Сергей Жадан - Mesopotamia

“Cheers,” she said, taking a swig. The champagne soused her, running off her lips, under the collar of her snow-white shirt. Dasha handed me the bottle brusquely and started undoing the buttons, wiping the liquid off her skin. I was in a real state watching how delicately and fastidiously she touched her own body.

“Drink up.”

“How was work?” I asked with an air of importance.

“All right. I have a stressful job. My clients always have one problem or another. But how can you work with people that have so many problems? They need a therapist, not a lawyer. What are you planning on doing here?” she asked.

“I’m just gonna settle in first,” I answered, deciding to play my cards close to the chest for now. “Can I kiss you?”

“Kiss me? That’s rich. Find yourself a girl your own age! All right, that’s a wrap.”

She got up, grabbed her jacket, stuck the unopened bottle in my hand, and went to bed.

What did I do wrong? Where was the error in my calculations? Was it the shirt? Or the sandals? Or maybe even my sunglasses? Everything should have played out differently. I should be lying in her bed right now and she should be lying next to me, gazing tenderly and languidly into my imperturbable eyes. Instead, I’m standing here in the kitchen holding a bottle of champagne in these hands that I don’t know what to do with. What’s she up to right now? Yeah, I knew it—she’s walking around in the kitchen, too, feet pattering on the other side of the wall. I placed the champagne on the floor and pressed my ear against the wall. Now she’s walking over to the window and opening it; all the twilight critters, all those moths and bugs, come rushing at her, so she shuts it quickly, walks over to the cabinet, takes out some dishes, tea, sugar, a mug, spoons, and saucers. All that metal jingles harmoniously; she puts it on the table right behind me—just an arm’s length away, just one breath away—turns on the gas, places a kettle on the stove, sits down, gets up again, walks over to the window, opens it back up, and takes out her lighter. “Damn, she’s smoking.” She anxiously puts out her cigarette, exhales the smoke from her lungs, shuts the window, takes her phone out of her jacket pocket, checks for missed calls, and abruptly tucks it away again. The kettle starts whistling; she ignores it for a while, stands up, looks tensely at her side of the wall, in my direction, turns sharply, shuts off the gas angrily, sits down at the table and forcefully sweeps all the dishes and spoons into the corner. Now I can’t hear her anymore. What’s she doing? What’s she doing over there? She’s crying! Suddenly, it hits me—she’s crying! She’s sitting there and crying! Yeah, she’s sitting there, all alone in her empty apartment, sobbing inconsolably, choking on her bitter tears after choking down a bedtime dose of bitter nicotine, and there’s nobody there, nobody at all, who can listen to her weeping and ease her pain! Nobody besides me! Struck by this epiphany, I spring to my feet, knocking the bottle over—it tips to the side, slowly and mutely, like a freight train loaded with oil, and starts rolling along the scrubbed, cold floor, its squeaking violating the surrounding silence. She tenses up, there, on the other side—now she knows what’s going on; she goes quiet and listens hard. The rolling bottle hits the wall and stops. I go quiet, too, standing still and listening to her silence; she holds it, knowing I’m here, that I can hear everything, that I’ve figured everything out.

It was a little before eight when she unlocked my apartment with her set of keys and shouted from the doorway.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!”

She sped down the hallway, poked her head into the bathroom, shot a probing glance at the kitchen, and barreled right into the room where I was sleeping, naked, as usual, so I finally gave her a good show.

“Ooo.” She sat down next to me and touched my shoulder. “Whatcha got there?” she asked, examining my tat. “Is that a dog?”

“It’s a dragon. It’s not finished yet, that’s all.”

“Nah, that’s no dragon. That’s a dog. Look, here’s its tail. It’s a wiener dog.” She touched my dragon again, sending waves of fire across my skin—but she hopped off the mattress before I could deliver a good comeback. “Come on, get dressed,” she ordered. “I want to show you something.”

I put my clothes on in a hurry. I’m generally a pretty confident dude, but after the wiener dog, I wasn’t in the mood to argue with her. Dasha opened up the balcony door, stepped outside, stood there, and waved. “Come on,” she said, “what’s the holdup?” There she stood in her white hotel robe. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, and she had apparently slept that way, so it looked like an array of vegetables a chef had selected with exacting skill for the soup of the day. I walked over gloomily.

“All right,” she said, looking around. “Let me show you the neighborhood and then you can go back to sleep. Look,” she began, making room for me on the balcony. “You see that?”

I peered down. There was so much sunlight that it blinded me and blurred the objects near the ground. My eyesight came back to me almost instantly, though; things regained their shape and colors grew fuller. Greenery and heat were ushering out the month of May—fresh air was lying on the rooftops and pooling between the apartment blocks. Schoolkids were running down the street, a few other people were zooming around, and a street sweeper stood on the corner, his vest flashing orange. “Today is no ordinary day,” I thought. “Today is something like a holiday.”

“So, that’s the school,” Dasha said, pointing at the building across from us. “I didn’t go there because I only moved here three years ago, but just so you know, some freaky stuff goes on over there. The principal often spends the night in her office, but not by herself—she has visitors… a car with diplomatic plates. They blast Italian pop music all night and stick their heads out of her office window to smoke. She has a red nightgown, just so you know. That’s the beauty salon next door,” she continued, pointing. “Those girls give each other nail extensions all day. They go outside for smoke breaks, take a seat on the bench—you see that bench up against the wall—whichever of them just got her nails done has to have her girlfriend pluck the pack out of her pocket. Then they sit there like owls digging their claws into the wooden bench. Check it out sometime. There’s a real shady restaurant around the corner—every morning the owner walks around in a pink kimono, talking to somebody on his little girly cellphone. A little farther back, there’s a sports bar where a bunch of Arabs watch the European soccer leagues. A while ago some Vietnamese guys opened up a seriously gross buffet—I’ve never seen one of them eat any of the food they make. Next to the Vietnamese joint, in the alley, there’s a sauna that’s just a front for a brothel—something to keep in mind… There’s a vacant building next to that; bums hang out there in the summer months—kinda neat. Local artists have their studios next to the bums—make sure you keep ’em straight. And there’s a TB clinic across the way. So, what else do we got?” She looked to the left. “There’s a publishing house over there. I suspect they hide documents for companies that do under-the-table accounting—fresh packages of paper come in at dusk and corpses wrapped in Chinese rugs go out at dawn. The city fathers have a mansion a bit farther down—it seems like their mistresses are living out their days there. Sometimes I see them on the back porch—not the city fathers, obviously—their mistresses, drinking their tea mixed with rum. The youngest lady is about seventy or so.”