Pig Read online

  No big tragedy. Pig and the Doctor simply conspired to keep the real cause of death secret and “doctor” the death certificate. But Pig never let the Doctor forget. The real cause was kept hanging over Bandar’s head like a derrick over a well if he every threatened to grow a spine and stop doing what Pig told him to.

  Over the rough decade since Pig’s Camp had been operating under private ownership and administration, roughly two dozen patients had passed away in the Doctor’s clinic. About half of them had been the result of accidents and natural causes. The other half had succumbed mysteriously after being treated for nausea, nosebleeds, and loss of hair. All of these had occurred within the past six months. Throughout that half year, whatever the actual cause of death, the Doctor had dutifully written down what Pig told him to and signed the death certificates accordingly.

  "How many people work here?" Snow had once asked Magda once she’d broken through Snow’s desire to be left alone in misery.

  What was it about her that made him let her through when so many others failed? It was the darkness inside her, he knew, that he'd recognized. He should have been Russian. Then he could have accepted being locked inside the dungeon of his own head. Wouldn't have had to fight.

  She'd considered the question. Carefully. "About half," she finally said, enjoying a sound he didn't make often enough. A laugh.

  "Maybe you're glad he's here," Pig accused. "Glad he's sick."

  "What are you saying?" Magda asked.

  "Your boyfriend. The rich Yankee. Snowball. Makes five times what I do. Twenty. A fucking Documents Clerk! With investments. Stocks, maybe. They know about such things there. Insurance. I know. He could be worth a lot to you dead. You’re as lucky as a girl with big tits."

  Canadian, not Yankee, thought Magda, knowing immediately Snow wouldn't care. Being Canadian, to him, was a curse, rather than a statement of who he was.

  "God brought me Sneg," she said instead, using the Russian word for Snow. "How could I give him up?"

  "Sure, God brought him and now you'd like to give him back, eh? But God won't take him will he? We got to him in time."

  "You know who you are," Snow had once told Magda when she asked him what he liked about being in Russia. He hadn’t been sure if he had a soul. If he did, he shouldn’t have felt empty most of the time. He had the sense of a monk, a man who was happiest without responsibilities and alone.

  "You've got your history, a sense of place. But me? What have I got? I'm a Canadian. Just anger. Anger at realizing that I have no history; no past or identity, just two cans of maple syrup, some beavers, and a Mountie with mouse ears. We’re the only people in the world who dream of being Clark Kent instead of Superman, the vichyssoise of nations -- cold, half-French and difficult to stir. We don’t believe in History in Canada. Here, you don’t believe in anything but History. I like that.”

  In 1991, hard-line Communists had attempted a coup against the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev. It failed. Long time Communist-cum-populist rebel Boris Yeltsin led the resistance to the coup and became the first Russian President, dissolving the Soviet Union and pledging to implement a market economy.

  The Communist laws had been removed from the books so recently you could still see eraser crumbs on the pages. In 1995, a Presidential Decree ordered that State ownership of the oil producing facility in Noyabrsk, a refinery in Omsk and the related exploration and distribution companies be privatized. Every citizen was given a voucher entitling them to a share in the new entity. The problem was, having never known any life but Communism, very few of them understood exactly what that was. The concept of private ownership of industry and shares in it – like being a teetotaller -- was a foreign concept to them.

  The voucher itself didn’t look like much, a simple piece of paper with faded ink, embossed gold and a registration number. It looked more like a lottery ticket than a share. And that was how people treated it. “If the state is giving it away, it can’t be worth much,” most thought. During the depression and rampant inflation that followed the fall of Communism, people would sell them for next to nothing. Vouchers could be sold for cash, invested in an enterprise of the holder’s choice or put in an investment fund. Two of Yeltsin’s financial advisers started up a fourth market, trading vouchers for vodka, usually at the rate of three vouchers for one bottle. A year later, they used the vouchers to take the company private again and became instant billionaires. This was who Pig worked for. Omsk Bacon, once part of the enterprise, was sold and Pig came to the run the Camp with a group of camp followers who enforced his rule, the oprichnina, Pig’s modern-day version of Ivan the Terrible’s secret police.

