The Gardener from Ochakov

by Andrey Kurkov

‘No,’ said Stepan. ‘You obviously didn’t read The Book of Food properly! He was arrested for slandering Soviet food. He claimed that workers’ canteens prepared “enemy food” and that “enemy food” was enslaving the people, making them weak-willed and passive. He criticised the food in the labour camp too, so he spent all his time there in solitary confinement. They thought he’d incite the other prisoners to an uprising, but they all agreed with him anyway. Then they sent him to a psychiatric institution, and he was only released after Stalin died. His fellow inmates helped him once he got out.’

  Stepan fell silent and gave a heavy sigh.

  ‘Could I borrow the book again?’ asked Igor.

  ‘Let’s go and get it,’ said Stepan, and he started walking towards the shed.

  He switched the shed light on, found the manuscript and handed it to Igor. There was another book on the makeshift bed, and Igor was sure he’d seen it before. He read the title: Restaurant Marketing.

  ‘Well, goodnight,’ said Igor, and he went out into the yard.

  The gate creaked as he was going up the steps to the porch, and he turned round and saw their neighbour Olga disappearing down the street. The light was still on in the kitchen window, but when Igor went in carrying the manuscript he found his mother just about to switch it off.

  ‘I think I’m going to read in here for a bit,’ he said, sitting down at the table.

  He opened the home-made book and flicked through it, scanning the recipes. He stopped at one of the pages.

  Enemy food enslaves the people. Take the fisherman, for example – he lures his fish before catching it, so that it becomes accustomed to the place where death awaits. Enemies of the people lure them in the same way, getting them used to food on which they will become dependent, like the fish before it is caught. Then the man who has been lured by this food can be made to do three shifts instead of one! First the enemies of the free man came up with the idea of replacing money with food, as payment for labour. These food payments were measured in units known as workdays. This was just the start of an extensive experiment, the ultimate aim of which was to control the people by means of food . . .

  ‘Wow, he really was a dissident!’ whispered Igor, astonished. He bent his head over the manuscript and continued reading.

  Igor spent half the night engrossed in the painstakingly recorded thoughts and reflections of the late Iosip. He eventually closed the book and went to bed just before 4 a.m., when his head began to ache, but even then sleep did not come to his weary body immediately.

  Was he crazy, or not? Igor lay on the folding bed in the darkness, listening to his mother’s peaceful breathing and thinking about everything he had just read. His thoughts kept jumping to Stepan, and he asked himself the same question: Is he crazy, or not? He remembered the book that he’d seen lying on the bench in the shed. ‘I wonder if he even knows what the word “marketing” means,’ smirked Igor. Seconds later, the smile fell from his face as he suddenly made the connection between Restaurant Marketing and The Book of Food.

  ‘That’s it!’ whispered Igor, staggered by his discovery. ‘So he’s not crazy, and the plans he mentioned over dinner . . . I think I know what he’s up to.’

  Stepan came to the house the following morning in his suit again, having managed to tie his tie himself this time without Elena Andreevna’s help. He stood in the living room and his presence alone lent a sense of urgency to proceedings, encouraging the others to hurry up and get ready if they wished to see his two houses.

  They spent a further ten minutes standing outside Olga’s gate. Finally, when all members of the previous day’s delegation were present, they set off towards the bus station. On the way Olga and Elena Andreevna called into a grocery shop and bought two round loaves of bread.

  ‘You should never visit a new house for the first time without taking a loaf of bread,’ explained Elena Andreevna, in response to Igor’s quizzical look.

  They turned into Teligi Street and continued walking for several minutes until Stepan stopped by an old wooden fence that ran in front of two adjacent houses: a new, two-storey brick house and an old wooden bungalow with a new slate roof. Though undeniably more modest than its neighbour, the second house was still a respectable size.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ announced Stepan, looking round at them all with pride. Jingling the keys in his hand, he was the first to walk through the gate, turning immediately onto the path that led to the new house.

