That evening we had taken the iron for a walk and didn’t want to go back. We walked on doggedly and in silence, with Cara’s shadow circling above us and our dolorous memories. We saw night taking over Moscow, and Moscow gambolled in delight, greeted us in the laughing faces of women of the night, raced by in shiny cars, thundered her music and closed the barriers of metro stations like the pale wings of moths. We walked, chatted with cops, smoked in silence with morose characters we came across, talked to the homeless, bought beer and fruit juice at 24-hour kiosks, drank it looking at Moscow, and went on our way, saying goodbye to our own personal night before it flew away forever.
We both knew we were saying goodbye to Cara but made no mention of the fact.
Then on dear, familiar Sretensky Boulevard we met Grand. He was sitting on a bench towards which both of us were impelled by the force of our loss. When he saw us, Grand knew it was us he’d been waiting for.
“My friends!” he said, looking neither at me nor at Sasha but somehow between us to where our humble iron was coyly hiding behind my leg. “All night long I have been walking through this city unable to leave its streets, because a feeling was constantly with me that this night would bring me companions with whom to begin my journey to the East.”
Or if he did not say that, he might have done, strange Grand, a breeze blowing freely along wide roads. He told us hitchhiking was his life, and that hitchhiking was about always moving on, that he could not endure stops, but that this time Moscow had not let go of him and he had understood that someone would come to him, someone the road was expecting. “Hey, Stalker, how much to take us into the Zone?” I quipped and we all laughed.
Grand is a lone hitch-hiker, but there comes a time when any sage takes on disciples. We all realised this was our destiny. We recognised it when we saw it, because we knew the road, and you learn to see destiny, friend, when you have gone out on the road.
“We’ve never hitched that far before,” Sasha and I said. “I will be your teacher,” Grand responded. “Here is your first rule: Every time you leave, be prepared for the fact that you may be leaving forever.”
We returned to the commune buoyed up and with the iron clanking quietly behind us. We returned with a sense of clarity and confidence as to our way, because we knew that Cara truly had changed our world.
Cara came to me in the Yakimanka courtyard. She came like a shadow suddenly incarnated as a bird. She flew down from a tree to perch at the end of the bench I was sitting on, arched her neck, swayed and repeated her name three times.
It was a lovely, warm June day and the poplars were clapping their new leaves above my head, but if a black raven sits beside you, friend, you can be sure your life is about to be turned upside down. Anyway, how often have you had a black raven sit beside you?
That day I had given up my courier job. I’d passed my last exam the day before and now in summery mood wanted nothing to do with travel agencies ever again. I left the office and came back home, my head light with a dizzying sense of freedom. Nothing now held me in Moscow. I felt so much space around me I could have flown up in the air like a balloon whose thread has broken. My knees gave way, I sank to the bench and Cara flew down.
A raven is a messenger of fate, and that day it was my fate. I brought big black Cara back to the commune, a free gift from Providence to all on Yakimanka. They reacted to her as Babylon might have. Ashen faced, shocked, they filled their lungs and all together began shrieking hysterically. Before we had time to do anything, the instant we entered the invariably crowded hallway of the commune, there was such a commotion that Cara soared to the ceiling and began swinging on the lamp-holder.
“Unbelievable!” Yakimanka ranted. “Unheard of!” it concurred with itself. “It’s against the rules!” “Why isn’t the landlord doing something about it?”
“It’ll steal our belongings!” “It will foul everywhere!” “Where’s the landlord!”
“Young people are getting completely out of hand!” “I’ve wanted to have a dog to guard my sofa for a long time but it’s against the rules!” “Landlord!”
Cara swung and uttered the curse of her name over the lot of them until Roma Jah did finally show up in the kitchen. Everyone fell silent, because he is our landlord. Everyone does as he says, even though his hair is in dreadlocks and he carries perpetual hippy springtime in his heart. He is always calm, and for us lunatics that is a sign of wisdom and good judgement.
Roma Jah stayed calm, and when he saw my Cara swinging on the lampholder said softly, “Titch, you know the rules don’t allow people to bring independent animals into the commune.” The rules were unwritten. Actually, they used to be written but were soon torn down by someone in a fit of pique, but they were remembered and generally known by being passed on to newcomers. One of the rules was that animals were classified as independent if they could find and eat things or leave the space allocated to their owner. That ruled out cats, dogs, ferrets and excessively frisky rabbits, but did not rule out caged mice, rats, hamsters, fish, reptiles, or Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
After that it was hopeless trying to defend Cara. It remained only for me to bring her down from the lampholder and for us to leave with our heads held high. The denizens of Yakimanka scuttled off to hide, barring their doors. I put a chair on a table and climbed on top. Lenka ran in, opened the window to give Cara somewhere to fly out, and jumped up and down, laughing loudly to give her something to be frightened by.
I found myself on a level with her. Balancing precariously, I stood up straight and reached for her. Cara looked at me almost reproachfully, turned her head and cawed distinctly, “Caa work!” Thereupon she abandoned the light fitting and flew off down the hallway, instigating a small tornado in the heart of the commune.
“Well, well, well!” muttered old Artemiy approvingly, or perhaps disapprovingly. “Hurray! Welcome to the Psychiatric Clinic!” Lenka shouted in delight and ran after her. Stilling a trembling in my knees, I climbed down and ran to our room, because straight down the hallway is Roma Jah’s and my room with the piano and my gallery.
The window was wide open and the room alive with street sounds. Lenka was sitting on the windowsill, holding the flowerpot with Sasha’s chilli plant above the courtyard. Lenka and Sasha’s destinies within the commune had jointly ordained that at this time he was again living in the bathroom while his chilli, a small green plant, was growing in our room. That was what held him in the commune, that and Lenka’s lunatic eyes, which were presently staring out the open window down the vertical drop to the courtyard.
On the day Sasha planted his chilli, a swollen husk with a white proboscis, he had been rushing round the room until Lenka could stand it no longer and said heatedly, “What are you hanging around here for? Go and do something useless. Why don’t you take the iron for a walk.” Sasha obediently said: “Okay,” I lent my support, and Lenka burst out cackling. She couldn’t believe we were really going to do it.
From then on we went for a walk with the iron every evening and Lenka renamed the commune ‘The Clinic’. At first, we only took it out to the grass near the house, but then Sasha found a skateboard. We tied a lead to it and fastened the iron on, so that now we could take it for longer walks outside the courtyard. Lenka gleefully shouted from the window, “Loonies!” as we turned out through the archway into the street.