“I haven’t hardly felt the pain since you came home, Vladdy,” she said.
Vladimir knew this wasn’t true. He could see Ilga’s teeth clench when she smiled and how she did everything she could to avoid wincing in front of her son. Her posture — the way she sat and moved and spoke — betrayed the severity of her condition. Vladimir couldn’t help but wonder how things might have been different if he had stayed. How much of her ailment was caused by the anguish of him leaving? How would she look and feel now if Vladimir had never left?
He placed his face in his hands and swallowed hard. His fingers slid above his hairline and pressed against his scalp. He looked down into his lap and then up to meet Ilga’s gaze.
“I will take care of you now, Mother. I won’t leave you again,” Vladimir said.
Ilga smiled and cried. Together the two of them feasted in celebration on a dinner of lenivye golubtsy and slightly sour milk.
The next morning, Vladimir headed to the piers in Igarka to find himself gainful employment. He initially planned on working on a fishing vessel or perhaps at the docks, but the Yenisey River had almost frozen over and within a few weeks it would be closed to travel. Igarka was still quite a small town. Vladimir lived in a time long before the installation of the renowned permafrost museum or even the unsuccessful attempt to connect Igarka to the Russian railway network at Salekhard. The only occupations available to an uneducated man of his age were fisherman or logger. His hand forced, Vladimir applied at two of the three sawmills. The first sawmill foreman, a lofty beast with a short-cropped mustache and a round nose, broke into a fit of laughter when Vladimir told him that he’d been hiccupping for twelve years. He called in his friends to listen and they too made good fun out of his misfortune.
The second foreman — also with a short-cropped mustache, but much slighter in stature and with a pointed nose that tilted skyward — took pity on Vladimir and offered him a job cleaning up in the mill. Within a few hours of work, Vladimir noticed a rat scurrying behind a crate in the loading dock. The foreman told Vladimir they’d had a vermin problem for well over a year. “Those parasites bring in nothing but disease,” the foreman said. “One of my men even died last winter from an infection caused by a rodent bite.”
That evening, Vladimir waited until the last worker had left the sawmill before producing a small hatchet and a plastic bag. He turned out all of the lights in the mill and climbed atop a large tree stump. Vladimir closed his eyes and listened. It was just like in the jungle. He heard the rats shuffling their tiny feet. He felt their movement, sensed their presence behind walls and underneath the machinery.
They were everywhere.
And they were going to die.
When the foreman arrived the next morning, his sawmill was shrouded in quiet. The machines weren’t running and his workers were nowhere to be found. He checked both levels before walking out to the dock. A throng of gaping onlookers were gathered in the back. The foreman asked what happened and in return he received an assembly line of horrified, cavernous stares. The foreman pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Standing before the assembled mass was a shirtless Vladimir. His hand held the bloody hatchet. His breath was short. Beside him a pile of dead rats was stacked waist-high; hundreds of them, killed in all manner of ways — decapitation, suffocation, split right through. Vladimir stood motionless, his expression blank. Every 3.7 seconds a hiccup emerged from his mouth.
A chill echoed down the foreman’s spine. He took off his jacket and placed it on Vladimir’s shoulders. “Let’s get you out of the cold,” he said. The man ordered one of the workers to escort Vladimir to the office and get him some warm milk. “And as to the rest of you,” he said, his words fostering greater conviction as he spoke, “there is something to be learned from this young man. He took initiative. And he very well may have saved one of your lives today.” The foreman headed back into the mill, leaving behind a speechless crowd and a pile of slaughtered rodents.