  In 1995, shortly after the fall of Communism, Porfiry Makahonic (his friends – those that weren’t in the hospital or dead -- called him Pig) had been appointed Camp Boss at the ever-growing residential camp that serviced the Noyabrsk oil production facility. Prior to that, he had held some nebulous position at Omsk Bacon, Russia’s largest pork producer. The two companies were part of the same corporation. The Camp provided services and shelter, after a fashion, to the employees of the nearby production facility. Rooms consisted primarily of porta-cabins, with the recreational facilities, service shops, laundry and local Closed Circuit TV system all housed in larger trailers. Pig was in charge of what was in effect the Camp’s own local cable TV system, the highlight of which was a porn movie every night that Pig had personally watched and recommended. Both construction and management of the Camp was slip-shod, haphazard and largely arbitrary. Approval to get anything done, from having your heater fixed to getting new sheets required the approval of the Camp Boss. Descended from a long line of army deserters and alcoholics, Pig sucked up sycophants like an aardvark licking ants. If it seemed as if the entire camp and setup had been designed entirely round him, it was; he’d made sure every system and new procedure first asked the question, “How did it affect Pig?” In effect, Pig was the local dictator and not a benevolent one. Like all little men in big uniforms, Pig was a martinet about the rules, but could ostrich-ize himself anytime it was necessary, burying his head in the sand in order “not” to see what he was supposed to.

  "Buy low, sell high," Pig would tell you if you asked him for advice.

  "Don't get too low or too high," Magda would say.

  "High sticking," would be what Snow said. “A two-minute penalty in the sin bin. Unless the other team scores first.”

  Pig scared Magda; just looking at him frightened her. Not because he had the skinhead neo-Nazi skull, prison-quality tattoos and jackboots. Not because he had a posse of slavish devotees who’d kill if he told them to, not just his cobra-yellow eyes or a mind that only functioned as a cash register. No, it wasn’t the presence of anything Pig “had” that frightened her. What scared here was the absence of something. A lacking. And it frightened her to even think about what it might be. Look into his eyes and you’d see someone who’d never be changed by Party, therapy, religion, Komsomol or pharmaceuticals.

  Watching Pig wrestle with a moral dilemma was like watching professional wrestling: mostly fake. He had managed to combine the roles of bully, braggart, sexual predator, vulnerable child, flamboyant drunk, charismatic leader and charlatan all in one persona, rolled in greed and selfishness like perogies in sour cream.

  “I don’t really think about why I do things,” Pig had once admitted to her in a moment of candour. “I just do whatever is good for me.”

  The two of them couldn’t have had more contempt for each other if one were Serb and the other Croat. The only thing the two had in common was their fondness for and skill in the use of “mat.”

  Mat is a form of Russian underground swearing, once only spoken on the street and in prisons. Soviet soldiers used it as they attacked the Nazis, and Russian hockey players used it when defeating the Canadians. Unlike other languages, Russian obscenity is rooted entirely in sex. Defecation is not part of cursing. Neither is religion or matrimonial status. Mat is multi-leveled, multi-functional, and extensi
vely articulated – more a philosophy than a language. It is too semantically capricious, too dependent on intonation for non-Russians to ever understand. It is linguistic theatre and verbal art that exploits the whole range of Russian suffixes and prefixes.

  Dostoyevsky claimed that a Russian could express the entire range of his feelings with one word -- which he dared not write -- khuy, a term for the male sexual organ, which along with pizda ("cunt"), and blyad' ("whore" or "bitch") and the verb ebat' ("to fuck"), are the cornerstones of mat, which derives from the Russian word for “mother,” as in yob tvuoy mat, meaning "fuck your mother." Khuy comes from the word khvoya, which means "pine needle," or something that pricks. A theory holds that these terms were once employed by pre-Christian fertility cults. Christianity turned this language of sexuality into a language of blasphemy.

