The Stacks. II Fall

Untitled (from the series Still Water (The River Thames, for Example)), Roni Horn, 1999

Nikita Cherdyntsev looked up at that blue-grey glow — a five-percent sensation of being. Birds swept past, their beaks slicing the airy thickness. Hands were sketched clenching one another, and the cold laid its long-awaited path toward the innards.

Could it really be this quiet at noon on the central square of a big city? Nikita stood, looked around, clutched his chest. He was in a pretty little coat, with short, gingery, thinnish hair.

Hop-hop — clumsy as he was, he failed to catch the last drop, which shattered against the dirty asphalt. Only the dark trace of it became the seal of his departed soul.

He went on with his walk. What is needed for an excellent conversation? A large table, four people sitting at it, food not particularly tasty but at least of some kind. Three men and one girl. These three are already almost men, this one is still altogether a girl. Here is the list of the main ingredients for the dish Nikita is now about to hurl into their faces. Wash your faces thoroughly so that nothing superfluous prevents you from enjoying the food that flows smoothly down your cheeks.

Nikita took a cutlet with zucchini. Nothing prevented him from taking mashed potatoes with fillet except for the fact that neither one nor the other was in the arsenal. A problematic situation: to squeeze out at least some word, Cherdyntsev needed at the very least to finish chewing, and so he was reduced to listening. Listening to what would burst forth from her player. For she had set out, contrary to all the admonitions of decent intelligentsia habit — “don’t play music from a speaker in public places” — and was trying to press the button. Nikita had to spit out the zucchini, tune the trajectory of everything on his face to an admonitory purpose, and put an end to this ethical torture. She listened the third time round, and they resumed their brief repast, and suddenly she broke loose again. Now it was not the player screaming, but her cornered soul in a vice.

— He says I’m a minor.

— Well, dump him then, and to hell with him. He’s gone in for pedophilia, so let him live up to the prescribed code.

— I have to pull myself together and finally grow up.

— Yes, pile it on. Bring the whirlpool of adult life crashing down on your shoulders, your broadly broad shoulders.

— Also, I need to lose weight. I’m fat.

— That’s how anorexia begins — after that, consider every clothes-rack vacancy yours, only don’t complain much when some starving old woman uses you off-label.

— What am I supposed to do? I should be cheerful, giddy.

— You’re a lass, sweetie. So be one.

— He doesn’t like me the way I am.

— Well, we like you. The three of us are going to rape you right now. Drag you straight out of this canteen.

— Nooo.

— Yes! How would you rather — all at once, or one after another?

— I’ll tell him everything, he’s a cop.

— That won’t save your virginity.

— I’m still a virgin.

— A year ago you told me something completely different.

— I was lying.

— He wasn’t lying, he stitched his hymen back on.

— What you need is a proper fuck, finally. There’s a guy, he has a car, he sort of loves you? What’s stopping you?

— He’s probably impotent.

— Nooo! He tells me he won’t do it until I want to!

A closed circle. Nikita watched the table spin. The tasteless little flowers on the tablecloth were dancing a drunk waltz of Tchaikovsky. He’d wander off for tea — green, from a shiny sachet. In the samovar the water was ice-cold, as if the days of the Blockade had begun or the Soviet legacy hadn’t ended yet. Cherdyntsev came back to silence. Once he’d downed the cup, he wanted another.

— You want me to keep you at home like a puppy, feed you, groom you, prop up cushions for you? Only you have to let me pinch your little cheeks. They’re so plump, so rosy.

— Are you nuts? Of course not.

— Think it over ten times before you refuse.

— And I’m not against it, honestly.

— We’re not going to fuck you, and don’t get your hopes up. Just be with us, stay a virgin till you die.

— And over your grave we’ll trumpet: “She was true to herself to the end, even the chain on her leg still rattles just as it did forty years ago.”

Nikita bolted for the samovar, cup with old tea leaves in hand. The moment he touched it to the tap, a rival appeared with a fresh sachet. He had to retreat. Then Cherdyntsev shrivelled for a good while under the feeling of unsatisfaction.

He did not observe the return of the third. Escape without a firing squad! A year ago D’Annunzio wrote the constitution of Fiume in verse, and then handed out cocaine to all its inhabitants instead of bread.

— I can see how it’s tearing you apart. Such drama, such conflict!

— That’s not funny.

— You’ve got the syndrome of unhappy love. Now it’s the PE teacher — you stalk him in the corridors and coo odes about him, only for some reason into my ear. Now it’s this cop, who guilts you into having sex with him by scolding you for frivolity.

— I’ll smack you upside the head right now, just because. — And take note, that’ll be far more decent than if you’d played music without headphones in public. Such a cultural paradox.

In flight through vaguenesses Nikita snared the thread with his mythic net. What had they come to? To the fact that number two had managed to escape while Cherdyntsev was lost in thought. They were left one on one, like the rams in the children’s song. All she needed from him was a passport. She had turned fourteen a long while ago, but this was symbolic. Nikita’s passport would shade her from the burden of adult life. But had it helped him himself in any way? Nikita had only recently ceased to be a virgin and had felt a loss greater than a few grams of blood. Neither he nor anyone else had any right to give her the correct answer, except that “the offer of upkeep” remained in force.

The points they visit shift with terrifying speed, move through space, oscillate, scurry everywhere and anywhere. There are points designed just for this, and not points at all really — pointses. Such as, for instance, suburban commuter trains. Nikita’s foot hadn’t crossed the threshold of a carriage of that huge iron snake in ages. In so many years the president could have changed, summer swapped with winter, the country’s economy set out on the right course. But neither one nor the other had happened. Just as the commuter train had stayed the same — like an old relative who, despite the years, keeps remembering what a darling you were in childhood and what a beast in adolescence. Meanwhile, the green maw was swallowing Cherdyntsev and chewing with relish. Metallic crumbs filled his lungs, dust of many years settled on his shoulders, some voice — annoyed by something — announced departure. And let those who don’t value their time not make it. Meet him, fresh world, which for a moment grants him a residency permit.

An excursion not only through space but through time as well. Nikita gazed into these faces. Now these are real faces, they are expressive, not shadows of indifference. They breathe perestroika, moonshine vodka, and heavy fate. Fate had run across them on thin little legs, leaving inconsequential traces, though not forgetting to leave the discount card of the nearest thrift shop. Now the next station, and social reality, embodied in faces, creeps into the corridors and settles down more comfortably, if such a thing is possible.

This old woman with a scruffy grey mane and a wild look keeps casting glances somewhere, fingering the handle of her plastic basket; this pilgrim with expressive bags under the eyes and a shining forehead — as if visited by a cosmic prophecy, a great secret — his yellow padded jacket has almost lost its colour. It has changed along with him. In the vestibule the second dozen cigarettes is being smoked, two not-yet-sober women stare convulsively out the window. That’s right, beware the ticket inspectors. Ticket inspectors are horrible ghosts wandering the carriages and striking fear into everyone. The creak of their soles makes even the bravest and the drunkest tremble. Now Nikita presents his ticket. Hurrah, all is well. His fate is not as tragic as he’d imagined. Though he had only been indulging himself with false hopes.

It would be unjust to mention ticket inspectors in the tale and to forget entirely about the peddlers of every kind of goody. They appear far more often than the former, and with them one may have a conversation of altogether greater interest. As if in a dance this Lady flew out with an enormous checked bundle on her back, and boomed in a languid voice like an incantation: “Beer, cigarettes, croutons.” Again and again from her lips streamed the terrible music, heroic and cacophonous. Nikita’s eyes stubbornly refused to become perpetually spinning spirals, but he was terribly hungry. Hunger climbed higher and higher, from the stomach to the larynx, any moment now it would knock at the teeth and announce its presence. The only thing people are capable of and the only thing they know is hunger and the means for its temporary elimination. All the rest is still a riddle.

— Excuse me, do you have any pastry? — Cherdyntsev enquired, not too insistently, of this walking sculpture.

She, saying nothing, slid the doors apart and slipped into the next carriage. Bewilderment mingled with delight. What a singular personage.

Of her second coming word was brought by distant echoes and the clink of coins. The distinct remnants of chestnut dye and figured wrinkles took the outline of a person, and she once again stepped over the threshold of his carriage.

— Beer, cigarettes, beer, beer, beer, croutons.

— Do you have any pastry?

This time there followed at least some sort of reply. Its materialization was a haughty snort out of a rather large nose. Well, well, well! This time Nikita would not let her be. Living witnesses and simultaneously exhibits of perestroika were briskly discussing their affairs, someone was rummaging in bags, and someone else had shoved their dirty hands into their pockets and, wincing, was looking around.

Cherdyntsev was armed to the teeth, he was ready to take this fortress. Who was he? He was a valiant warrior. A real man. It was beneath him to yield to some peddler in a brown jacket. He had to gather his will into a fist and wrest that piece of pastry from her. If Will didn’t spur him, then let the hints of his stomach, in the form of pitiful gurglings, at least do so. And so, he sharpened his eyes, unsheathed his claws, and prepared to pounce. Far down the carriage she appeared — with the same marketing policy, the same brown jacket, the same bundle. She came almost right up to him, and the hour of his triumph was at hand.

