"Russian Alcoholics on their Way to Nirvana" by Laura Beloivan
Translated into English by Invir Lazarev
In the first half of December, my husband and I, lost track of time and missed the six year anniversary of the day we sold the apartment in Vladivostok and moved to a village. There are a lot of city people here these days. Even though we’d left the city, the city followed us, bringing the urban lifestyle to the countryside, along with urban notions of comfort and infrastructure.
But townspeople, that's a different story. Our new neighbors in the village look smile at all of the newcomers. The village folk have three cows, thirty pigs,and a garden without a single weed. They have to work during the day and after they come home from work in the evenings they have to toil on their farms. Despite this, they're always smiling and neatly dressed. The formerly urban new-comers, who go to their jobs in the city, where they too work until the evening also wear clean clothes.
They buy empty plots in the village, take truckloads of garbage out, and in a flash lay out the gardens, build cute two-story houses on high foundations, and move in all in one summer. Despite the skepticism of neighbors (let's remember, three cows and thirty pigs), they engage local alcoholics to work. But alcoholics do not want to work, and so many lots remain vacant and undeveloped. Here and there among the vacant lots one might find one- and two-story wooden barracks built in the fifties.
The barracks are burning every winter; there is lousy old wiring, calculated according to standards that were in practice more than half a century ago.
It does not stand up to the heating know-how of local alcoholics - a very special kind of people, about whom the townspeople know almost nothing, since they think that the village alcoholic is no different from the urban drunkard.
This is not true.
The village alcoholic can drink away any future coal and future wood fuel long before the cold starts, but his self-sufficiency remains with him almost to the very end.
Therefore, when winter suddenly comes, the village alcoholic does not seek earnings, but begins to bask by using a crowbar.
Twelve kilowatts, destined for the entire barracks, rush along the frail wires into a socket, into which a metal bar is inserted; the bar is red hot and the whole place just feels like a warm blanket.
Seven barracks and some huts burned down within six years.
True, one of the seven barracks was burned not because a crowbar was used as a space heater, but during the New Year celebration.
New Year's Eve a very important holiday for the Russian.
Only one woman had a bad day, and she was not in the mood for a party.
She was offended, so she locked in her sleeping friends,and set fire to the den and left.
Seven people were burned alive. The burned two-story building stood for a while, looking at passers-by through its terrible black windows - until a year ago when it was finally demolished and the site was leveled as if nothing had happened.
We were also called the "townies", which means we were different from people around here. However, we are not trying to get local drunks to come to work anymore. In addition, over the last three years have died many of them.The kind of persons that we liked the most. Some of them were acquaintances we met in the early days of our village life.
Boris, who caught shrimp with his own underpants, died. He would go into the shallow waters of the local gulf, take off his underwear, pull them onto a forked stick and rake it along the muddy bottom. Then, he would put his haul into a bucket that he would carry tied to his neck. When the bucket was filled, Boris rinsed the underpants of the silt, put them on and sold the shrimp door-to-door. Whenever he caught shrimps, he usually drank windshield washer fluid for three days and said to himself that he worked every fourth day. As a consequence, his skin turned yellow and he died of liver failure. During our first two years, we also bought shrimp from Boris. Suddenly, he stopped catching them- he started his path toward achieving enlightenment.
Another person who died was a huge guy named Pavlik. Pavlik looked like a mountain, on top of which sat motionless a human head with thick pink lips from ear to ear. But, there was no neck on Pavlik’s body. So, he would be still able catch shrimp. But, he would have absolutely no place to put them in, except to tie the bucket to his wiener, but who does that? Before enlightenment, Pavlik was sometimes called to break something monolithic - made from iron or stone. Pavlik also worked by removing items for a small fee, or, even better, for a gallon of windshield washer fluid.
He died like this: there was a fight and Pavlik was hit on the head with an ax. But he did not notice and managed to fight a little more. Then, when he was halfway home, he fell down. He soon died.
