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.