The Industry of Souls (2 page)

This morning, Frosya laid out my breakfast on the table. It was a meagre repast for, in my advanced years, I do not eat much: a small piece of hard cheese, a slice of bread, a pared and cored apple and a cup of plain tea without milk or sugar.

As I cut into the cheese, Frosya joined me, sitting opposite me across the table. She, too, had a cup of tea.

‘You are such a man of habit, Shurik. A man of schedules. Every day, cheese, bread, apple. Do you never want something different? An egg?’

She looked up the gentle slope behind the house, towards the distant tree line where the forests begin that run, without interruption save for occasional roads and railway lines, clear to the Volga. Twenty metres in from the trees was Trofim’s chicken run built around an old, solitary oak tree.

‘I am not that fond of eggs,’ I informed her. ‘As for habit, I feel secure in knowing how my life pans out. A day with a timetable feels safe.’

I smiled at her and, placing the sliver of cheese I had cut on the edge of the slice of bread, raised it to my mouth and bit into it. The bread was dark, dense, slightly moist and grainy.

‘What will you do today, Shurik?’

‘The usual,’ I replied. ‘Take my walk down through the village, across the river, through the forest and back here. My customary route, to my customary schedule.’

‘You will take longer today,’ Frosya predicted. ‘People want to talk to you.’ She cradled her cup in her hands as if the weather was chilly and she was warming her fingers. ‘Today is special for you and for them. If you want to be back on time, you will have to leave earlier than usual.’

‘I shall leave when I’m ready,’ I declared. ‘No sooner, no later.’

Frosya sipped her tea. She had something on her mind and was not sure whether to broach the subject or leave it be. I knew what she was concerned about, too: yet I did not intend to say anything. She would come to it in her own good time.

‘Do you like your St. Basil?’ she asked.

‘He’s very fine and I’m very grateful to you for him.’ I took a swallow of tea: a crumb of the bread had lodged in my gullet and I washed it down. ‘A remarkable man from a veritable clan of saints. As I recall, his grandmother, father, mother, older sister and two younger brothers all feature in the hagiographies. He was a friend of St. Gregory and upon his principles are based the monastic paradigms of the Orthodox church. He showed much sympathy for the poor, always took the side of the under-dog and was critical of wealth even though he came from a very well-to-do family. He was also said to be obstinate, argumentative and querulous. In short, he was an ideal saint for Russia.’

Frosya laughed and declared, ‘For an atheist, you know a lot about the church.’

‘To defeat your enemy,’ I justified my knowledge, ‘you must know him in all his guises.’

‘You, too, are a remarkable man, Shurik.’

‘No,’ I complained. ‘That is not right, Frosya. I am not. I am merely a man shaped by his destiny.’

For a long moment, she was silent. She was, I could feel it, about to bring up the subject which was haunting her. Casting me a quick glance, she then looked into the distance, steeling her courage.

‘When will they arrive?’ she enquired at last, still not looking in my direction.

‘This afternoon. The letter said they would get here about five o’clock. It is a long drive for them.’

‘Are they coming from Moscow?’

‘Not directly, no. I suspect they will have stayed last night somewhere. In Voronezh, perhaps.’

She was silent for a moment then opened her mouth to speak.

‘Do not ask, Frosya,’ I warned her.

Yet she had to. It was in her feminine nature to need to know.

‘But have you decided, Shurik?’

I did not reply but reached out and, unfurling her fingers from around her cup, took them in my own. I looked at our hands. Mine are old, gnarled as the roots of a cypress: hers are soft, not as a young girl’s might be but as a caring woman’s. Frosya was 48 last month.

‘How long have I lived here?’ I asked her.

‘Twenty years.’

‘And still you don’t know me? You who can tell everything that is happening in your husband’s mind? Surely you know what is going on in mine, too. I have lived here with the pair of you for all your married life bar the first four years.’

She smiled. It was a loving smile.

‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘under normal circumstances, I can read your thoughts as well as I can my Trofim’s. But these are not normal circumstances and I am at a loss.’

‘Don’t worry, Frosya,’ I said. ‘Trust in fate. In destiny. What more can you or I do?’

‘Shape it!’ she answered quite firmly yet I knew she did not believe it. We have been through too much to do so.

I let go of her hand.

‘I want nothing more to eat. Save the apple for later.’

‘It will go brown.’

