Voroshilovgrad (12 page)

Kocha had worn himself out completely; he sat on his catapult and lazily fended off this truck driver, an old acquaintance, who was trying, just as lazily, to get Kocha to stand up and actually do his job, fill the truck up before a long haul. I went outside and
relieved the old guy. The sun smelled of gasoline, it hung over our heads like a pear full of oil.

Work diffused my confusion by giving my daily routine a defined rhythm and some semblance of order. When you're keeping busy you think less about the corridors of the future that you'll inevitably have to walk down. I helped my business partners, bobbing around under the orange June sky. In the evenings, Kocha would take out his canned food, roll a few cigarettes, and put on my headphones. We would sit under the apple trees, silent and relaxed, our skin telling us that the sun was sinking and the cool air was rising off the river. After dark, Injured would start getting ready to leave, washing his hands at the yellow sink and dousing himself with cologne. He'd put on his foppish white dress shirt and head down into the valley, toward the golden electric lights and lilac-colored shadows of the city's alleyways—his lovers would be waiting there for him, opening up their windows into the cool black night.

The colder air and sweet wool covers made our sleep deep and smooth, like an old riverbed; our skin, scorched by the sun, would cool off by the morning, but our blankets would retain the heat of our bodies for a while. In the morning Kocha would wake
me up with some tall tales, make breakfast, and kick me outside to brush my teeth. Our routine reminded me of some kind of extended school field trip—I had lost all sense of time. I was on an unexpected vacation, a visit to a gas station, and now I was roaming these little hills in bewilderment, tangled in the grass, wandering between the field birds' rusty iron hideouts. Injured continued to look at me with just as much suspicion, although he had softened up a bit; the next evening, on Wednesday, he took out the ball again, as well as the paint cans, put me in his makeshift goal, and spent a long while perfecting his left-footed shot. One of the drivers recognized me, said hello, and asked how I was doing, whether I was here for long and where my brother was. I avoided giving any direct answers, saying that everything was all right, insincere though this was. But what difference did it make?

On Thursday, Olga showed up after lunch. She arrived on her scooter, carrying a large wicker basket over her shoulder. The basket was constantly swinging forward, hitting up against the wheel, getting in the way. Olga passed a truck gracefully, turned off the highway, darted toward the gas station, and pulled up in front of us. Kocha and I were sitting in our chairs, swatting away the pesky wasps, intoxicated by the smell of tobacco and cologne. Olga hopped off her scooter, greeted Kocha, and nodded at me.

“You're still here?” she asked.

“Yeah, I decided to take a vacation. An unpaid vacation.”

“Oh, I see,” Olga said. “How are your buddies doing?”

“What buddies?”

“The guys in the Jeep.”

“Ah, those guys. Excellent. They wound up being awfully nice people.”

“For real?” she asked.

“They played me some music and they want to be friends.”

“And?”

“The music? It was shit.”

“What about being friends?”

“I'm still thinking about it,” I admitted.

“Sure you are,” Olga said coldly. And then, “Kocha, this is for you,” handing him the basket and heading over to the garage to visit Injured before Kocha could even get out a thank you.

The basket contained fresh bread and milk in a plastic Coke bottle. Kocha eagerly broke off a piece of the bread and sank his teeth into it; they were yellow and robust, like an old dog's teeth. He offered me the bottle of milk. I turned him down. The scooter's white sides were reflecting the light, heating up quickly under the sun's rays. The valley was quiet; the birds roamed between the trees, looking for cool spots to settle down in.

Olga came out of the garage a little later. Injured, huffing and puffing, wearing his work clothes and wiping the sweat from his neck with a snow-white handkerchief, followed behind her. He was holding some papers. Clearly, Olga had just given them to him, and he was waving them around, trying to explain something to her. She wasn't even listening to him.

“Injured,” she said, “what do you want me to do about it?”

Injured crumpled up the papers, stuck them in his coat pocket,
and vanished back into the garage, waving his fists.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Olga answered curtly. She hopped on her scooter, started it up, stood still for a second, and then shut off the engine. “Herman,” she said, “are you busy now?”

“Generally speaking, yes,” I said, a bit flustered. “But at this particular moment I'm on break.”

“Let's go for a swim in the river,” she suggested. “Kocha,” she asked the old-timer, “do you mind?”

