The Ball. Volume#1. “Kuluangwa”

The small village to which the stranger brought the young traveller had already plunged into darkness and sleep. All that Diego heard were hens clucking, babies crying, and the crackling embers of a smoldering campfire. The stranger led Diego into a small hut and gave him a drink of fresh water, although warm and stale, and offered a couple of tortillas from a small table. Then, Diego’s saviour fished out a pile of hard, striped blankets, spread them out on the floor of the hut, and folded one of the blankets into a pillow. Diego fell on all of this benevolence and quickly fell asleep.

The saviour waited until Diego’s breathing levelled off and then covered the boy with a light blanket, quietly closed the simple door, and exited to the clearing in the centre of the village. Beside a smoldering campfire in a clearing sat a motionless figure of a dried-up old man, who was silently staring either at the embers or at a myriad of stars on the black and blue horizon. He had the jaw of a power-seeker and the forehead of a philosopher. This forehead was cut up by numerous wrinkles and one deep, vertical scar that must have stopped healing a long time ago. He sat on the ground, legs crossed and covered by a round, dark object the size of a coconut. Diego’s saviour approached the old man, leaned over, and whispered something in his ear. The old man subtly nodded and again was left alone without even turning his head towards the tribesman.

CHAPTER 13

45° 27» 57» N

9° 11» 21» E

Milan, Italy

May 14, 1991

Rodion Karlovich Teichrib had a long way to travel. Multi-storey buildings of the renaissance and neoclassical periods gave way to brick and mortar buildings of the Milanese suburbia, complete with graffiti, broken and dried up paint, and sometimes empty windows. But Rodion Karlovich did not pay much attention to the surroundings that were flying by in the last rays of the sun. The pain in his temples was becoming simply unbearable. The bus slowed down sharply, pulling up dust from a nearby construction site, and stopped at a crumpled metal frame that had once been a bus stop.

With a flick of his sun-burnt hand, the little man commanded Rodion Karlovich to exit. The professor obeyed silently and without question. Stepping onto the dusty pavement of Via Privata Ofanto, he looked around in search of a pharmacy or a sign with a green cross. His head continued to crack. It was either the heat or the tedious morning lecture on the contemporary and historical place of the Soviet Union in the global political system, featuring a bunch of useless questions from the audience about the possible construction of a «new democracy» in the USSR.

Meanwhile, the Italian, quickly shuffling his slightly bowed legs and constantly looking around and oddly waving his hand at the hip, called for Teichrib to follow him down the little road. Obedient as if in hypnosis, Rodion Karlovich silently trudged after the old man. He did not have far to go. The old Italian led him to a desolate but noisy place – right at the exit of the Tangenziale Est motorway. He could hear how the nervous drivers of cars and trucks were honking on the bridge above him. But here, at the bottom, neither dust nor noise could prevent vines from growing an intricate green web on the white wicker porch. Tomato bushes held by thin smooth stakes stood at the perimeters of properties, separating neighbours with their low hedges. It smelled of sweet wine and fresh bread. This was not Milan – it was Lazio.

The old man took Rodion Karlovich to a house and with a gentle hand gesture invited him inside. Noticing a faded «Vecchie-Nuove» sign and a lot of old utensils and unknown junk, Rodion Karlovich concluded that he was in an antique pawn shop. Everything that happened afterwards played out like a strange little comedy, complete with black humour. The professor was standing in the middle of a small room cluttered with trash, surveying all this with increasing interest despite his severe migraine. The old Italian disappeared behind a partition. He quickly returned, holding a glass of water with a large bubbled tablet fizzing inside in one hand, and clutching a large piece of boiled corn like a golden sword in the other hand. And under his arm, he was holding a small black object that looked like tree fungus or a good-sized turnip.

The old man pushed the glass to Teichrib, who took it without delay. Then, the Italian thumped his finger on Teichrib’s temple and said, «Si prega di bere, da un mal di testa.» Rodion Karlovich’s modest knowledge of Italian prompted him to understand his companion’s words as «Drink please, it’s for the headache.» The professor promptly drank the bubbling liquid with an aftertaste of aspirin, closed his eyes for a moment, and then nearly fell, receiving a severe blow to the head.

