Liza Alexandrova-Zorina - The Little Man

Plonking himself down on the back seat, Savage noticed that the doors into the station had opened and the crowd was swallowed up by the subway. Savely would have liked the driver to stop but he had already started the engine.

«Hotel?» the driver asked matter-of-factly and Savage nodded. Dropping Savage off at a hotel the driver charged him well over the top and, looking at his wooden face and his big, dirty hands, Savage realized he would have to pay up. The hotel room was dirty. The window looked out onto a wall and old newspapers gathered dust on the table. But the only thought in his head was to walk around the city although he didn't know what he expected of it. He wanted a shower but there was only cold water so after a quick wash and without stopping for breakfast he went out onto the streets.

The tram rattling along the street was crammed with passengers like a pumpkin with seeds. Savage took the first one available and got out at a stop with a tempting, cosy-looking cafe where the tables stood close together and the nonsense of lovers had been written with a finger in the dust on the dirty windows.

Savage sat down in a corner and ordered a black coffee, his gaze wandering over the crowded room. The café was stuffy and smoky and the blades of the fans turned lazily, grinding up snatches of conversation. A young couple chatted about mortgage, two solid chaps engaged in heated discussion of the latest stock exchange news, a girl in a short dress shouted into her phone, gesticulating so wildly she nearly spilt her tea while the music wafting from the speakers stuck in the mouth like unripe berries. Savely spread out a magazine that had been left on the table and ran his eyes over the headlines but they only repeated the conversations that were going on around him as if the café's customers were reading the articles out to one another.

The cook could be heard singing in the kitchen. Fat as an opera singer, he sang arias as he made the soup and love songs as he prepared the meat then moved on to more modern melodies as he worked on the desserts. The waitress's heels kept time as she ran between the kitchen and the dining room. Having assessed Savage with a look in which Savely could read how little he was rated, she brought him the bill which he hadn't requested.

Savage paid and went on to a nearby café where the music was muffled and the conversations raced between the tables like beggars. Gossip, exchange rates, prices, brands and the names of celebrities hung like whores on every lip. Savage ordered a brandy, choosing the cheapest.

Rain scraped along the window and a woman, bored on her own and nervously lighting one cigarette from another, scrutinized the blurred shapes of passers-by that flickered past the window. She appeared mysterious because she wasn't talking and Savage couldn't take his eyes off her. After a drink, he grew bolder and moved to her table to suggest, with a stammer, that they spend the evening together.

«You w-w-would th-th-think we had l-l-language so that we could communicate b-b-but it t-t-turns out to be quite the r-r-reverse. W-w-we t-t-talk to k-k-keep our thoughts hidden from the p-p-people w-w-we are t-t-talking to.»

«Your coat cost 10 bucks,» she drawled with a slight trill as she clicked her cigarette case shut. «You're one of the have-nots. What could you possibly offer me?»

Clapping a hand to his forehead as he might to an empty pocket, Savage backed out of the café.

A fine rain was falling. Pedestrians streamed past, slipping by like the wind-chased leaves. Savage walked through the streets, turning the word «have-nots» over on his tongue and ducking out of the way of the umbrellas that threatened to take out an eye. The houses towered over him, the mouths of their stone arches yawning, and there was always rain in this city to be waited out under umbrellas and its conversations were the complete reverse of provincial gossip. He set off for the station that same evening and as he watched the platform recede he felt like an insect landing on fly paper only to leave its feet behind when it took off again.

And so Savage learnt that loneliness comes in many guises. In the countryside it's as quiet as a whisper behind you and in the big city it hits you over the head like a burglar with a bludgeon and roars in your ears with a thousand voices. To women it's as cold as an empty bed and to men it's as cold as a singleton's supper. Loneliness has ages just like people: in its youth it's as lachrymose as love poems inscribed on a wall and in old age it's cantankerous and decrepit so that everyone is lonely, each in their own way.

When he spotted the smoke from the factory chimneys drifting over the tree-tops, Savage felt a hot lump in his throat and nearly burst into tears, astonished at how much he'd missed a town in which he'd been so unhappy. His escort gave him a gentle prod in the back and, without looking round, ran back the way he had come, whistling to himself as he went.

Once on his own, it was all Savage could do not to hurl himself after the boy but the Saami had already vanished in the taiga and Savage knew very well that forest paths disappear as soon as they are walked on while others appear in their place to confuse you and make you lose the trail as they take you in a completely different direction.

Yellow leaves jumped under foot and a cold sun hung like a drawing of itself, offering no warmth at all. The Saami used to say that, at night, the sun would leave the sky on a reindeer doe and turn back into a man who had a wife and children as all men do. It had seemed to Savage in the forest that there were people all around him: the frozen expressions of the stones, the laughing rivers, the embracing trees, their branches entwined like lovers. He collapsed into the shaggy paws of fir trees held out like arms and sobbed aloud as though leaning on the shoulder of a friend.

The little town that he had previously found quiet and sleepy now seemed as clamorous as the metropolis. Klaxons and car horns, noises from the factory, laughter, tears, snatches of conversation — there was such a din, so much bellowing and ringing that it made Savage's head spin. A man stuck out of the gaping maw of a car and Savage imagined a monster had gobbled up the driver who was rootling around in the boot, while the grey houses crowding in on all sides seemed like craggy fjords. Stumbling backwards, Savely was close to diving back into the forest but onlookers had already gathered behind him. Armed with sticks and stones, the men stared at him, scratching the back of their necks. Savage saw the walls covered in his pictures, one of which the murdered runt had brought to the Saami encampment.

«Hey, toe rag, where did you come from?» yelled one of the men, taking a couple of steps towards him.

«Keep back. You can see he's a nut job!»

Savage touched his broken nose, tangled beard and long, matted hair littered with twigs and dry grass and realized that any resident of the town looked more like his picture than he did. Meanwhile, the men continued to argue, looking over the strange tramp who was more like a wood demon than a vagrant.

«He's really weird. Maybe we should call the cops?»

«He does look crazy…»

«I'm Savely Savage!» he shouted, gesturing towards the photos.

The rags on his feet trailed on the ground as Savage plodded on and the bewildered men followed, keeping their distance. «Savely Savage,» they said to one another, trying to get a feel for the name and threatening him with their sticks whenever he turned round. Passers-by stopped to look at them curiously, shrugging their shoulders or joining the procession without knowing why. «It's Savage!» came a loud shout and a frightened whisper went up on all sides: «It's Savage! It's Savage! Savage!»

The news raced through the town, stirring up the anthill. The inhabitants dropped what they were doing and rushed to look at the man they had first regarded as a murderer and then thought had been murdered himself. They didn't know what to think now but they did want to see him for themselves.