I am never satisfied. I always need more, and more, and more. Honestly, like a spoiled child. The body commands a weak will, and I obediently submit to the call of the flesh. Sapiens has temporarily stepped away on business, and now Erectus reigns on the stage—a simulation of a human with a baboon’s firmware.
In those rare periods of awareness that still occur in my worthless life, I hate myself for this weakness and even try, somehow, to restrain my base instincts—but, as the following will show, without success.
I load myself with work, train twice a day, raise my intellectual level, even tried meditation—yet it all ends the same: I find myself here again, at a bus stop in one of the districts closer to the outskirts of the city.
Like a predator, I peer into the crowd spilling out of a just-arrived bus.
And as a child, I was a sweet kid. And as my father used to say, in those times forever lost to the past, there were no signs that a well-behaved boy, the pride of his parents, an active participant in all school activities, would turn into what I am.
After all, my mother and father did everything to raise a достойный человек—a decent human being.
It’s just a pity that only in cartoons does a cute little lion grow up into a noble leader of the pack.
In real life, things turn out very differently.
Wow, that’s a lot of blondes at once. Though, I guess there were always plenty of them. And here I was thinking natural shades were in fashion now. In any case, none of them are right so far. One is too short, another too fat. Ugh, that one is way too old!
I grow nervous—what if I missed her? Panic starts to creep in. I feel an urge to break from my spot and plunge straight into the mass of bodies spread across the small пустырь, surrounded by haphazardly parked cars, a prehistoric four-story building, and rows of identical kiosks with ugly signs. But with my height, I wouldn’t see anything at all in there.
I sweep my gaze once more over the heads drifting away in different directions from the gathering point. A deep breath, to steady myself.
There—got her! What, thought you could slip away from me? So it was meant for us to meet today after all—I was already starting to doubt it.
I leave my observation point on the small rise by the tree near the stop. My heart, already restless, breaks loose and starts pounding wildly. I push through the thinning crowd toward the passage by the metal shop-containers.
The girl, with bleached hair grown out at the roots, moves slowly through space, almost as if floating. But no matter how much I speed up, sometimes even shoving people aside, the distance between us doesn’t shrink.
And now my unattainable target, along with part of the crowd, has already turned the corner of the four-story building with the cracked facade.
I follow, carefully repeating her maneuver. It’s important to stay unnoticed now—there are still plenty of people around. Everyone is hurrying somewhere in both directions, only my subject moves as if in a dream. As if time flows differently for her.
And now I, too, get caught in this viscous continuum, created by a tall, almost painfully slender figure draped in a gray oversized tracksuit.
A lone planet and a tiny fragment of what was once a larger world—we drift through the universe of this shabby Soviet-era neighborhood.
No matter how much I might deify her image right now, my gaze slid over the shiny pink backpack and settled a little lower, below her waist—on two rounded forms playfully swaying in time with her movements, their outline visible beneath the long-unwashed cotton fabric. But it’s still too early to act.
In our isolated world, it feels as though an eternity has passed, yet after a few courtyards the path is cut off by a busy road. The screech of brakes. The blare of horns. For her, nothing has changed: she crosses the dangerous stretch without even bothering to look around, as if the real world doesn’t concern her at all. Only halfway across does she stop and, with a sluggish, almost dreamlike motion, adjusts a strand of hair that slipped loose from the careless bun at the back of her head—once again provoking a wave of irritation from the drivers.
As for me, snapping out of the haze, I barely hold myself back from rushing after her. She’s already on the other side, and I urgently need to find a pedestrian crossing.
A brief pause in our game—and once again I follow the girl drifting unhurriedly along on her own wavelength, over broken paths between worn-out five-story buildings, with old women on benches and stray animals eager to trail after you to the ends of the earth.
“Damn, I almost lost you again,” I say after her.
I wouldn’t want to end up empty-handed today—then I’d fall into depression, become angry and aggressive, and once again destroy everything I’ve been building for months. At that thought—and from impatience as well—my legs turn to cotton, and I unconsciously quicken my pace, once again slipping out of that complex system, that parallel reality where everything moves to the rhythm of her lazy, swaying walk.
From the outside, it might look like some junkie staggering ahead of me, not yet fully recovered from another dose.
But that’s not the case…
Oh, damn! She stopped—now she’s going to turn around. It must be me, losing focus, stomping like an elephant with these puppet limbs of mine. I jerk my head around. I need to do something, fast, before it’s too late. Damn, not even a bush nearby!
I spin around and crouch down, as if tying my shoelaces. Maybe it’ll work? I even squeeze my eyes shut, repeating a mantra to myself, calling on all the gods of the underworld and the heavens to help me.
Suddenly, I hear the approaching click of heels. Definitely not her—the girl with bleached hair wears sneakers. Some elderly woman passes by, leading a child by the hand. The kid looks curiously at the Velcro straps on my sneakers. Under other circumstances, I’d stick out my tongue or pull a face—but now’s not the time.
