The Superfluous Man

by Botyakov Anatoly

  “I am sorry for all this,” Victor put on his head the hood of his jacket, which he had grabbed from a rack during his escape from the flat, and quickly went out of doors right into the street.

  Once he did so, this unpleasant situation immediately disappeared from his short-term memory because the world at which he was looking from his window earlier this morning was now around him and demanded all the attention that Victor could possibly pay. Everything here was full of life indeed: he could see lush trees rustling to the accompaniment of gentle breeze, he could hear the pipe of swallows flying somewhere in the sky, unseen from below. Even pigeons, naturally devoid of beauty and voice, were now filling this picture with simplicity, needed sometimes so badly; they were walking tall near an old bench, fearless and proud. From somewhere sonorous childish voices were reaching Victor’s ears, every time cutting a monotonous buzz of the lawn mowers up into equal pieces. Ten meters away from the house, like a huge monster of iron and steel, a dustcart with bin lift was operating, its huge claws turning containers over, one after another.

  Having looked farther ahead, Victor suddenly saw a couple of homeless people, hastily making an attempt to extract at least anything worthy from last two containers before the monster prevented them from this chance. Practically almost the whole area was already full of cars, many of them were now trapped; however, it did not bother much those newcomers, driving into the yard without a break. In fact, Victor was not the only witness of the show, for some careless inhabitants of other many-storied houses already occupied balconies of their flats, since no one asked to pay for a ticket.

  A few minutes later, when Victor left his house behind, that unpleasant morning experience also left somewhere behind his back. He was now walking cheerfully, discerning thoroughly familiar sceneries with particular interest. Just as virtually every single morning before, a young girl was leading a dog on a leash, or perhaps it was the other way round and she was just obediently following her pet, for the dog ignored her young companion almost completely, it constantly tugged and gnawed the leash, and what was more, started going off her head in response to every prohibitive command, pressing to the ground and barking archly.

  “You definitely should try the same with something tasty in your hand,” Victor advised with a timid smile on his face as he was passing by and for some reason feeling obliged to share a piece of his profound wisdom.

  “I bet it is what he is waiting for,” the girl answered earnestly and got back to her verbal threats.

  After leaving these two behind, Victor found himself in front of a long wide street and habitually turned to the left by reason of executing the exact same manoeuvre every time when he had needed to buy some food in the nearest supermarket. However, having reached the place, he suddenly realized that this time it was not his destination and just kept walking towards the unknown.

  A small open-air cafe on a corner of a crossroad was the next point of his aimless stroll. An owner of the place gingerly enlarged the sphere of his influence only in the summer by putting outside three, big, opened umbrellas, which grew right from the tidy brown tables of the same number. For some reason this cafe immediately attracted Victor’s attention. Striding with speed, he suddenly stopped near the very first table, occupied by a young woman that wore a beige hat and a business suit of the same colour; all her attention seemed to be chained to the screen of her cell phone, one cup of black drink being the only object on her side of the table. These two details that Victor noticed reflected in two of his new desires: first, he felt like recouping for his morning defeat and drinking a cup of decent coffee and secondly, he suddenly remembered about his meeting, hereupon he asked the woman in a quite emphatic manner what was the time and if she minded his company at the same table, which was now the only one safe from the merciless sunbeams.

  She quickly raised her eyes with surprise, trying to examine more closely a reckless personality that dared to bother her. Thus, without changing her position, she slowly looked him up and down being disinterested in keeping back her bewilderment. A few moments later however, there emerged a short, barely perceptible smile on her face, accompanied by an elegant gesture, which presumably allowed Victor to occupy one of the free plastic chairs. He smiled to her in response, but she hurriedly averted her eyes pretending to be unaware of his sincere gratitude. His question about the time also left without her attention.

  Shortly, thereafter, Victor saw a waitress standing beside him; it was a nice young lady wearing a white apron, stained with several scarcely visible spots of different colours. On her chest there was a small plastic badge containing within its borders one word only – ‘Mary’.

  “Your apron,” Victor pointed out the noticed defects.

  The waitress looked down in wide-eyed astonishment, quickly examined her uniform, and immediately forgot about the comment touching on her exterior view. The woman sitting at the same table customarily paid to the situation just a couple of seconds and then got back to her own worries again.

  “Are you going to order anything?” the waitress asked in nearly a hostile voice, looking at Victor downwards.

  “Yes, a cup of coffee, please, if not inconvenient to you,” Victor livened up.

  “What exactly kind of coffee do you want?” Mary rolled up her eyes and discontentedly put her hands on her hip.

  “Surprise me!” Victor smiled happily, although reasons of his joy were unlikely to be clear for anybody except himself.

  “Anything else?” she asked, having closed her notebook as not wanted, demonstrating all signs of her willingness to leave the weird customer alone.

  “It is very likely to be all I need right now, thank you very much.”

  “Fine, wait then!” and she made her way to the main building, dragging her loose slippers.

  “Oh, please, wait a second!” Victor screamed out behind her back, “But not more than one teaspoon of sugar and with no milk or cream!”

