Chapter 27
At Klava’s. Miners’ Day, two years later.
Headlights lit up in binocular shape the planks of a dilapidated fence, a mid-section of lamppost, the small green hump of a rusty telephone relay box, as the car turned into a dirt path off Red Dawn Road. The car tyres scrunched over gravel stealthily. It must have been getting on for 11 o’clock.
Vita had been out for the evening, catching up with an old friend who was over from England to visit her mother, who now lived in a big house on the edge of Utansk, all alone. In fact, Galkin's wife had been fretting about the meeting ever since she’d taken the call a few days before, because the friend had been her great school rival—especially for the attention of boys. Her clothes, as she pawed through them, looked so tatty, so provincial. What was she going to wear? She’d fended off the friend’s suggestion that they meet up at Vita’s: although since Osip's promotion they'd moved into a bigger flat on Lenin Avenue, it was still being done up—a seemingly unending process—and was covered with musty canvas tarpaulins, cluttered up with step-ladders, buckets, brushes, stacked bags of plaster by the entrance door. Projecting onto the visitor her own sense of her belittlement, she feared eliciting the pity for those who have stayed behind. She found herself checking her appearance more carefully in the hallway mirror, noting especially the lines that splayed out from the corners of her eyes when she grinned (she admonished herself not to do this), the appearance of one or two unruly grey hairs. But at least she'd had children—unlike her former rival. She was very proud of her two boys. Neither was it a small achievement that she was now in charge of the antenatal ward. At one of the town's new boutiques, she picked up a pair of jeans the colour of pink grapefruit, a high-necked crimpelene top in peach, had her hair re-hennaed.
The mother's house was on the far edge of the town, just before the wilderness took over. It had been a long time since they’d all met there, as they’d used to quite often in the days just after college, before they’d gone their separate ways. Soon after, Osip and Vita had got married.
The car tyres scrunched stealthily along the gravelly lane. Up ahead, Osip could make out the dingy yellow lights from the windows of a few irregularly spaced little houses as he searched for a spot to park, pebbles springing up sporadically against the car’s underside with a sharp metallic clink. At the gate in the high fence, he rang the piercing electric bell and waited. After a time, he could hear multiple bolts being undone from the inside and then Klava Rustadze let him in. As he followed her down wide steps into the cool lower floor of the building, which served as a kitchen and pantry, in the gloom Osip just managed to navigate the sticky flytraps that uncurled vertically at even points from the doorjamb.
Inside, with her back to him, his wife was leaning into the wooden kitchen table, eagerly relating the details of the latest unbelievable news to Zhenya Rustadze, her old school friend. Zhenya had on a tight T-shirt and jeans, all green, and her hair was cropped—quite different from how he remembered her. But her dark-skinned, pretty face was unmistakable, almost childlike in its naivety as she patiently listened to his wife, nodding in agreement and encouragement at judicious intervals. It must have been ten years since he'd met her, though they’d always got on. Maybe he'd even had a bit of a crush on her. Sat beside her at the table was Zhenya's new English husband, bespectacled and a little overfed, bearing a weak, discomfited smile. There were drinks and snacks laid out on the table. Behind them, on the kitchen sideboard, a metal-blue keg of Baltica beer was tipped sideways in a large enamel pie dish, drowning in a pool of its own juice.
“Osip, how are you?” said Zhenya, and she cracked open a can of beer and handed it to him.
Osip nodded in silent greeting, took a slurp of the beer and pulled up a chair next to his wife—who, he now noticed, with some approval, was a little drunk. It was so rarely these days that she got a chance to let her hair down. Klava sat back in a chair a short distance from the table, as though awaiting permission to join in.
“How are you, Osip,” repeated Zhenya. “You look well.”
But before he could speak, Vita interjected: “He’s been promoted. He’s head of material investigations."
"She thought I’d be stuck on the bottom rung for good,” said the officer, with a laugh. Then Vita added: “But he’s taken up smoking again.”
At Klava’s. Miners’ Day, two years later.
Headlights lit up in binocular shape the planks of a dilapidated fence, a mid-section of lamppost, the small green hump of a rusty telephone relay box, as the car turned into a dirt path off Red Dawn Road. The car tyres scrunched over gravel stealthily. It must have been getting on for 11 o’clock.
Vita had been out for the evening, catching up with an old friend who was over from England to visit her mother, who now lived in a big house on the edge of Utansk, all alone. In fact, Galkin's wife had been fretting about the meeting ever since she’d taken the call a few days before, because the friend had been her great school rival—especially for the attention of boys. Her clothes, as she pawed through them, looked so tatty, so provincial. What was she going to wear? She’d fended off the friend’s suggestion that they meet up at Vita’s: although since Osip's promotion they'd moved into a bigger flat on Lenin Avenue, it was still being done up—a seemingly unending process—and was covered with musty canvas tarpaulins, cluttered up with step-ladders, buckets, brushes, stacked bags of plaster by the entrance door. Projecting onto the visitor her own sense of her belittlement, she feared eliciting the pity for those who have stayed behind. She found herself checking her appearance more carefully in the hallway mirror, noting especially the lines that splayed out from the corners of her eyes when she grinned (she admonished herself not to do this), the appearance of one or two unruly grey hairs. But at least she'd had children—unlike her former rival. She was very proud of her two boys. Neither was it a small achievement that she was now in charge of the antenatal ward. At one of the town's new boutiques, she picked up a pair of jeans the colour of pink grapefruit, a high-necked crimpelene top in peach, had her hair re-hennaed.
