Found Life

by Linor Goralik

  “Nobody’s?” she inquired.

  “Nobody’s,” he said soothingly, “nobody’s.”

  “So strange,” she said, curling into a ball, blocking him off with her knees. “So strange. No, I get it, I do, it’s just strange.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, starting to get a little angry, “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  He tried to turn away, but she took him by the hand and he had to look at her again.

  “Just a voice?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “just some voice.”

  Then she let him turn away. He went to the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the washing machine and thought with dismay that he really shouldn’t have told her about the voice—and he thought, too, that of course he knew that voice, moaning in his head when she arched her back and bit her finger, that voice whispering meaningless hot words in his ear, when her lips touched his earlobe, that voice squealing when his thrusts get stronger and he begins to moan himself. “Of course,” he thought and flicked his nail a little against the open box of detergent, of course he knows that voice: it’s his first wife’s voice, the last woman he slept with before his deafness became absolute.

  URGENT CALL

  He answered the phone, heard the password, and quickly gave the reply. Something clicked, then, evidently, someone on the other end tapped a coin against the phone box and began to snuffle. He lay down more comfortably, took the book out from under his back, and asked something superficial, like about the weather. The person on the other end began to speak, first expressing interest in his health, then in his general situation, then saying:

  “Yesterday I saw you digging in the yard.”

  “I did no such thing,” he said, trying to sound very calm.

  The phone was silent, another coin tumbled down, then she said:

  “Spill.”

  “I just thought that later it wouldn’t work,” he said with a sigh.

  “I told you so,” was her displeased response.

  He remembered making the hole deeper, how the clumps of dirt emerged onto the surface enmeshed in the gossamer hairs of grass roots. A strand of this hair, cleaned of dirt, lay in a buried box, along with everything else, along with other clues of varying value: a stone shaped like a bird; a piece of wallpaper; a pair of old heavy glasses (that could be the riskiest thing of all); a flat metal lid with a rubber gasket; two teeth. He shifted the phone to his other ear and reluctantly explained the box’s coordinates: where and how to find it. He always played fair. He was asked to explain properly, and answered with irritation.

  “I’m tired of standing here already,” was the equally irritated response, he sighed and explained properly. There was the rustling of a piece of paper, then a loud swallowing, then, not so distinctly:

  “I’m hanging up.”

  He got off the bed and walked through the hot, wilted courtyard to the kitchen, where it was even hotter; no one heard his footsteps because of the clanging, bubbling, and sizzling, he walked up and rubbed his cheek on someone’s thigh, was carefully moved aside, away from the stove, and asked:

  “All packed up?”

  He didn’t answer but instead moved over to the window and began to watch the girl walking toward the house, dragging a stool behind her. The girl’s hands were smeared with soil. A damp palm smelling of strawberry jam was placed on the back of his neck, and he was asked, with a nod toward the girl:

  “You guys aren’t speaking again?”

  He slipped out from under the heavy palm and made his way out of the kitchen.

  “She’ll fall down off that stool in the booth,” came grouchily from beside the stove. “Where on earth do they get the coins is what I’d like to know.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have sold the dacha,” another voice said uncertainly.

  “Doesn’t matter,” was the answer from beside the stove, “they’ll make up tomorrow on the train.”

  COME ON, IT’S FUNNY

  They weren’t drinking a lot, it was just that the windows were open and outside everything looked blue and smelled like something that made everything seem funny, and he was glad that they were all there, and he loved them all. Someone was talking about how he got scared to death one time when a chick fell behind his collar—he bellowed and leapt around, lost his voice (they leapt in with stupid references to Hitchcock right away and kept on laughing until they cried). The girl Pasha had brought said that when she was a kid, she’d been afraid of Boyarsky in the role of Matvei the cat—she would run away to the kitchen and once even tried to hide in the fridge. “But there was a penguin in there!” said Pasha abruptly, everyone cracked up, Marina groaned, “People, come on … Stop it … my belly hurts …” “That’s nothing,” he said and laughed. “Listen to this: when I was something like four, my mom sits me on her lap and goes, ‘I’m not Mom, I’m a wolf who’s turned into Mom!’ I didn’t believe her, she goes, ‘No, really! I’m a wolf who’s turned into Mom! I’m going to eat you up!’ Like five times, I’m like: ‘No, come on!’ And she’s all: ‘Yes, yes!’—and all of a sudden I believed her. Boy, that was terror. Serious terror, for real. I fell for it so hard, you know how terrifying it was? Man!” He laughed again and waved his plastic cup—but nothing happened, and he marveled how from up here, on the fifteenth floor, you could suddenly hear the plodding of the slow night trolley down in the street.

