The Gardener from Ochakov

by Andrey Kurkov

  ‘OK, I’ll call you as soon as I get home,’ promised Kolyan.

  Igor’s mother brought him a cup of tea and a fried egg. She put the plate on the stool and moved the stool closer to his bed, to make it easier for him to eat.

  ‘I’m going round to Olga’s,’ she said as she left the room, carefully closing the door behind her.

  Igor rolled over onto his right side, picked up the fork in his left hand and carelessly chopped up the egg. Wincing in pain as he ate, he thought about moving the plate and pillow so he could eat lying on his left side but then decided that he couldn’t be bothered. When he’d finished eating, he rolled over onto his back again for a rest. The doorbell rang.

  I wonder who that is, thought Igor, lifting his head from the pillow.

  It rang several times, then fell silent. Igor noticed something moving outside the window. He twisted round and saw someone’s head peering through the white lace curtain.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the police! Let me in!’

  ‘I can’t stand up,’ said Igor. ‘Just push the door hard, it’s not locked.’

  He heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

  ‘Which room are you in again?’ called the young police officer.

  ‘Second door on the right.’

  The officer came in and looked at Igor suspiciously. Then he looked around the room, and his eyes fell on the stool at Igor’s bedside. He sat down next to him.

  ‘So, have you remembered who stabbed you yet?’

  ‘No.’ Igor shook his head. ‘It was dark, and they got me from behind.’

  ‘I was up half the night reading,’ said the police officer. He sounded annoyed, but that might just have been sleep deprivation. ‘I learned a lot about stab wounds. For example, you couldn’t possibly have been stabbed from behind – the blade would have gone in at a different angle. You were stabbed in a horizontal position, when you were already lying down or after you’d fallen.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said Igor, sounding less sure of himself. ‘I was drunk. Completely out of it.’

  ‘Do you seriously expect me to find the person who stabbed you, with nothing but a broken blade to go on?’ the police officer asked indignantly.

  ‘No, I don’t expect you to. I don’t even want you to!’ exclaimed Igor. Then his voice softened and he said, almost apologetically, ‘Just forget about it.’

  ‘How can I forget about it?’ The officer’s eyes widened. ‘The doctor and I both signed the report!’

  ‘You could always “lose” the report,’ suggested Igor. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to worry about it.’

  The police officer thought about it. He shook his head and frowned. Then he opened his satchel and took out a piece of paper and a pen. Resting the paper on the satchel, he placed it on the mattress in front of Igor and handed him the pen.

  ‘Start writing!’ he said.

  ‘What do you want me to write?’

  ‘A declaration. I, so-and-so, living at . . . whatever your address is, stabbed myself with a kitchen knife while suffering from acute alcohol intoxication. Junior Lieutenant V.I. Ignatenko has cautioned me regarding the health risks of alcohol abuse. I do not wish to press charges. Date. Signature.’

  Igor wrote it all down, then looked up at the police officer.

  ‘Can I have the blade back?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want it for?’

  ‘A souvenir.’

  ‘Well, I was hoping to keep it,’ admitted the officer, with childish disappointment. ‘This is my first case!’

  ‘Please,’ said Igor. ‘There is no case! I’ve just written a declaration explaining everything.’

  ‘All right,’ the police officer reluctantly agreed. ‘I’ll bring it back later.’

  After a while Igor made another attempt to sit up, this time successfully. His wound still hurt, but either the pain had lessened or Igor had grown used to it. He sat up in bed for about five minutes, then lay back down again. He repeated this exercise several times.

  His mother returned bearing an old jam jar that Olga had given her, which contained some kind of suspiciously yellow, greasy substance. She placed it on Igor’s bedside table.

  ‘Tell the doctor to put some of that on the wound,’ she said. ‘It’s a mixture of herbs and goose fat.’

  ‘What is it – some sort of folk remedy?’ sneered Igor.

  Elena Andreevna didn’t answer. She just glared at her son and left the room.

