Сергей Жадан - Mesopotamia

“Damn,” he hissed, releasing Sonia, tossing her the shirt, and opening the door. Looking even chubbier and more dazed after a good night’s sleep, the nephew stood there in a women’s nightshirt and blue sweatpants, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Sonia had managed to cover up a bit by putting the T-shirt on her lap. But Senia just had one hand over his private parts; the nephew stared intently at him, clearly frightened and anxiously tapping his feet. Nobody said a word for a little while, but then he couldn’t take it anymore.

“The toilet’s next door, it’s just the tub in here,” he said forcefully, leaning out into the hallway, flipping on the light for the other room, fading back into the darkness, and shutting the door.

He tried grabbing her shirt again, but Sonia pushed his hand back firmly, pulled the shirt back on, and headed toward the kitchen. He stayed put. Sonia thought he’d been a little too rough with her when the kid started banging on the door, and he had thrown her the T-shirt too hard, as though he was trying to get rid of her. None of this felt like it was supposed to, but did it really matter? Nope, not one bit. Her wedding dress hung from a light fixture in the kitchen. Sonia got started on the coffee. “It’s going to be a long day… and a fun one too,” she added.

Their relatives seemed to all get up at the same time. Maybe his nephew had come back and spread the good news—the bride and groom were already up and about, so everyone should get moving and start this glorious day the Lord had given us. Or maybe Uncle Hrysha had struck a particularly high note and woken everybody up. Either way, no sooner had she slipped back into her room with her cup of coffee than stomps and voices started bouncing off the hallway walls. The men were shaving—all three at the same time, crammed into the bathroom, backing the boy up against the washing machine, not that he wanted to leave; male behavior is driven by the need for a sense of collectivity, so he just watched the grown-ups nick their skin with disposable razors, shedding their first drops of morning blood, wincing but not griping about it. The women were raising a great commotion in the kitchen, circling around the dress, throwing up their hands in despair.

“The dress is too short.”

“We don’t have enough time.”

“It just can’t be done. And what can be done just won’t do.”

They started frying and chopping; the smell of meat and sun filled the apartment. Uncle Hrysha, wearing a pair of long boxer shorts adorned with all sorts of white flowers, slouched out of his room, holding an ironing board under his arm, looking like a surfer heading out to the beach in the morning to conquer some big waves. Sonia was sitting in her room, looking out the window and drinking her coffee, which was cooling off all too quickly. She hadn’t even gotten dressed by the time Senia came back.

“Ya nervous?”

“Sure am. It’s like the first time all over again.”

His face turned sour, even though she was just telling it like it was. At thirty-two, he was getting married for the first time, while she, at thirty-four, suspected this was her last try.

“Look, Senia,” she said, turning toward him, “maybe we should just bag the whole thing. I’ll make some omelets; we’ll feed your relatives, and we’ll send ’em on their way. Godspeed!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! They’ll disown me if we don’t get married. You think today’s about us? Come on, it’s like they’re the ones tying the knot.”

“All right. Then let’s go tie it already.”

They all got ready very quickly, taking just the essentials, pulling his nephew, who had got it in his head that he needed a bath, out of the tub, and spilling out of the apartment. Senia was wearing a black suit, and his hair was gelled back; his relatives hadn’t let him brush his teeth, so he stuck some gum in his mouth and started chewing angrily. She was in her wedding dress and white sneakers, carrying her light, high-heeled sandals in her hand.

“You’re gonna go like that?” Senia asked, surprised.

“It’s not like I’m gonna wear heels all damn day,” Sonia answered.

After she’d seen everyone out, she turned off the lights and locked the door. The apartment where they lived was hers. She paid the electric bill, too. They went outside and started cramming themselves into a taxi. Those who didn’t fit piled into a yellow Ford. Sonia put her heels in the trunk and sat down in the driver’s seat. The Ford was hers, too.

She didn’t want to get married—they’d already been living together just fine for a while, she figured if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But all of Senia’s many relations started getting on his case. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses who would ride into town every weekend to go to church with all their kids and grandkids, wearing their freshly laundered dresses and suits. They looked like people who had managed to grab their best clothes before fleeing from their burning house. Their church services were held at an old building in town that was originally supposed to be a kind of combination cinema and concert hall, but there hadn’t been any movies there for a while, let alone concerts. Senia would take his relations out to lunch afterward, just like the locals did. The men in town respected him and the women loved him. Everybody wanted the best for him. Everybody was constantly talking about Sonia, urging him to marry her. Senia lived in her apartment, she drove him to the metro every morning (just two blocks away, but it was uphill) and bought him cigarettes. Nevertheless, he started playing hardball with her, which really rubbed her the wrong way.

