The Superfluous Man

by Botyakov Anatoly

  Having entered the apartment, Victor slowly made a few steps and then laid down right on the floor. He could not make himself think; even one thought would not manage to find room in his head now. Yet, he was completely empty, devoid of feelings, as if already deceased. So he was lying on his back with his eyes closed, flicking through one hour after another and trying, vainly, to find answers; he became a wanderer who was now feeling his way in the dark of his own mind, affected with an unknown disease.

  When he regained consciousness from this hypnotic state, the sun was already burning another side of the house, but the day was not going to come to the end. In fact, this day seemed to be terminally ill too; it was fading, but slowly, very slowly, gasping for air…

  Saving himself from this madness, Victor closed the eyes again and lurked in pitch darkness of his own mad world.

  “Two days, two days…” these two words were running in his head.

  Two days were the target date for the full end of his last new life. Having opened his eyes another time, he saw no differences. It was total darkness and somewhere in the night, without any doubt, other children of hers were wakening the same way as he was.

  Now, after cogitations that had lasted for many hours, Victor managed to select three most obvious solutions of the problem. First, he had to get rid of Alexander, literally, by making him remain silent forever, to make him carry away from this world the secret that he must have never been privy to. Secondly, he could try to take not courage, but rather madness in order to meet Mariam personally, face to face, to look in her eyes and to tell her the truth by himself, without looking for any excuses in the process. And the third option, which seemed this morbid night the most unrealistic, was ignoring the ultimatum that had been delivered by Tumenov’s driver. Taking the third option, Victor would have to try to turn everything to his profit so that nothing else, whether it would be threats or revelations, could change her attitude towards him.

  At the break of dawn, several long hours later, in the beginning of a new day, everything turned upside-down again. Now Victor was going to square the circle and to become in her eyes someone he believed he was. First of all, he went to the café, having anticipatorily camouflaged himself with the help of a pair of sun glasses and an old cap, which he pulled on the head tight; in other respects he could hardly draw anyone’s attention anyway.

  He still had to solve the riddle that she had left for him after their last meeting. He could not fully understand why she complicated everything to such an extent instead of allowing them to meet again with the same simplicity that she had tolerated before.

  The first hour of this morning Victor spent keeping the café under observation, but she never showed up, then he began to calm himself, nervously, that the fact meant absolutely nothing and most likely had been foreseen. As the second point of observation was chosen the music school, which was easily found owing to a thorough analysis of a map of neighbouring districts. Having circled several times an old two-storied building, hiding in the depth of a residential quarter right before a park, Victor chose a suitable location – a ramshackle wooden bench behind a bush of acacias, and settled down on it, ready to spend here as much time as it might take. His yesterday purchase – the video camera, which he wisely brought too, became his augmented eyes once again.

  However, he did not have to wait too long; she appeared ten minutes after he had pressed the ‘record’ button. She was so majestic, so self-assured, and so beautiful that no words bound together could describe the sort of beauty that she was untiringly presenting to this world.

  One short moment was what he received this morning; the moment, which was not spent with her and not even within listening distance, but it was enough at the moment, since it was only the beginning. Victor had to draw up a schedule of her daily movement in order to cross her path, accidentally, without evoking obvious suspicions concerning fortuitousness of this potential ‘chance encounter’.

  However, one hour later, his inexperience in the matter of surveillance adversely affected him; he suddenly got hungry and surrendered his position, having overlooked thereby something very important, something what was now expecting him ahead, something that he was not ready to behold at all.

  After coming back, chewing the very first thing that he got in the nearest shop, he re-established his vigilant observation but spent the next two hours hibernating, no matter how industriously he tried to convince himself of the contrary. People kept coming and leaving away, shutting an old spring-supported double door with a bang every time, without exception, but they were only people, ordinary people.

  Everything changed when he saw the person he had done his best to forget about during last day. It was that very man, undoubtedly. The one Victor saw yesterday for the first time. Victor’s heart missed a beat and his hands solidified in a flash. Everything was correct! This man was the person whose existence was so obvious for Tumenov and made him so anxious. Now Victor could not keep deceiving himself that he had begun to share these suspicions, still unconsciously, after the very first meeting with Mariam.

  That man appeared from the building of the music school, having hesitated in the doorway for several seconds, then he smoke out a cigarette, spoke by phone and began to wait. Although it was a much-needed proof, all the same, the only thing that Victor really desired at this moment, counting seconds before her appearance, was this man to leave away and she to never come out.

  She went out of the door five minutes later, had a short talk with him, then he left away and she got back to work. All this seemed to take place only to let the truth sting two trusting eyes. Having seen them together, Victor no longer could look at the world the way he used to do it; everything became so sad, colourless, and oppressive that he lost his last strength to stand straight, as if the weight of the entire world fell on him right away, having finally crushed his lifeless remains.

  “What did she maltreat me for?” he asked himself.

  He worshipped her virtually as a goddess, he filled her incomplete image with a sort of purity that he could possibly imagine, and she betrayed all this so easily.

