Thirst

by Andrei Gelasimov

  Forthcoming by Andrei Gelasimov:

  The Lying Year

  Rachel

  The Gods of the Steppe

  Text copyright © 2011 by Andrei Gelasimov

  Published by agreement with Galina Durstoff Literary Agency, Koeln

  English translation copyright © 2011 by Marian Schwartz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Thirst by Andrei Gelasimov was first published in 2003 by Eksmo Publishers in Moscow as Zhazhda.

  Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz.

  First published in English in 2011 by AmazonCrossing.

  Published by AmazonCrossing

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN: 978-1-61109-069-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011907216

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  All the vodka wouldn’t fit in the fridge. First I tried standing the bottles up, and then I laid them on their sides, one on top of the other. The bottles stacked up like transparent fish. Then they hunkered down and stopped clinking. But ten or so just wouldn’t fit.

  I should have told my mother to take this refrigerator back a long time ago. It’s an affront to me and the little boy next door. Every night this monster cuts in full blast, and he cries on the other side of the wall. And my vodka is never all going to go in. It’s too damn small.

  Fucking pig.

  So I had to put it on the shelf. And the windowsill. And the floor. Same old same old. One I put in the bathroom, the dirty clothes hamper. I thought, Why the hell not? Just in case.

  When I was done with the vodka more or less, someone started ringing at my door. At first I didn’t want to open up because it was late, but then I did anyway. It had to be Olga. Not even my mother had stopped by in half a year. We communicated by phone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” she said. “My Nikita’s acting up. Please help me out this once. I can’t cope with him by myself.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  I threw on a jacket and went out. I even left my door open.

  “Well then, who here doesn’t want to go to bed?”

  The little guy shuddered and stared at me as if I were a ghost. He actually dropped his blocks.

  “Who here isn’t listening to his mama?”

  He was looking at me, speechless. Only his eyes got as big as saucers.

  “Come on, get your things,” I said. “Since you don’t want to listen to your mama, you’re going to be living with me. You get to take one toy.”

  He was absolutely speechless, and his mouth was open very wide.

  “Which one are we going to take? The car or this guy? Who is this you have here? Superman, is it? Come on, take your Superman along.”

  He shifted his eyes to Olga and whispered:

  “I’ll go to bed. Mama, I’ll go to bed all by myself right away.”

  “What a smart boy. You catch on quick. If anything like this happens again, I’m going to come back and take you with me for real.”

  Olga stopped me by the door.

  “Would you like some tea? We can go into the kitchen. I just brewed some up.”

  “I left my door open there. You never know…”

  Then she said, “You have to forgive me for bothering you all the time. It’s just that he…you’re the only person he’s afraid of. He’s stopped listening to me completely.”

  I grunted.

  “Makes sense. I would’ve been even more afraid if I were him. How old is he?”

  “Five. Four years and ten months.”

  “I would’ve been even more afraid.”

  “Please forgive me…Just don’t be insulted, please.”

  Then we didn’t say anything for a while.

  “It’s perfectly all right. If anything comes up, be sure to stop by. I’m going to be staying home now. I finished a job. I got all my money.”

  She looked at me.

  “Are you going to be drinking vodka for the next three months again?”

  “Where’d you get that idea? I just sit home and watch TV.”

  She looked at me and smiled. Not very cheerfully, I must say.

  “Fine, forgive me one more time. You too be sure to stop by if anything comes up. You really wouldn’t like some tea?”

  At home I walked over to the mirror and stood in front of it for a long time. I looked at what had become of me.

  If only Seryoga hadn’t been wrong back then and hadn’t left me to burn up last in the APC. But he thought I was already done for. That’s why he pulled the others out first. The ones who were still showing signs of life.

  Which means I’m only good for frightening naughty kids now. Olga lucked out with me for a neighbor.

  But when we first started construction trade school, they lined us all up in front of the building, and the head teacher said, “You are now the face of the construction industry. Don’t let your fathers down.” But who was there to let down, really? Our head teacher was obviously out of the loop. Instead of fathers at home we had our Uncle Ediks. In the singular, of course. But the head teacher meant all of us standing in front of him, even though it had started raining and the trees had lost nearly all their leaves. That’s why he was speaking in the plural. While we stood there in front of him shivering with cold. No one had warned us that the lineup would take so long. So we had left our jackets in the workshops. And no one had taken cigarettes, naturally. But maybe he was right as far as the generalizations went. Who knows? Maybe by then each one of us had his own Uncle Edik sitting in the kitchen.

  Mama would say, “Only you don’t have to go making that face. Eduard Mikhailovich is helping us out. If it weren’t for him, do you know where you and I might have wound up? Your father never even gave us the time of day. Not before the divorce for sure, and after it he just spat on us. Do you know where we might have wound up?”

  But I didn’t. And Eduard Mikhailovich wasn’t Eduard Mikhailovich to me. And he sure as hell wasn’t Uncle Edik. To me he was nobody. I didn’t even say “him” if I wanted to tell my mother something. I just mumbled incoherently and jerked my head. But she understood. It’s just every time she would say, “You don’t have to go making that face.”

