And she could not muster up any pity for the Pakistani—he was too frightened to take any money, not a cent, well, too bad, he wasn’t he only one who had a bad day…She fell asleep at Ron and Martha’s with that same idiotic smile still attached to her face like cookie crumbs: well-well, it occurred to her as she fell asleep, my darling’s on his way, he sure is—the catastrophes have begun raining down! So it’s small wonder that her first reaction at the sight of her beloved man at Kennedy—he was standing against a wall, chattering away with fellow travelers on the Kyiv flight in the most innocent way, jeans jacket, the familiar gray spiky hair, she saw him before he saw her, how many times had she played out this scene in her mind!—was an involuntary prickle of hostility—whereas he, look at him, scampered toward her as fast as he could, planted a kiss on her cheek as though nothing much had happened, as though this half year of devastating waiting had never occurred, this futile burning of oil in the vessel of a vestal virgin, and there was no need for any explanations, behind him Mark bobbed up and down like an obedient penguin, his round belly protruding forward, well, true, this wasn’t the time for long explanations, I’d like you to meet…—how dumb and inappropriate all this turns out to be, rumpled, chewed up, I’m simply tired, I have to rest, catch up on sleep, and he, too, has had a long flight, I’ll figure it out later, later—and “later,” once we got home, alone and face to face with each other, suitcases half-unpacked, it appeared—peeking out as if from afar, not quite yet accessing the still deadened, seared, gnawing instincts—that thought which she blurted out to him without thinking, brought it forward and laid it at his feet, like a dog retrieves a stick—you know, it seems to me that you’re open to evil. He jumped back like someone stabbed him with a knife; that malevolent flame in his eyes was strange, she had seen it before—on the edge of a bared grin with sharply protruding incisors from under the upper lip, like it was something else that peered out for a moment through his narrow eyelids, red-rimmed and swollen from lack of sleep—it was late at night, they had stepped out for their first walk at the new place, to have a look at the neighborhood that mysteriously glimmered with colored lights in the yards and gardens; from the half-open doors of the single-story buildings bursts of music and laughter escaped from time to time, white T-shirts passed by in the gentle brown darkness, disappearing into its depths, the town was awake, in the throes of anticipation of a holiday: the annual arts festival would take place soon, look at that house straight out of Andersen’s fairy tale, look at that interesting spire!—a new beginning, we will have a new beginning, I still have to go light a candle in church—to thank God for helping me come here to be with you, yes, yes, she nodded, all the horrors are behind us, all those fires, crushed cars and bodies, crazy flights, quite a story! there’s only one thing to mention to keep in mind for later—you know? Just don’t misunderstand me, don’t be offended: it seems to me that you’re open to evil. She was aiming, in the habit of a professional lecturing bore, to examine this issue further: it’s not that the evil is actually lodged within you, but that you, in some fashion, manage to attract it—but there was no explaining: he flashed a wild, otherworldly glare, just as they came out to an intersection—looked both ways and decidedly shook both his head and forefinger: that way!
And from that moment they were hopelessly lost.
Before that they had spent an hour wandering around their own, not-yet-accustomed-to abode (he was saying “our little house” as she was filled with the warmth of an inner smile)—time after time they would return to it and then set off in a different direction—when suddenly the whole neighborhood became unrecognizable, and they could not figure out which direction was home. Knocked off their bearings, they passed intersection after intersection, stoplight after stoplight, all their orientation points—the pseudo-Gothic spire, the hedge, the square with the trash bins, which they had walked by each time—vanished like into another dimension and after a few times she began asking directions (at least she remembered the address) from every passerby who crossed her path, of which there were fewer and fewer because it was already past midnight, tipsy students partying on the lawn of one of the yards simply shrugged their shoulders unable to say anything comprehensible but at the same time still managing to get into a fight discussing whether it should be left or right, and for quite some time after they had stupidly-smiling-sorry-apologized and taken off, they could still hear behind them the strident clamor of a female voice sliding over consonant clusters not very soberly—giving some Jerry hell for, as usual, not having a “damn clue” and naming the wrong street—they had obviously wandered off too far, it was actually quite funny—amused, she was translating the girl’s scolding for him, poor Jerry—he, on the other hand, clammed up, demonstrating no such childish enthusiasm, but she still kept making fun of it, see, you should have listened to me, I’ve got a perfect sense of direction, it has never led me astray—yup, that much is true, sweetness, it’s just that this time it was another one of your instincts that led you astray, fa-a-ar more important than mere direction. Did it ever.
This went on for about an hour—and then suddenly he stood stock-still and pointed: the hedge! They had been circling not more than several dozen yards away the whole time. Again the neighborhood “switched on,” all the familiar landmarks bobbed up. How could they have been so blind, she wondered. That’s right, “good question,” as they are prone to saying around here. How could you have been so blind, you poor fool? So blinded at a time when everything around you was screaming, howling at you in direct speech? What’s the panic, you would have tossed your head, no-oh, you would not have let it stop you, even if a fiery hand had appeared out of thin air and sketched a written warning on the wall right under your nose, you were in love, oh yes, you were sure that you could do it (“I can do anything!”), do what not a single person can do on their own for another—it can’t be done, luv. It can’t be done. Unless—and here, as they say in newspaper ads, different options are available—unless you exchange your own life for another’s: exchange destinies. No, thank you very much, I had somewhat different plans for my life.