Recoiling and dropping the glass that shattered on the stone slabs, Rodion opened his eyes and saw how lumps of succulent masses were flying across the little room – yellow corn peas. This mess also crawled down from his forehead and hair. Before he knew it, the old man turned Teichrib over his shoulders, kicked open the door, and pushed him out almost right under the wheels of a bus, which barely had time to decelerate. A piece of corn cob flew after Rodion Karlovich. Surprisingly, this spectacle was not followed by any swearing or long explanations in rich Italian gestures and hoarse cries like «idiotto!» The bus driver opened the door to the empty bus. Giuseppe «Blue Nose» went out after Rodion Karlovich and placed a black object into the professor’s hands. With an apologetic tone to his voice, he said, «Ton guha, Rodion! Grazie.» He turned the professor around by his shoulders once again and gently pushed him into the bus.

Rodion Karlovich flopped on the first seat and sat there for about five minutes, looking blankly out the window. Then, he thoughtfully ran his hand through his hair, still wet from corncob, and felt a light, bruised pain over his left eyebrow. A small streak of blood remained on these fingers. So that’s how what a corn fight for freedom and independence feels like, he chuckled to himself. A black, rubber ball was on his knees, pushing hard on the hip. Rodion Karlovich put his bloodied hand on the object and the pain that was festering him for several hours vanished in an instant. Just like that. The professor spread out on the plastic seat with a satisfied smile.

The driver’s shout brought Rodion Karlovich back from the void. The bus was at the same bus stop on Piazza Lima, and even on the same side of Via Plinio. When Rodion stepped out past the driver, he stopped him. Politely but firmly, the driver tapped on a scratched metal box with a cracked glass window.

«Dieci lire, signore, per favore,» he rasped.

«Si, signore,» responded Teichrib in the same tone and threw in a well-worn coin of ten lire, with ears on one side and a plow on the other side. A minute later, he again sat on the bench at the bus stop, as if asleep for a few minutes. Instead of a headache on his hands, he now had a warm, black rubber ball.

CHAPTER 14

55° 46» 12» N

36° 39» 10» E

Odintsovo District, Moscow Region, Russian Federation

September 8, 1994

He woke up from the voices behind the door, finding himself lying on a hard mattress in a small, unfurnished room in the attic under the roof of a house. The mattress was not laid out, but at the head of the bed he found carefully laid sheets, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, a pair of clean but ragged jeans, a Dynamo Moscow t-shirt (how did they know it was his favorite team?), towels, and soap. He immediately sensed the smell of his own clothes and became ashamed of himself.

Outside the window, the gold crowns of birch trees sounded lovely as they rustled in the wind. A nearby radio blared a song about a «cherry-colored nine.»8 Oleg looked out from the barred window and saw an old Uzbek raking leaves. A transistor radio hung on a clothesline around his neck. The Uzbek was collecting the falling leaves with the rhythm of the song. The door, to Oleg’s surprise, was not locked, so he stepped out of the room. He found a pair of old friends sitting in battered armchairs, smoking, and playing a game of nard.

«Hey, brother Oleshka is up!» sarcastically hissed one of the men, «And boy do you stink! Move your feet and go take a shower… you’ll find a razor and a toothbrush there. You didn’t forget how to brush your teeth, did you?» Both men erupted into loud laughter. Sometime later, Oleg came out of the shower refreshed.

«Oh! Who are you? Look at him! It’s Wise Oleg the Second!» His «rescuers» had no limits to expressing their surprise. «And you said, „why do we need this piece of shit?“»

«The boss will be happy this time!»

Oleg was indeed unrecognizable. The formerly homeless man spent a good hour under the hard stream of water and wasted almost the entire bar of soap. He used up two disposable razors on his face and head so that not a single hair remained. Oleg was a creative person, «an artist in life» as he called himself. And it didn’t matter what he was doing. Under the running water in the shower, he imagined himself as a young Grigory Kotovsky, a Red Army commander. His reasoning on creativity was that the art of an «artist in life» – whether a singer, sculptor, composer, poet, it doesn’t matter who – cannot and should not be considered in isolation from their fate – or, calling fate by its real name, death. Take Pushkin. His poetry wouldn’t have been any worse had he not been killed in a duel, but it’d be unlikely that he would have been remember by anyone to this day, just as few people remember the verses of Zhukovsky, Kukolnik or Baratynsky.