  Inside, the house smelt of paint. The spacious rooms were unfurnished but for a selection of mismatched chairs. There were also a number of trestle tables dotted about, along with tins of paint and paper sacks full of powdered plaster.

  ‘May this house be blessed with happiness,’ Olga declared solemnly, as though she were in church. She placed the loaf of bread in its cellophane wrapper on the windowsill.

  They went up to the first floor. Several narrow doors led off the landing, all of them closed.

  ‘That’s a bathroom with a toilet,’ said Stepan, gesturing like a tour guide. ‘And those three are bedrooms.’

  ‘It’s not a house, it’s a palace!’ exclaimed Elena Andreevna, unable to hide her amazement. ‘You could get lost in here!’

  ‘We won’t get lost.’ Stepan smiled.

  Igor found the little wooden house next door far cosier, probably because it was warm and furnished and already felt like a home. There were curtains at the little windows, and the old-fashioned furniture left by the previous occupants seemed to suit the house perfectly. The living room was dominated by a handsome oak dresser, with glazed cabinets. Igor was sure he’d seen one just like it somewhere before. He closed his eyes, trying to remember where . . . Yes, that was it! At Fima Chagin’s house in Ochakov. Fima had taken the shot glasses from it before he’d attempted to poison him. There had been something oppressive and sinister about that dresser, though, whereas this one exuded warmth, nostalgic charm, well-being and prosperity.

  ‘May there be happiness here too!’ said Elena Andreevna.

  She walked over to the dresser and placed the second loaf of bread in the recess beneath the cabinets. Stepan joined her by the dresser. Opening the left-hand cupboard door, he took out a bottle of brandy and several old-fashioned glasses.

  ‘I won’t have one myself, but the occasion definitely calls for a drink,’ he said.

  He opened the brandy, poured it into the glasses and took a step back.

  There was a round table in the room, covered with a maroon velvet tablecloth, but they all drank their brandy standing near the dresser. Stepan put the bottle back, without offering anyone a refill.

  Igor’s mobile phone rang in his pocket. He saw that it was the photographer calling and went outside to answer it.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Did my friend bring the films?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve already processed them, and the prints are ready for you to collect . . . I have to say, they’ve come out exceptionally well,’ gushed the photographer. ‘What incredible photographs! I’ve never seen anything like it!’

  ‘I’ve been a bit under the weather lately,’ said Igor. ‘I’ll try and drop by in a couple of days.’

  ‘I was wondering if we could have another chat,’ said the photographer, and Igor heard him sigh. ‘It’s such an amazing collection of photographs . . . simply outstanding! They would make a fantastic exhibition, and I’m sure that all the photography magazines would be interested in running a feature on it. I wish you’d agree . . . I would be willing to print the photographs in large format, completely free of charge . . . And I could organise the advertising, and the catalogue . . . What do you say?’

  Igor looked all around him. He gazed at both houses and the trees in the old garden. Then his eyes were drawn upwards, to the blue sky and its scattered wisps of clouds.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and he sensed the photographer’s face light up with a smile.

  ‘Thank you so much! I’ll start work on the prints today, and I’ll be in touch again
soon. Goodbye!’

  Igor slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket and smiled. He turned back towards the old house. The front door had just opened, and Alyona was the first to come out. Like Igor, she looked all around her. He had the impression that her eyes were also drawn to the sky.

  Stepan and his daughter stayed at the old house; Olga, Elena Andreevna and Igor went home, after they’d all agreed to hold a housewarming party in a few days’ time.

  About twenty paces from Igor’s front gate, his mobile phone rang again.

  ‘It’s me,’ said the photographer, sounding flustered. ‘I forgot to ask your full name! We need it for the catalogue and the poster.’

  Igor stopped and thought about it. His mother, who had gone into the yard ahead of him, turned round and looked at him expectantly. He waved his hand to indicate that she should go on into the house without him.

  ‘Are you there?’ the photographer asked impatiently.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Igor. ‘I’m just thinking.’

  ‘Are you concerned about using your real name? Would you prefer a pseudonym?’

  Igor jumped at the idea. ‘Yes, a pseudonym would be better.’

