The Moscoviad (14 page)

And hence you
intuitively run downstairs. A few landings, some long closed doors, a long
narrow corridor lit by only one lonely lamp by the entrance. Not a single
living soul, just like on the third day of creation. And simultaneously a
feeling that someone is here, someone breathes secretively in this
semidarkness, behind one of the doors. You should hide and wait. This is the
only chance. Wait until they lock everything. If he’s here, soon he would
definitely want to get out.

You sit down
behind a large metal wheelbarrow with the inscription “Shoe department” on its
side in crooked black letters. You listen, but only hear the echo of the
resigned shop life upstairs. You could have borrowed money, say, from Kyrylo,
but now you’ve offended him, and besides said a bunch of obscenities to his
wife about her actually quite average legs. And the main thing: how to get a
ticket home. For you’re sure they’re long sold out by now.

What remains is
to close your eyes and quietly croak here, by this wheelbarrow. You, who dreamt
of travels and of writing unfathomable piercing lines, of waking in Venice and
going to bed in Jerusalem, you who wanted to embrace all humanity and love all
the women in this world, you, the fool who treated life like a bottle of
expensive hard liquor, die here now, unknown, an unidentified body in a wet
sweater. A quiet tear ran down your cheek. Don’t wait for me, ye who are
waiting, I will not come to you!

Soon they will
lock this building. The boundless night in a scary dungeon will begin. Then
there will be the entire Sunday, and on Monday morning they will find you here
by the wheelbarrow, frozen to death. Truth be told, if you manage the catfish
well, you could last perhaps as long as week. Water can also be found, in those
very restrooms, for example. Everything looks not so hopeless. You will find
him out, the vile thief, and having taken your wallet back, will go back to the
dorm—to take a hot shower, shave, have breakfast. In the evening you could go
to the conservatory for Mozart’s Requiem. Under the beneficial impact of his
otherworldly music you will finally start writing your novel in verse. For it you
will receive a lifelong stipend from His Royal Mercy and set out for a
round-the-world trip . . .

The train of your
thoughts is interrupted by steps that approach from the side of the corridor.
Somebody indeed was there. You tense like an archer the moment before the shot.
You briskly get up from behind the wheelbarrow, almost losing your balance in
the process. Shouldn’t have drunk so much. At the exit from the hallway, right
under the lamp, you see the flash of the familiar tiepin. Him!

You block his path.

“Give it back,”
you say in an uncompromising voice.

“What’s with you,
boy?” shrugs his shoulders the thievish baron. “You had too much to drink,
right?”

You should come
two or three steps closer. Then you’d be able to reach him with your foot. Kick
him in the balls and only in them—this is cruel, but it works. The bag in your
hand will be in the way, but it could also be of some use: it’s rather well
made, from crude patent leather.

“Give it back,”
you repeat in a metallic voice, making a few steps towards him.

He reaches in his
pocket. This is worse. You did not foresee this. But you manage to kick him in
the hand, and the mace flies far to the side. He rushes back—into the darkness
of the corridor. Now only your legs will help you, von F., your drunken but
rather long legs, the tired legs of a young poet. And so this chase begins . .
.

One of the
doors—maybe even the last one—turned out to be unlocked. Then again stairs, a
steep staircase going someplace down, almost unlit except for reddish emergency-style
lights or some such thing. He was running some five yards ahead of you,
breathing heavily. But you were unable to shorten the distance between the two
of you. Apparently you had much worse night vision than him and thus you had to
constantly slow down and feel the bulges in the walls at sharp turns. Besides,
your large angular bag was sometimes hard to get through the narrow stairs.

An involuntary
thought came to your head: the true pickpockets, the kings of this delicate
craft, as a rule work in groups. And quite possibly the guy you’re chasing is
luring you into some horrible trap, into a gangster den where they will be
countless against the lonely you. This thought resulted in ever sharper pangs
of pain in your liver and the more and more palpable lack of air in your lungs.
You felt like stopping, giving it all up and lying down somewhere.

