The Bickford Fuse

by Andrey Kurkov

Genres: Literary Fiction; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Catch-22 meets The Brothers Karamazov in the last great satire of the Soviet Era

The Great Patriotic War is stumbling to a close, but a new darkness has fallen over Soviet Russia. And for a disparate, disconnected clutch of wanderers - many thousands of miles apart but linked by a common goal - four parallel journeys are just beginning.

Gorych and his driver, rolling through water, sand and snow on an empty petrol tank; the occupant of a black airship, looking down benevolently as he floats above his Fatherland; young Andrey, who leaves his religious community in search of a new life; and Kharitonov, who trudges from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad, carrying a fuse that, when lit, could blow all and sundry to smithereens.

Written in the final years of Communism, The Bickford Fuse is a satirical epic of the Soviet soul, exploring the origins and dead-ends of the Russian mentality from the end of World War Two to the Union's collapse. Blending allegory and fable with real events, and as deliriously absurd as anything Kurkov has written, it is both an elegy for lost years and a song of hope for a future not yet set in stone.

Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Dear Readers!

There are nations with great, complex histories, nations that have seen much blood and many tragedies, nations that are so hopelessly bound by their histories that they cannot move forward into the future, or even into a normal “present”. Perhaps the most striking example of such a nation in today’s world is Russia, which, under Boris Yeltsin, seemed to have made a concerted effort to escape the vicious circle of its history and move forward into the modern world. In his freewheeling and – in keeping with Russian tradition – rather harsh and cruel manner, Yeltsin worked to tear Russia away from its Soviet past. But he could not bring it off. I wonder whether he himself drew comparisons between his own policy and the policy implemented by Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin’s death in 1953. Maybe not, but what Khrushchev did was indeed quite similar, and just as harsh. Like Yeltsin, Khrushchev was guided by political expediency, not by the rule of law. Khrushchev dreamed of a modernised Soviet Union, while Yeltsin dreamed of a civilised, democratic Russia. In both cases, the result was the same: a return to the past.

When I was writing The Bickford Fuse, Yeltsin was merely collecting his thoughts, while Khrushchev had faded into ancient history. To me, however, this “ancient” history was vital. I kept trying to understand what had been happening in society, among ordinary Soviet people, when – high above their heads, up in the Kremlin – questions of enormous significance were being resolved; these decisions would determine the fate of the nation – of more than two hundred million citizens who had defended their homeland during the Second World War, who had rebuilt its devastated industrial base with cheerful songs on their lips, who had returned from the camps of the Gulag in silence, and who, never breaking that silence, had lived out their difficult lives. I kept trying to understand how they had perceived their new, post-war “Khrushchevian” reality – to understand what had prevented Soviet society and the Soviet political elite from treating Khrushchev’s liberalising “thaw” as the starting point of a new era in Soviet history. And as I worked on this novel, I found my answer: Khrushchev’s efforts to modernise the country were blocked by “Soviet man”. And that same “Soviet man” would block Yeltsin. That very same “Soviet man” now supports Vladimir Putin in all his efforts, hoping that he will return the nation to a mythical past which the Russian people have learned to regard with a kind of religious pride, a past they worship more than God himself.

This novel is about “Soviet man” – a man who is neither bad nor good, but simply Soviet. It explores his psychology, the nature of his thoughts. It explores Soviet man and “his” nation. The Bickford Fuse was the first of three novels in which I attempted to trace the evolution of Soviet man’s utopian mentality. I spent four years writing it, and, for me, it remains the dearest and most important of all my works. The novel was not easy to write, and I realise that reading it might also prove challenging. But I am sure that if you are willing to enter its world, you will not need four years to follow its characters on their journeys, to live alongside them through that most trying and most interesting, half-real, half-fantastic time between the end of the Second World War and the eclipse of Nikita Khrushchev’s political career, accelerated as it was by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

ANDREY KURKOV

The city slept lightly. It dreamt of a fish – a huge, wide flounder blocking out the sky. And if the flounder blocked out the sky, that meant it wished good things for the city. The city had long yearned for good things. The lone walls of gutted houses were hysterically afraid of the wind, while people were afraid of the crippled houses, avoiding them, keeping a full block away. The tall “single-wallers” looked like dominoes standing on edge. If one of these dominoes were to collapse, everybody thought, the others would also fall, one by one, rumbling and raising dust.