Still crouching, bent awkwardly, I glance back. The blonde, as if nothing had happened, continues on her way.
So, where was I? Ah, right—the junkie! No, wait. First impressions are deceiving. If you look closely, every movement of hers follows a rhythm. As if she’s listening to music. Only the melody isn’t coming from any electronic device—it comes from within: from her heart, her soul, her mind. I don’t hear that music myself, I just know it’s there.
And I also know for sure that our strange journey into the depths of this shabby neighborhood is about to end.
The courtyard of yet another five-story building. The second entrance along her path. A gray metal door, stained at the bottom by dogs’ piss, crusted over. The girl slips off her backpack and rummages inside, searching for her keys.
I should wait for the beep of the magnetic lock—but I no longer have the strength to stop. Casting aside caution, I take the three low steps up to the entrance and find myself under the canopy, just a few steps away from her.
The world sways from side to side, the outlines of things blur. Now, between us, my rules apply. My brain sends a command to my hands—but I don’t feel them, just like I don’t feel the rest of my body.
With my own eyes, I see someone else reaching toward the girl.
And then everything cuts off.
No, I didn’t lose consciousness, my legs didn’t give out, and I didn’t smack down onto the concrete slab. No one hit me with a taser or sprayed my face with anything. I’m still standing there, arms stretched out like some mummy from a stupid mummy movie, staring straight into the large gray eyes opposite me.
Two bottomless, expressionless portals that have once again changed the rules of the game—and the jolting world slows down again.
A few moments ago, she suddenly turned and said in her hypnotically low voice: “Oh, it’s you.”
And now we’re still standing, silently looking at each other. In my field of vision I can also see her carelessly lined eyelids in black, with very long but sparse lashes, the faint shadows beneath her eyes, a thin nose with a slight hump, hollow cheeks. Blood runs through the veins shining beneath the thin, pale skin of her face.
Her lips? Always chapped.
These features, unattractive on their own, come together into a face I could look at for hours, imagine, and then admire again in my mind—and as I fall asleep, see in my dreams.
Everything below that I can’t see, but right now it doesn’t matter.
I wonder what happens next.
She takes a step toward me. I hesitate, lower my arms, and move forward too. Then it’s her turn. Then mine. Now there are only a few centimeters between our bodies. We freeze. I know she’s hesitating too—hesitating over how to finish this chess game with its delayed ending.
Our hearts beat out the seconds. She hears how mine flies, I hear how hers races. It feels like this fragile pause could last forever—but all it takes is some small, insignificant detail from the outside to throw the system out of balance.
Meow!
A brazen street cat sneaks up from behind and starts rubbing against my left ankle. I don’t even manage to look at the tailed bastard.
The blonde lunges forward. So do I.
And with the ferocity of starving predators, we crash into each other’s lips.
It would seem that now I’m supposed to dissolve into the passion that’s opened up between us. But all the thoughts I had been blocking, avoiding for so long, suddenly crawl out from somewhere—I don’t even know where I’d hidden them—and my poor brain drowns in a chorus of monotonous murmuring.
It occurred to me that we’ve known each other for an eternity, and I can no longer count how many times, after months of yet another separation, we’ve met like this again. Pitiful puppets tangled in the spokes of the wheel of samsara. Two opposites, doomed to push each other away again after yet another attempt to become a little more alike. And so it will always be, until death finally puts an end to our strange relationship.
I remembered how much she loves music—lives only for it. If not for me, music would be her only passion. No, she doesn’t collect vinyl or CDs, doesn’t store tons of tracks on a hard drive. She doesn’t give concerts or upload covers to some audio platform. It’s as if she simply breathes it. Yes—inhales oxygen and exhales melodies.
Everything that comes to her mind, she records in her home studio, then, like a witch over a great cauldron, stirs it all together, seasoning it with samples from the sounds of the surrounding world.
I’ve never heard more beautiful music—though of course I can’t be objective here.
It’s a pity you will never know how she hears a July sunset, the silence of a freezing January night, the beating of my heart when we are together. Even the strained rumble of a battered diesel bus at rush hour, in her rendition, sounds like a dreamy suite composed by an angel. Hell, even angels would probably envy her talent—if they existed, of course.
But as I said, you’ll never hear the music she creates. Because no one but me is worthy of her talent.
That’s who she is—the love of my life.
I should say that before I met her, I was completely ordinary: with plans, prospects, ambitions. She burst into my life like a hurricane, and the world of proper formulations and logical conclusions shattered into pieces. Only separate words remained. Then the words mixed together and became poetry. And the poetry became life itself, the very meaning of existence.
The objective world lost its power and turned into an illusion.
We could have lasted forever—shining on a stage, sounding loud and clear—but our meetings are always a flash, a comet burning up before it even reaches the earth.
