February 1994
Three days flew by, not the way I’d dreamed. Didn’t meet up with any friends: they’d stayed put for break wherever they studied, saving on train tickets. I moped around at home, treated myself to Mom’s pastries, and watched the biting frost through the window. Remembered my recent self.
Before winter break I’d agonized over the choice. Scrimp hard and ride round-trip in a bunk car for who-knows-what reason. Or spend the break in a half-empty dorm?
My friends decided not to bother and stayed wherever they were studying – some in Petersburg, some in Kazan or Yekaterinburg. I skipped the alumni evening. Glanced at the thermometer showing minus thirty and started packing to head back.
Along the way I mulled over what strange creatures parents are. They shoved three sacks of garden produce on me and returned the money I’d ceremoniously handed over upon arriving. Yes, three days earlier I’d reported that I was gainfully employed, good salary, plenty of money. Here you go!
The thousand dollars shocked them into a flurry of questions. They didn’t believe I ran a trading company. Mom even shed a tear, remembering our neighbor Mukha, a known hooligan and blockhead who’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. First he’d bragged about his dollars, now he was felling timber in a labor camp and writing whiny letters.
I didn’t try to talk my parents out of it. Had neither the desire nor the means. What arguments could I possibly offer? Who could I call as a witness?
Zhorik, with his talent for solving problems in a flash?
Laughable.
What wasn’t laughable was finding myself alone in an empty compartment with a thousand dollars. My parents had stuffed it in the suitcase, not forgetting to bind it with a rubber band. After a couple hours of reflection I came to the conclusion they were right. Money like that could have no connection whatsoever to a student at a Moscow institute.
Then I mulled over a paradox. Strange as it seemed, a thousand dollars struck me as a significant sum too. Based on my own spending, I knew exactly where a hundred dollars or two hundred could go. The biggest sums I’d spent were six hundred dollars on clothes at Luzhniki and four hundred on a prostitute.
The next level of spending – a car, an apartment, a dacha – implied savings mapped out years in advance. Finish the institute, get a job, get married, open a savings account, set money aside, set money aside, scrimping on everything, spend it, ceremoniously toast the purchase, and set money aside again, again, again, harshly and mercilessly saving on necessities… My actual life was total chaos by comparison.
Every week I bragged to Zhora about income comparable to the price of a car fleet and a couple of Moscow apartments. Why didn’t the row of six-digit figures under «net profit» warm the soul the way a couple hundred in a wallet did?
The day-long reflection ended badly. Vasilich, who met me at Kazansky Station, hit me with the news: Genka had been killed.
How? Who? Why?!
We raced to the office… nobody there! I dashed between offices, learned at reception that all the staff were at the funeral. They were burying Gennady in his hometown, sixty kilometers from Moscow. Yuri Andreyevich and Pavel Gennadyevich had left yesterday. The rest were going today by bus. Only the chief accountant, standing in as head, and the cashier remained at the office, whom I was currently interrogating with questions at the reception desk.
I dashed to Marina, gasping through her tears. Collapsed into the chair opposite her. Air was in categorical short supply. I took each word she squeezed out through the tears like a blow from a club:
– The warehouse in Khryakino. Robbed. Gena was stabbed. To death. Drove off with a whole truckload. Police are there now.
I could make nothing of it. What warehouse? What truck? Gena is supposed to be leafing through «Nauka i Zhizn»!
Marina babbled on, I wasn’t listening. Once I’d caught my breath, calmed down, come to my senses, I got up and shuffled off to my office. On autopilot I opened the cabinet, pulled out a bottle of cognac, filled a glass to the brim, and drank it in three swallows. Felt a bit better. Ten minutes later I repeated the procedure. Yes, definitely better.
The alcohol helped pull me back from unconsciousness into reality – a drunk reality, unsteady, shaky… ready to slip away… dissolve into the alcoholic haze and vanish. But reality nonetheless.
I made my peace with the news. I soared above the February slush, above the stupid rectangular block of Metallsnab, above the gray forecourt of the industrial zone hunched next to the endless temples of Mammon around the Boulevard Ring, looked around, tore off toward Kolomenskoye Park, and dropped like a stone. Choked on a drunken haze that clogged my mind with spots and waves of nausea.
The dead-drunk sitting spree ended abruptly. The door flew open, a flash of light from the doorway struck my eyes. While I rubbed my palms against my tear ducts and cheekbones, trying to see, Zhorik, with the words «Let’s remember the kid!» slammed a bottle and glasses down on the desktop. After him, Pavel and Yura tumbled into the office, both pale, transparent against the light.
My vision returned, I rose from the chair and took a half-filled glass in hand. Zhorik, having poured the bottle bone dry, exhaled «no clinking» and tipped his share down his throat. So did we.
The silence stretched on a long while.
Zhora went to the cabinet for a second bottle, poured it out. Without a word. We drank.