After two weeks, Vladimir had established a routine. He worked at the mill Monday through Saturday. The foreman arranged for a coworker who traveled by dogsled to pick Vladimir up every morning and transport him back to his sleepy village in the evenings as well. Sundays were spent doing odd jobs around the house and playing svoyi koziri, a two-person game of cards, with his mother. Since he had arrived, Ilga seemed to be in fine spirits and with each passing day her condition showed slight signs of improvement. On the second Friday following his homecoming, Vladimir received his first wages from the sawmill. The foreman threw in a little bit extra as compensation for exterminating the rats. Vladimir beamed with pride when the stack of bills was placed in his one hand and a cluster of coins in the other. It was the first time he had ever made his own money. Including what Gog had left him, Vladimir had enough money to support his mother through the winter. His mind swirled with all the good things he could do with his wages. He could buy Ilga a car so she no longer had to rely on the goodwill of her neighbors to bring food and supplies. One day he might even be able to convince her to travel to the large cities in the southwest and seek proper treatment for her swollen joints.
Yes, Vladimir had great plans for his money. But first he would feast. He had worked hard for two weeks and felt he’d earned himself a reward. Vladimir eschewed his ride home and headed over to the local alehouse for dinner. The tavern was a lively place, with sawmill workers and locals sharing tall glasses of beer and mingling with their friends. Full families, mothers and fathers, great aunts and their assorted offspring were enjoying meals in booths set up against the far wall, and next to the bar a husband-and-wife singing duo were performing an old Scandinavian folk song, the wife’s voice high and pretty, the husband accompanying her on the accordion, his voice low and full of gravel. Vladimir tried his best to muffle his hiccups when he entered the pub. He walked through the clusters of people holding tall glasses of imperial stout and found an unoccupied booth toward the back.
His waitress, a pretty young thing not yet sixteen years old but with an ample, partially exposed bosom and long hair in curls, took his order. Vladimir ordered a glass of Medovukha and searched the menu. He could barely read some of the words.
“Is there a special?” he said.
“Yes. Would you like to hear about it?”
“No,” Vladimir said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s very good. I’ll have the special, please.”
The evening’s special turned out to be a green goulash with sautéed turnips. Vladimir dug in ravenously. He ate as though he’d been hungry for years. When he finished his meal, he ordered a glass of imperial stout and leaned back in his seat, comfortable and satiated. The singers had taken a break from performing and the chatter picked up in the alehouse. A hotly contested game of gorodki found a winner in the far corner. Vladimir was absently running his hand along the edge of his glass and dreaming of his newfound, modest wealth when he saw a vision out of the corner of his eye. It was that angelic little girl from long ago.
Vladimir would have recognized her anywhere. Ileana Berezovsky had grown up, of course. No longer was she that long-haired child with the slight shoulders and small hands. She was a woman now. Her hair was blond and short, curled just behind her ears, and she was wearing purple mascara — a sign of the times, perhaps? Vladimir wasn’t quite sure. But her features remained the same. She still had that tiny nose: pert and perfectly square on her face. Her eyes were as wide and beautiful as they’d always been. When she turned to speak with the waitress, Vladimir saw the profile of her heart-shaped lips, the ones that had enchanted him so long ago. After all this time she was still flawless and pure. Ileana was sitting amongst a crowd of seven — four men and three women — at a seat just a few meters away.
Vladimir couldn’t help himself. He slid out of his booth and walked straight over to their table. He stood in front of Ileana, speechless and in utter adoration, hiccupping every 3.7 seconds.
Ileana looked up at him with those wide eyes. “Hello,
” she said.
Vladimir felt a flush of emotion in his chest. He tried to speak, only the words refused to leave his mouth. So he did the next best thing. He gazed upon her. He took in her every feature. He memorized the minutiae of her entire being, for if he were ever to be forced back into the Mongolian wild, with chaotic thoughts plaguing his troubled mind, he would have something new to hold on to.
Somehow Vladimir failed to notice the enormous thug with his arm around her.
The man stared Vladimir straight in the eye. “Who in the hell are you?” he said.