But there was no wind. The “single-wallers” stood motionless.

The town slept.

It dreamt of a fish.

At half past two in the morning the city was roused from its light slumber. The engine of a big black truck started in one of the tumbledown courtyards. Then the truck turned on its lights and rode out into the street. The city blinked, lighting one of its windows, and watched it go. It knew that truck. That truck wished it no harm.

So the city went back to sleep.

The truck stopped at a checkpoint, its motor humming. A man in uniform emerged from the booth, shone his torch into the cab, nodded silently, and lifted the barrier.

“Who was that?” asked the guard’s partner, lying across the chairs placed against the wall.

“Searchlight operators.” The guard on duty yawned and sat down at the table, with its electric lamp, so as to pick up where he had left off – staring blankly into the middle of an open book. He was too sleepy to read. He simply hunted for the shortest and longest words.

Slowly, feeling the dirt road out with its headlights, the truck pulled further and further away from the city.

There were two men in the cab.

“I think it tapers in the east,” suggested the passenger, eyeing the glowing tip of his cigarette.

“Don’t think so . . .” the driver calmly replied, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Then why don’t the airships rise in the air?”

The driver laughed.

Suddenly something rattled against the hood.

“Again!” The driver slammed on the brakes and let out a heavy sigh.

“No surprise there,” the passenger commented indifferently. “Just more proof.”

They got out of the cab. The driver ran a finger along the shallow dent in the hood and looked up cautiously at the inscrutable black sky.

“Well, then – on we go?” the passenger either asked or proposed.

The driver hesitated. Deep in thought, he bit his lower lip and didn’t answer. Then he silently climbed back into the cab and started the engine.

The passenger took his place, casting a questioning glance at his friend.

“Alright . . .” the driver mumbled uncertainly, and they drove off.

“Pity they bumped off Gorych,” the passenger said after a pause, and struck a match, lighting another cigarette.

“Are those Belomors?”2 asked the driver.

The passenger handed him a cigarette.

“It was our fault,” the driver said grimly, after a deep puff. “We shouldn’t have followed his lead. We’d still be driving together, the three of us.”

“Yes.” The passenger nodded.

“And you’re sure they shot him?”

“In accordance with martial law . . .” The passenger monotonously quoted that familiar phrase from the announcements posted all across the city.

“Don’t you worry, they’ll get us too – in ‘accordance with martial law’. We’ll get to see Gorych soon enough.” The driver exhaled cigarette smoke and turned on the wipers.

“You nuts?” the passenger asked, taken aback.

“The engine’s quiet,” the driver explained. “And I’ve had it up to here with this camouflaged silence!” He ran his index finger across his throat.

The passenger shrugged.

The dirt road ran up into the hills. The truck drove slowly, blindly following the wheel-ruts. Its headlights picked out a wooden mushroom by the side of the road – a pre-war bus stop. A man sat on the ground beneath it, his back propped against the mushroom’s stem. Spotting the truck, he jumped to his feet. A machine gun appeared in his hands. He stepped out from beneath the mushroom and fired a few rounds in the air, ordering the truck to stop.

“Looks like we’re in for it,” the driver said cheerlessly, and hit the brakes.

“What if we slam on the gas and knock him clean off?” the passenger suggested.

“This isn’t a two-seater, dammit! The truck bed alone weighs God-knows-what, and there’s another ton inside!”

In the meantime, the man had come up to the cab on the driver’s side, pulled the door open, stepped back, and shouted, “Come out and get shot!”

The driver squinted, trying to make out the attacker’s face, but all he could see was a military uniform, the same as theirs. The stranger’s voice seemed too familiar.

“Kill the lights,” the passenger whispered.

The driver was suddenly delighted. Why hadn’t he thought of that right away? He switched them off – and darkness instantly filled the space vacated by the light.

The driver and passenger sat perfectly still, deathly afraid of giving themselves up with even a barely audible rustle.

“It’s no good, fellas!”

“But that’s . . .” the startled passenger whispered, “that’s Gorych.”

“From where? The beyond?” the driver objected.

“Gorych!” the passenger cried out softly.

“Finally! Recognise me?” they heard from the darkness. “I knew it was you straight away!”

The driver switched on the headlights as well as the lights in the cab. A familiar unshaven face appeared at the door.

“So what did they . . .?” The driver stared at him.

