They had a smoke, patted each other on the back, and went their separate ways.
Then again, he could have thought about that morning two days ago or its low-hanging fog sticking warmly and waxily to the pines, making the forest invisible and treacherous. The dark skeleton of their building stood in a clearing, in the middle of a field, like a half-finished battleship. Oleh slept in the trailers, right alongside his construction crew, like a true captain, sharing canned food, bread, and alcohol with his cheerful and mischievous band of pirates. It was the alcohol they were most interested in sharing that night; it went on until the early morning, and then Oleh told everyone to get some shut-eye.
“No days off for us,” he said. “This is a big client shelling out the big bucks, three hours of sleep, then reveille—we’ve got a construction timetable to think about.”
But no sooner had he fallen asleep than he was awakened by his phone. It was Danylo.
“Did ya know,” he started, “that your friend is getting married to that guy tomorrow?”
“What friend?” Still drowsy, Oleh wasn’t following.
“Your friend, Sonia. Her wedding’s tomorrow. I gave her relatives a ride into town from the train station. They had this fat jerkoffy kid with them, too. Did you know they were getting married?”
“Of course I did,” Oleh assured him.
He got up and dressed quickly, putting on his work clothes and a jacket—a cold patch of air was coming out of the woods—woke up the foreman and told him he wouldn’t be back for two days, and brushed his teeth with icy water, realizing that his breath still reeked of alcohol, so he’d have to take the train. “Well, it’s no big deal. A five-hour trip and then I’ll be home,” he thought. He went over to the village and asked for a ride to the station. Someone agreed to take him, and they navigated the fog and murk. He’d missed the night train; the next one wouldn’t be for another two hours. Oleh sat down on a bench and fell asleep. A cop woke him up, demanded to see some ID, spent a long time checking his picture, and called somebody to make some inquiries; it was only then that he got around to telling him that there wouldn’t be any train today because it only ran every other day. Then they agreed that the officer would drop him off on the main highway. Nobody wanted to pick up some dude mired in the fog, dressed in heavy hiking boots and a shady-looking jacket. Pissed off and unshaven, he lay down in the grass, slept for a bit, and then called Danylo to ask for a ride. His brother had no problem with helping him out, but Oleh couldn’t explain where he was standing, or, more precisely, where he was lying. A truck finally picked him up in the afternoon; the driver agreed to drop him off at the nearest bus station, refusing to take any money, because Oleh looked so worked up. When he got to the station, it turned out that the evening bus wasn’t even going to run its route—there weren’t any passengers. Oleh offered to pay the driver triple the regular fare but got turned down anyway. Oleh headed over toward the taxi drivers, who took one look at his stubble and the blood and cement caked on his boots and turned him away too, all but one of them, who said they’d be leaving at ten, because he had to wait for a regular customer of his who’d be arriving on the Rostov night express and bringing him a little treat. That’s what he said—a little treat—like it was a chocolate cake or something. Oleh agreed to wait and then went over to the snack bar. The taxi drivers all followed him in, standing at the counter next to him and listening closely to his silence. They left at ten, driving slowly and stalling occasionally. The driver was anxious, and so was Oleh. They covered the first hundred kilometers. They were so close. Right at the city limits, as the car was struggling up yet another hill, it started smoking. The driver opened the hood so despairingly that Oleh paid him the full amount and started walking. “No biggie,” he said to himself, “keep going at a good clip and you’ll get to the metro in a few hours. You’ll be there by morning.”
He descended into the valley and then started climbing back out, feeling the city coming closer as he walked, and its breath becoming more and more palpable as its glow grew more and more intense up ahead of him. Trucks rolled out of the night, delivering fresh vegetables, frozen pig carcasses, grain, cotton, and contraband medicine to markets and warehouses. Some of the tankers had fresh milk sloshing around in their innards, some had stolen oil, some hid slaves being transported from market to market, singing their sorrowful songs, wondering who would buy them and where they’d ultimately end up. An endless stream of train cars loaded with fish and timber rolled down the tracks, and sleepy passengers peered out the windows, watching the sun flooding the grass of the outskirts with red flames. Barges filled with coal and ships with armed crews glided inaudibly up the rivers, trying to slip through the morning fog to the city’s docks. The sun was poking through the fog, and the city swelled with light, voices, and sounds, rousing people from their slumber and releasing images from their dreams. The city lay up in the hills, flanked by rivers on two sides. Down in the valley stood the first of the houses where the workers lived and the schools where their children went, loomed the dark walls of the hospitals where the lepers were, glowed the white limestone walls of the prisons where they kept the thieves and lunatics. Beyond that were the great factory buildings where they made tanks and tractors, unrecognized churches, which it was forbidden to build in the upper neighborhoods, the black landing strips and the opium fields of the nunneries sprawled out before Oleh. Beyond the airport began the fences of bread factories and meat-packing plants that woke up in the dark to feed the residents of the city, followed by the gallows where they would hang local witches; the large hardware store was visible behind them, and in one of the hangars, hidden away from the security guards, pilgrims who had come from down south—the Donbas and Crimea—to venerate the icons of the city’s ancient cathedrals slept on the concrete floor with pieces of cardboard underneath them. A bit farther along were red-brick houses with satellite dishes and secret wards that drove off swindlers and Gypsies. It was mostly people who worked at the markets and train stations that lived in those houses; in the morning, they’d set off for work, their boisterous children running after them, carrying backpacks full of hymnals and algebra homework. The women would stay home and take care of the housework, washing, sewing, making brews that cured the sick and kept men faithful, and pulling food out of their pantries and fridges—red peppers, green suns of cabbage, and yellow cheeses that looked like ripe moons. Smoke from factories and the fires where people warmed asphalt and boiled clean the clothing of the consumptive rose over the roofs of their buildings, and trolleys packed with factory workers, villagers, and couriers rolled past linden and poplar trees, goading along their fuzz that simply wouldn’t settle on the ground, sending it fluttering up above the city’s squares.
The old neighborhoods faced one of the two rivers, its smooth, level bank overgrown with cattails, where anglers hid, lying in wait for precious fish that were foolish enough to burrow into the silt of its shallows, where they shone like stolen silver dishes. The area around the bridges was mostly inhabited by alms-seekers who had set up camp in the old typography offices and pharmaceutical warehouses, prostitutes who rented cheap rooms at the dorms run by the railroad institute, jewelry dealers and Sophers who were hesitant to live in the residential area down by the river, so they raised large families in the Stalin-era apartment buildings along one of the main avenues. Sickly and childless women, homeless men, and unemployed teenagers peered at the city from the riverbank. Children tossed dead birds into the water, where they would float with the current, terrifying those living in the cottages that stretched along the left bank, behind the industrial area and the cemetery for prisoners of war.