Mark dug out his keys, opened the door, walked down the hallway, and entered Kolia’s dusty domain, where herbs lay in a great heap on the floor. The air had the overwhelming smell of medicine and the muffled smell of burned food. There was a fancy new chandelier hanging over the table in the first room; only one of the bulbs worked, though. There were two washing machines in the corner; neither of them worked. There were wardrobes full of new, brand-name clothing and old children’s books. The rugs were densely covered with potato chips. Then Mark stumbled over a loose TV cable and an unplugged extension cord with a toaster at one end. Kolia was clearly all about the latest technology, but he had some problems getting it hooked up. The curtains had been drawn, and the rooms were swaddled in murk. The air held so many smells and so much stagnant warmth within itself that Mark couldn’t take it anymore and had to open the window for some relief. He took out his bag and started rooting around the apartment, gathering up Kolia’s things: the thermos, towels, and underwear. Then he remembered about the toothbrush. The bathroom was on the other side of the building. He went through the room with a couch and two televisions (one had picture and the other had sound), past the closet where Kolia kept brooms and his hunting shotgun, into a spacious, messy kitchen; in the corner, partitioned off by a colorful Chinese screen, was a big, fancy tub resting on four bricks. He loved Kolia’s kitchen—you could always find something interesting there, either in the fridge, which would shut off on its own sometimes, or in his grandma’s old desk, where Kolia kept sweets and sleeping pills. There were suitcases packed with magazines and cardboard boxes stuffed with Kolia’s socks and supermarket bags. A heavy piece of velvet was draped over the window like a flag, which made the surrounding disorder mysterious, so Mark stepped into the kitchen full of the foretaste of mysteries and riddles—with good reason, as it turned out. A young stranger stood in the shower, her back turned to Mark, fiddling with the hot-water knob. The screen had been pulled slightly to the side; the stranger apparently hadn’t been expecting any visitors. Mark froze, took a half-step back through the doorway, and then peeked in again. Light was streaming through holes in the velvet, yanking colors and shades out of the twilight. The radio on top of the fridge was singing with melodramatic sorrow; two hoarse women’s voices were telling some sob story about a downtrodden girl from a small port town who had learned too early about heartache and disappointment. The stranger didn’t even hear that somebody had walked into the room—she stood on her tiptoes, reaching for the nickel-plated Italian showerhead that Kolia had attached with blue adhesive tape, swaying slightly and listening to the sad women as though the song was about her own life.
“There was,” the first woman started, “nothing to do in my town except pound beers all day and fuck your brains out all night in the park by the jungle gym, the factories’ white smoke, the workers’ black eyes, and duplicitous raspberry bushes behind the brackish nighttime delta.”
“Yep, yep,” the other woman chimed in, “nothing to do, no attractions but dry southern wine and making love in the salt-parched grass. The hammerers’ black eyes and the fresh raspberries at the Sunday bazaars.”
Mark stared hard, trying to get a better look at the stranger. She was short and skinny with long, dark hair—weighed down now by the water—standing on her tiptoes, muscles taut with strain, but she still couldn’t reach anything, and she kept on swaying so bitterly that the song, already none too cheerful, became utterly hopeless.
“Everyone in town thought I was a tramp,” the first woman cried, “everyone hated me for my dyed curls and the golden chain on my defenseless neck. Every good-for-nothing scumbag on the street tried looking under my skirt and pawing my hips in the dark movie theater.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the other woman continued, “black strands of hair glinted keenly in the dark pit of the movie theater, and forlorn men walked her home late at night, passing through the olive-colored evenings, mesmerized by the warm bronze gleam of her skin.”
“They loved her,” the other woman added, as though emphasizing an important point, “for her light heart and carefree nature.”
Mark listened and looked. She had slim and weightless calves, soft hips, and dark skin, as though she had spent a lot of time working in vineyards, exposed to the sun, not hiding from the wind and rain.
Then the first woman continued, “Downtown was all decked out for the big holiday when I met him. He was a real gangster, plucking pigeons in streetcars, never parted from his Finnish knife, gunfights, hideouts, the whole shebang. But I’d given my heart to him—love’s a funny thing. But he left me, withdrawing a step at a time till I was all alone in this cruel, cold world.”
“Love, oh love,” the other woman took over, “it made every day a holiday for her, when she’d rush downtown every morning, and the local men would pull their knives and fight over the right to buy her a bouquet of wildflowers. But only one of them could open her joyful heart like a bike lock; he removed its secret spring and deprived her of her voice and happiness. Where is he now? What streetcars carry him home? Why won’t he come back for her?” She flung her hair onto her breasts, and Mark discerned some birthmarks on her back, so tiny they were hardly perceptible—he discerned her delicate vertebrae showing sharply under her skin like underwater rocks breaking the surface of a lake, rising to hold her up—she was so slim they could hardly feel her weight—he discerned her small, childish shoulder blades, unable to look away, bewitched as he observed them moving and then freezing again—he discerned her collarbone, her neck.
“Ever since then,” the first woman, the sad one, intruded suddenly, “I’ve come to this mobbed-up bar to sell my love to postmen and longshoremen—to anyone willing to pay anything at all for it. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch—nothing in life is free. When we buy our sweet love, what we get is just ripples on the water and blue makeup smeared on our faces.”