“Whaddaya mean, ‘what’? Pretty obvious. Had plans to finish me off, but didn’t do in time. I knocked out the guard, grabbed the machine gun – and it’s off into the dark!”

“So they’re looking for you?” The passenger nodded.

“Yep. The only place left for me is up there.” Gorych pointed to the sky.

“Good luck finding your way.” The driver grinned. “Get in the back, under the tarp.”

“And where’re you fellas heading?”

“East,” answered the passenger. “Want to check there.”

The truck began creeping over the hills.

“It’s a good thing he’s got a machine gun,” said the passenger. “But it’s too bad they tore the epaulettes off his shirt. The first check – and it’s all of us, ‘in accordance with martial law’.”

“So let’s go ahead and rip our epaulettes off, too,” the driver suggested. “Take the weight off our shoulders . . .”

“No, we’re on a mission, after all . . .”

“That’s a laugh.” The driver grinned.

They heard a persistent drumming on the back of the cab. The driver braked and slid open the little door.

“Whaddaya want?”

“We’re here!” Gorych answered.

“You sure?”

“I thought I saw it.”

The two men in the cab exchanged spiteful glances, then stepped out together.

“Uncover it!” the driver commanded.

The tarp crackled in Gorych’s hands. He panted, feeling the pressure.

The driver and passenger climbed onto the back to help. With movements perfected by several years of work they pulled the tarpaulin slip-cover off a huge searchlight, folded it up, and placed it in the corner.

Gorych carefully wiped the glass face with a cloth.

“God be with you,” the passenger said, almost in a whisper.

The driver leaned over and flicked the switch. A fiery point appeared inside the searchlight, spreading gradually across the parabolic reflector.

“Let’s aim it vertically!” Gorych proposed.

The driver agreed. They loosened the clamps, lined the drum up so that the beam was perpendicular to the ground, and fastened it again.

The searchlight was slowly coming to life. At first, a hardly visible little column of scattered light reached into the sky; some five minutes later, the light focused, becoming bright and monolithic. The column rose ever higher above the ground. Gorych, the driver, and the passenger observed it tensely, their heads thrown back.

“Taking a long time to warm up,” Gorych said, shaking his head.

“An old piece of equipment.” The driver nodded.

“But it takes even longer to cool down,” sighed the passenger. “With this thing, you won’t dissolve into darkness instantly. Better step back.”

They retreated about twenty metres from the truck.

The beam slowly rose upwards. Suddenly it stopped, as if it had struck some kind of opaque barrier.

“What did I tell you!” the passenger exclaimed joyfully.

The driver and Gorych were silent. The driver was tired of straining his neck. He rubbed the back of his head as he lowered it.

“And what’s the point – even if you’re right?” he suddenly asked the passenger.

The passenger stopped smiling and looked at the driver with a somewhat bewildered expression.

“Whaddaya mean? But that’s our only way out!” he began to explain.

“I see it,” Gorych said loudly and abruptly.

The passenger stared at the driver triumphantly.

The driver glanced up.

“Yes, seems you’re right . . .” he muttered. “Well, what now?”

The sound of a volley reached them from the direction of the city. A moment later, a shell shot across the bright beam of the searchlight, like a fly buzzing around a candle flame, and burst up ahead on the dirt road. Clods of earth and shrapnel rattled dully along the ground and against the truck. The searchlight operators dropped down and pressed themselves against the resistant, inanimate soil, which was devoid of even the barest traces of grass.

Shells fell one after the other. The beam of light had served the artillery battery’s maddened commander as a signal to open fire. It’s hard to keep your wits about you when you spend three years on heightened combat readiness in the complete absence of hostilities.

Gorych jumped up and rushed headlong for the truck. The driver, raising himself up just slightly, followed him with his eyes, while the passenger was preserving his face for a brighter future. The daredevil leapt onto the back and flicked the switch.

The beam of light began to shrink and dissipate, mingling with the darkness.

Gorych awkwardly leaned over the side and jumped down.

The next shell lifted a few cubic metres of clay soil into the sky and scattered it all around. A lump of clay the size of a good watermelon from Kherson hit the passenger on the spine between the shoulder blades. The passenger hiccupped and froze. It seemed to him that an instant paralysis had seized all his limbs, and though he felt the presence of a conscious life within him, he could not use it.

