The car-assembly line switched over to the late shift. Ilinaya stopped work and began scrubbing her hands using a bar of black rancid-smelling soap, the only kind available if any was available at all. The water was cold, the soap wouldn’t lather — it simply disintegrated into greasy shards — but all she could think about were the hours between now and the beginning of her next shift. She had her night planned out. First, she’d finish scraping the oil and metal filings from under her fingernails. Then she was going home, changing her clothes, daubing some colour on her cheeks before heading to Basarov’s, a restaurant near the railway station.
Basarov’s was popular with people visiting on business, officials stopping over before they continued their journey on the Trans-Siberian railway east or west. The restaurant served food — millet soup, barley kasha and salted herring — all of which Ilinaya thought was terrible. More importantly it served alcohol. Since it was illegal to sell alcohol in public without selling food, meals were a means to an end, a plate of food was a permit to drink. In reality the restaurant was little more than a pick-up joint. The law that no individual was to be sold more than one hundred grams of vodka was ignored. Basarov, the manager and namesake of the restaurant, was always drunk and often violent and if Ilinaya wanted to ply her trade on his premises he wanted a cut. There was no way she could pretend she was drinking there for the fun of it whilst sneaking off with the occasional paying customer. No one drank there for the fun of it; it was a transient crowd, no locals. But that was an advantage. She couldn’t get work off the locals any more. She’d been sick recently — sores, redness, rashes, that kind of thing. A couple of regulars had come down with more or less the same symptoms and bad-mouthed her around town. Now she was reduced to dealing with people who didn’t know her, people who weren’t staying in town for long and who wouldn’t find out they were pissing pus until they reached Vladivostok or Moscow, depending on which way they were travelling. She didn’t take any pleasure from the idea of passing on some kind of bug even if they weren’t exactly nice people. But in this town seeing a doctor about a sexually transmitted infection was more dangerous than the infection itself. For an unmarried woman it was like handing in a confession, signed with a smear. She’d have to go to the black market for treatment. That required money, maybe a lot of money, and right now she was saving for something else, something far more important — her escape from this town.
By the time she’d arrived the restaurant was crowded and the windows steamed up. The air stank of makhorka, cheap tobacco. She’d heard drunken laughter fifty paces before stepping through the door. She’d guessed soldiers. She’d guessed right. There were often some kind of military exercises taking place in the mountains and off-duty personnel were normally directed here. Basarov catered specifically for this sort of clientele. He served watered-down vodka, claiming, if anyone complained and they often did, that it was a high-minded attempt to limit drunkenness. There were frequent fights. Even so, she knew that for all his talk about how hard his life was and how terrible his customers were, he made a tidy profit, selling the undiluted vodka he skimmed off. He was a speculator. He was scum. Just a couple of months ago she’d gone upstairs to pay him his weekly cut and, through a crack in his bedroom door, caught sight of him counting out rouble note after note after note, which he stored in a tin box tied shut with string. She’d watched, hardly daring to breathe, as he’d wrapped his box in a cloth before hiding it in his chimney. Ever since then she’d dreamed of stealing that money and making a break for it. Of course Basarov would snap her neck for sure if he caught up with her, but she figured that if he ever discovered his tin box was empty his heart would give out right there, by his chimney place. She was pretty sure his heart and that box were one and the same thing.
By her reckoning the soldiers were going to be drinking for another couple of hours. At the moment all they were doing was groping her, a privilege they weren’t paying for unless you counted free vodka as payment, which she did not. She surveyed the other customers, convinced she could earn a little extra money before the soldiers started clocking on. The military contingent took up the front tables, relegating the remaining customers to the back. These customers were sitting on their own — just them and their drinks and their plates of untouched food. No doubt about it: they were looking for sex. There was no other reason to hang around.
Ilinaya straightened her dress, ditched her glass and made her way through the soldiers, ignoring the pinches and remarks until she found herself at one of the back tables. The man sitting there was maybe forty, maybe a little younger. It was hard to tell. He wasn’t handsome, but she reckoned he’d probably pay a little more because of that. The better-looking ones sometimes got it into their heads money wasn’t necessary, like the arrangement might be mutually pleasurable. She sat down, sliding her leg up against his thigh and smiling:
— My name is Tanya.
It helped, at times like these, to think of herself as someone else.
The man lit a cigarette and put his hand on Ilinaya’s knee. Not bothering to buy her a drink he tipped half his remaining vodka into one of the many dirty glasses surrounding him and pushed it towards her. She toyed with the glass, waiting for him to say something. He finished his drink, showing no sign of wanting to talk. Trying not to roll her eyes, she pushed for a little conversation.
— What’s your name?
He didn’t reply, reaching into his jacket pocket, rummaging around. He pulled out his hand, his fist clenched shut. She understood this was a game of sorts and that she was expected to play along. She tapped his knuckles. He turned his fist upside down, slowly extending his fingers, one by one…
In the middle of his palm was a small nugget of gold. She leaned forward. Before she could get a good look he closed his hand and slipped it back into his pocket. He still hadn’t said a word. She studied his face. He had bloodshot, boozy eyes and she didn’t like him at all. But then she didn’t like many people and certainly none of the men she slept with. If she wanted to get fussy she might as well call it quits, marry one of these locals and resign herself to staying in this town forever. The only way she was going to return to Leningrad, where her family lived, where she’d lived all her life until being ordered to move here, to a town she’d never even heard of, was if she could save up enough money to bribe the officials. Without any high-ranking, powerful friends to authorize the transfer, she needed that gold.
He tapped her glass, uttering his first word.
— Drink.
— First you pay me. Then you can tell me what to do. That’s the rule, that’s the only rule.
The man’s face fluttered as if she’d tossed a stone onto the surface of his expression. For a moment she saw something beneath his bland, plump appearance something unpleasant, something which made her want to look away. But the gold kept her looking at him, kept her in her seat. He took the nugget from his pocket, offering it. As she reached out and picked it from his sweaty palm he closed his hand, trapping her fingers. It didn’t hurt but her fingers were trapped all the same. She could either surrender to his grip or pull her hand out without the gold. Guessing what was expected she smiled and laughed like a helpless girl, letting her arm go slack. He released his grip. She took the nugget and stared at it. It was the shape of a tooth. She stared at the man.
— Where did you get it?
— When times are tough, people sell whatever they’ve got.