The Superfluous Man

by Botyakov Anatoly

  After reaching the meeting place without complications, he saw Mariam where she had to be. Then he thoroughly examined her from head to toe, as he had done it the first time, and found almost no changes, except for one – the colour of her skin that had darkened a little and now practically approached the colour of a milk chocolate. As for Victor, who preferred avoiding the sunshine by all means, he was pale or maybe even white as if just escaped after a long imprisonment in some underground vault. In some sort, it was true. Here their distinctions ended because they were united by a glow of happiness, which, as well as grief, makes us look similar in appearance.

  For some reason, Mariam did not want to come back to the conversation that they had not had time to begin last time, and Victor for his turn decided not to insist, either. Everything seemed to him insufficient to aggravate their relations; it seemed too early, the place was overly crowded, and not to mention the break of visual contact that they had to catch up. Either way, without saying a word touching on this subject, they somehow managed to agree that this meeting would not be saddened by any revelations. They both could feel that even one drop of the concentrated truth was too dangerous for their not yet completely defined relations.

  The hour that Victor had planned to spend with her flew by as if it was just one minute, although there were no doubts that he spent with her sixty times as many. They wasted the hour talking about weather and disputing about their preferences. For instance, Victor complained about high temperature of the air, whereas Mariam, on the contrary, claimed that even the forty-degree heat that, according to her words, was this day in Spain, could not prevent her from going to this country, with which, as it turned out, she was in love since her first visit there.

  When another moment to say goodbye once again came, for the first time Victor felt neither grief nor uncertainty; the same, it seemed, was with Mariam. For the very first time they said ‘goodbye’ without any difficulties, which could afford only people truly understanding each other. On his way home, Victor was absorbed by planning of everyday household trifles as purchasing of food and looking for what to do until the evening, when they had to meet again because, according to Mariam, her husband had left the city for some very important meeting, having informed her about the sudden departure at the very last minute. Everything was good, good as never before. However, it was already the top limit and going beyond it now meant an inevitable collapse.

  Having bought everything he needed in a grocery store, Victor turned to the yard of the house, but made it too thoughtlessly as if having forgotten about the strange feeling that he had had a little more than one hour ago. The black van, waiting for him since the morning, was still on the same place, but not in a warning capacity any more, it was now a personification of retribution for his own choice. The second time Victor noticed the van when he was as far from the entrance as he was from this not yet completely obvious threat. Having caught his reflection in the body of the car, glittering in the sunlight, he stood motionless for one short moment and then tried to keep walking again. Only then he realized that something bad was about to happen with him as if the air suddenly froze, auguring ill, and he just appeared within this sinister aura.

  Then, everything changed into a bad dream: two sturdily-build men in inconspicuous clothes rushed out of the van, then one of them, which was the first, approached Victor in no time, harshly grabbed his collar, having thrown one of his hands over Victor’s shoulder, and dealt a blow to the stomach with the second hand. Whether it was a fright or because of adrenalin, which was now oversaturating Victor’s blood, but he did not feel any pain, but rather a push that even helped him to slip out from his thin jacket, aimlessly waving his hands. However, recoiling back, he suddenly stumbled over his own package, which he had dropped one moment before. And when he fell to the ground, everything was over… An object approaching his face reflected in his widely opened eyes and he lost consciousness. The second kick it the face was definitely superfluous, for the weak resistance ended before it.

  Maybe someone could see a scene similar to a brawl or maybe no one saw anything, but when two men took the third one and went away, nobody tried to stop them…

  In a little while, Victor regained consciousness again but still could see only pitch darkness. He was not able to define what time he had been unconscious, but basing on the fact that his face did not become swollen yet and also taking into account that he was neither thirsty nor hungry, it would be logical to assume that it was no more than several minutes. Since the moment when he opened his eyes, looking through a dense black fabric, all his body was seized by this nasty, freezing shiver, which nevertheless receded after a while, but the fear that had come along with it did not even think to leave Victor alone. Victor had to look at his life through the prism of this fear in a new way now, for exactly his life, in his estimation, was the object of this cruel attack, and he was going to say ‘goodbye’ to it, doing it rather subconsciously than consciously and with the true readiness to meet the result of these conclusions.

  Being this way, beaten unmercifully, with his courage cracked, bound hand and foot, he was lying about half an hour more without feeling anything but pain, which gave him a sharper blow every time when the car ran into another roughness of the road, taking him farther away in obscurity. His nose was seemingly broken and filled with clotted blood, but even in this state kept allowing him to smell the heady smell of the gasoline, spilt somewhere nearby.

  When the car pulled over and never moved again, Victor realized that it was the point of destination because before this one there were a great number of others stops, which were unlike shorter and obviously meant city driving. Every such time Victor desperately tried to make a sound in order to draw some additional attention to the suspicious van, but got nothing, every time becoming quiet until the next attempt and then seeking salvation again and again. Nevertheless, this time everything was different; hearing the doors of the van bang and some voices move nearer, Victor no longer tried to do anything, fully accepting the role of the victim, imposed on him.

