St. Petersburg Noir

by Natalia Smirnova

  Thus passed nearly four hours. The driver was tired—chatterers don’t know how to listen—and had smoked all the cigarettes the man had given him. And then the writer saw his wife.

  Basically, the earlier arrangement was repeated, only in reverse. First, in lively conversation and even with little explosions of carefree laughter, the three persons of the female persuasion passed by; the male person, by now tieless, coat flapping open, was bringing up the rear of the procession. His left arm dragged a solidly filled package bearing the logo of a cheap supermarket. Tensing, the writer managed to make out his perfectly ordinary face in the light of the streetlamp. The heavy cheeks of a thirty-year-old not inclined to adventures, moderately charming, inoffensive. The writer managed to glimpse the gentleman checking out his female companions’ figures. He’s choosing, the writer thought angrily. Three of them, one of him, and the whole night ahead … But if it’s her and him, that’s a disaster. He’s boring. He has boring hair, boring ears, boring boots. What’s he got in that package? Kefir?

  The windows lit up, and again vague shadowy patches began to move behind the curtains. The writer got out. After the stuffy car the air seemed prickly and sweet. He took out his phone and called.

  “Everything’s fine,” his wife said matter-of-factly. “I just got back, I’m tired, and I’m going to bed. What are you doing?”

  They lobbed a number of everyday questions and answers at each other and said goodbye. The writer paced back and forth. A car passing through a puddle gave him a good, stiff splashing.

  The light in the room went out, and the curtains were lit up blue from the inside. She’d turned on the television, the writer realized. Or had she? A television masks noise well. For instance, in prison, if you had to break some idiot’s bones, first you turned up the volume on the television and only then called the idiot in for a chat.

  Who is the idiot now? the writer asked himself. Me, naturally. On the other side of that wall, in their room, they’re watching television. They have a blanket, pillows, and tea. Maybe even wine. Actually, his wife barely drank. Whereas I have a heavy sky, icy damp creeping under my collar, and next to me a greedy fool with yellow nails on his short fingers.

  The light went out, eleven o’clock—what should he do? Where should he go? Tomorrow afternoon she’d return home. He hadn’t seen, hadn’t understood anything.

  He went back to the car and immediately caught a familiar whiff that called up a number of the most varied associations. The driver was looking in his direction.

  “I could go for a joint myself,” the writer declared. “Got anything?”

  “Not on me.”

  They quickly came to an agreement and drove off. In the process of making the deal they’d had to find out something about each other. The driver’s name was Peter.

  “Bear in mind, I’m not the pusher,” Peter warned. “But I can introduce you. It’s nearby. Liteyny Prospect.”

  The apartment—huge, in an old building—turned out to be something between a squat and a lair. The young guy who led the guests in looked like Jesus gone to drink. A lump of gray ash hung in his beard. While the writer was considering whether to take off his boots, a petite young woman in an alcoholic’s tank top and outsize camo pants emerged from the depths of a dark hallway on her way to the kitchen, holding onto the wall, which was covered with pieces of different-colored paper instead of wallpaper; her left arm was adorned with a badly wrapped gray bandage. The writer decided to keep his boots on.

  Entering this place, the driver was subtly transformed and became both looser and cruder. He curtly reproached Jesus for being hammered again and looked at the girl with undisguised hatred. The writer picked up on this immediately and tensed. He himself had not experienced hatred for many years and hoped never to experience it again.

  “For you,” Peter told Jesus, and he nodded at the writer, who straightened the strap on his backpack, making it clear he was a guest, a stranger, he’d come on business and would leave right away, as soon as he got what he needed.

  “Follow me,” Jesus responded in English, and he smiled at the writer and stepped into the hallway’s dimness. He moved slowly and smoothly. He threw back a blanket covered in large fuchsia flowers that served as a door and led the writer and driver into a room hung solid with watercolors of flowers, eyes, and clouds in various combinations and even symbioses: some flowers had pupils and lashes, while the clouds looked like blossoms with partly opened petals. The illustrator didn’t have much talent but was obviously a very passionate creature, and the writer chuckled to himself; he himself wrote books that had passion but not much talent.

  “I’m not the pusher,” Peter repeated, flashing his tooth. “Talk to him.” And he pointed to Jesus.

