Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

He sighed and took a tracksuit out of his chest of drawers. As soon as he was dressed, he called Kolyan.

‘Hello there!’ Kolyan sounded pleased to hear from him. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Listen,’ Igor said slowly, carefully choosing every word to try and avoid sounding stupid, ‘did I… did I turn up yesterday?’

‘I can’t believe you’re asking me that!’ Kolyan burst out laughing. ‘Can you really not remember? Must have been a good night then! Of course you turned up. You were wearing some old military uniform and had obviously been drinking before you got there. You were really winding up the bouncers, you know! We managed to drag you away from them just in time. They wanted to throw you out, and it was chucking it down outside.’

‘Right, I see… What were we drinking, in the club?’

‘What weren’t we drinking! You were on the brandy, mainly. You must’ve had a bottle and a half, maybe even two… We had to flag a car down to take you home. You were in such a state, we gave the guy two hundred hryvnas. So you can pay me back when you get the chance!’

‘Right, I see,’ Igor repeated slowly. He couldn’t hear his own voice properly because of the buzzing in his head. ‘What happened before that?’

‘In Petrovich? You’re kidding! Can’t you remember any of it?’

‘No,’ admitted Igor. ‘And I’ve got a splitting headache.’

‘We were just drinking, having a laugh, dancing to old music…’

Igor suddenly felt the sharp, sour taste of cheap white wine on his tongue.

‘Did I drink any wine?’

‘Wine? Yeah, right at the start. You tried some French Chablis, then announced that it tasted like cheap vinegar and washed it down with some Armenian brandy.’

‘All right, I’ll call you again later,’ said Igor, with a weary sigh.

‘Take it easy, old man!’ Kolyan replied cheerfully.

Igor’s head was feeling calmer by the afternoon. His thoughts had finally gathered themselves into something resembling order. He went through his memories with a fine-toothed comb, searching for the slightest grain of truth or credibility. In the interests of soothing his agitated soul he was equally keen to find proof that it was merely the fruit of his drunken, and consequently overactive, imagination. But however many times he played back the evening’s events, however closely he examined the details, everything still felt incredibly real – and remarkably plausible. The watch that had suddenly started ticking and showing ‘Moscow time’, Vanya Samokhin, the Ochakov Wine Factory, the glass of white wine… And, perhaps most significantly, Vanya’s suggestion that Fima Chagin might be the reason a policeman from Kiev had been sent to Ochakov. The only thing on the other side of the scales of Igor’s common sense was the brandy he’d been drinking before Kolyan had called. Yes, and there was something else – the party in the Petrovich club in the Podil district! Igor couldn’t remember a thing about the birthday celebrations. He couldn’t remember where the club was, or even where he’d seen the poster advertising the ‘Retro Party’.

Igor put his hand into the pocket of the policeman’s breeches and took out the gold watch. He brought it to his ear. Silence. He opened it. The hands had stopped at half past one. Igor sighed, utterly perplexed. Exhausted by his own unanswered questions, he drank a cup of coffee then went out into the yard. The shed door was still shut and padlocked. Stepan was obviously still not back.

Sparse but heavy raindrops were falling from the sullen sky. When Igor looked up he saw a black storm cloud hanging low over Irpen, ready to unleash its contents at any moment, and he hurried back inside. The rain began hammering down on the slate roof the moment Igor entered the house.

THE AFTERNOON DOWNPOUR lasted several hours. When it suddenly stopped, the inhabitants of Irpen had no choice but to accept that the evening was upon them. Autumn evenings are all too brief; they are followed quickly, almost imperceptibly, by night. This particular night, with its leaden, starless sky, promised to be impenetrable.

Putting aside the book he’d been staring at for the past three hours, Igor glanced out of his bedroom window and then at the clock. His thoughts returned to the night before. What would happen, he wondered, if he were to do the same again? What if he were to drink a couple of glasses of brandy, then put on the police uniform and take another walk towards the bus station? No one would be out in this weather, at this time of night. Even if they were, they wouldn’t pay him any attention.

Igor went into the kitchen and poured himself a brandy. He drank it slowly, then poured himself another and drank that too. Noticing out of the corner of his eye a prescription for heart medication in the raised pan of his mother’s scales, he poured a third glass of brandy and took it back to his bedroom. He swallowed a mouthful, then put the glass to one side and felt in the pockets of the breeches to check that the bundles of Soviet roubles were still there. With the next sip of brandy he felt a warmth on his tongue, which soon reached his nose and his forehead. Igor broke into a light sweat. He raised his glass to take another sip but it was already empty, so he went to the kitchen and refilled it.

About half an hour later Igor felt a heady rush of adrenalin and confidence. He smiled to himself. Approaching the police uniform more decisively, he put on the tunic and breeches, pulled on the boots and buckled up the belt. This time he deliberately kept the gun in its holster. He put on the peaked cap and lifted the round table mirror up to get a better look at himself. This cheered him up still further. What a fine figure of a man! he thought.

As soon as Igor shut the gate behind him and set off towards the bus station the darkness around him intensified, as though it were attempting to swallow him whole. But his feet kept walking straight ahead, apparently not in need of a sighted guide, and the soles of his leather boots met the concrete surface of the road with reassuring familiarity.

Fear crept up on Igor several times, surprising him from behind or from the side. Each time he would stop and look around, trusting his hearing more than his sight, but everything was quiet.

After a while a faint light appeared ahead of him, and this became a reference point. About twenty minutes later Igor recognised the illuminated gates of the Ochakov Wine Factory. He stopped under the trees, about twenty metres from the gates, and wondered what was going on. Was it really happening again? Was it going to be like that American film, where the same day repeats itself endlessly, driving the main character insane?

Just then the green gates opened. They seemed to be taunting Igor, mocking his apprehensions. He heard the rumbling of an engine, and then the same little old lorry that he’d seen before drove out of the grounds of the wine factory. It turned right and drove away from Igor, lighting up the road with its headlights. The gates closed and silence gradually seeped back to fill the space illuminated by the powerful factory lights. Strictly speaking, the factory lights illuminated everything on the other side of the concrete fence and the green gates; the square in front of the gates was lit by a street lamp.

The gates suddenly creaked again and opened slightly. A lad with a strange sack over his shoulder peeped out of them, just like the day before.

Now he’s going to come out and wave back at the guard. Then the gates will close, and the metal bolt will make a loud clang, thought Igor. Then I’ll come out from under these trees and walk over to him, and he’ll panic, throw the sack on the ground and ask me not to arrest him.