It was Aslan Dzhioyev, a fiery Ossetian with gold crowns on his teeth and a map of deep scars on his forehead, once his division’s weightlifting champion, who threw everything out of balance. He knew how to live large, but he also knew the price of money, and never wasted any – like a gold prospector who’s hit it big. He could pay for everyone’s food and drink. Or he could let someone else do it. He was persistent and ardent, but gallant. He was like steel. He won Lukeria, as the waitresses whispered, right there in the pantry and she could not resist him.
He was a figure, of course. A king. Aslan didn’t care for jeans; instead, he appeared in English suits that made him look like an heir to the throne. The country girls at the Riflemen Izba coat check, its weary cooks and its independent director – they all smiled as soon as they saw him. No one ever observed an expression of contempt on Aslan’s face. He owned a gas station at a highway exit and a used car consignment business.
Polite and solicitous, but somewhat distant in public, Aslan, whose mountain upbringing did not permit public displays of affection, was at home as loving as a good child, and his filial respectfulness melted even the heart of Lukeria’s bitter old mother, who never called him anything but Aslanchik.
For five years this Ossetian prince became the source of bliss and passion in Lukeria’s life. His half-Ossetian, half-Chechen army confidently moved to acquire Stargorod’s remaining gas stations, then opened the first video-theaters in the city, and was eyeing the Cooptorg and the furniture factory when one dark August night Aslan, on his way to the restaurant, was gunned down by a boar-grade rifle wielded by a Gypsy he had crossed in some affair.
The Gypsy managed to disappear from the scene, and Aslan’s empire, that had appeared to be so solid, cracked and began to disintegrate. What no one could have guessed, and what became clear in the aftermath of the shooting, was that the whole kingdom had been held together by the will of a single man, a brilliant man, one shot with such matter-of-fact impunity right in the center of Stargorod. At a traffic light. With a hunting rifle.
Lukeria heard the news immediately: the restaurant was only beginning to stir to life, and the gallant Ossetian’s life had been cut short not 500 yards from the building. Lukeria took it stoically. She stayed and worked her shift, even after the director offered to personally drive her home. Lukeria refused, and only at the end of the night, after she had closed out, did she jump into her car and leave the restaurant’s parking lot for the unfinished winter dacha Aslan had put in her name.
She crashed ten miles down the Stargorod-Leningrad highway, as she was descending a small hill. Somehow, a low concrete post from the roadside barrier speared the car in the front, and it rolled three times before coming to rest in the ditch. The emergency team on duty made it there, miraculously, just in time – had they come even a bit later, Lukeria would have bled to death. The accident, monstrous in its cruelty, remained deeply wedged in Stargorodians’ collective memory. For a long time afterward, they passed on the detailed accounts of how the emergency team scraped Lukeria from her smashed car. The drive shaft pierced her peritoneum, but to Doctor Vdovin’s amazement (he did the surgery), no vital organs were damaged. Nonetheless, after they had to stitch Lukeria back together like a rag doll, the doctors were convinced she would not live.
Lukeria survived. Her mother nursed her back from the brink of death with herbal remedies known to her alone, thus securing irrevocably her reputation as Stargorod’s resident witch, and six months later, Lukeria took up her post behind the counter of the consignment shop, which her own Aslan had founded not long before. She did not return to the restaurant.
On a somewhat different topic, when the local GB18 followed the route of Lukeria’s “panicked flight” (as it appeared in their reports) to the unfinished dacha, they extracted a significant sum of money from a secret cache, but Lukeria said she knew nothing about it. No matter how many times they called her in for questioning, she stuck to her story, and they never charged her with anything.
In obvious concern for her mental well-being, people never brought up Aslan to her, but one day Lukeria herself mentioned him, and from then on spoke of him often and without any prompting. She came back to life and even bought a new car – an act that struck Stargorodians as particularly extraordinary. For some reason, no one ever envied her, even though, when you think about it, between her Japanese TV-VHS combo, her new car, and the unfinished dacha she had inherited, there were plenty of grounds for loads of gossip at least, if not a touch of envy.
A year later, Vitenka entered the stage. A painter who had graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute, he somehow landed in Stargorod, started drinking shortly afterwards, and gradually debased himself to the task of painting signs for the traffic police. That’s where Lukeria Ivanovna picked him up. She dusted him off. She dressed him up. She took him to a mentalist and got him coded against drinking. Then she got him a job at the coop – painting samovars in Khokhloma style.
“Lukeria’s got her second wind,” her former restaurant friends observed admiringly, before shaking their heads and indulging in reminiscences of Lukeria’s wild life, so wide-open to any inquiry and commentary. Usually, this reminiscing ended with the mention of Lukeria’s Hill – as the site of her accident had been baptized, to everyone’s satisfaction. You can be sure that in another hundred years, when spreading Stargorod swallows the tenth mile marker, developers will call the neighborhood they build there Lukeria’s Hill. Once something gets a name around here, it doesn’t go away.
✵ ✵ ✵
Meanwhile, it’s lunch time at the consignment shop. Lukeria has fried a pan of potatoes, but hasn’t come to any conclusions. She fished a few pickled tomatoes out of a jar, stacked them into an attractive pyramid on a plate and began arranging sliced bologna around it; she was so engrossed in her lunch-time ministrations that she began to hum a tune to herself.
The other girls put the “Closed for Lunch” sign in the door, came to the back room and gushed over the beautifully set table. Terentieva, unable to resist the temptation, snatched a tomato and bit into it with great gusto. She was moved by Lukeria’s care, she couldn’t help it, and blurted out her secret: “Lush, just don’t take this personally or anything – Valka said she saw your Vitya yesterday with one of those drafter girls. Said they rode a boat to the islands.”
Lukeria by now has her mouth full, and has to choke on the hot potatoes to answer, with a dismissive wave, “Let him ride his boat wherever he wants – he isn’t going anywhere. And if he does – big deal, I won’t cry for him. We’ll find another one, won’t we, girls?”
The overweight 30-year-old “girls” and Terentieva laugh in chorus, jealous as one.
18. Short for KGB.
Greed
It’s like somebody jinxed the job: no one ever has any luck at Stargorod’s Conservation Bureau. So many directors in the last couple of years, and it’s the same thing every time – they don’t last long. For a while there, we had Pesteryev – everyone had such hopes for him when he came, and then he too went under. Call it what you will, but greed does have a special rotting effect on a Russian soul. Take Pesteryev: you’d think he had everything he could possibly want, why, then, why did he want more? A man is weak, that’s why – weak and pliable, and before you know it, he’s caught up in the infernal machine of greed – smack! and it pins him down. Savvatei Ivanovich Shestokrylov even called Pesteryev, personally, about this very thing.
“Semyon Ivanovich, are you sure you want to build that deck?”
“Yes, why?”
“Well, it doesn’t look good. Why don’t you just rent a party room at a restaurant – that’s nice, and cultured, and not as conspicuous. No one in the oblast can get any lumber, and you’re framing a stage with four-by-sixes – isn’t it a bit too much?”