  That evening, when the doctor came, she reappeared in Igor’s bedroom to make sure he applied the grease as directed. The doctor sniffed it and nodded, as though he recognised the smell. He asked no further questions.

  After the doctor left Igor had another visit from the police officer, who returned the blade. When he left, Igor suddenly burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Elena Andreevna, putting her head round the door.

  ‘Nothing,’ said her son. ‘I just feel like a celebrity! Everyone keeps coming to see me, bringing me things, dressing my wound . . . It’s like some kind of circus!’

  ‘You’ll have even more guests at your funeral,’ his mother observed wryly. ‘You’ve already been a victim of knife crime, thanks to this lifestyle you’ve chosen.’

  ‘What do you mean, “this lifestyle”?’ Igor replied indignantly. ‘I’m not an alcoholic, a drug addict or a thief, am I?’

  Igor’s mother waved her hand at him, indicating that she had no wish to continue the conversation. Just then Stepan appeared, holding a bag.

  ‘Oh,’ said Igor, looking at him cheerfully. ‘Another visitor!’

  ‘I’m not stopping,’ said the gardener. ‘You’re stuck in here with nothing to do, and that’s unhealthy. Not to mention boring. So I’ve brought you something to read. Here.’

  ‘What is it, The Three Musketeers?’

  Ignoring Igor’s remark, Stepan took a large book out of the bag. Igor thought it looked familiar.

  ‘It’s the volume my father wrote, The Book of Food. It was in one of those suitcases from Ochakov. His handwriting’s neat enough, you shouldn’t have any trouble understanding it.’ The gardener held the book out to Igor. ‘Read it – you might learn something.’

  The bedroom door creaked. His mother had obviously been listening in, but now she’d gone.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,’ said Stepan, suddenly lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘First of all, there’s a bullet missing from the gun. And the barrel smells of gunpowder.’

  He narrowed his eyes, and they bored into Igor.

  ‘Yeah, we were mucking about at the barbecue, shooting bottles in the forest.’

  ‘There’s only one bullet missing,’ said Stepan, with barely concealed scepticism in his voice. He clearly didn’t believe Igor’s version of events.

  ‘Yes, we only shot one.’

  The gardener reached out and took the broken knife blade from the bedside table, where the police officer had left it. He turned it over thoughtfully in his hands.

  ‘So you’re determined to sort this business out yourself, without any help?’ he asked calmly.

  ‘Yes, I’ll take care of it.’

  Still holding the blade, Stepan made several sharp movements with his hand, watching the metal slice through the air. Then he held it up to his face and inspected it closely.

  ‘You see, just two millimetres left, it’s not completely filed through. Very risky! You’d have to be very sure of yourself to try a trick like that. You’d have to know exactly how much force to use.’

  ‘Why is it risky?’

  ‘If a knife like this hits a rib, the handle will break off too soon and the attacker will cut himself on the blade.’ He ran the tip of his forefinger along the edge of the blade. ‘And it’s sharp!’

  ‘So whoever stabbed me must have known he wouldn’t hit a rib,’ mused Igor.

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Stepan. ‘Which means he must have stabbed you whe
n you were already lying on the ground. And one of their rules is that if you’re attacked with a knife, you respond with a knife – you don’t use a gun!’ Stepan looked searchingly into Igor’s eyes.

  ‘Whose rules?’ asked Igor.

  ‘The rules of thieves.’

  Igor recalled his last night in Ochakov.

  ‘Seeing as you know so much about their rules,’ he began, with something approaching respect in his voice, ‘what does “thief’s honour” mean?’

  Stepan cleared his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, running his hand over his clean-shaven chin. ‘It’s stronger than “scout’s honour”, but it only works among thieves.’

  ‘So if a thief promised something on “thief’s honour” to someone who wasn’t a thief, then he wouldn’t have to keep his word?’

  ‘A thief wouldn’t promise anything on “thief’s honour” to someone who wasn’t a thief,’ declared Stepan seriously. ‘That’s against the rules.’

  ‘Interesting,’ murmured Igor. ‘Do you know the best way to stab someone?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Stepan.

  ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll show you, once you’ve made a full recovery. For now, you’d better get some rest.’

  The gardener gave him a warm smile and left the room.

  26

  OUTSIDE IT WAS raining for the third consecutive day. Igor was initially puzzled by The Book of Food Stepan had lent him, and then he began to find it amusing. The book consisted of a seemingly random collection of strange culinary inventions, which were rather like traditional folk remedies, interspersed with solemn declarations arguing that the fate of the nation depended on the food people ate. Some of the comments were worthy of attention, whereas others were more like the ravings of a madman. The pages were covered with neat, childlike handwriting, and one page had been divided into pencil-drawn rows and columns, forming a graph. Various alimentary products had been sorted into groups under the headings ‘Enemy’, ‘Reactionary’, ‘Hostile’, ‘Benevolent’, ‘Natural’ and ‘Curative’. Igor noticed that meat products, pasta, seaweed, rice, citrus fruits and whale blubber were ‘enemy’ foods, whereas sour fruits, vinegar, herring, dried fish, halva and chocolate were considered ‘hostile’. The ‘natural’ group included buckwheat, pearl barley, millet, corn, dried peas, chickpeas and goat’s cheese.

  ‘Interesting chap, but clearly insane,’ murmured Igor, closing the manuscript.

  He got out of bed and walked slowly and carefully over to the window. Accelerated by the inclement weather, twilight was taking over the world outside.

  He thought back to Kolyan’s visit the previous day. Although his lips were still swollen and sore, his friend had smiled and cheerfully boasted that there was no longer any danger of him being ‘finished off’, because he’d been offered a deal, and fortunately for Kolyan the task could not have been easier. All he had to do was to hack into someone’s computer and copy all files and email correspondence containing any password information.

  ‘What are you going to get out of it?’ asked Igor.

  ‘His forgiveness!’ answered Kolyan.

  They relaxed over a bottle of brandy that Kolyan had brought from the city, chasing it with apples that Stepan had picked from the garden.

  Stepan looked in a couple of times and peered closely at Kolyan. When the time came for Kolyan to leave, he happily agreed to take the five undeveloped films and drop them off at the photography studio on Proreznaya Street.

  After Kolyan left, the gardener knocked on Igor’s door.

  ‘Was that the banker you were telling me about?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s not a banker, he’s an IT specialist. He just works in a bank.’

  ‘Seems about the right age for my daughter,’ said Stepan, half questioningly, as though he were seeking Igor’s approval.

  ‘He’s not exactly marriage material,’ said Igor, looking into the gardener’s eyes with genuine concern. ‘He works as a hacker on the side, and that can be a dangerous business.’

  Stepan looked puzzled. ‘What’s a hacker?’ he asked.

  ‘Someone who steals information from other people’s computers.’

  ‘You mean he’s a thief?’ asked Stepan, surprised.

  ‘No, he’s a hacker.’

  Stepan suddenly looked suspicious. ‘Is he the one who made a promise on “thief’s honour”?’

  Igor burst out laughing.

  Before leaving, Stepan asked Igor what he’d thought about the manuscript.

  ‘Interesting, very interesting,’ nodded Igor, not wishing their conversation to end on an argument.

  A faint smile appeared on Stepan’s face.

  ‘There are some serious messages in that book,’ he said. ‘You should read it more carefully.’

  Igor’s recollections were interrupted by a lorry driving past noisily outside. He lay down again. Being confined to his bedroom, albeit temporarily, had made him desperate for company. He’d enjoyed seeing Kolyan the previous day, and talking to the gardener, but this evening seemed dull and interminable. His mother was watching television. The emergency doctor had already been and gone, noting with approval that Igor’s wound was healing remarkably quickly.

  Igor was about to resign himself to switching the light off and going to sleep when Stepan knocked on the door and peeped into his room. He was wearing his new suit.

  ‘Igor, can I borrow your umbrella?’ he asked.

  ‘Where are you off to in this weather?’

  ‘I found a nice cafe the other day . . . I’m just going there for a bit.’

