Zakhar Prilepin - Sin

Molotok and I went up to them and stood there. They kept repeating their oaths, twisting their drunken, red-lipped mouths, and clenching their fists.

“You wanna fight?” I asked “Go behind the bushes and fight then, don’t hang around here.”

They kept standing opposite each other, pretending not to notice me.

“What did I just say?” I asked, two notes higher.

The one in the unbuttoned shirt didn’t have enough strength of character to maintain the pose, and with a disgusted expression he ducked back into the club. The second turned his back to us, and lit a cigarette, loudly exhaling the smoke. The smoke swam in the light of the street lamp, slowly. Rain was falling, barely noticeable.

The worst time at the club is after one in the morning. The guys start dividing up the girls, accidentally hitting each others’ shoulders, and sorting out other stupid things like that. This goes on until four in the morning. In the last hour, they are all tired and leave slowly, without saying goodbye to us, not even seeing us, looking at the floor, while others sway and can hardly move their dull eyes. At quarter to five there’s hardly anyone left in the club — two or three people, who are very sluggish. Usually, I’d noticed, they didn’t have any money for a taxi, and they slowly and submissively went out into the night, when we made them leave.

Laughing, we returned to the counter. Molotok stretched, cracking his strong bones. The jacket on his back tightened when he stretched out his arms.

A girl ran past us outside, and I didn’t get a chance to see her face. From the back, she seemed familiar.

“Is that Vadik’s girlfriend?” I asked Molotok.

Molotok nodded.

“When did she come here? I didn’t see her.”

“You were out walking with Lev Borisych…”

“What’s with her?”

Molotok shrugged his shoulders.

The girl was evidently agitated about something. She was running toward a taxi — the drivers always park some distance away, we don’t let them park by the club, so they don’t stop customers from leaving their cars there.

“She forget her purse,” Molotok guessed, when the girl swiftly ran back to the club.

She probably had a fight with Vadik , I barely had time to think, when suddenly Vadik himself, his face covered in pink blotches, ran into the foyer and stopped, waiting for his girlfriend.

“Where’s my purse?” she asked in a subdued voice, walking in.

“With him,” he replied.

“And what?”

Vadik looked at her constantly, as if he was trying to read the answer to the question on her face.

The answer came of its own accord, opening the door to the foyer with its shoulder — it was the pale guy with the bad teeth. A woman’s purse was dangling from his hand.

“Why did you run away?” he asked the girl, ignoring everyone else in the foyer.

She turned away, looking through the glass at the cars, waiting for Vadik to solve the problem somehow.

Vadik was silent, looking around with a gaze that wandered without focusing on anything: he didn’t see the guy with the purse, us or his girlfriend.

I didn’t want to get involved, but I said:

“Give her the purse.”

“Let’s go in to the club, you,” said the pale guy, walking past Vadik and not answering me, and dragging the girl by the elbow. “What are you acting up for, fuck it…”

“I’m talking to you, pal,” I challenged him. “Give her the purse.”

“I’m not your pal,” he replied, without turning around. His voice was unpleasantly calm. A person who replies with this voice may turn around and aim a short and nasty punch at the face of the person who asked the question.

“You’re no one to me,” I replied. “Give her the purse — and go and hang out with your friends.”

“We’ve got our own things to sort out, who’s asking you to butt in?” The guy finally turned to me, and he looked completely unfriendly. “I’ve known this girl… for a long time. And I’m with her now,” he said slowly, almost painfully, uttering the words as if he had difficulty talking. “Who are you? The vice squad? Didn’t anyone explain your duties to you?”

“My duties are no concern of yours,” I replied. “The purse isn’t yours, even if you shared a potty with the girl at kindergarten. Give her the purse, and off you go.”

The guy was silent, smiling . After a pause, showing that he wasn’t obeying me, but was making an independent decision, he replied:

“I’ll give it to her, but don’t you stick your nose in again.”

The guy gave the girl the purse, and she grabbed it, but instead of going outside she went into the club again.

“And you can go away and hide behind your bar,” the guy said to Vadik, and followed the girl back into the club.

“What a brainless girl!” I said angrily, when I was alone with Syoma. “Why the hell did she go back there?”

Molotok also swore — in the sense that the pale guy was a real jerk.

She’ll put a strain on his nerves all night… I thought about Vadik’s girlfriend.

I felt like smoking, but unable to resist, I went to see what would happen with them next.

I didn’t see the guy or Vadik’s girlfriend. Vadik himself was mixing a cocktail for someone.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I said angrily over someone’s shoulder: you couldn’t get to the bar, it was so crowded.

“She went upstairs, to the changing room,” Vadik replied, not looking me in the eye.

Why did she go there? I wondered. No one who doesn’t work here is supposed to go there.

I had never been there myself. I went up the staircase, looking around. There seemed to be just two rooms there: for the DJ and for the dancers.

I looked into the first one — a stripper was standing in the middle of the room, topless, and adjusting her stocking. For some reason seeing her breasts didn’t affect me at all — they were just breasts, I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if I had seen her elbow or knee.

“Did you see a girl here?” I asked, looking at her.

“Svetka? She ran out through the other entrance. That jerk was chasing her. He came in here, he knocked.”

“How do you know she’s called Svetka?”

“Svetka? We studied together. She came to watch me dance tonight. You should do something, you really should, he’s completely nuts. He was shouting…”

Without replying, I closed the door.

I went down the other staircase, didn’t see anyone, and returned to the foyer.

“Did you see them?” I asked Syoma.

He hadn’t. But they came back themselves: the girl, Svetka, now completely hysterical, with disheveled hair, and the guy behind her, with his angrily tight cheeks trembling angrily, insolent, stupid and stubborn.

“Come with me, and today I’ll fuck you…” he pulled her by the shoulder, catching her by the door outside.

“You’re getting on my nerves,” I said.

“Who’s getting on your nerves?” the guy looked at me, baring his teeth.

“You are.”

I jumped off the stool, and Diesel came out — loud in every movement he made, slightly drunk, smiling — perhaps he had already found something out, perhaps from our appearance he realized that there would be a fight, but he reacted immediately.

“What are you doing here?” without malice, but loudly, with a father’s honor, he questioned his pale colleague. He turned him around, and with a heavy blow with two hands on the shoulders, he thrust him out of the foyer, outside.

“Sorry, guys, he’s acting the fool… Keep working, don’t worry,” Diesel said to us, smiling.

They left immediately.

Svetka came back to the club again, stayed there for a minute, and then Vadik came out to see her off with a tender expression.