Andrey Kurkov - The Gardener from Ochakov

‘And what does this have to do with me?’

‘Well, you were the one who put him away, so you must know something about him,’ said Stepan. ‘What about his friends, for example? He must have had friends. Who were they?’

‘Friends?’ repeated the old man. ‘Maybe he did have friends. I don’t know. As for what he got up to… how can I put it? Let’s just say he had his fingers in a number of pies. He sold stolen goods, he had suspicious visitors… His house was like a kind of “poste restante” service. People used to leave things with him to look after for a year or so, sometimes longer. They would pay him for this, of course. People reported him, and the police came with search warrants, but they never found anything. So he just carried on like that, right up until he was killed. Would you like some tea?’

Anastasia Ivanovna brightened and nodded on behalf of herself and her lodgers. While they were drinking their tea Stepan tried his best to find out more, but the old man had nothing further to tell.

‘My father must have been one of his visitors,’ Stepan reflected that evening, when they were sitting on the beds in their little room. ‘And I bet he left him something to look after as well… So he was a thief, after all.’

The following day they went to a hardware shop near the market, where Stepan bought a crowbar and two torches. Igor paid, albeit reluctantly.

His apprehensions proved to be well founded. That evening, the gardener grabbed the torches and crowbar and led him out onto the street.

‘We’re just going to scope out Chagin’s house for a bit first… Get a feel for the place,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Then we’ll take a look inside.’

The dark southern sky hung low above them, and the smell of the sea tickled their noses. Somewhere nearby, a radio was blaring out Turkish music.

After walking past Chagin’s house several times, they went into the yard and hid behind a tree to the right of the doorstep.

‘We could get locked up for this!’ Igor panicked. He knew what was coming next.

‘For what? For trying to understand my childhood? It’s not like we’re robbing a bank,’ Stepan reassured him.

They stood there for about twenty minutes, just listening. The silence was broken only by a single car going past. The town was obviously early to bed as well as early to rise.

Stepan deftly forced open the padlock with the crowbar, then levered the door up until the built-in lock disengaged from its mortice. The door opened.

Stepan slipped through the gap with Igor close behind him. They shut the door and immediately found themselves in pitch darkness. Stepan switched on his torch, and Igor did the same.

‘The police aren’t stupid,’ whispered Stepan. ‘If they came here with search warrants they would have checked under the floorboards, and in the attic. They must have searched the old stoves too… I bet they’ve all been ripped out, though.’

They were in a kind of hallway, with various doors leading off it. Stepan shone his torch along the walls and over the cast-iron radiators, which had been painted white. He approached the closest set of double doors, which were marked ‘Public Office’. Before Igor even noticed the doors opening, Stepan was inside, illuminating the walls and floor with his torch.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘We need a system, otherwise we’ll be here all night. You stay here while I go back and open all the other doors, then we can start working our way round clockwise.’

Igor switched off his torch and stood motionless in the darkness, listening to the hushed whispering of the doors as they opened one by one, yielding to pressure from the crowbar.

It wasn’t long before Stepan returned. He touched Igor on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow. Together they went back into the hallway and then walked around each of the rooms in turn, shining their torches over the floors, the walls and the unprepossessing Soviet-style furniture. They ended up back in Deputy Volochkov’s office.

‘Right, here’s what we’re going to do,’ said Stepan, voicing his thoughts aloud. ‘We can rule out the attic and the floors. There are no stoves. That just leaves the walls. Do you know how to sound out walls?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Igor.

‘Like a doctor. Rap on them with your knuckles, and if they sound solid keep going. But if they sound hollow, then stay where you are and call for me. We’ll do it together. I’ll start to the right of the doors, and you can start to the left.’

In the pitch-black silence, they started knocking on the walls: right up to the ceiling, and right down to where they met the floorboards. In the third room, to the right of an enormous, brooding safe, Igor thought the wall sounded different.

‘Stepan!’ he whispered urgently. ‘I think I’ve found something.’

Stepan went over to check.

‘Yes, it does sound empty just here,’ he said, although he sounded unconvinced. ‘I’ll go and check from the other side.’

He came back pleasantly puzzled.

‘The wall sticks out strangely on that side,’ he said, grasping the crowbar in his right hand. ‘Right then, here goes!’

The exertion was reflected on his face as he smashed the crowbar into the wall. After a certain amount of resistance the crowbar plunged deep inside.

‘Now, that’s interesting,’ whispered Stepan, shining his torch onto the wall.

He widened the hole he had made. Igor noticed pieces of dark plywood sticking out of the plaster. It took the two of them them about ten minutes to open up a section of the wall big enough to shine their torches inside.

‘Well, fancy that!’ exclaimed Stepan. The light from their torches fell on three old-fashioned leather suitcases, covered in dust and building rubble. ‘All that time they spent searching for left luggage, and we’ve finally found it!’

Stepan dragged the suitcases out one at a time. He blew the dust and debris from them, then brushed his clothes down and switched off his torch. They left the building carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible. Stepan even managed to close the front door silently behind them.

The streets were equally deserted on the way back to Anastasia Ivanovna’s house. What a lovely little town! thought Igor.

They put the suitcases on the floor in their room. Stepan wiped them with the cloth rag that served as a doormat.

‘We’ll have to leave early, before the market opens,’ Stepan said firmly.

‘Aren’t we going to see what’s inside?’ asked Igor.

‘We’ll open them up back at your place, when we can take our time over it. Let’s just concentrate on getting them there, for the time being.’

Igor was not inclined to argue. They had two hours left before sunrise. Stepan was already packing his rucksack. He paused and looked at his young companion.

‘Put twenty hryvnas on the table,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t hurt to leave a good impression.’

KIEV WELCOMED THE returning travellers with pouring rain. The sky hung dark and low over the train station. Wearing his rucksack on his back and carrying one of the old leather suitcases, Stepan walked briskly towards their suburban commuter train. Igor was carrying the other two suitcases as well as his own bag, and he struggled to keep up. At least the suitcases weren’t heavy. Though this did call into question the value of their contents.

The puddles in the streets of Irpen reflected the autumn sun. It had obviously rained there earlier in the day.

‘Let’s take a taxi,’ suggested Stepan, looking around. They were not exactly inconspicuous with their three large, old-fashioned suitcases. Igor also noticed a few passers-by looking at them in surprise.