Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

Kolyan stopped too, a little way ahead.

‘On my own?’ he repeated.

‘Well, not completely. Someone will meet you soon. His name’s Vanya Samokhin. Tell him I said hello. Oh, and this is really important – don’t ever take the uniform off. Treat it like a second skin. Without it, you’ll disappear.’

‘What do you mean, disappear?’

‘You’ll come straight back here.’

‘Back to the present, you mean?’

Igor nodded.

‘That’s good to know. If it’s worse there than it is here, at least now I know there’s a way out. So we don’t need to say goodbye!’

Without another word, Kolyan turned away from Igor and continued walking along the road. The darkness swallowed him a few moments later.

Igor stood there for a while, looking and listening, then he turned round and walked quickly back along the road. His steps were surprisingly light, which might have been something to do with the imported Chinese trainers he was wearing. They weighed next to nothing.

Houses appeared again along both sides of the street. There were still no lights in their windows.

Kolyan stopped when he reached the illuminated square in front of the green gates of the Ochakov Wine Factory, unsure what to do next. He looked around.

The gates suddenly creaked open and Kolyan took a step back. An old lorry rolled noisily out of the gates and turned onto the road, which was visible only in the glow from its headlights. It drove away from him, soon disappearing from view. The gates closed and all was quiet. Kolyan’s sense of hearing was more alert than usual, and after just a few minutes he detected the creak of the gate hinges again. A young lad appeared in the gap, carrying something over his shoulder. The gates were bolted behind him. The sack was obviously heavy, and as the lad lowered it to his feet it seemed to squirm as though it contained a live piglet.

Kolyan peered closely at the young lad and the sack.

‘Are you Vanya?’ he called out of the darkness.

‘Yes.’

Kolyan walked over to him.

‘Igor says hello!’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

Kolyan sighed heavily. He had to say something, to break the ice somehow.

‘Is that heavy?’ he asked, pointing at the sack.

Vanya nodded.

‘Let me give you a hand.’

Kolyan bent down towards the sack of wine, and Vanya gladly helped him to hoist it onto his right shoulder. They began walking along the dark road, following the route taken by the lorry.

‘I’ve got a note for Valya,’ Kolyan said quietly. ‘Will you introduce me to her?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ promised Vanya Samokhin. ‘She’s having a difficult time at the moment, but she’s got a soft spot for men in uniform. We’re going back to our house now. Mother said she’d fry some gobies. You can stay with us for a while… The wine will help you sleep.’

‘What wine?’ asked Kolyan, confused.

‘This wine!’ Vanya slapped the sack and it wobbled on Kolyan’s shoulder. ‘It’s a dry white… Your friend loved it. You can drink it on its own, without food, and the dreams it gives you… well, they’re better than any film!’

Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin .

Amanda Love Darragh studied French and Russian at Manchester University, then spent the following decade working in Moscow and at BBC Worldwide in London. Amanda won the 2009 Rossica Translation Prize for her translation of Iramifications by Maria Galina, and she has translated works by Ilya Boyasho, Igor Savelyev and Anna Lavrinenko, among others.

Death and the Penguin

The Case of the General’s Thumb

Penguin Lost

A Matter of Death and Life

The President’s Last Love

The Good Angel of Death

The Milkman in the Night

“Kurkov is a master story teller, using a simple lean style for a narrative that reads like a fable or myth, rich in invention, brought to life by the deadpan depiction of local people and local events.”

“Kurkov masters the details superbly, writes with constant consummate wit and soufflé lightness.”

“Some see him as a latter day Bulgakov; to others he’s a Urkanian Murakami… With a characteristic mix of realism and fantasy it [ The Gardener from Ochakov ] will delight fans… Kurkov combines the mundane details of life in modern Ukraine (minibus taxis, tins of sprats and bottles of moonshine) with surreal elements from thrillers and sci-fi: knife wielding gangsters, or quantum leaps in the midnight suburbs. The plot rattles along like a Kiev commuter train, regularly stopping for vodka, salami and salted cucumbers…”

“Quickly becomes an absorbing rollercoaster, an understated fantasy with an unlikely but likeable hero.”

“More than a clash of ages… It’s also a tale about fathers and sons and what they need from each other.”

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Epub ISBN: 9781448104697

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Harvill Secker 2013

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Copyright © Andrey Kurkov 2011

Copyright © Diogenes Verlag AG Zürich 2011

English translation copyright © Amanda Love Darragh 2013

Andrey Kurkov has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published with the title Sadovnik iz Ochakova in 2009

by Folio Publishers, Kharkov

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

HARVILL SECKER

Random House

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

London SW1V 2SA

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781846556159

This publication was effected under the auspices of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation TRANSCRIPT Programme to Support Translations of Russian Literature