  Something split inside him that day. His world’s perception tore open with a terrible crash and then instantly accreted again, having left an infinitely wide ugly scar. Victor felt it distinctly but could not define yet what changes it was going to bring in his life. Standing there, near the old ramshackle bench, he indifferently took the cell phone out of his pocket, dialled Alexander’s number and pressed the call button.

  “Yes,” the driver answered almost immediately, being, judging by noise, at the wheel.

  “I quit,” Victor whispered the first word that had come to his mind.

  “What? I could not hear you,” Alexander seemed to be mocking at him.

  “I said that I would leave her alone, no more playing private detectives, but promise not to tell her about me,” although virtually everything in this world was indifferent for him by this time, there was only one thing that he could not afford – to fall in her estimation the way she just fell in his.

  “Right decision! I knew that you were a sober-minded man,” Alexander answered with deep satisfaction in his voice; he was going to add something else, but Victor hung up on him before he managed to do it.

  The conversation was over and so was the story. In the course of the next week, Victor kept coming to the café, spending about an hour somewhere in a shade of a tree, as if doing it out of habit, which actually was not even existent. She came every other day, always alone and never lingering there for a long time. Several times Victor came to that place, to the old bench in the park, and every time he saw the same picture: he came twenty minutes after her and left one hour before she did. Soon Victor found himself incapable of standing this torture any more. So he set her free once and for all and returned to his past life. He lived quietly, scarcely going outside and making exceptions only when being short of food. His cell phone was now permanently turned off.

&
nbsp; Once, towards the end of another week of his isolated life, he felt unwell. He suddenly got an awful headache that refused to calm down more than for moments of vertiginous attacks. He went without food all day and drank only water just to slake his thirst. By the evening, he finally managed to fall asleep and then he dreamt of her. They were following the road towards his home together, towards the home that seemed to him irrevocably lost. They were so young in this dream as if both only just turned twenty. Looking at himself from the outside, Victor kept feeling everything so clear as if being there indeed. He was happy to be walking beside her arm in arm. He could feel warmth of her hand; see her smile, even though it was just a dream, which was soon smeared like watercolour paint.

  He woke up with the same intolerable headache, with which he had trodden in the land of dreams, and therefore it seemed to be endless. Trying to alleviate the suffering, Victor hastily dressed himself and went outside, having headed towards a drugstore. He knew neither the hour, nor even the day of the week, for all this did not mean anything for him now. He could not define whether it was daytime or already evening. The sky was overcast with lacerated grey clouds, the sun shining dimly in the breaches. Not a living soul strolled about the streets, and only the street sweepings, carried by gusty wind mixed up with dust, dared to accompany Victor on his way. It felt like the calm before the storm, and everybody, except for one person, seemed to be aware of the imminent danger.

  Having reached the drugstore, Victor bought three different types of headache pills at once, took a couple of them right away, then asked one of sellers what the time was, it was almost nine p.m., and went back home.

  “Victor!” someone quietly called him by name, when he came out of the drugstore.

  But he was too broken-down to respond to that word.

  “Victor, is it really you?” Mariam asked him again, looking under his hood and cautiously holding him by his elbow.

  “What?” he answered surprised, trying to tear his eyes away from the ground and to lift up his heavy head.

  Then their eyes met again… And it seemed that an eternity passed since the moment, when he had said the last sad farewell to his dreams about her. Most likely, she was a miracle for him. Most likely, he wished it above all – to be looking at her at arm’s length and catching the smallest changes in her face expression. Most likely, he would have sold his soul for this opportunity, but not in this life, not with what he knew about her now. Her purity was gone, and he could see it no more. Even if he tried to find it, there was nothing but remains of her former innocence, stained by someone else.

  “Oh, it is you,” he said in a soft voice and immediately dropped his head down again.

  “What is wrong with you, Victor?” Mariam tried to show empathy, having removed her hand from his elbow, which he instantly marked with tiny grief. “Where have you been all this time, Victor? Why did you disappear so unexpectedly? Why do not you come to have coffee for breakfast anymore? I have been in want of your company all these days,” seemingly, she was saying all this with a sad heart, moreover, judging by her voice, she was sincere, but he knew for sure that she was telling lies, just as before. She told nothing but lies, all her words were defiled with a barefaced lie.

  “I have not disappeared yet, but I am feeling unwell so maybe hereafter,” Victor murmured illegibly and, trying to avoid eye contact, lowered his head so much that his face was almost level with hers.

  “Mariam! We should go!” suddenly someone called her from the direction of the road, and Victor involuntarily turned round to the words that were not addressed to him.

  There, five meters away, was a car with that man at the wheel. Undoubtedly, Victor still hated that man but he had no strength to lift his own hatred from the bottom of his soul, where it was stored, so he indifferently averted his eyes, after noticing Anna who was sitting behind, as a passenger, and calling Mariam.

  “They need you,” Victor listlessly pointed at the car and made the first step away from Mariam, which he had failed to make before.

