Александр Молчанов - KillerFoulkner

Soon as I get back, I’ll go to Seka’s place straight away. I’ll take her to my room and she’ll live there. I just want to see her smile every day. Fuck, aren’t we there yet? I’ve probably covered hundreds of kilometres the last few days. On a quest through distant lands.

ANDREW. I went to the dorm. Nikipolev was sitting on a bench inside the hallway. He told me last night, Seka got thrown out of the seventh-floor window. Some local guys came to play, and he beat them. He shouldn’t have said this, but straight after, he said «I beat you cos I want to buy a motorbike.» He said it. And naturally they thought he’d been cheating. Apparently, the last thing he said was about hearing some music. The cops came, and there was no-one there, and nobody was stupid enough to mention the local guys. I asked where Oksana was? Nikipolev looked at me weird and said she’d left. Meaning she was homeless, I said «How long’s she been gone?» and he shrugged. About twenty minute, maybe.

I kicked the metal door open, jumped off the porch, ran across the field. I crossed the railway line, ran past the train sheds, the garages, the school yard, through the square with the statue of Babushkin, onto the road. The number five trolleybus had just arrived and I jumped on through the back door. Only just made it. She’d be at the bus station buying a ticket. Maybe the buses don’t run that often. I don’t even know what village she comes from. What bus will she be on? If she’s already gone than that’s it. Game over.

The trolleybus crawled across the bridge and I looked at the dome of St Sophia’s Cathedral, with the sun setting behind it, and I prayed she hadn’t left yet. Lord. You’ve helped me out so much. You killed Tugarinov. You killed Seka, You saved me from killing. Just help me this one more time. Help me make it. It’s easy for you! Or is this the price? You help me out and then you take her from me. Or maybe she wants to go alone.

The trolleybus pulled into the square by the station. But the back door doesn’t open, only the small one next to the driver. Then this fat woman gets on, says «Tickets, please’. The girl next to me quickly punched her ticker and I said „Have you got a spare?“. The woman shouted „Don’t punch your tickets after the bus has stopped!“ I went up to her and started to make an excuse, I forgot, I was in a hurry. She gets angry, starts telling me she’s gonna fine me. I» completely forgot I had money in my pocket. I looked at her face. Her round face. Two kids for sure. She probably reads them bedtime stories. And I punched her. She fell backwards onto a seat and yelled. I jumped out of the bus and ran across the square.

I had to blend in. I was exposed as an enemy bomber against a clear blue sky. I tried to get lost in the crowd. I turned the corner and was surrounded by people, coming out of the station, waiting for buses, drinking beer, just walking. I pressed through them, looking for Oksana everywhere. She wasn’t there. I looked. But she wasn’t there.

Then I stopped. I stopped still, and I closed my eyes and said «Let me see her.» And I opened them again and there she was. Getting onto a bus, carrying a red bag. I ran towards her. She turned, saw me, looked a little frightened, I ran. I was knocking people out of the way, left, right and centre. I jumped up on the step. I grabbed her and just started kissing her. Someone said «Young people. Just so arrogant.» I kissed her smoky lips, sweet and bitter, like licking a silver ashtray. And she kissed me back. Then someone said «You’re holding the bus up. Either gen on, or get off.» And we got off the bus.

HE. And fourthly, last of all, a writer like Faulkner never would have existed in Russia.

She begins to unpack the bags and put things away. He walks to and fro around the room.

HE. Ask me why.

SHE. I don’t care.

HE. I’ll tell you why. Faulkner lived most of his life in a provincial town with a population of around ten thousand people. That’s slightly larger than my village, back at home. D’you know what would’ve happened to me if I’d lived in my village my whole life?

SHE. I’d never’ve met you, and you wouldn’t be driving me crazy right now? This room, by the way, is distinctly average.

HE. But it’s downtown though. The epicenter of the city. Look out the window.

She looks out of the window.

SHE. Brilliant. A view of the parking lot.

HE. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. One person sees a parking lot, and another the Cathedral of Saint… you know… the one they have here… the main Saint, the main guy.

SHE. Vaclav?

HE. Vaclav?

SHE. The main guy they have here is Vaclav.

HE. No, the other one. Shit, I looked it up on Wikipedia yesterday and now I’ve forgotten it.

He looks into the shower.

HE. No bathtub.

SHE. None of others had one either. Why would they have one here?!

HE. I’ll take a shower.

SHE. Set up the Internet for me first.

HE. You wanna get on Facebook as soon as you can, do you?

SHE. I want to talk to my Mom!

He pulls out a laptop, puts it on the table, turns it on. He sits down.

HE. If I’d stayed in my village, I’d probably’ve become an alcoholic and died. Best case scenario.

SHE. I’m scared to ask what would’ve been the worst. You’d have become a great writer like Faulkner and won the Nobel Prize?

He. Yeah, right, that’s it. Nobel Prize, Schnobel Prize. Worst case, I’d have survived and would have become… you know, like… some sort of… rural eccentric. Would’ve worked in some boiler room, walked around the forest with a notebook, talking to myself, would’ve overloaded the local paper with my lousy poetry.

SHE. Maybe Faulkner was a freak just like that.

HE. It’s no comparison. America, it’s kinda even, you know. There’s not much difference between the provinces and the capital. Three houses in the middle of a field — it’s already a town. It’ll have everything you need for communication. Mail, telephone, hot water, newspapers and contemporary literature. Sitting in his Yoknapatawpha County, Faulkner read the same Joyce that Hemingway read in Paris. That’s what’s important for the formation of a writer. But we’ve got Moscow and then we’ve got Russia — it’s not even two different countries. They’re two different civilizations. Travel outside the Moscow Central Ring Road and you go back two centuries. In some places it’s like serfdom still exists. The Russian village kills all living things. So even our so-called «provincial writers» have always tried to settle somewhere near the airport Metro station. Well. It’s asking for a password. Did they give us a password at reception?