Thirst

by Andrei Gelasimov

  That’s why I was always waiting for her to come. And bring her melting voice. “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t rush. What’s with you? Hold on just a little longer.”

  Then I started dreaming and started to dread her arrival. Because I remembered. I dreamed about it all.

  “Damn, he’s alive! He’s alive!” Genka shouts. “Pull him out! He’s burning up there!”

  “There’s a fucking horde of snipers around us!” Seryoga’s voice. “I can’t crawl over there again.”

  “Crawl! Can’t you see my leg’s busted? Crawl! I can’t get him! Pashka! Do you hear me? Pashka? There’s a sniper in the window over there. Take him out when Seryoga runs back to the APC. And I’ll shoot the fuck out of the ones over there. Give me another gun! Where is that shitass captain? Let’s do this, Seryoga! All set? One, two, three! Go!”

  Chaotic shooting from several submachine guns. Then a loud boom.

  “Fuck you, bastards!” Genka shouts. “Pashka! Hit him with another grenade!”

  Seryoga leaps toward me in the APC, shielding himself from the fire with his arms. The bullets are raining down. Crackling on the armor.

  “Kostya! Kostya!” he shouts. “Are you alive? Can you hear me?”

  I open my mouth. There’s a look of horror on Seryoga’s face. He puts the fire out on me with his bare hands. I want to close my eyes, but I don’t have any eyelids. They’ve been burned off.

  “We’ll pull you out right away! The captain’s gone for help. They killed the ensign, Demidov. And smashed his player to pieces. Lord, how can this be? You’re burned to a crisp! I thought you were dead! Kostya, forgive me! Kostya! I thought you were dead!”

  “Seryoga!” Genka’s voice. “Where the hell are you? Pull him out of there and fast! We have to get away! We can’t hold on here long! I’m nearly out of bullets!”

  Again, a gust of machine gun fire. Then a loud grenade launcher.

  “Pashka! All set? One, two, three! Come on, Seryoga! Go!”

  Seryoga leans over me, and I wake up from the pain.

  That’s how I remembered. In a dream.

  That’s why I was afraid to go to sleep now. I was terrified when she came with her shot.

  “Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you so upset? I’ll give you a nice shot and you’ll fall asleep in a flash. You’re completely worn out. It’s all right, two more minutes and it won’t hurt. Hold on, it’ll be over soon.”

  “How’s that? Does your tummy hurt?” the doctor said, leaning over me. “It’s nothing so terrible. Appendicitis is a very minor matter. We’ll put you to sleep now, and when you wake up it’ll all be fine. See, over there, at the end of the hallway? The light? Go there. That’s the OR.”

  He and my father stayed in the room where they’d undressed me, and I headed off into the darkness. The floor was cold.

  “Don’t stand around barefoot!” the doctor shouted at my back. “Climb onto the table and lie there. I’ll be right in.”

  All I’m wearing is a shirt that reaches nearly to the floor. There’s a cutout on the right side. Round, like an apple, but a little bigger. As if someone had torn the shirt with a watermelon. Kind of a small watermelon. I touch my belly through the hole and keep going. It’s dark all around. Only ahead of me light falls from the open door. No one’s there. I’m walking—one step, another. It’s hard to walk any faster. It hurts where the cutout is on my shirt. And my feet are freezing. It’s dark.

  But there’s no one in the room. It’s light, but it’s still cold. Because it’s autumn, and Mama keeps going on and on about how we obviously can’t expect any heat from the house management. You could take them to court, those miserable idiots, and they’d still just drink their vodka and curse over the phone. Dress warmer, Kostya. Or you’ll catch cold and have to miss school. Where’s your sweater?

  Where? Under the couch, that’s where. I wore it once and the kids in the yard started teasing me and calling me “sunflower.” Little yellow birds and pink flowers.

  But now I wouldn’t mind. I’d pull it right over this shirt with the hole and curl up in a ball somewhere. Because it hurts. I’m a little sick to my stomach, too. But there isn’t anywhere to curl up. In the middle of the room there’s just this ironing board. Mama has one exactly like it. But without the straps. She doesn’t have a lamp like this, either. It’s huge—bigger than a wash-basin. And there are four more switched on inside it. A real spotlight. We don’t need one like that for ironing. I always help her iron.

  “What are you doing on the floor?” The doctor’s voice reached me from the hall. “All right now, get up! I told you to climb onto the table. Why did you lie down on the floor?”

  “It’s too skinny. I’ll fall off.”

  “Climb up! Enough chatter. Help him. He’ll never get up like that.”

  I turned my head and saw feet in women’s shoes coming toward me. The doctor kept talking somewhere behind me. A man’s voice: “Great, he decided to stage a sit-in. Lift him onto the table.”

  Her hands were cold, too, but I didn’t care anymore.

  “OK, scoot up a little.”

  “It hurts.”

  “I know. Now you’re going to breathe into the mask and it will all go away.”

  “What mask?”

  “Raise up a little and I’ll show you.”

  The table was very narrow. She looked at me with the dark half of her face and strapped in my arms.

