Fish- a History of One Migration

by Peter Aleshkovsky

  I put my hand on his forehead, which had instantly broken out in a sweat, and began to rub his temples. He pulled his knees to his stomach, stretched out both arms and fixated on the bubbles.

  “Are you warmer now?”

  “This… what a kick, yeah! What’d you give me, you witch?”

  “Quiet now. You almost got us driving you to the cemetery. Lie still, be quiet, it’s ok now, everything’s over now.”

  He relaxed right then, the muscles of his face unclenched and he closed his eyes, believing that I gave him a dose. He fell asleep even before the relanium started working. I made sure he got 400 milliliters of haemodesum and only then noticed the fierce draft blowing through the apartment: the window in the kitchen was wide open and no one had bothered to close the door. Yulka had sat all this time, as if under a spell, on the floor, with her back to the wall and with ear buds in her ears. I shook her awake, turned off her player, shut the window and closed the door.

  “He has to sleep through the night, and in the morning he’ll need another drip. He will sleep for a long time now. I suggest you call a doctor. Who is his attending?”

  “There is this one pill-pusher, but he wouldn’t have made it here in time. I panicked, he was all worked up, sliced his veins, it looked deep to me, blood sprayed everywhere!”

  “What do you mean, worked up?”

  “The fear. It comes after you’ve been clean for a week. It seems everything’s good, fun, cool, and then suddenly you have this little worm inside. At first, you don’t even know what you’re afraid of. It’s just this fear, all by itself. It comes from inside, like in waves, now it’s huge, and then it’s gone. And every time it rolls over you, it’s stronger, as if it were growing there inside you. And it gets bigger and bigger until you get this mania. You think someone is out to get you. This time, Toshka just raped me, at least he didn’t try to strangle me.”

  “How?”

  “Simply. He just grabbed me and fucked me, hard. When he’s high, he’s strong as a bull. Actually, I like him like that, but this was over the top, and I figured he’d lost it. He didn’t recognize me, called me Svetka—that’s his wife, she’d left him. I started to scream, thinking maybe he’ll come around. He did, said he was sorry. And then his fears came back. He had it in his head that the pigeons were watching him. And he’s the one that lured them here; he feeds them with crumbs he throws onto that overhang. He ran away, hid somewhere, then crawled back at night—the birds don’t fly at night, you see. Then he took a dose and went off the rails.”

  “That’s when he started to cut himself?”

  “I’ve seen folks chop half an arm right off: there’s no pain, just the fear of bursting and the relief when the blood flows. I’ve never done it myself, but I’ve seen it. And the other thing—roaches. They live under your skin and they stink like pus or shit, and eat you from inside, and breed there. Last time he pricked his feet to get rid of them. He stood in the bathtub for three hours straight waiting for them to fall down and crawl out through the holes. Pure comedy!”

  She suddenly laughed.

  “That’s how it goes… you didn’t know?”

  “I’ve no desire to know. Hand him off to his doctor. Better still, get him admitted, he’s on the edge, trust me.”

  “No, not yet,” she sighed. “Can’t take him to the clinic, they’ll reel him in for good. He’ll come out of this; he’ll be like a rag tomorrow. You come, keep him on the drip for another day or two, so he’ll sleep and not get up. You keep him on the drip, I’ll give you money.”

  “I’m not a doctor. I can’t take that responsibility.”

  “Well, that’s alright, thanks for what you’ve done already. I’ll have to ask Skull, he’ll call the right doctor.”

  “What about you?”

  “I smoked a bit; I have to keep it on the straight and narrow now. When he’s got the shakes, I have to be like the heroic pioneer Valya Kotik,[4] always ready.”

  She was falling asleep right in front of me; her speech became incoherent, and she could not stay with the conversation. I took her to the other room and put her down on the couch.

  “Tanks, I owe you one,” she slurred and was out.

  I covered her with a thick bathrobe. There were very few things in the apartment: a wobbly table, a few broken, duct-taped chairs, a pile of rags by the wall—dirty laundry. I left, closing the door behind me.

