Gratitude is an illness suffered by dogs.
Josef Stalin
Wide cobblestone streets, lime and chestnut trees, car horns. Wrought iron balconies, the smell of petrol, red and yellow trams screeching along rails. Linen factories, tinsmiths, exhaust fumes, a clock tower. Minsk, 1938. Nothing like he has imagined, nothing like he could possibly have imagined; he has no store of pictures in his mind for this place, these crowds of people.
Women in shin-length dresses fitted to their bodies, a few with red lips, furs around their shoulders. Some of the men with polished shoes instead of boots, here and there a fedora. Walking singly, in couples, groups, some of them striding, some of them strolling. The hubbub, the foreign smells, the sheer busyness are overwhelming — it is all he can do to keep from gaping. That this had been going on, that these people had been lining up for kvass from barrels on wheels, that they had been buying malt dough or sour apple pies at the very moment he had been spreading muck on the fields or wrestling with the plow is unfathomable.
But he is here now, in this place free of the stench of rotting potatoes, and he can already see small possibilities hidden in this landscape. The curve of a woman’s hip, the smoky aroma of grilled meat drifting into the street, a man putting on his hat in the sun, his fingers placed around the furrow in the crown. Glimpses of a new existence, already drawing him in.
He sells the horse and cart quickly, buys some used trousers, a shirt, a comb, a razor, scouring the shops for them — supplies of almost everything are short. He rents a corner in a weekly room — illegally — three other men in it, mildewed wallpaper curling up at the seams. An electric bulb hanging from the ceiling — a revelation, but only until six o’clock, when the power often goes off.
The next day, he begins searching and asking, applying and offering. Everywhere — a tannery, a distillery, an iron foundry, a machining shop. Look, how strong I am, how quickly I learn. But they are not hiring, or they are not hiring him — some of them skeptical about his claim to be sixteen, or sizing him up as a farm boy, too callow.
He is startled and angered by these rebuffs. They have no idea what a hard worker he is, how fast he is, how long he has been waiting for this, how much he has earned it. He keeps on going, plodding from place to place, attempting to conceal his resentment. Come back next week, we might have something then. But his supply of kopecks is already running low, and he is becoming more desperate. He cuts back on food — he is used to this, but it seems more painful now, after days in which he tore into loaves of bread, or wolfed down dumplings with bacon, letting loose his hunger. Another few days and he will lose his corner of the room as well, he will have to sleep out by the river. And the weather is becoming colder, trees littering the ground with chestnuts, the wind poking and prodding him through his thin clothes. Now he tries the shops, going from store to store, asking if they need someone to do anything, anything at all. I learn quickly, I can read letters and numbers. No work, they say, not bothering to tell him that if they did need someone, it would be someone with more manners, who could lure in customers, cajole them to buy. Not someone who hammers out questions, and then grunts his answers.
A sign overhanging the sidewalk — a spool of thread, a needle dancing beside it. A small shop, the place where he bought his shirt and trousers when he first arrived.
The smell of cedar greets him — to keep the moths away, says the tailor, to keep them from eating holes in the bolts of cloth. A thin man, wire eyeglasses hooked behind his ears, his fingers long and fine.
No, no work, he says. He tries to keep his face straight at the thought of this young man threading a needle, sewing a seam. A small girl — three? four? — sidles out of a backroom and slips her hand into his.
He looks the young man up and down sharply.
At least I can give you something to eat.
The backroom is lined with shelves, pieces cut to patterns stacked on some of them, chalk marks showing. Linen, twill, broadcloth. Spools of thread in every possible shade take up another shelf. Several irons of different sizes sit beside a tailor’s form, a form with a half-sewn vest on it bristling with pins. The black treadle sewing machine is under the small window, the words Kompaniya Singer across the top in gold writing, partly rubbed away.
The man clears a place, moving aside baskets of needles and bobbins, basting thread, long scissors, a jar of white sizing. Then he ladles out a bowl of garlic and barley soup from a pot on the wood stove, cuts off a chunk of rye bread.
Soup mit nisht, we call it, he says. Soup with nothing.
