Alina Bronsky - Broken Glass Park

I inhale with all my strength, sucking in as much as I can. My fear of the tobacco disappears. I’m not putting a lot of emphasis on my well-being tonight.

I don’t cough, which is good. In fact, my body has no reaction. I sit there and wait and wait. Everyone stares at me. I stare back at them. Nothing happens.

“I don’t feel anything,” I say. “What the fuck. It doesn’t do anything. Is that stuff any good?”

“I got that on a class trip to Amsterdam,” says a guy sitting next to Peter. “We hid it in a piece of cheese. It’s Moroccan black. It works. Wait, maybe it’s Black Domina?”

“Rookie,” says Peter contemptuously, grabbing the joint. It cracks me up, and Peter winks at me, inhales, and then exhales the smoke through his nose. He closes his eyes and passes it on. The next guy holds the joint like a flute and grimaces and makes faces as he inhales. And although I don’t feel high, I find surprisingly warm feelings welling up inside me towards everyone here — everyone except one person.

“Like a peace pipe,” says Peter, looking at me. He’s acting as if there’s nobody here but me. “Everyone gets a puff, right?” I nod.

The joint is handed to the phony Volker and he drops it.

Anna picks it up.

“I guess Nazis don’t smoke Dutch grass,” I say. “They just drink genuine German beer.”

“We’ve got beer,” says Peter. “Hang on.”

He knocks over a can and amber liquid dribbles out.

In the distance frogs in the pond croak.

“Oh, sorry, I guess we’re out,” says Peter. “How clumsy of me. But who drinks that stuff anyway?”

Volker looks as if he’s already tried everything here. He can’t stop shaking and he’s doubled over as if he’s about to puke.

“It’s okay,” I say scornfully. “Nobody’s going to do anything to you.”

“You sure?” asks Peter in German. “I don’t know. Want something to drink, you little fascist? Maybe a cup of sailor’s tea?”

“Of what?” I ask.

“Haven’t you read your classics?” asks Peter in a self-congratulatory tone, a proud host.

Volker shakes his head but Peter is already pouring clear liquid from a vodka bottle into a used paper cup. Then he adds a few drops of something from a brown medicinal bottle and stirs the concoction with a dirty knife.

“Legal speed,” he answers in response to my questioning look. “From England. It’s not something for you.” He looks at the cup pensively, leans his head to the side, and then pours a little more vodka into the mixture.

I’m quiet like the rest. I don’t say a thing as he approaches Volker and puts the cup into his hand. Volker’s hand is shaking as if it’s freezing cold. Peter wraps his giant hand around Volker’s and says, “If you spill even a drop, I’ll kill you. Do you have any idea what I have to pay for this stuff?”

He lifts the cup — his hand around Volker’s — to Volker’s lips. Volker closes his eyes. His head is shaking. With his other hand, Peter pushes Volker’s head back. Then he pours the liquid in Volker’s mouth, though the bulk of it sloshes down the sides of his face, causing Peter to issue a stream of comments, “I’ll fuck your mother” the most friendly of them. I listen with my mouth agape. It sounds almost poetic. If only I could curse as fluidly as that.

Volker moans, grabs his throat, and falls to his hands and knees on the ground.

“Let’s try that again,” says Peter, grabbing the vodka bottle. I stay silent, as do the rest. Except Anna, who whispers in a panicked voice, “Honey!”

After the third cup, Volker groans loudly — it’s almost a scream. I look at him. He lies down on the ground, but sits up again, scratching at his throat.

When he starts to puke at my feet, I get up, grab my rollerblades, and leave.

Nobody stops me. Nobody says anything. I can hear the wailing and gagging from the woods. Then they turn on a portable stereo. The clearing is filled with frenetic beats that sound like a racing pulse.

I stick my feet back in the skates one more time. They hurt now. The fact that I didn’t wear socks is taking a toll. The soles of my feet are raw and blistered. I skate anyway — through the neighborhood, past the Emerald, and out onto a main road.

I skate on the dividing line, right down the middle of the street.

I don’t swerve to the side of the road when I hear a car behind me. The street lights are dull, I’m not wearing anything reflective, and my dress is dark — as are my thoughts. Just one thought, to be more precise. I’m pissed off that the Moroccan black hash has bypassed my receptors.

I guess I need something stronger, I think. I want to feel something. Right now.

And then it hits me.

I wonder how long this will last.

Brakes screech. I don’t turn around. Everything’s a bit slowed down.

A taxi careens past to my right and comes to rest on the sidewalk. I realize I am looking backward.

It also dawns on me that I’m falling and that now my knees are scraping along the pavement. For yards. Finally I feel something.

Not on my knees at first. It’s my head wobbling back and forth as I’m wildly shaken and then rammed in the back. Suddenly I’m sitting on the sidewalk with my legs stretched out. There’s a small, swarthy man in front of me in a leather jacket. He’s irate. He’s cursing at me in a language I don’t know, a language with lots of sibilant sounds.

I look over at the taxi, sitting sideways on the sidewalk, the driver’s door ripped open, nobody at the wheel.

“Is that yours?” I ask. “Did you drag me through the street, you scumbag? You trying to skin me?”

He lashes out and a smack in the face goes pop in the night air.

“Little piece of sheet,” he says.

“It’s pronounced shit,” I correct automatically, holding my hand up to my face. Then I look down at my legs. The skin is gashed open. There are streaks of red pulp from the knee to the foot. I forget all about this or that Volker, about the joint with no effects, about sailor’s tea, and even Vadim.

I cry, quite loudly. Not because it hurts so bad — or at least not only because it hurts so bad. I cry because nobody is here to take care of me.

“Marina!” I shout. “You’re never there when I need you!”

The taxi driver walks to the car. But instead of getting in, he starts rummaging through the trunk.

He comes back, leans over me, still cursing incomprehensibly under his breath, holding a bottle of the same brand of vodka Peter had. He unscrews the top and dumps the contents fizzing over my legs. My screams shatter the eerie silence on the street.

“Aaaah! Have you lost your mind?” I shout. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Disinfection,” he says, lifting me to my feet. “Otherwise infection.”

But I can’t keep my balance.

I sit back down and free my poor feet from the skates for the final time of the night.

“Where do you live?” the taxi driver asks acidly.

“Right around the corner,” I say. “Thanks.”

I put a skate under each arm and stagger barefoot to the Emerald. The asphalt is warm. My legs feel as if someone is holding a red-hot iron to them. I’m standing in front of my apartment door when I finally hear a siren in the distance.

About time, I think.

I fall into bed without undressing. Thoughts race through my head. I’ll never be able to fall asleep with my legs scraped open and these images in my head. I can’t let the sheets touch the wounds. I can’t lie on my stomach. I can’t think about all that happened today. I don’t want to toss and turn, but I can’t lie still, either. I’m going to lose my mind.

Then I am swallowed by the great, merciful darkness of nothingness, and I don’t dream at all.