Yulia burned with desire as Oleg ripped off her panties and bra, but she was trying to drive Jacob out of her thoughts. Oleg licked her belly, arms, and face—whatever he came across—with his hot tongue.
German balanced on the edge of the roof, trying to hold onto the New Year’s garland that was slipping through his fingers like a snake. “Jacob!” he shouted. “Jacob, help me!” “I’m hurrying, Papa!” Jacob shouted in reply, stamping his boots on the roof—and with a running jump he pushed his father off.
Oleg thrust himself into Yulia, panting and moaning. Yulia tried to get into his rhythm, furiously driving him on. Goddamn you, Jacob, her brain grumbled angrily. Goddamn those novels! Goddamn this job! Goddamn this life!
Jacob carefully mopped up the floor in the living room and kitchen. He checked the chicken in the oven to make sure it hadn’t burned, then went to his room. He looked at himself in the mirror. There was an ugly red mark on his neck. I can put on a sweater, Jacob thought. He carefully removed his checkered shorts and put on the white pants he’d hung neatly on the back of the chair. He found his white sweater in his closet and went out into the dining room, where the utensils were already neatly set on the snow-white tablecloth on the oak table. He sat down at the head of the table. It’s Christmas, Jacob thought. I’m home alone. Like in the movies.
The next morning Yulia woke up with a hangover and a nasty taste in her mouth. Her head was spinning. Oleg wasn’t next to her. Yulia rose with difficulty and walked into the bathroom. The shower brought her back to earth. She moved into the kitchen and sat down on a stool.
Life was quietly returning to her—the street noise, her neighbor’s scratchy radio, and the sound of the boiling kettle. Yulia drank plain hot water, then she went out on the balcony to clear her head. The casino-ship had turned out its lights and no trace remained of its nocturnal grandeur. Yulia smiled. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a crowd of people below. She took a closer look.
On the asphalt, in an unnatural pose—his hands and legs turned out like a marionette—lay Oleg. Naked. Yulia blinked. Then she mechanically stepped back.
Yulia struggled for breath. She went back inside. Here they were, Oleg’s clothes. Here were his shoes. Here was his briefcase. With trembling hands Yulia unlocked it.
The briefcase was packed with bundles of euros.
It will be Christmas soon, Yulia thought. And I’m alone. With a stash of money. Like in the movies.
Jacob smiled.
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
by Sergei Samsonov
Ostankino
Translated by Amy Pieterse
He acted as though he had received a divine certificate verifying the fact of his brilliance from birth. While the other inhabitants of Literary House on the corner of Dobrolyubova and Rustaveli were plunged in a state of despondency that comes from the sense of a wasted life, my roommate, Tatchuk, lacked even a hint of that overpowering feeling of hopelessness.
Surfacing to earth out of Lucifer’s cowshed, otherwise known as the Moscow subway, on our way back to the dorms, I felt, as always, dejected, stunned by defeat. He seemed, as ever, pampered by good luck, an immutable, victorious smile on his lips. I hated Azerbaijanis, Russians, Moldavians, Jews, Tajiks, Ukrainians, blacks, and all other earthlings, forty thousand of whom passed through the vestibule of Dmitrovskaya station every day (with marble facings the color of a dried blood blister). He seemed to take no notice of the riffraff, cutting right through the crowd as though it were just a hologram image of a human herd.
“What’s with the gloomy face?” he asked as we were coming out of the underground crossing on Butyrsky Street. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“No, but I can tell from just looking at you that you think it is. Honestly, though, you can’t blame me for the fact that you didn’t have a single manuscript in your file! That, my man, is just plain bad luck.”
It was like this: the head of our university was approached by the organizers of a certain literary prize, who had requested a few examples of the more interesting manuscripts that the student body had produced. All of this (reading and submitting the text) had to be done in a matter of hours, because the deadline for novels and stories had almost arrived. They chose Tatchuk, myself, and one other student. They checked our files, but mine was empty. Unlike Tatchuk’s, which was stuffed full of work. So I missed my chance. A month later, I found out that my roommate was a nominee for nationwide fame, and a tidy little sum of money to boot.
The 29-K trolley pulled up to the stop and we squeezed into the coach, filled with scum and lowlifes.
“Cut it out,” he said, hunching up his shoulders squeamishly, shoving away the people crowding into the trolley. “If you want, I can help you get a job at Profile. Let’s go there together tomorrow, I’ll tell them you’re a better man for the job,” he suggested.
“What about you?” I said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get a job in Business Primer, they’re offering a better salary there.”
While others spent months looking for a job, he always had a choice between four or five attractive offers. All he had to do was cross the threshold of an editorial office, and the woman in charge went wild. “What a sweet young man!” He possessed qualities that piqued the sexual interest of young ladies and mature matrons alike: a sharply defined jawline, the playful brow of a caryatid, the sweet eyes of an angel, with the muscular hands and other features characteristic of a dominant male. If you only knew the way the girls at the university stared at him adoringly, burning with desire to give themselves to him.
But the newly won position had no value for him, and he ignored the obligations it entailed. In fact, he never stayed on with the same publication for longer than three or four weeks. Yet each time he found himself another job without the least bit of effort, as if Moscow employers were constantly creating new vacancies just for him. It was as though he had some kind of aura about him, like some sort of mythical deer with jewels pouring out of its hooves. Indeed, I owed several good jobs to his lucky charm.
We got out at 2 Goncharny Proezd, passed the bookstore named, quite idiotically, Page Turner, past Pharmacy and Optics, one right after the other according to phonetic logic, and they were soon behind us.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said, nodding at the neon sign over the grocery store where young writers went to buy ingredients for breakfast and dinner (individually wrapped crab sticks and a packet of mayonnaise, occasionally allowing themselves some disgusting treat like liverwurst, or a string of glossy, suspiciously natural-looking pink hot dogs). He bought a pound of choice ham, half a pound of Dutch cheese, canned olives, and two bottles of Chilean red wine.
“What do you think?” he said as we were leaving. “Isn’t it about time I started writing a new narrative, a story at least? I haven’t submitted anything in a while, and spring is just around the corner—exams are coming up. I’d like to do a narrative using the stylistic techniques of Nabokov and combine that with the magical realism of Márquez. What do you say?”
“How about the sexual candor of Miller,” I couldn’t resist suggesting. “Maybe you can work that in?”