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VOROShILOVGRAD
speaking terms. My former
Kharkiv friends never came
back. I forgave their debt.
Kocha’s Gypsy relatives gave
me enough money to keep
going. I stopped trying to
contact my brother. At night
I’d dream about airplanes.
Surprisingly enough, my
gas station worries had just
evaporated somehow. At
first, I sat around anxiously
awaiting their next move—
waiting for arson, corpses,
and so forth. I even tried to
rally my old acquaintances in
town. Nothing ever wound
up happening, though, and
I was told not to make a big
deal about it, and just take
things as they came.
I gradually calmed down,
despite Injured’s constant
warnings that our problems
wouldn’t blow over so easily,
and that one day somebody
was going to get his neck
snapped. “Maybe,” I told
myself. “And then again,
maybe not.”
In the early fall, everything
was set into motion again,
everything was reactivated—
caravans of trucks pushed
out to the north, delivering
the fruits of the harvest to
local markets. This golden
September was warm. The
sun would seem to halt right
above the gas pumps, and
then it’d get it into its head to
roll away as quickly as it could,
heading along the highway to
the west, lighting up the road
for the truckers. Sometimes
Ernst would stop by and
hold forth to Injured about
differences in the tactics
of tank combat in daytime
and nighttime conditions.
Injured would soon lose his
temper and disappear into
his workshop to dismember
some more fresh automobile
carcasses.
Occasionally,
when it wasn’t too hot, the
clergyman with whom I’d
struck up a friendship during