  But I remembered how she and my father and I used to go sunbathing in the summer, and he would always wear these white shorts, to show off his tan, because he tanned easily and handsomely. He wore this very classy cap and shimmery, multicolored glasses. He never sat with us on the blanket. He would circle around it or stand a little ways away or play volleyball. Or laugh with the tanned, young girls. While Mama and I would hide from the sun under our umbrella.

  She would tell me, “Kostya, you got my skin. You can’t tan with skin like that. Too many freckles. Come on, I’ll rub some cream on you. Otherwise your whole face is going to burn up.”

  Olga opened the door almost immediately. She probably hadn’t even had time to undress little Nikita.

  “Did you change your mind about the tea? Good for you. Go on into the kitchen. I’ll put Nikita to bed right now.”

  I waited for her in the hall, and when she came back from the nursery I said I didn’t want any tea.

  I just needed her to show me where to nail up the mirror I had for her. I mean, just set it down. Because it was late now and Nikita had gone to bed. So it didn’t make any sense to hammer a nail into the wall now, naturally. Then there were the neighbors. Although, besides Olga and me there was just one old man on o
ur landing. And he was deaf. But still, there was Nikita. So it would be better first thing tomorrow morning. For now I just needed to set the mirror down somewhere.

  She looked at me in silence and then pointed toward the corner. Directly under the coat rack. There was already a mirror hanging on the other wall. The same kind of round mirror. But a little bigger than mine.

  I straightened up.

  “It was just leftover from my mother. They moved a long time ago, but they left a few things behind…That stupid refrigerator. It must keep your Nikita awake, I’ll bet.”

  “No, it doesn’t bother him.”

  Then I took a look at her vestibule and said it was time for some renovations. She smiled and replied that she couldn’t afford it.

  “How much would you charge?”

  “I only do Euro renovations. For rich people. Double-glazed windows, dropped ceilings—all kinds of crud.”

  “Well, but still. How much?”

  “Oh, eighty, a hundred thousand. Sometimes as much as a hundred and twenty.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “They’ve got plenty of dough. They have to rub each other’s noses in it.”

  She smiled.

  “They’ve got a hard life.”

  I smiled, too.

  “Yeah, real tough.”

  Because I really didn’t know who had stiffed whom. Whether Genka had stiffed Pashka or vice versa. Although each of them accused the other of chicanery, naturally. They took turns coming to see me in their SUVs and saying, Oh, you know I couldn’t stiff him. Go on, say it. You know it’s true.

  And I said I knew because I couldn’t tell them no. Either one. I didn’t actually know the truth. Not that I wanted to. Who gave a damn about that? When you burn up in an APC with someone—after that a lot of things start looking very different. They were just lucky. Seryoga pulled them out a little sooner. First them; then this weird captain from division headquarters; after him the driver, Mikhalich; then Ensign Demidov; and after everyone else, finally, me.

  Maybe it was because they were lucky that they later decided to stiff each other. I don’t know. Money’s a terrible thing. I wouldn’t like to be in their place. Not this time, at least.

  If only it had been a little sooner. When Seryoga crawled into the smashed APC.

  But money’s money, and money’s what split them up. Their partnership flushed right down the tubes, and I had to buy a little more vodka than usual a time or two.

  Because they drank like horses. They would pull in from that Fryazino of theirs and drink up what I’d bought for myself. But always separately. They actually called ahead to make sure they weren’t going to run into each other at my place. But I drank with them both. I didn’t care who’d stiffed who. For me they would always be Pashka and Genka, the guys I burned up with. Who knew I once had a face and not this hunk of charred flesh.

  Half a year after being drafted and then another whole month in Chechnya.

  It was Genka who had the bright idea of getting me into Euro renovations.

  “What’s the big sweat?” he said to me. “Fuck, you’re a carpenter. You know all that construction shit. Why don’t you trick out my apartment? I can pay pretty well, and then maybe you’ll find some more clients.”

  And I did. In several towns even. True, they were always surprised when I told them on the phone that I worked alone, but later, when they met me, they weren’t surprised anymore. At least they didn’t ask me why the renovations took so long. The ones who were in a hurry hired other people.

  So did the ones who didn’t like my face.

  “Look at your faces!” the head teacher would shout at us during drafting class. “Just look at yourselves. There’s not a single idea in your eyes. I might as well have a flock of sheep sitting in front of me. You’re as dumb as sheep. Idiots!”

  He was standing beside me, brandishing my drawing. The piece of paper was trembling in his hand, over my head. I was looking at my desk and counting the drops of spit. First one, then another. I moved back to keep from getting hit, and then he paused. He looked at me, sighed, folded the paper in half, and said, “Let’s pay the director a visit. Take your things.”

  And he looked at all of us again.

  “Everyone else, keep working. Don’t even think about leaving the room.”

  “Take a gander at what your pupils are doing, Alexander Stepanovich,” he said when we entered the director’s office. “Future builders!”

