Found Life
Page 30
Young women (several) and the Witness in a subway train car decorated for May 9.
Young women: Hey, you’re an officer, right? An officer?
The Witness: You have no idea.
Young women: Ooh, tell us! Three half-moons, what’s that?
The Witness: Three half-moons is a wounded, wounded officer. See, they’re gold. Gold is for fighting. I served on the Tver border. Got a pitchfork to the chest, see—here, here, and here? (Points to three holes in a row) But I saved Moscow from the muzhiks.
Young women: Ew, a border guard. Ew, ew, oppressor of his own people. Ew, discursive enemy.
The Witness [in English—M.V.]: I had educational and social disadvantages.
Young women: We’ll pray for you.
SCENE 4
Two boys on a playground. The Witness is sitting on a bench and sipping a beer, watching the playing children.
First boy: Let’s play “for shame”! I call not first.
Second boy: OK, what shame should we play?
First boy: Ummm…let’s do hiding bread!
Both, in unison: Three, four, start the war!
First boy: Boom! Boom! I’m a German with a gun, open up!
The second boy pretends to open the door to his peasant hut.
First boy (pretending to aim a gun at the second boy’s stomach): Got any bread?
The Witness from Friazino (suddenly): Aim higher.
First boy (aiming at the second boy’s head): Got any bread?
Second boy: I do.
First boy: Come on, you have to resist first or it’s boring.
Second boy: No, I have no bread.
First boy: On your knees, Soviet scum!
The second boy reluctantly gets on his knees.
First boy: Got any bread?
Second boy: No, no!
First boy (pretending to cock the gun): Click-click.
Second boy: Yes, yes!
First boy (grabs the second boy by the chin): What’s your name?
Second boy: Nikolai.
First boy: Nikolai, you’d never cut it as a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Boom!
Pretends to shoot the second boy in the head, then hoists a sack onto his back and leaves.
The Witness from Friazino lifts his bottle in a gesture of approval. The second boy stays on his knees.
The first boy returns, squats down in front of the second boy.
First boy: Are you ashamed?
Second boy: So ashamed. Don’t know how to go on living.
First boy: Here we go, “Three, two, one…”
Second boy: Three, two, one, war’s done!
Both moan with evident pleasure and fall on the ground.
Second boy: That was a good one.
First boy: Now you do me, do me!
Second boy: What shame this time?
First boy: Umm…Let’s do the Siege of Leningrad and boots.
Both, in unison: Three, four, start the war!
SCENE 5
Four pilots are flying a small plane, taking up its whole interior. One of the pilots is the Witness.
The Witness: Anyone have any gum?
Second pilot: Up to your old tricks again, Sasha.
Third pilot: I thought you quit.
The Witness: Just this once!
Third pilot: Just this once, and then you’re back to a pack a day.
The Witness: I’m stressed, I’m stressed because of my brother.
Fourth pilot: Barrel roll!
They do a barrel roll.
The Witness: Do you have any gum or not?
Third pilot: Been a year since I quit.
Second pilot: Not one chew in three months.
Third pilot: If I give you some, we’ll all smell the strawberry. Everyone will want some.
Fourth pilot: Barrel roll!
They do a barrel roll.
The Witness: I’ll chew out the window.
Second pilot: You’re weak, Sasha.
Third pilot: Oh lay off, he’s stressed.
Second pilot: We’re all stressed.
The Witness: My brother’s been appointed a veteran.
Silence.
Fourth pilot: Barrel roll!
They do a barrel roll. Silence.
Second pilot: How many years did they give him, then?
The Witness: Eighty-three. And he was only forty-two, he and I are a year apart. It’s OK, they said he’s got another couple of years in him.
The third pilot hands the Witness some gum.
The Witness (reads the wrapper insert): “Love is fulfillment of the law.”
SCENE 6
Dramatis personae: Boy, Girl, Witness in the form of a dog. All other participants are just voices (against the background of faint crowd noise).
Two children—a boy and a girl—are standing on a small podium. The children are wearing absurd militarized uniforms—an attempt to clothe old aesthetics in new signifiers: say, hideous St. George sashes over the shoulder, and sailor hats, except khaki-colored for some reason. The girl is wearing a short skirt and knee socks, with two enormous white bows in her hair. The boy is wearing short shorts and white knee socks. The boy and the girl have appeared in previous scenes.
They are standing motionless, holding up lighters like at a rock concert; they look straight ahead sternly, without blinking.
The Witness runs in, in dog form, and joyfully throws himself at the children, barking and wagging his tail.
Female voice: Awww, take a picture! Hurry up, take a picture with your phone!
Male voice: What do you mean, take a picture? It’s all fun and games for you, but that, in case you didn’t realize it, is the Eternal Flame.
Female voice: Doggie, doggie! Don’t do it! That’s the Eternal Flame!
