The Good Angel of Death

by Andrey Kurkov

  The colonel took a watch on a leather strap out of the pocket of his denim jacket and wound it. He pulled up the jacket’s rather long sleeve and glanced at his own watch.

  ‘So which watch shall we set our time from?’ he asked. ‘The idealist’s?’ He lifted up the watch with the leather strap on his open palm. ‘As you can see, the idealist left the world of the living a long time ago, but his watch is still ticking! Or the pragmatist’s?’ He glanced down at his left hand.

  We said nothing. I don’t know what Petro was thinking about at that moment, but my own thoughts were circling somewhere far away, over Kiev. And I wanted to join them there. ‘Everything will work out just fine,’ I told myself firmly. ‘I just have to wait a while.’

  ‘One more minute, and I’ll make the decision!’ the colonel said in a chilly voice.

  ‘All right,’ Petro said with a heavy sigh, ‘we’ll talk on equal terms.’

  ‘Look at that,’ I thought in relief. ‘Crude force has conquered . . . or, as they used to say: “Friendship has triumphed!”’

  I chuckled and the colonel, noticing my chuckle, gave a smile too.

  He reached into his plywood crate and took out a fancy green bottle. He got to his feet.

  ‘I have not deceived you in any way,’ he said, speaking calmly now, and unscrewed the cap of the bottle. ‘Your health!’ He took a sip from the mouth of the bottle and held it out to me.

  I looked at the label – it really was Vietnamese balsam.

  A sticky warmth spread through my mouth after the first sip, and I took another. Then I handed the bottle on to Petro.

  Half an hour later we were still the colonel’s guests. We were sitting on plywood crates at the plywood ‘table’ drinking more Vietnamese balsam by the light of a burning candle, but by this time we were drinking out of disposable plastic cups that Vitold Yukhimovich had hoarded. The conversation really was being held on equal terms, with the colonel joking and trying to create a relaxed atmosphere. Petro strove stalwartly to keep a serious expression on his face, but the Vietnames balsam proved to be a rather potent beverage.

  Later I realised that the colonel had been joking more for himself, that he had needed to relax. But even so, from time to time the tiredness wiped the smile off his face.

  Once or twice Petro tried to ask the colonel serious questions, but Vitold Yukhimovich just laughed them off.

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he promised Petro as he poured the remains of the balsam into his own cup. ‘But now it’s time for bed!’

  We left the colonel and went back to the compartment.

  ‘Well?’ Gulya asked me. ‘Are you going to have supper?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I replied, clambering up on to the top bunk.

  66

  THE NEXT DAY started unexpectedly early. I was woken by the silence – that often happens when someone has been used to falling asleep with noise. And it was unnaturally bright outside – there was a yellowish-red light pouring in through the window.

  Looking out I saw the bright ‘suns’ of the spotlights and other lamps that were lighting up the train and immediately realised why we had stopped – THE BORDER!

  I heard voices approaching outside.

  I got up quietly and walked out of the compartment. I opened the outside door and glanced into the space that was flooded with powerful artificial light.

  Vitold Yukhimovich was approaching the wagon, accompanied by a young customs officer in a green uniform.

  ‘These two here are mine!’ said the colonel, pointing at our wagon and the one behind it.

  Then he looked at me. The customs officer looked at me too.

  ‘This is our man escorting the load,’ the colonel told the customs officer, at the same time gesturing for me to disappear.

  I yawned demonstratively and closed the door to the hallway. Then I listened.

  The two men’s voices began slowly moving away.

  I went back into the compartment and glanced out of the window. Now they were standing beside the wagon which the colonel had said was carrying the sand. I could see that they were talking calmly, as if all the questions had already been settled a long time ago, if not in advance.

  I observed them for about five minutes. Then I saw a customs officer with a briefcase approach them. He took some papers and seals out of the briefcase and started explaining something to the colonel in detail, jabbing his finger at the papers. It all ended with the papers being transferred to the colonel’s hands and his shaking the customs officers by theirs, before he walked back towards our wagon. I moved away from the window and froze, listening.

