14.50 alien
And maybe he would have shot her anyway.
14.52 Ksenia
Yes. And then, I told you the town was under siege, and maybe she was taking that food to her children – in that case she wasn’t just picking up what had fallen, she was trying to fight to the very last moment. And then I realized that this story doesn’t have any moral, it’s just a situation with a choice – and that choice is a parable about our life. There are three characters here: the victim, the killer and the observer. And when we hear this story, every one of us subconsciously associates himself or herself with one of them. So, I started talking straight away about what happened to the victim. I guess if I were a genuine journalist, I’d have asked if my colleague carried on talking to the sniper afterward, what she asked him about later, what his answers were and where the interview was published. At the very least, I would have tried to understand what makes journalists go off to war.
14.52 alien
I think they don’t understand what war is.
14.53 Ksenia
You mean, they’re trying to find out?
14.54 alien
No. They don’t understand that what they find in war can be found without going outside the Moscow ring road.
14.54 Ksenia
Risk? Adrenalin?
14.54 alien
No. The most important thing about war is the insanity. Any war is a moment when lots of people are suddenly informed: listen, you’ve always been told you mustn’t do this, and this and this. Well, now you can.
And people start killing, raping and torturing.
14.55 Ksenia
You mean to say that war is simply the moment when all of us are allowed to understand serial killers?
14.55 alien
Yes. It’s that kind of insanity on a mass scale. And so you’ve only been in a war if you’ve been inside that insanity. When you’ve realized for yourself that it’s possible to torture and kill people. But I’m not sure there’s any need to go to Yugoslavia or Chechnya to understand that.
14.55 Ksenia
But what if you’re outside it? If you take the position of the observer?
14.56 alien
In that case, I think there’s no point. It’s no different from watching the news on TV.
Try to work – at least sometimes. Try to turn off ICQ for an hour at least. Try not to rush back to the computer during lunch. Try to avoid the word addiction when you think about this.
Try to understand what you’re really talking about. Admit to yourself that you’re not really talking about playing, or about handing over control, or about sadomasochism, or about submission and domination, or about sex games. Try to find the words. Cruelty? Fear? Violence? Horror? Insanity?
14.52 alien
In actual fact there’s an important difference between us and the characters in this story.
14.53 Ksenia
What’s that?
14.54 alien
We can choose who we would like to be and attempt to analyze our choice, but the characters don’t have that opportunity. We have freedom, but they don’t. The journalist, the woman and the sniper can’t change places, even if they all want to. They can’t see any possibility of choice for themselves. The woman can’t help starting to gather up the food, and the sniper himself doesn’t know why he fires. They each have a set position.
14.54 Ksenia
But they ended up in that position somehow!
14.55 alien
Yes. That’s why I agree with you. It really is a frightening story. A story about the fact that while we remain outside a situation we have freedom, but we can’t use it because every choice seems equally terrible to us. And when we’re inside a situation, we still can’t choose, because we’ve lost our freedom.
14.55 Ksenia
But is there anything we can do to avoid being there?
14. 56 alien
Of course. For instance, the woman could have taken a different route. But the key element of this parable is that as a rule we learn that a situation exists when we’re already inside it. Or, even worse, we don’t even realize we’re inside it and simply stop noticing other possibilities. And then we bend down to pick up the food or press the trigger.
14.57 Ksenia
But tell me, dear brother, can you and I find ourselves in the situation “two live people in the same room”? Or, if you don’t want it to be in a room, perhaps in a basement or some other place?
14.58 alien
We can find ourselves in that situation. At least, I don’t see any particular physical obstacles to it. But I think the time’s not right yet.
Try to love a man without any flesh. Try to ask less and less often to meet him. Admit that his refusal is a demonstration of authority. Try to imagine what he looks like: thin or fat, with broad shoulders or a stoop, with brown eyes, like Nikita? Transparent eyes, like Marina? Dark eyes, like Olya? Pampered hands, like Vlad, or rough hands like Sasha? Try not to ask him about this. Try asking. Accept his refusal to talk about it.
Try to tell yourself that external appearances don’t matter. Try to imagine you will meet sometime. Imagine how you will live when the malleable, pliable image with no specific features, hardens into a man over thirty years old. Imagine how you will try to find the alien who has said “hi” to you every day when you turned on the computer under the veil of his flesh. Imagine that your meeting is inevitable.
Get him to give you more orders. Try putting the laptop on a stool at home and typing, standing on your knees. Ask if you should scatter broken glass on the floor. Answer “ok” when he says “not yet.” Try standing on your left leg in the subway on the way to work, and on your right leg on the way home. Try to understand why he orders you to do precisely this.
Feel the pain in your tense muscles. Feel like a puppet in his hands. Regret that you can’t make all your body hurt at the same time. Accept this pain as love. Try to feel this love in every muscle, every square inch of skin, every bruise, every wound. Try to love even more strongly.
