The Superfluous Man

by Botyakov Anatoly

  “You know, and this is not true; I can actually prove that you are mistaken when saying so.” Victor countered with a cunning smile; somewhere in the suburbs of his mind he could already feel, although not yet too clear, that he was with her for the last time, but at the same time closer than ever.

  It was a moment that could be easily missed.

  “The matter is that I reviewed… No, it is not the way to start it. First of all, I believe that every person has thousands of faces that he keeps changing throughout his life. And we are not actually able to see how they replace one another in real time, for these moments are so imperceptible, so transient that they just flow together. But a camera is quite a different matter! It can see what is not seen by us. It catches these moments, sifting our faces out and preserving them. Therefore, sometimes we simply cannot believe that we see ourselves in a photo. And as I have just said, I reviewed your photos, over and over again,” Victor was explaining enthusiastically, accompanying his words with pertinent gesticulations. “And believe me, you are beautiful in all these photos, all your faces are equally beautiful. It proves that you are one hundred per cent beautiful.”

  “It proves nothing at all,” Mariam answered calmly.

  “Do not talk nonsense!” for the first time he ventured to reproach her so roughly. “And when I proved your beauty, being horrified by my own realization, I came to a conclusion that a truly beautiful woman is simply unable to appreciate a person beside her. ‘Being very young, she already begins to receive confirmations of her beauty’, I thought then. So how can she perceive the only one, when the very life proposes countless alternatives for her? Someone, of course, would try to argue with this belief of mine, saying that you must always be number one, the best of the best, so that she had no opportunity to feel doubts about you and never switched her attention to somebody else. But as I see it, it is exactly what being incapable of appreciating the one who is not the best in everything means, not to mention that it is just impossible to be the best everywhere.”

  “I do not understand you.” Mariam broke a prolonged silence.

  “Sometimes I do not understand myself, either. It must be one of those cases when either you are mad, or the rest of the world is,” now Victor became silent, having moved his head aside a little, “I always trusted myself, I always knew that I was right, no matter what situation needed to be analyzed, I believed I always could see the truth. Even if somebody did not agree with my opinion, starting to argue with me, denouncing, abhorring, I always knew that in the upshot, when some time passed, everyone would accept my point of view anyway whether it would be done openly or in a shameful secret manner. And so it always was, every time letting my self-righteous belief grow and blossom. Nevertheless, it is all different with you, Mariam!”

  At the end of this revelation Victor suddenly supposed that she was cold, having ceased even to breathe, but he did not manage to understand how accurate his assumption was because of being irretrievably absorbed in thought. He was desperately looking for truth or maybe writing his own, and Mariam was sitting motionlessly indeed, one of her hands hanging down and the second leaning against the sofa. Her look seemed empty and lifeless, sinking in the twilight…

  “When I am with you, I cannot be sure about anything. I can no longer proudly declare myself right in all my thoughts and actions. I cannot pronounce a word without doubting it a thousand of times afterwards, if it concerns you; I cannot make a step being sure it is not a false one, if I come towards you. When I saw that man on the threshold of that music school, I began to look over any possible justifications of this coincidence, but when you appeared there… Forgive me, Mariam, I just felt that your heart was dismembered, and only one of its parts was beating for me. I kept coming there and every time, over and over again, I saw the same and what is more important, I felt just the same.”

  Everything calmed down again in the gloomy room. Everything seemed to be standing motionless in expectation of the continuation of this story.

  “You were right when you said it was silly of me to ask you to listen to the very end no matter what,” Victor suddenly admitted the correctness of her words, having decided that she completely lost interest towards his reflections.

  “I am devouring every word!” Mariam responded in a cold voice.

  And Victor failed, again, to understand what her look was bearing, what thoughts were in her head, or how she saw all this.

  “Then I realized that I loved you,” he continued without placing emphasis on his serious declaration. “It was strong, even stronger that myself, I could not tolerate sharing you with anybody, but at the same time it somehow proved insufficient to make me fight for you. Nevertheless, I am glad that there were borders for my madness; otherwise, I would have never learned whether it was your own choice or I influenced it. Therefore, I just went away, left you alone. Exactly until that evening when you called me by name. You will probably not believe me, but I dreamt of you just before this meeting. I think that dream also helped me to start to believe you again, or maybe I made it myself by having provoked it first. Anyway, then I decided to learn what you were going to do to me and I went there for the last time,” Victor suddenly became silent and drew a long-long breath as if something was clenching his heart.

  “You must be tired,” Mariam reproached him with this sudden stop in his narration; the tone of her voice was invariable this evening. “I think you need some time to have a rest.”

  “No, please, do not stop me now,” he asked her persistently, “if I do not finish now, then you will probably never hear these words, and it is a matter of vital importance for me to see that you understand.”

  At first glance, her silence meant permission to continue and though he was not fully sure about it, he all the same was not going to be silent.