  The outer door into the hallway clicked. I thought that now the colonel would look into the compartment and explain something. But he went straight through to his lair. The lock of the door into the cargo section rasped twice. So he had shut himself in.

  The train started to move and slowly pulled out into relative darkness. I lay down again.

  ‘Almost home,’ I thought, realising that any moment now we would be on Ukrainian territory.

  The renewed hammering of the wheels began lulling me to sleep. I closed my eyes.

  In my dreams I saw a sea, probably the Caspian. I was being rocked to and fro, side to side.

  Then a warm hand was laid on my lips and the touch of another woke me.

  ‘Quiet, Kolya, quiet!’ whispered Gulya, who was sitting beside me. She kept her hand over my mouth.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Were you having a nightmare?’ she asked.

  The train jerked again, stopped and moved backwards.

  ‘I was dreaming of the sea,’ I replied, pulling up my legs and sitting cross-legged. ‘Where are we now?’

  I glanced out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything. My dream must clearly have been a short one, if it was still night outside.

  ‘We’ve been here for twenty minutes already,’ Gulya whispered. ‘Going backwards and forwards.’

  But now we were travelling straight ahead, not backwards and forwards. The rhythm of the iron wheels speeded up. Artemovsk Station drifted by, brightly illuminated.

  ‘It’s Ukraine already,’ I whispered to Gulya when we had left the station behind us. ‘Have you been awake for a long time?’

  ‘Two hours,’ she answered.

  ‘Listen, have we passed the Ukrainian customs?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gulya said, nodding. ‘Men in uniforms with a dog walked along past the wagons.’

  I found such a brief and clear description of the Ukrainian customs both amusing and reassuring. The sleep had already been blown clear out of my head.

  ‘By evening we’ll be in Kiev,’ I whispered to Gulya. ‘We’ll leave the things at my place . . . at our place . . . and go out to a cafe. I’ll just have to ask my “bookkeeper” Galya for half the bucks I’ve saved . . .’

  ‘And then what?’ she asked.

  ‘And then we’re going to live. Like normal people,’ I said, and Gulya smiled.

  ‘Let’s lie down for a bit longer,’ she suggested. We settled down comfortably on the lower bunk. I lay against the wall and she was on the edge. But we lay facing each other. I put my right arm round her and she put her left arm round me. The train swayed us to and fro, and we kissed as if we were playing a game.

  ‘I have my diploma with me,’ Gulya suddenly whispered. ‘I can work as a doctor . . . All right?’

  I looked at her in amazement.

  ‘You want to work?’ I asked, and then realised that my question sounded rather stupid.

  ‘Yes,’ Gulya replied. ‘Until we have children . . . Stroke me!’

  I stroked her hair. She lay there with her eyes closed and the corners of her mouth twitching gently.

  I thought I was happy. ‘Thought’ because it was an odd kind of happiness. There was an admixture of quiet fear, the fear of responsibility. ‘Our future will begin this evening,’ I thought, and tried to picture that future. But no image would come. Of course, it wouldn’t be all that
easy to see. And my imagination was tired too, it had stopped believing in miracles. Scepticism, or perhaps even cynicism – that was what I had acquired in the course of this journey. Now I needed to be cured of it. My hands, feelings, head and mouth had to recover their taste for life. I needed to drink ‘a different coffee’. I needed to freshen up my soul. After a rest my body would recover from its tiredness.

  I suddenly realised that there was a multi-stranded thread linking the soul with the body – the nerves. They made your hands shake, they gave a dream the intensity of a nightmare. The different coffee that I had just invented for myself would hardly be capable of enlivening my soul without affecting my body at the same time, without transmitting some kind of charge along the irregular threads of my nerves – unless perhaps it was milky coffee, with milk from a can of ‘infant formula’.

  I pulled Gulya close and nuzzled her hair.