Vladimir glanced briefly at him and then turned his gaze back to Ileana. He couldn’t move. He felt no other sensations — not the cold air seeping in through a crack in the nearby window nor the loud voices coming from all around the bar. He breathed in fully and deeply. At last, after more than a decade of existing in ambrosial fragments in the corners of Vladimir’s memory, that precious aroma made its way back to him. It was very faint and Vladimir had to decipher it from a mélange of other aromas floating through the air. But it was there. There was no denying it. Through the primordial odor of ripened cheese emanating from the floorboards and the ghastly gray-smelling cloud of smoke hovering in the air, beyond the baked pike perch and meat pies, the dried sweat in the patrons’ armpits and the exhaust of dozens of mouths wet with a miscellany of sour wine and tangy Russian beer, Vladimir located that precious fragrance he remembered from his childhood — caramel and peaches outside on a spring day. It had been so long that he’d begun to believe he’d fashioned that smell out of nothingness. Here it existed as an irrefutable truth. Vladimir inhaled again and again. He filtered out the rubbish and drank in only Ileana’s pure scent.
The colossal brute beside Ileana yelled at Vladimir. “What the devil do you think you’re doing!?”
The other patrons, some sixty-three souls, reared their heads. The tavern fell suddenly quiet, leaving the hypnotic pulse of Vladimir’s hiccups as the only sound.
The man stood up to face him.
Vladimir opened his eyes. He recognized this man at last. It was Pavel Discarov, the boy who had mercilessly whipped spitballs at young Vladimir’s head in the schoolhouse. He was the one who had carried Ileana’s books back and forth from school, the one with those shifty eyes, neither passionate nor cruel, yet somehow impossibly devious and dumb. The body around them had matured, but those eyes remained the same. Apparently he’d been carrying Ileana’s books for her all these years.
A look of realization came over Discarov.
“It’s really you, isn’t it?” He turned to one of his companions. “I told you the rumors were true. Everyone, may I introduce you to Vladimir, the amazing hiccupping boy. Where have you been all these years, Vlad? Have you been hiccupping all this time?”
Vladimir tried to hold in his next hiccup but it came out all the same, only with added — regrettable — vigor.
“Ileana,” Discarov said. “This dolboy’eb sukin syn has been hiccupping for ten years. What’s that been like for you, Vladimir? Does it help you with the ladies? Does it tickle their short, curly hairs?” he said to the raucous laughter of his friends. Discarov sat down and took a sip from his beer with a look of great satisfaction in his eyes.
Ileana was the only one not laughing. “Vladimir,” she said, “is that really you?”
“Oh, it’s the hiccupping boy, all right,” Discarov said. “He sounds like a donkey to me. Ee-haw. Ee-haw.”
Ileana leaned into Pavel’s ear and whispered something, but his friends were so very amused and he was causing such a scene, he doubled his efforts.
“One of my friends at the sawmill told me all about your homecoming, Vlad. They said that you can’t read or write. What have you been doing all these years that you haven’t managed to learn how to read?”
Vladimir gave Discarov a look of abject hatred. Deep within, a red rage escalated. He glanced around. The entire bar had been drawn to the scene. They were all eagerly anticipating Vladimir’s reply.
“I’ve become a hunter,” Vladimir said. “I’ve killed all manner of beasts in faraway lands.”
“Oh, I heard about that too.” Discarov’s voice dripped with witless sarcasm. “I heard that you killed a pile of rats over at the mill. Is that what gets you off, rat-boy — stacking up piles of dead rats?”
Despite the lack of intellect or depth of wit behind his remarks, Discarov’s friends broke out into a sea of hilarity. Never before had Vladimir been forced to match wits. He dreaded doing so. With his lack of education and inexperience at trading barbs, he would be destined to lose, even to an opponent as demonstrably unfunny as Discarov.
Vladimir gave Ileana a final look. He closed his eyes and breathed in her sweet smell one last time, then turned to walk back to his booth.
Discarov, however, was not done.
“Off he goes again,” he cried. “Poor hiccupping Vladimir is heading back to his land of make-believe, where he bangs away on sheep and murders indriks for sport.”
Ileana stood up and told Pavel to stop. Discarov grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back down into her seat.
Vladimir’s eyes filled with fire. Needles shot through his arms. “Don’t you hurt her,” he said.
“She’s not your girl,” Discarov said, his hand still firmly gripping Ileana’s arm. “So I fail to see how what I do is any concern of yours.”
