From Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

After Alik had walked up to the closed gate of Lychakiv Cemetery, [1] about ten people stepped out from under a row of trees growing next to it. They came toward him leisurely, gathered around him, and pulled the key to the lock on the gate out of his pocket.

The key had already been slipped into the turning mechanism when the footsteps of a man hurrying pitter-pattered behind those who had gathered. Alik looked back and saw a nearly two-meter tall, slightly stooped-over giant. His long gray hair seemed to be saying: “I’m one of you.”

“Labas vakaras!”[2] he uttered softly. “Sorry, I nearly was late!”

“Audrius?!” Alik indicated his surprise out loud, measuring the giant with his gaze from the crown of his head to his pointy shoes. “By train?”

“Yes, through Kyiv,” he nodded.

Everyone clambered over toward Audrius to give him a hug.

“You’ve been away for a long time,” Alik said, and turned toward the gate. He turned the key, and the steel shank of the padlock jumped out of its slotted hole.

They walked silently through the cemetery. After climbing onto a hill, they looked around. Alik waved his hand invitingly and led the rest behind him along a trail between graves and fences. They stopped at an iron cross that seemed to be intentionally hidden from separate gravesites behind the trunk of an old tree and two overgrown bushes. There was no fence here. The long-haired older company gathered around an unmarked grave. It was impossible to read either the first or last name of the deceased written on a rusty plate welded to the cross arm. One of the visitors squatted down in front of the cross, nuzzled his knees onto the edge of the grave mound, and pulled a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket. He opened it, laid out a jar of white paint onto the grass, and a brush appeared in his hand.

His steady hand carefully outlined with white oil paint letters on the plate: “Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970.”

In the windless silence, a branch snapped. It was somewhere nearby. Alik strained his ears. The crunch repeated. Under the feet of an approaching stranger, fallen leaves rustled plaintively.

“A guard?!” Alik thought.

Along the same route, circling around the graves and fences, a small man wearing a cap approached them. An ordinary stranger. The visitors at the grave dispassionately watched his approach. Curiosity is the realm of the young, and the gathered visitors were already over fifty.

“I beg your pardon,” the uninvited guest uttered in a clear manner like a TV announcer, stopping at a polite distance from the group. “I’ve long wanted to. . . Wanted to speak . . . .”

“Then speak.” Alik calmly gave him permission.

“Don’t you recognize me?” the man asked and took off his cap.

The face of the person who had come, despite the fact that it was night, was amply illuminated by the moon. A typical face, even though it was illuminated, that didn’t reveal anything to Alik. An average face, billions of which the world has churned out: ears, nose, eyes, everything seemed according to a single GOST, [3] without flaws, without memorable or eye-catching highlights or defects.

Alik shook his head in the negative.

“Oh, come on,” the voice of the guy with a buzz cut boomed with umbrage. “We used to be close. Not by your choice, of course. I’m KGB Captain Ryabtsev.”

“Oy,” tore out of Alik’s lips, and he squinted, still staring into the face of his unexpected companion. “And what are you doing here, captain?

You must be retired now?”

“Captain in reserve,” Ryabtsev corrected Alik. “Though it’s the same thing . . . I wanted to apologize . . . And say something.”

“Well then, apologize!” Alik shrugged his shoulders. “Just make it quick. We’re not gathered here to listen to you, of course,” and he nodded toward the iron cross with a fresh white inscription.

The captain put on his cap and cleared his throat.

“In general terms, forgive me, guys! Both me and Mezentsev. I was just at his funeral . . . bladder cancer . . . .”

“Do we have to listen to him?” Penzel inquired in an angry voice. He was a large long-haired and bearded man in a leather jacket, who looked more like a biker than a hippie.

“Well, we’ll listen for a minute,” Alik sighed. “Come on, captain, express yourself as concisely as possible! The guys are losing patience!”

“To keep it short . . . .” Ryabtsev began to speak in a quieter voice and less clearly. “First, I wanted to thank you for introducing me to Jimi Hendrix thirty-five years ago! He turned my life around. Thanks to him, I lost interest in my career. That’s why I’m a captain, and not a colonel. . . . And that’s why me and the boys in 1978 were able to get you a piece of his body, his hand. So Jimi would have his own little grave here in Lviv, so you’d have somewhere to commemorate the anniversary of his death!”

“What?!” Alik’s eyes widened. “No way, it was guys from the Baltics who brought his hand, and they were helped by Lithuanian expats in the U.S.! Tell them, Audrius! You remember!”

“Yes,” Audrius nodded. “I remember those guys. Jonas, Kęstutis, Ramūnas . . . .”

“Of course, they passed along the hand, and our people passed it on from the States.” Captain Ryabtsev again uttered the words resolutely and clearly in military style, the way one conducts a briefing or gives a spoken order. “Moscow didn’t know about it. It was me with the late Mezentsev here in Lviv who came up with a special operation in the States on the illegal partial exhumation of his body. Moscow funded it, but if they had learned the whole truth, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now . . . .”

