Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

When she saw that Igor was ready, she led him to the path and they scrambled awkwardly up the slippery crevice to the top of the cliff. The path ran along the cliff towards the bushes. When they reached the bushes Valya suddenly stopped, as though she were rooted to the ground.

‘Someone’s there,’ she whispered.

Igor looked around her and saw two figures silhouetted in a narrow gap between the bushes.

‘So, bitch, drinking champagne with coppers now, are you?’ The voice was coarse. ‘Well, let’s see if it’s their lucky night… Go on, Sanka, launch your blade!’

One of the figures made a sudden sharp gesture with his hand and a knife whistled past with a dull, sinister gleam, barely missing Igor’s face.

‘I’ll shoot!’ cried Igor, instantly embarrassed by the fear in his voice.

‘Good shot, are you?’

Igor took the gun out of the holster and looked at it. Suddenly he wasn’t just scared, but petrified. He imagined the men hearing the gun misfire. What would they do to them then? No, he had to scare them without actually pulling the trigger.

Igor held the gun out in front of him, stepped around Valya and pretended to take aim.

‘Look, he’s got his gun out!’ hissed a second voice.

The silhouettes disappeared. They had stepped back into the bushes.

‘Hey, Valya,’ called the first voice, ‘I’m going to drop by later, to see whether you’re sharing your bed with a copper or a fisherman. We’ll have a little chat then!’

Igor could sense Valya’s fear.

‘One more word and I’ll finish you off!’ he exclaimed in a fit of rage, feeling his own fear ebb away.

‘Coppers don’t talk like that,’ hissed the second voice. ‘Did you hear, Fima?’

‘Yeah, I heard,’ the first voice cut him off. ‘I think this calls for my special blade!’

Valya put her arms around Igor from behind. She was trembling, and he felt his fear creeping back. Igor thought he could see the two men again, and they seemed to be approaching. Quietly, heads bowed and shoulders hunched, they looked like they were getting ready to pounce.

‘Stop, you bastards!’ cried Igor, but they just ignored him.

Igor held the gun out in front of him and lowered his head. His finger pressed the trigger, and a shot rang out. One of the men wheezed and fell to the ground. The other man froze for a second before jumping into the bushes, and the ensuing rustling and snapping of twigs, receding into the distance, told them that he’d decided not to hang around.

Valya crouched down and began sobbing. Igor stood over her, not knowing what do to next. His eyes involuntarily returned to the motionless figure on the path ahead.

He went up and leaned over the body to get a closer look. The man’s face was covered in blood. The bullet had obviously hit him right between the eyes. He went back to Valya and touched her shoulder.

‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

‘They’ll find me,’ she whispered through her tears. ‘Oh, why did I go with you? I asked you not to wear your uniform!’

‘It’s all right, don’t worry.’ Igor squatted down beside her and started stroking her wet hair and her shoulders. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’ll think of something. Do you know who it was that ran off?’

‘Fima,’ she sighed. ‘Fima Chagin… He wanted me, but I said no… I told him that I love my husband… What now? What’s going to happen now?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Igor, more confidently. ‘I’ll definitely think of something.’

He took her home, but she wouldn’t let him past the gate. She’d stopped crying by the time they reached her house; only her eyes betrayed her fear. Igor put his arms round her.

‘I forgot to tell you something important,’ she whispered into his ear.

‘What?’ whispered Igor.

‘You left your gobies on the counter. I’ll give you some next time, if I have any.’

He managed to kiss her cheek before she gently pushed him away and hurried into her yard.

LEFT ALONE BY the gate, Igor looked around. He took in the unfamiliar street, the sudden stillness of the cool air, the silence and the dark sky that rose up from the barely discernible outlines of trees, roofs and telegraph poles. The house that Valya went into hadn’t reacted in any way to her arrival, neither creaking as she opened the front door nor lighting any windows to welcome her home.

The insides of Igor’s boots were wet with the water running out of his breeches. The only thing that wasn’t wet was the cloth bag containing the Soviet roubles.

The water felt as out of place in his boots as Igor himself felt standing in an obscure backstreet in this town, which was becoming increasingly familiar to him. Everything that had happened had lowered Igor’s body temperature by at least two degrees. He stood there, constrained by his wet clothing, by inertia, by a strange fear, which felt alternately incredibly real and ludicrously childish. A sharp knife had flown past his head – close enough for him to see the predatory gleam of steel. But in reality he hadn’t even been born yet. The knife had flown past his head on an autumn evening in 1957, which meant that it couldn’t have killed him. Or could it?

Igor ran his left hand over his tunic. It felt cold and wet. The water was definitely real, there was no doubt about that, otherwise he would be feeling a lot more comfortable. So the knife must have been real too.

Igor looked along the fence outside Valya’s house. Noticing a small bench outside her neighbour’s gate, he went over and sat down on it. He pulled his boots off and shook the water out of them, then put them back on again.

The town was fast asleep. Igor’s thoughts became clearer and clearer, as though someone were typing them out inside his head in large capital letters. He remembered how Valya had crouched down in fear. He’d been frightened, but her fear had been different – as though she’d known exactly what to be afraid of and was afraid with all her might. At that point her fear had intensified his own. Fear was what had pulled the trigger of the gun, but it wasn’t supposed to fire! If it hadn’t fired, though, then… Igor couldn’t bear to imagine what those two would have done with them. The fact remained that a shot had been fired, and one of the men – the one who’d thrown the knife – was still back there on the path.

He recalled Vanya Samokhin’s comment about Fima Chagin having an affair with Valya. If there was something between them, that would certainly explain both her fear and Chagin’s fury. It also meant that the fear and the fury would stay with them for a long time, until the fear killed the fury or the fury killed the fear… Either way, there would be no happy ending. That much was clear.

Igor sighed. He looked around again. Suddenly he got the feeling that Fima was hiding nearby, knife in hand. Waiting for Igor to get up and walk away, leaving Valya’s house unprotected. This thought made him uneasy. Should he sit here all night, guarding Valya’s house until the sun came up?

A soft rustle came from the fence on the other side of the road. Igor leaned forward, peering into the darkness. Two green cat’s eyes stared back at him. A dog barked somewhere in the distance and the cat’s eyes disappeared.

‘No, I can’t protect her,’ Igor whispered to himself. He looked back at Valya’s house. ‘She’s got a husband – it’s his responsibility.’

Igor stood up, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave so he sat down again.

I can’t prevent or change anything here, he thought. I have nothing in common with this town and its people. They have their own lives, their own time, and I have mine.

This argument wasn’t particularly convincing. Chagin had been very much alive in the memory of the inhabitants of Ochakov quite recently, when Igor and Stepan had come here and broken into his house. Time is a flexible concept. The present is woven from the recent past, after all, and as long as people remember the past it will remain alive, somewhere nearby, watching you and telling you what to do.