While exercising in the yard, I see an old man sitting by the wall. He looks vaguely familiar. I go over and — oh Lord — it’s Igor Alexandrovich. He has aged. Now he resembles a decrepit old lion whose shaggy black mane is grey at the roots where filth has not yet penetrated. Igor Alexandrovich screws up his eyes and studies me for a long time. Finally he mumbles: “Ivan Andreyevich! Is it you?”
“The very same.”
“Have you been here for a long time?”
“I’ll be out in a week.”
“Which cell are you in?”
“Six.”
“Would you be so kind as to take me in? Do you have enough room?”
“We’ll make some.”
Igor Alexandrovich jumps up and comes over to me. Bending his head close to mine he whispers: “Do you have lice in there?”
“Not until now,” I reply, catching sight of a huge louse on his coat lapel. I point to it. Despite his poor sight, Igor Alexandrovich catches his household pet with a deft pinch and for some reason drops it into his pocket. Our exercise period ends and we are locked up again.
A tramp in my cell says that for the last few months he has seen Igor Alexandrovich begging in the subway near the Collective Farmer cinema. “When he has enough money he runs to the chemists for eau de Cologne, which he drinks from the bottle right there in the shop. When he gets too cold and tired in the subway he goes to the Collective Farmer. The cashier usually lets him in without paying. He sleeps through the double bill of Indian films, warms up a bit and then returns to his pitch in the subway. At night he dosses in a basement in Chelyuskintsev Street.”
That evening the guards bring Igor Alexandrovich into our cell. They have sheared his mane and treated him to a half-hearted disinfection process. To keep him at a distance we put him to sleep on a separate bunk which we call the thieves’ bed. Igor Alexandrovich takes this as a mark of special respect.
That evening he entertains us with a monologue on Rasputin. Our cell mates listen open-mouthed. Believing Rasputin to have been the lover of Catherine the Great, they hope to hear some dirty stories. Encouraged by his audience, Igor Alexandrovich strides up and down the cell, gesticulating wildly. Suddenly he stops in the middle of a word and crashes to the floor with an demonic cry. White foam bubbles from the corners of his mouth. We rush to help him, trying to make sure he doesn’t bite his tongue. I have seen alcoholic epilepsy before in people who stop drinking too abruptly. We bang on the door, calling for a doctor, but the nurse has already gone home and the guards can’t be bothered to ring for an ambulance.
Gradually Igor Alexandrovich’s trembling ceases and he falls asleep, snoring loudly through his nose. We lift him onto his bed. We’re all frightened. Perhaps every one of us is thinking to himself, ‘That’s my fate too.’
When Igor Alexandrovich awakens he remembers nothing. He rises and paces about the cell. We are all silent. He comes up to me, his head trembling: “Could you tell me the time please?”
“I left my watch at home on the piano.”
“Yes, yes, it is easily done,” he nods. “And may I ask what your name is, if that is not confidential?”
“Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich.”
Igor Alexandrovich knocks at the cell door asking to be let out. When the sergeant comes he asks: “Would you be so kind as to tell me where I am?”
“Up your arse,” replies the sergeant and goes off to lie down again.
After a few hours Igor Alexandrovich recovers his senses. I tell him about his fit. He sits on his bed lost in thought for a long time. Then he looks at me with tears in his eyes: “Finita la comedia.”
As a doctor he understands very well what has happened and knows his end is near. “Ivan Andreyevich,” he whispers to me, “I pray that death may come sooner rather than later. I would like to be done with this life.”
The next day Igor Alexandrovich has another fit, an even more violent one. We make a terrible racket but still they refuse to call an ambulance. After all, it’s not worth going to any trouble over an old beggar.
I do not see Igor Alexandrovich die for I’m released the following day and I take the first train out of Tblisi.
I go west, to the town of Zestafoni, joining a group of tramps who sleep under the carwash by the fruit market. Tramps regard Zestafoni as their capital, perhaps because the local police are lenient and no one has ever been jailed for vagrancy in this town. When the bazaar opens in the morning I earn a few roubles helping farmers carry goods to their stalls.
Most traders sell chacha under the counter. The police take their cut and turn a blind eye. Real chacha is made from grape skins but this is only for personal consumption. The bazaar variety is made from rotten fruit and anything that will ferment. Some brewers fortify their chacha with luminal and calcium carbide.
Near the entrance to the bazaar there are a couple of kiosks which sell odds and ends: envelopes, cosmetics and shoe-laces. They are owned by two Georgians, Archil and Soso. One evening as we sit outside the car-wash Archil comes up with a three-litre cask of chacha. He makes an offer: “I’ll give you this if you pick up Soso’s kiosk during the night and move it further away from the bazaar entrance.”
“What about the cops?”
“I’ll take care of them. You’re not breaking into the kiosk.”
“Okay.”
We find an old telegraph pole, chop it into rollers, and at night move Soso’s kiosk about 100 metres away from the entrance to the bazaar.
The next day Soso approaches us, offering another cask if we’ll roll his kiosk back and drag Archil’s away. This goes on for a week. There’s no enmity between the two men; they’re simply having a joke with each other. They have a sea of chacha and they think up this game out of boredom. Everyone has to find a way of entertaining himself.
There is a tramp in our circle who goes by the name of Lousy Vassya. Lousy Vassya has lived in Zestafoni for years. Everyone knows him; some even pity him. All year round he wraps himself in a dirty woollen coat which has not a single button. He likes to sit in the sun scratching himself. A tall and sturdy peasant, he’s bloated from constant drunkenness and unable to do any form of work. From time to time a woman approaches Vassya and surreptitiously holds out a small medicine bottle. Reaching deep under his armpits he catches a few lice and offers them to the woman at a rouble a piece. His price is as stable as the London stock exchange. Georgian folk medicine recommends live lice as a cure for jaundice. They are stirred into yoghurt and fed unnoticed to the patient.
A few days before Mayday the bazaar director Vakho comes to us. “If you go on the First of May demonstration I’ll give you a barrel of wine.”
Tempted, we get down to business. We find a couple of poles and Vakho gives us three metres of red linen. We boil glue on our bonfire and mix it with chalk to make paint. Then we try to decide on a slogan. I propose Lenin is with us! but the others reject that as too inflammatory. Peace to the World! is too innocuous. Finally we agree on Zestafoni tramps salute the First of May!
Neatly stencilling the slogan, we hide the banner under the carwash and go around to other places in town where tramps congregate. Most of them sleep outside the metal plant where waste pig-iron is dumped. These tramps are distinguished by their burn scars and blackened clothing. Some agree to join us on the parade.