Kitabı oku: «A Flower Ungodly», sayfa 2

Love poetry and vexation of spirit. Girl number 1. Sveta.

Sad thoughts came and went, but my whole consciousness was engulfed in the flames of love. It was impossible to live without love. Love was necessary. And a necessity always finds a way to materialize sooner or later. From lack of freedom, my soul quietly dried up like a pair of socks left by the fire, and love – while providing some distraction – accelerated the process, so by the second year of service, my soul looked like fish jerky. A human in love is like a chicken with its head cut off – it still runs, but, in essence, it has already died. And a seventeen-year-old cadet in love inside a military incubator is a mad and ridiculous creature. Why I decided that I was in love, I don’t know. I just did. Maybe because Sveta – my classmate, no, I’d known her since kindergarten – was the only girl who did not succumb to my innocent proposals to examine and touch each other’s private parts. All the other girls in my kindergarten group quickly agreed to this harmless game. Sveta was an angel, both because of her purity and because she sang in an angelic voice while playing her guitar.

Moonlit panorama,

Night as clear as day.

Sleep, my sweet Svetlana,

Sleep the night away.

Little nose is nestled

In the pillow soft;

Stars are just like freckles

Shining from aloft.

She did have the prettiest little nose, although freckleless. I thought about her at school, I thought about her while fishing, during the exams, dreamily resting my cheek on my hand, thought about her at the academy while standing in formation, thought about her when falling asleep and waking up. The only moments I did not think about her was whenever our room was engaged in group masturbation. I couldn’t picture someone as pure as her during this enjoyable yet shameful activity. I must say, it turns out that I did not think about Sveta quite often. At any rate, my face towel became rigid like a tin sheet in a single week… I visited her at the edge of Kupchino; swamps and lakes overgrown with reeds started right behind her house. She sat at the table studying for her music school entrance exams, and I sat on the couch where she slept. Knowing this, I was close to losing consciousness: here, she lies undressed, resting her beautiful head on the pillow, touching the sheets with her bare legs… and I touch the same couch with my buttocks.

I knew I looked stupid just sitting there. Coming all this way to sit still for hours. So I took her big toy dog to comb it instead of staying motionless. I came to see Sveta five times, and I combed the unfortunate dog each time. It became manicured like a lawn in front of a Scottish castle. Sveta was already giving me funny looks, and I understood that it was a little bizarre to sit and comb the dog like that, especially since it was already so smooth that it could win the world championship for the smoothest toy dog hairstyle! To be honest, I didn’t just look at Sveta. Sometimes I hugged her. Yes, I hugged Sveta, but not really her, but rather, a sleeping bag. Once at school, or not even at school, but in the summer, at a pioneer camp, we harvested carrots for a whole month. When the shift ended, I asked her to lend me her sleeping bag. I said there weren’t enough sleeping bags to go fishing with the boys and that we needed just one. I, in fact, came up with all of this to at least talk with her coherently about something. So we talked, and she gave me her sleeping bag. But when I brought it home, I, of course, could not resist hugging and sniffing this sleeping bag. And maybe imagining Sveta in its place a little bit. The sleeping bag smelled of Sveta. Only its middle part had an unpleasant odor, but I achingly sniffed that part and was not at all angry with my love for smelling like that.

The sleeping bag was back at home, and I was in the barracks, so there was nothing to hug or sniff, and I had to pick where to go on leave: to the sleeping bag or to the living Sveta? In the end, I chose the real girl. But Sveta didn’t know that we had closer contact – I’m talking about the sleeping bag – and again looked at me funny, probably because I was sitting on the sofa with half-closed eyes, combing the dog. Then I plucked up the courage, moved to her table, and my hand slowly started to sneak up to her hand. It took ages. I watched my hand in horror while it lived its own life, almost touching Sveta’s, then crawling back and climbing into the sleeve. Then I mentally commanded it to act, and it quietly covered Sveta’s little hand. Sveta smiled and said that she couldn’t write like that. But I no longer needed any words; I didn’t even listen, didn’t hear them, beautiful poetry sounded in my ears, and I immediately began to write it down right in the taxi on my way back to the academy, and I called it – Sonnet #1

If I love selflessly, then let the whole world love you!