  When the side door swung open with the rasp of metal, Victor’s eyes saw, for an instant, an unclear source of light that was instantly blocked by a figure. Then someone grabbed the hostage’s shoulders, aimlessly dragged him along the floor of the car and made him sit down on something. The whole time none of the kidnappers said a word, and this frightened Victor most of all, because his eternally seeking brain was not going to make exceptions for this case and kept looking for explanations.

  If they only tried to scare me, he nervously had dialogue with himself, then they would certainly act much more aggressively, beating up and insulting.

  But what was happening this instant looked more likely as a preparation for an execution, and he was that poor creature that was about to mount the scaffold. At this moment of short but utter despair, he remembered Mariam, who had no idea that they could meet nevermore; he remembered his family, having helplessly let one mad thought enter his consciousness.

  They will never see me again, they will never hear my voice, and I will just disappear from their lives without any explanations, I will percolate through the ground as some dirty snow in the beginning of the spring…he was thinking, sitting with his head bowed.

  At this point, such sorrow, such intolerable sorrow gripped him that he immediately broke off all these thoughts, crumpled them, tore them to shreds and threw away. The same mentality that brought him here was this time saving him, explaining that if it was the end, then Victor was not going to be kept waiting too long; there was no point in crying about anything anymore.

  He spent about five more minutes being completely indifferent, hearing steps and some odd noise. Then they finally removed the sack from his head, and he could see where he was, squinting because of the glaring sunlight. He was still in the same van, sitting on a chair in the forepart of the car, to his left the door was open wide, allowing him to survey a grassy forest glade filled with all the colours
known to this world. The un-trodden nature was surrounding him since the moment of their stop, but he managed to hear and see it only now. From everywhere nervous compositions of infinite grasshoppers were reaching his ears, the pipe of various birds was heard from every side, which together reminded a slow, solemn piece of music suitable for a funeral procession also known as the dead march.

  There were no emotions at his disposal to react upon what was happening there; he could only feel this little, shy sadness that came back with just one goal – to make him feel sorry for not being able to scent all these wonderful forest smells. Although being so close to them, he smelt nothing but gasoline, soaked into his clothes, that was going to be the last smell in his life.

  “Look at me!” one of kidnappers unexpectedly gave Victor a slap across the face, demanding obedience.

  Victor returned his look back in the van, seeing not his offender but an opened laptop that was standing right in front of him on a small folding-chair, which is usually used for fishing or other sorts of outdoor activities.

  “Ready! Connect it!” the second wrongdoer ordered, having approached the open door from outside, where Victor could not notice him before.

  Both of these men, the first standing outside and the second busying himself with the hardware, seemingly were the most ordinary people. They did seem to care much about hiding their faces except for wearing sunglasses; dense moustaches, anyhow shaved beards, and old jeans clothes took care of everything else.

  “What have I just told you?” the technician growled suddenly, saving his workmate from attentive studying.

  Victor, who already learned by bitter experience what was going to follow this angry tone, quickly turned back at the command and saw before him a raised hand, ready to give him another humiliating slap, which, however, he was lucky enough to avoid this time.

  “Good doggy!” cheerfully said the second kidnapper, still standing nearby, and both burst out laughing hysterically.

  “Listen to me! You are looking at the screen; a glance beyond the screen means your nose going inside your face, which implies breathing through mouth only and running nose being no problem of yours anymore. You open your mouth before I command you to do so, and you will forget how to breathe at all. Is everything clear?”

  Victor nodded assent, having turned a deaf ear to all the insults. His eyes, as it was told, fixed on the laptop.

  “Tell him that everything is ready.”

  “It is ready!” the second faceless kidnapper confirmed and instantly repeated the same phrase back to his accessory.

  After that, the laptop screen suddenly lit up, and Victor saw there a serious facial expression of his former employer, who was, judging by an interior of a room, in some luxury hotel.

  “And here we have my best private detective!” Tumenov said slowly with poignant sarcasm and took a sip from a square glass.

  Victor’s wide-open eyes were filled with surprise. It was truly strange, but up to this point, he did not remember about his former employer even one single time.

  “Am I wrong or you really seemed surprised by our rather odd meeting?” Tumenov hurried to lay stress on Victor’s great astonishment, then knitted his brows, squinted a little and began peering at the betrayer, as he saw him. “And what is wrong with your face anyway? Have you fell on your way here? Wait a second, seriously, you hit him in the face?”

  “Just once so that he stopped resisting,” one of the mercenaries answered shortly.

  “It is sad indeed, however, there is no sense in crying over spilt milk. What is done, cannot be undone,” Tumenov summed up and made himself comfortable in a big armchair. “Maybe you would not mind removing this sticky tape from his face, please?”

  One of the accomplices quickly bent over Victor and began to remove, slowly, the sticky tape from his mouth.