  “They’re all our pupils, Arkady Andreyevich,” the director said. “And they may never be builders.”

  My teacher dropped my drawing on his desk and stared at me silently. But I was looking at the director. Because I’d never seen him before. None of us ever had. The head teacher ran everything at the school, and people said all kinds of things about the director.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” He chuckled. “Am I fat? You never saw Morgunov. There was that movie once, you know? About Morgunov, Vitsin, and Nikulin.”

  The head teacher shuddered and started talking.

  “Excuse me, Alexander Stepanovich, but it seems to me—”

  “Thank you for the heads up, Arkady Andreyevich,” the director interrupted him. “I’ll sort this out. He can stay here in my office.”

  When the head teacher left, the director set my drawing aside and looked at me again.

  “Well then, let’s get started. Take that chair over there and sit a little closer. Otherwise I can’t see at all. That’s it. Good boy. Now, tell me your name.”

  “Konstantin.”

  “Konstantin? A fine name. You must be a constant person. That’s good. Are you a constant person, Konstantin? Or is that just your name?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I found it odd that we were sitting there like this, in his office, and he was asking me these weird questions. Because I was waiting for him to start hollering.

  “You don’t know? You should. You should know as much as possible about yourself, Konstantin. What do you know about yourself?”

  I looked at him and didn’t know what to say.

  “Fine,” he said. “You’re not ready yet. Later, maybe, I’ll ask again. Think about it. For now, though, tell me, what do you know about your bag?”

  I looked at him and had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Give it to me.”

  I handed him the bag across his desk. He took it, hefted it, and smiled.

  “It’s heavy. What do you have here?”

  “Textbooks. And my gym uniform. We’re playing basketball today.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “Notebooks.”

  “What else?”

  “Pens.”

  “Good boy. What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  I wondered whether I had left my cigarettes there.

  He put my bag on his desk and picked up my drawing again.

  “Do you have others? There, in your bag?”

  I stared at him.

  “Drawings, you mean?”

  “Well, yes, drawings. That is why you were brought here. Any more? Show me. Or do you want me to dig around in your gym uniform?”

  He spent about five minutes paging through my notebooks. Then he stood up, walked to the window, stood there, came back, and looked for another five minutes. After that he pushed it all aside and said, “Why don’t you have anything besides naked women? Are you preoccupied? How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Ah, that explains it,” he said. “Put it all back, sit over there by the wall, and wait a minute. I have a few things to finish up here.”

  The first time it doesn’t work out right, not because you don’t have any experience but because you’ve been waiting too long. I mean, a few years go by from the moment you start thinking about it. And the point is not that all of a sudden you end up alone with her and you kinda look at her and think, Damn, I don’t have any experience.

  No, it’s jus
t that you’ve been waiting too long. That’s why it doesn’t work out right. And of course, she’s got the same problems. Or don’t girls think about things like that?

  In short, you end up starting to draw. First the neck, then the shoulder. That’s how it happens. You’re sitting there, mad at them, and drawing. Then you get a new notebook. And then another.

  I never was able to explain to Mama where I was hanging out after class. I couldn’t tell her about these drawings or about how the school director kept me after class in his office for three hours, and then he wouldn’t let me go anywhere anyway and instead took me home with him. Along the way, he gave all the homeless guys money and then gave out more in front of his building; there was a whole crowd waiting for him. Maybe not a crowd, but several people. And when we went up to the third floor, some old woman was sitting on the stairs, and the director said to her, Certainly, certainly, let’s go, come in, I’ve been expecting you for a long time. There’s an awful lot piled up in the kitchen. She rattled around in the kitchen for a long time and then left. On her back was a huge knapsack with empty bottles, and the director said, That’s not too heavy? Can you manage alone? Will you make it? And the old lady said, I’ll make it. Then he got out some book, showed it to me, and asked, Did you copy your drawings from here? I said, No. Because I didn’t copy them. I just drew whatever came into my head. When I felt lousy. And he said, Are you sure they’re not from here? And I said, No. Then he gave me the book and said, Take it home and look at it. Come here in the morning, at about eleven. I said I had a test in the morning and the head teacher would kill me. And the director said, He won’t kill you. Go home and look at the book.

  But I got home late anyway, and Mama really started laying into me. I looked at her and couldn’t explain anything. Because I had that book in my bag. I couldn’t show her that book! There were drawings in there she wouldn’t have liked at all.

  But Eduard Mikhailovich did. Or didn’t. I don’t know. But he was interested. He grabbed that book off my desk right away, the moment he walked into my room, and started leafing through it. He got this expression on his face…A weird one. And he said, Why are you making your mother crazy? Full of himself, such a concerned new father. He leafed through this book and said, Your mother nearly went out of her mind waiting for you. She was getting ready to call the police. What’s this book you have? I said, You’re holding it. Look at the cover. That says it all. He said, Goya, Caprichos. What is this, some artist? I said, I don’t know. The director gave me the book. And he said, Well, look out. You’ve got to quit making your mother crazy.