Basically, Epiphany ended with one of their usual arguments. Nikita didn’t fully understand his father’s fury. Neither did his mother. Displaying admirable self-denial, she refrained from sprinkling the water anywhere in the apartment. Maybe she had decided to keep it for a rainy day. Either way, she felt as though she’d done her duty and the retort was duly stored away in the darkness at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, between the bottles of oil and vinegar, and everyone forgot all about it.
One fine day, a couple of years later, the apartment filled with Marchenko Senior’s joyous cries. God knows why he’d been rummaging in the depths of the kitchen cupboards… Maybe he was after the vodka? It didn’t matter anyway, because while he was groping around in there he’d discovered the retort, which he now dragged out and presented to them. There was something floating in it, a kind of gelatinous clot… basically, the holy water had gone mouldy. His moment of triumph had finally come! The inveterate atheist took great delight in celebrating such a resounding victory. The enemy was defeated, once and for all! Drunk on his discovery, the triumphant victor shouted at his wife for such a long time that she developed high blood pressure. And they all lived happily ever after… Yeah, right.
The truck came to a stop with a heavy groan, and Nikita woke up. He pressed the button to illuminate his watch. Shit, it was already late, especially considering that local time in Ufa was an hour ahead of Samara. “Vadim’s probably been asleep for ages,” he thought. “And I’ve still got to find the squat!” In the distance he could see a police checkpoint, flooded with orange lights. The gates to the city. He would have to walk a little further to get to the city itself.
“Thanks a lot!” Nikita finally came to his senses and started rummaging about in the darkness, getting his sleeping bag and his rucksack together. “I really appreciate it. Have a good trip!”
“You too. Good luck.”
“Hey!”
Nikita turned round. The driver leaned across the cabin to call out of the window, “You’ve dropped your cap!”
“Oh yeah, thanks!”
His cap lay on the ground next to the wheel. As he bent down to pick it up, Nikita suddenly felt the vibrations of the enormous, intimidating vehicle against his cheek, and it freaked him out. When he’d straightened up and moved away, the truck drove off. The noise of its engine grew fainter, and its red lights receded into the distance… And then they were gone. It was dark and quiet. Nikita was alone on the road and alone in the universe, or so it felt. He stood there for a minute, just listening, and he was overwhelmed with a sudden, primal fear. Brushing this feeling aside, Nikita hurried along the empty road towards the distant checkpoint. He looked rather peculiar, a solitary figure half-running through the darkness with his rucksack and his sleeping bag… If there was a God, he was probably watching him right now.
The policemen weren’t interested in Nikita’s sudden appearance, and he positioned himself at the roadside beyond the checkpoint, to be closer to people, to the lights. The floodlights at the checkpoint were so bright that the July night was virtually banished from the feeble roadside forest.
A pair of headlights approached. Nikita raised his arm apprehensively. He didn’t like hitching at night. All kinds of thoughts would enter his head, scenes from horror movies and the like. It really is quite scary when a car pulls up and you open the door… You never know what’s going to happen next.
The inside of the car was dark and smoky.
“City centre? Thirty roubles.”
Nikita sighed and took his rucksack off. It wasn’t worth spending the night on the road just because paying for a lift was technically against the rules of hitchhiking. It felt strange being so low down after the truck, and as he sat in the passenger seat watching the trees fly past he resolved not to speak to the driver. Well, it served him right! Once he’d made this decision he relaxed and started feeling better. At least he’d made it to Ufa. He was already in the Urals!
Actually, credit where credit’s due — the driver gave Nikita detailed instructions to help him find the squat where he was supposed to be spending the night, although it was the middle of the night already. It was 1.00 a.m. local time when he eventually made it to the Khrushchev-era apartment blocks and started searching for the right address. He didn’t like wandering about strange cities at night. In Penza, a few nights ago, he’d been approached by a group of local lads who looked like they were in the mood for a fight.
“Which block are you from?” they’d asked him.
Nikita would have been less surprised if they’d asked him which planet he was from.
“Oh, you’re not from round here, are you?”
Then they’d left him alone. It was a district of newly constructed apartment blocks and apparently these ‘blocks’ were their equivalent of courtyard gangs. So nothing had come of it that time, but the Ufa crowds might turn out to be less tolerant. Nikita noticed a group of three lads under a tree. They all seemed to have stopped talking and were looking at him. He increased his pace. The night wind was agitating the leaves on the trees and blowing rubbish about. Large moths flew at the street lamps, colliding audibly with the glass.
When Nikita finally found the right address, his happiness and relief knew no bounds. The stairwell stank, there was dirt everywhere and the cats he’d disturbed narrowed their eyes at him, but still — he was so pleased to be there! He found the right door and hesitated for a second before ringing the bell… What was his name again? Squire? Something like that…
6
A hitchhikers’ squat at night is a peculiar place… The people who spend the night here are just passing through, and they never stay for long. Their thoughts are already far away — memories of a hard day on the road, the blazing sun, a succession of stuffy cabins, and tomorrow more of the same, back into battle. You might expect them to take refuge immediately in their sleeping bag cocoons, to make the most of every available hour of sleep. But no, they have to sit and chat! Squats are meeting places for like-minded souls, people who share the same outlook on life, which means they don’t mind talking half the night away. At times like this even bitter out-of-date beer can taste like nectar!
They don’t drink too much beer, though, maybe just a couple of large cans shared between them, to keep the conversation flowing. It’s understandable, really — what with the early start, the long road ahead and the blazing sunshine, a hangover and dehydration are the last things they need. In any case, it’s rude to fill someone else’s car with stale beer fumes. That’s the driver’s privilege.
So here we are… It’s the middle of the night, the whole city’s asleep, and the only sign of life is in Squire’s appalling kitchen. The bare light-bulb burns too brightly. As a rule, apartments like this don’t tend to be overly well-endowed with lampshades. No curtains either — they’ve been burnt, soiled and long since discarded. That’s the level of comfort on offer in this apartment, where the nights are often full of acrid smoke and guitar music.
All four of our main characters are sitting at the kitchen table, passing round a can of beer. Squire knows exactly how to tilt it to avoid pouring out any foam. A skill honed by years of practice! What are they talking about? If we disregard the conversations about music (I don’t want to bore you), essentially what it comes down to is ‘travellers’ tales’.
Every hitchhiker takes a dozen or so stories from each journey. They’re mostly other people’s stories — many drivers love to make confessions and often launch into them as soon as their passenger is on board. Or their own stories, happy or unhappy as the case may be. Each tale circulates until it becomes a kind of folklore, and every retelling is interrupted with impatient comments such as, “Well, I…”, “Once I…” These ‘travellers’ tales’ are a kind of competition, with everyone keen to have their say. “Well, you won’t believe what happened to me”, “I’ve got an even funnier story”, “I’ve done that loads of times”… In other words, “I’m better than you”.