Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

A dreamy smile appeared on her face.

‘Fima was handsome, he was, and smart. All the girls had an eye for him. Such a shame he was killed…’

‘How was he killed? When?’ asked Igor, unable to contain himself.

Their landlady thought about it for a moment.

‘It must have been during Khrushchev’s time… Yes, that’s right. Just after Khrushchev sent Gagarin up into space. Or was it before that? After the satellite he sent up… I remember, everyone was whispering about space at the funeral.’

‘And the house he used to live in…’ Stepan began cautiously. ‘Is it still there?’

‘Of course,’ nodded Anastasia Ivanovna. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

Stepan looked at Igor. His eyes burned with excitement, and his lips spread in a barely perceptible smile.

IGOR DIDN’T SLEEP very well that night. The iron bedstead creaked every time he turned over and kept waking him up. Fortunately it didn’t disturb Stepan, who lay fast asleep and snoring in the other bed.

Eventually Igor opened his eyes, rolled over onto his back and lay there staring up at the low ceiling, which was barely visible in the darkness. He thought about the evening they’d spent with their landlady. He remembered the way she’d broken into an almost girlish smile when she’d been talking about Fima Chagin. It had looked so strange on her wrinkled old face. Later on she’d let slip that she herself had been in love with Fima, as had many of the other girls in Ochakov. Apparently Fima Chagin had been a striking individual – tall and thin, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a sharp nose. He had just turned up in Ochakov one day, after the war. His grandmother lived in a big house, and when she was suddenly taken ill his parents had sent him from Kakhovka to live with her, so that when she died the house would stay in the family. According to their landlady, the grandmother recovered and shared her house with her grandson for the next ten years. They got on well, and their life together was certainly never dull. When Fima first arrived he had sought out the local troublemakers and picked fights, in an attempt to prove himself. He soon earned their respect and they began to consider him one of their own, as though he’d lived in Ochakov all his life. He went fishing with the other lads or down to the port to steal things, taking anchors from boats that belonged to outsiders and selling them at the market. Every now and then he was caught, but he would simply break free and run away. And he kept on running until the divisional inspector got him locked up for two years.

When Fima came out he seemed much older, more aloof. He had stopped running. From that point on he walked slowly, with authority. People came to visit him from all kinds of far-flung places – from Taganrog, from Rostov, from Odessa. Sometimes they would stay at his house for several weeks and then simply disappear, but others came in their place, all of them thin and wiry. He grew rich. The divisional inspector would greet him in the street, turning a blind eye to it all. This went on for five or six years, maybe even longer, until one day he was found stabbed in his own home.

Igor thought of the flame that had burned in the old woman’s eyes when she told them about Fima Chagin’s murder. Fima had been found, she said, lying on his back in the middle of his living-room floor, a knife sticking out of his chest. Near his body they’d found two bundles of roubles and a note that read: ‘For a proper send-off’.

The old woman had promised to show them the house the following day.

Igor eventually dozed off just before morning, but in no time at all the birds began chirping and squawking right in his ear, or so it seemed, and his eyes snapped open. Stepan had opened the window, letting in the sounds of the clamorous autumn morning that was coming to life in the warmth of the rising sun.

Greeting him with a nod, Stepan went out into the yard wearing just his underwear. From the yard came the sounds of a bucket being lifted and water being poured from the well. Then the gardener made a loud spluttering sound and ran straight back inside, wet to the waist.

After shaving, Stepan went out into the yard again. He returned immediately holding two large apples, one of which he threw to Igor.

‘Breakfast!’ he announced, taking a bite out of his own apple.

About quarter of an hour later the familiar voice of their landlady called to them from the yard. She hadn’t asked for their passports the previous day, or even their names. So when she knocked on the window, she just called, ‘Gentlemen!’

The ‘gentlemen’ left their room. Stepan secured the padlock and checked it twice.

‘It’s on Kostya Khetagurov Street,’ said Anastasia Ivanovna, once they’d set off. ‘Not far from here. It’s an office of some kind now, for a pension fund, or something similar.’

They turned left past a small shop and saw a number of two-storey brick buildings, but kept walking until they came to a patch of wasteland and a burnt-out wooden hut. Beyond this vacant plot, behind a low metal fence, stood an unsightly single-storey building with a high socle around its base. Double wooden doors served to emphasise the building’s unwelcoming bureaucratic nature. There were two signs, one on either side of the doors: ‘Organisation of Ochakov Labour Veterans’ and ‘Public Office of A. G. Volochkov, Deputy of the Nikolaev Regional Council’.

The old woman stopped. ‘There it is,’ she said. ‘It looks exactly the same!’ Her voice sounded tearful. ‘In Fima’s day the house used to be divided into just four big rooms with old stoves, but there must be at least ten rooms in there now. I came here once, to the veterans department. I thought they might be able to help me get some extra money on top of my pension.’ She waved her hand sadly. ‘And about five years ago, it must have been, I saw Egorov here, the divisional inspector who got Fima locked up. He must be dead by now.’

Stepan stared at Anastasia Ivanovna with interest.

‘Divisional inspectors usually live to a ripe old age,’ he said pensively. ‘Maybe we ought to check… Where did he used to live?’

‘I don’t know the address, but I know which house it is. It’s down there.’ She waved her hand along the street. ‘Towards the sea. It used to have a red fence.’

‘Maybe we could call on him now?’ suggested Stepan. ‘We really do need to speak to him, if he’s still alive.’

It took about five minutes of gentle persuasion before Anastasia Ivanovna agreed to take them to Egorov’s house.

They arrived at a small stucco house with a red fence around it. The door was opened by a young girl with freckles, who must have been about six years old.

‘Is your grandfather at home?’ the old woman asked her.

‘Grandad!’ the girl shouted back into the house. ‘It’s for you!’

A wizened old man looked out into the hallway. He was wearing a dark blue woollen tracksuit emblazoned with the Dinamo football club logo. At the sight of two strange men on his doorstep he froze. Then he noticed the diminutive figure of Anastasia Ivanovna beside them, stooping beneath the burden of her years, and his expression softened.

‘Nastya, is that you?’ he asked, unable to take his eyes off the old woman.

‘Yes, and these two lodgers of mine twisted my arm until I brought them to see you,’ she said, indicating Stepan and Igor. ‘Can we come in?’

The old man nodded.

He led them into the living room, trying on the way to capture a moth that had flown into the hallway. He invited them to sit down at a table covered with a velour cloth.

‘So, what can I do for you?’ he asked, sitting down opposite them.

‘Well,’ began Stepan, ‘I think Fima Chagin was either a relative, or a friend, of my father’s… I just want to find out for sure. That’s why I’ve come to Ochakov.’