— Beer, cigarettes, croutons, cigarettes.

— DO YOU HAVE PASTRY?

She swept past him and barely audibly mumbled under her nose: “Pastry — at my mama’s house.”

This yobbish little phrase shoved him into a memory. Joy and calm — Nikita found nothing surprising in it. Mary had eaten her third zucchini of the day. She must be praised, she had done her utmost. She was such a typical little grand doll: little cheeks plump and pink, little glass eyes empty, she moved as if she were sculpted out of porcelain. Ai, good girl, the zucchini wasn’t tasty, but she had eaten it, swallowed it, opened her maw so wide that everyone could see her huge even teeth. She smiles. Was here, was there. Oh, aren’t you nimble, Mary.

Father had bought Cherdyntsev a new toy today; he wasn’t very glad of it, because he had been waiting for something else, something more candid. Nikita didn’t quite understand what it was, but he sensed it was far more important. And in the moment of unwrapping the present it was as if everything grew clear before him. Mary sat on the floor, delighted, tugging at her curls. She laughed, dissolved in laughter, the ringing of her laughter penetrated every crack in these white walls. Light hit the windows, the curtains grew transparent. Mary sliced her face open again and again, with wider and wider smiles.

Nikita was punished. Papa didn’t like it at all. He’d wanted to fetch the belt and give him a proper whipping, but it ended with the corner. Cherdyntsev wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of having broken the toy, and these punishments had long lost their effect. He drew his hand from his sleeve and ran it along the wall.

He and Mary are playing together again today. On the green-green grass, soaked with warmth and morning dew, they sat and clapped each other’s palms. They struck them, and then the knock and the ring became echo and lit up everything around them. Mary was laughing again. On her white stockings she wore little blue shoes, they stomped, shattered the earth to pieces, and she went on laughing. Nikita gets up, straightens his tiny jacket, and walks toward the horizon where the July sun shines so bright, his socks are already quite soaked. But he walks on without stopping, becoming a pacified shadow against the enormous shining disc.

There was nothing in the window now, only the traces of his breath. A simple solution, it would seem — wipe the glass — but his hand was as if glued to his knee. What was that? Sloth spilled everywhere? Or had Nikita already grown old? He peered at himself in a little mirror, compared himself to old snapshots.

Indeed, the resemblance wasn’t so striking. No, he didn’t look like his father, or his mother. But Cherdyntsev had aged, that was plainly felt. The gaze had grown more sullen, splashing with all-penetrating analysis, the lips no longer as tender as before, to stroke the skin gave no pleasure. He had to drive these thoughts on, like three horses along a winter road, and yell “Ekh MA!!!”, watching the snow tumble from age-old trees, delighting at the manoeuvres of squirrels leaping deftly from bough to bough, and racing.

That day Nikita had seen Denis, and his face too had changed, had darkened. No, he hadn’t become a second Michael Jackson — the stamp of three years’ work as a loader and monotonous trips to football had been laid upon him. In his head a theory was born that had nothing in common with science. What if everyone had grown old on a single day, right on that day, back then? Both Nikita, and Denis, and that swarthy little girl who spent day after day of her life in the tanning salon. Out of nowhere, everyone had aged, not by one day but by a considerably longer term.

That night he couldn’t sleep, kept thinking about this theory. What would it change, would anyone feel better because of it? Or perhaps what kept Cherdyntsev awake was his own fear? Who needed him with this old age, these grey strands, this wrinkled little mug, tottering, jittery, exhausted. Everyone around him had lost something in one single moment and hadn’t noticed. It was more interesting to them to buy a washing machine at a discount, to make it to the premiere of new episodes of the beloved series, to withdraw their money from KamaBank.

A lousy Dorian Gray Nikita made — got worked up and found himself a new preoccupation. More capacious, more dynamic. And old age — it was just as perishable as youth. It seems, among some tribes of South America, youth and beauty meant one and the same thing. And you get above yourselves.

With this thought Cherdyntsev plunged into the web of sleep. And the world had a whole twelve minutes left in which to finish growing old. Little old ladies in grey overcoats fell dead upon the asphalt; men, third shot in hand, combed the table with their brows; lovers, hidden behind the corners of Khrushchev-era blocks, enjoyed each other’s embrace one last time; dogs by the dumps for the last time licked their wounds; some singer finished his last aria and crashed into the orchestra pit. Silence swallowed everything, and only in the forest was the rustle of leaves still heard, and the first snow was falling from the age-old boughs.

He looked at the wet rain gnawing at the sagging roof, at the steam and glass-wool oozing from the grey metal pipes; behind them their older brothers had surfaced again — the rusty, sidewalk snakes biting the sky, the wrinkled faces of patients in the military hospital, their faces and limbs cracked open.

Nikita was afraid of running into anyone he knew, always afraid it would turn out to be one of his professors. “All professors are fascists. If they weren’t fascists, they wouldn’t be professors” — such a bright thought sidled into Nikita’s head as he walked past the shabby Khrushchev blocks, having stepped off the tram at Krupskaya. Cherdyntsev floated over the dirty asphalt, drifted past bespattered windows. It looked as if a many-century-thick layer of dust coated them. Like a second window, a kind of marker of the owner’s social position. What was hidden behind them? Or, more precisely — who? A half-naked stripling straining diligently on an exercise bike, a plump housewife hanging damp laundry in the corridor, the pale face of a decrepit old woman. It was precisely that face, illuminating him with its endless pallor, that looked straight into Nikita’s eyes across space enclosed by the window frame. It surfaced from the grey murk and hovered before him motionless. One face, without a body. The wrinkles on that face wound about, forming high-speed highways along which death made its way to its terminus, point “B.” Their connection did not last long, but time managed to make a circle around their faces and return to its starting position.

Cherdyntsev sooner hurried home. That face bit into his memory for a long time. Even if he forgot about it, some dim reminder would flicker somewhere. At home a laid table awaited Nikita. Everything as it ought to be: little vodka, herring, little pickles, boiled potato, traditional aspic. Mama had always been surprised he didn’t like eating aspic. Nikita, to be honest, didn’t know why either — surely some childish aversion still mowed the grass in his head: “don’t let new taste sensations break through in there.” And this time his refusal was no surprise. The table was not of such interest as the conversation being conducted over it.

And here is the conversation at the table. Like a wounded vulture, fate circled over this small MDF table covered with a nondescript yellow tablecloth. On it, admittedly, some gold-coloured cubes were pictured, but they clearly did not refer to modernist art. Three sat at the table: two women and one man. All were already past fifty. Two of them were Nikita’s parents. The food on the table was arranged in the best traditions of a Russian village — his mama managed it mechanically. They were tense but did not show it. Something troubled them. That something floated in the air above them, as if it were all soaked with electricity. Now from a female mouth a moan escaped, almost a death shriek:

— She should have taken care of it, she hasn’t gone entirely off her rocker!

— You don’t know her character, — replied a male voice.

— She’ll take care of it, only I sense that we’ll get nothing, — said the second woman.

— You tell your brother he can have the apartment, but the looking after her will be his alone. And if you help her too, then a share should fall to you as well, — the first lady would not relent.

— He won’t agree, and he’ll accuse me of greed to boot. In the end he’ll set it all up in his own favour. That’s the kind of pusillanimous person he is, — the man did not press too hard.

— A person has an obvious choice between what is better and what is worse. You are clearly better. And your children are good, and you looked after her better. You are owed. — insisted the lady.

— Yes, you’re right, — the second responded.

— So we must work her over thoroughly before the writing of the will, — whispered a something.

The natural conclusion to this fabricated polemic would have been a dashing mazurka annihilating everything in its path. To launch into a headlong dance, in which your partner would be your own conscience.

Financial crisis is like a real war, it is just as merciless and cruel. So, at any rate, most people saw it. It hurled itself at the last hearths of well-being and bore them away in a river of blood of prematurely deceased bank accounts. Once all the peace treaties had been signed, humanity sighed with relief and returned to its usual cashing of cards. Among these volunteers on this overcast autumn day was Nikita. Trying not to look at the digits of the pin being punched in by a middle-aged woman, Cherdyntsev involuntarily heard her conversation with her son. Or, rather, the conversation of the son with the ATM.

— Little monies, when will the little monies come? — pleaded a squeaky little voice in perplexity.

Hearing the sound of the counting of bills, the young face was transfigured, and the little fingers on the little hands wriggled.

— Here they are, the little monies! Take them quickly, before someone steals them.

The mother responded with an indulgent laugh and hurried to shove the thousand-rouble note into her pocket.

— Thank you, ATM. I respect you, — with the pride of a Komsomolet just accepted into the KPSS, the little one pronounced, and enfolded the money-monster in steel embrace.

The peculiar little family disappeared through the glass doors of the bank. And Nikita was left alone with his own savings and thoughts of how love for money is taught from a young age. Before long, instead of milk, they’ll be pouring coins into infants’ bottles with teats, at the age of five slipping banknotes under the pillow, and teaching first-graders how to swindle their comrades-in-misfortune-called-Education into investments. Not snowballs with kick-scooters but turnover will fill young minds. Instead of the first kiss — proper marketing policy. Instead of the first fight — business negotiations. Instead of the old sandpit — a limited liability company. Cherdyntsev saw small children’s bodies climbing laboriously up a career ladder of pure gold, up to where His Majesty Lord Deposit awaited them.

