Вадим Бабенко - The Place of Quarantine

I smashed my fist on the table with a mighty swing – the cups jumped, spilling their contents. I leaped up from my seat, ran to the window, then took a step back to the table – and again rushed away.

Elsa stared at me in fear. “The warrior? You were enchanted with the warrior thing?” I shouted at her. “Well here it is, the act of the knight with no brains. Only capable of destroying, never creating, achieving nothing, spoiling everything… I just don’t understand how I could be so stupid, so naive and blind? Even Nestor saw something was wrong, but I kept waving it all away, mumbling nonsense about teasing shadows of meaning, an elusive twist … A fucking elusive twist! Shadows of meaning – how do you like such shadows?”

Elsa got up, took a roll of paper towels, tore off a few and started to wipe the table. “I should have guessed!” I groaned, clutching the window sill with my fingers. “Everything was leading toward it: his intonation, glances, phrases and, most importantly – of course, he was not talking about Dara! I just didn’t see what Tina had in common with the woman he was so obsessed with. But, undoubtedly, there was a connection… One can only guess – actually, I suspect he didn’t need us personally. Something is prompting me: in his eyes we were just proxies who had stumbled in his way. And he decided to remove the obstacle!”

“He had made his decision, and he was unstoppable,” Elsa said and smiled sadly. “Probably, this is what free will really is. Don’t think I’m justifying it, of course…”

I did not answer her; I didn’t even turn around. Just stood and looked out the window, in a gray haze over the hilly prairie. Then I said with difficulty, “It’s easy to imagine what this freedom will turn into for him. The B Object will not allow him to slip away into oblivion, believing in success. He will remember and understand: his ‘triumph’ turned out to be empty; he achieved zero. It will be his payback – disappointment and shame. The payback for the ‘knight,’ the lot of the ‘champion of karma.’”

“So, you’re talking about your Objects again,” Elsa narrowed her eyes. “Being too clever again, dancing ritual dances?”

I barely stopped myself from shouting at her. After a pause, I asked coldly, “Why don’t you want to understand me? I am not trying to be clever; I don’t give a damn about B Objects, all their groupings and the metabrane itself. I want to find, meet Brevich and shoot him with a long-barreled pistol. And this desire will remain with me forever!”

“And then what – disappointment?” Elsa asked, refusing to back down. “Or do you expect a different fate?”

“Whatever,” I waved my hand, pressing my forehead against the glass. “I don’t care. It’s clear to me now: the only essence of freedom is that you accept, you agree to accept disappointment in what you do – in advance. You accept future shame for yourself – otherwise, it will torture you in the present. Only in this sense are you truly free.”

“That may very well be,” Elsa nodded pensively, and I felt I was no longer angry with her.

“Sit down, eat something,” she added. “Do you want me to make fried eggs or toast?”

I refused, finally tore myself away from the window, paced around the room a few times and, in some sort of exhaustion, sat down on the chair next to her. Elsa drank her coffee, gazing ahead intently. The crease on her face had not gone. And she was all tense, like a spring.

“Well, we can report to our Nestors – our joint task has been accomplished,” I said, forcing myself. “The intersection of our lives – admittedly, very indirect – has been found. So now what?”

“Now…” Elsa turned to me. Her gaze was cold and serious. “Now we can sum up. If you want me to do it, then okay, I will: that man, Ivan, undoubtedly did carry out his ‘plan.’ This means both he and your Tina went off into the same ‘nonexistence’ at almost the same time as you did. I, of course, understand little about this science of yours, but it seems to me that your destinies – with or without Objects – are so intertwined that it is difficult to divide them. And as for my fate – no, it is separated. No matter how hard I try, there is no way to connect it with yours. Because my lips become a blur when I speak. Because I don’t have a real body. Because my scent is a fake.”

“You want to say…” I began.

“There’s nothing I want to say!” Elsa suddenly exploded. “This is how you want it yourself – what do you want yourself?”

She turned away in anger, remained silent for a few minutes and then continued quietly, “By the way, I remember you told me – time flows differently here and there. Thus, we don’t really know – who ended up where and when. Ages also may happen to be different – older, younger – it’s funny, isn’t it?…

“Actually,” she added after another pause, “time is a strange thing, but for some reason it can never be used as an excuse to back down…” And she shook her head, “I cannot believe I myself am saying this to you!”

Soon I went to my room and, before my session with Nestor, I sat alone, collecting my thoughts. I imagined Tina, picturing her as a captive, reliving her captivity – as if trying to empathize with at least a part of her confusion, her fear. Then my mind went astray. The fabric of the cocoon was torn apart; I now seemed to see Ivan Brevich, sitting opposite, in minute detail. I saw his sunken eyes, his flabby face and drooping cheeks, I heard his drunken mutter. And I recalled his gaze – the one with which he had been looking at his woman, somehow taking Tina for her… I saw an enemy in front of me – yes, now I had a sworn enemy. An extremely personalized one; he had a name. A name, a consciousness, a memory, a B Object…

And I was thinking, again and again, about my enemy, feeling the hate heavily turning inside me. It had no boundaries; it overshadowed ‘Theo’s theory,’ the connections of destinies and the fundamental ellipsoid. The power of mathematics faded and failed next to it. Next to it and my desire for revenge.

Only the image of Brevich, growing in my inner eye, was not inferior to the scale of my hatred. He was huge, Brevich; his confidence that things would happen as he wanted seemed to build a rampart around him. His willingness to sacrifice everything released energy of the most sinister sort. I imagined its vortex, like a looming tornado; it might be I could even derive its formula. I could lock into the square brackets, place under the integral symbol the true nature of the self-proclaimed “knight.” His resolve to subdue the principle on which all causality is based, to affirm power over it, to use it for his own purposes. He wanted exactly this, and he had made sacrifices for it…

“Ha-ha,” I curled my lips caustically, “how naive!” And I meant the two of us: both Brevich and myself. His naivety was leading to a dead end; I saw it – but scribbling formulas also wasn’t letting me reach much further. Formalization, perhaps, helped to extract the essence – but it greatly diluted the feel of life. All the formulas were flawed; they could not restore fairness or bring justice – in any world. They couldn’t throw a weight off one’s shoulders – or, for instance, return a woman, without whom life was not worth living. Yes, for instance… That’s the instance of Brevich – and what is mine? Elsa argued that for me Tina was just a means. What are, really, the means and – the true goal, the meaning?…

Then Nestor appeared. “You can rejoice,” I said coldly, instead of greeting him. “Your choice of dreams about Ivan Brevich has been justified one hundred percent.”

“What are you talking about?” Nestor asked, perplexed.