«Was it her idea?» he asked.
«Course, it was,» Coffin lied, knowing Saam wouldn't believe him. «I didn't make it easy. After all, she's your girlfriend…»
«There are plenty of girls,» said Saam, repeating what Coffin had said.
They embraced and went inside. They were hardly through the entryway before they were falling about laughing.
Meanwhile, Shorty was hiding behind an old barrel. Coffin had beckoned to him as he headed for the street and the cripple, hiding a gun in his shirt, stole into the yard like a cat. Coffin knew that Saam wouldn't have time to use his knife before being shot in the back. Saam too noticed that the cripple who had been setting out his game of patience on the floor had vanished and he felt his gaze wandering over him from his hiding place behind the rotting barrel.
That evening Saam swore to get revenge, hiding away the hurt that pierced his chest like a knife.
He didn't drive Severina away immediately. She followed him round like a beaten puppy, afraid to open her mouth, and when she lay down beside him, Saam would shove her off the bed and that's where she slept, on the floor, next to his slippers. He stopped taking her with him and for days at a time the girl would sit by the window, her eyes tracing the rain drops that trickled down the glass.
One evening Saam came home drunk with a girl who was roaring with laughter. She wandered around the flat, still in her stilettos and the click of her heels pounded in your temples. Saam spent the night with this new girlfriend, putting Severina outside, where she sat by the door, legs crossed, ears attuned to the slightest sound. In the morning, the girl carefully stepped across her, wiping her smudged mascara with the edge of her sleeve, while Saam held out her bag. Severina didn't go away, though. She kept watch for him by the door. As he locked the door, Saam kicked her, swearing through gritted teeth. Then he disappeared for a few days so that Severina went back to the children's home where the staff took her in without a word.
Even there, Coffin stalked her and Severina hid in her room whenever she saw his car parked by the fence. Then Coffin would send the boys to drag her out into the street and he would take her off into the forest to a banya on the side of a lake.
At the banya, the elderly attendant provided clean, crisp sheets and, looking at Severina, would say in a singsong drawl, «as soft as the first snow». It wasn't clear whether he meant the girl or the sheet.
Severina curled up in the sheet, biting her nails in silence and looking askance at Coffin. Furious at her indifference, the gangster was eaten up by jealousy.
«But I'd like to marry you,» he said huskily, sitting her on his lap.
Severina didn't believe him.
«One word from me and Saam's sweeping the streets!» he bragged. «I can kick him out of the gang if I want.»
Severina lay back and looked at her reflection in the mirrored ceiling, at Coffin and the syringe on the table. She swayed like a sleepwalker. «Soft as the first snow, soft as the first snow, softasthefirstsnow,» she repeated faster and faster until the words stopped making sense.
Furious, Coffin passed Severina on to a sidekick.
«Set her up somewhere. She can start dealing, whatever takes her fancy.»
Severina was passed around and now it was her men that she counted on her fingers, men whose faces she couldn't remember and whose names she got mixed up. Coffin sent her into schools to swap heroin for crumpled banknotes. She liked standing outside a school, listening to the cheerful chaos of break times. Sometimes she looked through the windows, mouth open, repeating what the teachers said. They seemed completely different to the lacklustre teachers at the children's home who were always gone too quickly for the children to get used to them.
«We've got to get that brat set up with one of our guys,» Coffin spat out one day, scratching the stubble on his chin. «She knows a lot. We can't let her go.»
«Who needs her?» said Saam dismissively, pursing his lips.
«I do!» hissed Shorty from his corner.
Boredom meant they set about the preparations as if they were giving away their only daughter. They decorated the house in white net, hanging it on the walls, wrapping it around the chairs and ceiling lights and draping it over the sofas. Falling about with laughter, they stuck paper angels cut out of newspaper onto the windows.
«We learnt that at the children's home,» boasted a boy who was skinny as a rake, had a squint and was diligently wielding a pair of scissors. «We cut snowflakes out every year.»
They plied Severina with alcohol from early morning so that she was wearing a silly smile as she looked at them with drink-filmed eyes. The cripple was puffed up with importance. His suit had been ironed and he had a faded flower in his buttonhole. Coffin gave the bride away, bestowing his blessing on bride and groom alike. The whole night was spent carousing and dancing, every toast preceded with a rousing «Kiss! Kiss» that reached the entire neighbourhood.
The moon was frozen to the frost-covered window and the old tape recorder croaked like it had a cold. Barely able to stand, Coffin pulled Severina up to dance, leaping around and shouting to a slow, syrupy, sentimental song. Then, when the tape changed to something with a bit of rhythm, he spun in a slow dance and Saam, drinking from the bottle, pointed it at him as if he was taking aim.
«Life's like a bottle of vodka,» Saam muttered drunkenly, his head on Shorty's shoulder. «You think just another shot or so and things will cheer up but the more you drink, the crappier you feel.»
«No,» laughed Shorty, shaking his head, «life's the bottle. And what you fill it in with, vodka, water or poison, is up to you. That's what freedom of will is,» he said, stressing every syllable.
As morning approached they jumped over the fence, all hot and bothered, and fell on the first person they came across who was going home after a night shift. They kicked him in the face till the dirty snow turned red and, abandoning him in the roadway, went off home, howling with laughter.
They woke up where they had fallen in a drunken sleep, some at the table, others on the floor or out in the yard, face down in the dirt.
«Get us some water!» rasped Coffin, rooting around in the ashtray. He pulled out the remains of a cigarette and lit it, coughing.
The cripple filled a pan and dragged it over to Coffin who clutched it greedily, spilling water down his front.
«We'll have a real wedding when she's eighteen!» he said with an evil grin, spotting Severina coming down stairs. Trembling, she was holding on to the wall and when Shorty reached out to her she shot out of the house to the accompaniment of Coffin's laughter.
An insult hurts like a splinter until it's taken out. The day after Coffin's funeral, Saam took a tied-up Shorty to the cemetery. He didn't know what he wanted revenge for — the evening the cripple had hidden behind the barrel or his wedding to Severina. The gang dug a fresh grave and threw Shorty in it. He wriggled like a worm and thumped on the lid of the coffin. When they had filled the hole in with earth, they drank to the memory of the dead.
Karimov, the factory manager, was looking listlessly at a cardboard model of the plant. Tiny pipes, production units, buildings, quarries and railway tracks: scale models of the real things. To Karimov this was like being God. He imagined someone up above, looking listlessly down at the real factory, while he, Karimov, scurried like an ant around the edge of that someone's table, which to him was the whole universe.
«Your father is God!» his foster father used to tell him, poking him in the chest. «And you shall have no other gods.» Karimov didn't believe there was no God. He sought Him passionately in sermons and travelled the world on pilgrimage until he was deadly tired and filled with hatred for people and God. «God exists and he is as evil and cruel as my father,» he decided. He drew a line under his search for God.