  THE MURDERER

  “It’s not going to happen,” he said to himself, “I know it’s not going to happen.” But there was nowhere to go: he had started the whole thing, had volunteered, and now they had already put the muzzle on him, the instruments were clinking, the interns salivating in anticipation. He was rubbing his fingers with a sponge and feeling nauseous, and then he imagined, with faint hope, that there, in the container that looked like a cat carrier, they’re just wasting each other—whipping each other with veins, digging in with the ends of their arteries, the liver tearing into the atria, the heart answering with a twist of the liver’s quadrate lobe, and the liver attacks the heart’s right ventricle and, howling, suffocates it—and he’ll open the container, and inside will be nothing but scraps and blood.

  MAY IT TRULY COME TO PASS

  He fell too early, earlier than he should have—as if the air being squeezed and compressed by the approaching bullet was pushing on the back of his head, and under this pressure he had leaned straight over to the side and fallen as planned, fallen as if cut down—but the bullet hadn’t even reached him yet!—and he stopped living for a second out of terror, because of course they were about to notice his trick, about to walk over to him—and with one more shot—but then the actual dead began to fall from above, people who didn’t yet believe that they’d been killed and so were hitting each other with their knees and digging into strangers’ necks with their nails, their trembling hands grabbing at the air convulsed by the bullets. ­Someone sank their teeth furiously into his face, so that hot red water poured into his eyes—but he lay on his side and didn’t move, didn’t move, didn’t move, didn’t even blink, and then everything was over, the fiery crackling ceased, and they went away.

  Just in case, he lay there until dark, and the dead, whose bodies he kept breathing through, quieted down, hot became cold, but he only wiped his face after he ended up at the top, on the edge of the ravine. For a few minutes he just stood there and furiously, raggedly inhaled the scent of bird cherry, then climbed up along the nearest pine tree, and, keeping his head down indifferently, walked to Astrakhan in a matter of minutes: a gypsy acquaintance had once told him that life was good in Astrakhan, and now he intended to find out.

  GET TO WORK

  He got up with the alarm right at eight, took two pills and went to eat breakfast, eating porridge instead of just random crap, and after showering took the trouble to smear his teeth with that whitening stuff, and swore to himself that from now on he would use it twice a day, like he
was supposed to. He even arrived early at the office, and cleared out all the papers (and found lots of interesting stuff in there). And at lunch he didn’t go with the rest of the herd to bitch about the shit that’s always bitched about at lunch, but took two more pills, waited a little and then forced himself to eat the cheese sandwich he had bought on the way, and called ­Marina, and said immediately that he was calling just because—to find out how she’s doing, and for the first time since the divorce they talked easily without any of those overtones. He forbade himself from reading stupid stuff on the internet that day, and decided to work—and worked, and didn’t take anything else, because his hands were already trembling from the codeine in the pills. Instead, he told ­himself he’d ­distract himself with work and ride it out—and did ride it out, and really did feel a little better, and during that time he finally called his landlady and settled the issue of the fridge: he said it was his own fault and that he’d buy a new one, which was the right thing to do. And even that night at home, he didn’t immediately collapse on the bed, he got undressed properly and put on his pajamas, even though it was only seven p.m., and only then collapsed. It was true that he felt bad, really bad, and it felt like his eye would fall out from the pain, and the right side of his nose hurt too as though someone had given him a love tap with a brick. “There,” he said to himself. “There, you were good all day. So what? My head still hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Evidently that’s not the point.” But he still made himself count to ten, get up, go to the bathroom, and there, standing with closed eyes and holding on to a pipe to avoid falling down, smeared his teeth with the stuff again.

