Andrea Bennett: Two Cousins of Azov

‘Fourth of October. 1994.’

‘Ah! Autumn already.’ He took another drink, and smacked his lips. The voice got louder. ‘They never ask me how I am, you know: they just look at that chart, and ask me if I need the toilet,’ he carried on. ‘They think I’m a piss pot!’ He took childish delight in the word, chuckles hissing from his throat like air from an old tyre.

Vlad smiled and scratched his curly, chestnut head. Anatoly Borisovich noticed how the biceps quivered under the knit of his foreign-looking jumper.

‘I will put that right. Would you like some tea, perhaps? I can get an orderly to bring you some?’

‘Ah! Tea! Yes!’ The old man’s eyes shone, as if tea were a long-lost son.

A few minutes later, with the aid of some fragrant lubrication, the words tumbled briskly on his tongue.

‘Thank you, thank you!’ He stirred in a fistful of sugar cubes. ‘Is that a pine tree out there? Beyond the fence?’ He took a sip, and sucked in his cabbage-leaf cheeks. ‘These eyes are worn out with looking. I have looked long and hard, at many things, in many places. But I can’t make it out. It moves, you see: sometimes nearer, sometimes further away. One night it was at the window. I think it’s a tree. It must be, mustn’t it? If not a tree, well, I…’ the old man stuttered and stopped, turning wide eyes to Vlad. ‘There isn’t a forest?’

Vlad straddled the visitor’s chair by the old man’s bedside, pen and paper dropping to the floor.

‘No forest, Anatoly Borisovich. I don’t know about trees: I am a medical man. It may be a pine.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘I would say it is definitely a tree.’ The old man smiled encouragingly. ‘No forest, but lots of water. Because we’re by the sea.’

‘By the sea? Oh really?’

‘Of course – just a few kilometres further west.’ Vlad pointed into the grey. ‘That way: the Azov Sea.’

‘Ah! Yes! That rings a bell… maybe. Is Rostov far?’

‘Not far. We’re more or less half-way between Azov and Rostov. You are from Rostov, no?’

‘No.’ The old man nodded. ‘Not Rostov.’

‘Ah. Well, you seem to have found your voice, so talk, Anatoly Borisovich. Tell me what happened to you. The more you say, the more detailed my case study will be, and the more helpful to you. I’ve plenty of time: my shift has officially ended, so I’m free all afternoon, more or less. Do you remember being brought here?’ He smiled, generous lips drawing back to show the clean faces of straight white teeth. The old man’s eyes rested on them for a moment: they were sharp and huge and strong looking, like those of a horse. His tongue probed the stumps and pits in his own worn gums.

‘No. Not at all.’

‘Ah, well, maybe we can start a little further back?’

Anatoly Borisovich took a sip of tea, slurping joyously.

‘Very good. I was born in Siberia—’

‘Maybe not that far—’

‘—a little village not far from Krasnoyarsk. You know Krasnoyarsk?’ The old man waited, and fixed Vlad with a stare that demanded an answer.

He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, of course – it has a hydroelectric dam. Wait, have you seen…’ he fumbled in his pocket and drew out a large, crisp bank note folded neatly in half. ‘See? It’s on the back of the new ten thousand note. The dam.’ He held it to the old man’s face for a moment.

‘Ten thousand rouble note? Are you a millionaire, Vlad?’ Anatoly Borisovich was incredulous.

‘Not yet, but I’m hoping!’ He flashed a smile. ‘But seriously, ten thousand roubles is nothing: about two US dollars. That’s Yeltsin’s inflation for you… we’re all millionaires now!’ Vlad winked as he re-folded the note and placed it carefully back in his pocket.

‘Two dollars? Millionaires?’ The old man’s mouth flopped open and a furry, pale tongue poked out. ‘But what would we want with US dollars, eh? We have our health and this Soviet Union, I mean, um… what’s it called now?’

Vlad shrugged and bent to pick up his pen and paper. ‘What indeed? But continue with your background. You were born in Siberia.’ He leant forward on the chair, thrusting his chin towards the old man. ‘Do you remember your childhood?’

‘Oh yes, it was all to do with being a child. I remember, you know, out there in the forest, everyone had to work. In the forest, with the trees… hard work! Everyone had quotas. You had to fulfil your quota, or your pay was cut. It was piecework. My papa, he over-filled his quotas. All the time. He was a hero, you know! They put him on a flag – for a time. We never saw him.’ The old man’s eyes wandered as his mind strayed back to reach out to his papa.

‘Freezing cold all the time, I should think? And what about the gulags, the political prisoners? Did you see them? It must have been the 1930s?’

Vlad’s questioning seemed vulgar to the old man. He wanted to think about his papa, and his baba, and the pine trees. He didn’t want to think about the camps. He frowned.

‘You may have thousands of roubles, Vlad, but you know little about people. Listen,’ he coughed and sipped his tea, ‘I was a child. I was happy. I didn’t know about any camps. Comrade Stalin was our friend, our protector!’ His eyes glowed. ‘It was just a little village, a straggle of huts with pigs and chickens, hard workers, lazy drunks. It was cold, in winter. But Krasnoyarsk is in the south: we had a summer, oh yes… hot and humid and heaving with midges! Midges so bad they sent the cows mad… or so went the story. There were lots of stories.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Stories come out of the forest, you see… come out of the bark of the trees, to eat up your mind like an army of ants!’ He stopped, grinning. ‘Let me tell you a story.’

‘Is it relevant?’ Vlad answered meekly. He knew he should be drilling for facts, perhaps working through a structured Q and A about the weeks leading up to the old man’s admission. He also knew Polly would be waiting for him after work. She’d probably have sex with him – joyous, sweaty, slippery sex – if she was in a good mood. Which she wouldn’t be, if he was late. He checked the Tag-Heuer watch strapped to his wrist.

‘You said you would listen, Vlad! Please listen!’

The old man wanted to ramble, to go way back. Maybe it would be good for a bit of practical analysis. Maybe, even, he could write it up as a ‘talking cure’? It depended on what was said, of course, but… He had thought the old man would cough up some story about a fall, maybe TB, too much vodka or maybe some old war wound… But a spot of psychoanalysis might be worth a try. A story was a story. And to be honest, he had always loved a good story. Just not as much as sex.

‘Yes, of course, go ahead, Anatoly Borisovich.’

‘Once upon a time, in a forest far away, there lived a young lad: green eyes, impish smile, and cow-lick hair. A simple-clever lad called Tolya—’

‘That’s you?’

‘You’re sharp! A boy called Tolya, simple-clever, who lived with his granny, whom he called Baba, his dog called Lev, and his papa. Away in the East, where the bears prowl and the pine trees sway. Where the saws bite the trees day-in, day-out, and where little boys learn about life…’

Vlad rested the pen nib on the paper, ready to write.

Tolya wrapped his hands around the mug of broth waiting for the warmth to flow through his sore, grubby fingers into the bones of his hands. He was sitting in his corner on the wooden bench, swinging his feet under the table and leaning against the wall. The lamp was lit but his eyes strayed to the blackness beyond the window next to him and his breath steamed up the glass. Not seeing was worse than seeing. He put the mug on the table and wiped the steam with his sleeve. He peered into the hole he’d made and moved the lantern away, the better to make out what was outside.