Although nobody had been killed, the people of our district had taken it as a grave insult to the community. And one evening Grandfather Kuzya said to me:
‘Watch the news; you might see something interesting.’
Among the latest headlines was a report from Moscow: seven men with criminal records, and of Georgian nationality, had been found murdered in the home of one of them – brutally shot while they were having their evening meal. The pictures showed an overturned table, furniture riddled with holes, bodies gashed with wounds. On the lampshade, a hand-painted Siberian hunting belt, and hanging from the belt the fake hand grenade. The journalist commented:
‘… a brutal massacre, no doubt a revenge attack by Siberian criminals.’
I remember that that evening, before going to bed, I took my hunting belt out of the cupboard, looked at it for a long time and thought, ‘How wonderful it is to be Siberian.’
After the conversation with Uncle Kostich I woke Mel up with a couple of slaps on the cheek. We thanked Aunt Katya and went on our way. She, as always, came out onto the steps outside the restaurant and waved to us till we disappeared round the corner.
Mel started pestering me; he was desperate to know what I’d talked about with Uncle Kostich. The idea of having to summarize the whole content of our conversation was almost unbearable, but when I looked at his innocent expression I couldn’t say no.
So I started to tell him the story, and when I got to the part where Uncle Kostich had asked me about Hook, he stopped and stood as stiff as a lamppost:
‘And you said nothing, didn’t you?’
He was angry, and this was a bad sign, because when Mel got angry we often ended up fighting, and since he was four times bigger than me I always came off worst. I only beat him once in my whole life, and we were only six years old at the time: I hit him with a stick, giving him a nasty gash on the head, taking advantage of the fact that he’d got his arms and legs trapped in a fishing net.
Now Mel was standing there, stock still on the road with a scowling face and fists clenched. I looked at him for a long time, but just couldn’t guess what might be going through his mind.
‘What do you mean, nothing? I said what I thought…’ Before I could finish the sentence he’d thrown me down on the snow and was pummelling me, shouting that I was a traitor.
While he was hitting me, I slipped my right hand into the inside pocket of my jacket, where I kept a knuckle-duster. I put my fingers right through the holes, then suddenly pulled out my hand and punched him hard on the head. I was a bit sorry to hit him right in the area where he already had so many aches and pains, but it was the only way of stopping him. Sure enough he released his grip and sat down beside me, on the snow.
I lay there panting, unable to get up, watching him closely. He was touching his head where I’d hit him and with a disgusted grimace he kept kicking me lightly with his foot, more out of scorn than with the intention of hurting me.
When I got my breath back I propped myself up on my elbows:
‘What the hell got into you? Were you trying to kill me? What did I say?’
‘You talked about Hook, and now there’ll be trouble. He saved my life, he’s our brother. Why did you squeal to Uncle Kostich?’
At those words I felt a sharp pain in my stomach, I couldn’t believe it. I got up, brushed the snow off my jacket and trousers and, before walking on, turned my back on him. I wanted him to understand the lesson properly.
‘I praised Hook, you idiot – I defended him,’ I said. ‘And God willing, Uncle Kostich will help us to get him out of trouble.’
With that I set off, already knowing what would happen. For well over an hour we would walk like a theatre company: me in front, looking like Jesus just descended from the cross, with head held high and a gaze full of promises which loses itself cinematically in the horizon, and Mel behind, with shoulders drooping, all humble, with the expression of someone who’s just committed a shameful crime, forced to lurch like the hunchback of Notre-Dame and repeat the same words over and over again in a whimpering, piteous voice, like a monotonous prayer:
‘Come on, Kolima, don’t be angry. We had a misunderstanding. These things happen, don’t they?’
‘Bloody hell,’ I thought, ‘bloody hell!’
And so we left the Centre and the last row of old threestorey houses. We now had to walk across to the other side of the park, where there stood a hideous and depressing building, a palace which had been erected two centuries earlier as a lodge for the tsarina of Russia on her journeys into the borderlands. I know nothing about architecture, but even I could see that the palace was an ill-assorted jumble of styles: a bit of Middle Ages and a bit of Italian Renaissance, clumsily imitated by Russians. It was coarse, its ornamentation was completely out of character, and it was covered with mould. This ghastly place, which I thought more suitable for Satanic feasts and human sacrifices, was in fact used as a hospital for people suffering from tuberculosis.
In Bender the hospital was known as morilka, which in the old Indic language means something that suffocates you. The doctors who worked there were chiefly military medics employed by the penitentiary system – prison doctors, in other words. They came from all over the USSR. They would move to Bender for a few years with their families and then go away; their place would immediately be taken by others, who in turn, before leaving would suggest new changes – trivial and pointless revolutions. Those poor patients had grown accustomed to being constantly moved from one floor or wing to another. They were forced to see their lives drawing to an end in the midst of absolute chaos.
The hospital was of the ‘closed’ type – that is, it was guarded, like a normal prison, because many of the patients were ex-convicts. It was surrounded by barbed wire and had bars on the windows.
Smoking was forbidden in the building, but the nurses secretly brought in cigarettes and sold them to inveterate smokers at three times the normal cost.
Among the patients there were many who were only feigning illness: Authorities of the criminal world who by exploiting their connections had managed to have false medical certificates made out for them which declared them to be ‘terminal’. So they stayed in a comfortable hospital instead of a cold, damp, stinking prison. Whenever they wanted they had prostitutes brought in from outside; they organized parties with their friends and even meetings of Authorities at a national level. Anything was permitted and covered up, provided you paid for it.
The person who guaranteed the Authorities a happy stay in hospital was a woman, a fat nurse of Russian nationality and of a perennially cheerful disposition: Aunt Marusya. She seemed healthier than Our Lord: she had red cheeks and spoke in a loud and extremely powerful voice. She was very popular with the criminals, because there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them.
The hospital was divided into three non-communicating blocks. The first and most pleasant was exposed to the sun: it had big windows and a warm swimming-pool; it was the block for the terminally ill, where every patient had his own clean, warm little room and received constant attention from the staff. This was where the Authorities stayed: they pretended to be moribund but were really as healthy and strong as could be; they spent their days playing cards, watching American films on video, screwing the young nurses and receiving visits from their friends, who supplied them with all they needed for an agreeable life full of delights.