Roaming a small market in a residential district of the city, one should not forget to look around. At first glance they were unremarkable people in an unremarkable place, and indeed that was so. They looked around, minced their little legs, wrapped themselves in the collars of warm coats, hurried to take their place in the queue for cheese, milk, meat, avocado. So silly and so touching at the same time. One unrelieved tenderness took hold, tightened into the ear, and evenly laid things out in Nikita’s head. The sky was pale, and the earth, as it were, volunteered to be its reflection. On this seemingly small market lived the foretaste of a great celebration. The stalls were crammed with tasteless sweaters and blouses, powders and pastes, toys and dishware. The women, men, Russians, Tatars, Tajiks standing behind their counters discussed the bad behaviour of their children, the news about the new American president, the day’s TV schedule. Everything went on peacefully and quietly, taking its course; the feeble little human streamlets flowed peacefully in the artificial channels dug by the trade business. A woman in brown dragged her daughter from stall to stall, she was preoccupied, calculating every gram, every kopeck, and the girl’s eyes were filled with a thirst for adventure. The mother’s hand was a formidable counterweight. A man accustomed to swearing filthily was asking, as politely as he could, for some frozen strawberries. The container fell, and the strawberries rolled out over the snow-swaddled earth. For a second everything froze around this picture. Only the snow went on slowly pouring from the grim sky.

It seems strange, but the poor are more used to sharing than the rich. It has always been so, especially in Russia. The greater the wealth, the harder it was to part with it — even with an insignificant portion of honestly earned money.

That battered old woman on crutches held to the same principle. Barely making ends meet, she pulled out a softened piece of meat and threw it to the stray dogs. And they, in their turn, out of politeness refused. Furry heads burdened with morals. Following the rules of good tone, the old woman, barely keeping her balance on decrepit crutches, made one more attempt to deprive of hunger-death these gentlemen with tails. To refuse a second time would be a sin. Besides, one could allow oneself to receive a minute of joy on a day of despair, pain, and cold. A maw opened wide, and a red, scruffy mutt, wagging her tail, dragged the prize round the nearest corner.

Hobbling on thin, scraped-raw paws, she gets to a place where she can find long-awaited seclusion. Union with a bone covered in meat. That is where the market ends and the small garages begin. Where the traders keep the goods that don’t spoil or the goods that have long since spoiled. Here all the local dogs gather, to warm themselves pressed against a neighbour’s ragged fur coat, to share the spoils, and, yet again, to complain about the injustice of the fate that has doomed them to a half-starving existence. But today she is alone here, save that snow sympathetically circles above the maw greedily gnawing at the red flesh. It doesn’t matter to the dog how she got the piece; she was glad that for a few moments she would be able to prolong her life.

Life spills through the body, hides in each little drop of blood, breaks out and takes hold of everything around. It runs, without stopping.

Somewhere over there, in the distance, are heard the voices of people, the sliding of tires, the slaps of metal doors. Suite of a pre-death repast. Breathing, patter of paws, unrestrained barking. The pack returns to its old spot.

She is, as it were, among them, but not with them. She wandered into their ranks by chance, and there she stayed. They didn’t touch her, she didn’t raise her voice. She had to share her food, but she could keep out of fights. Today the pack leader has died, and power has passed to another, more strong-willed, stronger, a real dog. He cannot stand freeloaders, everyone must earn his keep, the sick must die. A dog remarkably healthy for a mutt, with a half-moon tail, bares his teeth and lunges at the ball of red fur. He snatches the bone away and looks at the bloody prints of paws leading toward the fence. She has gone.

The city is unhurriedly falling asleep, ever since the clocks were turned back it has been getting dark far earlier. Evening streetlamps are lit, motorists switch on their headlights, mamas, leaning out of their windows, call their children in to supper. The woman took off the brown and stepped up to the stove; today they will eat pasta with cutlet — all of it bought at the market. Wheel tracks on wet snow, tracks of grievance on a dead heart.

It is already long past midnight. The streets are being torn apart by an excess of silence and emptiness. Streetlamps and the shadows of buildings paint whimsical pictures. Snores, snuffles, tossings, walks to the fridge for sausage — all merge into an impression of the typical urban night. One or two drunks might slip into the archway of a high-rise. Relieve themselves and shuffle on to seek shelter, or maybe just lie down right here.

Only for some reason our red friend is nowhere to be seen. It’s as though she got soaked through, rusted, and dissolved, leaving a huge stain upon the virgin snow. They looked around everywhere. It was as if they were soaring over the city, seeing the roofs, fences, antennae — someone used an old umbrella as a satellite dish. They could have used the method of deduction, searched for her by the bloody trail, but it had long been snowed over. Perhaps she was already dead?

But if she had died, this narrative would have no sense.

Strange, since this bitch has no significance for the development of society, the economy, politics, or culture. She never took part in processes vital to the country, took no wilful decisions, owes no one money; there isn’t even a small blond boy who will miss her and, tugging his mother by the skirt, whimper: “Find the dog! Find the dog, please.” She is only an unnecessary element of the biosphere, a torn thread in nature’s fabric.

All that’s needed, or rather, all that money stretched to, has been bought. The protocol is drawn up and signed. Eggs, milk, a bit of cheese, oatmeal, a loaf of black bread, minced meat, pasta — all this rocks about wildly in the bundle the old woman holds. To get to the market — you have to climb uphill, and at her age this is a huge labour. And now it’s simply a paradise for the legs — you could hurtle down the wet snow, forgetting about the food. Let it tumble out, break — for a second’s joy no pity! Pity.

She descended carefully, overcoming meter by meter of slippery road, watching not to break the eggs, for which she had accomplished this dangerous journey.

Home isn’t far, but for the elderly this short road becomes a lingering torture. Snowflakes race past her face, the wind sways the grey hair sticking out from under her kerchief.

A straight grey path, fenced by wastelands, a dim sky over it, and a small silhouette in a peach coat with a bundle, carefully rocking from foot to foot. She counted the steps but did not count them. Open door to the entrance, slamming doors of the lift, closed door into the soul.

You can hear the oil hissing on the battered frying pan, the knife hacking the bread, liquid filling the glass. “Oh” — the old woman exhaled and sat down on a small stool. The peach coat is already hanging in the hall. And in the small kitchen the marvellous ritual of preparing food is in full swing. The oatmeal she’ll leave for tomorrow. Porridge in the morning — that’s not healthy, but it’s economical. She had already begun to feel hungry, her belly grumbled unpleasantly. Blue paint peels off the walls, on the ceiling are stains — last week they nearly flooded her from above. Under the cracked window rests a hoard of polyethylene bags that she has been saving, not really out of mercantile considerations.

Is it ever boring to eat? Is the swallowing of food a process more boring or more interesting? Well, if the food is tasty or some kind of exotic dish, it’s interesting; but ordinary pearl-barley porridge or canteen keta fillet — you couldn’t dream of anything duller. Each piece of food carries a code of information on it: taste; colour; cultural, social, economic conditionality; energy value, dietary value, values; vitamins, fats, proteins, carbohydrates. Every product is unique and carries its own unique information. But why do most of us prefer to switch on the television while eating, explaining it with the phrase: “So it wouldn’t be boring.”

The news happened to be on. She didn’t really follow politics. She simply watched what they wanted to show her. Swallowing piece after piece, taking step after step, she chewed, he spoke. The stomach began to digest the food, the new president assumed his duties.

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Today is the last day of her right to housing, and perhaps to life. Tomorrow she is obliged to vacate the apartment forever. From the office they called a month ago. Hearing the cold voice on the receiver, she thought: “I’m not to blame, I’m sort of among them, but I’m not one of them. What do they want from me? Why do they treat me this way? It’s pure chance.”

One had only to glance out the window and understand that another day of pain and despair had come to an end. Tomorrow she should expect the same, except that breakfast will be oatmeal, not millet.

And this time as if according to script. Broken sofa, torn sheet on it, cushion with little flowers, a pair of feathers straining for freedom. The cushion, with its meat and its bones straining for freedom, lies down on the torn sheet, forcing the broken sofa to squeak methodically. This is how they converse — she groans, it squeaks; she yawns, it squeaks. These conversations go on for hours, sometimes until morning. Often, in the morning, family quarrels take place. She swears foully, and it, in retaliation, keeps a demonstrative silence.

A warm blanket is the truest friend on cold nights. Sometimes we ourselves await the coming of the cold, so that we can wrap ourselves in bulky pieces of fabric, curl up like a dog, and to the sounds of the night close our tired eyelids. By this we create for ourselves a minute-long illusion of security. The old woman is already asleep, following the example of the big city.

