2007 - Two Caravans (29 page)

Once, in a different kind of time, Vitaly had been the bright hope of his family, the student, the dreamer of great dreams, the apple of his mother’s eye. He would most likely have grown up to be a lawyer or a politician, had he not lived in Bendery, and had he not come across that life-changing book, locked away in a school cupboard full of out-of-favour texts, some dating back eighty years and more, which the librarian was keeping hidden just in case any of them should ever come back into favour again. Probably they are still there.

He had just turned sixteen when Transdniestria seceded from Moldova in 1992 over the issue of language. Cyrillic versus Roman. He had joined the patriots, of course, along with his brothers, but his heart wasn’t in it and he managed to keep out of the worst of the fighting, even though Bendery, which lies on the west bank of the river Dniester and is joined to the rest of Transdniestria only by a bridge, had been in the front line of the civil war. Two thousand lives lost, his oldest brother’s among them, hundreds of homes burned out, theirs among them, over how a language should be written. OK, he was a patriot as much as the next man, but he just didn’t think it was an issue worth getting himself killed for. Some know-alls said it was really about politics—about whether it was time to say goodbye to their Russian-dominated past and cosy up with Westward-leaning Romania. And others said that it was just a tribal war between rival gangster families. Probably each person had his own reasons for getting involved, and some had no reason to but still did.

After the truce had been agreed and life got back to an abnormal sort of normal, he tried for a few years to make a go of it in the family construction business, he really tried. He worked all hours, humping bricks and mixing concrete, laying pipes and drains, hammering in doors and windows, and paying protection money all the while. But after his father and his younger brothers were shot dead in the main street of Bendery by a henchman of one of those gangsters for daring to query a hike in the protection fee, he realised that work was for losers, and the wily old grizzle-jaws was right (probably that’s why those dangerous books had to be locked away) and if you want to join the elite, you have to learn to tap into other people’s labour, and let them make you rich. Harvest the efforts of the others—the losers. It is the only way.

So he got in touch with that Kosovan phoney-asylum-seeker wide-boy who had transported his sisters, and offered to get four girls for him in exchange for a passage to England. In the event, he could find only three, the two daughters of his impoverished former English teacher at school, who had been sacked for refusing to teach English in the Cyrillic script, and a deaf-and-dumb girl who sold pickled mushrooms in the market. The Kosovan wide-boy got them all Greek passports, and Vitaly escorted them on the ferry to Dover, where the wide-boy, who was working under the name of Mr Smith, took the girls off his hands and introduced him to his uncle, Vulk, who had once run a similar business in Slovenia and Germany, who introduced him to farmer Leapish, who made the mistake of introducing him to his wife (ha ha), who introduced him to Jim Nightingale of Nightingale Human Solutions. That’s how it works in the world of business—you need contacts, and if you have the right contacts you can sell anything.

And now, look, only four months later, here you are, sitting at the best table in this expensive London restaurant, wearing a good-class expensive suit (the shaved head and gold chain with pendant knife belonged to a different phase, which may have given a wrong impression to some Angliski businessmen), with a genuine Rolex Explorer II, not one of those replicas which any fool can see is fake, enjoying a glass of reassuringly expensive super-chilled New Zealand Blind River Sauvignon Blanc while waiting for your client to arrive, taking a picture of this attractive and potentially very expensive girl on your expensive Nokia N94i, and facing the pleasant dilemma of whether to keep her for yourself or sell her on to someone else. You know a couple of guys who might be interested if you send them her picture.

For in Bendery, girls as pretty and innocent as this used to be two a penny, in fact you yourself deflowered several of them—that was after Rosa, after the war, after all the killings—and you’ve been thinking recently that spending so much money on the visibles, the suits, watches, phones, girls, is all very well, and probably an essential investment for creating the right brand image for the business, but if you want to be seriously wealthy, you can’t just spend it all, you need to accumulate and invest, to build your capital, and property is hellishly expensive here in London. And you could really do with the cash.

Not enough people appreciate what a struggle it has been—what a lonely struggle—rooting yourself out of that nowhere town on the borders of an unrecognised republic which is really nothing but a strip of countryside with half a dozen little towns sandwiched dangerously between the east bank of the Dniester river and the western border of Ukraine, and establishing yourself as an advanced motivational human solution recruitment consultant here in the bona fide Western world; they don’t understand how dynamic you have to be, and sometimes how ruthless, and how lonely it is not being able to trust anyone, no one at all, because every other chancer will take their opportunity to knock you down and steal your business, and your closest business partners are also your deadliest rivals.