  67

  NEXT MORNING WE were woken by the colonel. After first knocking on the door of the compartment, he waited for two minutes, thinking that would be long enough for us to get up and greet him with a vivacious smile. But when he came in, we were all still lying down. Although we did have our eyes open.

  The colonel was smoothly shaved and his moustache had recovered its former tidy, distinguished appearance.

  ‘The water has boiled already,’ he announced and glanced at his watch. ‘We have one hour left for drinking tea. I give you three minutes to get up!’

  He smiled and went out. When he came back we were already sitting at the table.

  ‘Right then, shall we cross the t’s and dot the i’s?’ he asked, half serious and half joking, as he stirred the almost insoluble ‘railway sugar’ into his tea with a spoon.

  The train started taking a bend, and I automatically looked out the window. The horizon resembled a palisade of immensely tall factory chimneys. The chimneys were silent, and the sky above them was blue and clear.

  ‘We’ll be in Kharkov in an hour,’ Colonel Taranenko began. ‘That’s why I woke you up. Our last chance to talk. Only to begin with I’m going to do the talking.’

  He smiled and gave us all a rather tense glance.

  ‘I’ll listen to what you have to say afterwards,’ the colonel continued, ‘but first you have to listen to me. Listen closely, without interrupting. Agreed?’

  Silence signified consent. The colonel gazed round at us all again and maintained a two-minute pause.

  ‘I’m staying in Kharkov, you’ll go on . . .’

  ‘What about the sand?’ Petro asked, staring stubbornly at Vitold Yukhimovich.

  ‘We agreed that you would listen carefully and not interrupt me! You can ask questions afterwards, if there are any.’

  The colonel chewed on his lips for a moment.

  ‘All right, about the sand . . . The sand is no longer with us. The wagon carrying the sand stayed behind in Artemovsk. Neither I, nor you, nor all of us together have the right to decide what to do with it. But together we have achieved the most important goal – we have delivered the sand to Ukraine. And that will stand to our credit . . . I can promise you only one thing – that I will try to let you know any news about that sand. But it’s in your interest not to talk to anyone about it. In the first place, they won’t believe you. In the second place, if you do start talking about it, you’ll never hear any more news. But you might learn that you are wanted by the Moscow FSB on suspicion of trading arms and narcotics in the northern Caucasus. By the way, that situation was forced on us. There was no other way we could have got the sand through. Unfortunately, to achieve a lofty goal you have to get your hands dirty!’ The colonel sighed heavily. ‘And now for something else.

  ‘You, Kolya,’ he said, turning to me, ‘cannot go back to Kiev. I don’t care where you manage to hide for the time being, but hide you must. I think you trust Petro more than me, so leave your contact details with him and we’ll let you know through him when you can go back to Kiev. I think the SBU will manage to clear a landing strip for you somehow. Only you’ll have to wait for a month or two. But you two,’ he said, turning his attention to Petro and Galya, ‘can simply go home. Let me repeat once again, it is in your own interest not to say anything about the sand. You didn’t go for sand! You went in search of treasure – let’s say spiritual treasure. You went and you came back. You didn’t find anything. But you are richer in experience of life, and one of you’ – the colonel cast a cunning glance in my direction – ‘actually did find his treasure.’ He looked at Gulya. ‘In short – life goes on. The future ahead is bright. Let us remember only the good things from the past and forget our mutual grudges. That’s all!’

  Having concluded his monologue on a note of exalted sentiment, the colonel sighed in relief and took a sip of tea.

  I thought about where Gulya and I could go now. I didn’t have any relatives in Ukraine. There were people I knew, but I didn’t want to descend on them out of the blue with Gulya in tow. It was one thing to turn up for a couple of days, but we were talking about at least a month here . . .

  I looked at Gulya.

  She snuggled against me.

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ I whispered in her ear.

  Petro sat there in silence, with his lips twisted out of shape. The dejected droop of his black moustache reflected his condition perfectly.

