I was aware that you hated me desperately, tied to me for the rest of our lives, and there was no way to change it. Retiring into your shell, you no longer lived our shared life, but a very quiet life of your own; in other words, you rejected me like a body rejects its own disobedient hand. It made me feel insupportable pain, depriving me of understanding what the next step or move was. Instead of doing something worthwhile, I chose to do nothing at alclass="underline" neither move, nor speak, nor even breathe, pretending that I didn’t exist. I stayed motionless, waiting for movement. Perhaps, I should have acted in a different way, should have anticipated your moods, softened your rages, tried to know your thoughts and to do whatever you desired. But pain, born out of hurt pride, was stinging me and I could only focus on myself and neglect others. Every day we became more aggressive and selfish, as if after leaving our mother you had caught her self-destructiveness and then infected me with it. Having turned into enemies, we hated each other more and more with each passing day. You scowled at me with hateful eyes and when you started drinking you couldn’t stop. You did it not for the sake of getting drunk but in order to plague me. Thus, little by little, our connection faded away, until the only thing we had in common and the only thing left partially unbroken was our liver.
In those days I almost gave up, not expecting anything would change, that only a miracle could save us and put us back together.
16. THANK YOU, YURA, THE SPACE IS OURS!_
All night long you were pushing and tossing, croaking and groaning, keeping me awake. I squeezed your hands tightly – they were hot and very dry – and studied the tension that you felt. As soon as we got out of bed, you threw up on the floor something that looked like rotten gruel.
“I got sick again,” you sighed heavily and shook your head. “It’s always the same: catching a cold, nursing a cold, then catching and nursing, over and over again.”
“My bones ache,” I confessed wearily. “Maybe we should not go to work today?”
“Would you like to spend all day in this smelly attic?” you responded angrily. “No way; you may stay if you want, but I’m going outside.”
It became clear finally and irrevocably. You are something that destroys me, and there is no natural way to get rid of your existence.
In the frosty air, we felt a little better, and our spirits brightened. But in the tunnel you threw up again, though we hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning. You were shivering all over; I knew my condition was lousy too; I had fever and cold chills. Out of the corner of my eye I saw your head droop very slowly forward until it finally hung down with its whole weight… and soon, the same would happen to me. Very soon we would both fall down and indifferently nuzzle a cold floor. But for some reason I had no fear of death, and waited patiently, caught up in a strange and surprising apathy for people, life, myself. I was already passing out when suddenly some person separated from the crowd and made his way towards us.
He was walking in our direction so confidently that despite my exhaustion and drowsiness, I instinctively moved away and put my arms forward to avoid a collision. But he stopped a half step away from us, and spoke with conviction, gesticulating vigorously and rather apprehensively, from time to time pointing at his throat and chest. His face seemed familiar. At last, through the noise of the tunnel, I managed to capture the sense of his words. We are dying.
“I am not scared,” I said, or was it just a thought? You were totally motionless except for your heart. I could hardly feel your hand, cold as a dead person’s hand, though your body was burning with fever. Plucking up my strength, I dug my elbow into your side.
“Damn, it’s so cold here,” you said, regaining consciousness. “And who the hell are you?”
“Looks like pneumonia. Does it hurt here? And here?” the young man asked, poking your chest and ignoring your question. “Try to give a cough.”
He rushed into our stuffy tunnel like fresh air. Peering into a thin face squeezed by thick temples of glasses, I could finally recognize him. It was the son of that woman with a round face– our first mother, according to the list.
“You need to go to hospital, and you’d better hurry up,” he concluded imperturbably.
“No, we don’t need to,” you reacted instantly.
His face was indistinct and vague as if I looked at it through a rain-streaked window. For a moment, I completely lost sight of him.
“Yes, you do, or else you’re going to get into trouble,” emptiness answered, turning into a human again.
“I don’t care,” your embittered voice croaked.
One way or the other the young man was likely to be the winner of the dispute, for it is not so difficult to win over two dying beggars, but at that moment Compass Legs unexpectedly arrived.
“What the fuck do you want?” he asked toughly, screwing up his face into an aggressive mask. “Come on; get out of here, smarty pants.”
“They really need help, or else they’ll get into mischief,” the young man whom he called smarty pants protested.
“I said get the fuck out of my place!” was the rude response.
“Don’t you have a bit of mercy for them?”
Compass Legs shrugged his sloping shoulders blankly and without further ado pushed the guy out of the tunnel. It became clear that there was no way out, or so it seemed to me. I don’t remember how long we stood in the dark, outside our own minds, at the extremity and appendix of the world. It seemed like death would never come.
Despite frosty weather, the young man, whose name was Yuriy, was waiting for us outside the tunnel. As soon as we came into view, he grabbed us and helped us get home to the attic. He had brought some medication from the hospital where he worked as a doctor.
“What is it?” you asked apathetically at the sight of a syringe in his hand.
“It is no big deal,” he replied with a slight smile. “It will feel like a mosquito bite.”
“Are we going to die?” I asked quietly.
“Sometime you definitely will,” Yura (Short name of Yuriy) responded reasonably and shrugged, “but not now, certainly not!”
He stayed with us through the entire night and left to go to work the following morning. One injection of medicine was not enough to cure us, and he kept coming every evening, bringing food and staying with us for long hours; a little later, he provided warm clothes and an old, thick blanket.
Every person has secret thoughts that he or she can only confide in a real friend or a soul mate; however, those are particularly scant for people like us. So far, everyone coming into our life has never stayed in it long enough to see the consequences of his actions. Will Yura feel a strong desire to remain our friend? Actually, it doesn’t matter! All that mattered now was the fact that, for the first time in my life, I wanted to unburden my soul to someone. I was in such a rush to tell him everything that words literally jumped out of my mouth, escaped from my heart. Yura listened very attentively, not judging and not feeling sorry for us, just nodding from time to time, with a scarcely noticeable, ingenuous smile appearing on his lips from time to time.
In spite of the thin, slightly aquiline nose giving his oval face a characteristic hard look, he always emitted softness and warmth. He spoke just like everybody else, and at the same time in a way different from the others. He used to say, for instance, “smiley” instead of “smile”, “trouble” instead of “grief”, “pity” instead of “misery”, “angel” instead of “dear” – those were seemingly ordinary words but they evoked positive and reassuring emotions and corresponding sentiments. We found out that outside the tunnel there was a great, amazing world where magic and miracles await everyone; the world where happiness can be endless and people capable of doing good things are not weaker than those who lust after power and authority, where only giving can actually make you richer. He believed in his words with all his heart, and it made me hold my breath in order not to scare away or destroy this wonderful world of fairy tales. And he kept on and kept on speaking and I felt very grateful to him for having made me see the true face of mankind, or his version of this true face.