The Superfluous Man
Botyakov Anatoly
Austin Macauley Publishers
The Superfluous Man
About the Author
About the Book
Copyright Information
About the Author
Botyakov Anatoly was born in 1990 in a small hamlet in Siberia and began writing twenty years later. Ever since that moment, he has not ceased holding a pen. He writes in different genres and believes that an author does not deserve to be respected by his leadership if he does not put his whole self into writing.
About the Book
Why do so many of us feel painfully lonely in this huge world?
Why is the chance of ending up with someone who will not soothe this dull pain so incredibly high?
Victor has always believed he has solved the equation. He is young and lonesome, but he knows why and awaits no one special to enter his life anymore. He earns his living by seducing rich married women, but there is not any sort of pleasure in it for him. Victor believes that what he does is saving misfortunate birds confined in cages, yet he does not know there are cages better left closed…
Copyright Information
Copyright © Botyakov Anatoly (2018)
The right of Botyakov Anatoly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788239356 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788239363 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781788239370 (E-Book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2018)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd™
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Victor did not remember the way and the time when that summer had begun. He simply woke up one morning because of the sun burning right through blackout jalousie and shining its brightest directly upon his eyes. Everything had been much more real at that time, a combination of words ‘real life’ had not seemed something distantly familiar, his thoughts had not shuffled, everything had been clear and obvious, and everything had been different at that time. His current life looked rather like a dream than a real one. However, he was not asleep and he knew it for sure, but what was more important, he could prove it with just a couple of words—“Has anyone ever asked himself about his status during a sleep?” And the answer was – no! Dreams, in contrast with reality, never left additional options…
He reluctantly opened his eyes but immediately covered them back with one of his palms and turned away from the window, having found himself in the exact same position that he had while falling asleep last night on this very sofa. Then he waited like this just a couple of minutes and finally sat up, looking at his rented flat – a place that was filling his soul with nothing but the absolute emptiness. The only thing that he could afford by living here was wasting of time, and he was truly prosperous with this occupation.
This flat was the first and the only one visited by him during his search of a place to live when he came to this strange town. A very modest advertisement presented a two-room flat on the third floor of an old five-storied house. There was no information about money needed to cover the proposal, but it contained one very peculiar, and at first sight even suspicious sentence: “Inhabitation on my terms only.” His phone call was responded by a quiet voice belonging to a very humble and polite owner of the flat. Within an hour, Victor already found himself in front of an entrance, where that very woman hospitably met him. She was very small, seemingly forty years of age. First, she invited her potential leaseholder to the kitchen, however, she did so not to start showing the flat but simply to treat him to a cup of tea.
Later the woman told him that her husband had passed away a little bit more than six months ago, and since they had no children as well as any other close relatives who could take care of the flat for a couple of months, she decided to rent it out. Her own intention was to visit her sister who lived somewhere abroad; unfortunately, Victor was not able to define a country because a name of a town told him nothing at all.
He was deeply astonished and touched by the attitude that he met that day, by the trust that he was granted being just a stranger. Of course, all these feelings provoked his desire to stay here; after all, he was alone in a strange town and no matter what his thoughts were, his soul was looking for someone alike, for someone who could understand him and whom he would also understand. His decision to rent the flat had found its place in his head long before he said it directly, but he was unlikely to know about this fact.
When the question about money emerged, the woman suddenly proposed Victor to stay without paying a coin for itbut providing that he kept order until her arrival. There was no doubt that she was literally overwhelmed with warm feelings towards this place and could not afford seeking profits. Victor accepted her excellent conditions but stipulated for letting him make at least one average payment for the first month. When they reached an accord, he promised to keep order and maintain everything as it was. However, there was not much to change anyway, for all personal objects, such as old pictures of the family, had been providently put away, and only old empty frames could betray this secret.
Thus, a new chapter in Victor’s life began and for that moment, it seemed to him the last. A month passed after that and he still ran out of time trying to fill this blank sheet with anything slightly interesting…
There was something mesmerizing about his current position. He was sitting still on the sofa without mowing a single muscle. Virtually every part of his body, from a distant look to his curled toes, was saying he was completely broken and lost. It had been almost a minute since he began to stare at a corner of the room, where right on the floor a cell phone was. Victor was waging a battle against his own mind, trying to suppress a desire of getting up and lifting the object. In the upshot, he simply gave in, rose to his feet, took several leisurely paces and got the cell phone as if not being the one who had thrown it in this very corner yesterday night. Few seconds later, the cell phone got back to life with a splash screen and began actively uttering as it counted missed calls and new messages.