The passenger stared blankly into the gloom called earth. He could distinctly feel its indifferent cold with the tip of his nose, but his eyes saw nothing before them. A surge of desperation made him want to clench his teeth, but he couldn’t even do that. Only his eyes would obey him, and he was free to open or close them at his discretion. He suddenly felt disgusted by this limited freedom: whether his eyes were open or closed, the picture didn’t change. He could also still think, but only very angrily. And being a good person, he didn’t wish to think that way, and so he closed his eyes.

The driver and Gorych crawled over to the passenger just as soon as they realised that the fire from the city had stopped.

They turned the passenger onto his back.

“He’s breathing!” the driver said with relief.

“Concussion,” Gorych said, lighting a match and holding it in front of the passenger’s eyes.

The eyes narrowed with displeasure and closed.

“Let’s get him to the truck!” the driver commanded.

Trying to move as gingerly as possible, they carried their friend to the cab. They opened the door and decided to place him on the soft seat. As soon as they tried to seat him, the passenger desperately wailed out his pain and went limp. The driver and Gorych lowered him back to the ground.

“Spine . . .” the driver sighed.

“We’ve got to put him in the back.”

The friends just barely managed to raise the passenger onto the back, folded the tarpaulin slip-cover a few times, and laid the wounded man on top of it. They covered him with a layer of the tarp.

The searchlight emitted great heat: the metal had had plenty of time to warm up, and it would take at least an hour for it to cool.

Gorych and the driver climbed into the cab. The driver shivered. He hesitantly touched the wheel, then drew his hand away and switched on the cab’s little light. The tiny bulb that flashed on divided the darkness into two colours: grey and black. But even this micro-illumination made the driver blink, and for a long time he refused to open his eyes.

When he finally opened them, he caught Gorych glancing at him wistfully.

“We’ve got to go,” Gorych said firmly, as if protesting.

“Where to?” the driver forced himself to ask.

Gorych indicated the windscreen with a look.

“Forward, with the headlights off,” he elaborated on the look after a short pause.

“In complete darkness?” the driver asked, dumbfounded.

“Well, what do you propose, we tease the urban artillery again?”

“Alright,” the driver resigned himself. “But let’s say our goodbyes now, to each other and to him. We might not have a chance later. This looks an awful lot like a journey across a minefield.”

“My whole life looks an awful lot like a journey across a minefield, but I never say my goodbyes in advance.” Gorych smiled sadly. “It’s better to part like the English – just leave . . .”

The farewell with the passenger was brief. He lay on the tarp with his eyes closed. The distinction between waking and sleeping had lost all meaning for him. The driver and Gorych squeezed the passenger’s arm, which was stretched out alongside his torso, squatted down beside him, and smoked a Belomor apiece. When they finished, they returned to the cab.

The engine started. The blind truck slowly crept forward.

A massive self-propelled barge swayed listlessly on the surface of the sea. The flag of the naval forces hung limp from its short radio tower, and two sailors sat on the deck without speaking. One was redheaded, freckled, and bearded. The other (you could tell right away he was a great admirer of regulations) was clean-shaven, had cut his hair very short – in places down to the scalp – and held his back so straight it was as if he’d been given the command “Attention!” but was allowed to remain seated. His face, which expressed no mood or emotion even when talking or arguing, was just begging for a spot, via a small photograph, in an official document granting some power or permitting some action.

“Kharitonov, when we return, I’ll write a report on you,” the regulation sailor said in a completely indifferent voice, but in perfect Russian. “You haven’t carried out a single one of my orders for the past two months.”

“C’mon,” the redhead sighed wearily. “There’s no-one around! The engine croaked – a heroic death. If I’d have shaved for the morning rollcall for these two damned months of drifting, we would’ve—”

“‘We would’ve’ what?” the regulation sailor interrupted indifferently.

The redhead waved his hand and turned away, showing the other man the shaggy back of his head.

“Junior Seaman Kharitonov!”

“Aye, aye,” the redhead replied without turning back.

“I order you to lower the flag!”

The redhead turned and looked, thoroughly puzzled, into the senior seaman’s eyes, which were narrowed in contemplation.

“The flag might help enemy aircraft detect us,” the regulation sailor said monotonically.

“Yeah, sure, that’s true.” Kharitonov rose and lumbered off to the radio tower. “No sign of the enemy in two months. No sign of allies, either. It’s all got to end sometime.”