  “Wait,” she stopped him carefully, having taken him by hand, just below his wrist.

  He was stopped rather by surprise than by an effort that she made, but it could not be in a different way, for they were encircled by the aura of diffidence and uncertainty, so one unsaid word could wound fatally or help to escape death. Victor cast a glance at her tiny palm, which looked exactly as he had imagined it in the dream, and then abruptly looked up. Virtually everything was the way he had seen it one hour before. Nevertheless, it was just an illusion… There were no signs of a smile on her face, nor any warmth in her touch.

  “Do come again to the café, if you feel better!” Mariam offered with respect. “No deliberate deception this time, it is Monday tomorrow and I will surely be there.”

  “What was it?” he was asking himself, looking directly in her eyes.

  He did not know if she wanted to break him once and for all, but even if it was her design, then where was the thrill of victory in defeating someone who was bleeding and exhausted… A few moments he was silent, without knowing what to say, until he finally remembered the treatment that she deserved, in his estimation.

  “I think it will be better if you come to my place instead. I will paint a portrait for you!” he offered suddenly without any qualms concerning admissibility of such proposal in a conversation with a married woman.

  He was hoping that she would feel insulted, and he for his turn would experience some satisfaction about hurting her feelings.

  “As you please!” Mariam accepted the challenge. “It is my phone number, take it and call me tomorrow in the afternoon,” having changed the time for the meeting, she quickly wrote it on a crumpled banknote, put it into Victor’s fist and hurried back to her friends, leaving him alone again.

  Everything turned upside down for the umpteenth time. No sooner he had begun to think that he was able to fully understand this woman than she cancelled out all his previous achievements. She could take away his pain as easily as bring it back. This time it was the turn of the temporary rescue. Having instantly forgotten about all his infirmities and once again replaced everything with her, Victor was the best example of the miraculous healing.

  That dreaminess, which she had magnanimously granted to him, proved to be enough to occupy him until the next day. Somewhere inside, he could feel a strong excitement concerning their forthcoming meeting, he yearned to hear her first words and to see her humour, and what was more, he had to learn at any price, what made her be so persistent in that strong desire of seeing him again even regardless of this insulting invitation. There were millions of long-standing questions, and he could not afford to idly await her to give him doubtful explanations, for he knew another way of receiving them.

  He left the house early and headed directly the music school. Fascinating, irresistible – he used to see her so, but now he could not emphasize anything, except for her punctuality. She was in the right place, as was expected, but there was one more actor to enter upon the scene, whose absence could deprive Victor’s plans of sense, for the performance could not begin with only two thirds of the all-star cast. That is why he had to keep waiting, patiently, occasionally changing locations of observation in order to forestall the prompt bell and not to miss the right instant.

  Nevertheless, that man was still behind time. So passed a half an hour, then a full circle as well as the second one, but he was not there yet. Victor could hardly believe it… He had seen them together so many times before, having no intentions to do it, and now, when he all of a sudden got the ace of trumps, nobody wanted playing. He even played with the idea of rescheduling the appointment for the next day, holding his cell phone and the crumpled banknote with her number. He was running around like a madman because one part of his doubting self-desired to live in accordance with his feelings, whereas the second could one not see another way but following instructions of the intellect. Nevertheless, the choice had been made long before this day,
when Victor had begun cultivating prudence and cold calculation for the first time. Even despite the fact that she was beyond all comparison, he managed somehow to suppress agitation and decided to wait to the last.

  And this decision proved to be right. Victor caught sight of that person several minutes prior to the end of her working day and instantly, without waiting for a starting signal, rushed at full speed to head him off, hiding behind close-planted trees. His heart tapping out a frenzied rhythm, as if somewhere in his head a crazy song was being performed, hustling him. That man was also in a hurry, but his haste was different. It was not incriminatory, but rather guilty. He was quickly pawing the ground, his head inclined forward and hands swinging vigorously.

  Fifteen seconds later, everything was finally ready: that man managed to reach the entrance, she came out probably to meet him, and Victor was noiselessly standing three meters away from them, right behind a corner of the building, having redirected his rush to soothing his rapid pulse. He was taking a serious risk, but he could not stop it because truth was the most expensive thing for him at that moment, and he was eager to find it out.

  “And what is this all supposed to mean?” Mariam began with such an accusing tone that she had never used talking with Victor. “Do you really think that I can afford doing nothing all day long, waiting for your appearance? Actually, everybody here can see that I am busy with nothing, could not you give me a call?”

  Victor could hear everything what they were saying extremely clear. She expected that man to come to see her, patiently and faithfully. Not some miserable twenty minutes, sitting in a café, but hours, long hours, just as those that Victor had spent before, waiting for their meeting. Looking for a way out, his jealous rage clenched his fists.

  “Mariam, I am so sorry, but you know that I just could not! I have spent the whole day with Anna, without stirring a step from her side; I have no idea why all of a sudden she decided to spend the whole day with me. What could I do? How do you imagine me calling you and feigning to be talking with my grandmother like in some stupid comedietta?”