  “What could I tell you, my dear friend,” Tumenov continued quietly, holding the glass with both hands and enjoying every second of being in command of the situation, “you are probably the most hopeless idiot of all that I have had occasion to meet in my entire life; moreover, you are a true cretin, imbecile! I could continue saying words that describe you perfectly, but I am afraid in that case, I would risk to fall to your current level. I just cannot understand all this, you poked your nose into this story, forced me to believe you, forced me to start all this,” Tumenov’s shock was so great that for a moment he was at a loss for words, meaning the kidnapping and his sudden departure, “but tell me what was this all for? For this miserable amount of money I gave you?”

  “I bou…a came…” Victor muttered, writhing with pain.

  “What are you saying there?” Tumenov asked again. “I understood nothing!”

  “I bought a camera, I will repay!”

  “Just listen to you, son! The stories you tell! You had better start using your birdbrain right here and right now! Do you really think that I need your damned camera or this damned money? However, I have to admit it, at least you have not wasted it for drugs,” for a moment Tumenov even calmed down and sang small. “Explain me one thing, for I need to know it, why on earth I have to pay two idiots for receiving a report from the third idiot whom I had also paid? Do you, idiots, have some sort of an agreement to rob me? Answer me!”

  Victor made an attempt to say something, but his throat was so dry that even a request to give him some water croaked with great difficulty.

  “What is he mumbling there?” Tumenov began to lose patience again.

  “Wait a second,” one the kidnappers tried to curry favour with his employer, opening a bottle with water, “I will give you to drink now!”

  And he splashed water on Victor’s face with all his might, which literally became the last straw; he could not suffer this humiliation anymore. So he raised his eyes, looking at the offender, slowly licked his lips, spitted out some blood and said the silliest thing in his life: “I do not really like mineral water.”

  The man regarded this foolish thing as a personal insult and therefore he hit Victor in the face with such force that his head rebounded of the chair and returned to the former position within one second, and Victor began to cough in an abnormal way, listening to insults that followed the punch.

  “What the hell is this? What do you think you are doing?” Tumenov jumped up from his place and involuntarily rubbed his face, having stepped aside and cursed somewhere off-screen and only then returned to the armchair.

  “Listen to me you, sick freak, if you hit him again, having wasted at least one second of my precious time, tomorrow you will be sitting where he is now!” he threatened the subordinate in one breath after finally finishing the glass. “Do you think I am going to spend here the whole day, waiting for a moment when he will be able to start talking? Give him this damned water and let him speak!”

  In accordance with this order, Victor got a bottle of water and hardly managed to take several sips, holding it with his tied hands.

  “And now you will explain me the situation so that maybe I could miraculously get rid of this feeling that I am the last sane person in this mad world,” while saying this Tumenov replaced one half of emptiness of the glass with cognac, took the glass in his hand, leaned back, and by the moment when his legs were crossed, Victor already had to start clarifying things, however, contrary to Tumenov’s expectations, it did not happen.

  “Do you understand what you are doing here, anyway?” spitting out blood, Victor hardly squeezed out a few words, having also leaned back. “Kidnapping! Someone saw them attack me for sure! Physical trespassing! And what then, are you going to kill me? Then for what is this stupid circus with explanations meant?”

  “Eh, I no longer seem to be the only one here who needs some explanations,” expressing his disappointment for the umpteenth time, Tumenov said wearily, “fine, my feeble-minded friend, if the stick does not work with you, I assume the time of the carrot has come. First, if I really wanted you dead, you would have been already dead, believe me, there are n
o reasons for you to doubt my words. Nevertheless, tell me at first, why do you think it is in my interests? Has the fear brought you this idea?” he assumed rather accurately. “Because of the money I gave you? You know, it is almost an insult. I am sorry to disappoint you, but it was very long ago, when I could murder a person because of such sum. And now… All right, I believe that we somehow unpacked the first part of the matter.”

  Having heard convincing assurances that nothing threatened his life directly, Victor instantly cheered up a little, and even though the situation contradicted Tumenov’s words, it was more profitable for Victor to trust his former employer right now.

  “And concerning all this nonsense about kidnapping and beating that you have just slandered here, I do not even know what I could say here in response to your flight of fancy in order to avoid being frighteningly predictable for myself. Frankly speaking, I harbour serious doubts about you believing there is a point for saying all this. Tell me, are you really thinking about going to the police with your word only, showing them this slight bruise of your physiognomy? Fine, let us imagine that they will take from you this piece of paper where you will describe in detail, of course, how you were kidnapped and then beaten by two certain unknowns, acting, as it became clear later, on a direct order of mister Tumenov – a legitimate businessman who aspires after a serious political career. And what is next? You do not know, do you? Then allow me to tell you what will be next. You will receive another piece of paper in response to yours, in which several hypocritical words will let you know that investigative actions revealed nothing, that a thorough examination of the crime scene brought no results, that the described car with such registration plate is not in their database, and lastly, that the mister Tumenov was beyond the city this day, which establishes his alibi. And it will be enough!”