Too bad that they have now somehow altogether lost their meaning…
Their first night together, that mad—festival!—night with the crazy race toward the flashing avalanche of lanterns reflected in the street puddles, flying from one late-night pub to another, and finally to the completely unambiguous little bordello on the outskirts of town, who would have thought that they had something like this out in the provinces (unremarkable from the outside, except for all the expensive foreign cars—a house with two rooms “across the hall” from each other, in one room leather soles shuffled across the wooden floor, a densely compacted drunken human mass shoved to and fro in dance, and in the other, where they were served coffee and liqueur, there stood two cots covered with quite touching azure plaid blankets, over which hung some kind of obscene lithographs—“Kuprin! Straight out of Alexander Kuprin!”—she had burst out laughing; despite her physical exhaustion—it was her second night without sleep!—she was nonetheless very keenly aroused, like she had drunk champagne, by the pathetically exhibitionist theatricality of this atmosphere of cheap sin, by the convulsive music behind the thin wall, by the almost embarrassed look in the eye of the woman serving them drinks—she would especially remember seeing in the dance room a very young, scarcely eighteen-year-old prostitute with flowing chestnut-colored hair, attractive in that puppy-wet, bright, untarnished folk-song beauty that you can still find among girls in Volyhnia and Podillia—and the poor thing, dead drunk: “Listen”—she had latched on to them, sensing something out of the ordinary—“what’s your name? My name is Maija. You’re such a beaudiful cupple. Naawh, I’m seerious”—and when given a light for her cigarette she replied like a gracious girl, “Thank you kindly”—that local dialect “thank you kindly,” just like they taught her at home!—for some reason pierced one to tears with an aching pitying tenderness: “She’s still a child
and has no idea what’s happening to her”—she shared her feelings with him in the car on the way back—he shrugged his shoulders—“Who the hell cares? She’s just a wipe, that’s all,” and yet that “wipe” was the first to recognize the growing, awakening love between them, every love needs witnesses at its beginning, it needs—parental, tender approval from the outside world of this newly emerged union of two, and the world is never miserly in dispensing its blessing with warm, misty eyes, with the smiles with which old men turned to look at us in the train station café into which we brought from the street, in a flying, dancing rhythm, the fresh breeze of an invisible carnival, the atmosphere of sly glances at each other, little games, conspiratorial chortles over something frightfully funny but incomprehensible to anyone else—shining sequins, generously scattered lucky confetti, which, as it falls, slowly twirls in the air long after the door shuts behind the radiant couple, “Which cigarette lighter do you want?”—“The red one”—he turns to the bartender, spreading his arms helplessly like a comedian: “She said—red”—and the bartender begins to glow like a juicy peach, a smile washing over his face, he’s a participant, and, filling the tall glasses with sticky, amber liquid, he lets it spill over the top—ah the world loves lovers, because only they, in the dull monotony of daily life, give it a sign that it’s really different, better, than it’s used to thinking of itself, that it’s enough to stretch out your hand, twist the dial, and everything around begins to sparkle, glitter with the colorful lights of a child’s kaleidoscope, begins to laugh from an overabundance of strength, and breaks into a dance!—the old street photographer on the park bench, beside him a matron like a Scythian statue in a cloth padded jacket: “Photograph those young ones over there!”—“Oh stop,” he drones slowly, almost dreamily, “they’ve got other things on their mind, they’re in Love”—the last word is spoken with a capital letter, and you, exchanging glances, turn and rush over to be photographed, eager to either offer yourself as a gift to these oldsters or, on the contrary, thank them for the unexpected blessing that descended like a wet kiss of a fallen leaf on your forehead—then he takes away those photos and you will never see them again, it’s not impossible that he’s already torn them to bits, thrown them into the ashtray and set fire to them—afterward carefully pushing the ashes into a little pile with his crooked baby finger—okay, darling, I’ve nothing against it, you can engage in a little suffering, too: it was time for you, too, at the tender age of forty-plus years, to discover that not all of us are “wipes” or, in the best-case scenario, “mousy loves,” I’m sorry, but I only know how to play for keeps, and if I’m not going to be your love, not a mousy one but a real one, then I sure as hell won’t be, in any way, your “wipe”: I prefer to be sandpaper, sir)—that first night, it was probably then, in those moments of heightened emotion, that somewhere deep inside her was born a slightly ironic, sneering coldness: it’s a fuck party and nothing more, with all the attendant attributes, like some off-stage screenwriter had taken care to maintain the purity of the genre (and moreover, as quickly became apparent, a rather unsuccessful fuck party at that!)