  ELBOWS FORWARD

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and busied himself with the doll. This doll had one face that was pudgy and smiling, with two shiny pink teeth peeking out from between equally shiny pink lips. The other face, though, was bony and very unpleasant—just about to start bawling, nose crinkled, upper lip raised, a nasty snake. This face had white teeth that were somehow smudged. He gave the doll’s head a couple of hard twists—back and forth, back and forth. It quickly became clear that the most interesting way to look at her was not head on, but from the back: the nasty, petulant little face above the clasp of the dress, bent elbows pointing forward below that, a price tag still tied to one of them. He wanted to rip the price tag off, but Mom wouldn’t let him, she said the price tag had to be cut off with scissors. He was not allowed to use the scissors by ­himself, it had ended badly last time, even though he really likes the ­scissors, scissors gave him a tickle in his belly. He has to wait until Mom and Dad leave the kitchen for Mom to cut off the tag. Then he’ll be able to give the doll a bath in the tub.

  He waited and waited some more. Then he walked up to the kitchen doors. They were whispering very loudly, he stood and listened for a while. “Don’t yell!” That was the female whisper. “Don’t yell! Don’t you dare yell at me!” The male whisper responded vehemently, “I’m yelling because you’re ruining him! Ruining him! Why did you bring that thing here?!” “Because he’s interested in them,” answered the woman. “Because they stimulate his interest!” “Lena,” said the male whisper very calmly. “Lena, you’re ruining him. He’s soft in the head, and we have to …” “Don’t you dare talk like that about our child!” the woman yelled at full volume (they often yelled like that; he felt bored, squatted down near the kitchen door and turned the doll’s head sideways, so that he could see both faces at once). Then the man also yelled at full volume, “I say it because it’s the truth! He’s eleven years old, he needs special classes, he needs to be in a home, you aren’t giving him opportunities! You just bring him dolls!” At this point he got tired of waiting, went to the bathroom, looked under the hamper, found the scissors, first carefully cut off the price tag, then drew the thin dully glinting blade along one arm and along the other. It turned out really pretty.

  NOT YET

  Family members and friends of passengers had already been asked to leave the train cars, she gave him tiny kisses all over—on his eyes, cheeks, chin, and then unexpectedly thrust her lips into his palm, while he muttered drily, “Come on, come on, I’ll be back in just a week,” and hugged her, a button on his coat sleeve catching on her hair. She walked quickly to the door, he didn’t look out the window, swallowed the lump in his throat and entered his compartment, and his neighbor, an inexpressive man in a coat identical to his, came in just after him.

  They exchanged greetings, the neighbor immediately sat down on his bunk and began to rustle the travel magazines graciously arranged on the table, while he decided to get ready for bed and began to dig around in his bag. There was no need to look into the flat interior pocket: it contained a packet with prescriptions, X-rays, CAT scans, all of it. He opened the small side compartment and got out some warm socks. It was stupid to drag along two track suits, but he had brought them because he felt unable to spend the night on the train in that new blue-and-black one, the one he’d have plenty of time to lie in, and walk around in, and lie in some more … He took out the other suit—an old brown one he wore at home, and turned to his neighbor—would it be appropriate to change in front of him?

  At the moment, the neighbor had his back to him—he bent over his own bag, dug around in it and slapped an old brown track suit onto the table. A second suit followed, a blue-and-black one with the tags still on, and some warm gray socks. Embarrassing little blue wads of underpants were momentarily scattered across the shelf, then hidden away once more (he suppressed the urge to pull back his own waistband and look down, he already knew exactly what he had on). The rest was obscured behind the neighbor’s back. He craned his neck as much as possible and saw the neatly folded green towel sticking out of the bag’s side compartment and the freshly purchased paperback volume of The Martian Chronicles (while they were trying to talk about something cheerful on the platform, Natasha had been picking at the price sticker—and had peeled it off, and now the sticky rectangle on the cover would definitely turn into a disgusting dirty stain).

