A fine thinker, Dmitri Petrov hailed from a family of locally popular folk musicians based deep within the tenements of St. Petersburg. His parents a staple in the local bars and music venues so prevalent in their part of the city.
He had been deported to Nerchinsk for his questionable editorial leadership the University newspaper—the last few articles published before his incarceration had decidedly anti-Imperialist sentiments and one article even went so far as to lay out social and economic alternatives for Russia. He was promptly expelled, interrogated, and upon his interview with the authorities, sentenced to eighteen months of disciplinary servitude.
Dmitri Petrov was what many who knew him would describe as a premature curmudgeon. In the time the men had known him, none had ever seen him laugh. Life was serious business for Dmitri Petrov, and being convicted for treachery was no laughing matter. A shy and overly serious man of extraordinary height, he was clearly descended from the prevailing Scandinavian people in the northern part of the country; and it was precisely this shyness, seriousness and towering physical measurement that made him, above all other qualities and skills, a truly exceptional cellist. He held a different reverence for music than did his parents, preferring a musical quality of the classical variety perhaps too refined for the folk-based roots he grew up absorbing from his family.
The instrument had made the journey with him, and, though worn and very nearly useless, he continued to nimbly extend his fingers to the ragged hourglass at every spare opportunity, far preferring to retreat into the instrument’s company rather than engage with his fellow men. Education, politics, family and Russia herself be damned; the cello was his first, his only, love.
"There you are old man!" Dmitri tossed the salt across the table in a haphazard and aggressive fashion.
“Goodness Mitya!” chimed the aging Yevgeny, mouth full of an indeterminate and overcooked root vegetable (all the better in their mushiness for the old man’s failing teeth), “Do ease up!”
Here was the voice of petty thief Yevgeny Ashenko, the elderly bunk-mate of Dmitri Petrov condemned by Nicholas to penal servitude in Siberia after a series of ineffectual disciplinary wrist slaps (he was not, as it turned out, a very good thief).
An aging prisoner, messy, forgetful, Yevgeny was what one could only describe as dear. The men loved to laugh with him for he was constantly full of good humor, and caused them all even more delight for he was most likely the root of Dmitri Petrov’s consistent ill temper which the men also found most amusing.
However, for Dmitri Petrov himself, who bore the brunt of Yevgeny’s ‘bright ideas,’ nifty schemes and endless idiotic enthusiasms, Yevgeny, though ‘dear,’ was, in Dmitri’s estimation, nothing more than a frustrating and completely useless imbecile. Yevgeny’s popularity flummoxed him, and only irked him further.
Dmitri played Bach suites. He had been the editor of the University newspaper. Yevgeny had the intellect of a cornhusk. While Dmitri was reading smuggled political pamphlets, the letters of Engels and the poems of Pushkin, Yevgeny was watching snow melt in his hands. And while Dmitri pondered social reform and existential meaning Yevgeny pondered absolutely nothing.
During the days Yevgeny would accompany Dmitri everywhere, constantly sharing fleeting thoughts with him about just about anything. Every once in a while he would look like he was about to say something terribly important and smart and Dmitri would get very hopeful; merely to then impart things like “kasha is preferable to potato because it is chewy rather than mushy!”
It was pathetic.
At night, Dmitri would stare at the ceiling and dream of ways to escape the company of his bunk mate, and while he slept he dreamed of cafes, study halls, chamber music and scores of people to talk to; only to wake to a snoring Yevgeny, mouth agape, face pressed to his pillow with abandon, his fetid breath wafting right up into Dmitri's nostrils.
And Yevgeny was constantly trying to impress him. That morning Yevgeny had come right up to Dmitri before breakfast with a child-like glee slapped across his face, hands hidden playfully behind his back. He shook with excitement, eyebrows up, grinning ear to ear.
“Close your eyes.”
“No.”
“Close them, please! I have made you a gift. It is a surprise.”
“Yevgeny, I haven’t the time for this.”
“Come along Dmitri Petrov, please… for an old man…”
Dmitri could feel a migraine beginning. He wrinkled his nose. He groaned. He capitulated. “Fine,” he agreed, “but make it quick old man, it is nearly meal time, and more importantly people may see!”
Yevgeny opened his hands wide, “Open!” he cried.
Dmitri yelped. Yevgeny’s hands were filled with compost. “Do you like it?” he inquired proudly, “It is a little cello! I have fashioned it for you!”
“But it is made of compost, Yevgeny,” disgust was visible behind his thick spectacles.
“Yes! And it is a cello…” he paused, face aglow, “...for you!”
Dmitri, revolted by both the figurine and its creator, took it up all the same and placed it in his pocket if only to make the man go away.
Dmitri would complain to Anatoly; “Yevgeny is a numbskull,” he would say. But Anatoly would remain silent. He was of no use. Nor was anyone. They all loved Yevgeny. He was sincerity and positivity and light. Dmitri was a curmudgeon. They playfully scoffed him. “Oh how you two amuse me!” Grigory would say, laughing,” the way you carry on! One would never think you were the boy and he the old man! So very often am I delighted by his humor and your hatred of it!”
Dmitri couldn’t understand their devotion: Yevgeny was clearly assigned to his bunk to destroy him; he could see it in his idiot eyes! And the very fact that Yevgeny was the favorite with both his friends and with the guards was enough to give Dmitri a headache.
Before Yevgeny came along Dmitri may have been lonely. But at least things were quiet. No one ever bothered a curmudgeon for too long. After he came, Dmitri was still lonely. Only now his nerves were also frayed.
“How can you eat it?” Dmitri rebuked adjusting his glasses scathingly so as to emphasize the full power of his reproach. “It is seeped into our pores, it flakes from our scalps, we discover it in the pockets of our coats, the crevices of our very selves, it sloughs off into our beds!” and he shook his cap over Yevgeny’s food.
“Bah! Look here Dmitri! Mind your business! And here when I gave you my extra half a slice!”
“You are a halfwit,” Dmitri dismissed. He was in another ornery temper. One would think that after all the time they spent together Dmitri would come to like Yevgeny, but instead, he only came to hate him more.
“Come, Dmitri, leave the man and his tasteless food alone!” Mikhail entreated the men, trying to intervene and eat in peace.
The men shifted, exchanging looks, chewing through their amusement. For a moment all they could hear was the clanging of the spoons against the tin trays.
“The food tastes of nothing!” implored Yevgeny, unable to let it alone.
“Better of nothing than of salt, surely?” berated Dmitri once again, his voice raising.
Yevgeny had no response.
“You are a bore.”
“You are.”
“You!”
The two returned with renewed zeal to their respective tin trays, leaving the rest of them bemused and silent once again.
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