At least Lyudka Selivanova, from the electrolysis department, saw it and came running to our workshop: “Guys, they killed Uncle Vanya!” Whatever we had in our hands, we all ran out carrying it. We caught them boys, alright: one kicked it right there, the other made it to the hospital. Vanya’d be proud of us.
Then we buried our Uncle Vanya. Old ladies came out in droves, paid Pashka Smolin to set the little icon Grozny wore on his chest in a stainless steel frame and make a cross around it. He did a heck of a job – no one’ll ever pry it out – and only asked a hundred for it from the old ladies. And actually it wasn’t the old ladies who paid – turned out Grozny had about three thousand put away, and the girls used it to pay for everything, a proper fence and a headstone. We were the ones who did it all too, and we worked hard for Uncle Vanya – he even thought to buy us a round from beyond the grave. And the old ladies – there ain’t nothing you can do about them, they’re all nuts. They hung a little lamp like in church on his cross, and ever since then, line up to get to the place – they do their repenting or whatever it is there, bowing, kissing the icon, and spreading rumors like you won’t believe – like this Stargorod’s holy fool heals everyone.
It could be that some actually get relief: first, the copper itself from which the icon is made can be good for people – it’s got negative ions that slow down our fields’ vibrations, and second, don’t forget the element of self-delusion – focusing hard on one thing can relieve stress. I’ve read all about it; it’s interesting, but whatever’s going on there, one thing’s for sure – Uncle Vanya was a whiz at healing us from boredom. He’d roll up to our bushes, greet everyone, and holler like it’s the Judgment Day: “All right, pour me a drink, you pagan seed!” and things would all of a sudden look up, just by virtue of him being there. We’d snicker and chuckle, but then his stories would make you think – man, he’d really seen things in life that few men had seen.
Even now, when we get together, someone always brings up Uncle Vanya and raises a glass, and someone else always says: “Rejoice, daughter copulative, the cup shalt reach you too, and drain ye thou shalt and bare yourself drunken!” Not a single one of us knows what a daughter copulative is, but it’s funny anyway. So we laugh first, and only then do we drink.
A Miracle and a Vision
Dear Editors!
I must confess I do not read your magazine much for the reason that it’s all but impossible to get here in Stargorod. I mean, it must sometimes come here, when they send an issue or two to our Soyuzpechat,12 but I’ve never come across one. Except that the other day, in our foreman’s office, I found an issue, the one in which you describe all the miraculous things that happen to the Shroud of Turin, and what scientists have been doing with it, and it made me feel like I should write to you about our own, local, so to speak, miracle.
Why am I writing about it? Well, it’s not just because I’m the sort of person who likes to waste paper with whatever fancy strikes them – I think it’s important that you record this. Maybe someone will make use of all this material. Nowadays, when everyone writes so much about religion, people have started to take a second look at their attitudes towards this subject, but many have stuck to their old views. Personally, I don’t think science can add much to the debate, but neither could I possibly not share with you how I myself witnessed an unusual miracle. In the philosophical dictionary, what does it say? A miracle is something that cannot be explained, and a phenomenon is an event that is scientifically explainable. So it is the inexplicable I want to tell you about.
We have a lot of new people now living in Stargorod, but, as a true old-timer, I can vouch that Raika Portnova is a true, born and raised Stargorodian. How do I know? Well, I used to live right next door to her – she was on Rosa Luxemburg street, in the railroad dormitories, and I was on Liebknecht’s, where the DOSAAF shooting range13 used to be. I used to go to her store at the market, too, how else – it’s the only one that’s close to our neighborhood.
Raika Portnova was short of stature and a fright to look at. Even if you didn’t know anything about her, you’d think she’d done time, and a lot of it. She never denied it, either. She’d bark sometimes, loud as a thunder: “Sure I did time, but I’m not hiding it – deal with it!” She had a hoarse, smoker’s voice, really raspy, and a gray beard grew on her chin; whenever she’d go on a drinking binge, she’d forget to cut it. If she had any goods to receive that day, she’d just lie down under the counter in her store – on the floor, on her vest or something – and zonk out – she wasn’t afraid of no one, not the director, not OBHSS.14 But she always looked out for her friends – she’d open the doors for you even during the lunch break, if she had anything in the store.
When things got tight around here, I did, I confess, go knocking on Grishka the butcher’s back door (I do not provide his last name here, for obvious reasons). And Raika, even if it wasn’t her shift, would always be there, just hanging out – it was packed at the dorms, where she lived. So she’d just be sitting there, at the butcher’s, on a crate, drinking beer and shooting the breeze. For example, we’d start talking about Vysotsky. And Raika just had to put in her two cents: “I don’t like him. He’s stolen all his songs from us. It wasn’t him – it’s us that came up with all the words. We’d be sitting around at night, bored, and one of us would say something, like such-and-such, and that’d be the first line, and another girl would add to it, and by the end of the night – we’d have a whole song. Like, for example, ‘Forgive me, mama, for what I’ve done...’” I’m sorry I don’t remember how it goes – Raika was the one who knew all the songs by heart. She’d sing, too, often, in what she called “the fourth voice.” But she was good at sales – it didn’t bother her if she’d never seen a person before, she’d make a crack, and the next thing you know, the whole line’s laughing. Raika was a fun-loving soul.
The other day, I picked up the brochure entitled “What’s in a Name?” produced by a Zhitomir co-op Olesya, sold for one ruble a copy, and it says there that “Raya” means “Easy-going” in Greek. And our Father Yevtikhy also says that a name doesn’t come to a person just by accident. He must be right about this – Raya did live her life easily.
“I,” she used to brag, “have six kids, 14 grandkids, and five great-grandkids. And the more the merrier.”
Her life, of course, was not in any way special. A common life. She just always tried to make sure to work someplace not too far from meat: at the slaughterhouse or in a cafeteria – she had mouths to feed, you know. How do I know about this? She said so herself.
We’d be standing in Grishka’s basement, where he cut cooled carcasses. The ones that don’t come frozen, you have to cut – can’t chop them with a hatchet – and the meat’s so fresh, it’s still bleeding a little. Raika would pop up out of nowhere. “I,” she’d proclaim in her graveyard basso, “just love drinking blood. Always loved it. Whenever they’d fell a cow, I’d slice it across the throat, and it’d just pour out. We all lined up with our coffee mugs.”
She was a real fright to look at, worse than the devil’s own mother, short, bristly, topped with a man’s hat, but she’d crack something like that and you’d just be laughing your head off. And that’s just what she was after.