One of the people listening heavily sighed. The captain searched with his eyes for the one who had sighed and sustained a pause.

“I’m telling you this so you don’t hold a grudge against us. We weren’t stupid bulldogs. I can tell you Jimi Hendrix’s biography right now year by year. I can recite the lyrics of his songs in the original. I can’t sing, sorry about that! My parents didn’t have money either for a piano or a guitar. As a child, I had only one musical instrument—a whistle! Am I glad I didn’t become a policeman!”

“I remember you,” Alik said thoughtfully. “If what you say is true, then we have to find a table, at which we all,” he gestured toward the gathered crowd, “can sit. And we’ll have a drink and reminisce in more detail.”

“Everything I said is true,” Captain Ryabtsev said. “There’s no sense in deceiving you. I’m not on duty. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve been in the service.”

Alik looked down at his feet and remained silent. He turned his gaze at the cross with fresh white lettering.

“Jimi, can you hear?” he said, turning to the cross. “The authorities have put a wedge between our relationship with you again. But we’re not going to reconsider our relationship with you. We haven’t betrayed you, either before September 18, 1970 or after. And there hasn’t been a year when we haven’t gathered together here and freshened up your grave. Even when they really wanted to stop us!”

Somewhere nearby an ambulance rushed past. The siren gradually subsided.

“Well, guys?” Alik said, exhorting. “I’ll begin!”

He pulled a blister pack with Phenobarbital out of his pocket, took a tablet out of it, sat down by the grave, lowered the white tablet onto the ground and, after waiting a moment, pressed it down with his index finger under the roots of the grass.

“Rest in peace,” he whispered and rose up on his feet. The captain took a step back as if he didn’t want to get in the way. But he stood there motionless, observing the scene.

Bearded Penzel sat down at the grave. On his palm was a prepared tablet of the sleep medication. The ritual was repeated. Audrius was the next to sit on his haunches by the grave. He whispered something in Lithuanian. Then, with his index finger, he also pressed a white pill into the ground of the burial mound.

The sky darkened over Lychakiv Cemetery. A light rain began to drip on the not-yet-fallen leaves of the trees and shrubs. The leaves began to rustle and whisper, evoking the sensation of lurking danger.

Alik glanced up.

“Everything like a year ago,” he said. “It’s time . . .”

They set off back toward the exit, descending down the hill, circling around the fences and graves, tombs and monuments.

Alik’s eyes distinguished a large crucifix on a stone cross in the darkness. To Alik the face of the crucified Jesus Christ appeared to be momentarily happy.

After the gate had already been locked shut, Captain Ryabtsev appeared right in front of Alik. The captain was a head shorter.

“Well, guys, should we look for a large table?” Alik asked, but without waiting for an answer, turned right and began to walk along the brick-lattice fence of the cemetery. The others followed him, with the captain trailing at the end.

Soon, the fence of the cemetery was left behind. On both sides of the road, the sleeping houses of Mechnikov Street now seemed gray. Alik suddenly felt a weakness in his legs. He was leading the way, showing the route to his old friends, those with whom he had been taken to the local police station in his youth. At the same time, he was thinking about the fact that he knew there was no particular large table ahead of them. And they really needed that table today. Back in the bad old days of the Soviets, even a small rectangular kitchen table, furnished with stools, seemed great. Those times and those tables are now in the “double” past: a different century and a different country. Now you wanted a full-featured chair—evidently your backside over the years began to require tenderness and comforts. But tenderness and comforts don’t happen at every step.

“Maybe go to Hotel George?” My friend’s warm breath filled my ear.

“Genyk’s working there as a guard, he’ll let us in . . . .”

Alik slowed his step and squinted his eyes at the guy who said that.

Right before our eyes the dark air began to stir, as if someone had cut loose a stream of cigarette smoke into it.

“The fog’s setting in,” said Captain Ryabtsev, who emerged to the right between Alik and the wall of the building. “It’s a low-lying fog,” he added in the voice of someone well-informed. “It’ll inundate us today . . . It’s better to stop.”

Alik stopped. The others stopped too. In front of everyone who was standing under the 84-A Lychakiv Street house number sign, which was illuminated by a weak light bulb, the darkness filled up with the airborne milk of the fog.

Before his eyes, the sign with the name of the street and house number moved away somewhere and became invisible.

“Alik, I’m leaving,” said the voice of Captain Ryabtsev. “Next time.”

“Which time?” Alik asked.

“You haven’t moved anywhere,” the captain said amiably. “I know your address from the seventies. I’ll drop by and tell you everything. Maybe even tomorrow.”

The guys said goodbye and dissolved into the night fog. Just Audrius remained close by, nearly touching Alik’s shoulder.

Translated by Michael M. Naydan

(with gratitude to Olha Tytarenko for her expert editorial suggestions)

Notes

[1] A famous cemetery in L'viv that was established in 1787 and serves as the final resting place for many of the city’s most prominent individuals.

[2] “Good evening” in Lithuanian. (Translator’s note)

[3] The Soviet acronym for Government Standard.