Maybe the problem is that we don’t need anything more. And when the inevitable routine—like parents barging into a room at the worst possible moment—intrudes into our relationship, everything falls apart.
Still not stopping our merciless devouring of each other, we seep into the stairwell. Like Siamese twins fused at the face, stumbling, we creep up the stairs to the third floor. Opening the ancient locks on the prehistoric door of the apartment inherited from a dead grandmother is a whole ordeal even in normal circumstances. We pant, grunt, twist, but manage to overcome that obstacle too.
From the barren hallway, devoid even of a mirror, we crawl along the walls into one of the rooms. There, on the ever-unfolded antique sofa, barely undressing, exposing only the most necessary parts of our bodies, we bring our story to its conclusion.
Feels a lot like a happy ending, doesn’t it? Only I’m not a fan of “happily ever after” fairy tales, so let’s keep going.
After everything, we move from the entryway to the kitchen. She always says smoking will ruin her voice and make her skin age faster, yet she stubbornly keeps at it. And now, clamping the orange filter between her chapped lips, she flicks the wheel of a cheap transparent lighter. I love kissing her when there’s a taste of nicotine in her mouth. No sooner do I think it than I reach for her again. She responds. Then pulls away to finish her cigarette.
I climb up onto the cool kitchen table, bare-assed, watching her naked silhouette against the backdrop of those ancient grandmother’s curtains. Words creep into my head, but they refuse to form into lines.
And then my stomach growls. Right—I haven’t eaten all day, nerves and all. I hop off the table. She giggles, seeing how ridiculously everything jiggles. In the fridge—standing there more like an exhibit from a normal life—there’s only an insatiable emptiness and a stale smell. Damn thing isn’t even plugged in.
It took us three attempts to finally make it out to the store. Exactly three times we stopped by the front door and went back to the big room, to the creaky old couch.
And finally, we made it outside. Someone seemed to turn a universal dimmer switch, and the summer sky began to fade. Deprived of the ability to sell alcohol at night, all the little local shops had long since closed. The perfect time to go grocery shopping.
And so we’re walking across the whole district again, only this time together, arm in arm, toward the bus stop, near which there’s a big supermarket open around the clock. Strangely, there are a lot of people outside. Don’t they have to get up in the morning? Tomorrow’s a workday, isn’t it? Though what do I care—we’re together again. I should enjoy this small happiness of ours.
Along the way, we keep stopping to kiss until our lips go numb, and then we move on again.
By the time, weaving through courtyards and making our little romantic stops, we reach the main road, it’s completely dark. The streetlights come on. Cold, sharp light from hundreds of LEDs floods the area, scattering angular shadows everywhere. There are plenty of people here too, and just as many cars. We need to get to the other side. We head down into the underpass.
Down there it’s incredibly bright, very dirty, and reeks. We squint. On the sides—white tiles, probably laid back in the days of King Pea. On the left, across the entire wall, there’s an ad offering “something or other for your princess.” Half the image is taken up by the face of a cute little dog with whitened teeth and neatly groomed golden fur. And beneath the billboard lies a pile of plastic bags stuffed with who-knows-what kind of rags. Among those belongings, two bodies are settled.
The crowd skirts around the underpass dwellers and their bundles with visible disgust, like in some kind of experiment where charged particles repel each other with the same polarity.
And now we draw level with the couple settled by the wall. The concentrated smell of human bodies brazenly pushes into my nostrils and, it seems, seeping through the pores of my skin, saturates my whole body. I try not to breathe at all. I look at the shrunken figures pressed tightly against each other.
The one that appears to be female—at least that’s what I assume from the long, graying light-brown hair and the absence of a beard—is wrapped in what looks like either some filthy tulle or someone’s discarded wedding dress. She’s curled up in a ball, clinging to her companion, who sits in a puddle of urine. His work clothes, worn to a shine, if you don’t look too closely, vaguely resemble a tailcoat. Nearby lies a traveler’s kit to other worlds: a soot-blackened aluminum spoon and a well-used milliliter syringe.
We pass by. Now, to catch the remaining details of the scene, I have to turn my head—but it’s no use. Some invisible force moving through the underpass carries us away from the man and woman, peacefully dozing, as night demands.
A little more, and we begin to rise back to the surface—but I keep thinking about those two. How did it all turn out this way? Maybe their passion, unable to take shape into anything accepted, anything harmonious—unable to transform into the unbearably standardized form of a relationship—first dragged them into the depths of a dim world of dreams, and then cast them down onto the dirty marble floor of the underpass. Here, into that unclaimed gap between the promise of a beautiful, well-groomed life—like the one in the advertisement—and the endless поток of faceless biomass, people constantly moving back and forth.
As for us, we’ve already made it outside, walked a dozen meters along the sidewalk, and then, through an automatic glass door that opened as if by magic, slipped into a grocery paradise.
