Pig: A Thriller (10 page)

“I want book,” the woman demanded.

“Yeah? I want Maria Sharapova’s phone number. Neither of us is going to get it. Now, fuck off.”

“Book!” the woman demanded.

“What book?” Snow conceded. Once she found out he didn’t have it, he could send her on her way.

“
The
White
Bone
.”

“I thought you wanted a book?”

“Yes, an book.
The
White
Bone
. By Barbara Gowdy. You give me.”

Despite the immense weight pressing him down to the bed, forcing his spine glued to the mattress, leaching the life out him, Snow forced himself to lean over on one arm. Depressed and not drunk enough yet to burn off his hangover, he forced a smile like he did at work whenever a supervisor came by.  The real benefit of living here in Noyabrsk was that once his work day was done, he never had to pretend to anyone, he could just lie about, drink and kill time, which had somehow become viscous – thick, unable to flow, as it normally did for most people.
             

On his bed table, an industrial-strength, Soviet-size alarm clock ticked off the minutes noisily, commanding Snow when to wake up, when to sleep, when to shit, eat and when he was permitted to lie around uselessly. Snow hated the damn thing. It was dented conspicuously where he’d knocked it against the wall numerous times, but he was under no illusions over who was in charge in this relationship. The clock – time – was. That didn’t mean he couldn’t fight back a bit, though.

“Who the hell is Barbara Gowdy?” Snow growled.

“She has written wonderful novel. She should be Russian. About elephants. Mud the elephant. Known as She-Spurns. You must know this. She’s Canadian. You’re Canadian. It’s about elephants.”

“How do you know I’m Canadian?”
“You're the toilet man.”

“Excuse me?”

“The symbols they use for things like toilets and airports. Just symbols, no words, so anyone can understand, no matter where you go in the world. No words needed, just logical pictures. A Canadian thinks them up. It’s you.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Pity. It's a very important job.”

“You still didn’t answer how you know I’m Canadian.”

             
“It must be a wonderful country,” continued Magda, completely ignoring the question. “Where you only need the police in the mountains. Probably to protect you from the bears. I know there are no elephants there.”

“What?”

“The Royal Canadian Mountain Police. They are famous even here.”

“Mounted, not mountain. They ride horses. Or did. They don’t anymore. Except in parades. Or when the Queen visits.”

“I know you are Canadian because you have a picture of Baffling Island on your wall. See?” She had the faint hint of an accent  Snow couldn’t identify, like an unknown spice in a dish yhe’d just tasted.

“That’s Baffin Island, not baffling. And it’s not a picture, it’s just a stain.”

“‘The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze,’” quoted Magda in suddenly perfect English.

“Huh?”

“The Buddha, Canadian. The Buddha. Talking about pictures, what is real and what is not real. Whether that is really Baffling Island or not.”

“I’m Snow,” Snow told her, like it was a complaint. “My name is Snow.”

“I know,” she said.

“Listen, Anne?” Snow remembered where he’d seen the woman now.

Magda looked at him blankly.

“That’s your name isn’t it? Anne?”

The blank look turned to puzzlement.

“I mean I heard that big guy…Pig? … call you that. Miss Ann Something-or-Other.”

Misanthrope, thought Magda. Misanthrope. That’s what Pig called her, a misanthrope, someone who hated all of mankind. Just because she hated him. As if he were all mankind.

“Magda,” she said. “My name is Magda.” That was the difference between her and Snow. She wasn’t boasting about her name, but she wasn’t complaining either.

Magda farted. Not discreetly, letting one slip out while she jiggled a cup or scraped her chair to cover the noise, but tuba-like, sonorous, mellifluous. Without a beat, any indication that she was embarrassed or had done anything wrong, she continued.

“I need to use your Joe.”

“What?”

“Your neck. You know, to shit.”

“Ah, the John, you mean,” Snow said, switching to Russian. “The head.”

“That’s what I said,” she answered him back in English. Magda Timofeyeva Perskanski might sometimes miss individual words, but she always caught the music.

“Look,” Snow said. “We can speak in Russian. I have a little. Probably as much as your English.”

             
Snow didn’t speak any language but English well, which was exactly why he chose to live overseas. Not being able to talk to anybody ... well, he couldn’t think of a more pleasant circumstance, to be completely and utterly alone. Seeing life through a fog of incomprehension, he was free to drift through life rudderless.

“No Russian, please. Right now, I am studying English. Sadly, it is the language of the world. You will give me your book. Then, you will teach me.”

She stood there and stared at him.

“What?” he demanded.

“Your J-O-H-N,” she said, stretching out each phoneme sarcastically. “The H-E-A-D. Are you going to let me use it or not?”

Snow motioned her to the small cubicle with a nod of his head.

Magda was always startled to see herself in the mirror.  Green, almond eyes, wrinkles at their edges, suggested a face that creased readily into laughter; the face of a peasant -- round, bland, unreadable --  indistinguishable from thousands of others in the
Rodina
.  They were eyes capable of expressing sympathy or scorn with equal intensity, eyes that adored Mozart and mushrooms, Puccini and psychedelics. She was able to smell things acutely, as if she had extra frequencies on the radio with a special wave band other people couldn’t access. The total package suggested someone who looked like she had a great deal of experience minding her own business, someone as good as any man, better than none. In her mind, Magda felt so much better than she looked. She could live a hundred years and never get used to this bulk she carried around now. Inside her head, she was still the skinny, starving rape victim she’d been in the
gulag
.

No flushing the toilet to hide the sound of her body functions for Magda. She’d read that some Asian women flushed even before doing their business in order to hide the sound of their tinkling. When you had one hole in the floor to serve three hundred women and just a single bucket to wash it down, embarrassment over doing what came naturally quickly disappeared.

She flushed, and while the sound of the cistern filling still filled the small space, she quickly rifled Snow’s medicine cabinet.

“Did you know the average elephant produces fifty litres of urine a day,” Magda said once she got back.

“No. Did you know it’s rude to walk into someone’s home without being invited?” Snow chose to be direct. Perhaps the woman’s English was not good enough to understand she wasn’t welcome.

“Listen to me carefully, Magda. Go away. Now. Go out the door and close it. Find another foreigner to try your game on. I don’t want a woman. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had one. Besides, I don’t like you. Not even a little bit. I don’t like people who push me to do things. It’s rude and I don’t like it. I don’t like people who are always talking. I don’t like ....”

“....people,” Magda finished for him. “Period. You don’t like people. You are the misanthrope, not me.”

Snow considered that for a moment and decided to concede the point. “So?” he demanded. She was right. He didn’t like people. Any of them. “What’s your point? Why are you really here? What do you want?”

“To help. What do you want?”

“Your absence.”

“The pills don’t work, do they?” she challenged. “Or the vodka. How long do you think you can keep going on like this?”