While the old woman was finishing off the last wet flakes of oatmeal, we rushed off in search of the bitch. We are here, which means she is still alive. Today it is unusually clear, but the air is unusually cold. Crows, sitting on the branches of poplars, search for something to feed on. An uncombed street-sweeper woman clears the bus stop of the remains of the local down-and-outs’ revelries. The light drills our eyes, cuts into the earth, seeps into the farthest crevices. Even into the windows of the basement in which our red friend slept. Her muzzle lay right on the site of the wound she had received; she had fallen asleep while licking it. In a monotone dog sleep. The steam of the basement pipes warmed her, gave a last chance at life, as if a divine hand had decided to intervene in this worthless fate.

A little carcass, illuminated by the rays of the morning sun on the universal floor of social stratification. She had taken nothing with her — nothing of special value was to be had in that house anyway. A television — and even that was black-and-white. The one thing she could not do without were her crutches. Faithful and only friends, acquired against her will, but that had become irreplaceable. No strength for tears, for regret; there is only the road that leads into the unknown. Over the cold night the wet snow had turned to ice. Little children rushing to school, wide-eyed, break it with their feet, shouting as they race down the small hills. As if the whole world rejoiced at the arrival of winter. Except for two creatures that it had driven into a trap from which there is no escape. Not only that — it also sets dangerous snares for them.

A loud, piercing scream burst into the walls of the basement. The old woman had slipped, the crutches had torn out of her hands and flown in different directions. She crashed down, striking her head against the ice. The children were still hurrying to school, afraid of getting into trouble with the teacher for undone homework. Their parents were rushing to important business meetings. Old ladies, whispering to each other, walked past. All of them, as if by conspiracy. They had been swallowed up by affairs, feelings, desires, fear, and oblivion. The world turned away, frowned, and stuck out its tongue. She was roused by a pleasant sensation in the region of her cheek, something warm and sincere. Compassion embodied in matter. It was the dog. She recognized in the shouting one the woman who had shared her last piece of meat. The peach coat and the red fur, two ruined lives found unity in this moment. The wounded dog licks the cheek of the helpless old woman. Their reflection was imprinted forever in the ice. The ice will melt, and it will remain. Snow began to fall again — strange, they’d promised an anticyclone.

Under the hissing of snow the news was broadcast on television: Hello, this is Exaggerated News. My name is Anatoly Bryuzzhalo, and here is a brief review of what has come to us by state order. Today on air we will show you Butin five times, Panvedev four, we will fulfil the monthly norm for the appearance of newborn mammothlets at the Penza Zoo Garden, a bit of news from the fields, and, obligatorily, about how the financial crisis is choking on bourgeois wallets. This and other propaganda will add still more oil to your brain’s buckwheat.

Platvia has declared itself the 4th Reich; through the streets of Ziga hundreds of children and women march with Hitler-style little moustaches. Platvia is a fascist country. Today is Velimir Butin’s birthday; for this the mayor of Vladivostok, as a gift, has burnt one of the residential districts of the city. Chairman of the Reichduma Morris Grizzly delivered an address: “Citizens, it isn’t that your pension is small, it’s that our terms and salaries are large.” Meanwhile, Kremlin master-smiths have forged yet another marionette party. Now on to the cultural news: Yuri Kuklachyov dropped into the Supreme Court of Russia and gave the judges an unscheduled training session. Near Zelenograd a patriotic metal festival took place, “Autoretention, Bravoslavia, and Gardenity”; its target audience was designated as nymphomaniacs, Zhanna Aguzarova, and dachniks; performing were such gurus of the metallurgical industry as Grandpa Kuzmich, third-class fitter, and the truncated Baptist choir “Pilgrim.” That’s all the news for today; if you are a public official and would like your news heard on the air, write to any channel — you will certainly be heard.

Egoshikha — that was the very river from which Perm came, or more precisely, the city of Perm, or still more precisely, the copper smelter. In itself it was nothing much, a small brook occupying a very large ravine that split the city in two. Near this ravine were built the two main city cemeteries. Above it rose four enormous dam-bridges. During rush hour they were packed with humming cars, a clot of nervous tension rising into the sky.

Not so long ago in this ravine there had still stood small wooden shanties. People grew strawberries there, potatoes, perhaps, grilled shashlyk, played with their children. At the same time this place exuded the smell of death. And that wasn’t an overstatement — it was simply that all the nearby factories, by long-established tradition, dumped their waste into Egoshikha. It was as if she had been born for this. And the city’s inhabitants had corresponding associations with the river. Even the mercenary designs of entrepreneurs did not reach here. In this stinking abyss there were no shops, no dwellings, not even wholesale warehouses. Only dead earth soaked with waste, almost in the very centre of the city.

Networks of little paths left by dogs’ paws, a burst ball with a picture of SpongeBob, and a lonely pine tree lurking near a three-metre fence — such were the chief sights of these parts. Nikita looked at yet another lopsided hovel and waited for a kindly little old man to crawl out of it and offer him a cup of tea with baranki, but this did not happen. If it did happen, then somewhere in an altogether other world, drop-a-drop like ours, only where everything was far more interesting.

In his head three worlds arose. In the first he had lately acquired for himself a cat. And it did not know how to meow. He took it in for repairs; they looked, poked, and in the conclusion wrote: “was watching Von Trier, complained of a boil in the middle of the borscht.” And what was he going to feed the cat on, if he had nothing except instant borscht? So it was decided: hand the cat over to the shelter for women with an inability to hold a tray with four plates. Let her have blown on cold water, the wretch.

In the second he had lately acquired for himself a dog. The cat told the dog everything. She locked herself in the pantry, wanted to get out, but couldn’t. Her paw was pinched between the pliers and the toothpaste. He tried to smoke her out, but smoked out all he had while walking to the pantry. He decided to leave things as they were: the skeletons of a poodle and an Airedale terrier were now to have a new interlocutor.

In the third he had lately acquired for himself half a stairwell: “Look, ladies-citizens, how cold and dreary it is here — I’m doing it for you.” He handed out the scandal-plan for autumn; Larisa Izhgibisovna once again got the dismemberment. She was used to it. Ever since her mugshot at the precinct had been moved from “WANTED” onto the Wall of Honour, she was afraid of nothing, though everyone was afraid to shake her hand. She’d hang them all over herself and go down to the ground floor — to collect the lift fee.

After which Cherdyntsev threw himself into describing everyone he knew, but by the second name he’d already grown bored:

“Veronika is a typical Parisienne. She wears high-waisted clothing and behaves properly at table. Her room is eternally untidy.

Expensive suits lie about without hangers, the bed is not made, a damp towel has been hanging over the chair for a second day. She chose green wallpaper, in the classical style. She has been living alone for a month and three days. She returned from work today very late. Lately she has been spending a lot of time in the office. She was sitting at the table and suddenly pushed away the plate of broccoli and dashed for the toilet. She hoisted herself onto the pan and began slowly to shit. All the while she was repeating a prayer to the Virgin Mary: ‘Make it so that he comes back, I beg you. Make it so. I beg you.’

Leonid is a real man. Walks around in a sports tracksuit and wears a moustache. He has his own car and a permanent garage. He never swallowed gingerbread while holding it with two fingers. Every day at home Leonid was awaited by his favourite bathrobe, his hysterical wife, and his hooligan son. He was filling up his car with petrol at the station called ‘At the Church.’ Hearing the sound of the fuel flowing, Leonid, phrase by phrase, kept repeating: ‘Lord, deliver me from hemorrhoids, Lord save me, cleanse my soul and body. Help me, Lord.’”

Abandoning these reflections, he noticed lights in the building of the former railway station and discovered in his pocket an invitation to an exhibition, the opening of which, dressed in the leather of welcoming and hypocritical speeches, was to take place at 18:34. The vernissage guests had begun to gather somewhat earlier than he had thought. Most likely, the materialist explanation for this would have been the small amount of refreshments, of which there might not be enough for everyone. Or else they were drawn to art by an invisible thread — the very one that led Theseus out of the labyrinth. A lifeline. So many familiar surnames, images, and thoughts. He stood with a glass filled with the dry red wine he hated and tried to catch the new stirring aromas. Meanwhile the halls kept filling with them — the smartly dressed, the bearded. They strolled about and shared their considerations, took autographs from one another, and went on whispering. There a lady, evidently not from a poor family, had bought from an Italian tailor a full top and a form-fitting bottom, and there a grey-haired man — he looked at his own canvases, and they threw him into ecstasy. A compere flitted past, scrawny and small, having just returned from a hippie orgy. With every minute they were joined by ever more distinguished and great specimens.

And now silence was requested; the hosts of the vernissage emerged and in turn hacked it to pieces with their speeches. One beat his brow and bowed to everyone who had helped and would help him in the difficult path of self-promotion; the second thanked the first and all whom the first had thanked. The third, however, cut to the very heart of the matter and started harping on about how people in their own native land did not know their heroes, and they simply had to be remembered in their hearts. He looked round and saw an enormous beast with huge leaden teeth, its coloration recalling a red-green daub; from beneath its massive paws ceramic birds crawled out and flew off frenziedly into different corners, leaving behind excrement in acid colours. He shook his head and saw nothing except paintings, sculptures, and TV screens. The wine had taken effect.