“You know, we’ve been living together for almost a year,” Sonia said. “What else do you want from me? What’s getting married gonna change?”

“Nothing at all, but my family’s getting all worked up over this.”

“Well, tell ’em not to.”

But Senia kept insisting, and she gave in eventually, much to her own surprise… and his.

“All right, you’re gonna get your wedding,” she said. “But don’t push it, my love has limits.”

She rented out the Uzbek restaurant down by the river from the Tatars who owned it and tracked down one of her old classmates who now worked as a master of ceremonies at wedding parties. He didn’t recognize her. “That’s probably for the best,” Sonia thought. She ordered a dress, gave her friends fair warning, and told them they were having an Italian-style wedding—meaning everyone should come dressed like they were in the Sicilian mafia. “Let’s see them pull that off!” she thought, quite pleased with herself.

An odd bunch of people showed up for the wedding. They stuck around, too, which made things even worse. Sonia stood in the middle of the crowd, still in her white sneakers and matching dress, trying to figure out which of them she knew. Or which of them knew her, at least. Her whole office was there, including Dasha from the legal department, teary-eyed and exhausted, with her older and younger sons in tow. The little guy was probably the only one who was actually dressed for the occasion—he was wearing his school uniform and glaring at everything and everyone; yeah, he could pull off the role of a pint-sized gangster—though the boss apparently wasn’t sending much money his way these days. He was wearing a heavy mechanical watch, which he’d probably stripped from the corpse of some debtor whose business the family had been “protecting.” Their neighbor John was there to offer his best wishes, looking subdued as always and a little older than before. He glanced at Senia’s hair scornfully, but refrained from making any comment. Some wacko in a cowboy costume had just crashed the party—from afar, he reminded her of Celentano—though that had more to do with his temperament than how he looked. Sonia didn’t know him, but that didn’t stop him from taking it upon himself to post up by the entrance and greet everyone as they arrived. Then a bunch of neighbors, school friends, and business partners started pouring in. Most of them knew what the bride liked and had a good idea of what to get her—after all, it wasn’t her first time getting hitched, so everybody had kinda gotten used to it by now. A pack of Senia’s grumpy relatives were walking around, not quite sure what to do with themselves. His nephew was the worst, he was really making a scene, knocking appetizer trays off the table and smoking with the Tatar guys. Then he crashed into the fountain, and who didn’t see that coming? “And he’s only ten,” Sonia thought, thoroughly impressed. “He’s barely gotten started and he’s already a terror.” The only relative she’d invited was her uncle Hrysha, who regarded himself as her godfather, for some reason, which helped give the festivities an Italian flair. “Whatever. Let him have it,” Sonia thought. “He’d better head home after the wedding, though, I can’t take him screaming in the middle of the night anymore.” The rest of her relatives were either dead or off the radar. Her godfather more than made up for their absence, though—he was hitting on the women from the legal department, putting his skinny, yellow hands on their soft, supple thighs, pounding champagne, and occasionally taking out his dentures to clean them with wet wipes. Senia had invited his whole soccer team, too, at least the regular roster. They’d spent the last three years defending the honor of a local chain of hardware stores. The team had been on a real roll. They were always near the top of the leaderboard, so the players kept dropping hints—“Come on, Mr. Abramovich (he was the owner), if you spend some real money on us we’ll win a corporate championship for you. It’s all in our hands—well, not our hands… you know what I mean!” But Mr. Abramovich had his own plans; in winter, at the start of the second half of the season, he announced that the team had been disbanded. He’d gotten into some tussle with city hall and had a falling out with his guys in Kyiv, so he sold all his stores, bought a hotel in Egypt, and left for Africa to spend his days by the pool, counting camels as they went by. This was a huge blow for the team—they weren’t interested in much of anything besides soccer, so they had no real skills. Nobody knew what to do next. Some of them got jobs, others went back to school, and a few of them, including Senia, were too down in the dumps to do anything. They all came to the wedding, though. Nobody adhered to the dress code, obviously (“Senia, don’t be a fuckin’ show off with that mafia shit”); however, they were all sporting sunglasses to go with their warm-ups. They said that was the look down in Sicily. Sania, their right wing, went to Sicily last Christmas; that’s how all the Ukrainians there looked—Adidas gear, sandals, and black sunglasses. Just like the real mafia. They were apprehensive about all this wedding business, but they liked Sonia—her dark-red hair, warm lips, icy fingers, tan skin, slight, athletic build, lean legs, and expensive sneakers. They wouldn’t have minded all banging her right there by the fountain, if they could. She wouldn’t have batted an eye if they’d gone for it, either.