  “What’s this, are you going to cry now?” The voice under her surgical mask was different now. “You’re our future soldier. Soldiers don’t cry. Do you like to watch war movies? What? Speak up. Why are you whispering?”

  I repeated, “I like them.”

  “There you go. And you know how soldiers sometimes get hurt? But they don’t cry. They have to be brave. Will you be brave when you go to war?”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t wipe away the tears. She’d strapped down both my arms.

  “Good boy. Now I’m going to put some cream there. It’ll be a little cold, but you be brave. All right?”

  I nodded, and she put something wet there, where the hole was in my shirt.

  I couldn’t see what she was putting on there. It just felt sticky. And even colder.

  “Let’s have the anesthesia,” the doctor said. He had a mask on his face, too.

  “Don’t be afraid, little one,” she said. “Is the mask on snug? Don’t turn your head.”

  But I wasn’t. I was trying to nod that it was on snug.

  “Now I’m going to turn on the gas for you, and you start counting from one hundred to one. Backwards. Understand? Don’t turn your head.”

  I started counting. But then I got mixed up because I was trying to keep my eyes open. So they wouldn’t think I’d fallen asleep. And start cutting.

  “Are you counting? Now stop turning your head! Think about something nice.”

  But suddenly I saw that girl with the long hair. I saw her running toward the goal and scoring a point against my father. And then my eyes just closed. I was about to tell them something but couldn’t. I think it was about how I should count over.

  “Where’s Pashka?” I said, getting into the front seat of Genka’s SUV. “Have you two had another fight or something?”

  “Today we’re going to look for Seryoga without him,” Genka replied. “He’s got problems at home.”

  “Why didn’t you come yesterday?”

  “Yesterday we both had problems.”

  “I waited for you.”

  “That’s OK.” Genka snickered. “You’ve got yourself a new family now. I’ll bet you found ways to fill the time.”

  “Yeah. I took my brother to Happy Starts at school.”

  “What’s wrong with that mama of his? Did she dump the kid on you or something?”

  “Cut it out. She had some American journalists coming to see her. She was busy with them.”

  “American?” He snickered again. “And where’s your father looking? They’ll carry that babe
off. She’s not half bad.”

  “Hey, it’s all for her work.”

  “I know about that work of theirs. They’re always fucking in those offices of theirs. I wouldn’t mind getting to know that babe myself. For the purpose of mutual and disinterested love. Your father’s pretty old. She must be tired of him. What do you think, could she love a veteran of the Chechen War? Or do you have the hots for her yourself? Eh, Konstantin?”

  I didn’t say a word and started taking off my jacket. The car heater was going full blast.

  “Are you mad, Kostya? What do you care? She’s nobody to you. And by the way, you didn’t even want to see your own father. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have stayed with them at all.”

  “I’m not mad,” I said.

  “Toss it over there, on the back seat. Why are you crushing it in your hands?”

  I turned around to put the jacket down, at which point a piece of paper fell out of the pocket.

  “Got it!” He caught it, still steering the SUV with one hand. “What’s this you’ve got here? Did you draw this yourself? Damn if you can’t draw! Not too shabby! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “I just started drawing yesterday.”

  “Cut it out!” He kept one eye on the road and examined the page with the other. “You mean you learned to draw like that all at once?”

  “I drew a little before the army. There was this guy who made me.”

  “Smart man. Tell him thank you. And you say babes don’t interest you. Just look what a hot one you drew! And with long hair, too! You know how much I love long-haired babes! Who is it?”

  “A friend of my father’s.”

  “Listen, your old man is something else! He looks like a real old fart, but he’s got babes swarming around him. Those young ones just glom on to the old guy. I’ve got to get a consultation with him.”

  “She must be about forty now.”

  “Yeah?” He took his eyes off the road to study her face more closely. “Then why does she look so young? Are you having me on? Listen, you’re really strange today.”

  “Watch the road or we’ll hit something.”

  “I am watching. You’re the one who doesn’t want to tell me about the babe.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I was little back then.”

  But now I’m big. So is Genka. We’ve grown up and we’re driving from train station to train station, looking for Seryoga. Who’s nowhere to be found. None of the homeless guys, none of the police—no one knows anything. And Genka can’t stand cops. I do the talking and he looks off to the side. Or says he’s going to buy some cigarettes. Eventually you get back in the car, and there’s always something crunching underfoot. The SUV is full of trash. Parliaments or Davidoffs. Because Genka only buys the expensive kind. The dream of an idiot comes true. An American SUV. Cigarettes littering the floor. Not even Marlboros. In grade school he probably scavenged cigarette butts. “Hey, buddy, how about a smoke?” A conversation next to the Palace of Culture. What I’d like to know is where that Fryazino guy’s been hanging out.

  “Did you shake down kids when you were young?”

  He gives me a look of incomprehension.

  “I’m saying, did you take other kids’ kopeks?”

  “Oh! That’s what you mean!” He smiles, recalling. “Yeah, sure. What did you expect?”

  I didn’t expect anything. It was obvious he hadn’t gone to the conservatory.

  “Did you beat them up?”

  “Who?”