If I love tenderly, then you’re my only one!

In my eyes, nobody could come above you,

My love for you will be forever young!

I was smiling when my taxi neared the barracks, and I beamed at the realization that I had no money to pay for said taxi. The car stopped, I was AWOL – I escaped from the barracks without a leave. But my happiness was so great, I held her imaginary hand in my hand and flaming verses – talented and beautiful – in my heart! I opened the taxi window and, again with a grin, shouted to our platoon commander Goncharov.

«Sir!» – my face shining in the darkness like a lantern – «Can I have five rubles for the taxi!»

The sergeant was so shocked by my impudence that he pulled out a banknote and gave it to the driver. To me, he only said, «We’ll talk later.» But what we talked about later, I, of course, do not remember.

Love catatonia and an unsuccessful proposal.

After I held Sveta’s hand, my life completely changed. It was clear that Sveta was madly in love with me, which I spent whole nights explaining to my roommates while they inspiredly masturbated and nodded their heads sympathetically in the dark. I mostly stopped studying and walked around with my head hanging on its side, my mouth agape, smiling like an idiot. Somehow, my second New Year’s Eve in the barracks was about to arrive. I continued to write incredible, as it seemed to me, poems.

Look out the window in the morning

I see the trees covered in white.

And just like that, without a warning

Fall turned to winter in a night.

White fluff is falling from above,

Enveloping the land around us.

As soft as feather on a snow-white dove

It’s wrapping up the world in silence.

I insistently urged my friends to read my exceptional works, but they got too tired during the day to exert themselves intellectually at night. On the days of my inspiration, our room fell asleep earlier than usual. I couldn’t expect them to understand my sudden gift if their hearts weren’t opened with love like canned stew with a can opener! But I wouldn’t leave them without a life-giving sip of poetry. By the light of the lantern outside our window, I quietly read my beautiful works to my sleeping comrades, trying to convey all my tenderness towards them, who were devoid of love, preaching love with the perfection of the word.

Rejoice! For our very purpose

Lies not in solitude or dull philosophy

That only does a man a great disservice

And robs him of his curiosity.

It’s only love that matters in our lives,

Love is what moves the world around us.

And when love cuts us like a thousand knives

It also is the thing that heals us.

The whole humanity’s existence is reliant

On loving hearts’ reciprocal pursuit!

Throw out your old books and become aspirant

For letting love inside your heart take root.

I hoped that with me muttering those words, my friends would see beautiful dreams filled with love and joy, and if one of them tossed and turned, I started reading from the beginning so as not to spoil the process of poetry penetrating their hearts.

The New Year was approaching, and Sveta invited me to a party with her older sister’s friends. I came in my sorry little suit, and as it was terribly cold outside, I put on a pair of thick snow-white grandfather the general’s long johns under my trousers. The party was okay; the trouble started when everyone quickly moved to the floor to sing and talk after eating. I sat there focusing on a single thought – how to prevent my trousers from riding up and revealing my snow-white underpants that glowed in the semi-dark room. I was constantly smoothing down my pants. The suit was bought when I was sixteen, so its sleeves and trouser legs were a little short, but it wasn’t obvious when I sat on a chair or walked. But sitting on the floor, who does that? Those nasty underpants flashed like moonlight with my every movement, and it seemed to me that everyone was looking at them, so I sat in a daze, did not sing, did not laugh, and did not even notice a couple of questions addressed to me. White long johns, white long johns – spinning in my head, even forming into stupid little rhymes – long johns, strong bonds, drone songs, morons…