‘Then feed it to the hens and I shall break my habit and eat an egg in a few days made from it.’

She laughed, stood up and started to collect in the crockery. I drained my cup of tea. When she had returned to the house, I felt inside my jacket and removed the letter from the inside pocket. I slipped it from its envelope and, once again, unfolded it. I did not immediately read it but just looked at it. It was crisp and official, neatly typed upon a heavy bond paper, the expensive sort with the paper-maker’s watermarked lines evident as a faint grid in the weave of the pulp. The letterhead was printed in black, the letters embossed, shining and raised in relief from the surface of the page. I balanced my steel-framed spectacles upon my nose and, yet again, studied what was printed there.

*   *   *

I was five weeks making my way to Myshkino, the village in which I now live, travelling mostly by jumping freight trains, sleeping crouched up in box-cars parked in sidings or hiding in track-side maintenance huts. From time to time, I was moved on by railway officials or the transport authorities but usually I was simply ignored. They did not know who I was but they certainly knew what I was without asking for my papers. Some were sympathetic and gave me a few kopeks: others were antagonistic, punched and kicked me and stole the kopeks. Most were apathetic and paid me no heed whatsoever.

For food, I begged. Knowing instinctively the importance of appearing at least reasonably presentable, for a tramp in any society gets short shrift at all times, I managed to wash myself now and again in the public conveniences in stations, keeping my beard down to a trim stubble with a pair of nail scissors I filched from a street vendor’s stall in Kazan. My clothes, however, suffered on the journey and, by the time I had walked the thirty kilometres from Zarechensk to Myshkino, I looked more like a hobgoblin than a human.

With difficulty, for no one would offer the information to a vagabond, I found Frosya’s house around midday, opened the gate in the low fence and made my way up the path to the porch. I knocked on the door but there was no answer so, cupping my hands, I peered in a window. The living room was tidy, with comfortable furniture, a carpet and a radio on a table. Exhausted, I lowered myself down in the shade by the door and dozed fitfully, awaiting her return from wherever she was.

‘Who the hell are you?’ were Trofim’s first words when he found me at about five o’clock, hunched on the steps of the porch, my arms hugging my legs to my chest, my chin resting on my knees.

I woke from my semi-slumber and squinted at him in the afternoon sunlight. He was of average height, with dark hair and a handsome face, and dressed in a mechanic’s overalls. I could smell the syrupy scent of warm gearbox oil on his clothing.

‘You look like a thief who’s found nothing to steal,’ he added.

Slowly, I got to my feet and cast a quick glance at my reflection in the window. My face was grey and rough with several days’ stubble, my hair short but not to the extent of still being a criminal’s crop: it had had five weeks to grow. My jacket was soiled and my shirt, an old-fashioned clerk’s shirt with the collar missing, was grimy about the neck. My trousers looked as if I had slept in them which, save one or two nights, I had and the leather of my boots was cracked for lack of polish and too frequent soakings in the rain.

‘Go on!’ he exclaimed, waving his hand at me as he might a mangy cat routing round the garbage pail, dismissive rather than belligerent. ‘
Otvali
!’

‘My name is Alexander,’ I said quietly.

‘Fine!’ Trofim replied. ‘
Otvali
, Alexander!’

I felt weak and leaned against one of the posts holding up the roof over the porch. I had not eaten for several days except for some handfuls of wheat I had snatched in a field not yet harvested.

‘Are you are the husband of Efrosiniya?’ I asked, my voice hoarse and consequently not much louder than a whisper.

He looked at me, suddenly very suspicious, and said with no small degree of defensive menace, ‘What’s it to you?’

‘And was your wife’s mother Tatyana Antonovna?’

He was immediately on the offensive, glared at me and said, ‘
Poshol k chortu
!’

‘I will go to hell,’ I responded, my voice quiet with fatigue, ‘but first I must speak to your wife.’ I sucked on my own spittle to lubricate my mouth. ‘I have come from Kirill Karlovich.’

Trofim stared at me for a long moment then, his demeanour utterly changed, he stepped quickly forward, taking my arm and guiding me towards an upright chair under the window. It was the very same chair in which I still frequently sit on the porch on a warm evening, which over the years has become somehow shaped to my body, or my body has become formed to its curves and peculiarities.

‘Frosya!’ he called urgently as he let go of my arm. ‘Frosya! Come quickly!’