11.26 alien
have your lovers ever made you cry from the pain?
11.26 Ksenia
No. I never cry.
11.27 alien
But I cry easily
11.27 Ksenia
You’re my big brother, you can do whatever you like.
Try to hide your trembling from the other people in the room. Try not to go to the restroom too often. Try not to freeze over your cup, gazing into the empty cafeteria with unseeing eyes. Try to see yourself from the outside: blank stare, hair over your eyes, black circles from insomnia, nails bitten right down to the quick. Try not to tremble when Alexei touches your shoulder. Answer him: “Yes, I’m just fine.”
Feel how the hairs on your body standing up on end, notice the world scrolling up around you, pay attention to the way your hearing has become more acute. Imagine that you have no skin at all – your body is so sensitive.
Remember if it was ever like this before. Remember all your lovers. Remember your most intense orgasms. Remember your deepest depressions. Remember the moments of insatiable arousal. Remember the tortures that were inflicted on you. Remember all the instruments you have encountered. Admit that words replacing each other in a white rectangle have proved more effective than anything else. Remember the word subspace. Learn once and for all that it means simply what it says, and not “submission space” as you always used to think. Say thank you to him for telling you that.
Say thank you to him for visiting you on ICQ a month ago. Say thank you for all the orgasms he has given you. Say thank you for the pain. Say thank you for the pleasure. Say thank you for everything he has told you, for everything he has made you tell him. Say thank you to Someone Unknown for the fact that you met.
Do not be surprised that the word “meet” no longer means a meeting in the real world.
Try to lure him out into the real world. Try promising not to touch your clitoris until he touches i
t himself. Offer to have your nipples and vulvar lips pierced, offer to put on a chain, so that he can control you like a puppet. Offer to give him a severed nipple when you meet him. Offer him the choice of which breast he’d like it from. Try to admit you are really prepared to do this.
Try not to think that he might get bored with this game. Keep him here. Find the words. Talk to him. Don’t let him go away. Ask questions. Answer the questions he asks you. Make conversation with him. Be a smart girl.
15.16 alien
Have you even gone to a club for players?
15.16 Ksenia
No, never. I think it’s vulgar. Black leather, masks, rituals
15.17 alien
Right. It’s like an amateur choir meeting or a gathering of new school graduates.
15.17 Ksenia
Perverts!
15.18 alien
In fact the worst thing is that these people try to pretend everything’s all right, hunky-dory, safe, secure and consensual. Some boys like girls, others like boys, some like to wear high heels and some like to flog their fellow-creatures with a whip. It’s all voluntary, no animals have suffered in the course of the filming, nobody’s been hurt or offended.
15.18 Ksenia
But that’s really the way it is, isn’t it? Some like one thing. Others like something different. It should all be safe and by mutual consent.
15.19 alien
No. That is, yes. It’s not important. You know, when I talk to you, not only about sex, but anything at all – about politics, your friend Olya, the Moscow Psycho – I get a transcendent kind of feeling.
15.19 Ksenia
A feeling of the tragedy of what’s happening?
15.20 alien
Yes. The tragedy. And when I tell you “go down on your knees, raise your arms, and don’t dare toss off,” I can tell you that, and you can do it, because this feeling of tragedy unites us.
15.21 Ksenia
Yes.
Try to understand him. Try to imagine his life. Listen carefully. Grasp the meaning of every word. Try to prepare yourself to meet him. Understand what really interests him.
15.21 Ksenia
And pain? Why is pain so important?
15.22 alien
Because pain is the language in which this tragedy speaks. The language in which life speaks. And for me the most important thing is to know that I am participating in the cycle of pain. That we are participating.
15.22 Ksenia
On the other hand, we can’t avoid pain.
15.23 alien
True, but when we do what we do – we do it voluntarily. We accept responsibility for the pain – and ultimately it doesn’t matter which one of us inflicts it. You can inflict pain on yourself. The important thing is that the moment comes when you can no longer say to yourself: “suffering exists in the world, but it has nothing to do with me.” No. It is your responsibility. Suffering exists because you accept the responsibility for it.
Try a pencil with a sharp point. Try the nipple clamps. Try to stand on one leg. Try to stretch your breasts so far it leaves bruises. Try to take the pain to the limit. Make it even stronger. Try to feel that this is your choice. Try the word responsibility to see what it tastes like. The word suffering. The word voluntary and the word pain. Find other words.
15.25 alien
These people say: “look at the great time we’re having,” but I say “every day I burn in hell.” We can never understand each other. You can’t have a great time in hell.
15.25 Ksenia
I think you can.
15.26 alien
It’s my own personal hell, what can you know about it? But there’s certainly no room in it for a crowd of fifty people dressed in leather and wearing masks.
15.26 Ksenia
Imagine his life. Imagine that he’s never spoken to anyone about it before you. Imagine that the doors into his personal hell are firmly closed. Imagine his hell as a cupboard or a closet that he’s afraid to leave. Remember the expression in the closet.
