Вадим Бабенко - The Place of Quarantine

“Can I have it?” Elsa asked, and without waiting for an answer, she tore the page out of the notebook. Then we drank a cup of coffee and went to her bedroom to check the day’s weather.

Beyond the window was a downpour of almost floodlike proportions. A sky the color of lead hung over the promenade and sea, dropping vertical jets of water. They stabbed the boardwalk, like steel-tipped arrows, splashing, gouging and turning into a muddy stream, raging alongside the balustrade. The horizon was hidden by a wall of water.

We silently looked out of the window, then Elsa asked in a very calm voice, “Are you leaving?”

“Yes,” I replied, just as calmly, without emotion.

“When?” She turned to me.

“Maybe today,” I said. “Immediately after the afternoon session, if I’m allowed. I don’t know what the rules are on this matter.”

“Yes,” Elsa said quietly. “You never know with the rules on that. Like in our former life – basically, nothing has changed.” Then she shivered and added, nodding at the rain, “It’s good we don’t need to search for a reason for skipping our walk today.”

I kept silent. Elsa put the palm of her hand to the windowpane and examined her graceful fingers for several minutes. Then she removed her hand and said, “Forgive me for being a bit hysterical yesterday. I just felt I needed to tell you everything… Probably, this is what I really should have done for you; my red hair doesn’t count.”

I nodded, swallowing back a lump in my throat. Elsa grinned, “They told me – try to become his friend. Well, I tried as best I could – didn’t I? They should appreciate that; in my opinion, I honestly earned my points. Who is to blame that at the same time, I wanted something else, wanted more? And I still do – no matter what.”

The rain hit the window – likely the wind was rising. The jets were getting thinner and meaner.

“I wonder,” Elsa muttered, “what my next roommate will be like? I’d prefer a tall, dark-haired man with strong hands… Do you think the fact that this is what I want will help me? You see, I can’t just ask my Nestor for this directly!”

“It may well help,” I responded as easily as I could. And joked, “I hope, ‘having sensed’ your desire, the field of the conscions will shuffle the pack as you wish.”

“It’s about time it did,” Elsa quipped back. “Is it finally capable of making an effort? After all, I’ve never asked it for anything – I’ve only taken a few words on a tablecloth with me into my new lives. I can’t be reproached for being selfish.”

I put my hand around her waist, “I think you are the most unselfish roommate one could imagine. You made me breakfast every day.”

“Yes,” Elsa narrowed her eyes, “and you – you are self-centered, like all men. You used me – at least my fried eggs – to propel you to ever greater heights and horizons. Just like your Asian – without her, as far as I understand, not everything might have worked out.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “As a result, I have an accomplishment that can’t be taken away, and she – she ended up with only a memory of us together. I admit it’s not fair.”

“That’s why you feel guilty,” Elsa sighed. “That’s why you run off to garbage dumps and are now leaving Quarantine for good!

“No offence; I’m not being serious,” she added. “I’m not angry with her at all. I think of your Tina warmly, even trying to imagine what she saw at the last moment before her death. What flashed before her eyes – probably the face of her unborn child? I’ve heard they look like aliens…”

The rain did not subside. After staying for a while by the window, we returned to the living room and sat on the sofa. Close, but a little apart, not touching each other. Elsa picked up her book lying on the armrest but did not open it; she sat, turning away slightly, stubbornly pursing her lips. I glanced at her sideways – at the chiseled line of her cheekbones, her slightly upturned chin and her shock of bright-red hair.

“Actually, I’d like to become friends with her,” Elsa continued in the same tone, as if there had been no pause. “We could go to the gym together, to the hairdresser, to the café. Maybe we would open some kind of business – a shop or a salon. Or we could just meet sometimes to chat, as girlfriends do – and we’d discuss men as well. She’d tell me what you are like in bed.”

I laughed, even though I didn’t feel joyful.

“You know,” Elsa sighed, “I’ll ask them not to give me a roommate right away. How can I live with a new roommate after you? I want to spend some time on my own – at least a couple of days. Or maybe even three days…” And she added angrily, “If you want to look at the clock, go ahead – you don’t need to feel sorry for me.”

I looked up. The hands were approaching twelve. A shiver ran down my spine; I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

Elsa moved closer, touched me with her thigh. “Right now,” I said with difficulty, “I need to do three equally impossible things. To part with you; to announce to Nestor that I’m leaving – you could say, betraying him; and to actually leave, of my own accord, to no one knows where. I don’t know how to do all this; I’m ashamed and scared at the same time.”

“Get up,” said Elsa. “Come with me.” She took my hand and led me to the door of my bedroom. “Go and do this. Do this well.”

And I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. In the second that it took me to walk to my chair, my mind became aware with the utmost clarity of many facts at once. For example, how I was going to miss my roommate – in any of my future lives. Or – that phantom closeness yearns in the same way as a living one. That it is just as painful, as unfair as it had been with Tina. Or – that I could not have done otherwise.

Looking at the blank screen, I also thought that our decisions inevitably cause pain to someone. And, at the same time, we ourselves experience it no less. This was the oldest of truths, but it revealed itself to me as if it were new.

As soon as he appeared and nodded curtly, my counselor asked without preamble, “Well, what is your answer?”

“Nestor,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “I want to leave Quarantine. I want to do it right now.”

His face froze, but he did not look away. He kept silent for a while; then he bent his head and slowly said, “I confess, you have finally managed to surprise me. To surprise me for real: I understood you were having doubts, weighing up the pros and cons – and yet I was sure you would give me a different reply.”

“Why?” I raised my eyebrows.

Nestor did not seem to notice my question. “I was sure – even when I saw you crouched in the cab of that refuse car,” he said just as slowly. “Even knowing that once the process of escape has begun, it is difficult to stop it…

“I understood the past was pulling you back,” he continued, rubbing his cheek with his hand. “I saw your introspection, the torment of your conscience, hanging like a heavy weight. But all the same: I firmly believed that, once the anger and confusion had passed, you would make a different choice. I assumed your conscience would give in at the last moment.”

“But why, why did you think so?” I asked again and added, “Of course, I’m very sorry to disappoint you…”

“Disappoint?” Nestor grimaced. “Well, well… And what do you think I should have thought? Bearing in mind, for example, the curiosity of a scientist, the need for a talent to actualize itself… The scale of the task that awaited you… Of course, predetermination cannot be fooled, but sometimes you can get a respite, a break. This is no jaunt in a refuse vehicle; it is something completely real. You had a chance – such a rare, such a precise, unequivocal chance!”