The little girl curls up on the man’s lap, wide-eyed as the young man gulps it down. She begins chattering in a small, piping voice, making quicksilver movements with her hands.
Do you like buttons I can draw pictures I have a velvet hair ribbon how old are you?
The young man looks at her dumbly.
Pay no attention, says the man. Her mother died a few months ago. The blood-spitting disease.
He says this in a way that suggests the words are unfamiliar, that they are strangers in his mouth.
When the bowl is empty, he begins rummaging through one of the shelves, pulling out an old jacket, a rip in the side sewn up in precise stitching.
The owner left it two years ago. I doubt he’ll be back for it now, he says dryly.
He holds the jacket for him to put on, as if he were a customer, then straightens it, pinching the material over the shoulders.
Good fit, he says. Then he pushes him out the door.
Place to place, a cabinetmaker collective, a shoe factory, a slaughterhouse. Most are brusque, dismissive.
Eventually he finds himself beside the river, the Svislach, and he sits down to rest for a moment, tired. The stone embankments are patched with yellow lichens, a twisted willow hanging over the water. One of its branches is so heavy that it has split the trunk, a gash of white wood showing. A bowlegged man is poling a boat, leaning into the pole silently, lifting it and then sinking it down again.
Any work? he calls out to him.
The man shakes his head, leaning into the pole again, sending the boat gliding underneath the bridge, the green water swirling around him.
Nothing for him here. He stands up and turns back towards the main streets.
Then.
Only a week.
A small glassworks, sweeping the floor, moving pallets, stoking furnaces for a few kopecks, next to nothing. But enough to keep his corner of the room for the moment, for a few meals of lard and kasha.
And the place is warm, too warm, the furnaces stoked to small infernos. He sweeps up the scrap glass, the cullet, washes it, spreads it out to dry. By the second week, he is feeding it into the clay crucibles. How long does it take to melt, to go from solid to molten, from cold to hot, to two thousand degrees? Hours before it is hot enough, before the glassblowers can gather the melted glass on their pontil rods. This means there are always crucibles in rotation, the furnaces roaring and wheezing all night.
Be careful, says one of the men. Even a drop on the skin can burn down to the bone in a second.
Sometimes he stops for a minute to watch them — the head glassblower, a fish-eyed man, morose, but a master of breath and shape. He picks up a glowing blob, rolling the pontil back and forth on the bench, cradling the hot glass in a hollowed block of applewood. Then he lengthens it by swinging the rod around in a circle, picks up more glass, rolls, swings and begins the first blowing, the red-hot glass blooming out. More rolling, swinging, heating, cradling, a ceaseless effort to keep the fiery bubble from dropping off the rod. In a moment he inserts the shape into a hinged mould, and when he blows this time, the glass inside expands into the shape of another green wine bottle.
The man straightens up, wipes the sweat off his forehead with the inside crook of his elbow, his eyes bulging a little. A minute later, the bottle comes out of the mould, and he cracks it off the rod, smoothing the edges, the neck, the lip. After that, it goes into the annealer to cool down slowly, gradually. If it cools too fast, it shatters. And then on to the next bottle and the next.
Crates of bottles, jugs, jars, flasks — the glassblowers are swift workers. Several times a week, he sweeps out the van, unloads the empty crates, loads the full ones, rides along to help with the deliveries, to drop off the bottles at their destinations. All over Minsk, across the river, along the banks, into the low hills, the smell of the spruce trees, the red-barked pine trees in the air. From time to time, they go to nearby towns as well, Barysaw, Kojdanau, Nesvizh.
Another month, says the manager. But I make no promises after that.
Three months, he says, a few weeks later.
The young man is fascinated by the van, how the driver handles the wheel, the gears, the pedals, how he controls this large machine so nonchalantly. The driver, who would rather be sleeping in the back, notices his interest, and shows him what to do. A few weeks later, he pulls over to the side of the road on the way to Stowbtsy and they change places so the younger man can drive. His hands on the wheel, all that power sitting on the axles, even the rough sound of the engine are gratifying, and slowly, over the next several months, he becomes determined to hold on to this, to get it for himself. The man is lazy, shiftless, this should be mine. Once he is driving most of the time, even in the crowded streets of Minsk, he tells the manager. The next day, the sleeper is fired. Then the young man asks for his job as well as his own.
