Oksana Zabuzhko
FIELD WORK IN UKRAINIAN SEX
Not today, she says to herself. Not yet, not today. In the kitchen—a tiny, “eat-in” kitchen (refrigerator, hotplate, cupboard with carelessly tacked-on doors determined to open every time you turn your back like a loose jaw on a paralyzed face, and all this separated off by a medium-height stand made of wooden planks that looks like something you might normally find in a bar—this “counter” allows you to serve meals directly from the narrow enclosure into the room—sure, why not!—like morning coffee, for example, or a little roast chicken for lunch, just like the ones in the television commercials: golden crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside, legs playfully tucked in and presented on a bed of lettuce—these chickens always look much happier than live ones, simply radiating a deep blush of pleasure at the prospect of being eaten—you can also serve juice, or perhaps gin and tonic in a tall thick glass, you can add ice, the cubes sound so funny when they rattle as you pour them into the glass, or you can do it without ice, and in fact the possibilities are endless, but you just need one thing—for there to be someone sitting on the other side of their fucking counter, in which, incidentally, a colony of ants seems to have made a home, because every once in a while you’ve got something crawling around on the Formica that really doesn’t belong in a hygienic American home, nor in a non-American one, come to think of it—someone to whom you could serve all this good stuff as you smile your cover-girl smile. Since, however, there is no one sitting there, nor is there about to be, you’ve gone ahead and decided to create an improvised winter garden on that counter comprising two innocent potted plants—three weeks ago, when you first moved in here, they were: a luscious, deep-green clump topped with orange flowers—that’s one of them—and a thick necklace of shiny, kind of plasticky red nubs on tall stems with elegantly tapered leaves—that’s the other. Now both plants have the appearance of having been watered with sulfuric acid for the last three weeks—in place of the rich clump only a few yellow leaves with unevenly singed edges hang like dog ears, and the former tight red beads more and more with every day resemble dried rosehips that someone has decided to stick on burned-out spikes for some unknown reason—the funniest thing is that you deliberately did not forget to water your “winter garden,” you nurtured it just like Voltaire had taught, you bet, you wanted for there to be another living entity in this apartment, the last of hell only knows how many, your temporary home, where the filth of all previous inhabitants has indelibly settled into every crack so that you didn’t even try to wash it out—however, the damned American weeds turned out to be too delicate to withstand your depression, which thickens, unstirred, inside these four walls day by day, so they went ahead and died on you, and you can water them or not water them as you wish—and you still have hopes of keeping people in here!)—so, as I was saying, in this kitchen you’ve got water dripping from the tap into the sink with a taunting dumb burble and there is no bloody way to drown out that sound—you can’t even play a tape because your portable cassette player has gone on the blink. True, somewhere outside the window, which is as narrow as those cupboard doors that keep opening, and quite dark at this hour (you don’t bother lowering the blinds, because across from you there’s a dead wall anyway), on the other side of the screen an invisible grasshopper chirks like a distant telephone, as though it’s stuck right in the screen itself—just the same way that that thought keeps chirking inside your head, or maybe that’s in fact the only thing that’s chirking—why not do it today, after all, why wait, what for?
If you think about it logically, there’s nothing at all to wait for. Nothing whatsoever.
Half a bottle of sedatives plus one razor blade, and—please forgive the unsuccessful debut. I tried my very best, with best of intentions, and since the result was a total disaster the honorable thing is to do is fold your cards—I’m not much of a player even now, and it’s only going to get worse from here on in: no relief in sight, and my strength’s not what it used to be: not a kid anymore.
And yet—no, not today.
Wait a bit longer. See how this film ends. Unlike those that they broadcast here on “public channels,” where in the tensest moments as you watch, with involuntary chills of fear, as the hero races down an empty tunnel where from around the bend the most frightening of monsters is about to pounce on him, it suddenly hits you—shit!—everything’s going to turn out just fine—another two-three minutes, a confrontation, a pile of swinging limbs, some rolling around on the floor, and the beast, with an outlandish cry, by some miracle transforms to dust, while the masculine and only slightly ruffled hero, enveloped in smoke from the conflagration and breathing heavily, draws the rescued Sharon Stone to his chest, or that other beauty, what’s her name, the brunette—and your overwhelming surge of fear is suddenly revealed in all its ridiculousness: once again those Hollywood guys have succeeded, if only for a moment, in suckering you—unlike those, the film that you still can’t bring yourself to shut off does not necessarily have to have a happy ending. Still, turning it off is unforgivable bad taste. And foolishness. And childishness: I’m not ready for the test, so I won’t go to school. No, sweetie (“sweetness,” she ironically corrects herself: that’s what that man, who’s probably feeling shittier that she is right now, used to call her, but that doesn’t matter anymore), you’re not allowed to duck out, you deal with this properly, step by step, and then we’ll find out what you’re really made of. Got that?