Co-authors of dozens of calls were just two numbers, which divided their duties almost perfectly equally. Messages were playing on the same rules and covered two subjects: “Victor, call me back as soon as you can, do not let me down!” and “Son, why do not you answer? Victoria and I, we both are worried. Let us know how you are doing, when it is possible and comfortable for you.”
Victor briefly read the text of the last message and chose the ‘delete all’ function without thinking twice. Then he confirmed his choice and put the cell phone on a glass table standing next to him. After that, he warily approached the window and slightly drew jalousie apart, showing clearly visible hesitation. Despite a morning hour, the short hand was only just getting to the six, the town was already breathing with its full chest, greedily absorbing the remains of the oxygen and giving back swirling clouds of poisonous smoke.
It was the first time when Victor felt this outburst of anger towards what was surrounding him. He was bearing the purest malice towards this town, looking at it living without sharing anything wit
h the newcomer, without even paying attention to the desire burning him from inside. Fortunately, he was saved from these depressive thoughts by a sudden phone call. Demonstrating not much of an interest, Victor looked at the screen and in the same way, very calmly, pressed the ‘answer’ button. Then he activated the speakerphone and slowly sat down on the floor, having leaned against a wall.
“Victor! Can you hear me?” said a man with a slightly raucous voice.
“Yes, Eduard, I am list…”
“What the hell?” the man from the phone began to cry without even trying to cover his bewilderment and showing no interest in listening to the extension of the obvious phrase. “Have you lost your mind? What the hell, I am asking you!”
“I am sorry…”
“Sorry? What is happening to you anyway? Are you drunk or perhaps your head has been seriously damaged? Why did not you attend the meeting? I have called you, I do not even know, maybe twenty times. Why was your cell phone unavailable?”
“I was sleeping,” Victor responded honestly.
He had no intentions to drive his interlocutor mad, but his overall tiredness left him no other options but saying this stupid, unvarnished truth.
“I have had enough of this!” the second participator of the conversation suddenly abated his wrath. “My friendly attitude to you has never been a secret, but I am also a man who does know the price of his words. I guaranteed your presence there and I gave my word. Do you really think that the place I found for you is free for any person from the street, especially at your age? You have not even turned thirty yet. Of course, there are no guarantees that you will do it one day with your current approach. You have no experience de facto, you literally have nothing to prove your abilities with!”
“Honestly, I am sorry. Until the last night, I thought that I would be able to do it but now I understood everything so clear. I cannot keep doing it. I am just… I am just a shadow of my former self now. I am sorry, and I assure you that the employer will learn about my regrets, I am going to call him today.”
“No, it is where you are wrong! You are going to meet him personally to express your regret at not being able to do what you have done pretty well thus far. Yes, you have heard it correctly, you are going to present your sincere apologies directly to the Tumenov’s house. However, I would not like you to take it as a direct order, consider my words like an urgent request instead. We are both intelligent people and we both understand how this situation looks now. I hold you in high respect, Victor, but you have to pay me with the same. It is no secret for you that rumors within our circle spread extremely fast. Do you really want me to be treated like an idle talker?”
“I have no idea what could have happened to you, but if you just need my help to solve any question, I am ready to help you whenever needed. If it is within my power, of course.”
For a few seconds the conversation seemed finished, and because of the silence one could decide that Victor was taking his choice between two options, but the truth was very different. In fact, he was feeling a deep aversion to this conversation, which kept growing thicker every instant. His evoked memories of the past years were running before his eyes, persuading him that this part of his life was meaningless.
“Okay, I will do what you ask me to!” Victor answered abruptly and hung up.
First shy steps towards the new day seemed to be done, but Victor was still motionlessly sitting on the floor, staring straight before himself, and thinking of nothing. Shortly thereafter, the cell phone gave a start once again and began rattling annoyingly. Victor took it and brought it to his face, having begun to read a message of the following content, “I will talk to Peter and organize another meeting for you, it will take place at 8:30, this morning. Get yourself ready and do not let me down anymore. You have the address.”
New instructions were received, but Victor did not rush to follow them. Instead of doing it, he got up from his comfortable position, pushing off from the wall, then paced a few meters backward, and fell on the sofa. Nevertheless, inducing sleep was not an option now, not to mention that his eyes refused to close more than for a few seconds at a time. Everything that used to be insignificant and passed by his attention without leaving a trace was now the main, incontestable evidence of his absolute nihility in this world. Drop by drop, these thoughts began filling his head and carrying him away into the void, which did not have an evident entry and correspondingly had no way out either. This time he was lucky enough to realize that before it was too late. Once he did so, all those disgusting shadows, stretching their malformed hands towards him, disappeared at that very moment. Then Victor suddenly discovered his power, gained during the last night, and freshly in a trice, rose to his feet. Then he peeped into the kitchen, filled a tea kettle and disappeared in the bathroom, after having put it to boil.