In the transfigured halls everything went on shining with words about the near, happy future that awaited their land. The orators would not stop bawling, and their discourse wove itself tightly into the biomolecules of the ears of those present. Everyone already believed in this future and raised glasses with sweets to its further prosperity. Only the fellow resembling a peacock in the far end of the hall was not paying attention to these speeches; he was examining his own feathers and gathering the females with his gaze. Everyone had caught the idea, and they began fearlessly to fall ill!

They did not want to go home, since this was the only day of the year on which the remaining inhabitants of the city gathered in one place.

— And why didn’t Stepan Grigorich come? Cancer too?

— Yes, he passed away last week, liver.

— Sad, sad. I hope we still make it to the bright future.

— Of course, it’s already here, — on this phrase the speaker began coughing furiously and toppled to the ground.

They stepped away from the body and continued their conversations. Beyond the door of the exhibition hall reigned emptiness. The wind, out of nothing better to do, tossed the city dust first one way, then the other. He went out to the smoking area, where a toothless homeless man in a frockcoat, invited as an extra, held out a match.

— Thank you!

— The tragedy is that the I, becoming embodied in the material and turning into I-Not-in-Itself, is lost and becomes a paper bag with sunflower seeds — he began — And there are also times when the I, which you have finally decided to spend, cannot be released outward, and it begins slowly to wither inside. Everyone manages it better than I do, because my I was always found Out-Ward. Surnames, first names, lines, tales, children’s games of librarian took on the value of ends in themselves — but in this the I expressed itself only partially. It would return, not having managed to become matter, to say nothing of idea. The sickly eidos, such is it. Infected, cold-ridden — they say to it “bless you” or “WHAT WERE YOU SMOKING?”. And they also understand it as mystery, enigma, and considered self-detachment. And suddenly, unexpectedly, it ceased to be I-in-itself, for a second, and immediately clenched shut. Following the logic, such an I ought to be destroyed by Itself, otherwise all this will grow into a cycle of self-miscarriages. And yet everything was known from the very beginning. This is not lamentation, this is gratitude and recommendations.”

And how here not to remember that at the camp where he had holidayed as a wild boy, on the very first day of the parade a pissed-on mattress was hoisted onto the flagpole and it was announced on the loudspeaker that he had done it. He was also threatened: anyone who broke the daily routine would spend that night’s sleep on it. He stood and blushed, heard the giggling behind his back and involuntarily swallowed the boogers he was, like spaghetti onto a fork, threading onto his fingers. As soon as the parade ended he tore off at breakneck speed for the shooting range that remained from the biathlon training. Acid-treated dew burned his legs. Good thing at least he wasn’t bitten by a tick.

The shooting range resembled the aftermath of a war for oil. One of the boys had told him that not far from the fence there lived a mad old woman whose reserves of henna exceeded the stock of any Soviet shop. He pressed the edge of his palm to his forehead and surveyed the terrain. The layout was not very lucky, God had botched things here. The earth was uneven, the trees planted in the wrong places, and that tower wrapped in wires simply did not fit into the local landscape. His body was motionless, he stood in stasis all day. His eyes did not notice how the colour of the sky was changing. At the centre of the shooting range it went on being the same colour. Right up till then they weren’t looking for him. Not a soul.

When night came, he got up and by inertia headed back to the barracks. The guardswoman was quietly snoring, propping up a shotgun with her left hand. Through her snoring came the words: “children must be loved and killed… I didn’t get my share of love…” From the DJ’s room came the pleased cries of Svetka Doikina. Every door surprised him with something new. On tiptoe he traversed two more corridors. Bloody stains, glowing like lighthouses in the half-dark, led him to the doors of the dining hall. The cook had dragged in the corpse of a spent stray and was cutting up her carcass on the table for trays, despite the late hour. At last he found himself on the steps of the staircase that led up to the fifth squad. They were too slippery because the PE teacher had spilled lubricant when climbing up to the boys from the neighbouring ward. His nearly-shut eyes barely made out the way. Passing the squad’s corner, he blew out the candles and drew little moustaches on the Baphomet. Someone was going to catch hell for it tomorrow.

Connected with this, he was reminded of his cousin Margaret, who three days ago had left for France and had there eaten two cold-ridden pigeons, and now she is hated by the whole of that backward country. Her fresh French husband, Ferdinand, with Austrian roots, had heard of his own murder and asked people not to expound much on the subject. Everything unfolded just as it had to. Long and stupendously. Salomé had planned the crime precisely, had even agreed with the police that they would hush it all up.

In the city the sun appeared earlier than anywhere else. Even in the Bering Strait the whales were still sleepily rubbing their little eyes. Ferdinand walked up to his wife’s bed, whose endless hair was digging into the pillow, and kissed her on the crown. Both were shocked by a discharge of static. Space still had not forgiven them. Neither had Salomé, who watched all of this through binoculars from the house across the way. This was a condition of the wedding, and Ferdinand knew it perfectly well. Five-storey brick houses, whose walls were pierced by poisonous ivy, looked very European. Like Margaret’s coiffure. She shifted the crow’s nest that was on her head and hurried to the window. Insurance and elastic bungee once again saved her from death. Instead of her Ferdinand thought about her constantly. Ever since he had read on his mother-in-law’s Twitter that she was planning to do him in and would face no consequences, only a single thought troubled him: WHAT DOES EUROPE NEED GAS FOR? Toward his own death Ferdinand felt more than philosophical. He also worried about Margaret, as happened every day. Margaret at that moment was dismantling the tricycle of the small neighbour boy Cherubino. No one could sort out whether Cherubino was a boy or a girl. When the counter-repair was finished, Margaret took an oar and set off along the narrow streets of the town. She really did seem to be at the very centre of the largest and cleanest lake. A little spark that knew no obstacles.

— My daughter is ill, — Salomé announced to the honest inspector on the phone. — I do not wish for a healthy person to be next to her. He works, he cares for her — it is unbearable! From childhood I’ve been used to her cramming into her vagina any old thing, sitting in a dark room and whispering prayers to the reflections of moonlight. Yes, of course, I’ll hide the body. Thanks for understanding. — she said, and hung up. Salomé sat down on a chair in the middle of a room made of glass; over her face spread the smile of a madwoman. Just the smallest bit.

On the way home Ferdinand walked up to a vegetable seller and bought a vegetarian lunch. The seller injected tomatoes with homogens using a syringe right in front of him. After some pause the paunchy vegetable-man took an ampoule of poison out of his pocket, broke off the neck, and poured the contents into a spray bottle. He held the white container up to an avocado and methodically sprayed the fruit. Ferdinand watched this with a placid face.

Margaret rang Russia and asked pensioners for money.

Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud was hurrying to finish writing a chapter on psychoanalysis before jerking off into his underpants. A dialogue of his spermatozoa:

— have you ever dived through a urethra?

— As you can see, I never had the chance.

Meanwhile a little boy came home with a full bucket of cats’ heads and did not know where to put it. Mama turned to him with the request not to block her view of the kitchen appliances. She was looking at the cook-lady and blissing out.

He remembered how he and his friends had gone to Turkey. To the homeland of his ex-wife, back when she was a prostitute against her will. An aging Greek with a kerosene lamp had proposed that they follow him through the dark corridors of a sandy monastery. They thought he was selling incense, but he told them how to pinch towels from hotels. He opened a suitcase, and inside — rye was ripening, so orphaned, so yellow, so aloof. He drew in its scent so hard that the hairs in my nose instantly turned into it, the beautiful rye.

Nikita had a second soul, of whose existence only the physically nearby subjects and objects knew; his thoughts were now and again supplanted by visions in which, in a grey and rainy city where autumn came earlier than anywhere, there lived a red-haired, pale little boy. He lived with his mama, the two of them, in a small one-room flat in a mildewed little Khrushchev block. Damp had become a permanent resident of its basement — even rats were afraid to settle there. Mama, in the intervals between rains, would return home and rearrange the blankets in the wardrobe, and the red-haired boy would sit and silently gape at her thoughtless actions. In the little room there was only room for an old sofa, a wardrobe, and shabby wallpaper with a floral pattern. The floor was covered with grey linoleum, whose glint kept flickering in the boy’s eyes. One day mama decided to install cable television in it. She dialled a number on the phone, and afterwards came and sat down next to him on the sofa. For half an hour they sat in silence with indifferent faces. A shadow ran across the little one’s face and swept off all the damp. Mama did not notice the master installing in him the eighty best television channels.

— All ready, take the work.

Mama sat the boy on a stool opposite the sofa and turned on the first channel. Oh, how good it felt. She leaned back against the backrest and dozed off sweetly. Out of the belly of the red-haired, pale lump of bones and nerves, singers were singing and omelettes were being fried up. The heavens began to roar still more desperately, the watery heels stepped faster along the asphalt. The single lightbulb in the flat flickered in the rhythm of a syncopation. The boy slowly rose from the stool and moved in the direction of the balcony. He walked along the grey, ravenous linoleum, alongside these wall-roses, toward the eyes filled with tears. Toward the magical emptiness hidden behind the balcony opening. The mother’s eyes opened, she continued to look ahead — this time she saw only the wall, gnawed at by time. The little one leaned over the cast-iron railing and let himself go. Mama raised her hand to her mouth and began to worry her lip. “It was the same in Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist,’ only without the fucking,” she thought.