Fortunately, the
stairs at long last ended. Down below was another hallway, much wider this
time, but totally unlit. Thus you again had to slow down, since in the darkness
it was very easy to stumble over someone’s leg, or a stick, or a fist, or a
knuckle-duster. Moreover, you couldn’t hear the guy’s steps, only his heavy
snuffling somewhere further ahead.

“Hey, old man!”
you shouted, stopping, completely out of breath. “Let’s talk!”

“You idiot!” he
answered, his lungs wheezing. “You fucking bastard!”

“You and I have
gone too far, old man,” you began, speaking as firmly as possible. “In your
vile age it’s not good to run around like this . . .”

“What the hell,
why are you bothering me, what the fuck, you bastard, you goddamn cripple?”
replied the baron to this.

“Shut up and
listen! I have a proposition. You can take all the money . . .”

“What money, what
are you blabbering about, sonny?” he started mumbling.

“Take all the
money from my stolen wallet,” you continued.

“What wallet,
what the hell you are talking about?” persisted the baron.

“Take all the
money from the wallet you stole from me in the restroom, after all, you have
now earned it the honest way. But give me back my ticket, my plane ticket, give
back the ticket which has my last name on it. My name is on it, get it? What
use is it to you, old man? My name is on it, you dumb prick!”

“No way.”

“Why, explain it
to me, you gypsy stallion?”

“Because I can
return it to a travel agency and get the money back,” explained the baron
cynically.

“Isn’t the money in
the wallet enough for you, you scoundrel?” you got surprised.

“What are you
talking about, boy, what’s with you, are you stoned or something?” he continued
his primitive game.

You took a few
careful steps ahead, in the direction of his voice. And immediately heard that
he too started moving.

“Wait, old man!”
you tried another option for understanding. “We are probably compatriots. Where
are you from originally?”

“From Bila
Tserkva, boy. That is, from Kryvy Rih. That is, the other way round, from
Shepetivka, the state of Kashmir, the province of Punjab . . . And you are no
compatriot of mine, you Banderite scum! . . .”
17

You rushed full
speed ahead. He didn’t actually expect it. But still he managed to slip out of
your hands at the last moment. The two of you were running again—slamming your
feet on brick chips, broken off pieces of wire and other metallic stuff, on all
the crap that covered the floor of this suspicious place. Waving your bag like
a sling, you tried hooking his chin or neck.

Finally, at one
of the turns you managed at last to do it somehow. Using the bag as a lasso,
you started pulling him towards yourself. He snorted and resisted, fiercely
kicking with his legs and trying to get the rather unpleasant-feeling bag off
his neck. At one moment he managed to hit you painfully in the knee. Falling,
you pulled him along with you, but he was able to pull his head out of the bag
straps and was now free again.

Having wavered a
little whether to finish you off, as you were lying on the brick chips,
groaning, or to go away baron-style, with his head held high, he chose the
latter.

“You fucking
idiot,” he said, as if it were some sort of good-bye, having though first
walked away to a safe distance.

Then in the most
insolent fashion he pulled your wallet out of the pocket and, using his
phosphorescent tiepin as a light, he counted all the money.

“Not much,” he
said, as if to himself. “You live frugally, right, sonny? Aha, here’s the
ticket!” And having glanced at the fare, he apparently remained satisfied.

“So long!” he
waved his hand to you and, with his pin glittering, walked confidently in the
direction from which both of you had just come, that is, towards the exit,
apparently hoping to manage to get out of this “Children’s World,” or wherever
the two of you now found yourselves.

You gritted your
teeth, suddenly sensing everything: that the knee was swelling at an astonishing
speed, that you had fever again and that you suddenly felt a fierce chill, that
alcohol was clearing out of your system and soon even it would be of no help.

“I am sick and
injured,” you spoke into the corridor darkness.

