CHAPTER TWO

At the Baronkins, Sunday morning started in the tempo of a vigorous squabble that came to the boil in sync with Tatyana’s pea soup.

Trousered but bare-chested, Vassily was fretfully pacing the shared flat’s corridor now and again filling the cramped communal space with clamour on the sore subject:

‘Who da fuck is da boss in ‘ere?’

Tatyana kept silent and did not take her eyes off the stove.

At that same time, sprawling on the unmade bed of her parents, Lisa, one of the Baronkin twins, was interrogating the other twin sitting by her side:

‘Olga, you are a mongol, aren’t you? Tell me honestly!’

And without waiting for an answer, she announced:

‘I know, you’re a mongol. Mum told me. I am going to tell everybody that you’re a mongol.’

Olga suddenly broke into a howl, covering her face with her fists, whereupon Lisa decided to temper justice with mercy:

‘Hey, don’t shit your pants! Okay, I won’t tell then!’

Olga the mongol would not stop. Her howling woke up and frightened her younger brothers.

Tatyana cocked an ear to the discordant wailing of her children and replied sullenly to her husband’s next query as to who da fuck was da boss in ‘ere:

‘The cockroaches.’

Rosa had put on an old-fashioned bathing suit under her frock. It meant that on this day she and Sidelnikov might visit the beach, unless the weather turned foul.

But the weather seemed to have forgotten its own existence. The town looked southern and indolent like some resort, although in actual fact it was an industrial town in the mid-Urals.

Sidelnikov and Rosa were going down the deserted street formerly known as Shkiryatov. It had recently been renamed Oil Workers’ Street but the new name had not yet managed to take root.

Sidelnikov interrupted their habitual silence by asking Rosa why the street was renamed. It cannot be stated for certain that he was very interested in the question, but still... Rosa slightly winced, letting him see that it was of even less interest to her but, after some hesitation, said something along the lines of, well, you see, this Shkiryatov fellow turned out to be a bad man all of a sudden.

Sidelnikov made an attempt at a witty remark:

‘What if afterwards it turns out that the oil workers are baddies, too?’

Rosa did not appreciate the joke and gave him an unexpectedly serious reply:

‘They ought to be spared: they’ve already had their share of being called bad.’

With that, the conversation fizzled out. However, Sidelnikov was still a bit sorry for the old name because he fancied that it had some awe-inspiring gangster charm. One day, donkey’s years later, the abolished name would surface and merge on paper with an indescribably ugly mug, of the kind one would only expect in a nightmare. Sidelnikov, rummaging in a second-hand book shop, would find and take into his hands a shiny book with biographies of those honoured enough to be buried near the Kremlin Wall, or in the Wall itself. From a page opened by providence, an affectionate cannibal smile would be bestowed upon him by a functionary with bovine eyes set at the width of his iron-cast cheekbones: the unforgettable Matvey Shkiryatov.

But right at this moment, it was just a street where Rosa lived, where the inevitable imminent joy was trying – and failing – to hide behind the provinciality of the place and motionlessness of the time, and the shabby luxury of the pending Sunday walk. It was for this joy and to serve this joy that everything they encountered on their way was created.

Well, first of all, they would come across the Haberdashery Store. It was impossible not to nip in there. It was called “to go have a glance at the diamonds”. It is true that Rosa preferred the counter with cottons and buttons (where hardly anything caught the eye), but Sidelnikov straightaway glued himself to the counters where the “jewels” were displayed. The sun just about managed to squeeze itself through the grimy shop window and regained its strength on the display, thanks to the magnificent, like oil on water, iridescent splash fragmented into large faceted shards, priced about two roubles apiece. There also were swimming and shimmering bottle green and wine-red glassy treasures of such depth and clarity that they surely could be nothing but emeralds and rubies. These beauties never diminished since nobody ever bought them. Anyway, the idea that the treasure could be bought by anyone, taken in hand and put into a pocket never crossed Sidelnikov’s mind. The impression was enhanced by the divine redolence of “Carmen” face powder and “Chypre” eau-de-cologne.

After these haberdashery refinements, the air and the light in the street appeared bland and faded. But this did not mean to cause disappointment. The day was still there – with an open face whose every feature was a firm promise of a fabulous future that could not be cancelled.

The evidence was manifesting itself: the yell of a woman who had wandered from the suburbs with heavy milk cans (‘Milk, any-o-o-one?’); the cheerfulness of a short-legged stray dog met on the way; Rosa’s nimble step; and finally at the turning into Lenin Avenue, the billboards advertising “The Queen of the Filling Station” and “The Return of Veronica” at the “Mir” cinema. From those obscure names Sidelnikov contrived to glean a lot more than could possibly be crammed into any, even the most mind-blowing, film.

Everything he saw provoked his hunger and thirst - the dogberry bushes in the middle of the lawn, the rainbow running obediently in the spray of the street cleaning machine or the insistent inscription on a shop window: “If you want to be beautiful, be it!” If at that moment somebody were to ask Sidelnikov whether there was anything he did not want he would not have been able to give an answer. Because he wanted everything. The more pleasurable was the torment of his silent reserve, encouraged by the secret pact with Rosa.

