The Superfluous Man

by Botyakov Anatoly

  “And what exactly, allow me to ask, are you afraid of? I assume you are afraid that someone akin to yourself shall seduce your wife the next day after your wedding. Have you ever asked yourself how you can do what you do with these thoughts in your head?” the woman asked another poignant question without having an answer to the first one.

  “Well, using this line of reasoning, we should first mention that I would have to ask about seduction of my hypothetical wife, and only when it was done, I could start worrying, although it is not the fact that someone would succeed in doing it,” Victor stated the value of his sense of humour with a broad smile, but the woman decided not to share his joy this time. “My story seems to be in conflict with your high principles. I am sorry for this aggressive narration. However, I consider your conclusions too hasty, for there are many silent ‘but’, ready to emerge any second. Firstly, I’ve already decided to quit all this, just yesterday, I failed to attend a meeting with another client. And my current destination is his house, where my clear and doubtless denial will be voiced. Secondly, I have done a favour for those poor women, the majority of whom had almost literally lost themselves while having this perpetual and obviously loathsome rush for wealth. Virtually, I have helped them to refrain from repetition of the same degrading treatment in future. I have to confess, many of them were hopelessly blind and because of that I felt no compassion for them, however, there also have been true birds, trapped in their narrow cages who have forgotten their own voices and sometimes even themselves. The thing is that a human being tends to lose the sensation of being trapped with an unspeakable quickness; shortly, we no longer feel that we cannot think, live, feel in a way we used to see as the best one for ourselves. We have to shut our eyes just once, to deceive us with an illusion of freedom and that’s all. And when in the end there comes the inescapable realization of such life, there will scarcely be anyone able to stand the truth. You know, when you are standing on the very edge of your life, it is extremely difficult to try to shut your own pride, roaring of pain, with the fact that you have been well off.”

  “I do not understand why you are telling me all this,” the woman finally broke her silence.

  “In my opinion, you do not look like a woman who would not be able to retain her own requests. It was you who asked me about the principal occupation in my life. Well, it is it, to be more precise, it was it. Currently, I am totally unaware of a direction I should aim my energy at, and just maybe I just wanted to be as honest and frank with you as I could possibly afford today without causing your complete confusion. After all, it is what people do when they have to remain silent about something ambiguous too long. I think it has been important for me to learn what you can feel toward such person. And now, judging by your reaction, I can see that I might be not as right as I thought I was when I did what I did. One way or another, you have already demonstrated both great civility and kindness, having agreed to spend here with me all this time.” Victor heavily breathed in and got ready to rise to his feet in order to go away.

  “You are a very interesting man,” she barely avoided calling him weird, “was not it you who asked me not to jump to conclusions? And now you are doing from what you have asked me to refrain. I have not made my observations yet because it is not easy to do it. Nevertheless, you are right when reminding me that I have to go now,” she called the waitress, stood up from her seat, and adjusted her clothes.

  “Would you mind if I pay for your coffee?” Victor rose to his feet immediately after her.

  “No, maybe another time,” the woman answered briefly having no intentions to grant to this conversation any special status.

  “And what would you say if it is tomorrow?” Victor smiled guardedly.

  At this point, a red sports car pulled over in front of the café and right after that a fair-haired young woman with prominent appearance showed up out of it; her short red skirt sharply contrasted with a snow-white and seemingly weightless blouse.

  “Okay!” the woman agreed suddenly, having immediately averted her eyes from the approaching blonde-haired woman, “Tomorrow, right here on this spot, at this particular hour. However, you should promise not to seduce me.”

  “I do!” Victor nodded accepting her trifling terms.

  “Well, well, well… How do you like that? And what do we have here?” The second nameless woman gave a broad smile as she approached the table, boasting of her snowy teeth, “Must not you be introducing us to each other now, hm?” she fixed her curious glance on Victor, displaying no modesty at all.

  However, this question was not for him.

  “I would gladly do that but I do not know his name,” the first woman answered.

  “Victor!”

  “Mariam!”

  Victor finally learned the name of the person he spent this morning with.

  He looked in Mariam’s eyes, and she responded to his wistful gaze with the same. Thus, they were standing motionlessly, attentively studying each other and at the same time comparing mutual images, formed during the conversation, with the names that were discovered only towards the end.

  “Ann! Pleased to meet you!” the second woman bluntly stretched her arm to Victor, having thus broken off his eye contact with Mariam.

  “I am pleased, too,” Victor carefully shook Ann’s finger-tips and then released her hand.

  “And now we must go,” Mariam took her friend by the arm and both made their way back to the car, talking about something in a low voice and trying not to glance in the direction of Victor who was left behind alone.

  All what had occurred this morning once again seemed to him too strange to be true, but this time he possessed one undisputed proof of the fact that this encounter, this conversation, even this spilled coffee, two lives that barely avoided facing death, the transient handshake and other scarcely perceptible details were not just figments of his imagination. He was not asleep and he knew it for sure, it could not be just a dream, for no one could be able to fabricate all this. When Victor finally took his mind off recalling previous and still very fresh occurrences and looked at his cell phone, his forcedly shut up punctuality gave him an unpleasant injection somewhere in the area of his chest, for watch said 7:40 and there still was a half of the city ahead to reach his destination.

