Igor Eliseev - One-Two

The more I peered into broken windows and a wide open door, the more surprised I was, and I hardly trusted my own eyes. Where did a silent, lifeless house downtown come from? Was it by chance or was there someone continuously leading us on, purposefully, with a purpose known to him alone?

All of a sudden, a haughty wind spurted; the door squeaked plaintively and slapped before our noses. I got frightened and stopped, not wishing to enter the house, but then the door opened again and some unfathomable power nearly pushed us inside.

“I’m sleepy to death,” you interrupted my thoughts. “Let’s look for a place to perch ourselves. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look around.” And we marched up the stairs in search of lodgings for the night.

You never tell me what you see at night in your dreams; is there a place for me? Can this house and everything related to it turn out to be the fruit of a shared nightmare? I will surely ask you when you wake up.

We brought firm cardboard boxes from the lower floors, then tore and spread them on the floor, making a crude kind of bed. Despite the draft and the terrible cold, we drifted off into a peaceful and senseless sleep like newly imprisoned criminals who had nowhere left to run. However, in the middle of the night, all lower floors flooded with heart-rending barking; someone else was escaping from the cold in that huge house besides ourselves. There were dogs fighting over food in the stinging darkness, but it didn’t disturb us. On the contrary, it was even calming. We were happy not to be alone.

When I woke up early in the morning, I pretended to be sleeping for some time, having a strong presentiment that something distressing, something unpleasant was going to happen, as though a big, heavy world was about to fall on our brittle shoulders as soon as we got up, but the more I restrained myself, the more I realized how hungry I was.

“I’m feeling pretty hollow,” I said finally, figuring that hunger was a shared reality.

“We have some sausage from granny’s supplies left,” you reported in a vigorous voice. “It’s time to get up!”

We stretched and rose lazily, trying to move without a sound, for we didn’t want to draw the dogs’ attention to us and our food. Yeah, we were really afraid that reckless pity would lead us to share our last bite with those who had nothing at all. Anyhow, we were lucky; those dogs did not smell our paltry supply, and we finished our sausage without being disturbed.

After getting on our feet and dusting ourselves down, we descended the staircase cautiously. Fortunately, there was nobody around. However, we discovered something more valuable : a wardrobe door with a broken mirror, a backless chair and a holey globe with seas and oceans faded from moisture; extra dampened cardboard boxes lay under our feet. We also found old, torn, broken belongings left behind till the end of time; each of them untouched by us, continued, with care, to store the memory of its owner.

We laid out the boxes to dry them, took the door with the mirror upstairs and put it near our so-called bedroom, leaning it against the wall. We diligently curtained the window with a dirty, ragged oilcloth so that the wind wouldn’t rush into our “bedroom”, and carried away some small rubbish to the first floor. From among other stuff we dug out a kettle powdered with snow, and put it on the chair we brought from downstairs. In the neighboring room we found a huge, wooden chest all covered with a thick layer of frosty dust; its lid was adorned with a fancy carving. There was no lock on it, but we didn’t dare look inside; rather oddly, the chest evoked incomprehensible, primal fear. I suddenly thought that it kept something so frightening and powerful inside, real or imaginary, that we’d better not guess and not know anything about it.

“Let’s not open it,” I offered. “Who knows what’s inside?” All things considered, we decided to leave the chest as it was – unopened.

But what was really important was that we committed a lot of time and effort to furnishing our dwellings, having avoided the temptation to focus solely on short-term goals. We carried up gramophone records, picture frames, old calendars and someone else’s photos. By the evening we were so tired that we fell into the “bed” and were asleep in a couple of minutes. Only the next morning did we venture outside to look around. The house was surrounded by trees with bare branches; dim light from lanterns poorly lit the neighborhood. Tenacious hunger, like an insatiable leech, stubbornly sucked at our stomachs and disturbed our minds. We took several steps forward and then stopped indecisively.

“We’ll have to ask food from people,” I said quick-wittedly. “There will always be somebody who helps us because people are kind.”

Back then, we didn’t know that appalling changes affected not only our lives but the entire country’s, which was literally falling apart, and no one had control over these changes.

We decided to beg right there in the street. However, everything went wrong from the very beginning. People avoided us like the plague, quickly passing by. For some reason, I didn’t expect this to happen and wasn’t ready for it; the trifles that passersby occasionally threw to us were not enough even to buy bread. Day by day, freezing through and through, oppressed by primal needs, humiliated by our piteous condition, we strolled miles around the city, running away from a pitiless hunger that stealthily walked in our footsteps. And all this time a distant, annoying voice drawlingly raged inside me through the pain. “How long can you bear this? Come on, Faith, sit in a snowdrift and die! It is easier to give up than to resist.” And I would have surrendered to the mercy of that winner , if I had been alone.

After a month of suffering, we turned into two starved shadows with one common, almost animal need – to fill our stomachs. Depriving us of freedom, suppressing our minds, hunger etched particular thoughts in our heads, those concerning satiation. Our main, daily goal reduced to just sustaining ourselves. Like small mice, we sniffed the surroundings, listened to noises, shamelessly rummaged in the garbage; that is so gross to remember. People extremely seldom gave us charity; more often they poked or pushed us, displaying almost physical disgust in us, too. They must have had the same spiteful, repulsive feeling upon seeing us, and, moreover, I was imprisoned in a raging hatred whenever I happened to see happy people. I wanted to offend, punch or bite them all for the fact that they were feeling all right while we were perishing. How dare they laugh and be happy when we were in such misery? Each of them lived as if he or she was the only person on earth and nobody else existed; there were only houses, trees and faceless shadows around to fill the empty spaces everywhere. Or so it seemed to me in my deranged and alienated state.

Meanwhile, winter embraced the city, everything withered, and nature fell asleep. We were almost unable to see the sun in the sky; nights were frosty, shrouding the city with all-conquering ice. Merciless wind was destroying glimpses of life in everything around us. Days and nights rushed along, replacing one another; we were starving, freezing, humiliated. We hated everything and had no idea how to make our hatred meaningful. However, the nasty weather stayed with us all the way; one could think that such a fierce winter was created specially to wipe out Hope and Faith as freaks of nature.

Everybody knows that there is suffering, poverty and loss in the world, but those things seem to be somewhere far away from here, until destiny or our own thoughtlessness make them evident. And once they are faced, we get scared, shout and resist, but all in vain: nobody notices us or everyone pretends we don’t exist. When this happens, the main challenge is not to go mad with horror and despair.