Tell yourself: every one of us lives in hell, but as long we hold out, we’re doing fine. Remember that if you don’t hold out, then immediately the cuts start, the suicide attempts, the fits of feeling sorry for yourself and despising others. Repeat: we’re doing fine, we’re holding out. Imagine that there is a personal hell tightly constrained by the straitjacket of your body, feel it beating inside your ribcage. Listen to it pounding in your temples. Repeat: I must hold out. Tell yourself: I must not allow all this to burst apart the cage of my ribs and break out. Tell yourself: so far I am managing.
Think about him. Imagine his life. Say thank you to him.
Feel happy.
15.35 Ksenia
are you there?
15.35 alien
yes
15.36 Ksenia
I wanted to say something about your hell.
15.36 alien
well?
15.37 Ksenia
I want to come to you, into your hell. Could you open the door for me?
15.37 alien
all right, I’ll open it.
15.38 Ksenia
and then we’ll have one hell for two, won’t we?
Try to love a man without flesh. Try to explain this. Try to find the words. The most important man in my life. Ignore Marina’s smiley. Repeat again. My most important man – like Gleb is for you. Admit this man is so very important, it doesn’t matter if he turns out to be a lesbian woman. And even if she’s not a lesbian – it doesn’t matter.
Remember this very well. Remember the pain. Remember the arousal. Remember the trembling. Remember. Know: someday all this will end. Look at the screen. Read the little black letters in the white rectangle. Masturbate if you like. It doesn’t matter. The most important thing is – remember.
Try to find the words. Don’t tell anyone, just find the words. The words will stay when it all ends. Say them to yourself – and try to remember them. What did you say? The love of my life. Like in a romantic novel, right?
Yes, exactly, like in a romantic novel.
42
RECENTLY IT SEEMS TO OLYA THAT EVERYTHING around her is shedding leaves, as if it’s not winter outside, but fall, and she herself is a tree that is no longer very young, losing leaf after leaf. Two weeks ago, on the evening of that day when Grisha and Kostya shook hands with each other, she stood in her own bath, reflected in the mirror walls, and looked at the bloody clot in her hand. For some reason she thought it had two little tails because she had taken exactly two tablets, although what connection is there between tablets and an embryo’s tails? That is, of course, if that lump really was the embryo.
Olya turned her hand over and the unborn infant fell into the pink water, a reddish-brown blob. At that moment she felt very, very strong. For the first time in recent years she didn’t feel like a traitor. All my life I have behaved correctly, she whispered, I have always been right. I have nothing to reproach myself with.
She knew she wouldn’t call Oleg anymore, she would put his number on the blacklist in her cell phone. The old love had gushed out of her in streams of blood, leaving a resonant, joyful emptiness in its place.
This emptiness was the cold emptiness between the branches of the trees in fall when they have lost all their leaves, one after another. Grisha and Kostya had flown off to Thailand together, to cement their renewed friendship with a joint vacation. Vlad was still in Goa. Mom hadn’t called since the information about Ksenia’s site reached Peter. And Ksenia herself had become so deeply immersed in her virtual romance that Olya hadn’t seen her for ten days. And that was why today after work she was going to collect Ksenia from the office and then they would go off together somewhere for dinner. Afterward maybe they’d go to a movie, or maybe they’d stay on in the restaurant until late in the night.
All day long, in the gaps between business talks, Olya tries to reach Ksenia on her cell phone, but there’s no answer. Eventually she asks her secretary to find the number
of Evening.ru and connect here with Ksenia Ionova.
“Hello,” Ksyusha says in a voice that immediately makes Olya’s branches drop a few more leaves, as lifeless and withered as Ksyusha’s voice.
“What’s wrong with your cell phone?” asks Olya, and Ksyusha answers like an echo.
“What’s wrong with my cell phone? I guess I forgot to pay.”
Of course, she could tell herself that it’s just February. That of all the months in the interminable Russian winter, February is the cruelest. Sometime, a long time ago, when all the leaves were still green, when you could drink coffee outside in the street, Ksyusha and Olya had agreed on that: yes, as Eliot says, “all the instruments agree,” there’s no month in the Russian calendar worse than February. Ever since we were kids we have the idea in our heads that we have three months of winter, February’s the last, then supposedly spring begins. But every year in the middle of February, you suddenly realize there’s still a very long way to go to the end of winter, and you feel like a tree that has been stripped of all its leaves, and the new buds have no intention of opening yet. This is a month when you don’t even want to live, and maybe Ksyusha is right to have invented a virtual love for herself and fled from the cold Moscow streets, where the snow has long ago turned into dirty frozen slush and the leaves that fell from the trees in the fall have rotted, and not even the trees can recognize them any longer when they bow their heads down to the chilly, hoary earth.
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