The consumer of art loves to «look to the last page» and find out that the author justly hanged or shot themselves. Or at least, they pranced around naked in a prison cell or an asylum. That means, all that an artist wrote, made, painted, or sang was the clear truth. People are pleased to know that Gogol had gone mad, that Tolstoy died in some obscure little railway station, that Venedikt Erofeev fairly died of throat cancer, and Oleg Grigoriev of cirrhosis of the liver. The genuine actor is obligated to die onstage. The singer must belt out the final note and collapse. Lennon or Cobain had to die young because that was the proper, real way to go. That’s how it’s supposed to be for the famous and truly talented. Unlike those well-known people, Oleg Pervushin himself knew how to make an exit in his own way. He was sure that he could «hop away like a bunny» from any vicious circle. Unnoticed. Disappearing like a shadow at noon.

He was born in Kazakhstan in 1960, in the city formerly known as Tselinograd. He was an excellent student. Then he served in the army for two years the Arctic Division as a flight technician at a military airfield. After the army Oleg entered the Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture. Many scoffed at him, «did they accept you without an exam, as a collective farmer from the country?» However, he didn’t finish the institute. Instead, he rode the rails across the whole country as a train steward and began to write short stories and diaries of his travels. Once these records fell into the hands of an up-and-coming publisher. The stories were published in the early nineties. Readers liked them, wanting more and more… Life, it seemed, started to move in the right direction. But then he vanished, quietly, like an Englishman.

He left to the village Gostilovo in the Ryazan region, where he fathered a son from his wife, Katya, and where they all lived together, along with a dog named Bad and a cat named Marquis. Oleg would spend the evenings on the porch in satin shorts down to his knees, smoking a cigarette and staring at the sky. His wife eventually got tired of this life and left for Moscow, taking their son with her. She said to Oleg before leaving, «Other freaks can at least energetically promote themselves. Today’s «modern artists’ convert their idiocy into hard currency… thousands of dollars! And what about you? Your books have a laughable circulation, your paintings are not exhibited anywhere, and the peak of your fame was an appearance on the local news about government officials supporting culture in the villages. What culture? Goddamn you!» In conclusion, Oleg Anatolievich Pervushin could quite truthfully say, as in the words of one old Ukrainian man, «the world tried to catch me, but could not.»

But then yesterday, everything changed, and the «world» finally caught him with its net, in a manner understood only by its own worldly sense. He remembered how an old army friend, a Kazakh as dry as an old tree, put him first on a light drug, and then on a heavy one, heroin. He never took any money from him, never. He just made him a pusher. He made him more and more addicted to the thin doted line in his arm. It’s like in an old joke: «even in a competition of assholes, you’d finish in second place!… but why only second, my dear?… because you are an asshole!» Here he was, Oleg Pervushin, an asshole-loser. Lived in some hole in the Ryazan woods – no money, no job, no glory, no recognition. If he made any trips to Moscow, it was only for pushing the shit. While he was lucky never to have been caught for that, he still found ways to get mixed up in bad stories while travelling. Usually it involved drinking in some strange company – cheerful, good-natured Oleg taking one shot after another, to health, to life… and next thing he was in a police van again. With his blue Kazakh passport, he was an easy target for the cops, whose eyes were trained to pick out individuals like him in any crowd. That was just another reason why Katya left him.

While standing in the shower, Oleg was thinking how well everything was at the start of yesterday. He was on his way to see him son in Moscow when he began drinking with some «good people» in the third-class sleeping carriage. He recalled there were a lot of words and fraternization, tears in his fist, and the lapel of his jacket smelled of smoke. Twice he ran out to buy vodka from women at the stations the train made stops at. The last bottle was one too many – everyone collapsed. When the train arrived in Moscow in the morning, the conductor had to drag him out and push him onto the platform. Oleg walked straight to the Red Square. He didn’t have a penny nor his passport on him. Then – these «brothers» in their «crimson blazers,» a car, a mattress… what happened?