  Jesus smiled again, calmly and shyly.

  The writer didn’t like dealers; he silently pulled out a large bill and set it on the edge of the table, which was covered with dirty glasses and cups. Jesus nodded and left the room.

  “This is my pad,” Peter announced carelessly, moving the clothes off the couch and taking a seat. “Well, nearly mine. Two rooms out of five. My granny dies, I’ll have three rooms. Some businessman already bought the other two. Granny dies, I’ll sell him the third. My sister and I’ll be left with a room apiece. We’ll split the money”—he snapped his fingers—“and I’ll buy a boat. In the summer I’ll take tourists around, and in the winter I’ll go where it’s warm. Rostov, Sochi …” He fell silent, then added, “But Granny isn’t dying.”

  “That’s all right,” the writer said. “She will.”

  Jesus came back and set a baggie on the table with a delicate motion. “Hydroponic,” he explained quietly. “Organic, made in the European Union.”

  The writer opened the baggie, sniffed, and handed it back to Jesus.

  “Fire one up. Let’s see about this European Union.”

  Jesus shrugged; the motion was brief and helplessly bohemian. Great dealer I’ve got me, the writer thought contemptuously, but then he glanced at the psychedelic watercolors and decided not to judge the stranger. There are a hundred reasons why a talented young man suddenly drops from the level of artist to drug dealer. Don’t judge, the writer repeated to himself, accepting the joint from Jesus’s dirty fingers. Don’t even try.

  He pulled the smoke into his lungs, making sure not to produce a coughing fit. He handed it to Peter, who took it readily.

  Suddenly, on the other side of the wall, they heard the crash of something breaking, something small and solid, like a sugar bowl or cut glass; Peter whispered a curse, entrusted the joint to Jesus, and went out.

  “Yours?” the writer asked, nodding at the watercolors.

  “Hers,” Jesus replied. “I work in oils.”

  There were muffled cries. Jesus neatly placed the roach on the edge of the table and headed for the sound of the scuffle. The writer started to wonder whether he ought to remain alone in the room or put his buy in his pocket and retreat, dispensing with formalities; or, on the contrary, was the right thing to wait for Jesus’s return and close the deal and only then clear out? At that moment he understood that his doubts—excessively philosophical—were the result of the marijuana’s effect and that the drug itself, naturally, had to be left right here. And he had to disappear immediately.

  He finished off the joint in two drags, threw his backpack over his shoulders, and made tracks.

  Through the kitchen door he saw Peter sitting on the floor; he was holding his side with one hand and examining his other—bloody—hand. Jesus was standing over him scratching his greasy head. The girl, her legs tucked under her on the stool and her face covered with her open palms, was moaning softly and peeking out through her fingers wild-eyed. Right there on the floor, in a pile of white shards, lay a paring knife.

  The writer walked up to it and bent over.

  “Where are you going?” Peter asked, turning swiftly pale.

  He’s about to pass out, the writer thought. I’m sure they don’t h
ave smelling salts. If I slap him they won’t understand. Especially the girl. She’ll immediately think I’m starting a fight …

  He sat down, took Peter by the shoulders, and cautiously lay him on the floor. He pulled the driver’s shirt out of his pants and turned it up—after that came a dirty undershirt and below that a shallow cut.

  The wounded man was emitting muffled groans and cursing incoherently. The writer looked at Jesus and said, “A cut. Nothing serious. You can stitch it up right here. Or take him to an emergency room. But bear in mind—it’s a knife wound and the doctors might call the cops …”

  “I hope he croaks!” the girl hollered, squeezing her knees to her chest.

  “Your decision,” the writer said, shifting his gaze from Jesus to Peter.

  “Well …” Jesus said. “I don’t know … Are you a doctor?”

  “Nearly,” the writer answered, taking off his pack. “Bring vodka, a clean cloth, and a needle and thread. Quickly.”

  “I hope he croaks, the bastard!” the girl shouted.

  Jesus went into the hallway.

  In principle, it doesn’t have to be sewn, the writer thought. It could be cauterized. But he would scream.

  “Sit,” he ordered Peter. “And undress. It’s nothing, a scratch.”

