Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

‘All right, stay here. I’ll be back before twelve,’ said Igor. He went in to pick up the peaked cap, put it on and looked in the mirror. Then he nodded goodbye to Vanya and went out onto the doorstep.

Vanya’s hand-drawn map was surprisingly easy to follow. The closer Igor got to the market, the more people he encountered, and the air was filled with a joyous chirruping, twittering noise, like a chorus of human birdsong. Several young army officers cycled past, and one of them waved to Igor. He was overtaken by a brand-new brown Pobeda car with a chubby, red-faced driver at the wheel.

Igor really wanted to stop for a few minutes to look at the world around him, to watch the people and study their faces, to let it all sink in. Everything seemed slightly strange, natural and unnatural at the same time, as though old black-and-white newspaper images had been scanned into a computer and digitally coloured. Nevertheless he managed to suppress this desire and his curiosity and kept walking at a steady pace, rhythmically measuring out each step on the pavement.

Finally he noticed the gates to the market, through which a steady stream of cheerful humanity flowed in both directions – some holding baskets, others with bags. To the right of the gates two men wearing dark blue quilted jackets were gluing a colour poster to the noticeboard. The poster appeared to show a flying ball with four knives sticking out of it. A little further along a woman wearing overalls in the same colour blue, with a broom at her feet, was pinning the day’s newspaper into a flat, glass-fronted display unit designed for the purpose. As Igor approached she closed the window and started wiping the glass with a cloth, enhancing its transparency in order to render the contents more accessible to the curious public.

Stopping in front of the poster, Igor realised that the ‘ball with knives’ he’d seen from a distance was actually the first artificial satellite in space. Several other people gathered around the noticeboard, and Igor took advantage of this legitimate opportunity to observe them more closely. He noticed a couple of police officers nearby, wearing exactly the same uniform as him. Alarmed by the prospect of a possible encounter with ‘colleagues’, he strode decisively into the market and instantly felt as though he’d fallen into a beehive.

‘Hey, comrade lieutenant, try one of my apples!’ An ample saleswoman with plump, painted lips immediately started making eyes at Igor. ‘Sweet as a peach!’ she cried, holding an apple out to him.

The seller’s voice was also as sweet as a peach, and sticky too. Igor could almost feel it clinging to his ear and trickling down his cheek. Smiling self-consciously and shaking his head, he walked away from the woman and continued down the central aisle of the market.

The noises, sounds, voices and words began to revolve slowly around Igor’s head, making it spin. He screwed up his eyes and stopped walking, then opened his eyes again. It felt like he and all the other people at the market were in a giant aquarium, except instead of water this aquarium was full of a strange, dense air, in which bodies moved slowly and words were stretched and drawn out. As they reached your ears the words became louder then gradually faded again into silence as they receded into the distance, like aeroplanes high up in the sky.

Igor tried putting his hands over his ears and contemplating the world without sound. Everything looked perfectly normal, including people’s faces and their expressions. The only indication that he was in the previous century was the way people were dressed – that and a few other details, such as the old-fashioned scales.

‘Comrade lieutenant, can you change fifty roubles for me?’ A woman turned towards him holding a banknote between her chubby fingers. She had a plump face and curly chestnut hair pulled into a chignon.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Igor, increasing his pace.

He noticed that he was in the vegetable section. Someone bumped into him accidentally and apologised. Igor began to feel claustrophobic. Spotting a passageway between the stalls, he quickly moved into the adjacent trading aisle. This aisle was less crowded, and the sellers seemed to have a calmer approach to business. They stood patiently at their stalls, waiting for customers to come to them rather than calling out.

Igor approached an old woman selling bunches of succulent, freshly washed carrots. ‘Where’s the fish section?’ he asked.

‘That way,’ she gestured further down the row, to the right. ‘Before milk and cheese.’

The air began to smell of fish, both pickled and fresh. The smells mingled together, and there seemed to be a salty sea breeze in the air.

Igor heard a woman’s voice up ahead, loud and melodic. ‘Sardines and herring, from Astrakhan and the Don River! Take a look, they’re delicious!’

It’s her! he thought. He almost broke into a run but stopped himself just in time.

Then there was the fish section, right in front of him. The peaked roofs of the stalls were decorated with clusters of dried gobies and sea roaches. The sun shone in and the flies buzzed about deliriously, luxuriating in the fish-saturated air. The woman whose voice continued to resound throughout the entire section stood behind four open barrels of salted herrings. She was using a little bundle of birch twigs to swat away the flies, but she was doing it almost gracefully, without even looking at the fish. She only had eyes for potential customers as she repeated her mantra, the same words over and over again: ‘Sardines and herring, from Astrakhan and the Don River! Take a look, they’re delicious!’

‘Three herring.’ An old woman had stopped in front of her, holding a string bag. The string bag already contained several beetroot, a head of cabbage and a jar of horseradish.

The seller took a brief respite from her sales pitch, but this made no difference to the general noise levels.

Suddenly Igor heard another voice, a little further on. ‘Black Sea flounder! Black Sea flounder!’ This voice was stronger and more melodic than the first.

Igor stood on tiptoes, peering in the direction of the voice. He saw a queue of about five people ahead of him. As he approached the head of the queue, Igor spotted the striking red-haired young woman behind the stall. She was tall, maybe even taller than Igor himself. He wondered if she were wearing heels.

‘Black Sea flounder! Caught this morning! You won’t find fresher unless you catch them yourself!’ she continued, her penetrating gaze sweeping over the passing shoppers. ‘Hey, Brown-Eyes! Take a look! Your wife will thank you for it!’

Brown-Eyes was a bald man of about fifty, wearing glasses and a suit and tie and holding a bulging brown briefcase. He stopped and approached the stall obediently, like a tame rabbit.

‘How much?’ he asked.

‘For you, I’ll sell them at a loss,’ said the seller. ‘Five for five roubles!’

‘But that’s more expensive than herring!’ Brown-Eyes was disconcerted but made no move to walk away.

‘The market’s awash with herring! Barrels of them, everywhere… But only a handful of fresh flounder! You should try catching them – it’s not easy!’

‘All right, I’ll take five,’ said the man, nodding his assent.

The seller took a newspaper from under the counter and spread it open. She tossed a flounder into the air, catching it deftly in her other hand.

‘See how beautiful they are!’ she said.

She wrapped five fish up in the newspaper and took the money. Brown-Eyes regarded the newspaper parcel with suspicion.

‘It’s bound to leak,’ he said. ‘And my accounts are in there.’

The seller smiled. She produced another newspaper and wrapped it tightly around the parcel of fish, before holding it out to her customer again.