…and I rang him myself and asked «How's things?» «I'm busy, ring me in two hours'time»… I rang… He said «I'm busy, ring me at seven»… I rang… He said «Today's bad, ring me tomorrow»… I rang… He said «Wait a minute» and asked someone «Guy, what do we have on this evening?» and they replied, and he said «I'm busy, I fly tomorrow, till next time»… But I knew that he won't get away… and I said «OK, you know my number at work» and I hung up… and he rang back a minute later… «Hold on, read me some of your poetry» «But you're talking on your cell» «Don't worry»… And I translated my poem into English for him:
…He asked «Did you write that just now?» «I translated it just now» «You're a genius» «Me, sure» and I hung up the receiver again… And I felt waves of energy, up and down, flowing up and down over me, and I wandered the streets for hours, I didn't just wander, I hurtled, along the Arbat, along the Vozdvizhenka, past the building site of the underground mall on Manege Square, across Red Square, down past St. Basil's, over the bridge and along the Ordynka to the embankment past Oktyabrskaya Square, along the alleys of the Taganka, and I couldn't eat or drink or sleep, I smoked and lost weight and trembled for days on end, sounds and smells reached me late, the rains came, the sun peeped out, the phone rang and a female voice said, «Don't be afraid of anything girl, you have a double life-line, take risks».. Moscow was washed, scoured, cleaned, painted, pulled down and rebuilt, and I popped home, went to work, I touched objects and creatures, I should have done something with this insane energy, somehow find an outlet for it, inside me… at nights the May wind blew out of the holes and the gaps beneath gates, out of sewage gutters and cracks snatches of conversations, parts of bodies, handfuls of smells, flashes of light, chunks of open space and scraps of paper, and by morning it would mould the city afresh from all of them, and every morning newly-made people and animals, houses and cars, roads and yards, shops and restaurants, newspapers and films, trees and statues, would all wake up and not remember who they were, and lived as best they could, and didn't notice the disparities, and I would wake up in the morning and wonder who can guarantee that on waking I was the same person who had fallen asleep the night before?..and then I didn't sleep at nights, and lay in wait for the wind, so as to ask it this, and when it didn't come I reasoned that immortality was mistakenly linked to eternity, because everyone is so sure that life belongs to time and that consequently immortality — life without death — belongs to a very large slice of time, endlessly large, and that is eternity, but in actual fact eternity is not a very long time or the absence of time — it is any given moment lived out totally and utterly, here and now, as one rabbi said… and you can be immortal and never know eternity, while you can be eternally mortal, and the main battle of the immortals is for this very moment, and…
…and then they rang me again and said, «Let's go to England, come to England in July» and I said «No» «Come», we'll go to London, and then to Wales… and I recalled London, cut out of my dreams, and I remembered the feeling in my stomach in Trafalgar Square, and in my hands in Leicester Square, and the swans in St James' Park, and the vortex of Camden Town, and the metallic voices at the railway stations «Clapham Junction, this is Clapham Junction» and the black beauty in a white blouse and tailored blue suit who stared straight at me all the way from Brixton to Oxford Circus, and the sculptures from the Kenyan carnival in the Museum of Mankind, which made your hair stand on end if you looked at them close up, and walks round the centre along cobbled streets, and the crowd in front of the departures board at Victoria Station who were tensely awaiting the announcement of their platform numbers, and the Chinese restaurants of Chinatown, and the green hedges, and the cold stones and echoing galleries of Westminster, the synthetic coffee in polystyrene cups, and the feeling of miracles behind your back, and I agreed «Let's go» and I sent the fax to London and got my reply, and…
…and then he rang… «Marina?» «Yes?» «Eto David.» «So you speak Russian?» «A little» «Aren't you a sly one» «But of course, I'm a Jew»… he said all this in Russian, so he understood everything… «Shall we meet up?» «Maybe» «Now?» «Nowit's 11:30» «Is that late?» «I have an exam tomorrow» «I've just flown in»… and I remembered that we are all in the palms of… and I said, «I'm on my way»… And when the taxi-driver had heard «to the Balchug Hotel» and smiled knowingly, and when the May wind had gathered up the cigarette smoke out of people's mouths to save it for tomorrow's drags, and when the doorman had forgotten to open the door for me, allied with the taxi-driver's guess, and when my father had said «You have no self-respect, you run off at his call» and when the two girls at Reception had accompanied me with their knowing gaze across the lobby, past the armchairs, and when the saxophonist in the bar had broken off his tune as the metal instrument could no longer withstand the surging night with its throat, I said, I had a dream that we were walking somewhere, and you were leading me by the hand, and I suddenly realized that it wasn't the same outer you, it was the inner you, it was someone strange and terrible, and I recoiled and wanted to break away and run off, but I couldn't change anything because, well, when I said you were leading me, what I meant was we were floating like stage scenery, as it were moving and standing still at the same time, and you couldn't oppose this activity or inactivity, and I felt short of breath and suddenly let go, opened up inside and said «It doesn't matter who you are, I'll still take you whatever» and I relaxed, and I felt I was walking a centimetre above the ground, though from the side nobody could notice that centimetre, there it was all the same, and that centimetre of air decides everything… he puffed on a cigar, «Was that good or bad for you?» «There's no such thing as good or bad, only a feeling of harmony or its absence» «I don't understand you, there's always good and bad» «look me in the eye» «No» «OK»… he smiled, and I thought, damn what he thinks, all that's most important happens within, he doesn't even notice that he's killing me, he doesn't even feel it… and the thunderstorm began, and the avalanche descended, destroying road signs that laconically stated «Rappelez!» and whales beached themselves on the shore, and uprooted trees re-fenced the roads, and the elephants sounded their trumpets and Anna Nicole Smith stopped sensually stroking her legendary bosom on the muted TV screen and fainted somewhere between Nice and Magadan, and panes of glass cracked and shattered slowly, just like in a computer game, and the female praying mantis choked in surprise on the head of her beloved, and there were smells of lime buds and Tibetan fragrances, and a clattering truck with Californian plates and hardened stains of peat on its sides did not turn at All You Need is Love, and I gazed down at bodies now separated from each other and thought, «Is this all? Is this how it always is for everybody? And is this how it will always be for everybody? And…» and I thought on… «Could he have been right then, the one on the corner ofJampath Lane and the Tibetan Market? Can even death not alter this?»… and then I lay in the darkness for a long time after, looking at the emptiness of the yawning window frame, at the velvety clouds, and the angels tugged on the strings again…