After bathing and dressing, the «brothers» once again surveyed Pervushin from head to toe and took him to the second floor. They walked past massive and intricate Bali-style furniture, including several vases and a palatial heavy table with six chairs. When they stepped into a spacious office, the first thing Oleg saw was a large table occupied by souvenirs from exotic countries – various collectibles, masks, stands for ancient writing utensils. There he saw an antique telescope with shimmering copper sides and a vintage globe upheld by a bronze ring. Just like in the quarters of a military commander, a highly accurate map of the world hung above the table. Red pins dotted the map like bugs, likely indicating the owner’s travels.

A short and stout man, completely bald and with absolutely no neck, sat at the table. His head grew directly from his shoulders. He was wearing a red Liverpool FC shirt. «My name is Aleksey Potapov, in case someone doesn’t know…» He patted his bald head and with a smirk looked at the similarly hairless Oleg, who suddenly realized that he had no desire to know the name of this man. He lowered his head and stared down at his feet in the Chinese-made sneakers. A chronometer ticked loudly on the table. Outside, someone was swearing and shouting. Probably the Uzbek gardener. The silence dragged on and Oleg looked up. A man named Aleksey Potapov was staring at him. Under the long glare of those unblinking eyes, Oleg felt a void and dread inside himself. A painful hangover started to take over as Oleg felt his joints stretch and back stiffen.

«Since I don’t have much time, I will be brief with you… what’s your name again?» The bald man referred at a piece of paper under his hands, «Oleg. Oleg Pervushin. Especially because you don’t have any choice. I want to read you something.» He pulled out a copy of an old geography journal from his desk, leafed through, stopped at the right page, moved the magazine slightly as do people with impending farsightedness, and began to read. «There are more than 190 polar research stations in the Arctic and the Antarctic. They generally have enough fuel and food supplies for one or two people for a period of five or six years. For the USSR, these stations are a matter of national prestige. In addition, these deserted stations provide navigation support to the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route and are also used as weather stations.»

Finished reading, he set his sights back on Oleg. «It’s on one of these stations that you must work, brother. That is, just live there a little. You know, just survive. We’ll visit you every three months, check if you still eat your food. And the longer you last, the better chances you have of getting back to the world. I have to say, you’re looking much better than yesterday. Yesterday, you were the bottom of the barrel. Today, you’re something else, aren’t you?» He laughed, «You’re a casino chip! Six powerful, serious, and respectable citizens made a bet on you, brother. I’m one of them. You’re not doubting my integrity, are you?»

Oleg had only one pestering thought on his mind. What fucking station? What fucking North Pole? If I don’t get a dose in one minute, I’m going to kill myself! The bald Liverpool supporter named Aleksey Potapov stared at him for another half-minute and then slowly opened his mouth, «And now, we’ll stay here while you go prepare for your winter vacation in the Arctic. Here’s a little keepsake from me… the guide to your mission.» Potapov ripped out the page with the article about the Soviet polar stations from the magazine and tucked it in the back pocket of Pervushin’s pants. One of the «crimson blazers» then gave the same hind pocket a strong and confident slap, signaling Oleg to head for the door. His other hand seized Oleg’s elbow with an iron grip.

When Oleg was taken into the corridor, Potapov called the «crimson blazer» over. The goon turned around, relaxing his grip for a moment. This was enough for Oleg to pull away and break free from the hold. Oleg rushed to the window, knocked the high, storefront-like window with his head, rolled on the warm and sparkling iron roof, and thundered down into the rose bushes. He fell on his back. There was no pain, there was no sound. He frantically breathed in the garden odors – wet grass, smoke from the leaves, the smell of apples from his childhood. And then he lost his consciousness. The radio hanging around the Uzbek’s neck was airing the weather forecast. «Tomorrow, September 9, Moscow will face freezing rain and north-easterly wind, with a possibility of black ice on the roads…»

CHAPTER 15

21° 20» 70» N

86° 80» 81» W

Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

December 15, 1971

The thin black hen, clucking energetically, went into the half-open door of the hut in full confidence that the mystery of the sacred act of laying an egg will now happen. The hot sun rose, announcing a new day – it was time for the birth of a new life. But in a corner of the hut, in the hen’s sacred straw bed located, lay something big and strange. Something that was completely covered by a frayed colorful blanket was breathing softly and snorting. The hen did not tolerate these unexpected circumstances and unceremoniously jumped on top of the sleeping assailant. Diego felt a strange movement on his belly and gave a startled jump. The hysterical screams of the fleeing bird brought his mind back into the young day. He wasn’t scared at all and quickly remembered the previous evening, sweetly stretching out like a kitten after the long sleep. He got up and went out of the hut. His hands were resting on his belt. Diego looked carefully at the native village which was drenched by the sunlight of the early day.