Write down those words, I’ll tattoo them on me, a rough, surly voice pipes up from within, a very different woman, cynical, with in-your-face street-smart mannerisms picked up “on the inside” somewhere, quite capable of knocking you off your feet with curses should the need arise: if a person in general (every one!) is one big prison, then up to now this bitch inside her has lived tucked away in the remotest cell, coming out rarely, only when things got especially bitter and tough, and even so mainly for show: P-pisses me off—she’d hiss at moments of irritation, shaking her head and calming herself with an acrid smile; or else, digesting the aftertaste of the latest put-down (of which there was an overabundance lately) she would relate to her friends, her eyes wide with anger: Trying to make me a patsy—I don’t think so!—right palm slapping hard against the crook of her left elbow as a clenched fist flew up—in America the prison hag learned how to swear in English and was especially successful at rendering the word “Shhiitt!”—a hiss off the arched back of a cat, and also the contempt-laced “Oh come-on, give me a break!” with which she once lashed that man—all in all, it was with that man that this disheveled witch with strangely unhealthy glistening eyes and teeth and some invisible but suspected criminal past would periodically run out to center stage, boldly smashing the fragile vessels of unfulfilled dreams; that man would liberate her, call her forth from the remote jail cell—as soon as she heard, during their first fight, that brutal, fist-swinging intonation of his: “You tell me—what the fuck did I come way out here for, I had enough of this same shit at home—up to here!”—the bitch eagerly rushed out to intercept him, she recognized a worthy partner, it was only here that they were truly partners—and then there was no stopping her as she spread her wings in previously untasted freedom: “I started working on a head yesterday,” he would try telling a fellow sculptor in her presence, and the bitch would tear out ahead, dropping buttons and pins in the insuppressible excitement of verbal excretion: “That’s wonderful, dear, you do need a head—it can only help!”—he’d turn a hue so dark it seemed as though ink rather than blood flooded his face, whispering into her ear, “Stop fucking me up!”—the witch, exhaling cigarette smoke, laughed heartily from deep inside as she felt at least slightly pleased about something for the first time in a while: “Now, now, dear, where’s your sense of humor?”—“I left it back in our old apartment,” he’d mutter (they left that apartment, thank God, and it would be best if the owners could seal it up for about half a year, until the smell of plague had dispersed)—“Well why don’t you run back and get it,” the witch grinned, “I’ll wait here.”—“I’ve turned in my key,” he’d mutter again, thinking that with that he’d put the issue to rest, but he was mistaken: “I was the one who turned in the key, you still have the duplicate,” she shot back: the power and lightning speed of their fencing with clubs was not to be apprehended by an outsider; no, say what you may, but they made a good pair, that much can’t be denied! And now, when the time has come for that bitch—cursed and abused, scorched by misfortunes to the core, with a converted-to-acetone-but-still-extant spirit of survival (where in God’s name does it come from?)—to accede to the throne and assume full reign of the prison, taking responsibility for the further course of whatever life may still smolder in it, dispensing orders all over the place: that door—do not enter, and this trash—get it the hell out of here right now, and that section way over there—air it out, we’re converting it into a museum, and who’s this loser dragging her ass and slobbering up the place, get her out of my sight! (That’s wonderful, dear, you do need a head—it can only help!)—that bitch (and bitch she is!) has abdicated, turned into a smear on some distant wall, neither hide nor hair, and in all the caverns of the now empty prison an entirely different voice sounds, shuttling back and forth with uneven step: pitter-patter-pitter—then silence, and throwing itself against the walls, the same place time and again, each time weaker, while a poor, unloved girl abandoned at a rail station wails, and wails, and wails, eager to take the hand of anyone who says to her, “I’m your daddy,” except who’s going to say that to a thirty-year-old broad—that’s the girl that you yourself hate inside you, you’ve tried to keep her under lock and key since you were an adolescent, in the dimmest, furthest basement chamber, without bread or water, not letting her move a muscle—and still she somehow managed to survive and there’s no shutting her up now—now, when it seems that there’s no one left except for her, that there is no other you.