“That’s enough analysis, Kharitonov. Did you lower the flag?”

“Yes. And where should I stuff it?”

“Wrap it up in something and keep it on your person.”

“Listen,” the redhead began in a friendly manner. “Maybe you’ll finally tell me: what happened? We two grew up together, worked together, signed up for the fleet together when the bastards attacked. We asked them to put us on the same ship. So they put us on this rustbucket, and it’s five years of war, and it’s five years on the job. And for five years you’ve been acting like a wooden dummy—”

“That’s enough, Kharitonov!” the regulation sailor interrupted. “I’m the senior officer – I’m responsible for the cargo and the ship, and you – you’re my crew, and you must carry out all my orders. Is that clear?”

Kharitonov ran his fingers through his beard.

“Why can’t it grow out like a shovel?” he thought. “Comes out like a little sapper’s spade. You’d think the barge would capsize if I didn’t shave!”

Gulls cried out above the vessel. They had got used to flying behind ships and catching bits of food that sailors would toss in the air. But this ship wasn’t sailing. The gulls circled above it, swooping lower and lower. One of them sat on the radio tower.

“Kharitonov!” the regulation sailor called, throwing a meaningful glance at the noisy birds.

Kharitonov understood, sighed, picked up an automatic rifle from the deck, and fired at the gulls from the waist, without aiming. The gulls cried out in fright and soared up into the cloudless sky.

“You missed them all again,” the senior seaman uttered grimly. “How many rounds do we have left?”

“Three magazines,” said Kharitonov.

“Running low . . . Alright. Head below and check on the cargo.”

The redhead rose sluggishly. He looked up at the sun, stood stock still, narrowed his eyes, and exposed his bearded, freckled face to its heat.

“Go away somewhere,” the senior seaman said wearily.

“Aye, aye,” the redhead whispered to himself and made his way to the tank deck.

They last saw land more than two months ago, when, late at night, having taken on board another load of dynamite and safety fuses, they pushed away from the submerged moorage and headed for the part of the coast they’d learned by heart over the preceding five years, where their boys were engaged in the usual kind of military sabotage behind enemy lines. It was impossible to tally how much material they’d hauled to the place of discharge on their self-propelled barge. Surprisingly, the only things you could tally were a few raids by enemy aircraft, a couple of unidentifiable cruisers spotted on the horizon, and several dozen storms. It was the last of these storms that had left them bobbing on the waves these last two months: first some underwater rock had sliced off the screw propeller, then the engine froze altogether, though it had been as good as dead without the screw, anyway.

Kharitonov had spent all five years pondering one and the same thing: He kept trying to explain to himself how and why Fedya Gritsak, Fedya, with whom he’d grown up, with whom he’d gone fishing in their native lake, Lacha, had changed so much – as Kharitonov’s grandfather had once changed, when he’d learned that God was the opium of the masses and that the winter church was a good set of bricks for building fishermen’s stoves. But the announcements about God and the church were made from a podium. Who had announced to Gritsak, and from which podium, that immediately after being mobilised, Kharitonov – motorman of the Nikitin, the only steamer on the Lacha – was to be regarded, to put it mildly, as a halfwit? Kharitonov hadn’t heard about this. Frankly, he doubted that anyone would have dared make such an announcement, even to Fedya Gritsak alone. In general, Kharitonov took great pleasure in doubting. He loved it not out of a lack of confidence in his correct understanding of all that was happening, but, on the contrary, because of his constant attempts to compare his own understanding of the moment with that of other people. For five years now, he’d been denied the opportunity to compare contrasting understandings, but his ability to doubt, and to draw conclusions on the basis of his doubts, had grown ever stronger. When he first saw a newspaper and held it in his hands as a child, still unable to read very well, he licked the bold black font of each incomprehensible word, so as to grasp its meaning by its taste. And though the taste of the lead ink had not brought about the revelation he’d expected, the habit of finding things out on his own remained with Kharitonov as he entered his adult and partly conscious life.

He went down into the crew’s quarters, which were intended for up to ten people, and lay down in his “top-tier” bunk. Somewhere war is raging, while they’re in their third month of enforced peace. The mechanical nature of the complex relations between rock, iron, and sea had determined the course of events. It could have determined them otherwise – and then their hunk of iron, loaded with dynamite and Bickford fuses, would have been sleeping on the rocky bottom of the Sea of Japan long ago.

