Spring in Siberia by Artem Mozgovoy

Author:Artem Mozgovoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636280714
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

When our department store in Taiga was burnt down, one of the only things that she managed to rescue was a curious little white-stone figurine that someone must have brought her from Novosibirsk or even from nearby China. It depicted a scene from a monastery: two boys with shaven heads performing their duties, one drawing water from a well and the other lifting the filled bucket. When she brought the little monks home that night of the arson, the white-stone of the statuette had turned dark beige and smelled of smoke. The shape itself was not damaged except that, as a result of the heat, a few small bubbles had formed on the forehead of the boy who was lifting the bucket: it looked as if he was sweating from his hard work.

After sweating her own way through the shops and department stores in the big city, my mother found that there was not a single one which sold Asian talismans, souvenirs, incense sticks, and other Oriental bric-a-brac. Maybe it was her sentimental attachment to those two little monks, or some superstition that she—an Altay woman with slanted eyes and yellow skin—possessed, or maybe it was simply a practical calculation that made her decide to open an Asian kiosk. It was hard to imagine that such a minor, highly specialized business would ever come to the attention of gunmen running after the big money.

Obviously, she couldn’t afford to rent a place in one of the big stores, let alone a shop with a separate entrance. The best thing she could hope for was to rent a space in a basement. There was nothing strange about running a business from under the ground in a country which lacked any market-oriented strategy. Virtually none of the Soviet flat blocks had a place for shops or offices. In post-Soviet Russia, if one wanted to open a store, one had to acquire a ground-floor flat (usually by kicking some old lady out onto the street) and build an entrance via the window. Alternatively, one could convert a smelly windowless cesspit into a trading space.

Mother couldn’t afford to rent an entire basement either, so the solution she found was rather special. If you turned off Spring Street and walked into one of its spooky inner yards, you saw an iron door at one corner of the block, with stairs leading down. After descending into the sewage system and making your way through its grim tunnel, you suddenly found yourself in a sort of waiting room: no reception desk, no signboards, no windows, just a few chairs, a humid air, and a heavy silence. From that space, another door took you into a very particular ‘cabinet’, which housed an integrated medical center, private detective agency, and psychotherapy practice. The person in charge of that peculiar establishment was a stout, incredibly tall, deafeningly loud gypsy woman.

Isabella Davidovna was there to improve your family life, to set your career straight, to save you from some incurable disease, to find your kidnapped child, to bring new lovers together or to get rid of old enemies.

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