Siberian Education (21 page)

We didn't dare to drink alcohol in front of her, because we knew it would offend her. So we drank
kompot
, a kind of fruit salad, a cocktail of apples, peaches, plums, apricots, cranberries and bilberries boiled for a long time in a big saucepan. It was made in summer, and for the rest of the year preserved in three-litre bottles with a hermetically sealed neck ten centimetres wide. It was kept cool in the cellars, then warmed up before it was drunk.

But every time Aunt Katya went away, Uncle Kostich added a bit of vodka to our glasses, with a wink:

‘You're right not to let her see you . . .' We obediently knocked back the mixture of vodka and
kompot
, and he laughed at the faces we made afterwards.

Lunch lasted an hour, maybe a little longer. At the end there was boiling hot tea, strong and black, with lemon and sugar. And apple cake, a marvel. Mel leaped at that cake like a German invader jumping on the chickens in the henhouse of a Russian peasant. But he promptly got a friendly slap from me and his hands withdrew and retreated under the table.

The task of slicing up the cake was mine – it was my birthday. I gave the first piece, out of respect, to Uncle Kostich, the second to his friend, an old criminal called ‘Beba', who was a kind of silent, invisible shadow of his. Then, taking my time, very slowly, I served Mel, who was on the point of bursting: he was staring at his slice with intense concentration, like a dog who stares at the morsel of food in his master's hands, following its every movement. It made me laugh, so without the slightest remorse I played on his patience, performing each gesture in slow motion. Eventually Mel lost control and his legs started trembling under the table in a nervous tic, so I said to him, very calmly:

‘Watch out, or you'll knock it onto the floor.'

Everyone burst out laughing, Mel even louder than the others.

After the dessert it is customary to sit still for a quarter of an hour, ‘to accumulate a bit of fat', as my grandfather used to say. And people talk about all kinds of things. Mel, however, couldn't talk about anything, because to judge from the way he sat back from the table and slumped down in his chair, he had overdosed. That was why my uncle, ever since Mel had been small, had always called him ‘pig', because like pigs Mel went into a kind of drunken state after eating.

So the only participants in the conversation were Uncle Kostich and I, with Beba occasionally putting in a word.

‘Well, is everything all right at home? How's your grandfather, may God help him?'

‘Thank you, he still says his prayers; it's a good thing the Lord always listens to us.'

‘And what happened about that poor lad Hook?'

Kostich was referring to something that had happened a few weeks earlier: one of our friends, who had just come of age, had got into a fight with three Georgians and seriously wounded one of them with his knife. There was always a bit of trouble with Caucasus; it wasn't a real inter-district war, we only had it in for a group of reactionary Georgians. Hook wasn't wrong to get into the fight, but he had made a mistake afterwards: he had refused to appear at a trial that had been organized by the Authorities of the town at the instigation of a relative of the wounded Georgian. Hook was angry and out of control, and so, very thoughtlessly, he had offended the local system of criminal justice. If he had gone before the Authorities and put his case, it would certainly have been resolved in his favour, but as it was the relative had convinced everyone that the Georgian had been attacked for no reason by a cruel, merciless Siberian.

Kostich was one of the Authorities involved in the trial, and was trying to understand why Hook had behaved like that.

‘What's this boy like? You know him well, don't you?'

‘Yes, Uncle, he's a good friend of mine, we've been through all kinds of scrapes together. He's always behaved very well to me and the others – like a brother.' I was trying to save his face at least before one of the Authorities, hoping that Uncle Kostich would then influence the others. But I couldn't go too far and give my word; besides, my word as a minor didn't count for much.

‘Do you know why he behaved dishonestly towards good people?'

Kostich had asked me a question which we call ‘the one that tickles' – that is, a direct question that you can't not answer, even if you have nothing to do with it. I decided to express my opinion, irrespective of what had happened:

‘Hook's an honest person; three years ago he got stabbed three times in the fight against the people of Parkan, because he covered Mel and Gagarin with his body. Mel was still a child – he could have been killed. Sometimes it's hard to talk to him because he's a bit of a loner, but he's good-hearted and has never shown disrespect to anyone. I don't know what happened with the Georgians: Hook was on his own, there was nobody with him. Maybe that's partly why he felt betrayed. Three strangers – and guys from Caucasus, at that – attack you almost in front of your own house, in the heart of your own district . . . and none of your friends is there to help you stand up to them.'

I had told that story deliberately, about Hook's sacrifice in defence of Mel, because I knew that these things count far more than many others. I hoped Kostich thought so too; after all, he was still a simple man and a terrible troublemaker.

‘Do you think he behaved rightly? Wouldn't it have been better to settle the matter in words?'

This question was a trap laid specially for me.

‘I think it just happened like that. You know better than I do, Uncle, that every time is different. Until it happens to you, you can't know how you'll react.'

‘If he was right, why didn't he want to appear before the others, to give his side of the story? He must think he's in the wrong, he can't be sure he behaved honestly . . .'

‘I think he was just scared of being attacked a second time. The first time outside his house, with knives, the second through the justice of the Authorities. He lost faith in Authority, he felt betrayed: they granted the Georgians' request even though they knew he'd been knifed like that, three against one, and in his own district.'

At last I'd succeeded in saying what I thought.

Kostich looked at me for a moment expressionlessly, then smiled at me:

‘Thank goodness there are still some young delinquents in our old town . . . Remember this always, Kolima: it's wrong to want to become an Authority, you'll become one if you deserve it, if you were born for it.'

