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 a war film.
Valerka, at the controls of a fighter plane, was shouting, “Going in for the ram!” and bawling out the song about the curly green maple. The roar of shells and bursting bombs was deafening. The fighter dove at a column of Mercedes cars, out of which leaped Turkish sultans and Chechen separatists.
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.
Nothing encouraging. The verdict was as simple as the swish of the mouton in the guillotine: “If you show up there, Pashka’ll make mincemeat of you and kick you under the baseboard.”