In a few seconds Frosya appeared, her sleeves rolled up. Her hands and forearms were wet from doing the laundry in a tub behind the house. She must have been in the house all along without my knowing. Her face was blushed from the effort of scrubbing. When she saw me, she stopped in her tracks. A dog, sauntering down the village street, spied me and started to yap.

‘Where have you come from?’ she asked, her voice barely audible over the dog’s noise. Trofim bent to pretend to pick up a stone. The dog fell silent and slunk off.

‘Sosnogorsklag 32,’ I told her.

‘Where are you going?’ Trofim asked.

I looked at him and said, ‘After I have given you my message, I am going to hell.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Trofim began to explain. ‘When I first saw you…’

I raised my hand to silence him and smiled weakly.

‘Sosnogorsklag,’ Frosya mused quietly.

‘Not a pretty town, I’ll bet,’ Trofim remarked soberly.

‘Labour camp number 32 was not in the town,’ I informed him, ‘but some way out. South of Pasn’a. Not far from Vojvoz.’

‘I think,’ Frosya said, ‘you must have come from hell.’

She came forward, then bent over me and kissed my cheek. As she did this morning, when she entered my room and gave me my present, she smelled of soap.

It was the first kiss I had experienced in many years, since that terrible, unforgettable winter which I have never been able to excise from my mind.

‘Get some water,’ Trofim suddenly ordered her, as if coming to his senses. ‘Make some tea. Prepare a bed.’ Turning to me, he said, ‘You will stay here. With us. For as long as you wish.’

I stayed that night, promising myself I would leave the next morning: but the night turned into a week which evolved into a month that metamorphosed into two decades, the remnant of my life.

*   *   *

Folding the letter once more and returning it to my pocket, I sat on for a short while, gazing out from the leafy parasol of the silver birch. From this vantage point, I had as usual a fairly panoramic view of the village.

The house is on a slight rise with most of the buildings below, on the gentle incline that goes down to the river and the road which crosses it by way of a concrete bridge. Now, in high summer, the gardens are a blaze of colour. Sunflowers stand against walls, smaller blooms in front of them. Where there are no flowers, there are vegetables.

In front of Trofim’s porch are several rows of raspberry canes and a patch of herbs and small onions. Between the house and the woodland up the slope behind it, Trofim’s plot is filled with cucumbers and marrows trailing on the ground, beans hanging like plump green fingers from a trellis of sticks, tomatoes tied against stakes, dark-leaved potatoes with their tiny white blossoms and rows of cabbages. The ranks of carrots, beetroots and radishes are protected from marauding birds by a thin black netting suspended from poles like a miniature, transparent Bedouin tent.

Beyond the gate, across the lane, stands a quaint little house made of age-blackened wood with a fretwork boarding around the eaves over the porch which is as deep as a room. The chimney leans precariously but has done so for at least a decade. I cannot look upon the house without being reminded of the world of Pasternak and Dostoyevsky.

The property is owned by a widow, Vera Dorokhova, whom the villagers refer to behind her back as The Merry Widow for she has been happiest since her spouse disappeared into the forest one January winters ago, not to be found until the spring when his half-thawed body, gnawed by foxes, was discovered beside a woodsman’s hut in which he had taken shelter. A lathe operator in a small engineering works which turned out tractor wheel bearings at Zarechensk, his wife may have been Vera but his mistress was Madam Vodka under whose instruction, as people put it, he frequently beat her and generally made her life miserable. In the first few years of my residency in Myshkino, the sight of him returning from work, his clothing powdered with iron filings and his shoes trailing the odd shiny turning like a weak spring embedded in the rubber soles, sent involuntary shivers down my spine. Had I the hackles of a dog, they would have been instantly erect but not on account of his cruelty to Vera Dorokhova: I had seen far worse cruelty than anything he could have devised, sober or sozzled. It was because, at a distance, he reminded me of a brute I had known called Genrikh.

Since Madam Vodka’s lover was planted in the graveyard by the church at the other end of his village, I have been haunted by a newer ghost in the form of his widow. She watches out for me and I watch out for her. Despite my being 20 years her senior – twenty years today, as it happens – she has a yearning for me, a longing she will only satisfy by getting me to the altar down the road. That I am past caring for women, that I have been past caring for them for decades, does not seem to put her off. Perhaps she has developed a macabre taste for burying men. I do not intend to find out.