The old, dry man with an ashen face was sitting in front of the bonfire at the edge of the glade, as if waiting for Diego since last night. He looked like he was dozing, his disheveled head bowed down to his chest. Diego stretching once again, smiling at the discordant twitter of birds. In obeyance to his rumbling stomach, Diego headed towards the weak smoke that curled over a strange, shapeless clay oven.

Without saying anything, a short and wide old woman who was cooking at the stove gave Diego a clay bowl and filled it yellow corn and few small pieces of fried chicken using a big wooden spoon. She gave the boy a smaller spoon and motioned with her hand towards a small table with a pair of improvised stools near the humble dwelling. Gobbling up the breakfast, which was delicious despite its simplicity, Diego looked up and discovered that a dozen curious black eyes were watching him with great interest from the bushes behind him. He was surprised, but still finished his breakfast, brushed off his knees from falling motes and left the shade of the trees to go to the «town» square.

Soon as he came out of the grove, Diego stopped short. About three dozen villagers looked straight at him. They all had dark skin, the color of cocoa powder. All of them were very thin, and many of the adults were lacking teeth. Their legs were crooked or swollen. The children hid behind their parents, some gnawing on corncobs, and looking suspiciously at this strange boy. The bare breasts of the unclothed women sagged down to their bellies. The men’s colored loincloths hung dejectedly, barely covered looked what looked like dried pea pods. Some mothers held their infants wrapped in towels, but not one of them cried. There were as many dogs as people in the village – they were also skinny and bow-legged, but none of them barked. The only sounds in the crowd were dry coughs here and there and nothing else.

Directly in front of the crowd, in the same position as last night, an old skinny man with a scar on his face was sitting, still as a rock. The silence began to bother Diego, so he put his hand on his chest and bowed awkwardly. The old man raised his hand and a few teenagers from the crowd came forward, still holding gnawed cobs in their hands. One of them suddenly struck Diego in the chest with this cob. Diego froze still with both his arms up in the air.

How long he was in that position, Diego himself didn’t know. He only woke up when someone gently touched his shoulder. Two brazen boys approached Diego from the side and started sputtering something in their language. Diego smiled stupidly – he didn’t want God-knows-who to knock him out in this God-knows-where village. One of the natives suddenly poked Diego in the chest, right in the «Granada School – Buenos Aires» inscription on his t-shirt. «Argentina?» he asked. Diego just nodded, being somewhere far away in his mind. «Foot-ball?» continued his stranger-friend. Diego nodded again, knowing that the magic word «football» may perhaps be the only straw that can convert hostility into friendship. Another local gave a toothless smile, gave Diego a friendly push to the shoulder, took out a small round object from behind his back, and threw it at Diego’s feet. A crowd of boys approvingly shouted, waved, and clapped their hands. All over sudden, a group of children, no older than nine or ten years, jumped out from nearby bushes and surrounded Diego.

The game somehow began itself. After the kids poured into the field, shouting, and jostling their arms, they quickly divided into two teams without much thinking required. They pushed Diego into one of them. Immediately, goalposts were put in place in the form of two coconuts, shaped not too differently from that strange, black ball. Diego committed himself to the game from the first touch of the ball. If only his classmates could see him now! He was so tired of their constant ridicule, whether of his plumpness or his bowed legs or his slowness or his inability to do different tricks with the ball. None of them knew how much effort he gave and how much time he spent trying to improve! He spent hours in his room, trying to master the technique – but nothing worked. That’s why he was usually placed as a secondary defender at best, but more often – put on the bench. But where did all his clumsiness go today? He felt nimble, almost rubberlike, as if he could do whatever he wanted with the ball! And the ball seemed to stick to his feet. Full of happiness, Diego was flying across the field with invisible wings.