  “Did it nick my liver?” the wounded man rasped.

  “Your liver’s on the other side,” the writer said. “Come on, off with it.”

  Peter slowly raised his hands and with clumsy fingers started unbuttoning.

  Jesus came back and held out a sewing needle and towel. “There isn’t any thread.”

  “Pull some out of something.”

  The author of psychedelic watercolors looked at him uncomprehendingly. The writer told him to undress the victim. He went out into the hallway, quickly studied the garments hanging on the coat rack, found an old coat with a shabby fur collar—obviously belonging to the old woman who didn’t want to die—and neatly pulled threads from the lining. The thread was rotten, but folded twice it would do just fine.

  There was no vodka to be found either, but there was brandy. The writer told Jesus to calm the girl and neatly closed the wound with two stitches. Peter—he had a gray body with thick rolls of fat at his waist—moaned faintly and writhed.

  The writer poured half the bottle into Peter’s mouth and half on his bare flesh. He wanted a sip himself, but judging from the smell, the brandy was some wretched fake.

  The girl spoiled the operation’s conclusion. Breaking out of Jesus’s weak arms, she leapt up—the shards crunching—and tried to kick the wounded man. He bared his teeth and floridly promised his attacker a speedy and agonizing death.

  The writer stood up.

  Peter means stone, he remembered.

  He found the bathroom at the end of the hall. He liked it—large, good acoustics, a window with a broad sill. The writer thought that it would be nice to immerse himself in water here on a warm summer’s day, say, up to his chest, and turn his wet face and shoulders to the fresh street breeze.

  He washed the blood off his hands and carefully examined his fingers and nails. He could only hope the wounded man didn’t have hepatitis or something similar. He looked at himself in the mirror. Suddenly he felt a chill. The adrenaline’s washed out, he thought. Or the drug’s kicking in. In Moscow they sell southern grass, from Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, but here it’s the north, Europe; damn if I know where they get it. Maybe it really is from Holland. Or they grow it themselves …

  He buttoned his jacket as he walked, now in the hallway; he checked his pockets. He turned by the door. Peter was leaning against the wall, and Jesus was stroking the sobbing girl’s head. A thin blue flame was burning peacefully under the iron kettle.

  “Go to the pharmacy,” the writer said as he turned the door handle. “Buy a bandage. And antibiotics. Bandage him up.”

  “Fuck yourself!” the girl shouted, pushing Jesus away and rolling her eyes, white with rage.

  The writer nodded in agreement. The advice was perfectly sensible.

  On the stairs he checked his pockets and the contents of his backpack one more time; his money and documents were where they were supposed to be.

  Barely a drop, he thought, letting go of the massive door and plunging into the rain.

  The wind was strolling down Liteyny Prospect. The streetcar rails glinted like dagger blades. The writer remembered the paring knife among the china shards. It was a foolish shiv, no good for killing or even seriously injuring someone. He saw the lit windows of the twenty-four-hour store and headed for that.

  He didn’t like to warm up with alcohol. He considered the method lowbrow. But sometimes, in lowbrow circumstances, lowbrow acts were exactly what he needed. The writer bought a flask of whiskey, raked the change, a few coins (he had never respected copper money), into his palm, turned into the very first entryway, and downed half.

  If you were a real, old-school writer, he told himself, you’d find an open bar now, perch at a table, and get down to work. Right now, at three in the morning, when your hands still smell of someone else’s blood, not an enemy’s, but the blood of some random clown, some philistine who doesn’t matter. When your head’s filled with marijuana smoke and your mouth with the taste of fake Polish whiskey. When icy drops are rolling down your neck and back. And you wouldn’t write about the cold and graveyard damp. Or about fools, jealousy, greed, and poverty. You’d fill your story with sunshine and the scent of tropical flowers. Salty ocean breezes would fly at your heroes’ tanned faces. They would love each other and die young.

  He set out, feeling a surge of strength. He knew for sure that if he found an open bar he would do what others had done before him. Sit down and write. Moreover, if he didn’t find an appropriate establishment he’d grab a ride to the train station—or even walk—buy a ticket for the first morning train, and then find somewhere to sit in the waiting room and write anyway.

  He couldn’t come here and not write anything.