  On the door of the Camp Medical Clinic was a schedule of this week’s C.C.T.V. movie schedule. Tonight’s highlight? Shaving Raisa’s Privates. Raisa was the name of ex-leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife. The only thing Pig hadn’t liked about the movie was that Raisa was played by an actress and not Gorbachev’s real wife.

  On a cot a few beds down from Snow, lay Kolya. Kolya who worked in the same office as Snow. Kolya, the unrepentant Communist, who’d been camping out in that office for long nights trying to discover who was stealing documents from the locked records. Kolya, who suspected who, but had never had time to find proof. Kolya, who’d been sent to the clinic only days ago from a bullet that had snicked through an unsuspecting window and found a place inside his skull.

  “Magda!” a wizened creature with stubbled face and nearly bald head, held out a hand and gripped Magda’s arm fiercely. She’d been wandering around the clinic trying to find the small bedside alarm clock that she had seen earlier beside Snow’s bed, but had now mysteriously disappeared.

  “Arkady! What are you doing here? What’s happened to your hair?”

  “It’s nothing,” Arkady demurred. He smelled strongly of sweat and tobacco. Showers weren’t part of his lifestyle, unlike Pig, who seemed to shower hourly. Probably to get the smell of sulfur off of him.

  “I’ve just been working too hard. Some kind of bug, the Doctor says. Some nosebleeds, a little fainting, diarrhea, the food’s coming out of me from both ends. I’ll be right as rain in a week or two. Maybe they’ll even send me on one of those sanatorium vacations to Crimea on the Black Sea. I’m tired.”

  “Chernobyl, more likely,” muttered Magda under her breath.

  “Listen, what are you doing here? With him?”

  “Who?”

  “Pig. I hate that bastard.”

  “Don’t. Don’t give him that power. When water fills a jug, it takes the shape of the jug. But the water is not the jug. The jug isn’t the water. Don’t become like him.”

  “What are you doing here?” Arkady asked again. “What’s wrong with the chuzhie?” He used the Russian word for “foreigner,” so she knew he was talking about Snow.

  “Never mind. Just get well. Were you putting in double shifts again?” Arkady was trying to put together a retirement nest egg by working two jobs. His pension from the Soviet era was less than worthless now.

  “Yes, in the Lab and on the pipeline. Helping out with the pigging.”

  “Enjoying yourself?” Pig interrupted from behind them.

  “Yes,” said Magda. “But nothing else. There’s nothing else here to enjoy.” But Pig’s point was made. He didn’t want her talking to Arkady. Had just warned her off. That was okay. Another kind of person might have challenged Pig over it, asked questions. Not Magda. Magda was of the opinion that when you asked a question, all you got was the answer to the question, not the truth. If you wanted the truth, it was better to shut up, watch and listen. That’s how you learned the truth.

  Snow was dreaming again. Not about hockey this time. “Snowball” -- the model worker as Pig sarcastically referred to him -- was dreaming about Snowball. And Pig and Magda and the Doctor and Schrödinger and Kolya and Arkady. Except somehow in the dream, they had all become animals, except Schrödinger, who was a cat to begin with. There were a bunch of signs on the wall, but he couldn’t manage to read all of them, just the ones that said no animal will wear clothes and that all animals were equal. Magda was a mare, trying to help him sound out the words written on the wall. Nearby, Pig held a dripping paintbrush in his hand, as he looked at what he had written on the wall. He told everyone who would listen that he couldn’t be happier if they all knew how to take care of themselves, but since they didn’t he would take on the onerous responsibility of making sure the Camp ran smoothly for them. Doctor Bandar was also a pig, reading out statistics in a shrill voice that proved the Camp residents had suffered fewer illnesses, lived longer, ate better food and had more recreation hours than they had prior to the Camp being privatized and Pig took over. Some of the female animals professed their belief that their menstruation cycles were more regular and less painful under the guidance of Pig. Arkady was listening to strange bird tell him stories about Sugar Candy Mountain. “I must work harder,” he’d say. And “Napoleon is always right.” “Four legs good, two legs bad,” Kolya was bleating. A herd of sheep was milling about trilling that while four legs may be good, two were much better. A pack of dogs was gambolling around, nipping at everyone’s heels to keep them frightened and pointed the same way. Schrödinger the cat didn’t much care one way or another, just so long as Snow kept feeding him and scratching the scent glands on his cheeks.