  Being now properly exasperated, she left without making a turn, and Victor had to wait hoping that she just pretended being unaware of his last requests. This tedious weariness of waiting almost immediately made him gaze about in search of something worthy of his attention; so in the first instance, he anew looked at the woman sitting at the same table, who immediately answered to his look with her own, as if had this moment forecasted. Showing not much of delight regarding this casual eye contact, Victor smiled abruptly once again, slightly nodded, and averted his face.

  He could not help noticing that he was uncommonly absent-minded today, but he also believed that there was nothing abnormal in his behaviour, which was not true; No sooner he began thinking about anything specific than he quit an idea, rapidly picked up another one, which shortly suffered the same fate. As a result, all this inner indecision openly reflected in his movements that were rapid and abrupt.

  When the waitress finally returned, having put his coffee on the table, Victor hastily grabbed the cup, brought it to his mouth but suddenly remembered about his earlier sorrowful experience and put it back on the table without losing his tight grip.

  “You know,” he suddenly heard from the direction where the woman was sitting, “It is the oddest way of attracting my attention one has ever come up with.”

  “Excuse me!” highly indignant, Victor responded to her strange compliment as he looked in her direction without even having time to assume that she might be talking to someone else.

  However, there was no need for these unnecessary doubts, for she was looking right into his eyes, and this hard look left no additional options. Bearing no intentions to waste her time, the woman darkly gave a wide, artificial smile, stressing thereby Victor’s hypothetical guilt even harder; this time he was charged with refusal to acknowledge the obvious.

  “First, you were walking by having no intention to stop at this café, not to mention sitting at this very table; believe me, I know that for sure because I was watching you walk for about ten meters or less and I know you were go
ing somewhere else! Nevertheless, once you caught sight of me, you all of a sudden changed your mind and played this simulated fervour of asking me what the time was, though it was of no interest for you. I did not answer you deliberately, and you just dropped this fact without paying attention as if it was not your main reason to stop. Further, when you realized that it was not enough to start a conversation with me, you began drawing my attention by this ridiculous behaviour of yours whether it was remarks concerning aprons or allegedly accidental glances!”

  Now Victor was looking at her with attention and interest that she had really deserved from the very beginning of this encounter. It was a nice-looking young woman, long dark hair fell down on her shoulders; her biscuit-coloured suit consisted of the jacket with narrow waist and an underskirt that reached her knees. Other components of her clothes seemed to him insignificant, for he had literarily hypnotized himself by looking into her eyes. Somewhere in their depths there was concealed a great wisdom belonging to a mature woman, but she was unlikely to be completely aware of this treasure herself because in reality, she scarcely reached age of thirty. She slightly squinted her dark, seemingly oriental eyes at one moment and opened them wide again at another, looking at Victor and advancing one strong argument after another. She was truly charming, in his estimation. Perhaps someone else would not be able to descry the irresistible charm she possessed, but this assumption did not upset Victor at all, quite the contrary, it gave him a cause for feeling special.

  “Very well!” he finally stopped her in a merry voice, having stretched his arms with an invocatory gesture, “I think I understand what you are talking here about. Of course, there are no doubts that you will not believe me if I take my chance to explain everything you saw here, which is not a reason to reproach you either, for this logical order of yours sounds convincing indeed. However, the fact of the matter is that I really had no pretensions to your precious attention.”

  At that very moment, seemingly just a few meters away, tires suddenly began to whistle, burning down against the asphaltic surface of the street, and one moment later, right in front of the café, there showed up a car whose nearest aim was a full-bodied woman with a pram in her hands and an unspeakable terror in her eyes.

  Having scarcely found its peace after the previous nervous breakdown, Victor’s heart seemed to have gotten an electric discharge and immediately began to break through his chest with a tripled speed, waves of cold shiver hitting his back.

  “Oh, my God!” exhaled the woman as she realized that everything turned out all right, “Have you seen it?”

  However, there was no answer. Victor just kept sitting still on the same spot but was looking now rather like a ghost.

  “Is everything all right with you?” she asked gingerly, having changed her previous sort of concern for another one.

  “What? With me? Why…” Victor turned in her direction, “Why are you asking?”

  “But your hand…” She warily lowered her eyes and pointed at Victor’s right hand.

  Having followed her example, he also looked down and saw the small and almost completely emptied cup quivering in his hand.

  “Oh my, you are pale as a ghost. You look awful. Did you really get that scared?” She smiled ironically but instantly tried to disguise her deformed empathy with radically different emotions.

  Indeed, Victor gave no reason for even the smallest and most inoffensive smile. Showing almost no signs of breathing, he was intently looking at the shiver in his hands receding slowly, felt his pulse normalizing its rate, but it did not help much.

  “You must have no idea of how beautiful you are,” he said with such thickness of feelings that even her multi-layered self-confidence cracked a little.

  “Are you sure you are all right?” she asked again, having avoided commenting upon his last question.

  “It is fine, I feel, not bad, thank you. It is just an extremely weird morning; I would even call it the oddest one in my entire life. By the way, talking about strange mornings, have not you happened to notice anything strange this morning?” Victor asked her earnestly, suspecting everybody of the analogous perception of the world.