  ‘Shall I call back later? Give you some time to think about it?’

  ‘No,’ Igor said more decisively. ‘Put Vanya Samokhin.’

  ‘Ivan Samokhin?’

  ‘No, Vanya. Vanya Samokhin.’

  ‘OK, I’ve made a note of that,’ said the photographer. His voice sounded calmer now. ‘I’ll take your promotional portrait from one of the photographs, to use in the poster and the catalogue. There’s a good one of you looking straight at the camera.’

  ‘Fine,’ agreed Igor.

  28

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Igor went out for a walk. His initial plan was to walk to the bus station and back, but he changed his mind on the way. He was curious to know exactly how far away Stepan would be living and decided to time the journey to his new house. Before Igor had even reached the familiar turning, Stepan himself appeared. He’d changed out of his suit into a pair of black trousers, a jumper and a red shirt, the collar of which was just visible.

  ‘Are you going to our house?’ Igor asked him.

  ‘Eventually,’ nodded the gardener.

  They continued on their separate ways. When Igor reached the corner he glanced over his shoulder to see whether Stepan was watching him, but he had already disappeared.

  Igor walked past Stepan’s houses and on to the end of the street. On the way back, he slowed down again and scrutinised the gardener’s new properties in the gathering twilight. Igor was still having trouble making sense of everything that had happened over the last month. An old man, who was not exactly a tramp but a bit of a vagrant, met a young man who helped him to decipher an old tattoo on his shoulder. This tattoo led them to Ochakov, where they discovered suitcases full of surprises, gifts from the past. Now the man had bought two houses for himself and his daughter, whereas the young man who had helped him was still stuck in a rut, drifting aimlessly through life. All he had to show for it was a knife wound in his side and an unhealthy obsession with the fate of a fish seller from old Ochakov. So what if he knew the path to the past like the back of his hand? Igor’s ‘achievements’ did not even come close to Stepan’s!

  Igor found himself near the brightly lit kiosk at the bus station, although he had no idea how he’d got there. He bought a cup of instant coffee and drank it outside the kiosk.

  On the way home he bumped into his mother’s friend Olga. She was hurrying towards him in a state of considerable excitement.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he called out.

  She stopped to catch her breath. ‘I’m just going to the shop,’ she said.

  Igor could tell by the look on her face that she wanted to say more. She obviously had some news that she was bursting to share.

  ‘Guess what,’ she said, pausing for dramatic effect. ‘Stepan has just made me a proposal!’

  ‘Lucky you,’ smiled Igor.

  Unimpressed by his reaction, Olga waved her hand dismissively and went on her way.

  When Igor got home, the house was unusually quiet. The atmosphere had changed somehow since Stepan had left. It had been nice having his daughter to stay too, even though it had only been for a couple of days. Now, as he walked down the hallway, Igor couldn’t even hear the television.

  He found his mother in the kitchen. She was sitting quietly at the table with a glass of home-made wine, looking pensive but calm.

  ‘Can I join you?’ asked Igor.

  ‘If you like,’ nodded Elena Andreevna. ‘Sitting here by myself isn’t helping . . . It’s just going round and round in my head.’

  ‘What is?’ asked Igor, pouring himself a glass of wine.

  ‘Stepan proposed to me,’ she said, looking closely at her son.

  Igor’s mouth fell open.

  ‘It took me by surprise too,’ admitted Elena Andreevna. ‘Of course, he’s a respectable man –’

  ‘You think so?’ asked Igor, glancing at the scales on the windowsill. ‘He proposed to your friend Olga too, you know. I’ve just seen her on the way to the grocery shop, quite beside herself with joy!’

  He regretted his words as soon as he saw the effect they had on his mother. Her face fell, she turned pale and her hands started shaking. She stood up and went into the hallway, and Igor heard her putting her coat on. The front door slammed behind her.

  It’s all going to kick off now! he thought, imagining his mother storming round to Olga’s and the two of them having an almighty row.