Kocha expressed his consent with a big gulp of milk.

“Well then, are you coming?” Olga asked, hopping off the scooter once again and charging down the hill. All I could do was get up and follow her.

She took the lead, searching for the trail between thick blackthorn bushes and unripe mulberries. The path dropped sharply; blades of grass were getting in her shoes, butterflies and wasps were flying off stems, and little emerald lizards were scurrying around beneath us. Exhausted from running through the scorching air, I could hardly keep up with her. There was more greenery here, we only could see the valley though the gaps between the branches. The trail simply disappeared a few times—when that happened Olga would just glide over into the grass and push on. Finally, my legs gave out, and I tumbled down onto the bitter wormwood, cursing cruel fate.

“Hey, what's going on over there?” Olga called out from down below. “You doing all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I answered mutinously.

I didn't like that she had picked up on how tired I was,
my skidding into the tall grass, my inability to keep up with the pace she'd set at the top of the hill. “Well,” I thought, “come on back and give me a hand then. Why'd you drag me down this overgrown trail anyway? Come on back here.”

But she wasn't even considering coming back for me. She was standing down below, somewhere beyond the branches; I couldn't see her, but I could sense the heat of her blood pumping from her short run. I could feel her waiting, so I had to pick myself up, empty the sand out of my pockets, and move forward, following the sound of her breath. We walked on in silence. The river wasn't actually that close to the gas station; it would have been easier to take the highway down, but Olga stubbornly forged on, dodging trees and bushes, fighting through weeds, and leaping over burrows and ditches—and then the trail dropped off abruptly into the river shining below us. Olga advanced; skidding down the steep chalky incline, she stepped softly into the water. Resigning myself to following her obediently, I too skidded into the water. The bank had a small patch of sand surrounded by reeds.

“Just don't look,” she said. “I'm not wearing a swimsuit.”

“I can see that.”

She slid out of her long dress, exposing a pair of white panties, and stepped deeper into the water. I really did want to turn away, but I'd missed my chance.

“I don't know how to swim, by the way,” she said, standing in water up to her neck.

“Me either,” I answered, slipping out of my tank driver getup and wading through the water toward her. The river was warm; the chalky hills reflecting the sun's rays had heated it up, so I just
felt sleepy and lethargic.

“I used to be a camp counselor. At a Young Pioneers camp about fifty kilometers from here. My partner and I had to pull kids out of the water every day.”

“Dead kids?” I asked, a bit confused.

“What? No, regular, alive kids. Nobody drowned, but they'd swim out to the reeds and hide out until the evening. They knew we couldn't swim. Can you imagine the kind of pressure I was under?”

“Sounds like no fun,” I said. “My friends and I used to go dynamite fishing in this river.”

“There are fish here?”

“Nah, but we still tried blasting them.”

“I see,” Olga said, droplets shining like copper in her red hair. Her skin was wet and warm, which made it look smooth: the wrinkles under her eyes had disappeared. “Do you have a lot of friends here?”

“Yeah, a lot of childhood friends.”

“What's so special about childhood friends?”

“They still remember a whole lot.”

“Herman, you're too self-conscious.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm really self-conscious. Like about not being able to swim.”

“I can't swim, either, but I'm not self-conscious about it.” Olga's voice was stern.

“So you might drown, but you won't be self-conscious about it.”

“I won't drown,” Olga said confidently. “You can't drown in a river you've been going to your whole life.”

“Sure you can. Plus I haven't swum in it for a long time.”

Bugs skirted across the surface of the water, like fishermen hurrying along wet gray ice.

“What are you going to do?” Olga asked at last. “About the gas station, I mean.”

“I don't know. I've decided to sit on it for a little bit. I've got time. My brother may come back, after all.”

“Gotcha. How long are you going to wait?”

“I don't know. Summer is long.”

“You know, Herman,” she said, swatting some wasps away, “I'll be here to help, if you need me.”

“Thanks.”

“But don't take it the wrong way—it's just business.”

“Got it.”

“Then why are you staring at me like that again? Are you
trying
to make me feel self-conscious?”

The current was carrying away some branches and twirling the black grass that ran along the river's sandy bottom. Insects still hovered above the water, sticking to its pasty surface—the thick and clumpy afternoon river wasn't flowing so much as simply continuing.