Igor Savelyev: Off the Beaten Tracks: Stories by Russian Hitchhikers

Yes, Nikita was a bit odd. He was also a straight-A student and came from a family of St Petersburg intellectuals with an illustrious scientific pedigree. Grandfather Marchenko, a physicist and member of the Academy of Sciences, was still mentioned in school textbooks. He had died in the late 1980s, and all that Nikita could vaguely remember was the prickly feel of his beard. His father was also a famous physicist — not as famous as his grandfather, but a professor and Head of the Department of Physics at St Petersburg University, as well as director of the university’s scientific projects. The mantle of academia had long since been exchanged for the respectable suit of a state functionary. And so what if it had? He had a good salary, status, an office with a secretary, and even a black Volga to take him to work in the mornings.

In July the Volga would overheat in the sun (being black, of course — it was physics at work!) A mini-hell on wheels! The sun would beat down mercilessly on the roof, the bonnet and the windows, reflecting off the surfaces like a scuffed and faded version of itself. Professor Marchenko would overheat too, in his official suit, but he could not dress otherwise.

Nikita’s mother worked at the same university, although she was only a senior lecturer in philology. She was renowned for her short temper and her long hair, which she wore in a plait. Nikita had never thought of his family as a happy one. It was a long story, but basically since childhood he had been accustomed to living in an atmosphere of… unpleasantness. This wasn’t helped by the fact that his father’s first wife lived in the same block as them. There was nothing they could do about it — the apartments were owned by the university, and they were all colleagues. He went back to her once and lived a few floors below them for about six weeks, about the same time that Nikita’s mother had to go into hospital. If only this first wife had never existed! Even if she hadn’t, things still wouldn’t have been right. Every morning the black Volga would drop them off at St Petersburg University and they hurried to their respective floors, desperate to escape from one another. It goes without saying that Nikita was a student at the very same institution.

This atmosphere of oppressive formality, the home library, the glances exchanged over dinner, was what Nikita Marchenko, at the age of twenty, was running away from at any available opportunity. He didn’t care where he went, he just had to get away. He ran to the highway and beyond, across the vast expanses of his native land.

He was currently jolting along in the cabin of a loaded MAZ truck, nearly two thousand kilometres from his home town of St Petersburg. They were already in Bashkiria, as he had realised when they passed the town of Tuimazy and the village of Serafimovsky. The landscape was increasingly rugged, and quite beautiful. They were driving alongside the enormous Lake Kandry-Kul — in some places overgrown with reeds, in others an impressive sight to behold — and the water seemed to be lapping the edge of the road. It was a warm, sunny evening and there were rows of cars lining the lake, while their passengers enjoyed a swim. How Nikita envied them! After all day on the road he was hot and sweaty and covered in dust… But he couldn’t risk losing this ride. If Vadim had been here, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it — it was just the sort of thing he would do. Nikita peered at the bathers. Was Vadim there? He couldn’t see him.

There were some wind turbines on one of the hills, obviously imported. They were brand new, gleaming white and graceful. Symbols of austerity and power. There was something surreal about the sight of the turbines slowly turning against the backdrop of the sky as evening fell…. It was like a modern version of all those old paintings of Dutch windmills. New Holland… Come to think of it, there was a district by that name in his home city.

The truck was struggling up the hill. Nikita suspected that it might be quicker, and less stressful, if he were to walk. The truck was fully loaded with various food products, stewed meat or something. The driver had told him, but he’d forgotten.

“You might be better off getting another lift,” said the driver, reading his mind. He slapped the wheel, as though apologising for his lack of speed.

“No, it’s fine. At least I’m guaranteed to make it to Ufa tonight.”

“With a bit of luck!”

Several icons had been strung across the windscreen right in front of their faces. They were there to provide protection, the automobile variety. Nikita looked at the faces of the saints and they seemed to be looking back at him, right into his very soul.

Religion had become one of the main issues that divided the Marchenko household. Their spiritual inclinations were as follows: Nikita… Did he believe in God? Maybe, but like most of his peers he didn’t really give the matter a great deal of thought. Nikita’s father, like any physicist (any Soviet physicist, at least), was a materialist and staunchly atheist. Not only that but he expounded his beliefs with the kind of zeal commonly exhibited by members of fanatical sects. Nikita’s mother, on the other hand, suddenly became conspicuously devout. She took to all the rites and rituals like a duck to water, and she was at home in the suffocating clouds of incense of the little local church.

Oh, the fights that took place in their house! The ‘crusades’ they mounted against one another! There was something almost sadomasochistic about his parents’ fights — they both seemed to thrive on the energy of discord. For his father it was a kind of ‘holy war’ in which he made it his mission to shatter his opponent’s ideals, to destroy her faith. Nikita wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke coming from his nostrils. As for his mother, she revelled in the role of martyr, walking through fire for her faith. At the end of the day, it was essentially a kind of spiritual exercise for both of them — gymnastics for the soul, an exchange of passion that made them feel more alive. They would go to extremes to prove a point, too. During Lent Nikita’s father, who suffered from stomach ulcers, would eat salty and spicy food just to spite his mother. His mother would listlessly chew on her porridge, sick of trying to talk him round.

Nikita had a clear memory of his mother coming home for lunch one dazzling January day, wearing a scarf on her head and carrying a large chemical retort. Incidentally, the apartment was full of these retorts even though his father was a physicist, not a chemist. They used to store pickled vegetables in them.

“Look!” his mother announced triumphantly. “Holy water! It’s Epiphany today, and the priest blessed an ice-hole. I’d been waiting there since seven o’clock this morning!”

She proceeded to explain reverentially what was so special about the water and how it should be sprinkled in all four corners of the apartment, to banish evil spirits.

At first his father put up with it, but the assertion that holy water would keep forever finally pushed him over the edge.

“It’s just river water!” he exploded. “Have you completely lost your mind? You’re an educated woman. With a PhD!”

Basically, Epiphany ended with one of their usual arguments. Nikita didn’t fully understand his father’s fury. Neither did his mother. Displaying admirable self-denial, she refrained from sprinkling the water anywhere in the apartment. Maybe she had decided to keep it for a rainy day. Either way, she felt as though she’d done her duty and the retort was duly stored away in the darkness at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, between the bottles of oil and vinegar, and everyone forgot all about it.

One fine day, a couple of years later, the apartment filled with Marchenko Senior’s joyous cries. God knows why he’d been rummaging in the depths of the kitchen cupboards… Maybe he was after the vodka? It didn’t matter anyway, because while he was groping around in there he’d discovered the retort, which he now dragged out and presented to them. There was something floating in it, a kind of gelatinous clot… basically, the holy water had gone mouldy. His moment of triumph had finally come! The inveterate atheist took great delight in celebrating such a resounding victory. The enemy was defeated, once and for all! Drunk on his discovery, the triumphant victor shouted at his wife for such a long time that she developed high blood pressure. And they all lived happily ever after… Yeah, right.