Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

‘And how do you suggest we go about that?’

‘We need to take a photo first. Then we can play around with it on-screen. It might work, you never know! It’s worth a try. I’ve got a friend who’s great with computers – he might be able to help us.’

‘Well, there’s a bottle in it for you if you manage to figure it out,’ grinned Stepan.

Igor fetched his camera and took several photos of Stepan’s shoulder.

IGOR DRANK A mug of coffee, then sat down at the computer and merged the photos together. He zoomed in on the composite image, zoomed out again, rotated it this way and that, but the blurred tattoo remained incomprehensible.

‘All right,’ Igor murmured to himself, ‘I’ll go and see Kolyan in Kiev. If he can’t do anything with it either, then I’ll have to admit defeat. And I guess I can forget about that bottle from the gardener!’

He downloaded the photos onto a memory stick and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘Ma, I’m going into town,’ he said to Elena Andreevna. ‘I’ll be back some time late afternoon. Do you want me to pick anything up?’

Elena Andreevna looked up from her ironing. She thought about it.

‘Some black bread, if they’ve got any fresh,’ she said eventually.

The sun was climbing into the sky. The pleasant, warm smell of summer lingered in the air. It didn’t feel at all like autumn – it was as though the seasons were deliberately disregarding the calendar. The grass was still green, and even the leaves still clung to the trees.

The minibus taxi to Kiev picked Igor up about five minutes after he reached the stop. It set off again as though it were being piloted by a Formula One racing driver, rather than an unshaven old man wearing a cap who happened to be the husband of the local pharmacist.

The driver turned on the radio, which was tuned to his favourite station, and looked in the mirror to see whether any of his passengers would object. It did happen. The former head teacher at the school, for example, couldn’t bear Radio Chanson. But she obviously had no business in Kiev today, so he could listen to whatever he liked.

Igor started thinking about Stepan’s tattoo, and he was seized by a sudden moment of doubt: maybe Stepan was lying? Maybe the tattoo was some kind of prison ‘badge’ and he’d tried to get rid of it himself to cover up his shady past? Igor should have asked Stepan whether he’d been inside himself. Didn’t he say that his father had been imprisoned three times? Well, the apple never falls far from the tree, or so they say… Although come to think of it, what did Igor know about his own apple tree? Enough to hope that he wouldn’t turn out the same way.

Coincidentally, and rather appropriately, the song that came on Radio Chanson at that moment was a prison ballad about a mother waiting for her son to come back from a labour camp. It distracted Igor from his thoughts, and he continued his journey in a blank reverie, just staring out of the minibus window and not thinking about anything. He arrived in Kiev half an hour later and took the metro to Contract Square.

His childhood friend Nikolai, otherwise known as Kolyan, worked as a computer programmer in a bank. Well, maybe not a programmer but an IT specialist of some sort – he was responsible for troubleshooting, or monitoring the programs, something like that. Like many computer experts he was distinguished by certain idiosyncrasies, as though he himself had been infected at some point by a computer virus. He had a tendency to change the subject at the drop of a hat, and instead of answering a specific question he would often start rambling on about something completely irrelevant.

He’d been the same ten years ago, and he’d been the same twenty years ago. The two of them had grown up together and attended the same school. Even the army hadn’t separated them – they had ended up in the same military unit just outside Odessa. Military service had been like a holiday for Kolyan. The unit commander had just had a computer installed in his office, and Kolyan taught him how to play games on it. From then on the colonel would send Kolyan to Odessa once a week to fetch new games. Kolyan wasn’t stupid – he never brought back more than one game at a time.

Igor often went to see him when he was in Kiev, just to catch up over a beer. Kolyan’s working hours were pretty flexible. Only once had he been summoned back to the office, when one of the programs had frozen.

Kolyan emerged from the depths of the bank holding an umbrella.

‘It’s not raining,’ said Igor, looking in surprise at the umbrella.

‘You’re right,’ agreed Kolyan, unperturbed. ‘But in half an hour’s time, who knows? The weather’s like the dollar exchange rate at the moment. It can change several times a day.’

They walked to Khorevaya Street and sat down at a table in a small, cosy cafe.

‘What are you having, then?’ asked Kolyan. ‘I’m funding the refreshments today.’

‘You’re a banker – funding things is your job! Let’s have a beer.’

‘I’m not a banker, I just work in a bank. So don’t get any ideas about a side order of caviar.’

After taking a sip of draught lager from his old-fashioned pint glass, Igor took the memory stick out of his pocket and put it on the table. He told Kolyan about the tattoo, and about Stepan.

‘Can you do anything with it?’

‘I’ll try,’ nodded Kolyan. ‘The computers are all behaving themselves today, so I haven’t got much on. Why don’t you hang out in Podil for a while? Stay local, and I’ll call you on your mobile if I have any joy. If not, well, I’ll call you anyway!’

As they left the cafe, it began to drizzle. Kolyan shot a triumphant look at his friend. He opened his umbrella, waved goodbye and walked off in the direction of his bank.

Igor didn’t feel like wandering about aimlessly without an umbrella, even though it wasn’t raining very hard. He headed for the Zhovten cinema and got there just in time to see Shrek the Third. The film made him laugh out loud. Part way through the film, he noticed that there wasn’t a single child in the cinema – only old people.

When Igor came out into the foyer after the film had finished, he saw a notice on the wall that explained the strange audience demographic: ‘Free admission for pensioners and disabled individuals of all three categories on Tuesdays at 11 a.m.’

It had stopped raining, but the sky was still full of heavy clouds. Igor started walking towards Kolyan’s work. As soon as the bank sign came into view, his mobile rang.

‘Right, you can come and meet me at the bank,’ Kolyan said cheerfully.

‘I’m already here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m standing outside,’ explained Igor.

Kolyan came out a couple of minutes later. Igor noticed that he was holding a piece of paper rolled up into a tube.

‘Come on then, show me,’ he said, burning with curiosity.

‘Ha! As if I’m going to show you straight away!’ retorted Kolyan. ‘No, you’ll have to be patient – you owe me now. And it just so happens that I’m hungry. And hunger makes me mean – well, at least, not very cooperative.’

Kolyan dragged Igor towards a cafe. On the way, they passed the Petrovich nightclub.

‘Oh, look! “RETRO PARTY here every third Friday”,’ he read from a poster. ‘“Come in retro fancy dress for a chance to win a guided trip to North Korea, a holiday to Cuba or an excursion to Moscow, including a night visit to the mausoleum.” Cool!’ Kolyan turned to his friend, his eyes ablaze with excitement. ‘Can you imagine? A night in the mausoleum! You, alone in the dark… with Lenin! Eh?’

Igor shrugged. His mind was elsewhere.