These Russians were mostly short and stocky, and all of them were timid, shying away as we came closer to them. But Keats called out a word that sounded like “Tuhvaritch” a couple of times and that sort of settled them back down.
Old Keats was carrying a lantern in one hand and his book on Russian in the other. Shiny and I brought up the rear, leading the mules.
“Ask them if they talk American,” Shad said.
Old Keats thought hard and then said, “Gahvareet Amerikansky?”
Those in front stared at him like he was crazy, and a couple of them toward the back snickered slightly.
“Stupid bastards,” Shad grumbled. “Not one of ’em talks American!”
But then one broad-shouldered young man near Keats answered something in a low voice.
Old Keats was as excited as a kid. He almost yelled, “I understood him! He said he speaks Russian!”
“That’s a godsend,” Shad said dryly. “We found a Russian who speaks Russian. Tell ’im what we want, an’ that we’ll pay for it.”
It was an uphill job for Keats, but he finally managed to explain to them, mostly through the young man, that we wanted all the tubs or big pots or kettles we could get. He used his hands a lot to describe the biggest size possible.
When this was done and all of them were finally nodding and saying “Dah,” the four of us started on into Vladivostok.
It was a dumpy, dark, deserted town, with narrow dirt streets going up and down and curving around every which way. The houses and small buildings were made of plain unfinished wood planks, most of which seemed to have been nailed up by carpenters who had failing eyesight. Once inside the town, you got the feeling there wasn’t a straight line left in the world. But still and all the houses must have been built securely, because once in a while high winds would come shrieking in off the ocean that would have knocked anything flat that wasn’t pretty sturdy.
About our only greeting was from some occasional unfriendly dogs, who barked from a distance and slunk away growling if we passed by up close.
And then we saw a few lights from windows in a small building down closer to the water. There were three sleepy little horses that looked like undersized mustangs tied up outside, and there was a small hand-painted sign hanging over the door.
“What’s it say?” Shiny asked Keats, staring at the strange, meaningless lettering.
“Hell,” Keats muttered, “could be Chinese for all I know. But I think it’s a bar.”
We tied the mules to the hitching rail near the horses and went into the small building.
Old Keats looked around and said hesitantly, “I guess this is one a’ those bars without a bar.”
We were in a plain, poorly lighted room with nothing more than six or eight wobbly tables and some rickety chairs in it. Sitting at a table near the corner were three men in flea-bitten fur hats and thick brown homespun coats that came down to their ankles. They were all dressed enough alike to maybe be in some sort of uniform. They were drinking something that looked like water, and all three of them stared up at us with just barely controlled shock, paying particular attention to Shiny and his jet-black skin.
Then a fat man came out of a back door and we saw our first familiar sight in Russia because he was wearing a filthy grease-stained apron that had probably been white some years back.
“Thank God,” Keats murmured. “A bartender.”
Seeing us, he stopped short. Then overcoming his surprise, he started slowly toward us, asking some kind of a question in a deep, rasping voice. Like the others, he seemed particularly fascinated by Shiny.
Keats said just one word, so I remember it all right. The way things turned out later I’d sure as hell have remembered it anyway. He said, “Vautkee.” Then he added to us, “That’s their name for whiskey.”
The bartender waved us to a table and went back out the rear door. As we were sitting down he came back quickly with a bottle full of colorless liquid like the Russians in the corner were drinking and four glasses. He put it on the table and Shad poured a glassful. “Hope this stuff ain’t as weak as it looks.” There was a silence in the room as he lifted the glass, looked at it, sniffed it, and then shrugged. “Sure don’t smell like much.” The bartender and the three men in the corner were frowning at him with close, curious interest.
“Well,” Keats said, “try it.”
Shad raised the glass to his lips and downed it in two, or maybe three, gulps. I couldn’t tell exactly because at one point his throat seemed to become briefly paralyzed. He finished it all and put the glass down without a word. I could tell by his dead-set face he was either awful thoughtful or suffering something fierce. As Shiny pointed out later, Shad “looked like an iron man who’d just swallowed a large cannon ball.”
“I think,” Shad said finally, in an unusually husky voice, “this may serve our purpose.”
“How ’bout us tryin’ it?” I asked.
Shad just nodded, and I poured for Keats, Shiny and myself.
“Well, here’s how,” I said to them, raising my glass.
But the way I did it wasn’t how at all.
I took one gulp and thought I’d die right there on the spot for sure. Pure, burning fire started scorching and searing down my throat at the same time that a massive flood of salty tears surged up around my eyes.
Gagging as slightly as possible and forcing the nearly blinding tears back with fast, hard blinks, I put the drink down. Shiny was putting his nearly full glass back down too, not hardly breathing at all.
“Embarrassin’,” I gasped.
Shiny just nodded, not yet able to speak.
Between short, mercifully cooling gulps of air, and trying to joke away my own failure as a drinker, I at last managed to tell him, “You almost went white there, Shiny—or at least gray—if I can make light of the subject.”
Shiny swallowed slowly and then said, “Any—any color’s better’n pale green, like you.”
Old Keats had finished his entire glass, and without any noticeable side effects at all he shook his head admiringly. “Now that, by God, is one hell of a drink!”
“Tell him that we want t’ buy a lot of it,” Shad said.
“Vautkee, ochen horosho!” Keats said to the bartender, pulling up a chair and gesturing for the man to join us.
The fat man sat down, but he was suspicious and uncomfortable.
With the help of a newly poured drink and his language book, Old Keats went into an earnest conversation with him, using his hands and checking back and forth in his book from time to time. The bartender stayed unsmiling, just short of being hostile.
Finally Keats turned to Shad. “He and a couple of friends make it themselves for the whole town. I think he’s got about fifty bottles here, and a keg of it at his house, I think. Which is about another forty bottles, I guess.”
“Tell ’im we’ll take it all.”
“I already did, I think. But I think what he’s curious about now is how much’re we gonna pay him. And what kind of money.”
Shad took a silver dollar out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. “In American dollars like this.”
The fat man picked up the dollar and examined it closely on both sides, frowning. Finally he pointed at a part of the coin and said something to Keats, who started looking through his book.
At last he said, “He wants t’ know what that thing in the lady’s hair is, with those spikes above it.”
“It’s a headband that says ‘Liberty.’” Shad leaned forward impatiently. “Tell him what it means and tell him that’s a word no goddamned Russian could ever understand in the first place!”