  What I’d seen and heard was enough to keep me awake. I lay in bed in the dark for a long time, staring at the ceiling.

  I remembered our street in Panjakent, a late night, and the silence suddenly exploding with wild screaming, the thunder of shattered glass and the pop of a busted window frame. Kostya Murad—the terror of the street, a seasonal worker—nosedives out of a second-floor window of the geologists’ dorm across the street from our apartment building. I, a girl then, am watching this from behind a curtain; the screaming scared me awake when I had just fallen asleep, and now I’m up and by the window, watching this fight.

  For a long time, Kostya lies immobile on the ground. Finally, he begins to stir, as if in slow-motion, gets up on his fours, looks around and tries to figure out where he is and how he got there. He feels himself and wipes his face; his hands are covered in blood: he must have cut his face when he split the window with his head. His constant drinking buddy Rauf, nicknamed Lame, appears from the entrance to the dorm dragging his leg (it wasn’t set properly after he’d broken it).

  It’s dark everywhere; not one window lights up in the dorm. Everyone is used to such scuffles… It seems I am the only one spying on the men. The two go to stand under the single streetlight, Kostya crawling on all fours, like an animal, evidently not having it in him to get up. Lame stands above his friend and feels his head. They talk about something, cursing obscenely and loudly and waving their arms towards the dorm. Rauf goes to the water pump, takes off his shirt, soaks it under the faucet, comes back, and carefully dabs his wounded comrade’s face. Kostya hasn’t yet regained his bearing and keeps blinking as if after a concussion. Finally, the blood has all been washed off. The friends make themselves comfortable under the streetlight.

  Rauf rolls up a joint, lights it, inhales once and passes it to his pal. Having smoked, both become still; Lame puts his heavy head on wounded Kostya’s shoulder. Now it’s Kostya who holds up Rauf, while engaging in a very important task: he violently scratches at his knees as if he’d been bitten by red ants. Finally, that is done, and both men feel a little better. They turn their heavy heads to look at each other and stare as if they’d never seen one another before. What follows, happens at lightning speed: both scream, Lame hits Kostya’s face with his fist, Kostya pulls out a knife and sinks it in his friend’s side. The street explodes with noise: there’s now screaming from all sides, and men are running towards the streetlight. They take the knife away from Kostya and tie him up with a belt. An emergency vehicle and a police cruiser appear on the scene.

  The last thing I see is the childlike, smiling face of the murderer: he laughs and mutters to himself as they pack him off in the police car. The emergency van evacuates Lame, who will survive to roam the city for a long time, looking for jobs to do and drugs to score until someone finds him drowned in the frigid February water of an aryk.

  Mom comes from the other room, puts me back to bed, tucks me in and sits on the edge of my bed, lightly stroking my hair.

  “Go to sleep, Verunchik, don’t you mind, forget those bad men. They fought because of weed, weed robs people of their minds, makes them slaves.”

  I remember, I remember many things that night. The memories steal my will to resist them: my past comes to stand before my eyes, presses me down into my mattress, and I cannot move under its weight. Images, words, smells and sounds flash in my mind and retreat into the shadows again, to be replaced by others, and then others still. It is like diving into an ocean, only the world that fills the caverns of my soul is not at all like the splendors of sea life that you see on TV—it i
s straight and hard, like the iron stake that nailed Nasrulló. It appears he has always remained with me, but to what end? What for? The night is endless when it is filled with thoughts that never reach the morning sun.

  . 7 .

  In the morning, a ringing doorbell woke me. Ready for the next installment of last night’s saga, I threw on my robe and rushed to the door. Imagine my surprise when I saw Mark Grigoriyevich there. It turned out he was returning from his Australian tour and decided to make a detour to surprise us in Moscow.

  While he showered and made breakfast, I took care of Grandma. She accepted the usual procedures—pureed vegetables and juice—like a queen receiving an ambassador from a small nation, her entire countenance filled with superiority and boredom by this tedious ritual.

  After breakfast, Mark Grigoriyevich asked suddenly, “You about to go to the pharmacy and shopping?”

