Nobody was against having another drink; nobody had anything against true manly friendship either. Sasha, a skinny guy with a shaved head and a little, neatly combed mustache, looked like a chimney sweep who’d slipped off a roof but had his fall broken by a banquet table. He was quite happy with his lot because things could have gone much worse. As the sky got darker, the light shed by the lamps overhead became more disquieting. The darkness encircled us like water wrapping around motionless catfish it didn’t dare disturb.
We all knew the real story. Nobody interrupted or corrected Benia while Alina was around, but as soon as she stepped inside, I started telling everyone what had actually happened down there in Crimea; everyone else started recalling parts of that trip too. Our crew was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of confusion. Even Rustam avoided making eye contact, took out his cellphone, and started texting angrily. The “Devil’s” real name was Valera. He and Marat were kicked off the team on three separate occasions, but the coaches took them back every time. It wasn’t because Marat was unbeatable or something—he never even won the regional crown. It’s just that Valera’s dad worked for the police department and he had a lot of pull; he’d go to bat for his boy and Marat whenever they got in trouble. They were at training camp together, right here in Kharkiv, but they decided to skip town and head to Crimea. Marat had been dating Alina for some time already, and they had been telling everyone they were going to get married soon. But all of a sudden, he went off the rails. It was March; black snow covered the city’s squares and parks, the sky flared and burned, and Marat was itching to go somewhere, so he made up some story about another training camp down in Yalta. These two gymnast girls went along with them—I don’t think they’d even turned fourteen yet. Marat and Black Devil, who were both eighteen, seemed so mature and responsible to them—two manly men who were man enough for anything. They stayed at Black Devil’s friends’ place—a cramped apartment in a big concrete prefab building. You couldn’t even see the water from the balcony, but they couldn’t have cared less about the stormy sea—all it was doing was inundating the beach with ice and seaweed. On day five of their trip, when they started running out of money, champagne, and bread, Black Devil and his gymnast were trying to drag Marat back to Kharkiv—but then it was like somebody had flipped a switch. That’s how Marat would later describe what he had felt. He said that he didn’t even know what had hit him or how it all started—his partner in crime, a shy, slim girl with nothing going for her but the prospect of a dazzling sports career, went crazy for Marat… and he’d gone crazy for her a while before. They locked themselves in one of the rooms, crawled into bed and didn’t crawl out again for days, just wearing each other out. Marat told us that she didn’t know a thing: he had to teach her the basics and show her how to make it last. The heat was on low in the apartment; they had to hide under thick blankets, so he hardly ever saw her naked—he studied her by touch alone. When he told the story, he would linger over how tender the palms of her hands were, how thin her veins, how dry her skin. It didn’t take him long to teach her, and she soon forgot how awkward and painful it had been at first; she cried at night and laughed in the morning, grabbing him by the neck whenever he tried to free himself from the blankets wrapped tightly around them and run to the kitchen for another bottle of champagne. He’d come back to bed, slip under the covers, and they’d start going at it again. The alcohol made her reckless and tireless; she’d bite his skin and then lick his body’s wounds, whispering tenderly in his ear. He’d be thinking about how to escape and take a piss. She’d conk out, mumbling something to her mom in her sleep, then he’d bring her back to consciousness. That went on for days.
Black Devil was the first one to panic. He knew the girls were under age. Sure, maybe that wasn’t a big deal in and of itself, but he also knew that the girls had told their parents they were going to training camp too. They had to get home somehow, and fast, because if word got out, not even Black Devil’s dad could get them off the hook. His girl started to panic, too; she broke down crying and asked him to get her a ticket back to Kharkiv. Black Devil tried reasoning with Marat. They were sitting in the kitchen and smoking their last few cigarettes. Blood was seeping out of Marat’s fresh wounds, mingling with sweet saliva. Marat said that he wasn’t going anywhere, he didn’t want to hear it, he was afraid of going back home, she’d tell everyone everything, he didn’t know what to say to Alina—she had no clue what was really going on and if she found out she’d die of a broken heart. So the best thing for him to do was to stick it out until the gymnast rode him to death or he ran out of cigarettes. Black Devil patiently presented some arguments, telling Marat that staying here wasn’t an option because the authorities would start looking for them eventually and then it was only a matter of time—they’d be the ones dying, and not of broken hearts, either: the righteous would throw the book at them, and then start looking for something else to throw, and they’d wind up getting stoned to death.
“Nah, man,” Marat protested, “you just don’t get it. When things aren’t going your way, when you’re backed into a corner, it’s best to just keep still. You just gotta stand there and take it till it passes.” And then he went back to his room and started warming her cold, slim shoulders, then he warmed her palms and her stomach, trying not to think about anything in particular, trying not to think at all. For a few days, Black Devil tried to talk him into going home. He went to the post office a few times to call Alina and tell her that Marat said hello and that he was busy working out. Alina figured out what was up, but she didn’t let on. She just said not to go too wild after practice. On one of the following days, Black Devil’s girl gathered up her stuff, slipped out of the apartment unnoticed, hoofed it out to the highway, flagged down a car that took her as far as Simferopol, and made it all the way home by the next morning. It was only a matter of time until the cops showed up. Black Devil kicked in the door to Marat’s room, pulled his girl out of bed, and helped her get dressed without saying a single word as she stumbled around, getting her stockings and socks all in a tangle. Then he dragged her to the train station. Marat stayed. Black Devil’s friends came back in a few days, so Marat had no choice but to go home. Alina dumped him and then took him back. Marat’s gymnast girl tried swallowing a whole bunch of pills, but it didn’t work out for her. Well, she didn’t die, I mean.
In the time we spent remembering that story, a thin, copper-tinged moon dangled itself over the yard. Partially concealed by the fog, the crescent was still showing through the damp air, moving quietly over the city’s tin roofs and the black throats of its chimneys. Alina stepped outside and was drowned in the darkness that wrapped tightly around her black dress. Occasionally, her elbows and wrists would pop into view as if rising out of black milk. Everyone got really serious all of a sudden; Benia lunged out of his seat to help Alina once again, taking some bread and wine from her. Sasha started inviting her over to the table and she finally came, perhaps a bit reluctantly. The air was growing even cooler—it was as though a rain shower had just passed through and the smell of its even, frigid breath lingered. Alina hardly said a word, occasionally asking the guests what dishes to pass them, and then she kicked back in her hard chair, gazing at the blue wine in the green bottles.