After that, the other workers draw away from him, their faces stony. Even before then, he was not liked, although they had to admit that he was quick, useful. But he had made no effort to strike up an alliance with anyone, and now they are wary. Too late, he realizes that some other ties might have been useful. More than useful, in some cramped part of himself, he wanted their regard, their acceptance. Or at least to avoid their scorn. No longer, though, now he is angry again — although he is often angry, a crawling, prickly rage never far from the surface. What does he need them for, anyway?
He eats his dinners by himself at a place near his room, whatever they have — soup with goose blood, offal pudding. Even so, it is more than he had on the farm, and his body begins filling out — he is no longer as gaunt. As he becomes stronger, though, so do his sexual urges, a stringy itch when he was exhausted all the time, now something that torments him, waking him up in the night.
···
She is young, although not as young as he is, her eyes too small, her features too spongy, too uneven to be beautiful. But her brow is clear, and her hair gleams where it picks up the light of the oil lamp. She is wearing lipstick, rouge, and is dressed only in a pink and black lace slip. Aksana, she says, her name; when she talks, her breath smells of anise pastilles and onions. She is practical about the exchange — what does he want? Certain things cost extra. Just as usual, he says, without knowing what that is. She pulls him onto the bed, the bedclothes stained with semen. His fingertips are thick-skinned, but he winds his hand around her arm, kneads her breasts and belly, surprised that all this skin, this flesh, is in his hands.
She is almost as clumsy as he is, pulling at his penis, moaning in an unconvincing way. At first her touch prompts a wave of shame and nausea, then suddenly he seems to be watching himself from a distance, his ears plugged, his mouth clamped shut. The nausea retreats and he watches himself push inside her, rocking frantically against her slight torso, his spasm of release fast, a blink of pleasure. Afterwards he watches her breathe, the skin of her fragile neck, her eyelashes, her hair twisted up at the base of her skull. She opens her eyes to see him staring at her, and she laughs, naturally and clearly.
He is mortified, anger surges in him, anger and contempt — for her, for himself. He has a glimpse of twisting and snapping that thin neck, of her head lolling off the pillow, lifeless. Of hitting her with the base of the lamp, blood seeping out from under her hair.
Here, she says again. He looks up. She is standing beside the bed. She has wiped herself with a cloth and is holding it out to him.
···
Stars over the city, dots of light in an inky sky. Underneath them, far below, street lamps offer up a mellower glow, a boon for someone who is almost night-blind. And in a place where there is so much to see, to hear.
They are drunk, these officers, five of them in serge uniforms, black boots. One stumbles in the street, another is singing loudly, tunelessly, his tunic ruched up over his belt. The young man watches them as they lurch around, holding on to each other’s arms, shoulders. A bottle of vodka goes from hand to hand and they join in with the singer for a few lines, a ragged chorus.
The republic told us not to close our eagle eyes
We cut the enemy’s claws
We blunt the enemy’s teeth
We are the defence of millions
One stops to urinate in the gutter, and another guffaws.
NKVD, says a man next to him. All that vodka, down Russian throats.
Let them have it, he thinks. Who better? Let them drink a case.
He is impressed by them, by their authority, their arrogance. By the insignia on their collars, the leather straps from shoulder to waist, the revolvers on their belts. They know who they are, what they are. They know they are people who command, not people who obey. Even drunk, they walk as if they have an almost visible force coiled behind them. As he watches them, he has only one thought in his mind: I want this.
···
More orders come in for wineglasses, bowls, vases. Even in scarce times, there are people who need these things, who can pay for these things. Two of the glassblowers prefer them, these orders, there is more artistry, more skill required. More colours as well, not merely the never-ending green and amber of bottles and jugs. They add minerals to the glass, copper for red, nickel for violet, cadmium for yellow. To make milky glass, opaline glass, they add bone dust. When they can get them, they use pigmented glass canes — shipments from Germany, the tags still attached. Safran. Kobaltblau. Pomeranze.
