Voroshilovgrad (41 page)
Authors: Serhiy Zhadan
Tamara looked despondent. She wasn't in the mood to talk, but I had to get her to explain the whole situation to me. She said that Karolina called her that morning, asked her to drive over and pick me up, explaining where we were, saying she was sorry for being such an inconvenience, and assuring Tamara that taking me along with the tribe was out of the question, since the Mongols believe it would bring them bad luck, and were basically threatening to sever all ties with the EU Commission if I were to continue on the trip with them.
“All right, fine,” I said, already sitting in the back seat and counting the October poplars as we drove by. “But how did she know to call you?”
“It's a long story,” Tamara answered reluctantly. “She and her team did some work with us back in the day. Some charity work
for the church. They had a good relationship with our presbyter; he was always helping them out with paperwork or just saying a kind word. Who else could she have called, anyway? Just think about it, they can't have people poking around their camp.”
“That's for sure. I guess dumping on the church looked pretty appealing.”
“Right.”
“But they could just have taken me along, too.”
“No, they really couldn't have,” Tamara said. “The Mongols were worried you'd latch onto them. They don't need outsidersâthey've got a code. You should be counting your blessings. It's a good thing they didn't turn you in, or just get rid of you. Where do you get off wandering around like that?”
“Take it easy,” I said. “.What's going on back home? Are they still looking for me?”
“Yep,” Tamara answered. “They even stopped by the church and talked to the presbyter.”
“What'd he tell them?”
“Nothing,” Tamara assured me. “He said he didn't know anything.”
“So what am I supposed to do now?”
“Nothing,” Tamara said. “Now you just gotta wait it out. What are you getting so worked up over?”
“What am I getting so worked up over? Let me tell you what I'm getting so worked up over! Have you ever slept in a tent with two lesbians?”
“Yeah, I have. And I didn't like it one bit.”
“Can we make a pit stop here?” I asked. “I'm thirsty.”
A little green food truck was set up on a brick foundation. Long benches stained with ketchup and butter stood off to the side under some trees. It was a kind of rest stop, a safe haven with amiable female dancers, children's songs, and soft-spoken birds, where travelers could share the latest news, warning their fellow sojourners about upcoming traps and danger.
We were the only customers right now, though. A heavyset woman with pink hair and red nails came out of the food truck, gave us a deeply skeptical look, took our order, and disappeared back inside. Tamara and I were sitting on the bench in tense silence; Seva had decided to stay back in the car, but he asked us to bring him back a hot meal. The sun was warming up the autumn fields the best it could and the warm eastern wind brought us the smells of smoke and dry grass. Barren black soil spread out around us, and out on the horizon red-tinted pine trees soared upward.
The air seemed to be woven out of varying smells and shades of color, like the fabric of burning flags still flapping in the October wind. The emblems on those flags were long, sticky vessels made from spiderwebs and thin bundles of fatigued plants cut and assembled by women's hands. There were birds too, flying over vast expanses, heading south, deserting the thick, stagnant air that drifted along over our hair. Lethargic autumn insects crawled over the cloth flags, blending in with the earth and sky. The ragged banners smelled of silt and wet sandâthere was a river flowing nearby carrying leaves and severed plant stems downstream.
Tamara was wearing her usual cherry-colored sweater and long dress, hiding her eyes behind big sunglasses, which made her look like some mobster's widow; her heart still belonged to him, how could she ever move on? She sat there, smoking a lot, drinking tea out of a plastic cup, refusing to eat, and watching the butterflies gravitating toward the sugar cubes on our table.
The sun and the autumn air made the rest stop feel ghostly and unwieldy, as though the whole place was liable to collapse and fall to pieces any second now. The last few days were like a sugar cube that had been left outside, and now that sugar cube was flashing in the, blinding us, agitations our imaginations, reminding us that any moment might hold unexpected and unforeseen events.
“You'll stay at my place for now,” Tamara said. “They probably won't look for you there.”
“It'd be better for me to just go home. What could they really do to me? At least that way I'll figure out what the problem is.”
“Don't be ridiculous. Why stick your neck out? Wait it out for a few days at my place and then you can go back home. I told Injured about my planâhe's fine with it.”
“Well, as long as Injured's fine with it.”
“You'll go back in a few days. All right?”
“Okay,” I said. And then I asked, “Tamara, why haven't you gotten out of here yet?”
“Where would I go?”