Indeed, there was nothing strange in the fact that, upon entering the nearest grocery store, Rosa would immediately buy Sidelnikov a glass of tomato juice that cost 10 kopecks, without even asking whether he felt like it or not. While the shop assistant, having turned the minuscule faucet, was slowly dispensing the trickling juice out of a tall conical glass container, Sidelnikov fished an aluminium teaspoon out of a jar filled with water in order to scratch for and obtain some petrified salt out of another jar. He clinked for a long time stirring the salt in his glass and then sank the spoon in the jar where the water was turning pink, and then, at last, got a mouthful of the fresh grassy coolness. It was the tiny crystals of the undissolved salt on the bottom of the glass that always turned out the most delicious of all.

Still with his moustache of red juice, Sidelnikov grabbed hold of the tiny parcel of low fat “doctor’s” sausage that was bought for him just then and would be devoured by him in an instant.

Well, the sausage was gone – and why dwell on it? Yet one ought to mention the fabled age when boiled sausage priced two roubles twenty kopecks per kilo would become an object of deep preoccupation for the population of this huge country. And Sidelnikov, who by that time would have moved to another, larger city, would learn to woo the arrogant salesgirls. Suppressing the spasms of gentility-born queasiness, he would wheedle one or two extra sausage batons (over and above the allowed ration), in order to be able afterwards to transport victoriously those congealed treasures in a second-class carriage to his home town in the Southern Urals. The people there had almost forgotten the taste of the said victual, despite the concerted working efforts of the local meat processing factory. Rosa would not live to see those cruel times.

...

The central square was as quiet and forlorn as any other part of the town. By the newsstand, a fat woman in an apron was melting, glued to her candyfloss stall. For a three-kopeck bribe, several vending machines the colour of fire engines were ready for anything: to spray up to the ears whoever would dare plunge his hand into their white innards; or to spurt up a faceted glass full of prickly water with syrup; or yet to retain proud silence - surely, one could not possibly spurt every single time!

The main adornment of the square was provided by the ruins of the prospective drama theatre, a lethargic construction site thanks to which a whole generation of citizens was able to answer calls of their modest nature not just anywhere in the bushes, but behind reliable red brick walls. A few years later, this square would be renamed Komsomol Square, and into a low cement barrier by the ruins there would be immured, in the presence of an enormous congregation of gloomy schoolchildren, a Message To Progeny with an oath of loyalty to Lenin’s Party alongside other urgent communications.

Number Four tram came rolling to the stop, tinkling every now and again.

‘Is this ours?’ Sidelnikov asked anxiously, thus starting the game of pretending to be newly arrived in town, and maybe even a foreigner.

‘This is our tram’, Rosa, the local resident, assured him.

Sidelnikov, as a guest, sat by the window and Rosa rode standing, as if ignoring the vacant seats. The lady tram driver announced the stops regularly, like news headlines: “Vanguard stadium”, “Machinery Plant”...

‘Is this a machinery plant?’ the “foreigner”, clearly a little bit dense, liked to make certain.

‘Yes it is’, Rosa replied, looking down at him, for some reason with fondness.

The crude plaster figures of the man and woman toilers near the “Hammer and Sickle” Palace of Culture were shining as if made from pure silver. They too received their portion of attention paid as intently as if they were seen for the first time.

It must be mentioned that all tram routes in the town terminated at railway stations (of which there were two). And it stood to reason that all other stops, such as, for instance, “Collective Farm Market” or “River Ural” appeared something auxiliary and intermediary on the approach to the ideal final goal embodied in the railway stations. It was the stations, reeking of soot and toilet bleach that played the role of some magic lens beaming out rays of unpredictable paths and opportunities.

The river divided the town in two: the new part, as yet unfinished but already priming itself to become the main part, thanks to the precocious five-storied blocks of flats, and the so-called Old Town that became undisputedly famous for two reasons. First, it was here that the Ukrainian national (and obviously for that reason punished by the czarist system) poet Tarass Shevchenko was exiled, or, simply speaking, where he served in the army. Evidence survived as to how badly he was suffering here. He was forever pulling at his fashionable moustache and was sighing in his native Ukrainian tongue, ‘No-h-one would weeep... No-h-one would weeep!’ The second, if not the main, reason for the well-deserved fame of the Old Town, was the Old Town fried offal pasties. They were unique, that is, incomparable to anything at all in terms of taste and aroma. The pasties were so well-loved by the locals that at weekends they would not consider it beneath themselves to form a mile-long queue; while during the working week they would send an emissary representing a whole team or a workshop to the coveted steaming stall by the bridge. And the aroma from the left bank was so far-reaching that it made those living on the right bank either sit salivating, or promptly cross the river by the tram over the bridge and join the tail of the endless queue.

