The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov

buildings.
    Skirting round the buildings I saw a trolleybus-turning circle and a route-taxi stop. To be on the safe side I asked a cultured-looking old woman about the central market and she confirmed what the taxi driver had said, that it was five stops away. Then she asked me if I could remember which tree had come into leaf first this year: the alder or the birch? She explained, “If it was the birch, it will be a good, warm summer. But if the alder was first, we’ve had it, it’s going to be rainy and cold.”
    I already liked the town because it was filled with festive sunshine, and I could smell the blossoming lilac’s intoxicating scent even through the windows of the trolleybus. Most of the buildings were pre-revolutionary, with large windows, ornate moulding work that had come away in places on the walls and wide front doorways. The atmosphere of modest merchant-class serenity was spoiled bynumerous kiosks with clumsily daubed signs: “Pies”, “Ice Cream”, or “Irina Ltd”. I was delighted to see the Russian letter “y” at the end of so many Russian shop-name signs “Produkty” (“Groceries”), “Soki, Vody” (“Juices, Waters”), “Sigarety” (“Cigarettes”). In my native parts, where Ukrainian
nezalezhnyst
(“independence”) had been raging for almost nine years, this letter had disappeared completely.
    The town centre was green and spacious. The intersection of Gagarin Prospect and Komsomol 50th Anniversary Prospect formed a small square, which had a bronze Lenin three metres high. Standing to the right of the statue was an armoured car of Civil War vintage, and to its left was a T-70 World War II tank, as if Lenin were being urged to choose more contemporary military technology but wasn’t taking the hint, stubbornly thrusting out his hand in an attempt to flag down a foreign automobile on the main avenue.
    Right beside him was a cosy little park. A granite pedestal with a howitzer gun towered over the flower beds. Below the golden figures “1941–1945” lay wreaths and flowers, evidently left over from the Victory Day celebrations on 9 May. Rising up behind the little park was a cathedral with reddish, samovar-shaped domes and a bell tower with a steeple covered with a dull, mossy-emerald patina.
    The trolleybus stopped beside an old brick wall surrounding the cathedral that had grass sprouting through it. I walked along a short little street smothered in lime trees and came out directly opposite the metal fence of the market, at the point where the fish stalls began and there was a smell of riverine scum.
    I asked some women with stuffed shopping bags where the number eighteen bus stop was. They explained that it was at the other side of the market, but advised me against taking the bus— “it’s not reliable”—it was better to wait there for the route taxi, which also ran along Chkalov Street.
     
    I found the Trust agency that I needed in the semi-basement of a sleek nine-storey building faced with tiles, between a delicatessen and a hairdresser’s.
    The interior was a standard example of a modest “Eurostandard” renovation. The black imitation-leather furniture, white blinds and rambling pot plants inspired a distinct feeling of trust.
    There was only one woman ahead of me in the queue, but I was mistaken to feel glad about this—she stayed in the notary’s office right up to the lunch break, so I was forced to spend the best part of another hour browsing through the local newspapers.
    By the time the seals had been applied and I had spent more time in the queue to the little window in order to pay the required fee and handed in the receipt to the notary, the day was already declining into evening.
    In the delicatessen I bought a bottle of Absolut vodka and a large gift box of chocolates. Who could tell which sex of bureaucratic individual I would encounter at my uncle’s local housing department? I needed gifts to accommodate both possibilities.
    The