For in the transition from the old world to the new, as that cunning old bushy-beard wrote, all fixed, fast-frozen relations are swept away, all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and a man has to face up to his real choices in life and his relations with others. For in this new world there are only rivals and losers. And of course women.

She sidles up to him with that infuriating smile.

“Andriy. Vitaly’s here. Vitaly from the strawberry field.”

“Where?”

This is all he needs. The mobilfonman coming to taunt him as he stands with his hands in the sink.

“Here. Here in the restaurant. Sitting by the window.”

“What does he want?”

“He says he has a job for us. A first-class job. Gourmet cuisine near Heathrow Airport.”

Andriy feels the anger rising in his face.

“Irina, if you want to go with Vitaly, that is up to you. I have no interest in that job.”

He gropes in the hot caustic water and grabs at a couple of slippery plates, noticing how red and raw his hands have become.

“He says the pay is good. And the work is clean. Maybe it will be better for you, Andriy. Better than kitchen hand.”

“He knows I am kitchen hand?”

“I told him we were working to earn some money. At least go and talk to him.”

“What else did you tell him?”

Really, it’s not her fault, this girl. She doesn’t understand anything.

“I don’t know. What’s the matter with you, Andriy? He is trying to help us.”

“He is trying to help only himself.” He dries his hands on a damp cloth. “Did you pour his drink out for him, Irina? Did you let him look inside your blouse?”

“Stop it, Andriy. Why are you like this?”

“Did he show you his mobilfon?”

“Just go and say hello. He’s your friend, isn’t he?”

“I’ll say what I want to say.”

He stacks the slimy plates on the rack and kicks open the swinging door to the dining room. He looks around. Vitaly is sitting at one of the tables in the window. He is sipping wine and fiddling ostentatiously with his mobilfon. Where did he get that fancy suit? Suddenly the street door of the restaurant bursts open and another man strides in—a tall man with a shaven head and an ugly scar across his cheek and lip. Poised by the kitchen door, Andriy watches, rapt, as the scar-cheek man spots Vitaly, moves across the room and positions himself in front of Vitaly’s table. Andriy is sure he’s seen him before, but he can’t remember where. Irina is in the kitchen, hiding out of the way. Now here comes Zita, looking around for Irina, who should be out there offering the customer a drink.

The scarface man says—his voice is so loud that everybody can hear—“Where is she?”

“She is somewhere here,” Vitaly says. “Please sit down.”

“You owe me one girl, dead-boy. You promise four, and you only bring three.”

“Please, Smitya, sit,” says Vitaly in a quiet voice. “We can discuss everything. Have a drink.” He beckons to Zita.

“Those Chinese bitches you sell me. Neither one was virgin. I got burned.”

Now Andriy remembers where he has seen him before. Vitaly holds his hands out in a gesture of placation. “OK. We can make deal, my friend. I have proposition for you.”

“Just show me the girl.”

“In a minute. She is here. Sit down. I will fetch her.”

Andriy has broken out into a sweat. His body is taut with rage. If he had his gun in his hand he would just shoot Vitaly dead right now, he thinks. But he steps back quietly behind the half-open kitchen door where Vitaly can’t see him. Irina has melted away somewhere.

The man with the scar looks around wildly. His eyes light on Zita.

“Is it this one? This ugly dog? Do you take me for complete cabbage-head?”

“Please, Smitya. We are civilised men, not gangsters. Let us talk business.”

“You no play tip-tap with me.” His scar is purple against his livid skin. “You forgotten who I am, dead-boy. You think you talk clever business? You forgotten how we talk business in here.”

He sees the man draw a revolver from an inside pocket of his jacket. It all seems to happen very slowly. He sees a scarry smile stretch across his teeth. He sees Vitaly’s face contort in fear. Zita screams. The man fires four shots: two at Vitaly, one at Zita, and one at the mirror behind the bar.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The quick succession of blasts reverberates like underground explosions in the contained space. Andriy puts his hands to his ears. Around him there is a chaos of screams and shattering glass as Zita falls backwards, Vitaly slumps forwards onto his table, and the young couple eating their meal start to shriek hysterically. The man turns, walks quickly back out of the front door and disappears into the street.