Our friend Sanya, who came included with the house, died.
A stoker, a handover from previous homeowners, he also lit the oven for us at first - he came at seven in the morning, took out the ashes from the ancient, first generation, solid fuel boiler, stuffed it full with newspapers, coal and wood, lit it all up and went back home before dinner, then came once again in the evening.
He lit the stove when there was good weather, and in severe frosts, he didn’t come to heat the boiler because it was cold outside.
Then we changed the old boiler for a new one, stuffed with electronics, working on kerosene and electricity, but Sanya still considered himself our benefactor for a long time, doing various activities, including absolutely idiotic things which were unnecessary for us, though we still paid him: without work, Sanya was roaming around the village as useful as a hole in the head , and we felt sorry for him.
He used to be a miner, but the mines were closed, and he could drink not only on Fridays, but anytime you wanted.
Sanya would go on a binge six times a year for three weeks each. The first week he'd start revving up, the second week he'd spend blacked out, and the third week he'd slow down to end on a miraculous resurrection to normalcy.
As an alky, Sanya was an absolutely see-no-evil person and was easy-going about his life.
He only wanted to spent some time living in warm countries but did not really believe in their existence.
”Look, in Africa it’s snowing in the winter too,” Sanya said. ”I read in one book that even the Africans were frozen there.”
For a year and a half until his death, his three-week phases merged into one endless binge.
Once we picked him up in the snow and drove him home.
We were almost sure that one day he would die in the winter, he would simply freeze to death in a ravine, but Sanya died in September, at the height of our local summer.
He felt ill, and two days later his soul was gone - perhaps for exploration, to search for warm regions for the next winter - and never returned to his body. It probably found Africa, where there is no snow. Sanya was 47 at the time, but he looked like a heavy seventy.
But the last of Sanya's friends is still alive. This is our neighbor, Seryoga, a former fisherman. He lives beyond the wasteland. When we moved to the village, Seryoga had just returned from his final voyage and since then has not worked anywhere else. Now he's old, about fifty, and he's weak and walks with a stick. In winter, he burns fenceposts in the stove, in the spring, he plants onions in a meter square patch in the garden, and, most importantly, throughout the year he quarrels with motherfuckers. From the outskirts of the village, one can hear clearly: 'Motherfuuuuuuuckers!' Seryoga screams, 'fuckooofff!'.
At first we were sure that this was how he would chase wild cats from the garden when they came to trample his onion shoots. But Seryoga screams not only in the spring and summer but, like, all the time. Once we saw him walking along a completely deserted street, walking and yelling these same words. That's when we realized that the motherfuckers - they are not outside, but inside Seryoga, a part of Seryoga's inner world, the only part with which he is not in harmony: everything is fine, except that's he's plagued by the motherfuckers, but that's it.
In a mysterious way, Valya, a Sanya's former neighbor, is alive too. Sanya called Valka the queen of the cemetery. Valya, like no one else, was able to orient herself in a disorderly cemetery labyrinth of crosses and pyramids. And, she always knew, on which graves you could find a fresh snack - candy, cookies or even a boiled egg.*(Translator's note: The relatives visit the grave of the deceased every year, usually during the Easter holidays - by tradition, they tidy up the grave and also bring sweets, Easter eggs or a glass of vodka to the graveside for the deceased.)
Valya is aware of all memorial dates. She track the funeral events of the village as the ocean gulls track the death of seal offspring on the sanctuary islands.
Valka is about fifteen years older than Sanya. Sanya died two years ago. Valka, who's lost all of her weight and looks like a mummy with brown skin in the last six years, suddenly has a young boyfriend: a labor migrant from Uzbekistan who settled in the village. He’s a thin short dwarf who hardly speaks Russian. Valka wears a mink hat whether in summer or winter and summer and winter alike the dwarf carries her fur coat in his hands. Yes, Valka has a fur coat, but she mostly wears a quilted waistcoat.