  At that point he left the compartment for the hallway and, shivering in time with the motions of the recently departed train, carefully patted himself down—arms, face, chest. But no, he was still alive.

  DOESN’T COUNT

  He rubbed his temple with his fingers, and she asked, did his head hurt? He lowered his lids affirmatively, and then she said: do you want me to kiss it—and make it all better? He stared at her in amazement. She quickly turned her gaze away, made an awkward motion with her hand—as though trying to remove what she had said from the air between them—and hastily walked out of the elevator.

  NO SLEEPING

  He got up off the floor, and, hating everything that breathed, went to answer the door. The threshold was immediately flooded with water, and he looked at the late guest in disgust—a boy of probably fourteen or fifteen, sopping wet, wiping his face with his palm, cradling a half-dead bouquet like a baby. He even thought that it was some flower delivery boy with the wrong address, and barked with irritation:

  “What?”

  The boy, trying to cover the disintegrating bouquet crookedly with the hem of his coat, shouted through the water’s pounding:

  “I’m so sorry! I know it’s very late, I’m so sorry! I just! My train! I missed the earlier one, in short, I only got here now, I’m so sorry! I’m Mark, Mark Weiss! I came to talk to Katya, I need to talk to her! I’m her friend from school, back in Tver, I’m sorry! I only made the four-twenty-six train! I’m sorry, I know it’s late, please!”

  Then he shouted his response:

  “There’s no Katya here!”

  “What?” shouted the boy, and he repeated it, almost closing the door so that the water wouldn’t lash the rug so hard:

  “There’s no Katya here!”

  “Katya Marchenko! Marchenko!” shouted the boy.

  “The Marchenkos moved away two months ago!” he shouted. “I don’t know where to, ask at the post office!”

  He slammed
the door shut and bolted it fastidiously, returned to the living room, sat down on the floor near the sofa and carefully lifted the lampshade to shed a little light. The cat was breathing heavily and hoarsely, his mangy side heaving up and down. Occasionally the cat would moan in a human voice and torturously curve his paw toward his belly—it hurt badly in there. The shot clearly hadn’t helped. He put his hand on the cat’s forehead, then thought that this was only making the cat feel worse, lifted his hand away and lowered the shade back down. Maybe, he thought, they should have taken the cat with them instead of selling him with the house, maybe there, in the new place, he would gone on living for a long time. Or maybe, he thought, they shouldn’t have moved away at all: then Katya would have answered the door, looked at that little idiot with the bouquet in silence for a few seconds, and then she would have said: “My cat is dying, come in,” and of course, they would have sat up with the cat until morning, and sooner or later they would have kissed awkwardly, and things wouldn’t be quite so bad.

  I’M NOT YOUR DEATH, I WON’T EAT YOU

  The food arrived. He hastily finished his cigarette, crushed the butt in the ashtray and slid a salad crowned with a pair of dill tufts over toward himself.

  “Hey,” he said. “Look, the salad has ears! No, that’s not right: look, it’s a hill. There’s a burrow inside. Ears are sticking out of the burrow.” He used his fork to move the dill “ears” back and forth.

  At that moment, anguished and despairing, she understood that all her bravado wasn’t worth a plugged nickel: of course she would keep the baby.

  PEACETIME

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I get bored of just eating, and then I go out to a restaurant that serves, like, some special cuisine.”

  THE FOUNDLING

  They were so sorrowful, so calm. Afraid of nothing, concerned with nothing. They knew how to live, how to earn their daily bread, and how to stick together. He walked up and lay down among them in the walkway between the Mendeleevskaya and Novoslobodskaya stations—palms to cheek, knees to stomach—but then he looked closer: no, that’s not how they were lying; he put his elbow under his head, and immediately felt comfortable. They didn’t protest and didn’t chase him away—someone stuck a warm snout under the hem of his shearling coat, someone slapped their tail against his knee—and against the background of the monotonous scraping of human footsteps they fell asleep, the whole pack.