black UNA-UNSO flags flapping above their heads. A man with a long grey moustache that drooped almost below his chin was standing on a truck, exhorting them to do something or other. I didn’t want to listen to him – the shifting moods of large masses of people don’t really interest me very much. Politics is only the building material of contemporary history, something like cement. Once you get stuck in it, you’re finished! They’ll trample you down in it and then dig you up again – and you’ll wind up as an exhibit in some godforsaken provincial history museum.

  I walked between the truck and the crowd, whose attention was completely focused on the orator. As I passed by I noticed several irritated glances in my direction. Probably because I was just walking by, showing no interest in joining in their great vigil. But though I feel sympathy for all who suffer and value any sense of purpose in people, just as long as they don’t hang themselves or kill anyone else, sympathy was as far as my feelings for such people went. To offer them more than sympathy would be dangerous for me. I loved myself and my freedom, and in my relations with women I preferred passion to love – passion was more powerful, it was not subject to any rules, and it disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared.

  The orator with the megaphone carried on yelling behind me for a long time, but by the time I reached Opera Prospect, I had forgotten about him. I walked down on to Kreshschatik Street. Took a stroll. Dropped into a cafe.

  Topped up the caffeine in my blood.

  10

  AFTER SITTING AT the table in the cafe for fifteen minutes, I continued my aimless stroll. Of their own accord, my feet led me to the garden square by the university. It was obviously not a ‘club day’. There were only two old men on one bench, playing draughts without any spectators.

  When I stopped to look down at them, I noticed that a strange couple also stopped about five metres behind me – a thin-faced young guy with a black moustache and an equally thin-faced woman with black hair. The guy was smoking a pipe. For an instant our glances met and I caught a glimpse of tension and hostility in his narrowed eyes.

  ‘Maybe I just imagined it?’ I thought, wond
ering what I could have done to upset them.

  I turned back towards the two men playing draughts and gazed obtusely at the board, forgetting about the couple. When I looked round five minutes later, they were no longer there.

  Soon I set off back home – the stroll had refreshed me and improved my mood.

  As I walked along Vladimirskaya Street, people from the rally that had just finished came towards me. It was like running into drift ice, but there weren’t very many of them, so I manoeuvred my body carefully and avoided any unnecessary contact.

  As I was approaching the doorway of my building I caught something suspicious out of the corner of my eye. Looking round, I saw the same dark-haired couple again on the other side of the street. They had clearly been watching me, but when I glanced back, they turned away sharply.

  Puzzled, I walked in through the doorway.

  At home I sat down in an armchair and started thinking. Peace of mind gradually came to me.

  Most likely it was just a chance coincidence – things like that happen to me, walking round town and bumping into a man with an unforgettable face three or four times. No doubt he takes me for someone else, and I myself start trying to guess why he’s following me. The important thing was that this couple didn’t look like bandits, or drug dealers, so they couldn’t have anything to do with what had happened at the ‘baby food’ storeroom.

  11

  THAT NIGHT I was woken by the phone ringing. ‘Do you hear me, arsehole?’ the unpleasantly hoarse man’s voice said, irrupting into my sleepy head. ‘You were asked to leave, but no one asked you to lock the door behind you! Now you owe us ten grand for the extra hassle. Someone will be coming to you for the greenbacks in exactly one week. If you can’t get them together, that’s your problem. We’ll take your flat instead.’