In the stillness that follows, Andriy can hear Gilbert shouting from the kitchen, “What the fuck’s going on in there?” He can hear the woman of the couple talking to the police on her mobilfon. He can hear Zita’s long quivering moans as she examines the shattered mess of flesh, blood and bone that was her left leg. There is no sound from Vitaly. He steps carefully over to where Vitaly has fallen across the table. Dark blood is oozing in a vivid widening stain into the white damask, along with some other greyish stuff that is bubbling out of a gaping double wound in his forehead. The eyes are open. The hand still grips the stem of the wine glass that has shattered in his hand. Suddenly, a strange music erupts from his body—a grotesquely cheerful jingle—di di daah da—di di daah da—di di daah da—daah! It rings for a few moments, then goes quiet.

Andriy stares. Horror rises up in him like bubbling grey matter—horror compounded with guilt. Should he have intervened? Could he have saved him? Was it his own unspoken anger that had summoned Vitaly’s death to him? His first instinct is to laugh—he has to put his hand on his mouth to stop himself. His next instinct is to run—to run from death into the sunlight of the living world.

Beefy Gilbert takes control in an amazingly matter-of-fact way, telling the dining couple to shut up, sit down and wait for the police, attempting to staunch Zita’s wound with clean napkins.

“You can go if you like.” He pulls Andriy quietly to one side. “If you’re worried about the police.”

“Is OK,” says Andriy. Then he remembers the gun in the bottom of his backpack.

When he goes back into the kitchen, he finds that all the other staff have disappeared. Only Irina is still there, clutching onto the sink with both hands, as though she’s about to be sick.

“Are you feeling OK?”

She nods silently. She doesn’t look OK.

“You?”

“Yes. Normal.”

“Where’s everybody?” she asks. Her whole body is shaking.

“I think they’ve gone. They’re all illegals. Apart from Gilbert. Someone called the police.”

Gilbert shouts from the dining room for some ice. Andriy gets a bowl, fills it with ice cubes and takes it through. In a space between tables, Gilbert is struggling to staunch Zita’s wound, his big meaty hands amazingly deft at knotting the napkins into a tourniquet. The smell of cordite still hangs in the air. The young couple are gazing in stunned silence at Vitaly’s forehead, which has stopped oozing and started to congeal, and at their own congealing dinners. The girl is crying softly.

Suddenly, the front door of the restaurant opens. Andriy looks up, expecting to see the police or an ambulance crew, but in walks a big man holding a mobilfon in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other. He looks like another diner in search of a pleasant meal who has opened the door and stumbled by chance across this terrible scene. But it isn’t just another diner—it is Vulk.

Vulk stops in the doorway and looks around slowly, as if he’s trying to make sense of the chaos. His jowly face reveals no emotion. Andriy backs away noiselessly, his heart pounding. Vulk walks across to look at Vitaly’s slumped body, and mutters something under his breath. Just as Andriy reaches the kitchen door Vulk looks up. Their eyes meet. Vulk lunges forward. Gilbert bars his way with a beefy arm.

“Sorry, sir. We’re closed.”

Vulk tries to push through, shouldering Gilbert aside, using the flowers as a flail, but Gilbert is as big as he is. He blocks his way.

“Didn’t you hear? We’re closed.”

“Hrr!” Vulk gives him another hefty shove and barges through to the kitchen. But in the moment’s grace that Gilbert’s intervention has bought him, Andriy has grabbed Irina, pulled her into the kitchen storeroom and, taking the key from the lock, has locked the door from the inside. Clack.

The storeroom is cool and smells of onions. The light switch is on the outside. In the darkness they wait and listen. She is shaking and whimpering. He grips her tight against him, putting his hand across her mouth to keep her quiet. He can feel her heart jumping around inside her chest. On the other side of the door they can hear Vulk still charging around. They hear a crash of plates and the metallic bounce of a saucepan rolling on the ground, and that voice, like a mad beast bellowing, “Little flower!” The storeroom door judders and the handle rattles, but the lock holds. Someone—it must be Vulk—switches the light on from the outside, and for a moment they gaze into each other’s terrified eyes.