Too bad that they have now somehow altogether lost their meaning…
Their first night together, that mad—festival!—night with the crazy race toward the flashing avalanche of lanterns reflected in the street puddles, flying from one late-night pub to another, and finally to the completely unambiguous little bordello on the outskirts of town, who would have thought that they had something like this out in the provinces (unremarkable from the outside, except for all the expensive foreign cars—a house with two rooms “across the hall” from each other, in one room leather soles shuffled across the wooden floor, a densely compacted drunken human mass shoved to and fro in dance, and in the other, where they were served coffee and liqueur, there stood two cots covered with quite touching azure plaid blankets, over which hung some kind of obscene lithographs—“Kuprin! Straight out of Alexander Kuprin!”—she had burst out laughing; despite her physical exhaustion—it was her second night without sleep!—she was nonetheless very keenly aroused, like she had drunk champagne, by the pathetically exhibitionist theatricality of this atmosphere of cheap sin, by the convulsive music behind the thin wall, by the almost embarrassed look in the eye of the woman serving them drinks—she would especially remember seeing in the dance room a very young, scarcely eighteen-year-old prostitute with flowing chestnut-colored hair, attractive in that puppy-wet, bright, untarnished folk-song beauty that you can still find among girls in Volyhnia and Podillia—and the poor thing, dead drunk: “Listen”—she had latched on to them, sensing something out of the ordinary—“what’s your name? My name is Maija. You’re such a beaudiful cupple. Naawh, I’m seerious”—and when given a light for her cigarette she replied like a gracious girl, “Thank you kindly”—that local dialect “thank you kindly,” just like they taught her at home!—for some reason pierced one to tears with an aching pitying tenderness: “She’s still a child and has no idea what’s happening to her”—she shared her feelings with him in the car on the way back—he shrugged his shoulders—“Who the hell cares? She’s just a wipe, that’s all,” and yet that “wipe” was the first to recognize the growing, awakening love between them, every love needs witnesses at its beginning, it needs—parental, tender approval from the outside world of this newly emerged union of two, and the world is never miserly in dispensing its blessing with warm, misty eyes, with the smiles with which old men turned to look at us in the train station café into which we brought from the street, in a flying, dancing rhythm, the fresh breeze of an invisible carnival, the atmosphere of sly glances at each other, little games, conspiratorial chortles over something frightfully funny but incomprehensible to anyone else—shining sequins, generously scattered lucky confetti, which, as it falls, slowly twirls in the air long after the door shuts behind the radiant couple, “
Which cigarette lighter do you want?”—“The red one”—he turns to the bartender, spreading his arms helplessly like a comedian: “She said—red”—and the bartender begins to glow like a juicy peach, a smile washing over his face, he’s a participant, and, filling the tall glasses with sticky, amber liquid, he lets it spill over the top—ah the world loves lovers, because only they, in the dull monotony of daily life, give it a sign that it’s really different, better, than it’s used to thinking of itself, that it’s enough to stretch out your hand, twist the dial, and everything around begins to sparkle, glitter with the colorful lights of a child’s kaleidoscope, begins to laugh from an overabundance of strength, and breaks into a dance!—the old street photographer on the park bench, beside him a matron like a Scythian statue in a cloth padded jacket: “Photograph those young ones over there!”—“Oh stop,” he drones slowly, almost dreamily, “they’ve got other things on their mind, they’re in Love”—the last word is spoken with a capital letter, and you, exchanging glances, turn and rush over to be photographed, eager to either offer yourself as a gift to these oldsters or, on the contrary, thank them for the unexpected blessing that descended like a wet kiss of a fallen leaf on your forehead—then he takes away those photos and you will never see them again, it’s not impossible that he’s already torn them to bits, thrown them into the ashtray and set fire to them—afterward carefully pushing the ashes into a little pile with his crooked baby finger—okay, darling, I’ve nothing against it, you can engage in a little suffering, too: it was time for you, too, at the tender age of forty-plus years, to discover that not all of us are “wipes” or, in the best-case scenario, “mousy loves,” I’m sorry, but I only know how to play for keeps, and if I’m not going to be your love, not a mousy one but a real one, then I sure as hell won’t be, in any way, your “wipe”: I prefer to be sandpaper, sir)—that first night, it was probably then, in those moments of heightened emotion, that somewhere deep inside her was born a slightly ironic, sneering coldness: it’s a fuck party and nothing more, with all the attendant attributes, like some off-stage screenwriter had taken care to maintain the purity of the genre (and moreover, as quickly became apparent, a rather unsuccessful fuck party at that!)—however, they don’t call us gifted kids with enormous creative potential for nothing, we can convert an unsuccessful fuck into a tragic love in a flash, driving ourselves into a totally suicidal state in the process—it was only after nine (that’s right, nine!) months, in another land on another continent, on the night of the final fight in a room of some hillside motel—first tiptoeing around, smoking on the wooden veranda, they wrestled in hushed voices so as not to wake anyone up, then they went out walking—speaking at full volume as though the raising of voices meant automatically setting feet in motion—across the parking lot, between automobiles whose walrus sides flashed reflections of the moon, a stop—a confrontation, eye to eye—a spark!—a clash of sabers!—and suddenly he’s turned around and running across the whole lot back to the room to pack his things, a small, almost waxlike figure in shorts quickly moving its naked legs—within him twirled, like a screw—it seemed as though you could hear it grinding—nothing but rallied pride, a burning fear of what, God forbid, “people might say” (the good old provinces talking, Khvylovy might have sighed!) if they were to learn that it was she who left him, yanked him out of his home turf, carried him over the ocean and dumped him, what a tough broad! they’d say, and that’s why, heaving a travel bag quickly stuffed with his crap over his shoulder (“Don’t forget your sponge, dear,” she was handing it to him from behind, now that she too had made it back to the room) he barked with that especially brutal, quarrelsome voice that he’d been in a habit of addressing her with lately: “I’m flying home tomorrow! Thanks much for America!” (she ha-ha-ha’d in her soul, despite not really being in a laughing mood, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be flying anywhere, that by tomorrow or no later than the day after—a creative personality, after all!—he’d find himself some new version of his being here, in no way connected to her, which is exactly what happened)—and he tore off into the night—two and a half miles! with his stuff!—to that damned studio (I wonder if it’s at least open at night or whether he’ll just sit somewhere under a bush, crazy man, until morning?)—it was only then, after she closed the door after him, with mixed feelings about a show that wasn’t quite over, a burning rod of “what the hell do I do now?” plunged into her brain and that feverish-nauseous trembling scattered over her entire body that hadn’t subsided for over a week already—as though she really was a mechanical doll in which all the wheels and screws had slipped out of their grooves so that she could only swallow liquids and couldn’t sleep at all for several nights at a time—it was only then that she turned to the mirror and saw it: coming up, coming up to the surface, artistically twisting her lips with their not yet totally smudged-off lipstick!—that same coldly ironic (it’s a fuck party and nothing more) detached smile: what a story!—this smile said—God damn it, what a story…