Sveta must have thought it was because of love and ignored my catatonia. We left the party at about two in the morning, I accompanied Sveta home. The edge of the unfinished Kupchino was deserted, and the northern lights shimmered above our heads. I walked and dreamed of only one thing – kissing her. But we were walking; how could I go about it? Just stop and kiss her? It would be rude! And there are the northern lights overhead; she and I were seeing them for the first time in our lives. You can’t interrupt admiration of beauty like this. Sveta was silent, and I was even more silent. For forty minutes, we walked to her house, forty painful minutes, during which I tried with all my heart to turn to her, take her hand and kiss her. But my body continued as if nothing was happening; it did not obey me! In the elevator, while we were riding to the top floor, an enormous weight fell on me so that I could neither raise my hands nor open my mouth while the seconds flew by, counting down heavily the last moments of my evanescent happiness. She said «bye,» and I stood in the elevator until its automatic door closed and answered «bye, Sveta» to the already closed door.

I left the building, the northern lights disappeared, and my soul hurt and howled, but then my consciousness forced out everything unpleasant. Only the northern lights, our walk, and the memory of spending New Year’s Eve together remained. And joy poured out in a rhyme.

A tender melody is pouring

From my no longer troubled soul;

There’s no more stifling control

That often comes without a warning.

It isn’t nearly the springtime

And yet my heart is full and soft.

I do not know what this is called

I only know it is sublime.

I don’t remember the road home or how I went out to visit Grisha Litvak; I only remember that for the first time in my life, I got so drunk that I danced with his friends’ girlfriends, they pressed into me, and I pulled away, afraid that they would feel my stone-hard erection. The girlfriends were cute, and I was drunk. And then my hands slid down from another girl’s waist, no, not on purpose, I just hadn’t slept in two days and dozed off a little during the slow dance while Grisha’s friends looked at this, silently laughing. Grisha – the only honest person among my friends – said that your poetry, Anton, is shitty, and you need to read better poets, or better yet, give it up completely. I was dancing, clinging to someone’s girlfriend, a young nurse, and Grisha shook his head disapprovingly – presumably as the most seasoned alcohol connoisseur among us – and moved my hands from the girl’s bum closer to her shoulder blades while the girl only giggled and said, «Grishka!»

Then, closer to the morning, vodka suddenly needed to be outside my body, along with mayo eggs and Russian salad. Aleksey Grigoryevich, Grisha’s dad, a well-known typhlopsychologist – Grisha showed us his doctoral thesis printed in Braille – thoughtfully helped me vomit from the balcony, very sympathetically saying, «Here-here, it’s okay, it happens, that’s it, good, here, wash your face and let’s get you to bed.»

I was sleeping, but I heard the door slam, and a friend of Grisha’s parents, some physicist, was telling them how he went out in the morning to get some beer, and there was a queue. He had an officer’s cap with him for just this type of situation, and, briskly walking up to the stall wearing the cap and a sheepskin coat, he chirped, «Guys, so sorry, I just got off the plane from Angola, let me get a bidon* for my fellow soldiers!» The queue timidly asked, well, how is it? He grunted, finishing his glass, and answered, «it’s hard, but we’re advancing!» Then he took the bidon and fled. I returned home determined to go to Sveta and propose like the physicist ’from Angola.» Alcohol was still gurgling inside me, along with poetry, and a military march sounded in my ears. Sveta immediately opened the door, and her mother offered me something to eat. There was soup on the table.

Sveta and I sat in the kitchen, and everything was so prosaic: lukewarm soup, her mother in a ratty bathrobe, and an unsmiling Sveta. Sveta sharply asked her mother to leave the kitchen, and her voice did not sound like magical singing about the sleeping Svetlana… I got up, turned to the window, and proposed to Sveta with a memorized text, standing with my back to her since it was too scary to face her. The proposal sounded very unconvincing, something like we are no longer schoolchildren and should get married. Not a word about love, not a word about poetry, not a word about our delightful future. Like back then, in the elevator, I became more wooden than Pinocchio. Several minutes passed between words, so I was unsure if Sveta could even piece my speech together. «I don’t know,» she replied. No, I did not expect such an answer. I was waiting for a quiet Yes, or a joyful Yes. After all, I held her hand, and we saw the northern lights! At worst – Yes, but next year?! The skies collapsed, and I saw clearly that there was nothing between us, and there would never be anything between us; we didn’t even talk except for that one time with the sleeping bag. I silently gathered my things and stood at the door for a while. Sveta was also silent. I left, and on the way home on the tram, I wrote:

I will leave and let the snow conceal

Every step I took along the way.