  “I came for the final truth there. By the way, do you know there is not only one truth in the world? Everyone twist and embellish facts in a way that is the most favourable for a person. We all do it, some more, others less. However, I am saying now that I wanted the final truth anyway because at that moment I was detached, I was unprejudiced, and hence ready for the final truth. And I thought that I got what I had come there for, I kept thinking this way until you explained me everything; you did it so freely, having made it so clear and plausible that I just did not know what to do next. Then everything got under way and went forward with such ease, with such unusual tranquility… And I hate myself for the fact that some part of me still doubts you, Mariam! I swear I want to trust you so badly, to believe you with all my heart, to do it completely, without any exceptions, to do it the way the very word ‘trust’ implies.” Victor turned over on his side, bent his legs a little and smiled happily. “I have met beautiful and clever women before; there even have been those who at first sight seemed perfect. But this thin layer of infallibility never could trick my eyes over long. Sometimes, you just keep giving her a look that she does not deserve anymore; you richly endow her with qualities that she cannot even wear. And the more you learn about her, the more of your hopes come back to you, but the thing is that they are not like they once were; what comes back is useless even for yourself now. Then there comes a moment when you must say the last farewell, so you turn back to look at her for the last time and you see nothing capable of breathing new life into you, nothing capable of raising your soul skywards. It was the story of my life, until I met you, Mariam. You have made the first attempt of rewriting it. Everything that I saw in you at the beginning is still there. You are ideal for me! So you will always be, no matter what awaits us in the future, I will find a justification for anything. But I am so sorry that I doubted you, I am so sorry…” Victor was completely lacking in words, having switched over naked feelings. “I am so sorry for being unworthy you.”

  His confession drew to an end, but Mariam was not aware of it yet.

  “Please, stop speaking! Say no more!” she asked, having bent her head over him, put her hands on his face, gentl
y kissed his forehead, and embraced him tenderly. “Why are you doing it to me? How did I deserve it?” whispered Mariam, which became the last question that evening.

  Soon a murky night completely covered them with its black dress, and in the morning, Victor already was having the tastiest coffee in his life in the company of the most beautiful woman in his world.

  “What plans do you have for today?” Mariam asked him, standing by the window and having a shower bath of morning sunbeams, the city being reflected in her eyes.

  “It is an illegal hold,” Victor burst out laughing suddenly, “especially considering the fact that you know now every movement I have done during last days.”

  “Ah yes, sorry,” she sat down to table.

  “You have been my only plan within the last two weeks, and I regret only that it was not so during the last ten years,” Victor embraced his melancholy again, and Mariam instantly felt it.

  “Do not even think about starting it again!” she threatened him severely.

  “If you do not mind it, I could keep shadowing you,” Victor smiled as if having instantly come round, “and you felt nothing indeed when I was watching you?”

  “No, absolutely nothing,” Mariam answered, seemingly offended, “and frankly speaking, it gives me the shivers, when I begin to imagine this picture.”

  “I am sorry…”

  “We have already passed this stage,” she reproached him again, having got up from the table, “now it is a subject that I would prefer not to touch.”

  “Understood!”

  “And if you have nothing to do today, I would love to propose you to spend this remarkable day with me!” Mariam continued as she took away his cup and poured it out just as she did with hers a moment ago.

  “It is interesting… And what would we do?” Victor made a helpless gesture concerning the consequences of his sluggishness.

  “And why must we have a plan for everything? Let us take a walk, then we could have dinner somewhere, then we could take a walk again, and to have supper later,” Mariam offered ironically. “By the way, I could finally introduce you to my friends in order to dispel your last doubts.”

  “You know, Mariam, I did not even suspect that you were such imperious woman,” Victor frowned and began to closely examining her as if doing it for the first time, “first you pour out my coffee, then you forbid to discuss subjects that you discuss a minute later yourself, what is next?”

  “That is how I want you to be all day long!” Mariam burst out laughing, having caught his facial expression with an imaginary objective lens, which she made using her fingers.

  “I am afraid that I will not be able to maintain my eyebrows in this position the whole day,” Victor admitted, pretending to be sorry, “I can already feel my face get tired.”

  “You get what I mean!” she insisted. “Do not be sad, just do be sad. Put your sadness away, hide it. Do not you want to spend at least one single day without thinking about anything sad? Just live and enjoy your life…”

  “You know, I have a counter-question for you,” Victor said, “in your estimation, how many peaceful years a person should see ahead to spend one single day without being anxious?”

  “And you are starting all this after what I asked you about?” Mariam put her hands on her hips, demonstrating discontent.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I will go back home now not for long, there I will deal with some things, then I will get back here, and after this we will pay a visit to my friends.”

  “Are you sure you are able to realize what you are saying here right now? And what exactly am I going to do there?” Victor asked her seriously. “What can I do there anyway? In a house of the people that I do not know…”

  “It has all chances to surprise you, but it is exactly what people usually do – they go to see each other, get acquainted, communicate, and have a good time. I assure you that nobody sees in it anything terrible. Are not you tired of sitting at home all the time? And if you do not like it, I officially permit you to hate me to your heart’s content, but right now I do not want to hear any refusals. I will come and fetch you about 3 p.m., so be ready.”

