“You’re not missing anyone?” I myself don’t know what power lifted me from my chair and made me walk up to the blond guy. “You look like a dead man I know… sorry, like someone I saw recently. He looks an awful lot like you, like your brother really. Are you looking for him?”
“You want money?” He raised his eyes to me, dark and quick, like the river water under the ice.
I’d already raised my arm to punch him in the nose, but the waiter appeared beside the table with another steaming mulled wine, and his scornful look told me that I hadn’t shaved for two days and I looked like a tramp in my damp, ash-spattered coat.
“The alms seekers have multiplied. Here, take it.” The guy dug up change from his jacket pocket and sprinkled it on the table. I recognized the jacket too, and my mind went dim. Blood surged to my temples, I leaned on the table and looked into his eyes. His face was smooth and welcoming. I remembered how two days before I’d thrown spongy gray snow on that face, trying not to look at the snow-dusted eyes and the dark depression of his sunken mouth.
“Listen, buddy.” The waiter put his hand on my shoulder. “You need to get out of here, leave the man alone.”
“He’s a dead man,” I said, pointing to the blond man. “Touch his hair, it’s linen yarn. My granny would hang some like that on her fence to dry, and then she’d straighten it with a steel comb. He’s a drowned man, I buried him, but he dug himself out and ran away.”
“I see.” The waiter let go of my shoulder. “Get moving, sicko. Don’t worry about the brandy. It’s on the house.”
“Hey, look.” I reached out cautiously to tug at the man’s bangs. “He’s going to be bald now, and if you give him a swift kick he’ll fall to pieces.”
The guy moved my hand away, stood up straight, proving taller than I’d thought, pushed his chair back with a rumble, and started for the exit. I followed him, hearing the waiter’s voice behind me.
“Kind gentleman, your two mulled wines and croissant?”
The blond guy pulled a five hundred out of his pocket and threw it on the floor, on the dirty sawdust. I walked out after him and tried to grab his sleeve, but he pushed me with such unexpected force that I flew back into the café’s window, slipped, and struck my temple on the stone sill. Blood gushed into my eyes,
I sat down, leaned against the wall, and wiped my face with my sleeve. The drowned man sped off, and for a while I could see the shiny blue dot of his jacket in the crowd, then I lost it. I tried to get up but couldn’t, and I remained sitting. Pedestrians gathered around me, a fellow in a leather jacket started clicking his cell—I think he was photographing me, the bastard—the curious waiter stuck his head out the door like a lizard, some girl chirped something about the police, and I gestured that I was fine—but it was too late.
“Can you stand?” A cop who had come out of nowhere leaned over me. “The van’s on its way, I called it. Do you have your ID? Citizen, can you hear me?”
I could, but I couldn’t speak, the air was thick, and I had a hard time pulling it through my windpipe. I’ve got to get out of here, I thought, feeling the bills in my pocket, small change. I had to get out of here, I had the diamond in my sock, they’d find it if they searched me, and this would all get many times worse. I couldn’t go to the station.
What would I tell them? That I was a fence? That the river was giving birth to monsters? That for the first few days they were helpless and couldn’t climb out of the hole? That I had to drag them out so that they could rise after a few hours, shake themselves off, and head to town?
That this was the cycle of dead water in nature? That Petersburg was in danger?
The first thing they would do would be to pull my file, then they’d beat me in the kidneys, and then they’d call the orderlies. That was at best. At worst they’d find that dodgy old jeweler with knocked-out teeth and the glade with the silver sheep. The blood was pouring down my cheek and now creeping onto my neck.
“Listen, friend,” I said with difficulty. “Lean over. I have a stone worth twenty grand in my sock. Take off my boot, take the sock, and put me in a taxi. And do it quick, before your guys come. Come on, before I change my mind.”
After getting all this out, I heaved a sigh, stretched my leg out, and shut my eyes. An eternity passed, the cop was in no hurry, I could hear the street noise—the rattling windows, the streetcar rumbling, the radio muttering, the shuffling of soles over the wet snow—but still no sirens. The gawkers seemed to have started to disperse, and I no longer heard their alarmed voices.
“What, are things really that bad?” the cop whispered, leaning toward my ear. “Stop it, this is just a scratch. It would be different if you’d been smashed in the head with a silver ingot.”
He smelled palpably of slime and diesel. I unglued my eyes. Or rather, just my right eye because the left wouldn’t open anymore. The cop’s smooth, welcoming face spread like an oil spot in water. Behind him there was some lady with a string bag looming, and behind her the young woman who had shouted about the police, a linen fringe covering her forehead all the way to her eyebrows. Behind the young woman was a snow-covered square with a view of Kamennoostrovsky Prospect. There were people walking down the avenue, a lot of people, a whole lot of people, more than usual in this part of town. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I knew that many of them were wearing yellow scarves. I looked at them with one eye until the siren went up at the corner of Avstriiskaya Square.
“Get up, Luka,” the cop said, holding out his hand to me. “The van’s here. Very well, we’ll drop you off at work.”
BARELY A DROP
by Andrei Rubanov
Liteyny Avenue
Translated by Marian Schwartz
T he writer headed off an hour before midnight.
Usually he took the sleeping car: he liked his comfort and did not care for traveling companions. In fatter, richer times he might take a whole double. For the sake of solitude.
His best friend once said, “Don’t confuse solitude and loneliness.”
Now leaner times had come upon the writer. He wasn’t poor, of course, but he had no desire to pay extra for solitude. Thirty-nine. At that age you no longer feel like paying the world extra; it’s time to arrange things so the world pays you. And the sleeping cars were worse now. The creak of cheap plastic, the gray sheets. The brown railroad dust. Last time he’d traveled with his son. He’d wanted to show the boy springtime Petersburg; it had been a cold May, and the heat on the train wasn’t working. (The conductor apologized nonchalantly: “It broke; we’re fixing it.”) The writer froze and promised himself he would never travel in sleeping cars again. The cold and dirt—that was no big deal. He’d known worse in prison and barracks. Only there it was part of the rules of play, whereas here it just added to his irritation. A train plying between the two capitals and made up of “luxury” cars should be heated on cold nights, right?
So this time he took a regular compartment. He tossed his meager backpack on the rack, went out into the passageway, and waited for his neighbors: first an unshaven guy with an ordinary man’s ordinary face; then a young woman with a light smile and a heavy ass skillfully raised on too-high heels. She might have worn simpler footwear for travel, the writer thought censoriously, and he headed for the dining car without lingering.
He had found muddle-headed, unintelligent women annoying since his early youth. For some reason, though, he was drawn to the muddle-headed types more than the others. Muddle-headedness has its own energy and charm too.