I will go and let the rain reveal

Empty space where I was sure to stay.

I will leave forever, as in death,

Turn my back on her, who never was.

Let my heart feel winter’s frigid breath,

Close my ears to tired and useless words.

I’ll descend from daylight into night,

Draw a line under my broken soul.

Disappear forever out of sight,

Burn to ashes like a piece of coal.

* A Soviet bidon is a kind of keg or churn used for carrying liquids.

Booze night and talking to the general.

Love, of course, did not fade all at once and sometimes rolled over me, leaving a painful lump in my throat. Nevertheless, reality began to show through the fog of the love mirage. And this reality was terrible. There weren’t any horrors like beatings or bullying – there was simply no air, no freedom, and a life that did not belong to me. Once, I came home and admired my Rex Begonia, huge and fluffy, with broad leaves and petioles covered with bright orange spirals of flat hairs. I grabbed it and brought it to the barracks. No one at the entrance said anything, which was understandable since the cadets rarely came with indoor plants instead of vodka. I put the begonia on the windowsill and went to dinner. When I returned, I found the windowsill empty. Outside the dorm, I saw Pinochet’s sly mug with a sweet smile smeared over it.

«Cadet Pospelov, come see me.»

I came in. In his office, on top of the safe box, was my begonia. I blinked in disbelief at the audacity. Olshansky continued, «Such a beautiful plant! You can visit me when I’m here and water it!» «You fucking piece of shit,» flashed through my mind. «No, I won’t water you even once, even if you shrivel up in here.» I was angry at the captain, the begonia, and myself, that I so stupidly gave a gorgeous plant to this ghoul… Not only does Sveta not want to marry me, but they also take away my most valuable thing – a plant! The only difference between our dorm and others of the same kind, the only sign of freedom, an object from real life! I was suddenly determined to go free, to leave this vile artificial military world. No, not the world in general, but the academy. Not a plan yet, but a concrete certainty that I absolutely must live freely has solidified in me. Let them kick me out! For bad grades, for theft, no, theft is low. For drinking! Drinking is both pleasant and effective!

I invited Dimka, my roommate, to visit my cousins. With our last money, we bought Cinzano, other vermouths, and wines; I don’t even know why we didn’t just get vodka. I probably wanted to not merely get drunk and enter the academy like a scaffold but to mess around and feel the taste of freedom in the very act of drinking. We went to my cousin on Suvorovsky Prospekt, where grandfather the general lived. He was already very ill and was in the hospital, and her parents – my uncle and aunt – were at the dacha. Natasha and Irka were delighted, we brought drinks and conversations, and the boy wouldn’t be any trouble – he’s their cousin’s friend, after all. Dimka was arguing about something with Natasha; she obviously did not like him, he was too intelligent, and at that time, she had a boyfriend, also a cadet, but from macrophages, that is, from the marine faculty. She and the guy had a fight, and they broke up; yes, I already knew that her boyfriend was a huge asshole. But Natashka argued that all the guys from the academy were assholes; she tried to convince Dimka. They were both very drunk, so they just yelled at each other monotonously while I silently performed the duty of a cup-bearer, allowing myself and the whole group to get thoroughly hammered. I only drank like this for the second time in my life, so I didn’t need much, let alone such a mix, so I quickly lost touch with reality. I only remembered that I needed to return to the barracks since Dimka had a leave of absence, and I was AWOL.

