Siberian Education (20 page)

The highest Authority in that restaurant – whom I had to greet personally before doing anything else – was called Uncle Kostich, nicknamed ‘Shaber'. He was an old and experienced criminal, well-known all over the country; in our community and in my family he was highly thought of and treated with great affection. He was a calm, peaceful man with a very agreeable way of speaking. He expressed himself with patience and humility and was always clear and direct – if he had to tell you something he didn't beat about the bush. He lived with his mother, a woman so old she seemed like a tortoise; she moved slowly but she was otherwise in very good physical shape. They owned a house and a bit of land. Uncle Kostich kept a lot of pigeons, and I went to see him now and then to swap some of mine with his. He was honest, and would always give me a few pigeons more. He would offer me chifir and then tell me a lot of interesting stories about his life. He had a daughter somewhere in Russia, but hadn't seen her for a long time, and I think he was very sad about that.

In his youth, he told me, he hadn't been a criminal; he used to work in a big sawmill, cutting tree trunks. But then one day he'd seen a boy get cut in two, when a trunk had knocked into him and he had fallen on the blade of a large saw. The foreman hadn't allowed anyone to stop working even for a second; they had been forced to go on cutting the wood, getting spattered with their workmate's blood. From that moment he'd begun to hate communism, collective work and everything the Soviet system represented.

He had been given his first prison sentence under an article of the penal code known in the USSR as the ‘Idler'. According to this article, anyone who was unemployed could be condemned as a criminal. So Kostich had been sent for three years to an ordinary regime prison in the town of Tver. During that period a war between castes was going on, and Black Seed was about to gain control of the prisons; at first not many were happy with this change, and the blood flowed like a river in spring. Kostich had tried to stay aloof from everyone, not to take sides, but gradually, as time passed, he had realized that it was impossible to live on your own in prison. He liked the Men better than the
Blatnye
because, he said, ‘they're straightforward and don't try to get anything by violence and bullying; they prefer to use words and common sense'. In prison he had joined a family which tried to live in a neutral manner, not siding with anyone in that war, but one day one of their elderly criminals had been killed by a young, ruthless
Blatnoy
, who wanted to weaken Grey Seed so that he could exploit its members, bending them to his own interests.

So the Men first organized a kind of peaceful resistance, and then, when they realized that this approach wasn't producing the desired results, they decided to go to war. And they fought the war with knives. Many of them, there in prison, worked in the kitchens or as barbers (whereas the
Blatnye
didn't work; it was against their rules), so they easily armed themselves with knives and scissors and wrought havoc among the Black Seed.

Kostich was very good at using a knife: he'd grown up in the country, and as a boy he'd learned to kill pigs thanks the teaching of an old First World War veteran who worked as a butcher and slaughtered pigs by running them through with a bayonet. So, after his first murders, Kostich earned his nickname ‘Shaber' – the name of a knife. When he got out of prison, he already knew what he was going to do: he began a long career as a robber from ships on the rivers Volga, Don and Danube.

With Uncle Kostich I could speak freely, without worrying too much about rules of behaviour. Of course I was respectful, as I was towards any Authority, but I also took some liberties: I would tell him about my adventures and ask him a lot of questions, something that is not usually done in the criminal community.

Often he asked me to recite to him the poems of Yesenin, Lermontov and Pushkin, which I knew by heart, and when I'd finished he would say to his companions:

‘Did you hear that? This boy's going to be an intelligent man one day, a scholar! God bless you, my son! Come on now, let's hear the one about the eagle behind the bars again . . .'

It was his favourite piece, the poem by Pushkin which describes a prisoner's state of mind, comparing it to that of a young eagle that has been raised in captivity and forced to live in a small cage. I used to recite it to him in a powerful tone and he would look me straight in the eye expectantly, his lips moving slowly, repeating the words after me. When I ended with the lines ‘Come, let's fly away! We're free birds! It's time, brother, it's time! There, where behind the clouds the mountain gleams white, there, where the blue of the sea is deepest, there, where I fly alone in the wind . . .', he would clap his hands to his head and say in a very theatrical manner:

‘That's just what it's like, it's true, that's just what it's like! But even if I could have my time over again, I'd do exactly the same!'