  Igor picked up his glass of wine and took a sip. He didn’t particularly feel like sitting there waiting for his mother to get back, so he took Iosip’s book from the windowsill and went to his own room. He moved the reading lamp to his bedside table and settled down on his bed with the book. He was soon absorbed in the eccentric ramblings of Iosip Sadovnikov, avowed enemy of Soviet canteen food. Igor found himself noting with regularity how easily the handwritten text overcame his scepticism, making him look at certain culinary issues in a new, more serious way.

  He found the chapter about salt and sugar completely fascinating, for example – so much so that he didn’t even hear his mother come back. He didn’t hear her throw her coat angrily at the coat stand, or the way the coat slipped off and fell to the floor.

  His mother glanced into the kitchen, then opened the door to Igor’s bedroom. She marched over to his bed and raised her hand as though she were about to slap his face, but she managed to restrain herself. Only her eyes, aflame with anger, fell on her son’s face.

  ‘You stupid fool!’ she exclaimed. ‘You almost gave me a heart attack!’

  ‘I didn’t do anything!’ protested Igor. ‘I only told you what I’d heard!’

  ‘What did you hear, exactly?’ cried his mother. ‘He didn’t “propose” to her, he “made her a proposal”. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ asked Igor, recalling that Olga had indeed told him that Stepan had ‘made her a proposal’.

  ‘When you “make someone a proposal”, it means a business proposal. He asked her to be the manager of his cafe. But he proposed to me in the other sense of the word . . . He asked me to marry him!’

  ‘I wonder if he’d consider making me a proposal too,’ remarked Igor, his lips curling into a smile.

  His mother turned round and left without another word, slamming the door. Igor moved the reading lamp to the edge of his bedside table and opened the manuscript again at page 48, which bore the heading ‘Man and Food’.

  People can be divided into two categories, according to the way they naturally relate to the world around them: gardeners and foresters. Gardeners essentially see the world as a garden, in which it is their responsibility to behave appropriately, to fix whatever is broken, to decorate whatever is built and to keep order. Foresters, on the other hand, prefer an uncultivated environment. They are more inclined to break things and live in disorde
r than to build, renovate or repair. Foresters are more ruthless, but they are also physically stronger and more robust. They believe that it is impossible to change the world, whereas gardeners are always trying to improve it. Most men are foresters, and most women are gardeners. Male gardeners are able-bodied but often lack tenacity in their undertakings and the courage of their convictions. Foresters and gardeners differ also in their approach to food. This does not mean that foresters prefer simple food, merely that they tend to lose their natural ability to distinguish and evaluate refined tastes. They are more interested in the size of their portion – when everyone at the table is served an identical meal, the first thing they do is check to see who has been given the most. Gardeners do not usually lose their ability to distinguish refined tastes. In fact, sometimes their perception of taste is developed to such an extent that they are capable of detecting nuances that are not really there.

  Igor looked up from the manuscript, deep in thought. The words he had just read made perfect sense. He automatically thought about Stepan. Was he a gardener or a forester? A gardener, it would appear. Igor thought about himself, about his own culinary preferences and, if truth be told, about his growing indifference to food and to the world around him.

  ‘I don’t seem to be either a gardener or a forester,’ he concluded sadly. ‘Neither fish nor fowl . . . But I used to build such beautiful sandcastles on the beach in Yevpatoriya when I was little! So, I could have become a gardener.’

  Igor smiled at his memories, then shook his head.

  I’m taking it all far too seriously, he decided. It’s not a psychology textbook, it was written by an ordinary man of the people . . . He might not even have finished school!

  But Igor wasn’t convinced by his attempts to dismiss the book’s significance. It sounded unnatural and insincere, like a second-rate actor whose gestures do not correspond to the spirit and sentiment of his lines. He turned his attention back to the page he had been reading.

  The world has so far been spared from devastation because foresters and gardeners frequently enter into marriage, thereby creating unnatural but stable unions. When a male forester marries a female gardener, the husband enjoys the complaisance and timidity of his wife. But when a male gardener takes a female forester for his wife, then her spontaneity will curb his idealism and restrict his endeavours.