I don’t remember how I left the general’s apartment, only that I found a heavily intoxicated Dimka in the arms of some girl of easy virtue on the first floor. He must have gotten tired of arguing, left earlier, and picked up this beauty somewhere. He clung to her while she was trying to help him take her. I felt so ill I wasn’t even surprised by the scene, although I had never noticed such tendencies in Dimka. It seemed that Dimka felt no better. The first time I threw up was immediately between the entranceway doors. This gave me a few moments of clarity, and I managed to hail a taxi. The first driver, seeing my condition, slowed down but then drove on. The second one, shrouded in puffs of cigarette smoke, paid no attention to it, and I flew into the car like a bag of shit, with my legs left out and my face buried in the driver’s leather jacket.

«Yikes,» the driver said, «you won’t throw up here, will you, my friend?»

«No» – hiccup – «I’ll letchukno,» I replied.

I had to let him know often, and the last time was right in front of our course. The squadron was heading to dinner. Having vomited and paid off the driver mere three meters from one hundred and forty of my comrades, ten sergeants, and barracks on duty, I crept up to the foreman. I slowly glided, bending my back and carefully trying to find solid ground with my feet while it was treacherously slipping from underneath me, not because I didn’t want him to notice me, but just as not to fall; the pavement looked very suspicious. I was physically unable to salute and stand in line, so Shadrin approached me and asked me to breathe, then said, «Don’t bother. The whole street’s already saturated.»

«Something tasty,» he added, «Go sleep. We’ll figure it out in the morning.»

He never asked about my leave, which was great. I even felt faint tenderness in my heart for this two-legged mandible and a lot of pride for the ’tasty’ revolution. The course stood in an admiring stupor; no one laughed, there were only quiet, sympathetic smiles, or maybe I dreamed it. Someone helped me up to the second floor and even undressed me. Then – darkness.

«Unwell’ does not even begin to describe how I felt the next morning. Olshansky summoned me to his office – apparently, he did not want to solidify my heroic image by chastising me in front of everyone – and quietly hissed that he would kick me out for drinking. Here I mumbled, slightly swaying on half-bent legs, my speech slurred from courage and alcohol, that it would be very helpful and that I myself wanted it. Pinochet fell silent for several minutes, curiously examining what was in front of him, and then sent me to the head of the faculty, a handsome, gray-haired general.

«Here!» I thought. «Now I will be free.»

Clinging to the wall, I came down to the head of the faculty’s reception room. But the general didn’t scold me; instead, he reminded me about my sick grandfather, his great merits, and the fact that the studying would end, «and then you can do whatever you want – work with your roundworms, go skiing, meet girls.» I just nodded my head, wondering how he knew everything about me. I quietly told the general I wanted to be neither a doctor nor a military man. I tried to squeeze out a tear but couldn’t – my eyes were red and dry. He replied that was not yet a reason to leave the army. And then he shook my hand and let me go. I guess I should have been glad that this old man was so kind to me, but I was devastated. Military life cunningly entangled my arms and legs like a thin cobweb, and it was entirely impossible for me to get out, and the spiders – Shadrin, Olshansky, other military freaks – were deviously approaching while I hung there full of Cinzano and sadness. All this upset me so much that I began to write a great poem about the meaning of life.

…I walk alone through woods I do not know,

Through endless trees, shadowless and unstirring.

From time to time, I see a mellow glow.

Could this be the departed genius?

…

I lost my way… Where will my soul be found?

Back where it started since the world is round.

This body has become too small to live in,

I dream about infinity! Alas,

The body’s always with me as a given,

My soul is an uncrossable crevasse.

How may a weary traveler repose here?

Or find a pair of wings on this celestial sphere?..

And so on, it turned out to be a long poem, a real one. It filled a third of a thick notebook, not like those short poems about love. The poem was officially read in the smoking room. After that, I was recognized as a real poet in our dorm, which was my whole world, well, almost. And in the poem, it turned out that religion, science, the past, the future, pleasures – I meet all of them in the poem – nothing can satisfy me, and only Love in the form of my Svetlana makes sense. The poem ends with these words:

«Hallelujah to Love! Hallelujah to Genius! Hallelujah to Life!»