At these moments I found it moving to see how simple he was, and how beautiful and pure his simplicity was.

One day Kostich had beaten to death a couple of young junkies who lived in Centre, and who were guilty of having starved to death their four-month old baby, leaving him to die in a corner of their apartment, among the dirty rags and the clothes that needed washing.

That couple were famous in town for their arrogance. The girl was quite good-looking; she dressed very provocatively and behaved accordingly. Her husband, the son of the manager of a car factory in a big city in central Russia, was a university drop-out, a drug addict and a pusher; he was disliked by a lot of people because he spread his poison among the young.

The neighbours, who had been aware for some time that the baby was too thin and was always crying, saw them leave home one morning without the child and go to a bar, where they stayed all day. Suspecting the worst, they had knocked down the door and found that lifeless little body. At that point all hell broke loose.

The two parents were seized by the crowd, which would certainly have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Guardian of Centre, who took them and drove them to his home, saying that they must be judged according to the criminal laws. In reality the Guardian only wanted to exploit the occasion to blackmail the manager of the factory and force him to pay up to save his son from certain death. Everyone, though they suspected something, preferred to keep quiet. Everyone except Kostich.

Kostich made a spectacular gesture: he turned up alone at the Guardian's house, bare-chested, with a stick in his hands. The Guardian's henchmen tried to stop him, threatening him with force, but he said just one thing:

‘Are you going to strike her?' pointing at the Madonna with Child tattooed on his chest. They backed off and let him go in, and he beat those two unnatural parents to death, then threw them out of the window into the street, where the people trampled them underfoot till they were reduced to a pulp.

The Guardian was furious, but only half an hour later the highest Authorities in the town, including Grandfather Kuzya, proclaimed that Kostich was right and recommended to the Guardian a simple and drastic solution: to commit suicide.

A week later the manager of the factory arrived in town, with the intention of avenging his son. It was clear that he didn't know much about our town, because he turned up with a gang of armed buffoons, made up of off-duty cops and soldiers. He had engaged them to carry out a punitive raid against the criminal who had killed his son. Well, they all disappeared in an alleyway, together with their three off-roaders. Nobody saw or heard anything; they entered the town and never left.

The authorities searched for them for a while: there were appeals in the newspapers, and on television they even showed the manager's wife begging anyone who knew anything about her husband to speak out. Nothing came of it. As they say in our community: ‘drowned without even leaving any ripples in the water'.

Whenever I asked Grandfather Kuzya – not straight out, of course, but in a roundabout way – whether he thought the manager had died for a just cause, he would answer me with a saying which he must have been very fond of, since he repeated it on every possible occasion:

‘He who comes to us with the sword shall die by the sword.'

As he said this he would smile at me in his usual way, but with the brooding look of a man who holds many stories within him which he will never be able to divulge.

To return to our story, we made our way towards Uncle Kostich's table. I walked quickly and Mel shuffled along behind me. Uncle Kostich immediately invited us to join him. It was a generous gesture and we accepted at once.

Just then Aunt Katya arrived, and showered us with kisses.

‘How are you, my sons?' she asked, in her usual angelic voice.

‘Thank you, Aunt, everything's fine . . . We were passing this way, so we decided to drop in to see how you were, and if you needed anything . . .'

‘I'm still here with my company, thank heavens . . .' and she threw an affectionate glance at Uncle Kostich.

He took her hand and kissed its palm, as was customary in the old days as a sign of affection towards a woman – often your mother or sister. Then he said:

‘May Jesus Christ be with you, mother; we breathe thanks to the labours you make. Forgive us for everything, Katyusha; we're old sinners, forgive us for everything.'

