Though we do have people in Tschernowo for whom money is not an issue, as far as I can tell. The Gavrilows, for instance, are educated people, I can tell from the tips of their noses. And also by the fact that they are accustomed to living in comfort. They could win prizes for their garden. They have a raised bed with cucumbers, a greenhouse, and a contraption that they grill meats on during the warm months, just like on television. And they have roses, a never-ending supply of roses in every color, which grow in bushes that entwine the fence. Mr. Gavrilow often stands in front of those roses in a suit, and as soon as he catches sight of a withered blossom he cuts it off. Mrs. Gavrilow dabs the leaves with a soapy cloth to ward off aphids. When you walk past their property it smells like honey and perfume. But they never speak to anyone, so if I urgently needed salt I’d go somewhere else.
I could go to Lenotschka, who from the back looks like a girl and from the front like a doll. A doll like the ones Irina had, but aged for decades. Lenotschka mostly sits in her house, knits an endlessly long scarf, and smiles when someone addresses her. Doesn’t answer, though. She has a lot of chickens, and they seem to multiply at her place like flies. I could go to Lenotschka if I needed something, she always shares if she has it.
I would go to Petrow, too, except that he has no salt in his home. He is cancer-ridden from head to foot. After his operation they wanted to keep him in the hospital to die. He fled like he was in prison, jumped out the window in his surgical gown, his IV pulled along behind him. He moved into the house of his ex-wife’s grandparents in Tschernowo and didn’t have much more in mind than to die quickly and peacefully. But that was a while ago now. He’s been here for a year, to date the last one to arrive. Petrow doesn’t grow anything in his garden because he says he doesn’t want to feed the cancer anymore. He considers salt and sugar unhealthy, so he doesn’t have either in his home.
I put in a spoon, carry the bowl of chicken soup across the street, the German hiking sandals raise dust. I call loudly at Petrow’s gate, and when he doesn’t answer I walk in. He is still alive, and he emerges from the hedges zipping up his fly. A hatchet with a rusty blade is stuck in his belt. Beneath his left arm he squeezes a yellowed little book that he probably found in some empty house. The first few months he annoyed the whole of Tschernowo knocking on doors and asking for reading material — he had arrived with nothing but a bag with underwear and a notebook in it.
“Greetings, Baba Dunja,” he says. “I’m not much when it comes to gardening, and these blackberries are wearing me out.” He shows me his scratched arms and I shake my head apologetically.
“What’s new in Woman Farmer?” he asks.
His skin is so translucent that I wonder if perhaps he has become a ghost after all.
“You need to eat something,” I say. “Otherwise you won’t have any strength.”
He sniffs the bowl.
“Your fat friend’s old rooster?”
He sure shoots his mouth off for someone so translucent.
“That’s why it’s finally quiet,” he says, sniffing the soup again.
“Eat.”
“That stuff will kill you. Salt, fat, animal protein.”
I’m a peaceful person, but I’m slowly developing an urge to dump the soup down his front.
He seats himself on the bench in front of the house and polishes my spoon with his shirt.
“I like you, Baba Dunja,” he says. The spoon shakes in his hand. He probably hasn’t eaten in days.
“Come over whenever you are hungry,” I say. “I always cook fresh.”
“I may be an asshole but I’m no freeloader.”
“You can thank me by repairing my shutters.”
“Look what I found,” he says conspiratorially, reaching behind his back.
I have to push my glasses up to the top of my head in order to make it out. A pale blue packet of Belomor cigarettes, dented, with the letters on the label running together.
“Where did you get that?”
“Found it behind the couch.”
“Looks empty.”
“There are three left.”
He holds the packet out to me. I pull out a bent stalk. He pulls out another and clamps it between his teeth. Then he gives me a light. The smoke burns in my throat.
“You’re no freeloader,” I say. “You are a generous man, you share your last cigarette with me.”
“I’m already regretting it.” He sucks on his greedily, the same way he just spooned up the soup. “I’m no gentleman.”
My cigarette goes out with a fizzle. Either I did something wrong or it is old and damp. Petrow pulls it out of my mouth and lays it carefully on the bench next to him.
“Now I have a bellyache,” he says. “My stomach is full of dead old rooster. That soup will be the death of me.”
I pluck a large leaf from the fat thistle that is trying to pry Petrow’s house out of the ground with its roots and wipe the bowl with the leaf. I can’t remember the last time I smoked.
My sight has deteriorated but I still hear perfectly. Which certainly also has something to do with the fact that there’s little noise in the village. The whir of the electrical transformer hums in my ears as steadily as the buzz of bumblebees or the song of the cicadas. Even here the summer is a rather loud time. In winter it’s stiller than still. When there’s a blanket of snow on everything, even your dreams are muted, and only the bullfinches hopping through the undergrowth provide any color in the white landscape.
I don’t worry about what could happen if one day we no longer have electricity. I have my kerosene cartridges, and there are candles and matches in every house. We are tolerated, but none of us believes that the government would come to our aid if we used up all the resources. That’s why we think in terms of self-sufficiency. Petrow has taken to using the neighboring house to heat his own during the winter. There’s enough wood.
The biologist told me that not only do the spiders weave different webs here, the cicadas also make a different sound. I could have told him that, anyone with ears can hear it. The biologist doesn’t know why, though. He recorded their songs with his machines and listened to them with a notepad and a stopwatch. He took more than a dozen cicadas to his university in a see-through box with holes in it. He promised to let me know if he figured it out. I’ve never heard from him.
We are not easily reached in Tschernowo. Actually completely unreachable, particularly if one doesn’t wish to be reached. We have postboxes in Malyschi. Whenever someone goes there, he or she brings a bundle of mail for the others. Or not.
I never ask anyone to bring me anything because I always have mail in my box and it’s heavy. Irina sends me packages. Alexej does not. I’m not sure which one of them I’m more grateful to.
If I were to stack up all the packages that Irina has sent me from Germany, the pile would be several stories high. But I fold up the yellow cardboard containers neatly and carry them to the shed. Everything that Irina puts in the packages seems very carefully thought out. Smoked sausages and preserves, vitamin pills and aspirin, matches, thick socks, underwear, hand soap. A new pair of glasses, prescription sunglasses, toothbrushes, pens, glue. A thermometer, a device to measure blood pressure (which I gave to Marja), and batteries of all kinds. I have a collection of brand-new scissors, pocketknives, and little digital alarm clocks.
I look forward to the German gelling sugar, which isn’t available here, because it means I don’t have to simmer my jams for hours. Same goes for the baking powder and the spices with Latin letters on them, the little baggies of bean and tomato seeds (though I like to cultivate my own). I give away the large boxes of adhesive bandages and the rolls of gauze bandaging.