  “As always, Mark Grigoriyevich.”

  “Could you please keep yourself busy out there for another hour or so, and come back at noon?” he blushed brightly. “I have a student coming and don’t want to be disturbed.”

  The pharmacy was next door, all the shops were on the same block; I didn’t feel like hanging out with Petrovna downstairs and decided to check on apartment 84. Anton was still asleep. Yulka, on the other hand, had been to the pharmacy and back already, bought haemodesum and relanium, and—as she assured me—was just about knock on my door. She welcomed me like an old friend.

  “Great to see you! I was sure you would come.”

  “How so?”

  “You’re simple. I can feel it. I can smell who’s got what going on.”

  “Right. You just don’t want to call a real doctor.”

  “No, I don’t. But it’s still true about you.”

  “Well, you’re in luck: the owner came and told me to take a hike while he gives a lesson to a promising student.”

  “Ah! You got it, didn’t you?”

  “What was I supposed to get?”

  “You think they’ll be playing Mozart there? She comes to fuck—have you seen them together? They hold hands when they get into the elevator.”

  “That’s beside the point. Let’s go take a look at Anton.”

  “Of course it’s the point. People should fuck more, like rabbits. Without sex, we’d all die of loneliness.” She looked into my face plaintively. “Vera, I like your Mark Grigoriyevich, he’s alive, and you are alive, I trusted you right away.”

  “If you trust me, call a doctor. He’s sure to go through the same thing as yesterday again.”

  “Don’t I know it! I’ll call a doctor, just give him a shot now, he’s got no business waking up.”

  There was no harm in another drip and a little relaxant, so I gave up. With difficulty, we roused Anton, and Yulka took him to the bathroom. He was pale and didn’t quite know where he was. He wouldn’t have made it back to the bed without her help. He saw me and, with great effort, remembered what had happened the night before.

  “You the one who cleaned me up? I thought I was a goner, I had such nightmares,” he rolled his eyes.

  “Lie down and give me your arm.”

  He obeyed.

  “Hey, lady, the IV is ok, but hold off on the tranquilizers, I don’t want to sleep, it’s pure torture,” he suddenly burst out in tears and burrowed into the pillows.

  So I had to placate, soothe, comfort, threaten, and encourage him. In another half an hour, we got it done. Yulka now took my side and seconded everything I said, which irritated Anton. I had to do battle on two fronts, but carefully, since neither one of them responded to straightforward force. Finally, I got them both settled with my negotiations: Yulka stopped talking, and Anton accepted his part as the sorrowful sufferer, which he enjoyed quite a bit, surrendered, and fell asleep under his drip.

  I still had an hour before noon. I did not want to go to the pharmacy and to the shops—I did not need anything. Yulka made coffee and started chatting again. I did nothing to encourage or discourage her.

  She told me they met at a friends’ apartment, a den, basically. Each had a couple of trips to the “clinic” behind them. Both were tired. They gave each other a pledge that they would get clean, get off the drugs. Their fathers supported them financially.

  “Mine, did you see, gave me that Volkswagen, just so I would stay a good girl.”

  But Anton couldn’t do it.

  “It must be my fault: he fucks better when he’s high.”

  “And when he’s not?”

  “When he’s not, he’s lazy. I can’t explain it so that you’d get it.”

  Yulka defended him. She believed what she was saying, but I could sense a lie hidden somewhere. Her father had left the family; he helped her mother and her sometimes, but irregularly, and disappeared for long periods of time.

  “He really only started paying attention to me when I was fifteen and I got pregnant the first time. He took me to the doctors, paid them—it woke him up. He was ashamed: I’m a general’s daughter and an addict.”

  She never once called him by name: only “Father,” not even “Dad.” She didn’t go as far as to chalk it all up to his neglect, but it was clear that she blamed him rather than holding herself accountable for anything. Once she assigned the responsibility to him, she liked it; she could feel sorry for herself. After everything she’s been through, after burying her mother between two trips to the detox, being all alone in this world, she did not seem to fear anything. She talked about her life easily, as other people chat about everyday things, even laughing while she recalled such terrible things as a normal person couldn’t even imagine. Anton picked her up when she was already losing her mind and fussed over her as if she were a purebred puppy. He nursed her back to health and fell in love.

