Ryabets sets the newspaper aside and looks out the window. July. Hazy, hot, and stuffy. When he’s finished with breakfast, he puts his Marlboros, towel, swimsuit, three big sausage sandwiches (carefully wrapped in that same newspaper so they wouldn’t go bad), a bottle of water, a bottle of 777 port, and a plastic cup into a paper bag.
He tucks his short-sleeved shirt into his pants and slips on his sandals. Two trolley stops to Kaluzhskaya and then the subway to Kitai-Gorod. The route remembers itself, even though the last time he took it was back in the early 1970s, when Kitai-Gorod was called Nogin Square. Transfer to the purple line to Polezhaevskaya. He’ll ask from there.
Not much out the trolley window has changed in all those years: dust, buildings, poplar trees. Here’s the arched bridge and to the left another bridge—red cables, looks new. Beyond that the river and the Krylatskie Hills. The trolley dives down a slope and stops at a square. Ryabets gets out.
A few streets fanning away, fences, and behind the fences pines and high dacha roofs. Ryabets glances around—should be here somewhere. There used to be a beer stand here, but not anymore. They’d gone from the beer stand to the dacha last time. Not him. His feelings were hurt so he went home. Bolt took his book away from him. A word clicked in his memory:Decameron. Oh yeah—a stinging sleet slashing at the burn site, his heel making little holes in the black muck—the cover was charred, with dark blue, intricate twisting letters, Bolt’s book… He came here in the fall, before the army. How could he not? No, later.
It’s too hot for port… He then bought beer at a stand and took a sharp left turn into the woods.
Ryabets sleeps briefly. Right here under this willow. The beer-sun has taken it out of him. More like dozing, with quick dreams involving water splashing, children squealing, and a female mocking whisper directly above him. He opens his eyes but no one’s there and it’s quiet. Close them and all over again—a squeal, a splash, a whisper. And a rustling—are they stealing his bag? No one, a total haze. He sits up, gazing blearily at the river and at the white church on the opposite bank, cockeyed.
Below—stretch his legs out—the evening water lightly laps-spills over. Music, laughter, a shashlik smell coming from beyond the fence on the private beach. A volleyball thumps. A little closer, in a chaise longue, a woman with a book. The view from behind: short haircut, folds in her neck, the edge of her glasses, her ass. Ryabets reaches into his swimsuit and tugs and tugs—nothing doing. A languid spite sours inside him. He did drag himself all the way out here! Halfway—no, all the way—across Moscow!
The woman is approached by another, younger, who leans over and says something as her white breasts rise lusciously from her blue swimsuit. Ryabets is back in his trunks, kneading away furiously. Nothing. The cupola radiates an officious sneer. He gives the church a dirty look and kneads and kneads. Out of the corner of his eye he notices Luscious observing him, a combination of revulsion and curiosity on her face. He pulls out his hand. Just scratching. He stands up—his trunks sag in back—scrambles down the bank, and swims noisily. The water isn’t refreshing; it’s too warm.
Ryabets slowly plies the shoreline, watching Luscious. You’d think he wouldn’t care, but imagine, he’s horny; he feels dumb too, old goat.
Once Luscious leaves, Ryabets moves ashore. He towels off and gets out the 777: to drink or not to drink? No, first go there. He eats his sandwich, takes one last look at the address in the paper, gets dressed, and leaves.
First he follows the shore and edges around the beach fence, but immediately, in a young pine grove, he runs across some naked men lying there, privates exposed. Ryabets sidesteps them but the farther he goes, the more naked men there are catching some rays, arms spread wide. “Cocksuckers,” he mutters, veering more to the left. He tries not to look but can’t help it. The bushes along the river are filled with naked men’s bodies. He spits. Right in the middle of Moscow!
He fantasizes TNT exploding and scraps of genitalia in the bushes—too many to collect! The bloody image calms him, and Ryabets moves deeper into the woods, emerging on paths that lead to Lake Bezdonka. Evening is falling and the crowds stretch from the riverbank to the park entrance. Ryabets has nearly changed his mind about going to the address in the newspaper. He’s tired. He wants to go home. He’s walking down Tamanskaya when across the street on the left he notices a street sign: Second Line. He stands there a second and turns. Did I make the trip for nothing?
The street is suddenly quiet. The dachas are behind a fence. Turrets, porticos, balconies. As if they weren’t right next to that half-naked, heat-wasted mob. No. 43. In back of them, a new red-brick, three-story house. The kind ministers of state and oligarchs live in, Ryabets thinks. Actually, the house gives the impression of being uninhabited. Ryabets “accidentally” pushes the gate, which yields with a light creak. The house is standing where the dacha burned; Ryabets recognizes the lawn behind it and the semicircle of tall pines. But a prison? Construction debris, doorframes in their original packing, the porch unfinished. On the door, yellow police tape—looks like this was indeed the prison.
Cautiously he unsticks the tape and opens the door. Inside it’s half-dark, and he senses the staircase on the right. He gropes for the light switch on the wall and heads downstairs. Exactly: three cells fabricated out of thick sticks. In front of him a table, two chairs, and a mechanism that looks like a welding apparatus. Were the cops too lazy to pull it out? On the floor, reddish-brown spots and broken glass. Torture—and why not? Hah! Vagrants, human matter. Hah!
Ryabets doesn’t linger. It’s all just like the paper said. He goes upstairs, turns off the light, walks out, and puts the tape back. Not a trace of the other dacha, as if it were never there. He wants to go home.
But before he moves out to the street he decides to take a look, refresh his memory, see where he kept watch once upon a time. Over there, over there… Wait, wait…
In the lilac bushes past the pines, in the exact same place, he notices a figure on the ground. The instinct to flee subsides instantly. No cop would sit squatting in the bushes! On top of everything else, it’s a female. She waves. He’s walking, glancing from side to side to make sure no one else is there. But there is. The female has a dog at her feet. It raises its head to Ryabets.
“Got anything to drink?” she asks. “Who are you?”
Definitely a woman. And drunk. Two leathery folds are slipping down her belly from her unbuttoned pink top. Cellulite legs in white ankle socks spread wide. Bezdonka, hah!
While Ryabets is considering her, the woman takes out of her bag (just like his with his Marlboros) a bottle (just like him with his 777), tosses her head back, and glugs down the last of the liquid. She kicks an empty bottle aside.
“Commander, fill my glass! See? Not a drop! I won’t fucking say anything to your wife.”
A flat face, dark, slit eyes, no neck, formless all over. Like a steak! Ryabets thinks culinarily. But something very familiar I can’t put my finger on. What?
“Ryaba? Ryaba! Ryabets! Is that you? Yes, it is!” The woman scrambles onto all fours, straightens up, and starts hobbling toward him, as if she were wearing prostheses. The dog, too, yawns and wags its tail.