The mother's house was on the far edge of the town, just before the wilderness took over. It had been a long time since they’d all met there, as they’d used to quite often in the days just after college, before they’d gone their separate ways. Soon after, Osip and Vita had got married.
The car tyres scrunched stealthily along the gravelly lane. Up ahead, Osip could make out the dingy yellow lights from the windows of a few irregularly spaced little houses as he searched for a spot to park, pebbles springing up sporadically against the car’s underside with a sharp metallic clink. At the gate in the high fence, he rang the piercing electric bell and waited. After a time, he could hear multiple bolts being undone from the inside and then Klava Rustadze let him in. As he followed her down wide steps into the cool lower floor of the building, which served as a kitchen and pantry, in the gloom Osip just managed to navigate the sticky flytraps that uncurled vertically at even points from the doorjamb.
Inside, with her back to him, his wife was leaning into the wooden kitchen table, eagerly relating the details of the latest unbelievable news to Zhenya Rustadze, her old school friend. Zhenya had on a tight T-shirt and jeans, all green, and her hair was cropped—quite different from how he remembered her. But her dark-skinned, pretty face was unmistakable, almost childlike in its naivety as she patiently listened to his wife, nodding in agreement and encouragement at judicious intervals. It must have been ten years since he'd met her, though they’d always got on. Maybe he'd even had a bit of a crush on her. Sat beside her at the table was Zhenya's new English husband, bespectacled and a little overfed, bearing a weak, discomfited smile. There were drinks and snacks laid out on the table. Behind them, on the kitchen sideboard, a metal-blue keg of Baltica beer was tipped sideways in a large enamel pie dish, drowning in a pool of its own juice.
“Osip, how are you?” said Zhenya, and she cracked open a can of beer and handed it to him.
Osip nodded in silent greeting, took a slurp of the beer and pulled up a chair next to his wife—who, he now noticed, with some approval, was a little drunk. It was so rarely these days that she got a chance to let her hair down. Klava sat back in a chair a short distance from the table, as though awaiting permission to join in.
“How are you, Osip,” repeated Zhenya. “You look well.”
But before he could speak, Vita interjected: “He’s been promoted. He’s head of material investigations."
"She thought I’d be stuck on the bottom rung for good,” said the officer, with a laugh. Then Vita added: “But he’s taken up smoking again.”
“How long are you back?” asked Osip.
“A couple of weeks," replied Zhenya, "more than enough for anyone.” But she regretted the jibe even as it was leaving her mouth. They'd already been to visit her step-dad’s grave, she added quickly. In fact, they'd taken a wrong turn in the cemetery—it was so overgrown and unkempt there now—and had stumbled across rows of fresh gravestones: all those cocky young men who’d strutted about the town when she'd been a waitress, ten years before. One of them once spat in her face when she’d asked him to pay for his beer, and she'd even been out on a couple of dates with another—Arkady Shapiro, the lawyer's son. She hadn't even known that he'd died.
“A terrible business," said Klava. "Poor Arkasha. Such a funny little boy. Don’t you remember?” (She was speaking to Vita.) “Not even his wife could recognise him.”
“You knew Arkasha, didn’t you, Osip?” Vita said.
“Yes, I knew him.”
“They never found out who it was,” said Klava. "Soon after that, old Shapiro died in Israel. A stroke. (He always dressed so smartly.) The son’s death can’t have helped.” Then she brought her hands together in a mighty clap, squeezing the spirit of a mosquito out of its skin and making the jittery foreigner start.
“O, what a morbid conversation,” said Vita. “Can’t we talk about something more cheerful? Did you go into town today for the celebration? It was a lovely, bright day. All the young cadets were out in their dress uniforms.”
Klava said: “I saw Sashukian on the TV. He was giving away flats to crippled miners. It was a nice gesture.”
“The Armenian?” said Zhenya.
“He’s our new deputy,” said Vita.
“Got in on an anti-corruption ticket,” Osip added softly, almost under his breath. All of them, except Klava, burst into laughter.
Klava fumed. “At least he’s kept the mines open,” she said.
"But if he doesn't keep the mines open," said Vita, "he'll go broke."
At this, Osip took the opportunity to go outside to roll himself a cigarette.
It was a muggy night in late August. From the low wooden bench in Klava’s yard, beside a lattice screen of creepers, as he licked the gummy edge a cigarette paper he could see glowering over the back fence at the end of the long garden the silhouette of a huge slagheap on the grounds of the Utansk Metallurgical Works. Turning in the opposite direction, as if to escape its glare, he gazed up at the night sky, which was salted with the clusters of innumerable stars—the Great Pan and the Little Pan, that stubborn stain of the Milky Way—and inhaled.
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