Vladimir looked at this brute’s doltish expression, his thick square skull and the beginnings of a wart on his chin. With each passing moment Pavel Discarov tightened his grip on Ileana’s arm, cutting off her circulation and turning her wrist purple with pain. Vladimir felt that familiar sensation, that violent green mixed with piercing red that used to stab through his brain at night. He could take it no longer.
“If you don’t release her — I will kill you,” Vladimir said.
sixteen
The two men circled one another in the ankle-deep snow outside. Around them, the bar patrons had turned into a pulsing throng of humanity. They cheered and cried out, some raised glasses of beer while others jostled for better position. Above, a light layer of snow descended in wide, sparse flakes, incongruous with the battle about to take place. Vladimir positioned his legs. He raised his fists in the air and stared into the hulking beast that Discarov had become. Pavel towered over Vladimir, his shoulders round and wide. His jaw had a thickness to it that suggested even a running thrust with a mallet would do no damage. Discarov raised his fists as well. Each was nearly the size of Vladimir’s head.
In Vladimir’s haste, in his anger, he’d neglected to take into account that while sitting down, Discarov had near equaled his height. He must have outweighed Vladimir by twenty-five kilos. Still, Vladimir stood his ground in the snow. The cries and jeers of Discarov’s friends, the cacophony of noise from the bloodthirsty onlookers, even Ileana’s pleas for the men to stop, melted into the Russian night. Vladimir was ready. He’d been ready for this his whole life. He stepped forward with clenched fists. Discarov cocked his arms. Vladimir was not afraid. David had his slingshot. Vladimir had his cunning, his passion, his rage.
He swung a wild punch at Discarov.
The man moved aside and Vladimir’s punch sailed through the air past the colossal brute. Vladimir lost his footing and turned around, trying to right himself. The last thing he saw was Discarov’s fist driving into his face. Vladimir reeled. His jaw gave way and his legs turned to jelly. The world faded to black.
Vladimir came to slowly. The sudden unexpected unconsciousness was for a brief respite warm and comforting. Like the naked embrace of a devil-hearted woman who fears letting you go, the darkness held on longer than it had claim to him. Vladimir’s eyes opened to see the black Russian sky dotted with fluttering flakes of snow. He tried to sit up, but his head hurt and his jaw was locked in place. The hiccups remained. Only now they hurt. A pang of pain shot along Vladimir’s neck and jawline with each consecutive yelp.
A trio of concerned faces hovered over him. One
was the female folksinger. Vladimir could see right up her nose. Beside her a gray-bearded man had a look of great concern and to that man’s right was Ileana. She hadn’t left. With the help of the bearded man, Vladimir sat up. Five meters away he could see the bar patrons filing back into the tavern, no doubt disappointed that his conflict with Discarov hadn’t had more sport to it. Ileana was saying something. Vladimir reached up and cleared the snow out of his frozen eardrum.
“Are you okay?” she said again.
Vladimir tried to stand. The man helped him up by the elbow but he slipped and landed in the snow again. “I think I’m just going to sit here a while,” Vladimir said.
The bearded man and the folksinger waited a few moments before succumbing to the cold and following the others back into the tavern. Vladimir cleared the snowflakes from atop his head.
“Where were you all this time?” Ileana said.
Vladimir reached into his pocket and put on his wool hat. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the hospital, about Mongolia, about Gog and the Waterfall of Ion. “I was in Moscow, mostly,” he said. “I left the country for a while too.”
Ileana sat down beside him; she rested on one leg so as not to get her entire bottom wet in the snow. Since the moment she had seen Vladimir, she’d had a curious gaze on her face, the meaning of which Vladimir couldn’t quite place. He knew nothing of women. The conversation with nurse’s aide Strekov was the most he’d spoken to a woman in a decade. Ileana’s voice was gentle and soft. In the distance the tavern door closed, and now it was the two old schoolmates sitting alone in the snow.
The Last Hiccup Page 15