The dog keeps on barking and trying to ingratiate itself to the motionless children; it wants to play.
Male voice: It can’t understand you! It’s just a dumb animal, a savage. Savage, savage! Come here, savage! Come here, savage!
First voice from the crowd: You should throw something at it so it’ll run away.
A stick flies at the dog, to its delight: it fetches the stick and runs over to the Eternal Flame, wanting to keep playing.
Second voice from the crowd: Sir! Will you go over there and catch it?
Male voice: What do you mean—go over there? That’s the Eternal Flame!
Female voice: Let’s distract it! Does anyone have any food?
The whole crowd, in unison: We all do.
Pause. The children with the lighters stand motionless. The dog barks. Suddenly a lasso flies at the dog and misses.
Second voice from the crowd: Bastard.
First voice from the crowd: I tried.
The dog sits down and starts licking itself.
Male voice: Oh no, it’s going to defile it. I swear to God—it’s going to defile it.
Female voice: Citizens, this is horrible, come on! That’s the Eternal Flame! Does anyone have a weapon?
The whole crowd, in unison: We all do.
Shots are suddenly fired, and it’s clear that they’re coming from different parts of the crowd. The dog starts to yelp and run back and forth in front of the children. The children with the lighters stand motionless.
First voice from the crowd: Let me! Let me! I know how! I’m a veteran!
Moment of silence.
First voice from the crowd (the veteran): Hmm, for some reason I just…I can’t bring myself to do it.
Female voice: Citizens! The veteran can’t bring himself do it! The veteran is having a stroke!
An ambulance siren approaches. The dog listens closely and dashes toward the siren, barking. The children with the lighters stand there motionless.
Female voice: Awww, take a picture! Hurry up, take a picture with your phone!
Male voice: What do you mean, take a picture? It’s all fun and games for you, but that’s a veteran in there!
Ambulance driver: Veteran on board. Coming through, ve
teran on board.
Crowd on its way to the parade: Wait, what’s up with him?
Ambulance driver: He just got appointed, his nerves couldn’t take it.
Crowd: So how many years did they give him?
Ambulance driver: Eighty-three. Yesterday it was only forty-two, though. His nerves couldn’t take it.
These and the rest of the lines from the first scene gradually die down. The whole crowd recedes along with the ambulance siren and the barking. Finally everything is silent.
The boy falls down in a faint. The girl reaches into his shirt, gets out his phone, sits down on the ground and starts playing a game.
____
1. The title of the play, and its main character, are a reference to a wildly popular meme on the Russian Internet, circa 2006.
PART IV
COMICS
EXCERPTS FROM BUNNYPUSS
TRANSLATED BY GIULIA DOSSI AND ABIGAIL WEIL
PART V
POETRY
TRANSLATED BY EMILY KANNER (EK), GEORDIE KENYON SINCLAIR (GKS), MICHAEL WEINSTEIN (MW)
FROM SO IT WAS A HORN
I don’t even know, Katya
Maybe it’s out of spite, he’s at that age
But never before
Almost an honor student
We didn’t get it, even when he
Was clearly skipping school
Then he came home already in uniform
Yasha was screaming, what a nightmare
“Empty-headed,” he said, “dreamer,”
“Dingbat,” or something like that, words couldn’t express
And he clutched his field cap like a baby with its blanket
What can I say, Katya
Maybe he’ll still come to his senses, he’s at that age
Yasha, I say, he may still go to college
He may get sick of it in two or three years
There’ll even be benefits, and older students learn better
Anyway, you’ve heard it all already yourself
And you’ve said it all too
When he was young he was so chubby, ate
anything you put in front of him.
You see them out in the street—always underfed
you know, all beat up, it’s obvious
You think: he was probably a C student, or worse,
A permanent stain, some kind of outcast
You look at him and think: maybe his mother is happy
At least he’s not a thief, a cheat, instead
a serotonin
reuptake inhibitor
But after all he was almost an honor student, practically a mathematician
I don’t understand, none of this makes sense
Three generations of antiseptics, Katya,
Well, not including poor Pavel
But at least he was an anti-pyretic
EK
TO HAYUT
Katya comes in from the garden
(two years old).
“Katya, sweetie, what were you all doing in the garden?”
“Beating Vadik.”
Vadik’s fate was on the rise, on the rise—
and look, it’s rolled away.
Sweet Katya’s fate is just getting started—
standing there, rocking.
EK
Pyotr, my friend, how the blizzard ran wild!
Led us about in a deadly ring dance,
rose up in imperial columns,—
you vanish past four paces.
Only your voice blubbers through the blizzard:
“Save us, O Lord, take mercy!”
Pyotr, my friend—is the Lord your protector?
If your hands are red with blood
the Lord’s snows won’t make them white again,
the blizzard’s veils won’t dry your tears,
The snowstorm kerchief won’t warm your throat.
