“As recently as the beginning of the twentieth century, the Perovo neighborhood in the south-east of Moscow consisted of a treasure trove of toxic swamps, the kingdom of poisonous mycelium, and randomly intersecting paths along which it was dangerous to walk alone…” In this manner began the oral dictation, concocted by Danaë in order to test the literacy of her pupils, who had come back from their summer vacations with their heads well aired out. It ended thusly: “And now, fuckity-suckity, here you dwell, young sluts and indefatigable jerk-offs…”
Having spoken these words in her mind, Danaë stretched her pale lips into an ambiguous smile and began dictating another text—a fake one—that had been approved by the pederasts from the Ministry of Education: “In the spring the forest is awoken by trills, drills, spills, trolls, and various other junk…”
Her daddy, who had schooled her in the art of complex linguistic expression, was dying of cancer… Yes, Innokentii Karaklev adored phrases that produced an effect. And he had taught his own daughter to adore such turns of phrase. As a result, the speech of both the Karaklevs was as out of place in the neighborhood of Perovo as a fugue for organ would be in a shawarma shack in a resort town.
Watching over her daddy’s demise was crushing. Danaë thought it unbearable to have to live and suffer watching such a thing. But damn it if she thought her life worse than death. She was convinced that she could live on, even without a future. Somehow. She wished for her daddy to disappear. Yes, to disappear, like a bout of hiccups, which, having come from god knows where, torments you for a while and then snap! it’s gone just like that, no one knows how or where. Daddy—she had thought since childhood—wasn’t fated for the grave. She rejected the idea of his decomposition in that stuffy heat and darkness. Her daddy couldn’t become a skeleton. That’s what Danaë had thought previously. And her daddy could not be turned into an urn of gray powder. But Innokentii Karaklev was dying—he emitted the smell of decomposition and his daily caprices were driving his daughter closer to the brink.
The salary of a Russian schoolteacher permits one to purchase three of the most inexpensive urns, then dismember Daddy and shove him into the urns in equal parts, and transport the urns to three different polling stations, pretending that one has simply mistaken the place to somewhere else. But the salary of a Russian schoolteacher can only nurse Daddy back to health if he has been afflicted with a foot fungus. By purchasing the appropriate ointment. Yet Innokentii Karaklev was dying not from a foot fungus, but from cancer of the innards. The chemo had made him look even more cancerlike: his eyes bulged, his back had lost its layer of fat, and touching it brought to mind the shell of a shrimp. Soon he’ll learn to walk backward, thought Danaë.
At school, many knew of Danaë’s misfortune, which went on without end. The directress Gavriushkina, with all of her predatory, livid, gloating heart, sympathized with Danaë. Gavriushkina would say to her: “Danochka Innokentievna, you should get a good night’s sleep. I’ll think of someone to substitute for you, Danochka Innokentievna…”
Danaë couldn’t bear expressions of pity directed at herself. In her mind she quickly but carefully rolled up the velvety paths of pity—embroidered with gristle and spread out before her—and having rolled up each and every one of them, shoved the scrolls deep inside Gavriushkina’s cyclopean ass.
“Thanks for your concern, Maria Petrovna,” Danaë would reply to the woman, “but I think I can manage just fine…”
“It’s clearer to one looking at you from the outside,” Gavriushkina parried. “Your beautiful eyes have lost their shine.”
I’ll show you some shine, thought Danaë, and following right behind the scrolls of velvety paths, into the back end of the directress, she stuck a metaphysical myriad of wrinkled sheets, recently soiled by Daddy’s excretions.
Sometimes Daddy liked to frighten his daughter. When she was six years old, Innokentii Karaklev told her the story of a Chinese governor who had two pupils in each eyeball. It was because of these four eyes that he had received his political appointment; Dad said that the Chinese guy lacked any other talents. Six-year-old Danaë was unable to sleep without having nightmares for a whole month. The Chinese guy visited her in her dreams and made eyes at her relentlessly.
Innokentii Karaklev had been an archeologist. Unfortunately, he’d never dug up anything worthwhile, anything for which one might win an award. All the Troys had been excavated before him. In his youth, he had planned to search out the tomb of Abel Adamovich Yahwehev, but somehow it just never panned out.
What’s wrong with me? Danaë was indignant with herself. He must have dug something up, I’ve just forgotten.
“Listen, Daddy, what was it you dug up?” asked Danaë as she changed his sheets.
“Cancer.”
“Yeah, but what else?”
“You…”
“I think it was something related to the burial mounds of the Scythians.” “Yeah, well, the burial mounds…”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“Why would I want to talk about it? Soon I’ll be a Scythian myself…”
Once Danaë got a call from the bank and was offered a line of credit. What the bank needed with Danaë in particular even the bank didn’t know. The one who called had a hissy voice of unidentifiable gender.
“I don’t need any credit,” said Danaë into the receiver. “My dad’s dying of cancer.”
“Forgive me, for god’s sake. Forgive me. Accept my condolences. All the best to you,” the voice poured out like a frightened fizz.
“No, wait!” shouted Danaë. “Don’t hang up!”
“Yes, yes?”
“What kind of condolences? What made you say that?”
The voice was silent.
“I don’t believe it’s possible, do you hear me? It’s just impossible!” Danaë yelled. “I don’t believe you! You cannot offer condolences, do you hear? You are just a petty, greedy maggot! I don’t even know your name, or your age, not even your gender, you son of a bitch! How dare you offer me your condolences? And where did you get my number?”
But the fizz wasn’t listening anymore. It had gone flat. Danaë hung up the phone and lit a cigarette, looking out the window at the other side of the street, where a tram rumbled past a plaza recently torn up by excavators. The plaza—pockmarked with ditches in which lay naked sewer pipes gazing at the ashen sky with their tired, rusty eyes—was empty. It was empty, if one were to ignore the statue of three orthodox nuns hanging their heads in mourning over that which could not be seen from the window, and that which Danaë could not recall, even though she walked past these nuns-in-ditches every day on her way to school.
It was cheaper to go to the market. Although daddy hadn’t taught her how to bargain. It was all for the better, taking into accent Dad’s slow demise, that double-mouthed Karaklev family had begun to consume less food.
“One Karaklev mouth is foaming,” said Danaë unconsciously to the lady attempting to sell some pig’s feet that would never know flat-footedness.
A month ago Danaë went to see a certain bastard who had been referred to her by another bastard. Both of them were medical professionals who considered themselves transmitters of veritable mercy. They rallied for euthanasia, adding that if she were to tell anyone about it, they would make her into a visual aid to Vesalius’s anatomy. The pill that would spare Dad an agonizing death would cost Danaë eight-ninths of a teacher’s savings. She remembered that day well. She was walking home from the train station, down 2nd Vladimirskaya Street. The sky was the color of boiled pork. The traffic lights were doing what they always did—preparing to break down. Flattened cigarette butts lay strewn about the asphalt like pharaohs whose sarcophagi had been jacked. Stray cats dashed away from short-order cooks dealing shish kabab on the street.