“It’s good that we spent our last bit of money on this damned doll,” you said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Lose faster to find sooner.”
We still had the main valuables we had always possessed: our faith and hope, plus a fairly shabby drawing by Lizzie and an old blanket on our shoulders. Everything else was unimportant; our past seemed flat, as if made of cardboard, like hastily nailed together background scenery. Isn’t it odd how the kindest and purest things that are of paramount importance lose their former attractiveness over time and start looking superficial, ordinary, and even alien? Having played their role, all unimportant and unnecessary things eventually die off, remaining in the past forever, while futures, our own included, lie beyond old, demolished houses.
We spent the night at Ickie’s place. His apartment was filled with such a viscous and sticky smell that, once we stepped over the threshold, we felt like all the filth was steadily sucking us into its putrescent bog. Caustic, sour stench hung everywhere like a dense veil. It appeared we could touch it and define its color; the bathtub became green and was covered with slime, as if it was sick with a cold; the floor had gotten soaked through and rotted, making parquet boards plaintively creak with “save our souls” requests; the lighting was dim and faint as if hope had extinguished there and then. And the owner matched his icky apartment quite well.
Rolling clumsily, he took us to one of three rooms, folded out a couch and prepared bed linen; and while he messed around making us a bed, sweat streamed down his dirty face, dripping on to a scuzzy sheet. Having finished, he tiredly sank into the only armchair in the room and gazed at us with half-closed eyes, smiling guiltily and quietly sniffing; a slice of apple peel stuck to his front teeth. Time seemed to forget itself in conflict with the problems of the human heart. Time snored.
“Would you like me to take photos of you?” Ickie broke the silence and started fiddling with his fingers as if playing an invisible flute. “I do this sometimes when I am in the right mood and have inspiration, for my friends only.”
“What the heck do you want it for?” you flashed. “Don’t you see us often enough?”
“It’s just a keepsake box,” he told us sheepishly. “I merely collect photos. Would you like to take a look?”
Not even waiting for our yes, Ickie reached under the couch and took out an old cake box lovingly tied up with a colored ribbon.
“Here you are, my precious. Come on, don’t be shy, I’m gonna show you to everybody,” he muttered, carefully handing it over to us. And while we untangled the ribbon with a vague presentiment of something raunchy and obscene, Ickie hopped, blushing and nearly bursting with delightful confusion.
The box contained a pile of photos; well, it took me some time to understand whom they depicted. From every picture, a lot of different women looked at us, and one feature, except for their absolute nakedness, was common to them alclass="underline" each woman had a prominent defect. There were one-eyed women, women with burns, lame, one-armed, bald, scarred – a full range of abnormalities one could only imagine.
“Holy crap, you’re sick!” you cried, totally offended.
“Quiet, I’m begging you, quiet,” Ickie fidgeted anxiously, waving his hands. “I share the most intimate things, from the bottom of my heart, and you are swearing. Too bad you don’t like them. That’s what I thought, people are prejudiced. Why are you throwing them away? There’s no need to hurt them.”
I saw a glimpse of fear in his eyes and in his gesture, as he rushed to pick up the pictures you had scattered, not even trying to keep the miserable shreds of his human dignity.
“In that case, I’ll leave you,” he said as if insulted, but didn’t move, patiently waiting for our reaction. But you didn’t say a word; we had no place to go.
“Just don’t take offence,” he babbled finally, tying up the box with a ribbon. “Maybe, after all, you will change your mind because such gifts shouldn’t be wasted. I’m trying for everyone’s benefit. Believe it or not, I might pay you if you need. I want to help.”
“You have already helped,” I responded quick-wittedly, “really helped. Thank you.”
After my “thankfulness” Ickie lit up.
“Anyway, I should go. I’ll be near, behind the wall, just in case,” he twittered confusedly and poured out of the room, embracing his box.
The next morning Ickie flitted around us like a may bug, mumbling delightfully: “What a pleasure, what happiness!” And only after we had closed the bathroom door in his face – he must have peeped in at the keyhole – did we manage to obtain a degree of privacy which enabled us to wash ourselves and our clothes.
The same morning we asked Compass Legs to find housing for us. Usually talkative, this time he only hemmed gloomily and, having taken away our daily “yield”, silently made his way.
We had to spend several more days at Ickie’s. Challenges that we cannot even imagine! We who weren’t used to convenience and comfort, we who had lived a significant part of our lives in the scrap heap, found it intolerable torment to stay at his place. Driven by an impulse of socially acceptable behavior, I offered to clean up his apartment, but didn’t have much success in that endeavor. Absent-mindedly, shifting from one foot to the other, Ickie pretended that he didn’t hear me, and hid in another room immediately after. A kettle whistled on the stove, indicating that it was time to have tea and go to work. But at the last minute, Ickie crept out of his shelter and called to us:
“Please, just don’t take offence. I want everything to stay the same, the way it was when my mom was alive. I loved her so much, one and only.”
You mysteriously looked around and stared at him closely:
“I wonder if she felt the same way.”
He got embarrassed and confused, and started waving his hands in a ridiculous fashion in front of his own nose as if fanning away a cloud of mosquitoes. Freckled, lop-eared, with a puppy look in his eyes and a timid smile, he looked like an old, blowsy, forlorn child. It seemed he had not only broken his arms and legs when he fell from the flying trapeze, but had also damaged some secret mechanism of ageing. Not waiting for an answer, we quietly passed through the door, leaving him alone with his crusted thoughts and infinitely dirty and unwelcome environment.
In a couple of days, the supervisor offered us housing in a desolate attic, and before we had time to answer, barked:
“Do push-ups! I want to see it,” and added severely: “Come on, on the count of one-two.”
Bewildered, I was at a loss what to do next and felt your hand dipping into a pocket in search of a screwdriver. Or could it be lipstick?
“All right, I’m kidding.” The supervisor suddenly became cheerful. “I could force you, I have no desire. Let’s skip it. You will work off your housing in a regular way. You should be happy that I am kind-hearted.”
And we were happy that he helped us, that he didn’t beat us, that he didn’t force us to do push-ups or whatever, that he simply didn’t drive us away. There will always be someone to replace us. No one’s irreplaceable. That summer the number of beggars increased so strikingly that it seemed the whole country was begging with outstretched hands.
Yeah, we were really lucky. After the poverty, the dirt and the cold, the new housing we were provided with struck us as warm and cozy: scantily lit premises with high sloping ceilings of wooden beams smeared with pigeon dung here and there, brick walls with small windows under roofs that seemed about to fall, a heap of “accurately” laid plywood on a concrete floor and a weak, barely perceptible, unpleasant smell. A more thorough examination revealed the presence of small piles of faeces spread out carefully and evenly – not in just one corner, but literally everywhere – along the entire perimeter. We even had an urge to contribute ourselves. However, after many hours of cleaning, the attic began shining like a baby’s butt and turned into a model to follow, a dream, an unrealizable wish; in a word, a place for normal life.