Liza Alexandrova-Zorina - The Little Man

Trebenko would pop his head round the door on holidays but would hurry away after just one glass. Antonov, a chain store owner and an aspiring local Duma Deputy, left with a different girl every night. Facially, he looked like a kind uncle, capable only of taking you on his knee to tell you a story. Antonov didn't tell any stories but he did give generous presents. He had a furrowed brow and a well-padded torso that he covered up with wide jackets a size too big so that he always seemed to be wearing someone else's suit. Antonov drank life down in big gulps and his vodka in tiny sips and he believed that anything that was for sale could be bought and anything that could be bought was for sale.

In the evening, lolling out on the veranda of the Three Lemons, Coffin would look everyone over with a glance as clammy as his moist palms and Shorty would set up a game of patience, slavering on his fingers and slobbering on the deck which bristled in his hand like a ruffled bird. He would draw the cards from the deck as if he were plucking feathers and set them out face down. The cards were marked so that he was able to guess them while the other bandits looked over his shoulder and tried to predict whether the game would work out or not. Coffin's guys would sit stiff as statues at the little tables, the passers-by reflected in their shades.

Savely frequently came across his daughter at the bar. She had grown up on her own terms like nettles behind a fence. When she saw her father, she would turn away or give a laugh that was exaggeratedly loud. She wore too much make-up and blood-red lipstick and Savely wanted to rub it off his daughter's face with his sleeve. He tried to talk to his wife about it but she just brushed him aside. «Better a gangster than an insect,» the gibe came. Savely felt like a beetle crushed under foot.

«A little man in a little town,» he murmured to himself in front of the mirror, stroking his thin hair. «A little man…»

That evening, like thousands of other evenings before, he was on his way home from work and turning over his usual thoughts of life passing him by like the last bus home. «I've lived the wrong way, in the wrong place, with the wrong people,» he told himself.

There were some girls sitting on a bench drinking beer, lazily checking out the passers-by through the glass of the bottle. «They're even more bored than I am,» thought Savage as he went past. He bought a loaf of bread from a stall and munched on it as he walked along. Family meals had gone by the board even earlier than the marital bed.

Coffin was snoozing on the veranda of the Three Lemons, his legs stretched out, and a waitress nearly dropped her tray as she stepped over them cautiously. Shorty, curled up like a cat, narrowed his eyes in the sun. Rubbing his stumps, he clacked his teeth angrily, snapping at the air, and hated the entire world. The gangsters were drinking kvass in beer glasses, batting away flies and, with nothing better to do, were sizing up the passersby as if they were going through their pockets.

«You should look at every person as if they are condemned and going to die today,» said Shorty, repeating the words of a sermon he'd read in a church newspaper. He'd been frequenting the church of late, leaning back to see the icons he couldn't reach to kiss. «Then people will all be kinder to one another and more tolerant…»

«You should look at every person as if he's been told to kill you and could pull a gun on you at any time,» growled Coffin, without opening his eyes. «Then people will treat one another according to their deserts!»

The gangsters held unlimited sway over the little town. People were more afraid of them than of the police because the gangsters had been laying down the law for a long time. Sometimes, people would turn to them for help and ask them to intercede with an over-zealous civil servant. If it was a minor official, the gangsters would burst into his home, empty out the safes and get him to sign the necessary papers. Coffin's right-hand man, a gangster known as Saam, called this popular justice and there were people who were only too pleased to have someone in town who would stick up for ordinary residents. On one occasion the gangsters beat a local government official so badly that he died a few hours later. «Everyone does it and so did I,» the man kept saying through blood-caked lips as the doctor examined him and directed the paramedics to the morgue. «Did I really ask for too much?»

One of Savely's colleagues had gone to the gangsters too, asking them to beat up an old school friend who owed him money that he had been unable to get back for many years. The old school friend had borrowed from his pals and tried to set up his own business but had gone bust and taken to the bottle to hide from his creditors.

«What's the interest rate?» Coffin yawned into his hand.

The man made a gesture.

«A hundred!»

The gangster raised his eyebrows.

«I'm not doing it for the money,» Savely's colleague explained. «I don't really need it. You take it. It's the principle of the thing. If you borrow, you've got to give it back.»

«It's a good principle,» said Coffin, with a wry smile. «So, I'll be waiting for you to bring the money at the same time tomorrow. You'll pay me double: for you and your friend. You can pay in instalments…»

For several weeks, the man delivered the money to the gangsters, packing the tight little bundles into a plastic bag. He had to go into debt himself, sell his old car and his wife's rings and then, once he no longer owed the gangsters anything at all, he happened upon the old school friend and, pulling him into a hug, he dragged him into the nearest shop for a drink. «You can divide people up into those who don't pay their debts and those who pay off other people's,» he mumbled after the second glass. His friend, rubbing his blueing nose, nodded in agreement.

Antonov came out of the Three Lemons, gleaming like a polished boot. Looking at his red, fleshy face, Savely remembered the chubby little boy from the parallel class who was always eating between lessons, his sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper in his briefcase. His classmates used to laugh at him, clipping him round the ear, and he would wipe his hands on his trousers and chase them down the corridors. Savely was also picked on in class so he tried to make friends with the school fatty. When he went up to him, however, the boy looked him arrogantly up and down and turned away. Antonov hadn't changed much in thirty years. Savely looked at his own reflection in the bar's dark window and thought that he was still the same stooped and clumsy boy he had been thirty years ago, plodding home, his briefcase clutched to his chest. Looking around, Antonov dived into a huge jeep and the driver, whose face looked like a hand giving the finger, switched on the engine.

After Antonov came Savely's daughter in a flashy dress of her mother's that hung on her like a lowered flag. Vasilisa was unsteady on her feet, treading cautiously in her high heels, her cheeks flushed crimson with alcohol. Savage had long been aware of a smell of tobacco and cheap wine when Vasilisa came home late but now he was absolutely stunned: one of Coffin's henchmen was putting the girl in the car next to Antonov. The whole town knew the boss never left the bar with the same girl twice and Savely, remembering all he had heard about his antics from the old ladies in the neighbourhood, was practically gagging with rage.

Gasping for air like a fish out of water, he hurled himself towards the car but the gangsters blocked his path.

«M — m-my d-daughter, d-daughter!» Savage stammered.

«Daughters flower after hours,» chuckled Coffin, rubbing his swollen eyelids. «We'll bring her back in the morning.»

He rocked back on the wicker chair again, a sign that the conversation was over. Savely was determined to drag Vasilisa out of the car come what may but, as he rushed forwards, he stumbled and fell onto the table. The glasses rolled onto the floor, sloshing kvass all over the gangsters. Furious, Coffin leapt to his feet, fists clenched, and seeing his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat and the vein standing out on his forehead, the gangsters prepared to fight.