Stuart Kaminsky - The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

Boris had a hangover. He wanted to be home in the dark or immersed in warm water. Before all this reform, this perestroika, economic restructuring, and glasnost, openness, all this change, a man could have a hangover, a man could get drunk, a man had reason to drink. Now there were signs posted all over the city saying drinking was subversive, that drinking undercut the very fabric of the revolution. First they had raised the drinking age to twenty-one. That had been a good idea. Then Gorbachev had increased the price of vodka from four and a half rubles to ten rubles a liter. That had been a bad idea. And there were more bad ideas. Cutting the hours of State stores that sold alcohol was one.

Soon, Boris Trush thought, they will be making us embarrassed about smoking the way they are in the United States. What will be left when they take away the minor vices of the overweight and the middle-aged? Boris was, clearly, in a very dark mood when the two men climbed onto the bus, dropped their five kopecks in the box, and tore off their tickets.

Boris did not look at the faces of the men. He barely noticed that one was wearing jeans and a dark jacket, and the other was older and also wore sunglasses. The young man was like all the other young people, like his own sister’s son, Vladimir. Young people wanted to look like Frenchmen or Americans or even Japanese. Where was their pride? Boris had heard that Soviet watches were in great demand in France. He pulled away from the curb and into the light late-morning traffic.

“What is your name?” a voice said behind Boris.

Boris looked up into his mirror into the dark lenses of the glasses of the young man. Beyond the young man who spoke to him Boris could see the second man, an older man in a long coat talking to the old couple in the back.

“Don’t talk to the driver,” Boris said.

“Hey, Comrade,” the young man said. “I’m just trying to make things easier.”

Boris’s head ached. The young man in the mirror talking to him had long blond hair and needed a shave. He looked undernourished and nervous.

“Sit down,” Boris said.

The young man sat behind Boris and looked out the window.

“Stop here,” the young man said.

“There is no stop here,” said Boris. “No stop. No talking. I’ll announce the stops.”

A light rain had begun. Boris turned on his windshield wipers.

“Stop here,” the young man said evenly and reached over to touch something against Boris’s neck. Boris, startled, almost lost control of the bus. He did move slightly into the outer lane, but there was no traffic.

“You crazy lunatic,” Boris said with a growl, pulling over to the curb. “Get off my-”

And with that Boris Trush stopped, for at this point he turned his head and saw that the thing that had touched his neck was the barrel of a pistol in the young man’s hand.

“You know what this is?” the blond young man said.

“A gun,” Boris said, quietly blaming Gorbachev for this moment. If it weren’t for Gorbachev, Boris could have called in to his supervisor this morning, made the old excuse, which would have been understood, and Boris could have been home in a dark room with his pain. But that was no longer acceptable. Everyone wanted to show sobriety, zeal, support, a new beginning. Not only did it make Boris Trush sick, it now also showed signs of possibly killing him.

“It’s not just a gun, Comrade,” the young man whispered. “Open the doors.”

Boris opened the doors and looked up in the mirror to see the old couple being escorted off the bus by the man who had gotten on with the gunman.

“He told them there’s a problem with the bus,” the young man whispered. “You wanted to know about this?”

The young man held the gun out so Boris could get a better look at it. Boris did not want to know.

“This is a Stechkin,” the young man whispered almost lovingly. “The slide-mounted safety catch has three positions: safe, repetition, and automatic. When I move the catch like this and clip this wooden holsterstock to the butt, the Stechkin is no longer a pistol but a submachine gun with a twenty-shot box. Nice, huh?”

The man in the long coat moved forward with no sense of urgency and shook the shoulder of the dozing man with the cap over his eyes.

“Hey,” the man in the long coat said. “Last stop.”

As Boris watched in his mirror, the dozing man roused himself, pushed his cap back with irritation, and looked out the window. He was a burly man, a laborer of some kind, Boris was sure, for the man was a regular on Boris’s route and frequently got on the bus with grimy hands and face.

“It’s not the last stop,” the laborer grumbled and pulled the cap back over his eyes.

“Bus is down,” the long-coated man said, jostling the laborer’s shoulder again.

This time the laborer pulled his hat off and grabbed the neck of the long-coated man standing over him.

“Who the hell are you?” the laborer growled, looking around the bus for the first time.

The young blond man standing next to Boris sighed, pushed his dark glasses back on his nose, and turned. Calmly, the young man raised his gun and fired. Boris jumped and yelped like a puppy, as if it were he who had been shot. The tin-can rattle of the shot echoed through Boris’s aching head as he turned in his seat and saw the long-coated man push away the blood-spattered body of the laborer, who wore a quite surprised look on his face.

“Close the doors,” the young man said, looking outside to see if anyone had heard or seen what had happened. The old couple who had been evicted from the bus were half a block away. They turned, looked back.

“Wave at them,” the young man said.

Boris waved.

“Now close the doors.”

And Boris closed the doors.

“The Stechkin is unreliable,” the young man said conversationally. “Too big as a pistol. Too light as a submachine gun. It makes big holes but … You never told me your name.”

“Boris, Boris Trush. I have a wife and four children.”

The man from the rear of the bus had now joined them. The young man adjusted his sunglasses and turned to him.

“This is Boris Trush. Comrade Trush says he has a wife and four children. I think Boris may be lying just a little bit. I think he may not have four children. He looks like too good a citizen to have so many children. I think Comrade Trush is afraid.”

“Enough,” said the older man in the long coat.

Boris wanted to remove his cap. He knew his nearly hairless scalp was drenched with sweat that would soon be burning his eyes. He looked up at his mirror into the shaded eyes of the older man and shuddered. The man looked like an older, more conservative version of the young man with the gun, but the older man held no gun in his hand. He held a very narrow piece of dark metal pipe.

“You have a picture of your family, Boris?” the young man teased.

“I … not with me.”

“Enough,” said the older man.

“But, Boris-” the young man began but never finished.

The older man brought the metal pipe down with a ringing clang against the steel change box next to Boris, who pulled in his breath and began panting.

“We have work,” the older man said. “Get in the back and keep your eyes open.”

The young man nodded and backed away.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” said the older man quietly to Boris as he tapped the metal pipe into the palm of his left hand. “He’s young and nervous. He’s never done anything like this.”

“I forgive him,” said Boris, thinking that yes, oh, he certainly was going to wet his pants. “What are you going to do?”

“Steal this bus,” said the man. “Now, if you will drive where I tell you, there is a chance-a slight chance, I must admit, but a chance-that you will live long enough to tell this story to the police.”