The soul of a person is his social function — so believed the German sociologist Norbert Elias. A Jew, by the way. And in the Middle Ages ones like him were hanged along with dogs. Had he declared such a thing back then, he would have been first in line for hell. And that too was a social norm that appeared not for nothing, but as a result of the interaction of a multitude of people. This same interaction gave rise to a thousand social roles that people performed by the minute. Readers — that was you, and he — was a boulevard hack and a scoundrel; at that moment those were his and your identities.

Sometimes people did not feel their “importance” and community with others, and began to invent for themselves some sort of substances that they called souls, not understanding one thing: his social niche granted him a choice, not the other way around. And if he had not existed in the world, someone else would have taken his place. So it happened with the tramp Styopka. Every resident of Perm who had at least once in his life gone into the centre knew the rollicking bum with the pile of “Family” plastic bags, wandering irrelevantly through streets and back alleys. Drivers smiled at him as he passed, children pointed their fingers, students gave him players and CDs. They even made him VKontakte groups. And so Styopan wandered in search of food and warmth, until non-existence caught up with him.

Styopka had barely had time to disappear before his spot was taken by another homeless man with different bags. And the same yellow ticket. A figure of a person had been cut out of cardboard, and immediately the same one, only in black, was pasted into it. But still they had loved Styopka more. Society! Please give him back.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, another five hundred years ago in his “Praise of Folly,” was scratching away with a goose quill, saying, in effect, that the true madmen and paupers are the darlings of the gods, freed of the burden of social roles, wandering naked through the centuries with sack and crutch to the laughter of the crowd. Holy folly, the eternal vagrancy of the spirit, flowing from mediaeval treatises straight onto the dirty asphalt of the central streets. The great chain of homeless being was not broken, it simply coiled in rings, going deep into the centuries, until he himself, tired of the weight of these thoughts, locked himself in the cramped womb of a communal lavatory. Cutting himself off from Erasmus, Elias, Eduard, and all the men on “E,” Cherdyntsev looked at his cock while urinating: a strange one, discharged its little yellow liquid as if nothing were the matter. An atmospheric shot it made — a mixture of that indigo and pale pink. The toilet bowl with its yellowness went well in the frame too.

Their communal apartment, one of those still retaining the whiff of an enormous Soviet sock, huddled somewhere in the central district. The centre and the outskirts of their little city, in general, differed little from one another. There it was dark, everyone had been sitting without electricity for the fifth year now. He bought a gas stove and in the evenings would hold his hands over its wilting little flame. A volume of Blok’s poems evaporated in it in one minute. A record-breaking guy.

Precisely at 13:43 he sat down at the dead laptop and methodically began tapping at the keyboard. In the room it suddenly grew dark; he turned to the window and saw how the sky was being covered by a pall of gloom, wildly, savagely wild. The kind usually shown in films about the ends of the world or painted in disturbed canvases. He stepped closer and paid no attention even to the snow that came pouring from the enraged clouds. He noticed that his fifth floor, where he lived, was the very floor where all of his childhood and other pranks had been spent. The very house. His native one, where the radiator didn’t warm and the light had been off for a shitload of time. In short — he had come closer to the earth. As if it were not high, but were low. He was almost shaking hands with the magma. The house was growing into the Earth. And She was gladly swallowing it.

— MY HOUSE IS GOING UNDER THE EARTH! — he shouted into the window, and phoned his friends. Even if it wasn’t so — let everyone know! His house was almost under the Earth. It was almost there, and he himself was already there.

Thoughts of suicide rarely ever left Nikita, even when he fed himself on fresh milk and cloudy orange juice. Calcium and Vitamin C — no help in getting rid of soul-sicknesses. And so this morning too he put on the kettle and set off to pluck the little hairs from his nose. Let whoever has no hairs in his nose be the first to throw a pair of tweezers at him. The kettle boiled, Nikita poured the boiling water into a cup with a teabag and put it in the fridge. The thought of the end of life would not leave him. He wanted to die more than the poser-Cleopatra. The ordered sheets arrived exactly on time — of this he was convinced by the postman to whom he had opened the door not long before. The old ones he burnt in the stove whose flue butted right up against the window of the neighbour on the landing, at which she was sincerely pleased, for she held BDSM parties and metal concerts every evening. Today was the first day off in the last sixteen centuries, and he had to invent occupations for himself. Counting the torn-off little legs of mutated flies — that had already been done. Find yourself? That is impossible. By God, in idle time thoughts of death come more often.

If in the weekday bustle you think about it not too seriously, whisper, “I want to die,” and your deskmate asks: “what did you say?” and you say back: “nothing.” Cherdyntsev climbed into the bathtub without water and began to think how to make it so that he’d do himself in without his parents suffering. He loved them very much, and they him. Nikita knew they wouldn’t survive his death, as it had been with their relatives. Such relapses have a stronger effect on society. But if death didn’t overtake him, then all these musings in the empty bathtub were meaningless. Things must not be that way.

Not a week had passed when the forensic experts were inspecting a flat in a new build. On the kitchen table lay the lifeless body of a prosected woman about fifty-five years old. Her belly had been slashed open, and on her forehead was inscribed with a scalpel “MOMMY-DEAR.” The body of the man was pinned under the fold-out sofa, on his head a shiny new colour plasma screen. Traces of a struggle with a fire were visible. In the waterless bathtub lay Nikita with a Scythian sagaris in his groin. Well, well!

In Mu-dor, the underworld to which only pureblood Komi go, he heard:

“Take the wheel in your hand, proud sailor.” We are heading out on a voyage that will be remembered by you for its puke, jerking off, jerking off with puke, and drowning rats — ours are little movable. Here you’ll be embracing the mop, here sits Nikita and waits for coffee and fresh vegetables out of tin cans. Come, he’ll show you your cabin, youngster. Come in, more spacious, don’t mind that there’s little room here; when everyone’s on board, there’s still less. See the shelf, the bedside table, the eight bunks. See? Well then, they’re all taken. Well, all right, settle in, get used to it — in two minutes you’ll be swabbing the deck!!!

…by year 15 Cherdyntsev understood that higher than cabin boy on this ship he would not rise. In secret from the other sailors he lay on their bunks, and pissed on some, if he fell asleep and dreamt of a Jew. The captain had never introduced himself, hence a lot of problems with how to address him — probably that is why Nikita has still not managed to ask for shore leave.

…This cabin boy has noticeably changed. What is this? Has the salty air roughed up his face like that, or has the spirit of maritime service added to his stature? Eh, he’s a good lad, probably, if only he’d speak. Comes up to him, seems to want to say something, but at the last second freezes, then turns around and walks off. And naked in the shower he is fine, Nikita would rummage in his sweet little buns.

…The captain is constantly peeping at the sailors in the shower. And what is that to Cherdyntsev? He’s just a three-legged archivist-dog living in the ship’s cellar. He pays the rats for news with pieces of his fourth leg. Soon he’ll have to sacrifice something else. Most likely, the past. He’ll give up the 19th or the 18th century. What difference does it make?

And then he was born again. He was a growing organism. An organism. He didn’t drink vodka — better if he had. Instead, like some old peasant: sits by the window and lays down: “I am Zhelyabov, ran past a lot of things and boiled cabbage soup tastier than anyone!” He was daft, by God daft. Look closely at him — sort of like the young Sabaoth, and clever, and handsome within a certain social group, but the old man! Drinks, reaps, cavorts. Eh, forget it. Marya was the same, took no care of herself at all. No, well of course she did — tried on kokoshniks in her dreams. It was convenient to meet her in the same dreams. And he — a growing organism, one Marya was not enough for him. Now and then he would grow out of her and, like a snake, shed the skin. Her, Marya. Now there’s a she-devil, look out or she’ll melt away.

The bylina-etalon existed in their village, and not only for him. He was a grown organism, not a bohème like those lads and Nikita as a matter of principle. Had already built the izbas and shied at nothing.

The daring one. A pot-bellied bogatyr. Khazar roots were spied in him. It was there in plain sight, no purity of reasoning was required. Half the village he’d rebuilt while he was describing him. The old man drove his woman out of the cellar — she was pinching wine and secretly pouring it into the pond. Then the woman rushed about like a spawning salmon. She was to be pitied — but what can you do, such were the laws of social interaction. Saw, heard, that one must suffer — well, so she suffered. The people watched all this and marvelled. If only from the marvelling there’d been some practical use. But it was all spectacle and performance. Some sort of territory.

That day he came home. Was looking for a book. Didn’t find it — thought of departing this life. And he understood that it was not the book that was the cause. He was a growing organism. Growing into nowhere. Like the bean in the fairy tale, he was aiming for space, and space did not end. Here he was reviling his village, and he himself was caricatured and clownish.

Fussy footprints of those out debauching on Christmas — he gathered them into his head, grew a little sad, got used to the small frost. Quiet patter on a wooden Monday, clots of yellow in the corners of houses. He becomes a wholesome Master-citizen of his native country. He met a pair of foreigners, jabbering something in their own: benito, bambino, burrito. Terribly he wanted to consume food — quick, cheap, with sauce. Annoying flies — since summer he couldn’t stand them. Now — an obsessive idea that they are still here.