And you heard
your adversary giggling in the darkness. He had already moved rather far away.
His laughter was getting wilder and stupider by the minute. Mad waves of this
irritating laughter rolled towards you, while you were still lying down. And
overcoming it all, you started crawling after him. Brick chips and pieces of
wire moved under your stomach. The laughter was growing, it filled the corridor
to the brim, poured out of it into side passages, it rang ever more tauntingly
and victoriously. This laughter was such that for this reason alone the old
fool deserved to be finished off. The laughter roared. It seemed that nothing
would ever be able to stop it. It wasn’t simply laughter. It was a wild element
. . . Which was suddenly cut short by an inhuman scream. In the midst of suffocating,
choking laughter a frantic scream was suddenly born. Perhaps this is how
animals scream when they run into a knife. Perhaps this is how a severed pig
head screams.

At last you
managed to get up. But the scream did not abate, and you ambled towards it,
stumbling and spitting, and the scream acquired new qualities—the tones of
horror and despair were growing with each passing moment. The scream no longer
asked for anything, as it didn’t believe in anything anymore.

The situation
looked hopeless indeed. You understood this when some thirty yards ahead you
saw an open manhole, and it was from this abyss that the unfortunate baron was
calling. Undoubtedly he fell in there, having been so consumed by laughter that
he was not looking under his feet, which was a fatal mistake. Now he was making
the last effort to hang on to some rusted steel rods that stuck out about seven
feet below the floor, above the roaring stream of sewage; only the glistening
of his gold tooth that burned like an eternal flame in his open screaming mouth
made it possible to see where he was. He tried pulling up, but the heavy filthy
stream did not let him go, having already swallowed him up to the waist.

He saw you from
below, a black silhouette bending over his pit, and stopped screaming.

“Pull me out of
here, son,” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“I doubt this
would work out, old man,” you assured him. But apparently you disappointed him
with your reply.

“Hey, son, you’d
let me die here, eh? In this shit, son? Eh?” he was now pleading.

“Each person has
his own fate,” you sighed.

“And his path
wide open,” he added.
18
“Hey, compatriot, help me, please, pull me out,”
he had to really strain his vocal chords to make himself heard over the
frightening stream below.

“And how would I
do it in your opinion?” you inquired to cheer him up a little before death.

“You can climb
down a little, be so kind, here, there’s a pipe, and then you can reach my hand
with yours, see?” it was more and more difficult for him to speak, every now
and then he had to spit out some bits of sewage, but his gold tooth was still
glistening.

“I would have
gladly done this, old man, but my knee really hurts for some reason,” you
disappointed him again.

“Well, I’m sorry,
now stop joking, hey, man, give me a hand, you hear?”

“No I won’t,” you
promised firmly. “When you reach hell, convey my greetings. And I will now get
going. It really stinks here!”

And you
demonstratively hold your nose, although he probably does not see it. And he
starts screaming again, for what else is left for him to do, and he gets
submerged deeper and deeper into the grayish, dark, horrifying, warm Moscow
waters.

And you move away
from the manhole and lean against the moist corridor wall, for you can barely
stand on your feet and can’t listen to this scream any longer, and the stench
is almost suffocating you, and you are on the verge of tears, as you are indeed
sorry for the old son of a bitch. And with his last screams and choked pleadings
dies your hope to get back at least your plane ticket . . .

He held on for
some three more minutes. Turned out to be rather strong. But finally he let it
go, released his cramped fingers and slipped down, and the waters embraced him
down to his soul, and everything grew quiet in Moscow’s dark basement, and only
you, von F., remained in it, wondering whether there were at least a drop of
your guilt in his untimely death, whether you should have risked your life to
save his aristocratic thievish body. And you thought that some day, while
cleaning the clogged tunnels of Moscow’s city sewage system, a team of migrant
workers in oxygen masks would inevitably fish out of the sludge a tiepin or a
gold tooth, or perhaps a wallet, half-rotten, swollen with water, full of all
kinds of petty junk.