The question of Hook was settled three days later. The Authorities decided that the Georgians, by their request, had offended the honour of justice, and they proclaimed them ‘stinking goats', an expression of extreme contempt in the criminal community. Those three quickly disappeared from Transnistria, but before leaving they threw a hand grenade into Hook's house, while he was having supper with his old mother. Luckily the grenade came from a batch that was intended for use in military exercises: it had a red circle drawn on it with ink and there was no explosive charge, so it was about as dangerous as a brick. The Georgians didn't know that; they'd bought it thinking it worked.

Although nobody had been killed, the people of our district had taken it as a grave insult to the community. And one evening Grandfather Kuzya said to me:

‘Watch the news; you might see something interesting.'

Among the latest headlines was a report from Moscow: seven men with criminal records, and of Georgian nationality, had been found murdered in the home of one of them – brutally shot while they were having their evening meal. The pictures showed an overturned table, furniture riddled with holes, bodies gashed with wounds. On the lampshade, a hand-painted Siberian hunting belt, and hanging from the belt the fake hand grenade. The journalist commented:

‘ . . . a brutal massacre, no doubt a revenge attack by Siberian criminals.'

I remember that that evening, before going to bed, I took my hunting belt out of the cupboard, looked at it for a long time and thought, ‘How wonderful it is to be Siberian.'

After the conversation with Uncle Kostich I woke Mel up with a couple of slaps on the cheek. We thanked Aunt Katya and went on our way. She, as always, came out onto the steps outside the restaurant and waved to us till we disappeared round the corner.

Mel started pestering me; he was desperate to know what I'd talked about with Uncle Kostich. The idea of having to summarize the whole content of our conversation was almost unbearable, but when I looked at his innocent expression I couldn't say no.

So I started to tell him the story, and when I got to the part where Uncle Kostich had asked me about Hook, he stopped and stood as stiff as a lamppost:

‘And you said nothing, didn't you?'

He was angry, and this was a bad sign, because when Mel got angry we often ended up fighting, and since he was four times bigger than me I always came off worst. I only beat him once in my whole life, and we were only six years old at the time: I hit him with a stick, giving him a nasty gash on the head, taking advantage of the fact that he'd got his arms and legs trapped in a fishing net.

Now Mel was standing there, stock still on the road with a scowling face and fists clenched. I looked at him for a long time, but just couldn't guess what might be going through his mind.

‘What do you mean, nothing? I said what I thought . . .' Before I could finish the sentence he'd thrown me down on the snow and was pummelling me, shouting that I was a traitor.

While he was hitting me, I slipped my right hand into the inside pocket of my jacket, where I kept a knuckle-duster. I put my fingers right through the holes, then suddenly pulled out my hand and punched him hard on the head. I was a bit sorry to hit him right in the area where he already had so many aches and pains, but it was the only way of stopping him. Sure enough he released his grip and sat down beside me, on the snow.

I lay there panting, unable to get up, watching him closely. He was touching his head where I'd hit him and with a disgusted grimace he kept kicking me lightly with his foot, more out of scorn than with the intention of hurting me.

When I got my breath back I propped myself up on my elbows:

‘What the hell got into you? Were you trying to kill me? What did I say?'

‘You talked about Hook, and now there'll be trouble. He saved my life, he's our brother. Why did you squeal to Uncle Kostich?'

At those words I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, I couldn't believe it. I got up, brushed the snow off my jacket and trousers and, before walking on, turned my back on him. I wanted him to understand the lesson properly.

‘I praised Hook, you idiot – I defended him,' I said. ‘And God willing, Uncle Kostich will help us to get him out of trouble.'

With that I set off, already knowing what would happen. For well over an hour we would walk like a theatre company: me in front, looking like Jesus just descended from the cross, with head held high and a gaze full of promises which loses itself cinematically in the horizon, and Mel behind, with shoulders drooping, all humble, with the expression of someone who's just committed a shameful crime, forced to lurch like the hunchback of Notre-Dame and repeat the same words over and over again in a whimpering, piteous voice, like a monotonous prayer:

‘Come on, Kolima, don't be angry. We had a misunderstanding. These things happen, don't they?'

‘Bloody hell,' I thought, ‘bloody hell!'

And so we left the Centre and the last row of old threestorey houses. We now had to walk across to the other side of the park, where there stood a hideous and depressing building, a palace which had been erected two centuries earlier as a lodge for the tsarina of Russia on her journeys into the borderlands. I know nothing about architecture, but even I could see that the palace was an ill-assorted jumble of styles: a bit of Middle Ages and a bit of Italian Renaissance, clumsily imitated by Russians. It was coarse, its ornamentation was completely out of character, and it was covered with mould. This ghastly place, which I thought more suitable for Satanic feasts and human sacrifices, was in fact used as a hospital for people suffering from tuberculosis.

In Bender the hospital was known as
morilka
, which in the old Indic language means something that suffocates you. The doctors who worked there were chiefly military medics employed by the penitentiary system – prison doctors, in other words. They came from all over the USSR. They would move to Bender for a few years with their families and then go away; their place would immediately be taken by others, who in turn, before leaving would suggest new changes – trivial and pointless revolutions. Those poor patients had grown accustomed to being constantly moved from one floor or wing to another. They were forced to see their lives drawing to an end in the midst of absolute chaos.

The hospital was of the ‘closed' type – that is, it was guarded, like a normal prison, because many of the patients were ex-convicts. It was surrounded by barbed wire and had bars on the windows.