Вадим Бабенко - The Place of Quarantine

“What do you mean?” I said somewhat disingenuously.

“Oh, that’s how you want to do it…” Elsa sighed. “Okay, have it your way; I’ll say it for you. Otherwise, perhaps you’ll continue to have doubts and go running off to garbage dumps so that a whole team of Nestors will have to catch you and fetch you back to safety.”

She fell silent – we passed by the street singer, sitting near the balustrade. He was covered with a huge raincoat; next to him, under a smaller cape, stood his guitar, leaning against the railing. I nodded to him, but he did not respond, completely lost in himself.

We walked on a few steps in silence, then Elsa said angrily, referring to the singer, “There’s something strange, not quite right with him. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe him anymore!”

I made a vague sound. “So,” she continued. “Let’s play a guessing game. Who is in the house and who is not? Whose turn is it to be ‘it’? Who didn’t hide, and whose fault was that?”

“I don’t understand,” I glanced at her.

“It’s a pity I have to explain everything to you like a child,” Elsa shook her head. “But that’s all right. I’ll say it more directly: you won’t be able to create a theory of destinies without having lived out your own. You won’t come up with an equation for karma without having sensed to the fullest how your karma is whirling you round, what this bitch of a universe really wants from you. Do you already know the answers? No, you don’t. And your scribblings on paper aren’t going to help you.”

Her voice shook slightly; her fingers squeezed my arm, holding the umbrella, with a steely grip. I could feel her nails sticking into my forearm, even through the dense fabric of my jacket.

“I’ve been formulating this thought for a long time,” Elsa confessed with a nervous laugh. “You see how many smart-aleck words it contains. But everything could be put much simpler: Your Asian believed you and in you – can you get away from this? That man, Ivan, deprived the two of you of each other – and you, what, forgave him? You have unfinished business – yes, you’re lucky. I, for example, don’t. I don’t really have anywhere to hurry off to!”

She gripped my arm even harder, then abruptly let go, turned away and muttered, as she had the morning before, “I can’t believe I myself am saying this to you…”

Then we just carried on walking in the drizzling rain. The tension between us had disappeared as if we had just crossed over the summit of a peak, a rocky ridge with sharp jagged edges – and now we were slowly descending the slope. Something was spinning in my head – all the same familiar things, concerning enemies and revenge, and great accomplishments, for which you always need someone beside you. And also – what I had realized myself, what I had decided in the refuse vehicle. I could have said a lot to Elsa in reply – or at least I could have agreed with her – but for some reason, I felt that any words of mine would be inappropriate. They would simplify her effort, which was really difficult for her.

I just glanced at her sideways, remembering the crease on her face, her unforgiving eyes. I wanted something to happen right now – let the buildings collapse, the sea rise. I would have been so incredibly happy to do something for Elsa, to protect her, to defend, to save… But no, reality remained quiet and calm; it didn’t want to help.

Elsa suddenly stopped, turned to me and exclaimed, “Well, why are you silent?” And, immediately, she drew me on farther, increasing her pace and speaking again.

“They probably won’t like me pushing you away,” she smiled wanly. “But what can I do; I have to be honest with you. I have to be a good girl – I still want to get to heaven sometime. Quarantine resembles ‘heaven’ to a point, but, let’s agree, not quite.”

We walked faster and faster; I was barely able to keep up with her. “I’ve been through so much with you… So many different stages,” Elsa was saying. “You are the only man I have ever had this with. And there were moments when you were mine – even if only for a few hours, minutes. So, that’s probably what it means to have ‘a life fully lived’?

“So, now I know what ‘fully lived’ is,” she murmured. “And the depths – now I know what there is in your depths. Nothing fucking good, that’s what… You see, I just started to believe everything between you and me could be for real – well, as far as it’s possible in this place, this fake place. And now I, on my own, have to do a terrible thing: push you away from myself, give you up to another one, who for some reason has more rights over you. And it’s not even clear where this ‘other one’ is and whether you’ll find her at all…”

On the left, from the direction of the sea, a gust of wind blew in, almost tearing the umbrella out of my hands. The spokes bent back, the black fabric flapped, light rain splattered into our faces. For a minute we fought with the umbrella, then the wind died down as quickly as it had risen, and we continued on. Elsa spoke more calmly, “Well, whatever. Here, in Quarantine, there can be no great losses anyway. Even virginity can’t be lost here. And there is a logic in everything: as you explained to me – our bodies, our lives, are only needed to accumulate experiences in these Objects of yours. So that’s what I will be doing – accumulating them, I mean – hopefully, there will be many. Even here – with one roommate, with another…”

She paused, then added, “Some of my future stories might turn out to be happy ones, right? I must admit: living through everything here with you, I felt I could indeed be happy at some time – seriously, really happy. And it is also clear to me now – you can only find true happiness after death. At least after one death!”

We reached the openwork gazebo with wet, empty benches and turned back. After taking a few steps, Elsa stopped, hugged herself and said, “Go home: I’ll take a little walk on my own. No, no, I don’t need an umbrella, I am good like this…” – and she quickly walked away. Soon she headed toward the stairs and began to descend to the sea. Without turning around, she waved her hand to me – as if to say, go, go…

I didn’t see any more of her for the rest of the day. Having climbed up to the apartment, I looked around the living room, made some coffee for myself, took a sip and emptied the cup into the sink – it tasted terribly bitter. On the table was one of the articles – something about the quantization of gravity. I took it, went to my bedroom and sat down in my armchair – but instead of reading, I just looked at the wall opposite with its silent screen, thinking about everything at once.

The evening session with Nestor began exactly at five. He appeared with the same expression of indifference, as if to show that no one was rushing me, that he had all the patience in the world. After greeting me dryly, he asked, “How was your day? Lousy weather, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes…” I agreed absently. I wanted to tell him – as my counselor, as my friend – about my talk with Elsa and how she had walked away from me into the rain. About the street singer on the empty seafront and his guitar sheltering under a raincoat.

“Nestor…” I said and suddenly, surprising myself, asked, “Tell me, Nestor, how does knowledge of their new lives change people? You have plenty of experience; you see many of them at the crossroads. You witness how they become convinced that their former lives weren’t really the end, that the first is followed by another and others afterward. They begin to firmly believe in that – without any further doubt or speculation.”

Nestor narrowed his eyes, “So you want to philosophize? Well, it does calm the nerves. Although I wouldn’t say you look too anxious anyway…”