  “Would you believe it, what made me like him was that he didn’t drag me to bed. That was the first time in my life.”

  But the vicious cycle kept repeating itself, and they could not break it. Now she needed to talk, to vent. I listened, nodded and asked intentionally naïve questions:

  “Being high—is that bliss?”

  “Bliss? Oh yeah! When it comes on, it’s a warm, pleasant wave that rises from your stomach, up, up, until it envelopes your entire self, and spills into every single cell of your body, floods your head. It lasts for a couple of seconds and then passes, or rather, it transforms into a different state of being: you are suddenly plunged into a joyful, bright world. You feel you can fly. Everything around you is so lovely—the trees, the people. Everything is weightless; the air is crystal clear, and so is your mind. And everything around is yours, and there’s nothing you can’t do. You see things you would never see otherwise: you see the air moving around you. You feel like you can see the atoms it’s made of. And everything is so soft, so intent on pleasing you, like music that you can almost hear, and so fluid, so new. And you are floating in this new universe as if in a huge back-lit aquarium and the world is yours to observe.

  “In another hour or two you go down, though. Everything turns inside out and gradually dims. Everything that made you so happy hides, skitters away. All the things and objects become gray, dirty, drab, as if filled with a malicious force. People’s faces look foreign and glum. Your body becomes heavy and weighs you down; you feel as if you spent all day laying railroad tracks or loading potato sacks. The fatigue comes. You can see it coming, creeping up, it’s a dense grey cloud that wraps around you, seeps into your nostrils, crawls through your mouth to your insides. Your arms hang like ropes, you can’t move your feet. Your body doesn’t listen to you and doesn’t belong to you. All you want to do is hide in a hole in the ground or under the bathroom sink, bury yourself in pillows, towels, or rugs, and be quiet, and be alone. Everyone who happens to be around irritates you; voices seem to punch your eardrums like fists, causing pain and nausea. Other people threaten you; you hate them. The pain rises from your gut to your head; you want to give everything, anything for another dose. And the most terrible thin
g is that you are fully aware of all this and resist it for a while, but then it breaks you and you get the blues. If you can fight with yourself, if you can hold your ground and suffer for a couple of days, it all passes. But sometimes you feel it’s better to shoot up than to die. Those thoughts of death—they’re there all the time, like this kettle on the stove, only inside you and all around you. Your heart hops like a cricket in a jar, a hundred miles a minute.”

  “Tachycardia is always accompanied by fear of death.”

  “Well, you’ve seen it in your patients, and I’ve felt it on my own skin. Everything, you know, loses its meaning. You start bargaining with yourself, like, if you have a fever, you take something for it, aspirin, right? And your meds are right there. You hate yourself; you just sit there and curse, ‘You bitch, what do you want, you slutty little bitch,’ and then you give up. Right then, you have strength in your legs all of a sudden, and your body is tight, like a ringing string—it knows what’s coming. This is very scary. When you give in and go after that dose, you can get hung up, I mean, drop out of reality. When I got my dose up to two cubes, I was truly hung up.

  “I remember, I left Anton by himself and went to the boy who used to sell me drugs. It was winter; I wore a nice shearling coat. And then… I lost it, completely. I came back in May. What I did in between, for three months, I couldn’t tell you to save my life. The coat, of course, was gone—either stolen or I’d bartered it myself. So I’m wandering around Moscow in a torn fox-fur hat and someone else’s cotton-padded coat. I’m trying to get home to Toshka, and I’m throwing up at every step. Later we found out that I was pregnant and with a ruptured anus on top of that. Sometimes I remember, in flashbacks, what they did to me, but it’s better not to remember. Antoshka and his father took care of me, nursed me, kept me in detox; I wouldn’t have made it alone.”

  “Now you want Toshka to lose it like you did?”

  “Of course I don’t. We have to wait, Vera, wait and see. It’s no use to plan.”