Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

Her face was damp with sweat. This was some consolation to Igor, whose hands were buzzing like high-voltage wires.

‘If you need to go back to the house during the day,’ whispered Vanya’s mother, ‘just lift the door up a bit by the handle and give it a push. Then it’ll open.’

‘It’s all right, I won’t be back until this evening,’ replied Igor. He said goodbye and moved away to the side. As he caught his breath, he watched Aleksandra Marinovna take her white overall from one of the bags and put it on. She adjusted her hair, glanced into a little mirror, then took three bottles out of one of the bags and put them on the counter in front of her.

‘Home-made red wine, natural home-made wine!’ she cried, casting a proprietorial eye over her little section of the market, as though she were personally in charge of it. ‘Perfect for parties, perfect for funerals! Try before you buy! You won’t find better!’

Igor looked along the wine section. Vanya’s mother seemed to be the youngest and most animated of all the sellers. There were several old women on either side of her, all of whom had bottles or jars of wine on the counters in front of them. At the end of the row an old man was hunched over two old-fashioned glass demijohns.

Once he was fully recovered, Igor headed for the fish section. The sellers there were more vociferous, and in the chorus of voices he immediately recognised Valya’s. His feet automatically quickened their pace.

‘Good morning,’ said Igor, stopping at her stall. A thin woman of about forty with braids wound tightly around her head stood directly in front of Valya.

‘Good mornings start at six o’clock, not nine!’ Valya retorted with a smile. She looked back at the woman with the plaits. ‘I’ll let him know,’ she assured her. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll bring it back!’

‘It simply won’t do,’ grumbled the woman with the plaits. ‘I can’t go around chasing people like this. I ought to report it to the police,’ she said, looking pointedly at Igor. ‘They’ll put his name on the board of shame, then the whole town will laugh at him.’

The woman turned round and walked off.

‘Problems?’ grinned Igor.

‘My husband lost a library book. Unfortunately, it appears that this particular book has been requested by the Party organiser at the jam factory.’

‘Have you got any Black Sea flounder?’ asked Igor, keen to change the subject.

Valya shook her head. ‘Just gobies, and I’ve only got a few small ones left. My husband’s got a bad back. He can barely walk. He went out in the estuary yesterday and was only gone for two hours. I’ve got hardly anything to sell.’

Igor noticed that Valya’s usual zest for life was missing.

‘You should find a cure,’ he said.

‘Well, there’s a woman on Kamenka Street, but she charges a hundred roubles.’

Igor took a hundred-rouble note from the bundle in his right-hand pocket, rolled it up and held it out to Valya.

‘I’ll have ten gobies, please,’ he declared loudly. ‘And keep the change,’ he added in a whisper.

Valya wrapped the gobies in newspaper.

‘Oh yes, I nearly forgot!’ Igor put the carrier bag on the counter. ‘Here are all your medicines, and there’s a note that tells you what to take and when.’

‘My medicines?’ repeated Valya, perplexed.

‘Yes, for your disease.’

‘How do you know what I’ve got?’ she whispered.

‘You told me yourself,’ Igor whispered back. ‘The bench in the park, this evening?’

‘Six o’clock,’ she said.

‘Shall I bring some champagne?’

‘How could any woman refuse?’ she replied, with warmth in her eyes but confusion written all over her face.

AFTER WANDERING ROUND the town for a while, Igor came across a workers’ canteen. He went in, ordered borshch and a breaded cutlet with a side order of buckwheat, washed it down with fruit juice and paid seven roubles for the lot.

The sea breeze teased his nostrils. The morning sun had taken refuge behind the clouds that filled the sky above Ochakov, chasing and bumping into one another.

It began to grow cooler as the evening approached. Igor went into a grocery shop and bought a bottle of Soviet champagne and a large bar of Leningrad chocolate. Then he went into a hardware shop and bought two glasses and a cloth bag emblazoned with the slogan ‘A Holiday Souvenir’. He put everything into the bag and walked back to the park near the market. He sat on the bench. There was a rustle behind him, and suddenly a pair of warm, strong hands covered his eyes. Igor froze in alarm. If the hands had been soft and gentle he would have played along, but they had such a firm grip!

‘Valya, is that you?’ he asked guardedly.

He felt a warm exhalation on the back of his neck. Then he heard a familiar laugh. Igor relaxed.

‘You made me jump!’ he exclaimed.

The hands released his eyes, leaving their warmth on his eyelids. Igor turned round. There, behind him, stood Valya. She was wearing a pale green scarf over her red hair, a green dress and white patent shoes, and she held a white bag. She walked round the bench and sat down next to him.

‘Shall we go to the sea?’ suggested Igor.

Valya looked up at the sky. ‘It might rain,’ she protested. Then she waved her hand dismissively and added, ‘So what if it does? We’re not made of sugar – we won’t dissolve! And it’ll be more private.’

She got up decisively from the bench and looked down at Igor. He stood up quickly and the glasses clinked in his bag.

Valya led Igor along a narrow, overgrown path, which seemed to have been trodden down specifically for secret lovers amid the adjacent islets of bushes and gullies that were bordered by private allotments and abandoned factory fences. Several times the path joined the main road, which was equally deserted. Then after twenty or so metres it would veer off to the side again. Twice they had to climb through holes in fences.

Finally their path came out at the bottom of a steep slope, and they found themselves standing beneath a sombre, overhanging cliff. Ahead of them the dark sea gently lapped the shore. Unusually, there were no lights in the distance, no trembling moon or stars on the surface of the water. There was nothing to reflect in the water that night.

They sat down on the sand. Igor took out the glasses and the bottle of sparkling wine, then opened the chocolate and broke it into squares.

‘Won’t your husband miss you?’ he asked suddenly.

‘No,’ sighed Valya. ‘He’s confined to his bed, poor thing. His back is really troubling him. I’m taking him to that woman on Kamenka Street tomorrow. Hopefully she’ll be able to fix it. If he can’t go fishing, then I’m out of work too.’

‘You’ll find another job,’ said Igor. He picked up the champagne and held the cork down as he started untwisting the wire.

‘What kind of job?’ Valya laughed softly. ‘I left school at fourteen! Once I fell in love, I lost all interest in studying. Such passion! It’s a good thing my father lost both hands in the war, otherwise he’d have beaten me to within an inch of my life. He smashed my mother’s elbow with his army belt before he went off to fight.’

‘Do your parents live in Ochakov too?’ asked Igor.

‘They’re buried here, in the cemetery.’

Igor removed the wire and shook the bottle, causing the cork to explode into the sky. He filled both glasses with bubbles, then quickly covered the neck of the bottle with his thumb. With his free hand he gave one glass to Valya and then picked up the other.

‘To you.’ Igor leaned towards Valya, looking into her eyes.

‘What’s so special about me?’ She gave a playful shrug, then raised the glass to her lips and took a sip.