grieving mad. She insisted on seeing her husband, demanding him in
ways that were hard for his friends to deny. Wisely, they refused to allow
it. They had sequestered Markov’s remains at the home of an old man
named Kuzmich, a carpenter who lived alone at the edge of the village.
Onofrecuk and Zaitsev gathered some planks of Korean pine for a coffin,
and Kuzmich built it—full size. But Markov could not be buried right
away because Borisova had ordered a new suit for him. That there was
virtually nothing to put in it was beside the point. Borisova’s world was
tilting badly and she needed some order; she needed her husband to be
buried in a suit. Her friends obliged her, but the round-trip to Luchegorsk,
the nearest shopping town, would take a day. In the meantime, Markov’s
friends went to the village cemetery to prepare the grave.
The cemetery is laid out on a forested knoll about half a mile south of
the village, where it is overseen by a massive, dead Korean pine. The
cemetery is small, not only because Sobolonye is so new, but because the
people hired to work for the company and thereby allowed to live in the
village were generally too young to die. Nonetheless, some of them have
and so there is a high proportion of small children and young people
represented there—some by Orthodox crosses of crudely welded steel,
others by crosses of brightly painted wood, a few by formal gravestones.
If the family can afford it, an enameled photograph of the deceased will
be mounted on the grave. Today, the graveyard is the only place one can
view a likeness of Vladimir Markov.
Compact and solidly built, Markov had high cheekbones, melancholy-
looking eyes, and an athlete’s chin. Both Onofrecuk and his wife, Irina,
noted a certain “Gypsy” quality about him. Tamara Borisova put it a bit
differently, saying, “He was a Russian, but there was something
Armenian or Georgian about his face.” Its effect was not wasted on her:
Markov was handsome, with olive skin; dark, wavy hair; and blue-green
eyes. Short as he was, he was still exceptionally strong: before
Sobolonye’s disco burned down, Markov used to help out there, and
Borisova recalls him carrying 100-liter beer kegs (about 25 gallons) with
ease (full, these weigh about 250 pounds).
After the army, Markov had gone to a technical school for logging and,
ron
(Ron)
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