—however, they don’t call us gifted kids with enormous creative potential for nothing, we can convert an unsuccessful fuck into a tragic love in a flash, driving ourselves into a totally suicidal state in the process—it was only after nine (that’s right, nine!) months, in another land on another continent, on the night of the final fight in a room of some hillside motel—first tiptoeing around, smoking on the wooden veranda, they wrestled in hushed voices so as not to wake anyone up, then they went out walking—speaking at full volume as though the raising of voices meant automatically setting feet in motion—across the parking lot, between automobiles whose walrus sides flashed reflections of the moon, a stop—a confrontation, eye to eye—a spark!—a clash of sabers!—and suddenly he’s turned around and running across the whole lot back to the room to pack his things, a small, almost waxlike figure in shorts quickly moving its naked legs—within him twirled, like a screw—it seemed as though you could hear it grinding—nothing but rallied pride, a burning fear of what, God forbid, “people might say” (the good old provinces talking, Khvylovy might have sighed!) if they were to learn that it was she who left him, yanked him out of his home turf, carried him over the ocean and dumped him, what a tough broad! they’d say, and that’s why, heaving a travel bag quickly stuffed with his crap over his shoulder (“Don’t forget your sponge, dear,” she was handing it to him from behind, now that she too had made it back to the room) he barked with that especially brutal, quarrelsome voice that he’d been in a habit of addressing her with lately: “I’m flying home tomorrow! Thanks much for America!” (she ha-ha-ha’d in her soul, despite not really being in a laughing mood, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be flying anywhere, that by tomorrow or no later than the day after—a creative personality, after all!—he’d find himself some new version of his being here, in no way connected to her, which is exactly what happened)—and he tore off into the night—two and a half miles! with his stuff!—to that damned studio (I wonder if it’s at least open at night or whether he’ll just sit somewhere under a bush, crazy man, until morning?)—it was only then, after she closed the door after him, with mixed feelings about a show that wasn’t quite over, a burning rod of “what the hell do I do now?” plunged into her brain and that feverish-nauseous trembling scattered over her entire body that hadn’t subsided for over a week already—as though she really was a mechanical doll in which all the wheels and screws had slipped out of their grooves so that she could only swallow liquids and couldn’t sleep at all for several nights at a time—it was only then that she turned to the mirror and saw it: coming up, coming up to the surface, artistically twisting her lips with their not yet totally smudged-off lipstick!—that same coldly ironic (it’s a fuck party and nothing more) detached smile: what a story!—this smile said—God damn it, what a story…
And on that same night, as soon as she found herself alone (she felt better!), she finally, for the first time since his arrival, had a real dream: at first, still on the cusp of being awake and falling asleep, she had the one of him walking away from her on a narrow plank heading downward, but then there suddenly came a crowded, erotic nightmare: invisible hands, many hands caressing her from all sides—persistently, hotly, suffocatingly, and she had to gather all her strength to break free—only to turn up in a huge, empty, echoing hall with a high, vaulted ceilings like backstage at the opera, something akin to constructivist stage props were cluttering up the hall—carelessly draped pedestals, plinths of papier-mâché, some kind of stepladders, in a nave that looked like a dark cave stood a high podium, and flying in from all sides, with the whistle and rustle of wings and capes, settling on all those raised surfaces were the Princes and Princesses of Darkness—black vestments flitted by, out of the corner of her eye she spotted some chicken claws coming out of huge paws overgrown with shaggy reddish wool that had dug into a protruding section of a wall, but her main attention was glued to an incredibly tall—you couldn’t even make out its face!—figure dressed in a black cassock standing at the podium: is that not the Grand Prince himself, she wondered, who decided to reveal himself? None of this was in the slightest bit frightening—despite all of the striking external trappings, the demonic assembly constituted no clear threat, rather it gave the impression of a ritual somewhat reminiscent of a Brezhnev-era party meeting and in fact treated her with a kind of friendly acceptance, taking her into its circle, accepting her as one of its own—and, walking up and down that filled hall from one end to the other she began, crossing herself confidently, to recite “Our Father,” and they obediently transformed themselves into whorls of neon-blue vapor and flew off with a pyrotechnic hiss—only a gigantic cat, turning into a neon-blue shadow of a cat, hopped around from pedestal to pedestal for some time still before he too went up in smoke, and then there was still that panting gnome—with black wings, with a ski cap and simpleton’s round face (clown nose!) who swooped in
late and, not catching on to what’s happening, lashed out at her, “What, hasn’t it started yet?”—for him especially she repeated “Our Father” and he, after putting up some minimal resistance for appearances’ sake, and likewise not presenting himself as anything too scary as he lunged for her a few times, had to, in the end, what else was there to do, also turn into a neon-blue ball and, releasing a carefree whistle, fly away. In that dream she first felt a waft of relief—as though she had returned back to herself and, all alone in the now emptied hall, she thought, no—she realized: so it’s not really serious—this suicide stuff. At least, it wasn’t yet.
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