In shady spots there was still some pure, powdery spring snow, where marsh birds were happily pecking at holes in the river ice with their slippery beaks. Someone had painted in white on one of the rocks: Down with Yermak, Down with Stalin-Hitlers. The mysterious wind tore at the sides of a small barge caught among the pack ice, and a thin puff of blue smoke rose from the battered chimneys of the spruce-walled harbour buildings.
She climbed up the bank. A vast flock of a thousand wild geese was gliding just over her head. The muddy masses of water flowing from farther upstream lifted the rafts of ice higher and higher. The rumbling grew louder. Then the last of the surface ice crumbled into great chunks that hurled themselves over each other and climbed crashing up the shore. Nothing could stop the power of the ice. It could crush the shore, the docks, the buildings. She climbed up onto a boulder. There was a heart carved into it with ‘Valentina + Volodya 14.8.1937’ written inside.
She climbed higher and saw a little park a short distance away. There was a trodden path leading to it. She went and sat down to rest for a moment on a bench. The tranquil clouds looking down from the pale sky smelled like spring. She listened to the sound of the far-off Okhotsk Sea and looked at the half-built modern blocks of flats that seemed to press themselves quietly into the earth. A military band appeared from behind an arolla pine. They advanced towards the park’s small fountain with stiff steps, wearing black cloaks and billed hats of black fur. There was a post in front of the snow-filled fountain with a tin-shaded lamp on top that rattled loudly in the river breeze. The band tuned their wind-chilled instruments, the conductor’s baton fluttered, and a light military march rang in the air.
As evening fell, needles of ice began to fall. She wandered some more in the city. The glaring red, dying sunlight lingered over the bumpy streets. As she walked farther from the city centre the streets became narrower and more rundown, meandering capriciously, then turning straight and clear. She missed Moscow and the Arbat, where the narrow streets zigzagged delightfully. The fitful east wind started to turn into a snowstorm. It ripped at the clouds and cleared the sky. She headed back to the middle of town.
She went straight to the hotel restaurant. There were three signs on the restaurant door: CLOSED, CLOSED FOR DINNER, CLOSED FOR INVENTORY. The restaurant was full. She stepped inside. In addition to local diners there were a few Chinese salesmen, a couple of Koreans, and a few Japanese hotel guests sitting in the dining room. A pear-shaped waitress showed her to a table by the window where a thin woman with a shaggy fur hat and a lively face was sitting. The two of them looked sometimes at the other diners, sometimes at each other. The woman took a pretty packet of cigarettes out of her Yugoslavian purse and smoked one in a yellow amber cigarette holder. Her wrists were delicate and graceful.
The girl ordered millet porridge, sauerkraut and cutlets, peas steeped in vodka, leeks, and scrambled eggs with sliced tomatoes.
‘Is everything all right in your bathroom?’ the woman asked. ‘I can’t sleep because the gas boiler clanks and whistles all night. I’m not used to that kind of noise. I’ve been on the taiga for fifteen months and this city life gets on my nerves.’
She smiled, straightened her hat, and took out another cigarette. ‘We’ve been looking for oil for months in the far north. We didn’t find any this time.’
She lit the cigarette and looked at its glowing tip for a long time. ‘If we do find oil, they’ll bulldoze the village and put an oil rig in its place. Shoot the dogs, since they won’t be needed any more. The people in the village will be shipped somewhere else – the next village, which could be three hundred kilometres away. There are no roads, of course.’
She blew smoke gently towards the single pink carnation sitting primly in its long-necked vase.
‘This time we ended up having to leave empty-handed. All that’s left is a village ravaged by jeeps, tractors and earthmovers. That’s their gain, our loss. Now I’m flying to Moscow to rest. I have three months’ holiday. I’ll go walking down Mira Prospekt with my deadbeat friends and sit in cafés talking clever nonsense. After three months off, I’ll be perfectly glad to come back here. I like it here. Don’t you?’
She looked at the girl and tilted her head slightly. ‘I’m not married, because I like being around people. I think like Chekhov: if you love solitude, get married.’
There were at least ten waitresses at the counter. At one end sat a bloated cashier; the young men waiting to unload their trucks were making her laugh with their talk. A stiff-backed doorman was chatting with the old woman supervisor. She sat erect behind her little table, wrapped in a shawl knitted from thick angora, sharpening her pencil. On the table was a green plastic telephone and a brown calendar. Some aged cleaners sat in a corner of the entryway with tin buckets at their feet and enormous black rags in their hands. The bussers had taken over one table, the coat check had fallen asleep in his squeaky chair among the heavy winter coats.
An orchestra dressed in matching dark suits appeared on the restaurant stage. The bassist was Chinese; the drummer looked Korean. The first notes of ‘Moscow Lights’ drifted over the tobacco-smoke-softened dance floor.
A fashionable young Japanese man asked the woman to dance. The pair moved slowly over the parquet floor, which was lit by a plastic crystal chandelier that reached in every direction. The joys and sorrows of the city, falling asleep in the night damp, condensed beneath it.
Outside, the snowflakes gathered in a freezing whirlwind; a statue of Lenin blithely waving his hand peered in at the restaurant window. The woman said her goodbyes and left with the Japanese man into the bowels of the hotel.
The girl left the restaurant. The cloudless, starless, faded sky kept her company in the quiet, dream-sunken city. She peeped into a beer house on a side street. A puff of sour tobacco smoke blew over her face. She hesitated a moment, then went in, curious. Two peasants lay passed out on the slushy floor. She ordered a mug of beer, but got a purplish, bad-tasting ale. She put the mug down and left.
The dense, deserted night gathered around her. The city was inhabited only by the night wind, a hiss of snow. She passed the statue of Khabarov holding a miserable spruce sapling, walked along a boulevard lined with deciduous trees, and looked at the marvellous ornamental carvings on the stone houses. At every crossroads, she chose the smaller street. The houses were dark, with a faint yellow light glowing in just a few of the windows.
Irina had kissed her for the first time in the Lenin Mausoleum. It had happened so quickly and gently that the young soldiers on guard didn’t notice. Or if they did, they didn’t believe their eyes. When they got back home, Mitka greeted her and his mother with a crooked smile on his face. She had to wait a long time for the second kiss, but once it happened, there was no turning back. It happened at the same time that Mitka was lying in restraints in a lunatic asylum. And then the day came when Mitka was set free. It was a day of great happiness, but she and Irina knew that the worst was yet to come for the three of them.
After she’d walked far enough to the south and to the north, she decided to take the tram back to the hotel.
There was a large department store in the middle of the town. A dirty yellow pile of snow loomed next to it, and in front of the entrance spread a puddle of mud the size of a small pond that the customers carefully skirted. A stately gull stood in the middle of the puddle. She climbed to the top of the high, slippery staircase and bought a little bottle of Red Moscow perfume and two chocolate bars. One had a picture of Pushkin on the label, the other a smiling little girl in a babushka. As she finally walked to the station with hurried steps, a wild red star fell behind a rose bush covered in evening frost, the street lights silently went out, and she was surrounded by a growing Asian darkness. She could hear the far-off whistle of the train and see the tracks gleaming in the dusk. A local train crawled up beside her and a flood of workers emerged from within, brushing past her on both sides.