…I told myself to relax, you're not shaking, we're all in the palms of the good Lord and he's rocking us all gently in his arms… the customers phoned, I couldn't work, I smoked, went to the kitchen, had a cup of tea, returned, smoked, up and down, up and down, sat at my computer… the April sun was casting its warmth upon the windowsills… «Marina?» «Yes?» «What's up with that contract of yours?» «Dunno» «Think they'll sign it?» «I think they will, yes» «Good» up and down, up and… He rang and said «Get here now»…
He had insolent brown eyes and a powerful smirk, we were having coffee in the restaurant of the Balchug Hotel, the clouds were floating high in the sky behind him and he was staring straight at me… «I feel so calm with you»… he was used to building people, he liked the power of it, and I didn't feel like resisting, a week before I was still in India where the mushrooms with their enormous hats would bow down to me… «I know six words of Hebrew», I said «Kamma ze olle, l'chaim and geschevt»… He smiled… «Geschevt is Yiddish»… «I used to think that l'chaim was a type of verb…» It was hard for me to explain to him about how Russian verbs conjugated just like French ones… His cell phone rang… and it was like three years ago all over again… date of birth, nationality, make of car, up and down, up and down… he moved to another table and I looked downwards, at the river, across the bridge, through a huge windowpane, and saw an almost empty restaurant room, small bunches of people at the little tables, the back of a man on the phone who was going round and round like the minute hand on a clock, and the face of a girl who was still in India only a week ago tilted backwards, and I stared at her and she at me until one of us ran up against the cupola of a hotel that was under construction… and I felt that my tilted-back head was quivering and freeing itself from my neck, and I tried to prevent it, but… «How old are you?» «Twenty-two, and you?» «Thirty-two, you got a boyfriend?» «From time to time» «And what time is it now?» «Between times, but you can never say anything for certain» «Fine, and what do you do?» «I write poetry, you?» «Precious stones» «Why Russia? You should go to India» «You think so?» «And why do you bother?» «With what?» «Precious stones» «Have you read Orwell's Animal Farm?»… The waitress dropped her tray and a sugar-cube leapt out from it and flew into my boot… I turned my head away and he used the moment to examine my green nails… «The world is a struggle for power, there are privileged animals and unprivileged ones, and I belong to the former category and don't want to give it up»… he said this all without a hint of irony… the April sun turned cartwheels in joy, spilling out light, pouring into this pathetic business reservation… my poor, poor Jewish boy, blinded by his own self-importance… I smiled… «Don't you agree?» «What do you mean, I always agree with everybody, I'm a conformist»… I could scarcely stop myself bursting into laughter… «But I know that in this world there are many essences, visible and invisible, and we can communicate with them, and I know as well that in this world there is nothing except love, and you have to feel its flow and not swim against the current»… «That's all very poetic» «So are we meeting this evening?» «Maybe» «I want to kiss you» «But of course, you're far too busy to have coffee with a girl you don't want to kiss» «And you?» «Oh I often have coffee with girls» «I'm being serious» «So am I, but unlike you I'm completely free» «And what about your job?» «My job and I are well suited to each other»… I walked along the embankment towards the metro, and the April sun stuck out its tongue, and the April wind tread on my toes and waves of energy covered me from behind, and I kept walking, stumbling on the air and getting calluses from rubbing against time, and a yellow butterfly alighted on my arm, and I could smell cinnamon and the river and petrol, and I kept thinking that our bodies are God's clothes and bravura suffering is vulgar, but only suffering wears out our bodies and only then does the body of our Lord show through them… but then I've said that my head is stuffed with all sorts of rubbish… And the customers phoned, and I went into the kitchen, and sat at my computer, and… he phoned and said «There's been a change of plan, get here now» «I'm busy» I lied, and he said «I've got meetings this evening and my flight's tomorrow morning» «OK, let's meet in a week» «But I want to see you today» «Ring me after the meeting» «That will be late» «In a week's time then» «And can I kiss you then?» «That's all spontaneous» «Promise that I can kiss you» «I can promise that I'll never make any promises» «So that means it'll have to be now»… «No not now»… «I'll ring you from Belgium»… Ha! «Get here now!» Like hell. What am I, his call girl? And then…
…And then, when the dark wet clay of night mixed into the dry white clay of day, and the old rabbi from the Jewish ghetto moulded the Golem from it, and the Earth rolled backwards underfoot like the globe in Picasso's picture, when in the year One the emperor Montezuma sent his ambassadors to Cortes bearing gifts to persuade him not to harm the Aztecs, and the grey ants of insanity crawled in an endless stream into Nijinsky's brain, transforming into a thick vapour that condensed quivering sticky droplets onto the inner surface of his skull, enveloping it, depriving him of sight and sound, and when the first people gather in the House of the Waters, in the lower reaches of the Vaupes river together with the beasts that were there, and they brewed beer, and nobody could tell who was man and who was beast, as they weren't that different from one another, and the first and only woman in the world was expecting a child, and when the dirty slush born of the May rains flowed along the Moscow pavements like pus, and a dark blue comet shone in the indifferent sky, and when he didn't phone from Belgium, two weeks after my return from India I knew that that soft-boiled semolina otter was twirling his moustache at that moment at the corner of Jampath Lane and the Tibetan Market, leaping out at passers-by and laying the waxy eggs of his prophecies inside them… and I decided that no-one had any right to my destiny save My Lord, who gently rocks us all in his palms, and then I wondered, «What if he knows the will of the Lord?» and I replied to myself, «But he who knows is silent and he who speaks does not know» and I felt sorry that in my fit of pride I had not «got there to him now»… And when I had a call asking me if I wanted to go and work in Los Angeles in July I remembered the fakir with his little folder and said «No»… «But we really need you to go»… «A whole month in LA, just think what you're turning down»… «No»… I knew with that unerring harsh clarity impossible to fake, that exalts and ruins lives, that I could never go there, that if I refused he would ring, he couldn't get away from me now, because I had chosen him, because summer was a time of death and because it was the law and I abide by laws, because the fiercer the enemy that kills you, the healthier you are reborn, and if I had no choice over my death, then I had the right to choose my enemy and my battleground… and I said «I don't want war, but I've chosen you, and it's late to have doubts and slink away, and whatever I do, it's the only right decision, and it doesn't matter what you think of me, and if you kill me God's will will be done but they don't speak of that»… and then I threw away my pride, and…