On Monday I died, vanished. Killed outright by Seryoga, a sly little devil who knew everything about everyone. He burst in like a storm:
— Wake up, you crook! Remember Valerka Roslavsky? They wasted him yesterday! Threw a grenade at his feet! Blew him to hell!!! Anka works at his firm. A cop came by, said Valerka was mixed up in some serious business, holy mother! That’s how it is!
— What?
— Anka, my girlfriend, stopped by this morning. Roslavsky’s kaput, alles verboten! Your neighbor! Did you forget already?
I hadn’t forgotten. I remembered perfectly well.
Paralyzed by the news, I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Seryoga, not waiting around for a coherent reaction, took off. I turned onto my side, eyes fixed on the wall. Everything had collapsed and gone still. Dead, forever.
My guardian angel, who had shown up in a yellow shirt promising deliverance from all my problems, had been shot down on takeoff.
I pictured a scene from some war film. Valerka sat at the controls of a fighter plane, shouting, “Going in for the ram!” and belting out lines about the curly green maple. The roar of shells and exploding bombs was deafening. The fighter dove at a column of Mercedes cars, out of which leaped Turkish sultans and Chechen separatists.
No.
It couldn’t have happened! I felt desperately sorry for Valerka, and for myself.
I bit my lip so as not to howl with grief, squeezed my eyes shut, counted to a hundred… to two hundred… three hundred… at five hundred I peeled my eyelids open and stared at the wall for a long time.
I remembered Valerka’s last words. The right words.
Life hadn’t been good. It promised nothing bright or inspiring. I closed my eyes and pictured the future. I’d end up working as an engineer at the Institute of Whatever-You-Forget-Forever, wasting away on weekdays doing calculations, and on weekends with a can of beer on the table. A wedding would come along — a little doll on the dashboard, mayonnaise in the salad… Kids would come. Grow up. Move away. Misery.
Time to get up.
Getting up, I rubbed my aching knee and my bruised jaw. I was careful not to touch my screaming tailbone. I put on jeans, a t-shirt. Glanced at the fridge, at the empty table. Ah! I remembered Anya had come by Seryoga’s. They’d had tea, there should be some gingerbread cookies left. Plus Seryoga shared a room with Yura Shako, who worked a side job as a watchman at the same firm as me. A flicker of hope: maybe Yura knew the details of my firing. Severance pay, say, or wages for the five shifts I’d honestly worked in June.
I heard nothing encouraging. The verdict was as simple as the swish of a lamb under the guillotine: I was out of a job. Yurok, back from his shift, warned me: “If you show up there, Pashka’ll turn you into mincemeat and kick you under the baseboard. Don’t go. I wouldn’t risk it.”