  ‘It’s in the hallway, on the coat stand,’ said Igor.

  ‘You mean the red one? That’s a woman’s umbrella! I’ve seen you with a black one.’

  ‘In there,’ he said, pointing at the wardrobe. ‘At the top.’

  The gardener found the umbrella, thanked him and left.

  Igor switched the light off, but he couldn’t sleep. His thoughts were in turmoil, flitting between Fima Chagin, the blade that had been left in his side as a souvenir of Ochakov, Stepan’s father Iosip and his Book of Food, and Valya and her fear. All of a sudden he could feel his mouth burning, either as a distant aftertaste or as a memory – it was the same feeling he’d had after drinking home-made vodka at Fima’s house.

  Igor reluctantly got up, went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of brandy, without bothering to switch the light on. He sat down at the table by the window to drink it.

  It occurred to him that this was the time of night he usually drank brandy before putting on the police uniform and going out to walk along the road to the past, the road to Ochakov in 1957. A path that only he knew. Igor shivered with either cold or fear. He didn’t know which, until he realised that he’d come into the kitchen wearing nothing but his underpants. The little top window was wide open, and a cold, slanting rain was lashing down outside.

  He finished his brandy, returned to his bedroom and got under the blanket. His thoughts returned to Red Valya. He was really worried about her.

  ‘May God keep her safe,’ Igor whispered with his eyes closed. ‘If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive Him!’

  As he spoke, the anger and determination in his own voice seemed unfamiliar. He sounded more like an actor in a gangster film.

  The following morning, the house was unusually noisy. Igor could hear the sound of clattering dishes and of doors being slammed. His mother burst into his bedroom with a bucket of water and started mopping the floor. Igor watched her from the bed for several minutes. She didn’t once look in his direction, let alone speak to him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked her eventually.

  ‘The house needs a good clean,’ said Elena Andreevna. ‘We’ve got guests coming today!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stepan’s daughter from Lviv. He’s already gone to meet her at the station.’

  Igor got up and put on his tracksuit bottoms. He touched the dressing over his wound. It
hardly hurt at all, which surprised him.

  ‘You can get your own breakfast,’ said his mother, looking up from her mop.

  The kitchen floor was still wet. Igor fried himself an egg and sat down at the little table. His eyes were immediately drawn to the window, whose transparency had been thoroughly restored. It was dry outside, and the clouds seemed thinner. It looked like it was going to be a lovely day.

  Is Stepan’s daughter going to be staying in the house with us? Igor thought suddenly. While her father sleeps in our shed? That’ll be an interesting arrangement.

  Igor’s mother suddenly appeared in the doorway. ‘You’ve got a woman, haven’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘An older woman,’ said Elena Andreevna.

  If Igor had still been eating his egg at this point, he would almost certainly have choked on it.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He started laughing. ‘You’ve been watching too many soap operas.’

  By way of a response, his mother walked over to the table and put a pair of Igor’s socks down next to his dirty plate.

  ‘Do you think I can’t recognise the signs?’ she asked indignantly, prodding the darned heel of one of the socks. ‘You ought to find yourself a young girl and get married. Maybe then you’ll start behaving sensibly and people will stop attacking you with knives!’

  ‘I just –’ began Igor, and then he broke off and looked at his socks. ‘She’s just a friend. She noticed that they had holes in.’

  Elena Andreevna gave a sarcastic smile. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, visiting a woman with holes in your socks!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s disgraceful!’

  The door closed behind her as she left the kitchen. Stunned, Igor stared at the socks for a moment, then brushed them to the floor and kicked them under the radiator.

  ‘Whatver,’ he muttered irritably. Then he went back to his bedroom.

  ‘And wear something smart!’ said Elena Andreevna, appearing at the door.

  ‘Where’s she going to sleep?’ Igor stared at his mother.

  ‘I thought we could put her in here,’ she replied, looking at her son’s neatly made bed.

  ‘Right, so you want me to sleep in the shed with Stepan? So he can teach me how to be a tramp?’