Kharitonov wanted to fall sleep, but every time, just before closing his eyes, he’d try to recall some very important thought, which he’d put aside, planning to think it over later. His head seemed to be swollen from physical and mental inactivity. A surplus of all kinds of thoughts, their buzzing abundance, often made for a fitful sleep.

They left tens of kilometres of total darkness behind them. There may have been just as many in front of them. The truck drove in the darkness, through the darkness, into further darkness. The driver turned the wheel intuitively, listening to the road. It seemed to him he could see it by now, the road. That’s how it seemed, but in fact he couldn’t even see Gorych sitting beside him. He could only hear him coughing, fidgeting. They’d clicked off the little light in the cab, sparing the battery’s weak current. Neither of them did anything but look straight ahead. They looked ahead and kept silent, because a conversation in the dark is like a conversation over a telephone, where there are two people talking and an indeterminate number of people listening.

The driver licked his dry lips and closed his eyes.

He felt like a lonely, tired traveller. He wanted to sleep.

Gorych coughed again.

The driver stiffened, chasing sleep away, and was further roused by a subconscious sense of alarm. Still unable to determine the cause of his fear he turned on the little light. He listened close – and heard the creaking of the wooden side-panels in the back.

That’s what had surprised and alarmed him. He’d never heard that creaking before. Not because the panels hadn’t creaked in the past. It’s just that the engine had always drowned out all other noise, but now the engine was silent . . .

The driver pulled up the handbrake.

“Nothing but roads, cold, and fog . . .” Gorych moaned in his sleep.

“Wake up!” The driver tugged at his shoulder. “We’re here.”

Gorych rubbed his eyes.

“So quiet.”

“Yes.” The driver nodded. “There won’t be much noise, now: we’re out of petrol.”

“So what, that’s it? Can’t go any further?”

“Why not? We’ve been going with the engine dead for a couple of hours, now. It’s probably a downhill slope. So if the slope holds – on we go.”

“Down a slope?” Gorych thought. “Then God forbid the slope should end . . .”

Without saying a word, they got out of the cab.

The driver stomped his boots on the ground, and was surprised at its firmness.

“Getting hungry,” Gorych confessed.

“Got some dried bread in the toolbox,” the driver said, climbing onto the back.

“Do you remember where the Little Dipper’s supposed to be?”

The driver didn’t know. He remembered the stars, had seen them often in the sky before the war, but since all this had begun he’d forgotten not only the stars, but all celestial objects.

“Toss me the matches!” he shouted to Gorych.

The boxes fell on the tarp covering the shell-shocked passenger.

The driver lit a match. He pulled back the tarp and illuminated the passenger’s face.

The burning match trembled in his hand above the yellowed face.

The driver tossed it over the side.

“Dead,” he said.

Gorych was silent, shifting from foot to foot. He finally managed to force out a few words: “The ground’s very hard . . . Strange,” he went on. “I’d forgotten he was with us. Thought it was just the two of us . . .”

“I’d forgotten too,” the driver confessed. “Let me turn on the light.”

He flipped the switch on the searchlight and froze. A spark appeared under the glass, starting to dissipate the internal darkness. The driver stared at it without blinking. His eyes hurt, welled up with tears, but he didn’t take them off the slowly expanding light.

In about fifteen minutes the searchlight warmed up and the beam of light began its slow ascent.

The darkness withdrew. The truck took on shape. Gorych saw the earth under his feet and squatted down. He stroked the earth with his hand, raised his hand to his eyes, and blew on it . . . Then he looked at the figure of the driver, which was distinctly illuminated by the searchlight.

“So quiet.” Gorych again expressed his suprise.

“Let’s get him down,” the driver whispered.

Gorych got up on the wheel and climbed onto the back. He pulled the tarp off the passenger’s face and went rigid, gazing into the dead man’s open eyes.

“Did he want to go with you?” Gorych turned to the driver.

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t believe in it . . . He didn’t use to believe in it.”

“And then he started believing,” the driver replied. “It was very dark. You had to believe in something.”

“Alright,” Gorych exhaled, as if agreeing with some unpleasant thought.

They opened the tailgate and lowered the body to the ground.

There was only one shovel in the truck.

The dry earth resisted them, as if it were trying to hide something.

The driver took the first turn digging. Gorych deepened the grave. You could put your arm in it