  Mariam was demonstrating an extreme persistence, and Victor could find neither strength, nor a right mood to keep arguing with her about anything. She quickly gave him a friendly kiss on his cheek, having virtually completely avoided body contact, and left him alone. After this strange farewell, some strange thoughts began bothering Victor again, preventing him from realizing where exactly led the road that he was walking along now. He could not get rid of that picture, retaining in his memory, where she kissed that man the same way. He saw all this as a figment of someone’s morbid imagination and himself as a hero of a book without a proper plot and correspondingly without any admissible ending.

  It was an hour since he got ready, but Mariam kept him waiting, raising thereby more and more of his nagging doubts that he had to be untiringly dispelling now. Thus, as the minutes and hours ticked away, he waited anxiously for her call. He could not help worrying concerning her absence and could not do anything about it, either. Of course, theoretically he could screw up his courage and call her himself, but if at this moment Tumenov was somewhere close, then Victor would just destroy everything. Therefore, he had to wait, patiently. He did not like to wait and could never do it well, either, but in spite of it, he constantly practiced this sort of occupation ever since their first meeting. However, according to his own opinion, prior to that meeting with her he had nothing worthy waiting at all. All his childhood dreams, his youthful hopes – all this was too naive to come true one day. The life always amended his plans, constantly leading him from one obscurity towards another.

  He was reflecting on the question that Mariam once put. He did not tell her about his life not because he did not want to, he just did not know where he could begin and where finish. Now, however, waiting for her coming, he was trying to segment his life and to tell himself every part of it as sincerely as possible.

  Mariam called almost three hours late, quiet and imperturbable as if there were no reasons to be worried. According to her words, she was now waiting for him in the street. Victor ran down the steps as quickly as possible, and when he finally came out, he saw that everything was all right indeed. She was beautiful as never before, although wearing simple blue jeans, a simple white blouse, and high-heeled shoes. She was standing near a small car, presumably of French make, dexterously playing with a stylish keychain.

  “What took you so long? You chose the hour, not me!” Victor reproached her in an injured voice.

  “Someone seems to have missed me,” Mariam teased him with a sunny smile on her face. “As a matter of fact, I did not choose any definite hour. I just chose one so that you could approximately know when I was going to come. Husband returned…” she confessed so indifferently and fearlessly as if trying to let Victor know that they had quarrelled again and she was the one who proved victorious.

  “It means that he no longer sees it necessary to provide an alibi for himself,” Victor shook his head and involuntarily touched a bruise on his eyebrow.

  After his words, Mariam instantly changed countenance.

  “So this is his doing?” she asked, pretending to be unaware of the answer.

  “Not personally, though. However, by his direct order,” Victor did not want her to see him as a victim, nor to feel compassion for him, so he found no better way but to smile in response. “Are we going or what?”

  They silently got into the car; she took the wheel, and he got the role of a passenger. Mariam was silent for about a minute, with plainly visible fire of curiosity in her eyes, and it was not so easy to extinguish it.

  “By the way, you did not tell how and why all this happened,” she took her time starting the engine.

  “Because there is nothing to tell, I guess,” Victor leaned back, “your precious driver yclept Alexander who is, by the way, madly in love w
ith you…”

  “In love with me?” Mariam interrupted him suddenly, having put her right hand on her chest, attempting, naively, to exclaim at the news.

  “As I once said, my dear,” Victor reproached himself, “one should never dedicate his feelings to a woman who is incapable of appreciating it.”

  “Sorry, I think I interrupted you unwillingly,” Mariam hurried to draw attention to the former subject; obviously, discussing the romantic feelings of the unpretentious driver was not pleasant to her ear.

  “Yes, it is true, you have already done it twice, to be a little more precise. And where was I,” Victor took a deep breath, preparing himself to have a quick run throughout the story. “One day, our omnipresent Alexander called me and asked me to meet him, although it was just one or maybe two days since the moment when I started shadowing you, I cannot recall it accurately now. When we met, he unambiguously advised me to leave you alone, which surprised me just a little. In fact, saying I was surprised means saying nothing at all. He promised to tell you about me and about our agreement with Tumenov if I disobeyed. By the way, at first he was going to be my listener, I mean that I had to tell him about whatever I would learn – the idea I never actually liked. Just think about it, any information that I was going to collect concerning your movements and meetings was meant to be given directly to this man.”

  “And why would he do it anyway? I mean what was there for him if you stopped spying on me?” Mariam paused to consider his answer. “And what was next?”

  “If you keep interrupting me like this, señorita, we will spend the whole day in your wonderful car talking about it,” Victor threatened her, playing a role of a strict lecturer.

  “Huh, actually I do not really mind such a scenario!” she played up to Victor playfully, but instantly put one palm on her mouth, mumbling, “Fine, fine, I am silent!”

  “But those threats of his became insensible when I stopped watching you. By the way, I told him about it. Who could possibly assume that he was not going to share this information with his boss…? And when I came back home after our last date. And yes, I have deliberately used the word ‘date’, maybe I should call it the first date though. I am proud of this fact and I am not going to withhold it from anybody,” Victor ran off the narrative course now without anyone’s help, which made Mariam give him a lovely smile.