  Obviously, Snow’s mind had been seriously damaged during the freezing. What were his chances now that he had begun the thaw? If one had to guess, they’d probably say he had a snowball’s chance in …

  … hell!

  Magda had waited until the medical clinic was almost empty before sneaking back with Schrödinger, Snow’s best and only friend. Quietly, careful not to disturb the shadows, she reached inside her bag and set Schrödinger down on Snow’s chest, where he sat, purring and rubbing noses with his chum.

  Magda stood in the doorway contentedly and watched Snow and the cat. Backlit from the camp street lights fighting through the grime on the clinic window, her own shadow joined Snow’s, joined at the shoulders, merging into one, then suddenly broke apart when the door opened and the room was flooded with light.

  Pig was standing framed in the doorway. “Coming?” he asked pointedly.

  Magda -- a convict who could wait her whole life without cracking a yawn, a Buddha statue who could outwait any man who had a home to go to -- turned and meekly followed Pig out the door.

  BEFORE

  “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” -- Buddhist proverb

  It started with the elephants.

  You know that guy everybody says they'd hate to be? As in, "I'd hate to be him?" Meet Snowden Nastiuk. Snow. Or Nasty, if you preferred. Snow slash Nasty was him. That guy. The one you’d hate to be. He lay there on his narrow, stained mattress in the dark having a Russian conversation with himself:

  “It’s past dinner time. I should eat.”

  Forget it. I’m not hungry.”

  “I stink. Time to take a shower.

  Too much trouble.”

  “Turn the TV on?

  Probably nothing worth watching.”

  “Is there vodka in the freezer?

  Too far to go and check.”

  “I’m stuck in this hellhole.

  Where else could I go?”

  “I hate my job.

  No, I hate myself.”

  Not a pleasant place to be, inside Snow’s head. If, outside, it was night, inside it was, too. The nine-month midnight, as Whitman put it. Except in Snow’s case it had been longer, much longer. He’d lost track. Someone -- Pascal? -- once said that all man’s problems come from him being unable to sit alone quietly in a room. Snow didn’t suffer from that problem. There was nothing he liked more than to sit alone in his room. Alone. With his pain. An old friend. Like some lost soul sentenced to life in a Rus
sian novel.

  By 8:30 p.m., Snow was exhausted, crashed out on his cot. He’d actually gotten up and tried to eat a banana, but couldn’t muster up enough energy. It rested quietly on his pillow, smashed neatly onto his forehead, the tip peaking out from under the peel, as if it too were so tired it had tried to come out but only made it part way. It had been a long time since Snow had cared what went into his mouth, just so long as it was eighty-proof.

  He’d tried to force himself to turn on the TV and see what was on the satellite dish, but that didn’t work either. Watching TV was just a way of passing time. If he were a kid, he’d have been watching cartoons. If he were a teenager, he’d have been masturbating. But time was not cooperating; it didn’t want Snow to pass it. Like most other nights, he hadn’t made it past nine. Unfortunately, he knew he’d be up around 2:00 a.m., still exhausted, as thoughts forced their way into his head like amoebic shit sluicing its way through a Western tourist on the third day living like a local in Doryobinsk after the dysentery outbreak. It was usually then, the hour of the wolf, that he started making a list and adding up all the failures he’d managed to accumulate over the past forty one years and try to think of reasons why he shouldn’t just give up. Maybe he had already.