When he came back to the kitchen, he was cheerfully met by the same tea kettle, which now was steaming actively and promising with its actions lovely tea-drinking. However, in order to speed up his prolonged awakening Victor decided to drink a cup of coffee instead. For that, he very carefully measured one teaspoon of instant coffee, two spoons of sugar and filled the cup with water and a few drops of cream. Then he mixed all the components up in a thorough manner and prepared to please his receptors. Nevertheless, regardless of his almost childish expectations a taste of coffee proved being faraway even from very average standards. In fact, practically everything was wrong about it: water was too cold and correspondingly incapable of allowing him to enjoy his drink with slightly scalding sips, two customary spoons of sugar caused somehow this disgusting sweetness, and cream turned out to be superfluous at all. As a result, after having gulped once again, Victor fully realized his disappointment and poured out the remains of the indeterminate drink into the kitchen sink. Few short moments later, he could not manage to keep his offended feelings in and threw the cup right behind its content.
White shards of the china cup broke to pieces but did not bring any sign of relief; on the contrary, Victor all of a sudden felt a frightening choke, having found himself unable to breathe in; then, instead of trying to calm down, he began desperately attempting to force inspired air through his seemingly glued up throat. After noticing his pitiable status, the walls of the room slowly came to life from their eternal sleep and started to draw together. In the end, Victor saw no other way but leaving the flat in a hurry.
Outside of the flat, there was nothing except this unpleasant, stagnant air that seemed to smell of everybody who entered this building during the last week; still, here he at least could breathe again a little. Now his only motivation to move was this fixed idea of going as far as possible from his flat, therefore, he rapidly ran down the stairs and leaned against a wall with one hand, trying to get his breath back. However, the pupils of his eyes still were dilated and his heartbeat was twice more frequent than usual.
The power that he believed had been accumulated during the night was now gone; it disappeared just as quickly as it claimed about its appearance. Only one short look at Victor was now enough to understand his state. Everything he had seemed to be left behind his back, in that flat, even his body seemingly was still there, locked up, and here just a weak spirit was standing, a ghost or a phantom of his own ego. However, there was no condition that could make him go back and take what belonged to him; from now on, his only way was outwards. So, holding in his head this chief aim, he quickly ran another few floors down and reached for a door-handle, which unexpectedly slipped away from his grip at the very last moment, and then the door suddenly swung open in front of him without his assistance.
Due to the confusion, Victor took his eyes off the handle with a visible delay, but when he finally raised his eyes, he saw an emaciated, crooked man that was standing in front of the door. There was a walking stick with a polished top in one of his hands, whereas his second bony hand, covered with thick veins, was holding a semi-transparent packet with what was left of its strength. Victor did not mean
to scrutinize the packet, not to mention counting its content, but he could not help doing it either. He was acquainted with this old man quite well, if he could say so about a man he came across almost every single day when he rarely came out, as it was now, but with whom he never exchanged a word.
However, just as everything else this morning Victor perceived this encounter in a different way. Since the moment when he fixed his dark, lackluster eyes on this old resident of one of the upper floors, he did not move even one single time, staring at the old man like a mentally ill person. He simply could not avert his eyes from this weak man who was the best embodiment of the close link between life and death. The old man could barely stand even this morning heat and seemed to be ready to stop keeping on his legs at any moment. However, Victor could not feel what this man was feeling, although he saw in front of him not just an old man, for some reason he believed he saw himself. It all was like a nightmare that broke free from its habitual realm, as if someone put a mirror right before Victor’s eyes, as if it was himself looking with uncontrolled fear in his eyes in response, unable to stop shaking all over.
It is still a question for how many seconds or even minutes they were staying like this, but when Victor finally came to his senses after this stupor, he suddenly for both bluntly thrust out his right hand, having made the old man automatically shrink away from this threatening gesture, accompanied by a dubious phrase, “I’ll help!”
“No, no, it is not worth it! I will handle it myself. Pass right along, please!” the old man answered, murmuring with speed, and slowly moved back.
“I just wanted to drink a cup of coffee and then…” Victor answered with the same mumble, vainly trying to explain the story of his morning using just a couple of words.
Nevertheless, there was no answer; the old man was standing on the same spot without saying a word, avoiding any superfluous motions.
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