Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

But the gardener’s thin smile, which could easily have been mistaken for a grimace of pain, seemed to exude bitterness.

‘I’m going to go and lie down for a bit,’ whispered Igor.

‘Take it, take the suitcase. Don’t worry about the locks, I’ll fix those later.’

Igor took the suitcase containing the police uniform and the gun and went out into the yard without another word.

When his mother saw the suitcase, she clasped her hands together in surprise. ‘We used to have two like that at home, about fifty years ago. Did you buy it at a flea market?’

‘No, someone gave it to me,’ Igor answered curtly and slipped past her into his room.

The autumn evening fell early and surprisingly quickly, catching Igor unawares. They’d only got back that morning, and they didn’t seem to have spent that long examining the contents of the suitcases, but it was already getting dark. His arms were aching and he felt like yawning.

Without bothering to wait for the supper that his mother was already preparing, Igor made himself a sandwich. Then he went into his room and lay down on his bed. He was assaulted by exhaustion and thrown into a realm beyond normal sleep, a realm beyond dreams of any kind.

When the beef and vegetable casserole was ready and the potatoes were boiled Elena Andreevna looked into her son’s bedroom, but she couldn’t bring herself to wake him up. Noticing the gold pocket watch lying on a handkerchief on Igor’s bedside table, she picked it up and examined it with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. She gave a deep sigh.

Elena Andreevna didn’t want to sit and eat dinner by herself, so she decided to ask Stepan to join her. She put her shoes on and went out into the yard. She knocked a couple of times on the door to the shed and then opened it, coming face to face with a startled Stepan, who had clearly just got up from his bed.

‘I’ve made dinner, but Igor’s fallen asleep… Would you like to keep me company instead?’ she asked, looking directly into the gardener’s eyes.

‘Me?’ he asked, momentarily disconcerted, as though he’d been deep in thought and the invitation had been an unwelcome interruption. ‘Of course, it would be a pleasure. Thank you. I just need to lock up.’ He glanced around the room and his eyes fell on the shelf unit where he kept his things, and where all the tools were stored. He took a padlock from one of the shelves and put his jacket on.

Elena Andreevna watched, intrigued, as he closed the door carefully and padlocked it. She’d never seen him lock it before.

‘So, did you find any family in Ochakov?’ she asked, putting a plate of casserole and boiled potatoes on the table in front of Stepan.

‘Not quite,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But we found some people who remember them, which is something. And we found a few bits and pieces… things that used to belong to my father.’

‘You don’t say!’ exclaimed Elena Andreevna. ‘Someone kept them all that time?’

‘Indeed,’ nodded Stepan, wondering how best to change the subject. ‘So how are things here? What’s the latest?’

‘You’ve only been away for a couple of days.’ His landlady shrugged. ‘Nothing’s changed. Well, the kiosk near the station was robbed one night, and there was a fight near the Customs and Excise training academy, but that’s it really. Igor’s asleep… Should I wake him?’

‘No.’ Stepan waved his hand. ‘Let him sleep it off. Has he been out of work long?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Elena Andreevna.

‘Why? Can’t he find a job?’

‘He’s not even looking,’ sighed Elena Andreevna. ‘He had an accident when he was little. Five years old, he was. I told my husband to take him to the playground, but he met someone he knew and started chatting and Igor ran off towards the carousel. It was just slowing down, and one of the metal seats caught him on the head. He suffered what they call a closed head injury. He was in hospital for two months, and I never left his side. The doctor warned us to expect brain damage so we were prepared for the worst, but he ended up making a complete recovery… He just gets headaches every now and then. He was lucky. I spent years watching over him like a blade of grass, trying to protect him.

‘Then when he finished school I sent him out to find a job. One day he came home and said that he’d found one in a furniture factory, here in Irpen. He started leaving the house every morning, and he told me all about the job itself, what his friends were like, that kind of thing. He even brought some stools home once, said he’d been given them because they were slightly damaged. We’re sitting on them right now, in fact.’ Elena Andreevna paused and looked down at her stool. ‘About three months later, I needed to find him urgently during the day so I went to the address he’d mentioned, but there was no furniture factory there. Well, at first I wanted to challenge him about it, and then I decided I ought to take him to see a doctor, to a psychiatrist… In the end I just told him I hadn’t managed to find the factory, and he immediately stopped going. So, here we are. Things aren’t so bad – I get my pension money, and we manage to make ends meet…’ Elena Andreevna trailed off, lowering her eyes.

Now Stepan felt awkward too because the change in his landlady’s mood had been caused directly by his curiosity. But Elena Andreevna’s sadness didn’t last for long. She licked her dry lips, and when she looked up at the gardener her eyes were alive again.

‘Is the town pretty?’ she asked.

‘Ochakov? Not particularly. It was quite grey. It’s probably nice in the summer, but not now.’

Elena Andreevna offered Stepan a shot of vodka, but he politely declined.

‘Elena Andreevna, I’m going away this evening for a couple of days,’ he said after a pause. ‘It’s nothing to worry about – I’m just going to see some friends who live not far from here, on the way to Kiev. I’ll sort everything out in the garden and the vegetable patch as soon as I get back. We’ve got plenty of time to prepare for winter.’

‘Yes, there’s plenty of time,’ agreed Elena Andreevna.

She had the impression that something was bothering Stepan. He’d seemed tense over dinner. Elena Andreevna was pleased with her casserole – the meat and vegetables were particularly tender – but the gardener hadn’t said a word. On the other hand, he’d eaten everything on his plate and even scooped up the last of the gravy with his bread… Maybe he was the kind of man whose actions spoke louder than his words.

IGOR WOKE UP at about 3 a.m. He switched his light on and sat on the bed for a while, just thinking. Then he decided to go out into the yard.

As he approached the shed, he was astonished to see the padlock on the door. It occurred to him that Stepan might have gone for good, taking his treasure with him. He very much hoped that wasn’t the case. Igor couldn’t for the life of him remember where they kept the spare keys.

His mood ruined, Igor went back to the house and tiptoed into the living room. The house was surprisingly quiet. His mother was asleep, and the mice hadn’t started rustling about under the floorboards yet. They only came into the house in the winter, when it got really cold, and the first frosts wouldn’t arrive for at least another two months.

As Igor opened the top cupboard of the dresser he remembered that a bottle of walnut liqueur had been lurking in there for some time. He extracted the bottle carefully, selected a small shot glass and walked over to the table. He sat on one of the chairs, which had a knitted rag cushion tied to the back with a couple of ribbons, poured himself a shot and started thinking. He thought about the trip to Ochakov and the nocturnal ‘treasure hunt’. Whichever way you looked at it, they had definitely broken the law. But then again, wasn’t everyone breaking the law these days in one way or another? With the possible exception of his mother. Actually, he’d never done anything illegal before the trip to Ochakov. It had simply never occurred to him. Something had been holding him back in Ochakov too, whereas Stepan didn’t show even a moment’s hesitation. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he took Igor to the hardware shop to buy a crowbar. And he’d known exactly how to use it too, to open doors and smash padlocks. He’d said that his father had been in prison three times… Maybe Stepan had too? Yes, that was it. He must have been in prison, and when he came out he hadn’t been allowed home! That would certainly explain the vagabond lifestyle.