  “The kids you were shaking down.”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I did like to fight, though. You’re standing there, you’re still talking to him, but in your mind you’re already…you know…it’s fun. And you get this funny feeling in your stomach. Like it’s cold.”

  The policeman is wearing a leather jacket. Black, shiny, and very smooth. It fits him like a box and barely bends at the elbows. A medieval sentry in armor. What do they have to kill to skin a hide that thick? The crown on his cap is like a monument to Gagarin’s space flight. A little laughing face that doesn’t care it’s little. The main thing is there’s a cockade above it. And two narrow stripes. But wider than the possibility of us telling the bastard to go to hell. A lot wider. And a little pink bump under his left eye. Maybe a mole, maybe something else.

  That’s exactly where Genka socked him—on that bump.

  I always wondered what kind of people went to work there. His parents probably came to Moscow under the quota for the Workers Red Banner Plant or some such, repairing radio receivers. About twenty years ago. Then they started writing to their relatives, We’re Muscovites now! When you write, it actually feels good. That’s how you begin the letter. But you don’t invite them to come see your little boy. Because it’s a communal apartment. And you’d have to put them up. And for more than one day. You can’t say, Come visit and see the Metro we have here! We’ll ride on the escalator and in the evening we’ll put you on a train back. What would they say at home? What kind of Muscovites are you? Hell, it’s a communal apartment all the way to Khimki practically. The quota! Let them try to make it here. But your mother writes telling you to come see the grandkids. Your brother has had three for a long time. In the fall we slaughtered a hog. You could at least take a little lard back. Vitka’s still drinking, though. Is it hard to find pork there in Moscow? The return address on the envelope is the village of Zvizzhi. And at the letter’s close, as always, “Byby.” All one word, and without any e’s. How can you answer her? You’d have to bring presents and you don’t make that much money. As a result, a full twenty years pass. The plant’s finally given you an apartment. Two rooms. But your mother’s dead by now. And Uncle Vitya’s destroyed himself with drink. So you have to think of your son. There’s your brother, too, but you don’t get along so well with him. He came to visit about eight years ago. He had a few drinks and picked a fight. He said, Your son’s just the same. The same as what? Great guy. When the time came he went to work for the police. Such is life.

  And here Genka and I walk up to him and Genka punches him in the face.

  “You’re fools,” Marina said. “Fighting with the police.”

  “Don’t use that stuff,” said Genka. “It’ll sting.”

  “You fought in Chechnya, and now you’re afraid of antiseptic. Wait, don’t turn your head. I’m just about to put some on.”

  “Don’t use antiseptic. I’m telling you, I don’t like it.”

  “Who does? You should see my children howling over it. What, did the police make you fight?”

  But we didn’t fight them. It’s just that this little cop said that with my face I should be sitting at home, not driving around the stations. So I don’t scare the passengers. And he took away Seryoga’s photo ID. Especially since Genka didn’t have his passport with him. As far as my face goes, that policeman was just joking really.

  Only Genka didn’t get his humor at all.

  On the other hand, we did find the captain.

  “Which captain is that?” Marina said when she had cleared all the medications off the table.

  “Ours. The one we were riding with in the APC. After the grenade hit the armor, he ran to the checkpoint. To get our guys. His legs were OK. If it hadn’t been for him, the snipers would have picked us off by the APC. We all would have been left there.”

  Marina froze in the middle of the kitchen, holding the teakettle, and looked at Genka. Then at me. Then back at Genka.

  “What?” he said. “I’m not going to let you put on any more antiseptic.”

  “How could that be?” she said. “You’re boys.”

  “Well it wasn’t girls shooting at us from the roofs there, either. Although sometimes there are girls, too. Once we were doing a sweep of a block and in the attic of this school—”

  I gave Genka a swift kick under the table. He stopped talking and stared at me.

  “And what?” Marina said, pouring the tea. “What happened at that school?”


  “Nothing,” he said. “Could you put some more of that antiseptic on me? I think we missed one bruise. And while you’re at it I’ll tell you about the captain.”

  When my father walked in, she was holding Genka’s head to her breast with one arm and fanning him with the other and at the same time blowing on his forehead.

  “Hello,” my father said. “What is this very interesting situation you have going on here?”

  “Hi,” I said. “Marina’s fixing us up.”

  “Fixing you up?” His expression grew even more distant. “Where are the children?”

  Marina released Genka’s head.

  “I’ll bring them home now.”

  “H’lo,” said Genka, rubbing his forehead.

  “What’s happened here?”

  He dropped his briefcase on the floor.

  “Don’t you want to take your coat off first?” Marina said.

  Her voice changed, too, all of a sudden.

  “Konstantin, I’m waiting for an explanation. Konstantin, do you hear me? Kostya!” my father said.

  I heard him. Just as well as I had that time in the car. Jealous ninny, he’d told her. Jealous ninny. Who needs you and your jealousy? You sit there like an old sock while everyone else is having a good time. But my mother looked at him in silence. Although she’d heard him just fine, too. Only her chin started to tremble.

  “Do you hear me, Kostya?”

  “I hear you. You don’t have to shout.”