Mari Saat - The Saviour of Lasnamäe

Sofia knew, obviously, what that meant. That if anyone could get hold of some alcohol, then to bring as much as they could. She even had money to buy some with now that the braces had already been fitted and her mum had that horrible job that seemed to earn her perhaps even more than her work at the electronics factory had. And Sofia was earning too, from reading to Rael’s grandma. What a good feeling that was. Now she could go shopping and ponder what to buy. A bottle of wine would be cool. But who would sell one to her? They’d definitely want to see her passport. They’d definitely not believe her if she claimed to be eighteen… And they’d definitely not sell her even a beer. Anyway, she didn’t have a taste for beer. In the end, after a great deal of indecision, she loaded her shopping basket with a packet of fudge, a packet of sunflower seeds for the rat and two mini-cans of gin and tonic. She shouldn’t spend any more than that. The cashier didn’t so much as give them a second glance; apparently she didn’t regard the cans as alcoholic drink.

The party was very civilised to begin with. Zhanna gave a warning that no one must drink lying down or throw up on the carpet and at first they were all sober, no one was smoking even though there were ashtrays in the kitchen and the living room, and Zhanna had said that her mum smoked like a chimney and that her dad had a ciggie once in a while, so smoking wasn’t a problem. They’d never twig when they got back… It looked like nearly everyone had managed to bring something with them. There were several sorts of wine and even a couple of bottles of vodka, as well as cream liqueurs. Sofia’s two metal cans seemed paltry next to all this bounty, but they were immediately mixed with vodka and offered as aperitifs, just until the sandwiches were ready.

There was music of all kinds, although Zhanna said that they mustn’t play heavy stuff at full volume. If they did, the neighbour, an old witch from hell, would come up to complain and might even call her parents, which would be the end of parties for good, because there’d be no skiving off trips to St Petersburg any more… The good news, she said, was that the old cow turned her TV up to full volume so she must be half-deaf… And the other neighbours underneath were always yelling at or scolding or beating their kids so someone was always screaming the place down…

As the evening proceeded the drink began to take hold. Everyone became jollier and tried to talk over the music and writhed to the beat. Fortunately no witch came up from below to put a stop to it – perhaps she’d taken a sleeping potion or was holding her own party, seeing as it was Saturday night. Sofia didn’t like parties. She enjoyed them at first, but from the moment that the booze went to people’s heads, their eyes would glaze over and their chatter would lose its meaning. They would talk about something that was on their mind, perhaps something important, but it was impossible to understand them. Perhaps she should have got herself drunk as well, but she had to be home by midnight at the latest – before Mum got back – and she didn’t want her mum to realise she was drunk, or that she was coming home so late – Mum would go ballistic. Mum was permanently afraid of what might happen – that someone might murder her or rape her, or worse – that she might get AIDS… Her mother’s fear was forever ringing in her ears – she always had the feeling that something might be about to happen and that the thing that might happen would be something sordid and shameful. Being run over or meeting with some other kind of accident wouldn’t be so bad…

Swaying in the hinterland between sobriety and drunkenness was highly unpleasant… And to think that right now, or in no more than half an hour, she had to pull herself together and find a reason to leave. Or just secretly slip out – that would be the most sensible thing because it seemed that no one in the party as it was now would pay the least attention… She was sorry – everyone else seemed to be happy. They weren’t thinking. They weren’t worrying. Why did she have to worry all the time? And why wasn’t she happy? Why did she enjoy completely different things? She didn’t even like dancing with others, but at home, on her own, she could move and writhe exactly as she wanted… It was ridiculous to think that anyone like her would ever begin to deliver speeches…

She went to the window. Beyond it was the great, black sky, and far below, eight storeys down, dots of light moving, dot-like lanterns cleanly puncturing the darkness, the burning eyes of the windows of buildings lining the road, the lights of cars travelling along the long boulevards – twinkled and dotted roads flowed up into the sky and back… Like rivers. It was a real, large, unfamiliar city, not Lasnamäe but a city that stretched to the edge of the sky… And then she noticed amidst it all an eye glowing in the deep, dark sky, an eye that was staring into her, as if seeing through her…

She quickly realised that it was her own eye. It was reflected in the outer windowpane – upon studying it an indistinct face complete with two eyes, a mouth and nose appeared. But if she focused her gaze elsewhere, there was only a single, large, clear eye somewhere in the middle, opposite the bridge of her nose. It was as if that eye looked down from the sky above, over everything, over the roads, the buildings, the crawling twinkling bugs on the roads… It was her eye, and yet it was not, as if from heaven above, omniscient, staring right into her…

It was then that Tolik and Venya arrived – that was how Zhanna introduced them. They were probably friends of hers, although they looked older than the others here.

Venya was tall, sturdy, slow. He didn’t talk at all, merely smirked to himself, but he was able to find a glass on the table and drain it in one… Tolik was small, thin and very nervous – his eyes burned, he spoke rapidly, excitably, as if forever having to prove something, persuade someone, protect himself against someone. He reminded Sofia of the members of the communist youth from one of the old Soviet films, a Young Communist League figure working for free on one of the Great Construction Projects of Communism, the type who campaigned zealously and actually believed everything they said, the type who sprayed machine-gun fire or galloped on fiery steeds, budenovkas on their heads. They were ready to die for their ideas…

Tolik suddenly began talking about something that was apparently close to his soul – he tried to explain that young people were being messed around – people said that drugs would kill you, make you drop dead straight away, as soon as you tried them you’d be ill forever. He’d tried everything, more or less everything, and there was nothing that he couldn’t do without if he needed to. LSD and weed were completely harmless – the whole world smoked weed. He grabbed his silent friend’s glass, as if in passing, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do, and drained it completely. Venya didn’t so much as flinch, and merely turned to the next glassful.

“There’s no way I’m going to start injecting myself,” said Zhanna, “I reckon it’s completely stupid to get AIDS just for a high.”

“You don’t have to inject at all,” objected Tolik hotly. “That’s just for people who like injecting. People who want to inject, inject; people who want to snort, snort… There’s all sorts of stuff you can snort, if all you want to do is get high.”

“What do you get out of it?” said Andryusha sceptically. “You snort, it’s okay the once, and afterwards you’re left with the shakes your whole life…”

“Am I shaking?” yelled Tolik.

“So what do you get out of it?”

“I get everything. It’s a completely different world… You just have to be in that world once, and everything turns upside down… It’s like you’re free. In it you’re completely free.”