  “You have such a unique sense of humour,” she glanced at him with a pleased smile upon her face.

  “Tell me, please, would not you mind to spend here with me approximately ten more minutes? A nice conversation is just what I need now.” Victor asked her so simply and calmly as if saying it to his old friend.

  “I think I can afford staying here a bit longer than I initially planned, if, of course, you are able to maintain my interest towards this forthcoming conversation.” She idly touched her left earlobe that had an earring with a big white pearl in it and then propped her head with the same hand, “For instance, what is your occupation?”

  Victor could not help responding to her question with a smile on his face; then he coughed shortly, cleared his throat, squinted his eyes, and looked at the woman, who was still waiting for an answer, having inquiringly raised her middling eyebrows.

  “So? Are you a spy or something like this?”

  “No, absolutely not,” Victor answered calmly, “I seduce rich, married women.”

  This unforeseen confession made the woman burst out laughing unwittingly, and she put so much of an enthusiasm in it that this improper behaviour became evident even for herself, after that she sharply broke her laughter off with a long breath.

  “Here you are doing it again, though you’ve already tried to convince me of your innocent naivety,” she said in a seemingly angry voice, ambiguously smiling and tenderly touching a gold ring with a diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand.

  “And I will tell you the same thing again!” Victor responded to her observation emphatically, “I’ve stopped here not because of you, and I had no idea about your marital status, until you stressed it now.”

  “Well, fine, let us suppose that I take on trust that you do not spy on me. Nevertheless, I am far away from being ready to believe that you are somehow connected with that amusing occupation that you’ve just mentioned.”

  “May I know why you have this particular opinion? What’s exactly wrong about your current interlocutor, in your estimation?” Victor asked her, drying the table with a small paper napkin and looking at his spilled coffee with equivocal sadness in his eyes.

  “Of course, I beg your pardon for what I am going to say, but you are way too artless for anything of this sort. I am now talking about your appearance, your deportment and maybe even your idiolect. In order to be able to create an impression upon a woman from top-drawer you must possess refined taste in all the aspects of your exterior view, not to mention being obliged to constantly demonstrate your own high financial position. Talking about aspects of wealth, where is your car?”

  “But you saw that I came here on foot,” Victor smiled cunningly, “Let’s say I am having a day off today.”

  “Ah! Of course, who might have doubted this astonishing coincidence…”

  “You know, I believe I am ready to accept those details that you’ve described talking about the image of an average statistical seducer. It is very likely to be so, but the point is that I am not an ordinary seducer,” Victor said, bearing no pride towards his declared uniqueness.

  “That’s quite interesting,” the woman confirmed her intellectual curiosity, having sat up straight, “And what seducer are you then?”

  “Obviously, I do it not for money or any other material profit, encouragement of my ambitions is not the objective, either; it is also important to mention that my body does not hold sway over the mind. I am sure that you are not inclined to stereotyped thinking; however, in this very case it is excessively difficult to assume any exceptional circumstances. Anyway, the truth is that I do it on demand of husbands of those very women…”

  “I am asking myself whether it can really be true,” the woman said slowly, partially accepting his words and waggling her head.

  She ridiculed his unpredi
ctable answers no longer but at the same time, she seemed to be supporting some sort of an inner struggle between a desire to stand up and go away and another one that induced her to continue the conversation until its logical end, whatever it would be.

  “Can I ask you what is this all for? I mean why anyone would decide to ask you to seduce his own beloved wife?” she attempted to anticipate his answers.

  “In fact, you are bringing up a very serious subject now. Probably, even I myself am not capable of finding borders for possible explanations of this phenomenon,” Victor hastened to provide her with his comment, “Reasons, just as people sometimes, can be various. Sometimes it just a consequence of indomitable or yet not restrained jealousy, which is, in my opinion only, the primary cause. I guess you are aware of this strange desire to rely on your other half one hundred percent. Sometimes, the matter is concerned with this ignoble wish to get divorced with minimal financial losses involved,” Victor stretched his uplifted palm demanding thus some extra attention, “marriage contracts… Of course, a very prosaic desire to bet on one of two results is in the list as well. There have been a couple of such cases. To be honest, first time I agreed and this fact bothered me much subsequently, so now I prefer staying away from any dubious proposals if I may say so. Please, be a fair judge here, I highly appreciate the very word ‘family’, thereby, in my opinion, some definite moral principles must never be betrayed.”

  She was silent, and Victor could not define emotions and thoughts that he had provoked with his outspoken story, therefore he paused, hoping that she would eventually demonstrate her reaction anyway.

  “And what is about you? Are you married?” the woman asked suddenly, avoiding eye contact, her lips were compressed tight.

  “Of course, not! There was no need to ask,” Victor smiled timidly in response to her question, gesticulating in a funny manner, “I am afraid I do not possess enough courage for that. Please, pay heed to the fact that I have unwittingly said that I am afraid, and on top of everything added, that I am devoid of the necessary bravery. I believe nothing could express my attitude toward the question better than this coincidence.”