Sidelnikov was especially impressed by the fact that the river was once and for all declared The Official Border between Europe and Asia by someone from above. Therefore, before taking off his shoes on the hot wet sand, Sidelnikov would first peruse the opposite bank with curiosity and even certain angst, striving to spot the natives: ‘How are they doing over there? They are in Asia, after all!’

Meanwhile, the river was rivalling the sky in its blinding shine and speed. It was streaming past the heat-worn beach, needing nobody and nothing.

Rosa touched the water with a wary bronzed foot and then strolled for some time along the wet strip of the beach. Walking, she was unhurriedly tidying her hair away under a light-coloured, sun-bleached bandanna.

It was the season of tiny bluish-black dragonflies that appeared out of nowhere, in order to gaze at people in silence and hang above the water. They suddenly flew all together to Rosa, the whole mica-sparkling gaggle of them, as cordially as if they recognised her to be a relative. For some reason, Rosa accepted it for granted and did not even brush away the most passionate ones when they landed on her breast, which made her tan seem paler and her skin vulnerably white.

Unable to match her pace Sidelnikov was feeling self-conscious and scurried around, intercepting the sunbathers’ stares at Rosa and vexed by the dragonflies’ circus, which clearly was what attracted the attention of the bored men.

Then, into the bargain, Innokenty materialised in the flesh, as if he had been deliberately lying in wait for Rosa in order to, as usual, strike up a conversation with her in his at once wounded and adoring voice. And he always just failed to notice Sidelnikov, or looked through him.

Swimming did not appeal. The only thing left to Sidelnikov was to walk back by himself to the blue counterpane which had been spread on the sand by Rosa and to lie down to sunbathe. While scanning the feathery heavens for a short time, deliberately trying to imagine that it was not the heavens, but, on the contrary, a vertiginous bottomless pit, Sidelnikov noticed, by lateral vision, two pairs of wet legs: a hirsute one with sand stuck up to the ankles, as if covered in mustard plaster, and an immaculately clean one shimmering with tiny silvery sparkles.

‘It’s a shame that you can’t see yourself from the outside,’ Rosa’s cool voice was sympathising.

‘Well, I’ve quite forgotten what I look like. Before you know it, I’ll forget what my name is,’ Innokenty was replying quite seriously. ‘It’s been four months now that I can’t sleep at night, and during the day I feel happy and silly as a boy.’

‘Well, you are a boy.’

‘Rosa, I am nearly forty,’ confessed Innokenty, exercising a complicated manoeuvre with his right foot in order to get the sand off his left. It seemed that he was priming himself for a daring move, and then at last he ventured:

‘May I come and visit you sometime?’

Sidelnikov was sure that Rosa would reply, ‘Get away!’ to him and even felt sorry for Innokenty, who froze on one leg in apprehension.

But unexpectedly, she said:

‘It’s my birthday on Wednesday. Would you come by around six? The only thing is, I’m not going to celebrate and I do not want any presents. And you’ll need my address...’

‘I know the address!’ Innokenty cried hoarsely and broke into a cough. Then he took an awkward pause during which the situation on the cloud front changed completely and then, obviously at a loss for words, he offered solicitously:

‘Shall I remove this dragonfly off you?’

‘Get away!’ said Rosa.

In the evening of the same day, taking advantage of Rosa’s absence, Sidelnikov got out of the whatnot’s drawer an ink pot, a school nib attached to a wooden handle, and a pack of greeting cards in which he found one that was clean and uninscribed. On the front, a powerful fist was depicted, clutching a bunch of flowers with a vague interpretation offered underneath: “Peace. Labour. Month of May”.

He perched on the edge of the table, poked the ink pot with the nib and on the reverse of the card, scribbled painstakingly the first word:

Nana!

He thought a little, and then just as painstakingly crossed out the word and wrote above it on the left:

Dearest!

The word “Dearest” came out a bit askew but the lines that followed were appearing better aligned:

Happy birthday to you.

I wish for you to be free of any illness,

to be merry and to live until ...

Here Sidelnikov fell into a reverie. He was not happy about what he had written so far yet he did not feel like crossing out anything anymore. The nib dried up and started to resemble the back of a golden beetle.

All right. ‘To live until ...’ Suddenly, he felt as if he were a bestower of infinite beneficence and, upon a momentary musing, inserted an almost fantastical date into the greetings:

... until 1975!

Overwhelmed by good feelings, Sidelnikov bolstered the concluding exclamation mark with more ink, waved the card dry and took it along the corridor to the mailbox attached to the inside of the front door.

He had done his part. On returning to the room, he headed straight to the window: Rosa, alive and merry and free from any illness, was standing in the middle of the yard talking with the crazy redhead Lydia. He could not make out any words. At that moment Lydia might have appeared a lady of consequence – if only she were not scratching her greasy underbelly, now with the right hand, now with the left.

The August of the unforgettable year nineteen sixty-four was running out. In the previous month, Sidelnikov entered the seventh year of his life. In two days time, Rosa would turn fifty. She would have exactly eleven years more to live.