My Dear Wanderer

Yana Amis

By the age of thirty, Evgeny Ilyich Sviridov had somehow landed in Canada. He was an unremarkable man at first glance: quiet, modest, badly dressed for the times. But he had an excellent brain and worked as a computer engineer for a respectable company. In life, however, intelligence had not saved him from disaster.

His marriage had collapsed in Toronto after three noisy years, with tears, shouting, and broken dishes. Lyudka — whom he still called Lyudik — had taken their little daughter Olya and run off with a local plumber. True, the plumber was French and rather handsome. Lyudik, apparently, had fallen in love not only with him but also with his truck.

Gesha, as everyone called Evgeny, still hoped common sense would prevail. A child needed her father. So one evening he found the plumber’s workshop, put on new jeans and a fresh blue shirt, bought flowers and an enormous teddy bear, and drove there. The “workshop” turned out to be a garage. Through a small window he saw Lyudik inside, utterly transformed, her face glowing with someone else’s happiness. Nearby, little Olya slept under a blanket that, from a distance, looked clean.

Gesha did not burst in. He was a decent man. He left the flowers and the bear on the steps and disappeared into the night. The next morning he called a lawyer. From that day, everything began spinning: court hearings, debts, humiliation.

The Frenchman eventually threw Lyudik out. Olya missed her father and cried too much, which annoyed the new lover. Lyudik returned to Gesha, but he could not forgive her betrayal. He asked for custody and, after three years, won. Then Lyudik ran again — this time taking not only the child but also Gesha’s old guitar, the one she had given him back in Moscow.

They vanished. Gesha searched for them for five years, spent two hundred thousand dollars, drowned in debt, and finally gave up. Yet even after the divorce he never truly stopped feeling married. Sometimes he imagined the door opening and Lyudik walking in, with Olechka beside her, grown-up now and beautiful like her mother.

That day marked ten years since they had disappeared. Gesha decided to commemorate the anniversary properly: with food, vodka, and gifts to himself. He would go to the Russian store, buy caviar, ham, a chocolate cake, and a bottle of Stolichnaya. Then he would stop by Music World and finally buy the Gibson guitar he had dreamed of all his life.

The music store rang and glittered like a kingdom. Boys beat African drums, teenagers tortured expensive guitars, and in the middle of the hall a little girl tried to play a children’s song on a grand piano. Nearby an elderly man with silver hair played banjo so beautifully that even Gesha stopped breathing for a moment.

When the salesman brought out the Gibson in its black case with silver clasps, Gesha felt almost young. He paid the last installment, carried the guitar to the car like a sacred object, and decided he would definitely buy insurance tomorrow.

At home, he admired it for a long time. Then he tuned the strings and played a few jazz melodies. The sound was deep, noble, intoxicating. Around eight he set the table for three. Potatoes boiled on the stove, sausages steamed, vodka cooled in the refrigerator. He made a tomato-and-cucumber salad with egg, onion, and sour cream. Then he placed a little of everything on two empty plates.

“Well, my friends,” he said to the empty chairs, “shall we drink?”

After dinner he took the guitar and sang the song he had once written for Lyudik:

My dear, my tender wanderer,
Who could ever compare with you,
You wondrous bird without a nest…

The Russian words sounded strange against the voice of the Gibson, but Gesha sang on. Then the vodka warmed his chest, and grief rose up like smoke.

“You were wrong, Lyudik,” he said to the empty room. “You could leave me if you wanted. But why take the child? A child needs her father.”

He cried a little, then more than a little, and finally went to the bedroom. There, after much hesitation and several comic failures of courage, he called an escort service for lonely professionals.

A velvet female voice asked what kind of woman he preferred.

“A brunette is fine,” Gesha said politely. “A blonde is also fine. You have very romantic names.”

They agreed on Summer Breeze.

Near midnight two well-dressed young men arrived first, asking businesslike questions about weapons, drugs, alcohol, and unusual preferences. Gesha, bewildered, answered honestly. Then the girl appeared: thin, blonde, overly painted, dressed for a role she did not quite know how to play.

In the bedroom she ordered him to change the sheets.

“As they surely told you,” she said, “we care about cleanliness.”

“For a million dollars you’d lie down,” Gesha replied.

“For a million, yes,” she laughed.

The joke broke the ice. Soon they were sitting on the bed, smoking in silence. Gesha noticed bruises on her thin arms and the nervous way she delayed every step.

“First time?” he asked suddenly.

“What’s it to you?”

“And the marks? Trouble with drugs? Need money?”

The girl began to cry. Gesha pulled on his jeans.

“Go wash your face,” he said tiredly. “Then come to the kitchen. I have chocolate cake.”

“You have chocolate cake?” she asked through tears.

“And what a cake. Behave yourself and you’ll get half.”

Her name was Nicole. She was in her first year of nursing college. Her mother drank. There was no father. She had tried to hold herself together, then failed. Gesha poured tea and cut enormous slices of cake.

“We eat like champions after a marathon,” he said.

She smiled. Much later, as morning whitened the room, she noticed the Gibson.

“Play something.”

He played softly, then, without thinking, began the old song again:

My dear, my tender wanderer…

Nicole quietly sang along.

Gesha stopped.

“Where do you know that song from?”

“My mother sings it when she’s drunk.”

“But I wrote it twenty years ago, on another continent…”

He looked at her properly for the first time: the pale face, the cheekbones, the frightened eyes, the dyed hair that might once have been chestnut.

“Do you speak Russian?” he asked, praying she would say no.

“A little. Who are you?” she whispered, backing toward the door.

Tears filled Gesha’s eyes.

“Leave the door alone,” he said softly. “I’m your father, Olya. Nicole. And you are not going anywhere without me.”