***
Over time, of course, it dawned on us the value of washer fluid for windshield wipers. Of course, it is cheaper than even the cheapest lotion,and it is very handily packaged in a plastic container - it will not break if you accidentally drop it; but these are not it’s main advantages. The fact is that the washer fluid lightens the mind in a special way - it helps to see things more clearly. His fans have transparent eyes and complete clarity in their heads. They live in harmony with the universe, which is always with them and who is friendly to them even when they are hit on the head with an ax. The only thing is that it drives you to the grave in a short time. In the village everyone knows this, although there are exceptions (Valka, for example), but there are very few exceptions.
About four years ago my husband and I were buying some kind of food in a local store, and we remembered that the windshield washer tank of our jeep was empty. My god, what a range of emotions we made a saleswoman feel. From amazement and sorrow to the desire to reason with the poor, who stupidly stepped on a slippery slope. 'Why do you need it?' she exclaimed,'so you'd better take vodka, but do not take this poison! You shouldn't!'
We were touched, but a little offended: to all the other villagers it was sold out without as many words.
Recently Val'ka and the Dwarf came to us to steal the iron cover from the village water pump, and we and our neighbors booted them out. They left without a murmur, seeming resigned to live and let live; but a hundred meters later they snatched a wheelbarrow from another neighbor, he was carting out the snow from his yard to the ravine, went to the toilet for a minute, left the cart near the gate, got back and looked up- his property had gone walkabout. The neighbor took his wheelbarrow back, but didn't hit Val'ka and Uzbek, that's not the way things are done around here, but they'd probably never notice even if they were heat. This is the highest, unattainable stage of enlightenment. I've lived in the village for six years, and I have learned to see and respect it.
.
I will not achieve this unity with the cosmos ever, and you won’t either. Let's face it.
We're all miles from it. It's like walking along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok to Moscow station and back, while in a blizzard while wearing felt boots without socks, and without even drinking coffee in the morning. But both you and I (and all of us in general) will do our best- so that we have coffee in the morning, so that our feet are not barefoot, and so we do not have to walk. In general, what the hell is this walk, when there are bonus miles and you can fly to Argentina? We haven't been there- we should go.
We've got more on our plates than worrying about some mystical enlightenment. But they - and Valka, and Seryoga, and Pavlik, who did not notice his own death, and Oleg, who had drowned in a bowl, and a whole bunch of guys - absolutely do not care about Argentina, and Transsib, or other senseless shit. They don't give a damn about life at all, because life for them is not a very important thing: rather, it is a minor setback on their way- just a moment of drawn-out waiting; a small mishap. The period between the two states of out-of-body experiences.
I look out the window: Seryoga is walking with a limp along our deserted street, drunk, in flip-flops,sure, with bare feet, dressed in a T-shirt,and torn pants with a big hole through which you can see his lilac knee.The snow crunches with each step he takes. I know where he's going; to a row of mailboxes, which are nailed to a Manchurian nut tree in front of my house. Seryoga has gone to the nut tree almost every single day for the last six years. Seryoga hobbles from side to side, remarkably quickly, almost at a jog. He is ruled by his inner motherfuckers. How little time he has left to run before the final separation from the body - no one knows.
Respect to you, lilac knee, you are a part of a bodhisattva who made his choice, who can walk barefoot in the snow, free, free from peace, war and the world, indifferent to cause-and-effect relationships, to presidents of all countries wholesale and retail, to the supremacy of being over consciousness, to the standard of living and the external gross product. But Seryoga is still dependent on daily visits to the tree with iron mailboxes on the trunk. 'Crunch- crunch'. Not looking around, not looking at the sky, not looking where he's going. He rests on the nut tree and unlocks the mailbox. And then he locks it, turns around and goes back, bearing a huge, full of super-content, infinitely important today and loud on the whole street knowledge about the womb of the mailbox:'Fucking empty'.