flaskâs bottom to the wall.
What are you trying to prove and to whom? Thereâs no going into your place: you have a corpse peeking out of every nightstand. Youâre still young, healthy, and strong. No one would dare reproach you for anything.You were a little boy then and you still are. You dug your heels in and stood counter to life, and you think you can hold out. But youâll be swept away. Youâve got this idea that Zhenyaâitâs as if she were her deceased mother and you were living for her. But thatâs wrong. You know nothing about your daughter. Sheâs not yours anymore, sheâs her own person. You keep reaching for her to keep from drowning, but you donât have her anymore. Have you told Zhenya about her mother?
Mika and my father were silent for a long time, only I could hear the wet stems dripping from the edge of the table onto the floor. The ear I had pressed to the flaskâs neck was sweating.
When she came to us then she wasnât herself, I could tell right away. I asked, âWhy didnât you bring little Zhenya?â And she said, âLeave me alone.â I thought, Well, to hell with you. Living makes me sick even without you. If you donât want to tell me anything, you really donât have to. Then for some reason she stopped by at my neighborâs, a pharmacist. His little boy used to like all kinds of experiments, and his father had made him a laboratory. The lad started showing her his treasures. âIf you drink from this test tube,â he said, âyouâre a goner!â All this became clear later. In the middle of the night I suddenly woke up from a scream. I couldnât figure out what was going on because people donât scream like that. Then it was quiet. My Roman was breathing heavily, but she wasnât there. The bathroom door was locked from the inside. Behind the door there was some movement, shuffling, rustling. Scraping. I shouted to her, but she didnât respond. I wanted to give it a kick to make the latch give way, but then I looked and her fingers were reaching under the door. I shouted, âYour fingers, take back your fingers!â But they kept reaching. Somehow I got across the balcony to the bathroom window, broke the window, and nearly lost my grip, though it was only the second floor. I grabbed her and picked her up. She looked at me with horror in hereyes, she was trying to say something, but there was a jumble where her mouth should have been.
Evgenia Dmitrievna, thank God Iâm blind, not legless, and there is no need to grab me by the arm and push me. I just need to hold onto your elbow. Like this. Letâs go. And if you think that this makes me deeply unhappy, then you are mistaken, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I can see that youâre unhappy. I canât see, of course, I said that wrong, though thatâs not something you can see with eyes, rather I can sense it. But youâre not unhappy because you canât fly, for instance, or walk through solid objects, walls or earth. Isnât that so? I know youâre afraid of me, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I mean, you think you pity me, but in fact youâre afraid. Because itâs yourself you pity, not me. Thinking about me, you imagine yourself in the dark, eyeless, and naturally for you this is scarier than dying. But the point is that blindness is a seeing personâs concept. I live in a world where there is no light or dark, and that means thereâs nothing awful about it. My God, you should have warned me there was a sidewalk here.
God, prankster and coward, supreme lover, insatiable sperm-hurler, who each time chooses the guard for his fevered treasure on a whimâa bull-boor, swan-sneakâor sometimes you pierce me like sunlightâyouâre still a silly-billy. Remember how you kept dawdling and mumbling that you were afraid of hurting me? A god-child, even on a stolen bed, on that heavenly sheet, you wanted
Christine Zolendz, Frankie Sutton, Okaycreations