Worse Than Death

Andrie Federov sat in his car parked on the side of the thin street running through the middle of Popruka, a village about 200km from Saint Petersburg. He was totally lost. He didn’t know the name of the village: he couldn’t read the signs. The screen on his Fonepad confirmed the impossible; no network; no wifi; no satnav. Incredulous, he fiddled with it for ten minutes, removing and replacing the battery and re-booting it several times. Eventually, assuming it was due to a local systems fault, he accepted he was in the only place in Europe where nothing worked.

Over the road, there seemed to be some kind of café on the junction with a dirt lane, crammed against a row of squat terraced cottages with peeling paint and rusting corrugated iron roofs. There wasn’t a soul about, just a couple of cats watching a ragged Crow picking at an indistinguishable animal pancaked onto the road surface a hundred metres away.

On the verge of panicking, Andrie made his way over to the Café. Thirty minutes ago he’d pulled off the Expressway to find a bush to piss behind. Relieved, he’d returned to the car only to find there was no slip-road leading back to the highway, just a scraggy country road splitting the flat half-hearted farmland into two halves. Thinking there would be a spur linking the slip lane, he followed it and took a left fork, but it just led him deeper into nowhere. A solitary sign, he assumed was a place name, was written in Cyrillic. The last time he’d seen anything written in that script outside of a museum or antique shop, was when he was a kid. After an age of driving through featureless landscape he saw a gaggle of buildings huddling behind a bunch of Italian Poplars. A dusty concrete road led him to where he was now.

The interior of the bar was surprisingly luxurious. The mahogany coloured wood, carved beamed ceiling set off by silvered classical style lamps and brown leather seating made it look almost Csarist. The barkeeper, a large man about fifty, stood idly behind two beer taps watching Andrie enter through the open door.

‘Good morning, Sir,’ he said at Andrie. His manner, businesslike, but friendly.

‘Good morning. Sorry to bother you, I seem to have lost my way.’

The barman looked pointedly at Andrei’s clothes and smiled, his expression almost sympathetic.

‘You up from Moscow?’

It was Andrie’s turn to smile. It was the reaction he’d expected. ‘Yes, that’s right. I pulled off the Expressway for a . . . break and couldn’t find the slip road back on.’

‘That’s because there isn’t one, Sir. I think they forgot.’

‘Hmm, that’s not clever. I tried looking, but I got lost. I couldn’t read the signs they’re still in old text.’

‘Things don’t move very fast around here. I guess you want directions?’

‘That’d be great, thanks.’

‘I’ll draw you a map,’ the barman said, giving the impression it was something he often did. He rooted around under the bar, came up with a large frayed beermat and commenced to trace a hieroglyph on it with a pencil.

While the barman worked, Andrie had time to glance around the room. It was empty apart from a square table in one corner. Four very old men in dark suits that had seen better days sat, two on each side of the table facing each other. A fifth man sat in the middle on the far side. This man looked even older, as did his suit and crumpled shirt and black tie. He was almost bald with just a few wisps of white hair stretched across his pate. His deeply wrinkled skin and dark sunken eyes reminded Andrie of his great-great grandfather who died at a-hundred-and-two. The ancient “chairman” spoke continuously in a quiet voice which reached Andrie’s ears as a barely audible drone. The four men around the table seemed to be hanging on every syllable.

When the barman looked up from his map, he noticed Andrie eying the group. ‘Take no notice of the Politburo they’re nothing.’ He tapped the corner of the hieroglyph. ‘This where we are. If you go along here for about three kilometres you come to a junction. Turn right . . .’

Andrie watched the barman’s fingertip follow the lines while he described the route back to the Expressway. It all looked pretty straight forward. When the explanation was over, Andrie took the proffered beermat.

‘Thank you, you’re very kind.’ Andrie felt relaxed. ‘You know what? I’m thirsty in this heat, can I get a beer, and one for you also.’

Andrie’s host thanked him and poured out two glasses from one of the taps. The two men stood either side of the bar and supped their beer. A scraping noise from the table attracted their attention as the ancient speaker struggled to his feet and shambled up to the bar watched by his four admirers. He placed both hands on the wooden surface and stared directly into the barman’s face.

‘Give me a half-bottle of Vodka,’ he said in a hoarse, but cultured voice.

The barman blew out his cheeks. ‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you. NO credit.’

The old man lowered his gaze. ‘A shot then.’

‘That’s a hundred to you.’

Crestfallen the old man replied, ‘I only have fifty.’ His ancient crumpled face touched Andrie’s twenty-five year old heart.

‘Here. On me,’ Andrie said and gently laid two silver fifty Euro coins in front of the old chap.

An imperceptible nod acknowledged the gift as he pushed the coins across the bar, his now defiant eyes bore into the barman’s, belying a worn face which, a generation ago, was so strong, cold and treacherous.

‘There was a time when refusing me anything would have cost you your freedom.’

The barman snorted a short mocking laugh and slapped a shot glass filled to the brim on the bar. A few drops spilled out and ran down the side leaving alcoholic streamers on the surface. He leaned over until his face was ten centimetres from the old man’s.

‘Yeah. . . . WAS, you old goat.’ He pointed to the open door. ‘When you’ve drunk that, get the fuck out. Go back to your room and wait for your next Giro before you come here again wanting vodka.

In less than three seconds the vodka was down the old man’s throat. Then, turning on old unsteady feet, he shuffled out the door. Slightly shaken by the short exchange, Andrie watched him wandering across the threadbare lawn toward a two storey, typically Soviet, institutional building. Picking up his glass Andrie noticed the barman looking at him, a wide smile on his face.

‘Congratulations, Son. You just bought a drink for our great leader; Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.’

Andrie frowned and screwed up his face.

‘Who?’

Image: Narcissus by Caravaggio, (courtesy Wiki)