By seven or so I was on Primorsky, and forty minutes after that on shore, a kilometer from Drunk Harbor. The wind was at my back the whole way, and I counted that a good sign.
“Boat’s nobody’s,” the homeless guy told me. “Don’t wet your pants, I spent all fall there until it got chilly, and if no one was using it for sailing then, now I’m sure no one’ll come. Sometimes the locals throw some work my way, loading and unloading, but I can tell you’re a strong fellow, you won’t break. Best not to argue with the locals—if they ask, help, and you’ll have a quieter time of it. In November I dragged a stove onto the boat, plenty of firewood in the forest, only it smoked something awful. I went to the datsan for chow, Buddha Balzhievich’s the abbot, they started feeding people there—only kasha, of course—but at least you don’t have to go scrounging in town.”
I’d ended up at the station, where I met the homeless guy, out of stupidity. Not only did I have no reason to leave Petersburg, I didn’t really have anywhere to go, I had next to no money, my mother in Gatchina wouldn’t let me cross the threshold, and in the last year my buddies had become few and far between. Habit kicked in—hit the station and get out of town—but now things were different, and all I needed was to crash for a few days, keep an eye on the apartment from a safe distance, and somehow get to my kitchen. I was sitting in the station snack bar pecking at a cold omelet with my fork when this guy in a camouflage jacket sat down at my table and asked me to treat him to a drink—preferably two. I bought us each a shot of vodka and shared my omelet with him, and at that my change ran out, and my only thousand left in my wallet I’d stashed safely away that morning, for a rainy day. That shot got the man so muddled that he started calling me Stasik, grabbing my sleeve with his calloused paw, and dropping his face in his hand with a mournful look. This last part I understand, actually—I myself might as well have dropped my face in my hand, only I would’ve had to have drunk ten times as much.
I glanced at him and thought about the cops at my place on Lanskaya. It could be the people I worked for a year ago, for a whole winter, and in the spring I said I was tired and jumped ship. I cracked four safes for them like Easter eggs. The last job was a surgeon, a collector of precious stones, that was quite a haul, but they held back my cut, said I’d done messy work at the jewelry shop, botched it, and they’d had to pay off some people. Perhaps my accomplices came to Lanskaya, deciding that if I hadn’t worked for a whole year I’d stashed away a tidy sum, and if they cleaned me out I’d come crawling to them faster for a new assignment. In retrospect, they must’ve worked Anta over a long time ago. In the fall I’d noticed her asking incoherent questions, looking around furtively, and basically acting like an Estonian washerwoman. Of course, she’d searched the place long before—the pig with the white face rooted up the whole place—but I let it go, deciding I wasn’t giving her enough to cover expenses, and started giving her more.
Anta was a minor pawn at the consulate, one step above cleaning lady, but she knew how to parlay her sweet diplomatic butt, which she brought to work by noon, carrying her office shoes in a paper bag. Anta did have kind of a big butt, but her legs were made for basketball, they went on forever.
Skirting the boat, I saw a tree trunk to port that had one end resting on a stack of icy debris and the other on the iron railings. There was also a line of six small portholes to port, sealed tight, and there were old tires strung on a rope along the side. I grabbed onto one as I was pulling myself toward the railings, but it slipped out of my hands and I nearly collapsed back on the ice. I climbed on deck, sat on a coiled towline, and put on my boots, though they slid on the iron like skis down a mountain slope. There was a gaping black hole where the wheel had been, and the searchlight looked like a tin can—though a Chinese alarm clock jutted out of the compass niche, probably left by the previous lodger.
I couldn’t open the door to the deckhouse, I just smashed my fingers for nothing, not that there was anything to do there—the glass had been shattered and inside was a slab of gray ice. I lit one of my last two cigarettes, and standing at the stern surveyed the shore. Far off, to starboard, loomed Krestovsky Island, looking like the face of a sperm whale; straight ahead was Elagin, black; and from the park past Drunk Harbor I could hear the lively metallic voice of a carousel.
While I was scoping out my new quarters, the wind died down and wet snow started to fall, more like rain. My fleece soaked straight through and became heavy, like a greatcoat; I’d put it on in the morning so I wouldn’t look like a bum at my meeting with the passport dealer, and now I regretted not choosing something sturdier. Remembering the bum had said something about a cabin, I threw my cigarette overboard, walked across the deck, and discovered, next to the capstan, a hinged hatch on three busted bolts, and an iron rod stuck between the hatch and deck to keep it from slamming shut.
I dropped into the hold and saw a basket of firewood on the table in the galley and an army stove squeezed into the cabin, and I burst out laughing. I’d had the exact same stove, loud and stinky, in my tent during muster outside Lisy Nos in the late ‘90s, when I was a reserve captain, not a thief. I found a stack of greasy girly magazines in the cabin, lit the iron stove, though not easily, shed my coat, and covered up head to toe with a prickly blanket, thinking about how if anyone pulled out the rod, for laughs, say, the hatch would shut and they’d be carrying me out in a tin box. Then I thought that it really didn’t matter, was surprised at the thought, and conked out till morning.
I was able to shave in front of a shard of mirror attached to the galley wall, a rusty Gillette blade with dried foam lay in the soap dish, and when I saw it I remembered my train station friend repeating, stammering insistently, “Shave before you go to the datsan, you’ve got to look neat, not down and out.” The morning was chilly and dry, the gray ice sparkled in the sun, and about ten paces from the boat there was a black hole in the ice, like a mercury puddle, left by fisherman, and poking up around the hole were stakes with a metal net stretched between them. Ducks, half-crazed for lack of food, were jostling by the hole, trying to stick their beaks through the net, and I rejoiced to think maybe a box of fish had been left there. It would be nice to fry up a couple of whitefish for breakfast, I’d seen a bottle of congealed oil in the cockpit and an iron skillet.
It was odd, I was two steps from Primorsky Avenue but I felt like a shipwreck survivor cast on a deserted shore. I found a pot in the galley and dropped a pipe down to the ice and walked over to the hole for water and someone else’s catch. The spiky net had been dropped deep into the hole—hell if I knew why, maybe so the edges wouldn’t cover over; I don’t know, I never liked fishing. I tried to pull out the wire, but it was frozen solid to the thick ragged edges, so I knelt down, leaned over the hole, and jumped straight back. Looking up at me was a man’s face, his mouth spread in a smile, dark river water in his eyes.