—O, my comrades—or, rather, brothers,
I wouldn’t cry over Katya
nor over dark and wakeless passion
nor that birthmark, secret and rosy,—
for nowadays, brethren, we carry
a burden graver than love, heavier than death.
I only let icy tears fall when
I remember that Katya’s chickie died.
He was so delightful and so cheerful,
he held his little arms out to greet me,
he drooled and joked and poked me,—
that bright-eyed birdie of Katyusha’s and mine,
our chickie, our budgie, little piglet.
And then, alas, he set out down the road
along which there is no returning.
It was then Katya went a bit off the deep end.
It was then Katya went off the rails.
It was then everything went to shit.
GKS
Grief on grief, for us, the grieving!
Bitter grief for us to grieve.
Bitter throat choked full with grief
Gulping down by night and day.
Our only gladness on this earth:
that by night as well as day
greasy grieving, hot and guzzling
gurgles grandly in the hearth.
GKS
ON THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH’S REPEAL OF THE CONCEPT OF PURGATORY
Alyonka, there’s no difference, none.
Yours are dead, mine struck down by grief,
It doesn’t hurt you, while I can’t bear it,
You’re twelve, and I’m a bit past three,—
But here we are, sharing a single apple
In this two-minute recess—
Nothing but core, hard as a rock,
But sweeter than our silly special-order masses
(yours are catholics, mine dumbasses).
Today’s the final day, as if we cared,
although, it seemed, we were supposed to pray,
tell fortunes, tremble, tally up our sins,
die and resurrect with every rumor
about who was getting transferred where,—
but you and I went out onto the sill
you fidget, and with a sweaty palm
I hold onto you by your gray collar,
trying not to fall down from your knees,
and we slobber on our cigarette
and I breathe smoke behind your ear
into the dent the beam left there.
When you shot at them, at mom and dad,—
When then you climbed up on the windowsill,—
When I went where I wasn’t supposed to,—
When Alyosha left the house without a scarf,—
When Jerome threw himself under the wheel,—
When Natasha gave lip to grandma,—
When Asim discharged his heavy belt,—
When Eugène forced a pillow on his brother,—
When Ilya went off with that dude,—
When Hélène played with a lighter,—
When Bartholomew caught a kitten,—
We all caught the smell of the bird-cherry, cheryomukha:
Eugène, Tanya, me, Bartholomew,
Irina, Ada, and even Ilya,
who that guy had just then, in the bushes,
the bird-cherry,—even he,
through the blood and the rags, he caught the scent.
You see, it was just that kind of moment.
A moment in the history of bird-cherries.
GKS
While we’re all being read that tale,
all around, it goes like this:
first a hard little rodent, like a toy, lying there in the potatoes;
then it’s winter, we’re fussing making dinner, and hear a woman’s shriek
below the balcony: the eighth floor, the cat’s ninth life.
Then an unknown mutt somewhere in the park,—
The likes of us drops a lollipop out of grief:
we grew up with her—and then, outgrew her.
Then, grandma at first, later—grandpa.<
br />
Then, winter, you’re fussing with potatoes—
That’s when you feel a tender tug.
The gentle tugging’s just begun.
GKS
Just a bit to know about round here:
your foot to walk, and this here mouth for screaming
breathe through the nose, and use this one for looking,
—and death is cold and wrong.
GKS
Every airless, weightless creature…
▶ Stanislav Lvovsky
A shot into the air inside a mole,
from a bow made of a torn-off sleeve
from great-grandpa Trifon’s waistcoat
releases the little thing’s burrowing soul
and admits the Heavenly Spirit.
That Spirit crawls commando-style into the mole
through the moist and ragged burrow,
and steals into the spleen:
soon, soon, to its left will rise heme,
to the right will go globin,
a corona will light in a shine of bilirubin
quadrofaced phagocytes will set up in back
to sing something lymphopoetic and throaty,
and make the mole shake with the bass.
Look—see how the mole is tossing around with the bass?
And you, you thought—a mole, so what?
an airless creature—skin it and swallow it whole?
But we say: no.
So what then? what is it you crave?—
we too crave; every demon craves in its way:
we’ll eat the burrowing fiend through to its core
we’ll eat through the mole, and through the father
and the waistcoat sleeves
we’ll render nothing to the heathens
we’ll render nothing to the heathens
GKS
In hell Thursdays are the most familiar.
Everything on that day’s the most familiar.
That torture’s hard for us to take:
some are puking, our eyes all hurt,
we barely make it in to work,—
but then it’s Saturday, five AM
(in hell it’s often five AM),
and a little finch flies up to our window
and pecks out our lungs, a kernel at a time.
GKS
Unbelovèd,
we will marry you, as is proper for twins.
We’ll make a little girl in you,
feed you dill pickles,
together hold you by both knees