If you were a real, old-school writer, he told himself, you’d find an open bar now, perch at a table, and get down to work. Right now, at three in the morning, when your hands still smell of someone else’s blood, not an enemy’s, but the blood of some random clown, some philistine who doesn’t matter. When your head’s filled with marijuana smoke and your mouth with the taste of fake Polish whiskey. When icy drops are rolling down your neck and back. And you wouldn’t write about the cold and graveyard damp. Or about fools, jealousy, greed, and poverty. You’d fill your story with sunshine and the scent of tropical flowers. Salty ocean breezes would fly at your heroes’ tanned faces. They would love each other and die young.
He set out, feeling a surge of strength. He knew for sure that if he found an open bar he would do what others had done before him. Sit down and write. Moreover, if he didn’t find an appropriate establishment he’d grab a ride to the train station—or even walk—buy a ticket for the first morning train, and then find somewhere to sit in the waiting room and write anyway.
He couldn’t come here and not write anything.
This city consisted of black water and black stone. The water below, in the canals and rivers, and above, in the air.
Walking, he caught himself feeling as though he were breathing water.
The local inhabitants could probably use gills; especially now, in late fall. Or special breathing organs made of stone. Granite alveoli and tracheae.
The writer liked to fantasize after he got out of scrapes. He found contemplating abstract topics gave him a sensation of the fullness of life and was very calming.
His best friend once said, “Don’t look for peace, let peace find you.”
He walked to the station without finding a single open establishment.
Entering the warm, booming hall, he immediately felt a weakness. He no longer had any desire to work.
He bought a ticket. The cashier yawned mightily and glanced at his sleeve. The writer stepped aside and looked—there was someone else’s blood on his cuff.
Then he sat down on the plastic bench and composed a brief story about someone who loved people but not himself.
Twelve hours later he was home. That same evening his wife arrived, and the writer caught himself thinking that he was sincerely glad to see her.
The shirt he’d had to throw away; the blood wouldn’t wash out.
SWIFT CURRENT
by Anna Solovey
Kolomna
Translated by Marian Schwartz
I ’m not getting ready to die… This ridiculous plastic thing gets tossed too—who gives that to a little girl?… I’m not getting ready to die, that would be a waste of time. I’m moving. Very soon. Where, I don’t know yet, but there’s no staying here. Why would I do that? And don’t look at me like that from the wall. If only you could see… Hey, what is it with these photographs? Whoever invented photography ought to be shot… There’s one more sheet on the sofa, the last one, the rest are neatly folded and stacked. I’m moving and I don’t need anything now—when you don’t have it, you do without. There’s a kettle and a glass, so drink!
“Before, love sucked up all the air and I never did move anywhere. All those nights we fought and it always won, fell on me with its heavy, slippery body, its damp fog crushing me, squeezing my heart so hard it could scarcely beat, my breathing shallow, and until I smeared into a white cloud under its carcass, it wouldn’t stop making love… and it always said, I love you because you want to die. Anyone who says it’s chilly and youthful and its eyes are the color of a wave has never fought with it in bed. This city—Peter’s creation—always was the victor, smothering me with its embraces, so by morning I’d be brimming with the fatal poison of his seed.
“In the mornings, as I was walking across the Kryukov Canal to Theater Square, it would gradually reveal itself, like a vision, the cupolas of the St. Nicholas Cathedral piercing the gray fog. It would pretend we were strangers and just tickle me with its quivering air, flirting with everyone at once, the cheap stud! As if I weren’t the one who’d carried all its countless embryo-germs in my womb, as if I hadn’t coughed through its winters trying to spit them out. I crossed that little bridge on countless occasions, and each time admiration stopped me dead in my tracks, and I forgot all the darkness and reveled in the blue.
“But then I slipped away… I ran and ran… and I stuck out my tongue, teasing them!… I don’t go there anymore. But every day I try to describe… Here’s this stack of papers, I packed everything away in my chest and wrote for days and days, sometimes even at night. There’s heat coming from the tips of my fingers, and that heat gets transferred into the letters, my soul drains into the ink. I don’t like computers, I’m made of other blood, loftier blood, and my handwriting is like runes… open the chest and hocus-pocus—an empty chest, yes… because I had to condemn the words to fire for them to fly. It was because of the fire that they locked me up, my neighbors. Fire can burn everyone. That’s clear, that the fire burning inside can burn everyone. They decided I was crazy and rejoiced. Rejoiced that my room would free up sooner. They don’t have far to take me. Pryazhka’s a stone’s throw from here. A cheerful trick. They’re good neighbors, not mean. And you can see they’re poor. Who else lives communally now? They don’t have a car either. It’s enough to make you cry. Their boy sits on the steps with his friends all the time smoking weed. Could you really invite a girl up to an apartment like that? Poor people, their hearts seethe and have nowhere to bubble over. They themselves left, and shut me out, in case I burned the building down, set fire to it. They think they’ll be living in my room. Fools, fools, I have Mashenka… she’s not here now, but if anything happened to me she’d hop right to it and come running, my darling.”
Mashenka was walking across the bridge. Plié, plié! Knees out. Jeté forward, assemblé to the side! Rond de jambe, plié, extend! Fondu sur les demi-pointes! Your back!
What was the point? She hadn’t been there very long, but she still couldn’t get the words out of her head. Her heart started beating fast, though why should it, really? The Vaganova school… her dream… all that time not eating, not drinking, training until she dropped, leg cramps, and her ardent daily prayer to her home icons: Ulanova, Pavlova, Nijinsky, Lopatkina… and then—ta-da!—the envelope, please. The letters make it simple and clear: corps de ballet. Chin to chin, nose to nose, left-right, fire—dive, little soldier…
Masha was still foggy about what would happen to her afterward; she had dreamed only of victory. Roses by the basket and admiration. So there’d be none of that? She didn’t care if she had to slave twenty-four hours a day, didn’t care if everyone in the theater hated her, didn’t care if there was blood in her shoes every day, that didn’t scare her. What did? Being like everyone else, going around in Turkish sweats like everyone else, talking about television, trembling to save up for an apartment in Kupchino with her beer-swilling old man. Then going to a job her whole life, coming back in the evening, choosing wallpaper, hanging lights, closing the doors on people coming off the streets so the lobby wouldn’t stink, doing homework with her children, occasionally breaking free and going abroad to stroll in a crowd. What for? She hated all that, hated it. After all, times had changed. Anything was possible! Leave and find a job dancing? They would appreciate her there! But where? In a strip joint? Or one of those classical-cabaret kind of ballets that does The Birch Tree? Wait for some fat sugar daddy to make her his mistress? But she’d dreamed of creating a world of beauty around herself; she loved art, the audience, and she loved a city—Petersburg. She didn’t care if it was dark there nearly year-round. Its lights lit at night, its golden spires aimed for the heavens, the festive crowd on Nevsky, the Hermitage, architect Rossi’s street—their names alone made it worthwhile!