“Where’s the Armenian?”
“Suren Biglyarovich? He’s already on the boat – grilling shashlyk.”
Suren Biglyarovich is our independent retailer.
And here we are at the boat, and it’s moored off the main pier, by the Fishing Guard motor-boats. This way, the tourists won’t notice us, and they’ve got better things to do anyway – it’s summer, it’s Thursday, it’s a beautiful day, who wants to poke around with the Fishing Guard?
We climb the boardwalk. The Boss is right there – a one-man receiving line.
“Lyamochkin? Didn’t your father work at the printing shop?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Look at you now! The new guard. Why don’t you go to the galley, given Suren a hand with the shashlyk.”
Shashlyk. More shashlyk. Onions and tomatoes. Lamb shoulder.
“Sweetie, why vinegar? Marinate in cognac, vinegar ruins it.”
The shashlyk is divine.
“Let’s go, boys!”
We take the food to the deck. It smells! It oozes! Some dill, a salad. Sliced lemon for those who want some.
And the little steamer’s pretty as a picture: blinds are down over the portholes, no one can see in.
I sit off to the side, alone, and gorge quietly on my shashlyk. I’ve eaten too much already, but I keep wanting more – it’s so good! My face and hands are soiled with fat. I keep my mouth shut – I love a good shashlyk.
The toasts wind down – it’s time for the banya. A real Finnish sauna right here on the boat! Now, that’s a wow!
“Come on, come on down everybody – don’t upset your Boss!”
Men shoot the breeze on the benches. Comrade Karponos shares news from the capital; Patrikeyev farts inappropriately. He blushes. Men hoot. I’m embarrassed.
And now we’re back to the deck – in our swimming trunks. “The Pot” is pink as a piglet and steaming. Someone squeals with delight. Someone is talking up the pleasures of Stargorod’s river. Men egg on the fat Razkin – jump, here, overboard, cannon-ball. It’s deep here, the water’s clean. Here, on the Senga, on a channel no one will bother you – you can be sure of that. Once in a great while some idiot sails by, but they rarely come here.
And suddenly – it comes, from around the bend – the stench! A pair of muddy, stinking Stargorodian scows covered in clay dirt – smoky, tarred, fishing nets dangling in oily balls, and on the decks piles of fish guts, rot, fry. The stench! Everyone turns away, only I stare. I know what you have to do to get that fish. The fishermen, as if on command, turn away to hide their alcoholics’ noses, and only the man at the wheel stares back at me, steady and vicious. Not a gleam, not a spark in his eye. I am embarrassed, scared.
✵ ✵ ✵
“Lyamochkin, wake up! Lyamochkin, the day’s over. What are you supposed to say to that, Lyamochkin? You’re supposed to say, ‘And to hell with it!’”
It’s Timofeyev from the Letters Department, the eternal drill sergeant. Lyamochkin stretches, wipes off a bit of spit from the corner of his mouth – less than a drop, really, more a perspiration, the sweet drool of a midday nap. Did anyone notice? And if they did, who cares! He waves, at no one in particular, and heads for the street door. Some dreams, man! Sometimes you don’t want to know where they come from.
Lyamochkin goes straight to the beer stand – to have a mug or two, shoot the breeze, maybe hear a story. In advance, he prudently takes off his tie. He sips his beer. He listens.
“That Potyekha, son of a bitch, did he fuck up today or what! Captain’s on vacation – you ain’t getting no fish. Potyekha’s in charge. Made us haul ass all the way to Senga, the knuckle-dragger, to this side channel – and there’s fish alright, but you ain’t getting it, except maybe with a trammel. Thought I’d sprain something for sure, but we got it all pulled up – and what did we get there? A load of thorny coontails! We dragged right over it – twisted our nets nice and tight.”
“Coontails? Gramps used to say, they fed it to goats after the war.”
“Gramps? You just go on and listen to that old fart – he’s the biggest mouth for miles,” the story-teller says before turning around and sizing up Lyamochkin. The man’s dull eyes are pure beer – not a single spark glows there. The beer pushes him; it pushes him towards Lyamochkin. A fork-like paw shoots out, grabs Lyamochkin’s lapel and reels him in, like a boat’s propeller spooling weed.
“What are you... staring at? Huh?”
“All right, just take it easy, man,” Lyamochkin says. He knows how to deal with these types.
“What are you now? Who’d you think you are? You from around here? I fish, dude, I am a man, you get it? And what are you now?”
Suddenly, Lyamochkin recognizes him – recognizes his eyes, the same eyes he’d seen across the channel – and gets scared. That’s bad, that’s really bad – he cannot be scared now. That’s the worst thing he can do. Lyamochkin makes a step back; he’s in trouble.
✵ ✵ ✵
Filimonov comes to visit him in the hospital. He arrives; he congratulates Lyamochkin on having been approved for the promotion to Executive Secretary, and inconspicuously slips a glass flask of cognac under his pillow.
“So you can celebrate.”
He then proudly places a pair of lemons on the bedside table – greetings from sunny Greece. (“Konstantidi Georgius” read the tiny, bright stickers, the name lettered carefully in minuscule brown script, sharp and dark, as if inked with the pure oak sap. Now, that’s a transformation!)
It’s a shame he doesn’t have his wings here, but it’s all right, he can manage, he’ll just have to try harder. Lyamochkin closes his eyes – and his broken jaw does not hurt anymore: he is far away already, in distant and sunny Greece. This is his personal secret. He flies away light and quick, and returns healthy and full of energy.
But being an Executive Secretary is a dog’s work – you get heckled from all sides, and there’s never a break from it. You’re up to your ears in meetings, strategic planning, reporting, budgeting, schedules, complaints, people ratting on each other, people backstabbing – and it’s all you. Still, Filimonov knew what he was doing when he picked Lyamochkin to be elevated. Lyamochkin took to the job; he began to shine. Carved out his own niche. Spread his roots. Bought himself a new mug for tea, bigger than the old one, and a cast iron ashtray with the image of a hound dog, a set of fountain pens and an electronic Smena watch. Strange as it may sound, everyone came to love him. That is, everyone to the last man. Only his wife at home knows what it’s cost him – how hard it’s been. But it’s always hard. And not everyone knows how to get things done.
Lyamochkin returns to his pantry-sized bedroom, pulls out his old wings from the wardrobe – washed by his wife countless times in a special tub, white swan wings that he inherited from his grandfather, who picked them up for a dime in a tavern somewhere in Galicia in 1915 – puts them on right over his tshirt and flies out the window.
In a suburb of Rome, maybe perched on a pier facing the deserted sea, or perhaps on the deck of an ancient, creaky galley, seated on a spool of rope on the stern, hidden from prying eyes, Lyamochkin unfolds his scroll. Lyamochkin reads; he recites the lines out loud: “Some things are in a haste to become; others – to cease; even in the becoming, a flame is extinguished; change and the flow of things keep the world young exactly as limitless time is eternally young in its every speeding instance. Thus, how could one admire any of a myriad things flowing past in this river any more than another, if one cannot even stand close enough to touch it? It would be the same as to give one’s heart to a fleeting sparrow – a blink, and the bird’s gone, never to be found again...” Lyamochkin contemplates. No, he cannot agree with this... yet he also can. But how could you not love a sparrow? A tweet – and it’s gone!