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said eventually, peering at the colonel through narrowed eyes. ‘You have outwitted us, Mr State Security Officer. But there’s one thing I don’t understand: what are you doing playing games with Vietnamese balsam?’

  ‘It’s my hobby,’ the colonel said with a smile. ‘Small-scale legal import and export . . . And it’s good for the family budget – like having an allotment for growing vegetables. Puts a bit of food on the table . . .’

  Petro simply shook his head.

  ‘I’m going to get ready,’ said the colonel. ‘Do you have any money left?’

  Petro looked enquiringly at Galya. She nodded.

  ‘That’s good. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet again soon!’

  Vitold Yukhimovich carefully closed the door behind him. We sat in silence for another five minutes, with the tea turning cold on the table. The outskirts of Kharkov flitted past through the window.

  ‘Let’s go to Kolomya,’ Petro said unexpectedly, looking at me. ‘You can live with my parents for the time being. And we’ll go on to Kiev . . .’

  I was genuinely shocked. I found it hard to believe that at that moment Petro was thinking about me and Gulya.

  68

  VITOLD YUKHIMOVICH OBLIGINGLY bought us the tickets to Kolomya. Unfortunately, the tickets were not all in the same compartment, but in two neighbouring ones. When the train started, we persuaded a forty-year-old couple to swap places with Gulya and me, and so we carried on travelling all together, as we had done from the very beginning of our railway adventure. It was getting dark outside, the twilight was thickening and the little yellow lights of stations too small and insignificant for our train drifted past outside the window.

  The female conductor brought us tea and biscuits and we drank our tea in an atmosphere of welcome tranquillity.

  Soon after that the same conductor brought us clean bedclothes. And when we had finished taking tea, we settled down for the night, allocating the places on the upper bunks to our women.

  When the light was turned out, I clicked the latch shut on the door so that our sleep would not be disturbed by any nocturnal visitors. But even so, our sleep was disturbed very early in the morning. We heard noises and shouting from the next compartment, the one in which Gulya and I could easily have been travelling. We turned on the light and listened in silence.

  ‘Someone came in here during the night!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘It’s not ours! You ask them!’

  But the train continued to clatter rhythmically over the tracks, completely unconcerned about what might be happening in one of its carriages.

  Meanwhile, another man’s voice told someone to get
dressed and collect his things. It was just starting to get light outside.

  The train slowed down as it approached the narrow platform of a small station. Pressing my face to the window, I saw a police Gazelle and a white Zhiguli beside the single-storey station building.

  There were several men in militia uniforms and civilian clothes standing between the cars and smoking. They glanced at the braking train, dropped their unfinished cigarettes and hurried towards the train. I thought I saw their eyes follow our carriage as it moved slowly past them.

  The noise from the next compartment emerged into the corridor. Then it stopped. I tried looking out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything or anyone beside the carriage,

  ‘What’s happening out there?’ Petro asked.

  ‘I can’t tell. They’ve taken someone off the train . . .’

  Meanwhile, the train jerked and set off again, as if it had pushed off from that narrow platform.

  In the morning a different conductor, a younger woman, brought us our tea.

  ‘They arrested some drug dealers,’ she said in answer to my question. ‘They pretended to be so respectable – a married couple, they said they were – but they found an entire bag full of those drugs in their case! He was shouting that he didn’t have any bag . . . Someone planted it, he said. But they arrested them anyway!’

  The conductor seemed genuinely pleased by this latest victory of the valiant militia over the criminal world. But I was seriously alarmed. Of course, I had heard that the trains in Ukraine were crawling with narcotics couriers, but I couldn’t help feeling concerned at the thought that I could have been in that compartment the night before.

  ‘It’s all right, don’t get so worried,’ Petro reassured me.

  It was raining in Kolomya.

  In the fifteen minutes it took us to walk from the little station to Petro’s parents’ house we got absolutely soaked through. The rain had been following us ever since Ivanovo-Frankovsk, but as long as we were still in the train, I had kept hoping that it would carry us out from under the low, heavy clouds. It hadn’t.