Zakhar Prilepin - Sin

I shook my head, thinking about Vadik, and Svetka, and about that… nasty…

“Next time we should knock him out straight away,” I said to Syoma.

Syoma nodded. He agreed.

I was a bit nervous, why hide it.

But Syoma wasn’t. Or he had already calmed down.

“Zakhar, I don’t understand, where do they get these cars from?” he asked me for the umpteenth time.

A foreign car drove up, and inside were two guys who were virtually teenagers, but overflowing with their own expensive worth. Of course they opened the doors, and turned the stereo up loud enough to drown out the din of music in the club. They called over some girls they knew, who happened to be nearby — and the girls quietly went over to them, transfixed by the sight of the car. The teenagers smoked and laughed, nodding their heads, revealing their white necks, which Syoma could have broken with two fingers, and smoked again, and laughed — without actually getting out of the car, reclining on the luxury seats, alternately stretching their skinny legs out of the car, or tossing them up practically on the steering wheel.

“Shall we take a closer look?” Syoma called me. “It’s a great car.”

We went outside. Molotok went up to the car and stood next to it with a look as if he were thinking: shall I take it off them, or shouldn’t I bother just yet.

Syoma had a reverent attitude towards cars. He had a beautiful, slender, large-breasted wife, whom he sometimes beat a little, because she didn’t want to cook. His wife would take offense and go and stay with her mother, but then come back, because essentially he was a good guy and loved her very much.

But as I said, all he dreamt about was a car.

I stood on the steps outside the club, breathing in the fine night air and calming, calming myself down.

I couldn’t care less about them, I thought, with a clear heart, which was now beating evenly. All I need to do is finish the day’s work, and that’s it. And tomorrow will be a new day, but that’s just tomorrow… Who cares, that’s right. I don’t care at all about them…

At home I have a young son and a tender wife. They’re asleep now. My wife is keeping my empty place in our bed, and sometimes she strokes her hand over the space where I should be lying.

Our son wakes up two or three times a night and asks for kefir. He isn’t quite yet two years old. My wife gives him a bottle, and he falls asleep, smacking his lips.

My son always looks as if he were sitting on a riverbank, swinging his leg, and looking at the swift water.

He has flaxen hair which gives out a soft light. For that reason, I call him “Birch bud.” The name suits him very well.

Smiling at my thoughts, I went down to where Syoma was standing.

He certainly liked the car. But not the guys in the car.

He seemed to be chewing on a crooked smile, as he walked around the car. The girls were already staring at Syoma, and the guys started spitting a lot, in long streams.

“Piggies, right?” Syoma finally said loudly, he was standing on the other side of the car, by the trunk.

I raised my eyes in surprise.

“The piggies took money from papa and mama and are showing off,” Syoma explained.

I started choking with laughter.

Molotok walked past the driver, who was smoking, with his legs crossed, and the girls who had suddenly stopped talking, and shrank back in fear at the sight of the sullen security guard.

Suddenly Molotok stopped, and went back to the open car door.

“Right?” he said loudly to the guy behind the wheel, as if speaking to a deaf person. Molotok even inclined his powerful head, as if he seriously wanted to hear a reply.

“What?” the guy asked, instinctively drawing his head away.

“Nothing,” Molotok replied in a go-to-hell tone of voice, and pushed the car door. It hit the guy’s legs, but not hard.

Out of the club, opening his mouth either to the wind or the absent rain, came the guy who had asked us where the turnpike was.

“We didn’t go around like that in Afghanistan…” he said with drunk irony, looking over Molotok and me as we returned to the foyer.

He’s in the mood now, just as I thought…

“What did he say, I didn’t understand?” Molotok asked, when we sat on our stools.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t understand either. He himself didn’t even understand what he had said. But he needed to open his mouth, sluiced with vodka, so he did.

He was clearly dying to say something else: in a hurry, taking several drags in a row, he smoked half a cigarette and returned to us, after some confusion as to what side the door opened on. He entered the foyer, and stood there, swaying and smiling. He didn’t shut his mouth, and you could see his nicotine-stained but still strong teeth. For some reason he undid the bag from around his waist, and held it in his hand.

People coming in off the street avoided him.

“What are you standing in the middle of the road for, like a weed?” I asked with interest.

“Am I in the way?” he asked maliciously.

I didn’t reply.

He came over to our table and put the bag on it.

He fumbled for a long time in the pockets, looking for something, cigarettes evidently.

He put some papers out on the counter, and small change.

He finally found the packet with broken cigarettes in it, covered in tobacco.

“Keep an eye on my bag,” he said, squinting with a drunken, mocking look. “I’ll have another smoke.”

“Take it away,” I asked him simply.

“Go on,” he said, and turned to the exit.

I lightly hit the bag, and it flew into the corner of the foyer, by the garbage bin.

“So that’s how you are,” he drawled, turning around. “In Afghanistan…”

“…A mushroom looks like a man. I told you: take it away.”

He stood there for a while, rocking on his heels again. Then he picked up the bag from the floor. He looked it over for another minute.

He came up to me, and unexpectedly threw his right arm around my neck, either to embrace or strangle me.

“So that’s how you are…how you are…” he muttered, hoarsely and maliciously.

Molotok looked at me, swearing, but by my face he realized that everything was all right.

Without hurrying too much, with my right hand I found the thumb of the sinewy, strong hand encircling me and pulled it hard, jabbing the man in the chest with my left elbow at the same time.

Grunting, the man let me go. I grabbed him by the chest.

“What’s with you, Afghan jerk? Don’t wanna dance? Huh? Why don’t you dance, soldier? You bored or something?” I shook him. “Get out of here then!”

I pushed him out on to the street, almost roaring with irritation. I couldn’t control myself, and rushed after him, and pushed him off the stone steps of the club.

Syoma also came outside. He looked at me, smiling tenderly.

“Angry?” he asked me, looking at the “Afghan,” who had started searching for cigarettes again, not far away. “Angry, Zakhar?” Syoma asked me again, but in such a way that I didn’t have to answer, and it wouldn’t offend him. And I didn’t answer. Just because I was immediately distracted.

Something nasty was happening in the car park.

The Moscow guys who I had met outside had parked their massive jeep so that it blocked a smaller jeep. But in the smaller jeep, the five “serious people,” as Molotok and I called them, were sitting.

For three minutes now, their jeep had been blocked. This is a long time for “serious people” — three minutes. To start with, they honked their horn — when I was talking with the “Afghan” I heard the horn — but no one came out to them.

Now, two of the “serious people” had climbed out of their car, and one of them, with a certain zest, was kicking the wheel of the Moscow guests’ jeep. The alarm went off, it blared for 10 seconds, then stopped, and he kicked the wheel again, getting angrier each time.