And there were those who ripped open their shirts to free their suffocating throats, tore off their clothes, fouled by poison and pus, and renounced henceforth and forevermore, crying out: Anathema to Augeas and his works, to his wives and his heirs, his steeds and his chariots, his golden stores, and his servants, his idols and his sepulchers!… And, having screamed their fill, they wiped away their saliva, tightened the belts and strings on their bundles and duffel bags, took their children in their arms and old people on their shoulders, and, without looking back or crossing themselves, dissolved into the sunset. A step forward—over the hunchbacked bridge—through the waters of the Lethe—a wood trampoline—darkened air—a whistling in the ears—the sobbing of the globe, quieter and quieter, and then: the world is different, blossoming thistle, spring blackthorn, wormwood cordial, capers shall scatter and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and… Ah, the new stars are so innocent, and the thronging lights below are so golden, as if a burning being had passed by and left traces, his step wide and uneven—golden, segmented worms and shining tentacles wriggle and burrow, and then the cake of an alien city spins, bloody-blue, doused with rum and set ablaze, stinging the eyes and fingers, hissing in the black water, while the sea with its smoking river tongues inches forward into space—a cooling, darkened, sluggish space already covered with a thin film. Farewell, you who were too slow, farewell, you who remain, forever, forever farewell.
And others survived, preserved themselves, guarded against changes, laid low behind the strips of unglued wallpaper, behind the loosened doorframes, under the tattered felt, and now they emerged, honest and old-fashioned, redolent of ancient virtues and devalued sins. They emerged and couldn’t understand, they recognized neither the air, nor the streets, nor a single soul—“this is not the same city, nor is the night the same!” They came out, carrying under their arms valuables safeguarded in their lethargic sleep: decayed novelties, frayed audacities, moldy discoveries, expired insights, amen; squinting, strange, rare, and useless, they came out the way an antiquarian, albino cockroach might emerge from a pile of old newspapers, and the hosts, amazed by nature’s play, can’t bring themselves to raise their slippers and crush the creature, who seems as noble as a Siberian fox.
But that’s now. Then—it was January, a black frost, two-sided, double-lobar love, and the two of them, standing opposite each other in the foyer of my old apartment, gazing at each other in amazement—oh, to hell with them, I should have pulled them apart right away and nipped imminent misfortune and the whole disgraceful mess in the bud.
I guess it’s no good talking about it now.
We forgot her real name and simply called her Judy; as for the country she came from, well, I couldn’t find it in the new atlas, and I turned the old one in for recycling—in a hurry, without thinking, since I urgently needed to buy the recycled edition of Backcountry River by P. Raskovyrov: everyone remembers that those two volumes traded well for Baudelaire, and Baudelaire was needed by a masseur I knew, who knew the fixer who finally helped me to get the apartment, though he ended up creating a lot of bad blood along the way. However, that’s beside the point. But I couldn’t find the country. Apparently, after the usual battles, partitions, witchcraft, and cannibalism, Judy’s compatriots tore apart the hills, the smoky river, and the fresh morning valley, sawed the crocodiles in three, dispersed the people, and scorched the straw huts. It happens. There was a war going on there, that’s the thing, that’s why Judy ended up stuck here with us: no money, no home, and no one answered any letters.
But in the beginning she was just a muffled, freezing young woman who didn’t understand much of anything, who wanted to nurse animals and who believed Lyonechka’s every word.
I knew him well, however. I knew Lyonechka from grammar school, and therefore I could neither trust nor respect him, but as for others—well, I never stopped anyone else from respecting him. All in all he was a great guy, a childhood friend—you don’t respect those kind of people, you just love them—and at one time he and I hurried together through the same iron-gray morning gloom, past the same snowdrifts, fences, and swaying streetlamps to the same redbrick school whose facade was girded with medallions sporting the alabaster profiles of frostbitten literary classics. And we shared the melancholy of green walls and floors smeared with red floor-polish, of echoing staircases and warm coatroom stench, and of stern-eyed Saltykov-Shchedrin on the landing of the third floor—a scary, murky presence who wrote obscurely about a carp which you had to condemn in the biannual exam that bore the purple stamp of the city board of education. This Saltykov was always either “castigating ulcers” or “revealing birthmarks,” and behind his rabid, arrested gaze there arose the bloodied apron of the sadist, the torturer’s tense tongs, and the slimy dock, at which it was better not to look.
Those painted floors, and the muddy carp, and the ulcers, and the hiss of the strap that Lyonechka’s father used to thrash him—all that had passed; the horizon, as they say, was lost in haze, and what does any of it really matter? Lyonechka was now an inspired liar and a poet—which is much the same thing—a small, bowlegged young man, with a head of mutton-blond hair and the round, not fully closed mouth of a skinned rabbit. Friends are like that. They aren’t pretty.
He fought for truth, of course, wherever he imagined it to be. If the coffee in the cafeteria was watery, Lyonechka would run into the Food Inspectorate offices and, saying he was a public inspector, demand an accounting and a response; if the train couchettes were made up with damp linens, Lyonechka would blow up and, banging the walls, crashing through the cars, break in to see the conductor, announcing himself as an inspector of the Ministry of Transportation and threatening to smash this thieves’ jalopy of theirs to smithereens, including the engineer’s cabin and the radio room, and especially the dining car: he’d mash the mashed potatoes and spatter all their borscht with the impact of powerful fists, and he’d bury each and every one of them under an avalanche of hard-boiled eggs. At the time I’m talking about they’d already kicked Lyonechka off the editorial staff of the evening newspaper, where, under the banner of truth and sincerity, he had tried without authorization to add a literary luster to the obituaries:
In horrible torment
TER-PSIKHORIANTS,
ASHOT ASHOTOVICH
passed on. Head engineer of a sugar-refining factory, member of the CPSU since 1953.
We can’t speak for the whole collective, but most of the packing department workers, two of the accountants and the assistant director of the local committee, L. L. Koshevaya, will remember him with a quiet, not unkind word for at least a little while.
or
The long-awaited death of
POPOV
SIMON IVANOVICH
former director of a soft toy factory, came during the night of February 2-3, neither surprising nor upsetting anyone in particular. He’d lived long enough.
Ninety years old, that’s no joke! Whoever wants to show up at the funeral, well, it’ll probably be on Wednesday the sixth, if they deliver the coffins, but then anything can happen here.
or
Noticed to be missing only a week later
POLUEKTOVA
KLARISSA PETRONOVA,
an individual with no particular occupation, born in 1930, a confirmed drunk. Found by her neighbors on the balcony, she gave no signs of life, and she certainly won’t give any now. It’ll happen to all of us one of these days, what can we say? Too bad.
or, finally,
Baby PETER played with matches, Now he’s up in heaven fair, Where bananas grow in batches, Baby PETER, hear our prayer!