— Hi! — shouted a painted-up harlot bulging out from under the newspaper kiosk.

What kind of kitty is this?

— Didn’t recognize your schoolmate?

Devilkin. He tossed her farther away, put on impassivity, and dashed down the street. She cackled something hopeless, gathered herself with the one thought she had, and put up with it.

Like a hacksaw across his heart it cut, this sun in cold candles, in kisses with essence. Blinking hard, coming out of anatomy’s snares, his crown tensed, gave forth a couple of the most terrible ideas. They frightened his mother. She heard how he groans. The senior lady of the stairwell teared up with delight and filled her ledger with a fresh saying, played with variations and added a couple of syncopations of her own. And he, not born in Ustyug, decided to make himself manifest to the world, his boldness and touchedness. Mother-play had bestowed on him the ability to distinguish the disposition of forces, the origin of rules, earthly gravity, but did not notice one thing: with such a bump on the head he was losing his taste for survival.

The table, the play of the media player, which is imprisoned in the laptop and creaks something German-Danish, baroque, and from those centuries when ladies folded from their pubic hair

something resembling origami. A green cap over surrealist junk, among them a gingerbread prison. The spider Gennady is still in a lethargic wait

for low-budget flies. I hope that he will finally book himself a one-way ticket and pack up his filiform suitcases. Lethally alone and a single drop of saline — that is the obvious entry in the diary on embittered topics. First of them: the fight with Belarus. They took the life of an oppositionist somewhere on a dacha plot, seemingly a normal practice for both allied states. But one of them may, the other may not. Belarus has turned its arse to Europe, whereas for Russia — it is the arse itself. And in this arse the traffic cops are honest and the roads are good. Well, right, guts-turnover. Thin diplomacy, tasty eggs, uselessly spent on defacing an already ugly embassy building. Better if they’d stuck drugs in their exhaust pipe. A gift for Knowledge Day. It’s like in the relations of two dogs of one master: there is no boundary, and everything is permitted: fight, then fuck. Bobik steals food from Mukhtar’s bowl, and that one farts right into his snout when they sleep in their own shit. Governors and presidents run the country via twitter, hold raouts there, cough into a hankie and report that everything will be fine. Children with a genetic paunch will walk from home to Australia, the rest will assemble their kennels out of cigarette packs. Let’s abolish the title of “president of the republic” more zealously than before. Everyone seems not to be against it. Some come out with initiatives of their own — for example, Ramzan Kadyrov — an example of unprecedented free-thought. Well, let him be the head; these Kavkasians, they’re a wilful lot, they’ve committed another terror attack — everyone bad was seemingly wiped out, only good ones are left. And since no bad ones are left — the good ones blow up. All from being overfed democracy. The Amerikosy. Right old crooks. Not only did they build oil rigs of bone and blood in the Middle East, they also throw dust in one’s eyes. Straight up — Storm in Katyn. Souls destroyed, tyrant hanged, apologized, and withdrew. But a residue of 50,000 people remained. And even now it smells unpleasant on neighbouring Iran. And that’s a country where Jews are hated no more than in ours. I’ve heard them called fools not only by Zadornov, but also by Fidel, Hugo, and that swarthy handsome guy with the beard. We’re a team.

With the clatter of hooves the wheels of the departing bus rolled on. It was going neither to Deutz nor to Netphen. It ran up against potholes, reared up, now and then whimpered and began to neigh piercingly. Chattering female passengers strained to plug their ears with stoppers, a pair of dashing sportif-style lads consumed themselves in conversation. The sources of these people’s strength were astonishing in their extent. He wanted to gather them all up in a tuft and gulp them down. The bus’s maw kept letting out now steam, now drool. And outside the windows the darkness struck up its accustomed song. Nikita’s companion yawned and buried her nose right in his shoulder, breathing into his pores through the linen clothing spores infected with herself. The pull asserted itself in itself, and he was ready to wait a month in this dissoluteness. The vehicle would not slow for a long time. The place where they were headed was equally distant from the city. Before them stretched the probabilities of visiting any other such places; they might have driven off in an altogether different direction.

Fewer and fewer buildings waved kerchiefs, seeing them off. Ever fewer human motes whirled in the enormous borscht sloshing about the racing car of the atomic-number-selenium route. Nikita froze, pressed himself to the seat, and listened to the song that was audible through the cracks of the curtained windows. Reflections in the surroundings, as if drawn, pressed upon his eyes. His readiness to sneeze was above all praise. The man asleep on the nearest seat would have to show them the road to the place they were making for. A yearning without answer, the kind a person set apart from problems, escaped from obligations, or one who has pickled and eaten his own roots like some ginger, might desire. Such was Cherdyntsev, such was his companion, perhaps the guide desired the same. But he was asleep, and his dream caught quite other little strings of a grey gigue. At that moment the tie with his parents had already been broken, and consequently with the whole web of aunts, uncles, godparents, matchmakers, women-neighbours, non-nymphets. For a shut-in like Nikita it is very hard to fold the computer in half by himself, to launder his own jacket, to curl his moustache into the required shape. All of this was to be done by a cloud of servants recruited to look after the estate, the physical and emotional state of the Lord, his cattle, his — cattle. All of this was absent, since in his lineage there had managed to fit only well-off peasants and savages. Once for a whole year, after school, Nikita snatched a little piece of freedom for himself: lolled on the sofa, drank wine, whined and insulted reality. Not immuring himself far into books, he fancied himself a Great belletrist, quarrelled with whomever he could, over any pretext. A year passed, and Cherdyntsev was locked up in a prison where instead of bars there were desks, instead of rations, notebooks, and where the guards read moral lectures, well perhaps lectures too.

Ring-ring. The telephone rang, Nikita straightened his posture and mumbled contrabass into the receiver. It was the hostess of the house they were headed for. She inquired about their whereabouts and fretted about strong cigarettes. Nikita reassured her, promising to buy everything by the time of their arrival, though the trade-winds walked through his pockets. This was his testimony to worthlessness. In that same borscht he could not be awarded even the title of cabbage. In prison he had spent something like five years. The crime he had committed, being born in this country, had to be cut short precisely with such punishment. When it was all over, Cherdyntsev, as it were, opened his eyes and closed them again in a midday sleep. More and more often the ceiling became his only interlocutor. He peered into Tartarus and searched for the secret passages dug by Zeus so as to find the Titan. Loopholes he found — but the Titans were no longer there.

His body was dressed exactly for the reception. A pink tux. A top hat painted in a spiral. Blackdirty gloves and a stick-crook. His companion wore leggings and constantly asked others about them. Everyone around did not long ask themselves: “who are these people?” In this their thoughts and Nikita’s thoughts coincided. They do not ask themselves, the surrounding do not concern themselves with unnecessary questions. Because there is a difference. Which, what for — that is for scientific disputes, which (this is known to all) come to nothing. She was a shot little sparrow, Cherdyntsev was a wounded rook. A little more, and they were ready to peck crumbs off the sleeves of those around them. The bus doors opened at their stop. Nikita finally sneezed.

The hostess phoned again to ask about the guests’ arrival. Nikita and his fellow travellers had gotten off in a gloomy nowhere. That is what settlements are usually called that latch onto big cities in hopes of gaining a more weighty status and a couple of thousand in the piggy bank of a wretched population. No helicopter was expected, so they had to travel by earth, and on foot. On the way, both of his companions came to themselves and were ready to conduct conversations on topics unrelated to the cold and the oncoming dark. The lad set about hailing a car to get to the dacha quicker. Cherdyntsev anxiously glanced over his shoulder, afraid that any moment a band of local recidivists — usually undeterred by anything — would pull up in front of them. But immediately his reason entered an unequal duel with desires known only to suicides and those who had refused to legitimize all-that-is. Why fear for one’s hide? Such is the scoliosis of the self-preservation instinct. Nikita stepped on the toe of his shoe and struck up an unforced conversation with his companion. Estates hither, estates thither, teehees and haws. Memories of Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe. The houses on the sides of the road parted and vanished in fog. Some had built themselves their dwelling with their own hands, others were housed by the Soviet state. Almost every window shone with a dim light. Streetlamps, condescendingly bent, gave them no chance to forget themselves. Grey road. Thoughtless racing — from the road, demagogic mooing — from the pedestrians. They were heading to a dacha where the vegetable beds usually rub the hands raw, and the loggia rubs out memory.

The hostess phoned again. She had already come out of the house and was heading toward them, and once more fretted about the cigarettes. Not one car had stopped yet. Nikita saw the faces of the people sitting behind the wheel, in the passenger and back seats. They expressed contempt. Some expressed contempt more verbally.

— Hahahaha, — burst out of somebody’s foul maw.

They braked, and, without waiting for any reaction whatever, sped off at full pelt. Cherdyntsev’s and his companions’ eyes stared into the lovely sunset. It grew completely dark.

With every kilometre of the way, the same thing was happening to the light around them as happens to forest mushrooms with the approach of winter. Today was just the middle of the season. In the end the lightbulbs burnt out. Some thing swaddled being in woollen blankets. Nikita, at last, calmed down.