“Anywhere. I don't know . . . you could have gone abroad. Why did you stay?”
She took off her glasses. It struck me again that she was already well over the hillâshe wasn't as young and carefree as she had
seemed in the Volga at twilight after two days of celebrating. Her face was pale, and she had a troubled and uncertain look about her. Her cigarette was quivering ever so slightly, right between her two big black and silver rings.
“You must have wanted to leave at some point. What could be keeping you here?”
“What do you mean?” she answered after a second's thought. “There always are things that keep us in a particular place.”
“Listen, isn't it the future that keeps you somewhere? I mean, the idea that you'll have a future there? Do you really think there's a future for you here?”
“No,” she admitted, “but there's a past. The past can also make you stick around.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It's hard for me to explain,” Tamara said. “Let's just go home.”
I hadn't been to Tamara's place since her mom's funeral. Remembering how everything played out that night, I crossed the threshold of her apartment feeling rather uneasy, would everything that went down that night make being here together uncomfortable? But Tamara was walking from room to room, too preoccupied to pay any attention to me, so that uneasy feeling soon passed. It was replaced by a newborn sense of confidence and an odd touch of melancholy, clearly caused by sweet memories and aching anticipation.
I chided myself for thinking of those memories as sweet. It
was a funeral, after allâwe'd buried Masha, who was a stranger to me at the time, but who was someone's mother nonetheless. I continued chiding myself, thinking, “Go thank her for picking you up and taking you away from that Tatar-Mongol haven of debauchery, for taking care of you and not turning you over to the cops or the local gangsters. Lay low for the next few days until everything blows over, and then go back to your gas pumps with a clear conscience. Make sure not to traumatize her by bringing up her mom, andâabove allâdon't promise to marry her.”
“Hey Herman,” she said, bringing me out of my reverie. “I'm gonna head out. You'll be in charge for the day. Don't open the door for anyone, don't answer the phone, and don't walk past the windows.”
“Waitâwhere are you going?”
“I've got stuff to do, Herman. Were you thinking I'd just sit around here all day with you?”
“Well no, not really,” I answered, my feelings a bit hurt. “All right, I don't wanna keep you . . . but when should I expect you back?”
“Why should you be expecting me?”
“Well, I'll have to open the door for you.”
“I've got a key,” Tamara said, matter-of-factly. “So, don't wait up. I'll be back late.”
“Well, what should I do all day?” I asked.
“Do some reading,” Tamara said. “There are a bunch of children's books over there.”
I found a packed bookcase in the living room; there were indeed a lot of children's books there, bearing stamps from the factory library, as well as musty collections of fairy tales and science fiction stories, books about heroic Soviet pioneers, and historical novels. I started flipping through the books, coming across the occasional dried flower or old birthday card serving as a bookmark. Pages had been ripped out in places, and sometimes I'd find odd doodles or grim pentagrams drawn in the margins. None of the books really interested me, though. I fumbled around the shelves for a while until I found some magazines, LPs, and a hefty photo album all stacked in a bottom corner.
The majority of the photographs in the album had been glued meticulously onto its pages, but a whole pile hadn't made the cut, apparently, and had just been left stuffed between the front cover and the first page. I went into the bedroom, taking the album with me.
A large sofa bed with a dozen or so soft pillows and cushions on it, was sitting by the wall; in true Soviet fashion, there was a rug hanging on it. It was synthetic and looked to be Chinese, judging by the stylized figuresâit was a picture of some sort of tea ceremony, and there was something familiar about the profiles of the figures sitting in the foreground. I had seen these faces before and they had said something to me. Two men were passing each other saucers, thick currents of steam coming off them, and a pregnant woman was sprawled out in the center of the image, between the men, her eyes fastened intently on their nimble hands. In the background, I could see yurts and campfires, smoke drifting up
and connecting the earth and sky, as well as herds of cows walking between the columns of smoke, bearing milk inside them like bitter truth.
I flopped down on the bed and opened up the album.
Caught, like birds in a net, their eagle eyes stared up at meâboth still and attentive, not knowing what to expect from me. Grown men and women, children and old people, students, soldiers, blue-collar workers, high school seniors wearing white graduation aprons, the deceased in coffins with silver coins placed over their eyes, and infants with their favorite toysâthey were all waiting for someone to meet their eyes, some color, some black and white, to ascertain what it was that kept them together, what they were living for and why they'd passed on.
