“You!” Zhukov yelled at the first Captain he saw. “Make the crossing by nightfall, or I’ll bury you alive!”
By nightfall, tanks were rolling across the pontoons, the enemy fled, the colonel was sent to Vorkuta, and the captain got a medal.
After the war, the job of rebuilding the bridge fell to the much-decorated Engineering Corps Lieutenant Colonel Shelest. Shelest was born a builder; he set to repairing the ruins with a team of soldiers who had fallen behind the front and stayed and a crew of German POWs. Eventually, the time came to send his soldiers home. Shelest’s officers drafted a new crop of recruits from places no one had ever heard of. They finished the bridge, but then the draftees’ term of service ended, and they, too, went home. Shelest, just for the heck of it, wrote to the appropriate authorities, asking for new soldiers. Instead, Cheka motorcyclists with machine guns rolled into town, but the war hero was gone. They never found him. Turns out, his unit had been disbanded right after the war – how did he manage to keep it working? Whatever he did, everyone – his officers and soldiers – served in the non-existent unit completely legitimately, and got due credit for it. People told many other stories about Shelest after this, but this one, at least, is true: he conned Stalin’s regime all right, but he got the bridge built.
Since then, the bridge has gradually fallen into decay. Every new head of the city spared no asphalt on it, but somehow the potholes only grew bigger and deeper.
When Mikhail Yefremovich Nozdrevatykh – a Stargorodian born and raised, a retired air force general, and a chopper-pilot hero of the Afghan war – became the head of the city administration, he solemnly pledged to undertake a fundamental reconstruction of the bridge to bring it into tip-top shape. His old mother, people said, counseled him to have the bridge blessed with holy water and forget the crazy idea, but he did not listen.
Instead, Nozdrevatykh sent a request to the governor: a hundred million. The Governor right away countered: six hundred million, and not a penny less, or else it’s not even worth the effort. That’s where The General came in – an important man from Moscow, he had developed a big construction business in Stargorod. The General cut out the governor, got the contract himself, and procured three hundred million straight out of the federal budget. The ministry sent the money, but something happened to it somewhere along the way.
Exactly what transpired then between The General and Nozdrevatykh, we do not claim to know. However, there are others who witnessed their conversation, and here’s what they report.
Mikhail Yefremovich is playing pool at the Old Tymes Club. Suddenly, The General, profoundly drunk, barges in and starts yelling, “You son of a bitch, what do you think you’re doing? You stole the money, didn’t you!”
“People,” Nozdrevatykh replied, “shot Stinger missiles at me in Afghanistan and I wasn’t scared. Get out of here. I’m not one to rob my own hometown.”
In response, The General whispered something into the city head’s ear – it had to have been a jinx – marched right out and climbed into his Mercedes, but didn’t go very far. He slammed into the bridge’s parapet – the car was totaled, and it was a miracle he himself didn’t fall into the river below. And Nozdrevatykh was paralyzed on the spot – his legs folded under him and he couldn’t feel them.
The money eventually turned up, albeit not all three hundred million – only a hundred. People said the governor found a way to skim off his cut after all. The General fudged and schemed, and paid Moscow back, but there was very little left for the bridge – just enough to roll on a new layer of asphalt using German technology. In the spring, the logging trucks came across and made the first dents in the road. Now, in the middle of the summer, traffic here crawls as usual – at a snail’s pace, everyone worrying about their suspensions. Mikhail Yefremovich, for his honesty and forthrightness, gained great respect from the locals, but it hasn’t given him his legs back. The bridge itself is holding up just fine – Shelestov with German POWs built it and that’s, I tell you, something – not just some new German technology. I do wonder sometimes, though: would it have been better to sprinkle the bridge with holy water, and let it be?
Demons Possess Us
Demons do possess us, that’s a fact. Old Father Artemon often spoke of being possessed in his sermons, but also never neglected to warn his flock against false healers.
Not so long ago, in the Solombal district of Arkhangelsk region they found a body of an old woman who had died of multiple traumas – her ribcage was shattered. A certain Ms. Lagunova – a local self-proclaimed healer – apparently attempted to cast the demons out of the old lady’s body “by means of jumping on her chest,” as the police report put it. Such charlatans roam Russia in great numbers, no fewer than those of the demons that possess and torment us. Sometimes, however, the demons leave the soul of their poor victim when the fear of a greater force compels them.
Mikhail Yefremovich Nozdrevatykh – the head of the city administration, a retired general and combat helicopter pilot – suffered at the hands of an evil-eyed Moscow businessman known around here as The General. He, people say, whispered a jinx into Nozdrevatykh’s ear, and the hero of the Afghan war was paralyzed from the waist down. This could not have transpired at a worse time: elections to the regional Duma were just around the corner, with our local philanthropist and millionaire Anton Porfiriyevich Nebendov running on the United Russia ticket. Anton Porfiriyevich badly needed a seat in the legislature: the region’s new governor, in contrast to the previous one, who was now serving time for illegally logging a swath of land the size of one-seventh of France, proved to be intent on putting the free-wheeling local entrepreneurs (like Nebendov) under his thumb. For instance, he forced guys who poured a unique brand of iron to switch to producing the cheap vodka brand “For Unity.” The metalworkers outwitted him though: they bottled the governor’s vodka into elaborate cast-iron bottles which cost and weighed so much that people refused to buy them, thus bankrupting the governor’s little home industry.
Now Anton Porfiriyevich, he came to Stargorod from Poltava some 25 years ago. A recent Polytechnic University grad, he was given a job at a small plant that manufactured trenching tools. Once it was allowed, Nebendo (that was his name then) privatized the plant, added the letter “v” to his Ukrainian last name to show he had no intention of going back to Poltava, and set to work. Now his “Stargorodian” makes construction cranes, lightweight motorboats, pumps and hydrants, spades, Halligan bars and cisterns for firefighters, needles, nails and meat-grinders. Imagine then having this iron-works empire being ordered to begin producing toilet paper! Nebendov did not say “no” to the governor per se, but immediately departed for the capital where the Commander-in-Chief of all firefighters made him a card-carrying member of United Russia.
The Stargorod’s campaign headquarters’ chief of staff – city head Nozdrevatykh – was supposed to ensure Nebendov’s victory in the elections. If Nebendov made it to the legislature, the governor would leave him alone, but, on the eve of the elections the campaign found itself suddenly beheaded, or rather, be-legged: Nebendov’s faithful lieutenants reported that Mikhail Yefremovich had fallen into a deep depression, locked himself up in his dacha, was seeing no one, and just sat with his old mother pouring holy water on his head and old Father Artemon in the corner mumbling prayers to cast the demons out of his paralyzed body.
“The Afghan hero’s gone nuts, you say?” Nebendov shouted. “That’s nothing! We’ll fix him right up, my grandmother was the first witch at the Sorochynsky Fair – took off jinxes, evil eyes, and cast demons out too. Hitch up, boys!”