The canes stand in a tall box in one of the cabinets, a box with partitions for each colour lot. The young man wipes them clean so that the grit and dust that settle everywhere, even inside the cabinet, will not change their hues when they are melted. Even a little grit will darken the batch, they say to him.
Irisgelb. Silbergrun. Dunkelviolett.
They are muscular, the glassblowers, smelling of mahorka tobacco. Thick-armed from the heavy pontil rods. Coarse, jocular, they work in undershirts stained with sweat, or sometimes with no shirt at all, the hair on their chests damp. When they open the furnace doors, the heat blazes out, a naked sun trapped in each one.
But when they handle the glass, they become makers, moulders, jugglers, their coarseness gone for the moment, their blunt hands full of knowledge. Stretching, shaping, twisting the glass, they make living things out of it, flowing from one shape into another. A strange, volatile thing — liquid one minute, rock-hard the next.
The cane is added in small batches, the molten glass turns blue, amethyst, rose. Then they use tools to stroke it, pinch it, to push it in and out of the furnace. One of them talks to the glass while he works, coaxing, chiding it, murmuring endearments. Come on, lapochka. That’s it, my darling, that’s it. No, no, no, not that way, no, no, no. Ah, that’s it, now you have it. Now just a little more.
These are special deliveries, these orders, packed in straw. Ay, ay, be careful, they say to him, reluctant to see this work handled by someone so awkward. He nods curtly. What do they think? He has not broken anything yet.
And not all his deliveries are for them anymore. It began when one of the receivers at a winery suggested that he deliver some wine for them as well — some bottles to their customers, along his usual routes. A little extra for you, no one needs to know. The work, the little extra becomes larger, and now he is seeing Aksana more often, eating more.
I know another man, says the receiver.
Another receiver, more wine deliveries. They pay him less than their usual drivers — too expensive, they say. Then they pocket the difference. See how this is good, good for everyone.
···
Aksana is telling a story, the story of how they will be, now that he has more money, when he has even more. They are lying in her bed afterwards, while she straightens her chemise, puts herself to rights.
We will live in a house, we will have a Victrola of our own, we will go dancing every night. I will have a red silk dress, a necklace of black jade, we will have fine furniture — she stops to consider — of dark green velvet. We will drink wine out of thin glasses, we will eat meat every day off china plates. We will have a son, a daughter, and another son, and they will all live. We will have a maid, we will have a horse and carriage and also a car, we will have paintings on the wall. And we will have a dacha in the summer, like a Party official, with birch trees and a steam house.
She is seventeen, she has no idea how much these things cost. But when she talks in this dreamlike way, it all seems possible. For a moment, he is drawn into the story, for a moment he is part of it, he can see the massive fireplace, the overstuffed chairs around it, the patterned rugs. He can see the flames leaping and falling, then rearing up again, the brocades reflected in their glow.
Then he rolls off the bed, stands up, begins putting on his clothes.
Why would I marry a whore? he says.
···
A cold day, already darkening in the late afternoon. One of the unofficial deliveries. He parks behind a building, out of sight, and goes in to collect the boxes, pick up his pay for the last few days.
One, two, three, five boxes, into the back of the van. But before he can get into the driver’s seat again, a man grabs him from behind, holding his arms behind his back. Another looms up in front, smashes him in the face. He can feel blood from his nose dripping down his mouth, his chin, he can taste it, an iron taste.
A piece of rope is looped around his neck and twisted slowly, cutting off his breathing. He yells, but nothing is coming out, he claws for the rope soundlessly, but his arms are still pinned. He writhes desperately in the man’s grip, choking.
The money, they say. The money.
He nods towards his coat pocket, struggling for air, the street beginning to spin around him. They find it, then throw him to the icy pavement, kicking him in the back. He gasps and draws in a burning breath.
No more deliveries, they say. No more deliveries from here. You can bring the bottles from the glassworks, but no more delivering the wine. Or we tell the manager, tell him that you’re a thief. And we will do this again. Only it will be worse.
Then one of the men takes the key from the door of the van and throws it in a long arc, a brief flash in the dusk, landing on the roof of the building. They kick him again, and disappear.
Good for everyone. Except the regular drivers.
Granat. Brilliantrubin. Kirshrot.