Now to cultural news. Barely had the New Museum of Timeless Art opened in Perm, when it already delighted the residents of the cultural capital with something fresh in the form of an ENTOFUTURIST exhibition, “Beetle-Courtiers.” At the press conference that took place, the director of the museum (a former governor — ed.), Mincing Beetle, announced the dances, and all the bohemian dragonfly-ladies threw themselves into the ballroom whirl, to the envy of the work-ant-labourers.

In essence, the exhibits of the exhibition became the guests themselves. Here is a maggot-lady with a bottle of putrescent 7up, here is a society earwig with her favourite handbag made of brain cells, behind her — the chief dung beetle of the city. Six-legged rudeness, eight-eyed obstinacy, arrogant little feelers, crooked buzzing. They are as timeless as the museum in which today they will be locked forever.

Little is known about the fact that the curator of the exhibition was the entirely unknown girl Mashenka, who each time she watched “Spider-Man” in 3D wanted to tear someone’s little wings off.

“And I fly by my eggs.”

The work of Pieter Van Der Komar (1617–1681) is distinguished by particular refinement. His world is refined salons with refined windows, and his heroes are refined, ceremonious aphids and tender moths in refined attire. Here is a work by the famed bark-beetle; on it is depicted — what would you think? — a pine forest. Butterflies, endowed with spirit, gaze into the windows. Their jaws are shut, they are engaged in retaining warmth and the scent of flower pollen. Bloody still lifes, micro-landscapes, tasty portraits. Everywhere the costs of Lefty’s nearly free labour.

The exhibition ended when one enormous boot crushed to the devil this whole abomination. The squeaking, the green ooze fountaining across the pavement’s bottom, whispered between themselves like a pair of lovers-turtledoves; they were bound by a death not entered in the registry of death. Art dies daily, just as it is reborn in fresh shavings owned by some antediluvian granny.

Nikita turned and found himself at the entrance to a kindergarten. Gates with bars resembling a snake that had set out to shed its skin but changed its mind halfway. Rust as an ashen bitch had staked its right to dominion over all the crevices of this passage. There was wandering. The road along the fence was soaked through with the choicest mud. This mud was picked out by the finest bikini girls and former governors in the same bikinis. Behind the transparent wall lurked the concealed adolescent fears — hordes of squealing brats occupying the sandboxes, mushrooms, swings. The petty ones raced about in their own dissoluteness, thrust their clingy little paws into their own selves, seethed, and became embodied in a chain of flights of truthfulness.

Seeing this loathsome pinball, Cherdyntsev began to recall maggots frenziedly swarming in the bushes of putrid meat. If one could see all this from a helicopter, then just such a sight would appear to the eye: young insects executing chaotic movements in an enclosed space. Without rules and without reproach. They embedded themselves in each other, babbled something in their own language, poked their fingers at Nikita through the grating, showed their milk teeth. He whispered a quiet song to their scarves. That song he had once heard from a girl — barely known to him. They had met at some training seminar. Nikita strongly remembered her cashmere monochrome coat. It fought terribly with her figure and height, thereby transforming a young personage into an elderly personage-personage. He saw her flit between the walls of a bakery, seize a shanga bun and, without a drink, chew it into herself. Nikita saw her by the pharmacy, in the same coat. Utterly young, utterly old. Damned coat! Back then he was in a rush over things, something vague was spinning in his head, something definite about her, he could not identify his hatred — the most frequent feeling arising in anyone’s head. And her, in the coat… He hated in her only the coat, but as for herself in herself, no, not really that so much, but altogether just that. Or better, no. Of course, no! Vileness.

Cherdyntsev had made an agreement with himself, once, when the toothbrush was having a conversation with the caries about something, that instead of the word “fucked” he’d always say the word “audacity.” It doesn’t always work out, but the effect is incomparable with the inscriptions on cigarette packs. Nikita also chose a situation in which he would broadcast his peculiarity: a game of Mafia! An infrequent affair in his life. On the birthday of one journalist! Whenever he remembered that journalist, he immediately wanted to squeeze a piece of plasticine in his fist, preferably turquoise. To get some freshly squeezed something. Once — that was in a Moscow restaurant — celery juice. Though he lies, what sort of restaurant. Moscow — in general is a city with nothing to boast about. This is said with all seriousness in Mansi cheekbones.

By the way, that journalist also cooks quite well. Though Nikita had never had to feed on her cookery. Larisa — that’s the name he invented for her. There had always been a special disdain toward that name. Well, you know, popular parlance, this and that. Once in the endless corridors of her Khrushchev block Cherdyntsev discovered a priceless stockpile of the works of Thomas Mann, wrapped in tinfoil made of aged newspapers.

They arrived a bit early. Barely catching his breath, Nikita bent his head into the ticket window and stretched a hundred-rouble note toward it. The garlic strained with the last of its strength; its gullet had grown concerned about it staying put. A rustle, he feels the texture of the stain on the ticket. Long walls, the coiled napes of old ladies, young lads in stripes, girls arm in arm, someone’s scarf on a bench. The floor under one’s feet lacks honey. Cherdyntsev and his companion descended into the basement, they wanted to empty their bladders of different sizes. Though Nikita lied. Slipping past a music lover pressed against the urinal, he hid in a stall and pulled out the treasured little bag of cocaine. One twist of the cellophane was enough to imagine the whole future effect of this white cunt. While he was snorting, the first bell rang, inviting the audience into the hall. Ah, philharmonic. Nikita’s highest aim — to make it so that during the intermission all the stalls are occupied by people with powder.

On the animal market a new beast has appeared — the noseprick. It’s just like a rhino, except instead of a horn it has a member of various sizes. The females of the noseprick are the fruitful bird-eggers. They fly very close to the earth because they are hindered by the weight of their own ovaries. The fruitful bird-eggers extract from their ovaries reproductive apples that very much resemble the real thing, right next to apple trees. The nosepricks find these apples and fertilize them. Unsuspecting farmers grab the ones that first come to hand, seemingly ripe apples, and are terribly disappointed when they discover that under the peel is hidden something far from one-hundred-percent juice.

His appearance — grey and yellow — could, in essence, embarrass people. But it did not embarrass children so small that they dimly remembered the names of all the shades of all the colours they could see only by shutting their little eyes. This past Saturday he began talking to four-year-old tots about Nietzsche’s aesthetic views. Don’t be alarmed. That sentence was one more provocation. They tried to seek out the Apollonian. With the help of sleep, to find in scanty children’s imagination the illusory reality that ought to be embodied in the A3 format. As it is usually done, they lay down, covered themselves with a mystical blanket, and plunged into sleep with all that follows: snoring, snuffling, whimpering. When all the little ones snapped out of sleep, Cherdyntsev enquired of them: “So, kiddies, what did you dream about?”

— Aeroplane!!!

— Good, and you, Vova?

— Seaaa.

— And you?

— Computer!

— And you, Anya? — Nikita asked his most gifted pupil Anechka.

— And I dreamt of meat! — Anya shouted and dissolved in a Dionysian laughter, capable, with the help of a megaphone, of raising mass hysteria within the walls of the museum where he went to work after being turned down everywhere and anywhere.

Cherdyntsev pictured a putrefying piece of bloody beef inside a child’s head and continued rolling on the floor. The children followed his example.

After lolling in the library of the museum, where he had been sent to prepare tours, he found the memoirs of a certain woman writer from the year 2017. It was said there that she had been the first to arrive. She had been let into a spacious office with viscose curtains, decorated according to all the canons of classical hi-tech. Nano-chairs, a wide nano-table, along the winding shelves laboratory rats scurried. By the entrance doors stood broad-shouldered men in Doberman masks with leashes in their ears. One of them approached her and pointed to the place she was to occupy; in his hands he held an iPad 8, in which shone the seating plan of the assembled writers. She noticed in passing that next to her the poet Shargunov was supposed to sit, and the place of honour to the right of the president was taken by Linor Goralik, a fresh edition of her latest novel already lying on the table. The writer sat down and began nervously tracing her finger along the smooth surface of the table, glancing again and again back into the past: at the jaunty little pantaloons her mother had dressed her in, the bushes near the country cottage, the puppies in the yard whom she named all sorts of garish and largely instinctive names, her first interview with a provincial actor, the eyes of her beloved when he saw in her hands their first little one — Glebka. Her reflections were broken by the sound of a door opening. In it appeared the president. Judging by all, this came as a surprise even to the Dobermans, they stepped aside. And then vanished altogether. She looked at Putin as at a dot in an eye test. He greeted her with a glance from narrow, barely noticeable little eyes and lowered himself into an armchair. Evidently he wanted to try it out with his new buttocks. Both of the president’s hands lay on the table and began to tap on it, with grown-out nails, something not entirely rhythmic. He turned to her once more, at which the sunbeam reflected from his face lit upon her eyes, and for a while she went blind. This did not prevent her from making out the enormous silicone bosom of the president, bulging out of his tightly buttoned shirt. His huge lips came unstuck, and he addressed her:

— So? Are you writers still the rulers of the thoughts of humanity?