  * * *

  This city consisted of black water and black stone. The water below, in the canals and rivers, and above, in the air.

  Walking, he caught himself feeling as though he were breathing water.

  The local inhabitants could probably use gills; especially now, in late fall. Or special breathing organs made of stone. Granite alveoli and tracheae.

  The writer liked to fantasize after he got out of scrapes. He found contemplating abstract topics gave him a sensation of the fullness of life and was very calming.

  His best friend once said, “Don’t look for peace, let peace find you.”

  He walked to the station without finding a single open establishment.

  Entering the warm, booming hall, he immediately felt a weakness. He no longer had any desire to work.

  He bought a ticket. The cashier yawned mightily and glanced at his sleeve. The writer stepped aside and looked—there was someone else’s blood on his cuff.

  Then he sat down on the plastic bench and composed a brief story about someone who loved people but not himself.

  Twelve hours later he was home. That same evening his wife arrived, and the writer caught himself thinking that he was sincerely glad to see her.

  The shirt he’d had to throw away; the blood wouldn’t wash out.

  SWIFT CURRENT

  BY ANNA SOLOVEY

  Kolomna

  Translated by Marian Schwartz

  I’m not getting ready to die … This ridiculous plastic thing gets tossed too—who gives that to a little girl? … I’m not getting ready to die, that would be a waste of time. I’m moving. Very soon. Where, I don’t know yet, but there’s no staying here. Why would I do that? And don’t look at me like that from the wall. If only you could see … Hey, what is it with these photographs? Whoever invented photography ought to be shot … There’s one more sheet on the sofa, the last one, the rest are neatly folded and stacked. I’m moving and I don’t need anything now—when you don’t have it, you do without. Th
ere’s a kettle and a glass, so drink!

  “Before, love sucked up all the air and I never did move anywhere. All those nights we fought and it always won, fell on me with its heavy, slippery body, its damp fog crushing me, squeezing my heart so hard it could scarcely beat, my breathing shallow, and until I smeared into a white cloud under its carcass, it wouldn’t stop making love … and it always said, I love you because you want to die. Anyone who says it’s chilly and youthful and its eyes are the color of a wave has never fought with it in bed. This city—Peter’s creation—always was the victor, smothering me with its embraces, so by morning I’d be brimming with the fatal poison of his seed.

  “In the mornings, as I was walking across the Kryukov Canal to Theater Square, it would gradually reveal itself, like a vision, the cupolas of the St. Nicholas Cathedral piercing the gray fog. It would pretend we were strangers and just tickle me with its quivering air, flirting with everyone at once, the cheap stud! As if I weren’t the one who’d carried all its countless embryo-germs in my womb, as if I hadn’t coughed through its winters trying to spit them out. I crossed that little bridge on countless occasions, and each time admiration stopped me dead in my tracks, and I forgot all the darkness and reveled in the blue.

  “But then I slipped away … I ran and ran … and I stuck out my tongue, teasing them! … I don’t go there anymore. But every day I try to describe … Here’s this stack of papers, I packed everything away in my chest and wrote for days and days, sometimes even at night. There’s heat coming from the tips of my fingers, and that heat gets transferred into the letters, my soul drains into the ink. I don’t like computers, I’m made of other blood, loftier blood, and my handwriting is like runes … open the chest and hocus-pocus—an empty chest, yes … because I had to condemn the words to fire for them to fly. It was because of the fire that they locked me up, my neighbors. Fire can burn everyone. That’s clear, that the fire burning inside can burn everyone. They decided I was crazy and rejoiced. Rejoiced that my room would free up sooner. They don’t have far to take me. Pryazhka’s a stone’s throw from here. A cheerful trick. They’re good neighbors, not mean. And you can see they’re poor. Who else lives communally now? They don’t have a car either. It’s enough to make you cry. Their boy sits on the steps with his friends all the time smoking weed. Could you really invite a girl up to an apartment like that? Poor people, their hearts seethe and have nowhere to bubble over. They themselves left, and shut me out, in case I burned the building down, set fire to it. They think they’ll be living in my room. Fools, fools, I have Mashenka … she’s not here now, but if anything happened to me she’d hop right to it and come running, my darling.”