It was a real spectacle to witness these simple yet flamboyant gestures of respect and human friendship exchanged between people of such different backgrounds, united by loneliness in the midst of chaos.

Aunt Katya had sat down with us. The old man continued to hold her hand and, looking into the distance, over our heads, said:

‘My daughter must be the same age as you, do you know that, Katya? I hope she's well, that she's found her road, and that it's a good and just road, different from mine . . .'

‘And from mine too . . .' replied Aunt Katya, with a slight tremor in her voice.

‘God forgive me, poor fool that I am. What have I said, Katyusha, may God help you . . .'

She didn't reply; she was on the point of tears.

We could only be silent and listen. The air was full of true and profound feelings.

What I liked about that circle, however violent and brutal it might be, was that there was no place for lies and pretence, cant and dissembling: it was absolutely true and involuntarily profound. The truth, I mean, had a natural, spontaneous appearance, not one that was cultivated or deliberate. The people were
truly
human.

After a short pause I said:

‘Aunt Katya, we've brought you something . . .'

Mel put on the table the little bag with the plant wrapped up in old Bosya's rags to protect it from the cold.

She unwrapped the rags and on her face there appeared a smile.

‘Well, what do you think? Do you like it?'

‘Thank you, boys, it's lovely. I'll take it into the greenhouse straight away, otherwise with this cold . . .' and she went away with the plant in her hands.

We were delighted, as if we'd performed a heroic act.

‘Well done, boys,' Uncle Kostich said to us. ‘Never forget this holy woman. God only knows what it feels like to lose your children . . .'

When Aunt Katya came back she hugged us and you could see from her eyes that while she was in the greenhouse she'd been crying.

‘Well, what shall I feed you on today?'

The question was almost superfluous. Everything she cooked was delicious. Without thinking twice we ordered an excellent red soup with sour cream and bread made from durum wheat. It was good bread, as black as the night.

She brought us a full saucepan and put it in the middle of the table; the soup was so hot that the steam rose solid as a pillar. We helped ourselves with a big ladle, then added to our dishes a spoonful of sour cream, which was hard and yellowish from all the fat it contained. We took a piece of black bread, spread garlic butter on it, and away we went: a spoonful of soup and a bite of bread.

On these occasions Mel was capable of emptying a whole saucepan on his own. He ate quickly, whereas I chewed slowly. I always gave myself up entirely to the pleasure of it, and often, when I twirled the ladle around in the saucepan to get a second helping, I would hear it knock sadly against the empty sides. At these moments I was strongly tempted to break the ladle over the head of my insatiable companion.

After eating that soup, I always felt as if I'd been given a new lease of life; a stream of positive emotions flowed through my body, and I felt like lying down on a warm, comfortable bed and sleeping for ten hours.

But within five minutes the second course arrived: potatoes roasted with the meat in the oven, which were were floating in the melted fat and had a smell that went straight to your heart. And as usual, to accompany this course, there were three traditional dishes. Cabbages cut into long, thin strips and marinated in salt – quite delicious. My grandfather used to say they were a natural medicine against any disease, and that it was thanks to them that the Russians had won all the wars. I didn't know how cabbages could cure diseases and with what military strategies they had won the wars, but they were tasty and, as we say, ‘they went down whistling'. The second dish was cucumbers, also marinated in salt – delicious, and as crunchy as if they'd just been picked off the plant, perfumed with many spices and herbs, fabulous. The third was grated white turnips with sunflower oil and fresh garlic. All these dishes were products of a peasant cuisine that was very poor in raw materials, but capable of exploiting them all in numerous different recipes. Then there were always on the table little dishes of fresh garlic, sliced onion, small green tomatoes, butter, sour cream, and plenty of black bread. For me, if heaven exists, it must include a table laden with delicacies, like that of Aunt Katya's restaurant.