  The next hour he spent waiting for a called taxi and getting to the place. However, this long trip seemed to him twice longer than it actually was due to an extremely talkative cabdriver. Having started a conversation with a simple and unpretentious “It is really hot today!”, he did not fall silent even one single time. In the first instance, without missing even the smallest details, he began to retell the latest and hottest news, then he smoothly turned his attention to events that had happened directly to him within an undefined period of time. After scooping out of his memory the last thrilling story about a drunk passenger who denied to pay, he suddenly redirected his attention to entirely domestic subjects as endless problems with his family, insufferably low earnings and so forth in the same direction without any predictable end.

  It is possible that to an outsider this picture might seem absurd and ridiculous, but Victor was listening to the cabman with a steadfast attention; sometimes he gave short nods as a sign of his undying interest or tried to clarify some definite details that escaped his undivided attention only because of the extraordinarily emotional narration. They parted being virtually friends, with numerous mutual wishes of good luck and as a result of this newborn friendship Victor’s cell phone learned one more number. ‘Just in case’ as followed from the words of the cabman.

  Now Victor was standing in the very end of a long street, built up with detached houses exclusively that were seriously remote one from another and only rare individuals had enough modesty to avoid boasting with more than two floors. Nevertheless, a house Victor was standing beside knew nothing of this meaningless quality. It was almost a real castle of white brick, fully enclosed with more than a-two-and-a-half-meter high wrought-iron fenc
e around it. However, Victor was not surprised by this wealth, for people with a lower income were unlikely aware of existence of occupation that he practiced for years.

  “What the hell do you want here?” a gruff male voice answered instantly, when Victor used a bell that hanged on the gate.

  “I came at the invitation,” Victor answered without going into details.

  “I know nothing about any investigations. Go to hell with your investigations before I unleash dogs!” the gate’s defender suddenly cried out hatefully, sitting, presumably, in a small building right behind the fence.

  “It’s not investigation! I told invitation,” Victor corrected him indignantly, “I am here on behalf of Eduard, the appointment was made.”

  “Wait where you are,” still full of doubts, the vigilant guardian answered and fell silent for ten minutes.

  However, on that point all troubles concerned with this belated appointment finally ended, which proved the opening gates and a polite suggestion to come inside, accompanied by awkward apologies for the recently demonstrated rudeness. On his way to the house Victor met a couple of great Dobermann pinschers that sniffed him around, followed him to the doors and only then left the guest alone with apparent feeling of the fulfilled duties. The outward security guard also did not go beyond this area and immediately returned to his watch-box, having promised to Victor a new guide. And he did not lie, right on the doorstep Victor was met by a tall and very thin aged woman that, judging by her face expression, seemed to be in an eternally ill humour.

  Her first unquestionable order for Victor was to leave his shoes at the door, and when he did so, she gave him a pair of slippers, having silently glided towards a winding stairs. Victor decided to keep himself from taking this temporal footwear and tacitly left it on its place. Being afraid of losing his severe guide, he only just managed to take a swift look at an enormous drawing-room, which left in his mind an image of an extreme or maybe even disorderly profusion; however, he scarcely could clarify to himself the meaning of such definition, even if he had a fanatical inclination to do it. A completely different situation was in a room of the owner of the house. Here everything was subjected to his own spirit; restrained, systematized, and ordered – were the words for describing this place, everything here accentuated a special constitution of things, encouraging the same state in a person’s mind.

  “I can see that you’ve deigned to appear today, unlike yesterday when it was scheduled!” the owner of the room reluctantly forced himself to speak and made a step towards Victor with a stretched arm; his hostile eyes were looking down at the guest, “Tumenov.”

  “Good morning. I would like to apologize right away. I am deeply sorry that I could not come yesterday,” Victor said reinforcing his words with a serious face expression.

  “There are no questions about your regrets. Nevertheless, Eduard called me up this morning and tried to explain the fact by mentioning some circumstances beyond your control,” Tumenov kept analyzing the yesterday occurrence without releasing his grip.

  “Yes, this is exactly how matters stand,” Victor nodded lowly.

  “Of course, if I had heard such excuse directly from you, I would have never accepted it. However, since his author is not yourself, so be it, I will leave it as a part of the past. Well, do not stand like this and make yourself comfortable,” Tumenov did not wait for his guest to take a seat and got back to his worktable, sat down in a chair, and then pointed at the second one, standing opposite, closer to a corner of the room.

  “Has not he happened to say something else maybe?” Victor asked guardedly, having made himself comfortable.

  “Why are you asking such question?” Tumenov suddenly got indignant without a reason, “I am absolutely sure that on this point his participation in this story finds its end, and now it is your turn to explain things,” he idly lifted his right hand as permission for Victor to start.

  The owner of the house behaved as if he was reading a lecture to some miserable clerk responsible for routine problems within a company and who was now obliged to shake all over with a strong fear, cautiously keeping in the depths of his cowardly heart a tiny gleam of hope that in this case he would be forgiven and left on his present spot. Tumenov strove to seem as calm and self-confident as possible, but all this superfluous clearness of his words and the order in which they followed each other were nothing but two wobbly columns that were struggling to hold his peace of mind. It seemed that during these attempts to portray himself in the most favourable light, he completely forgot to question the talents of the man sitting in front of him whose appearances’ only work was provoking doubts.

  By sight, Victor was the most ordinary young man with the average height and the same not outstanding constitution. The only thing that could help him to stand out in a crowd was his face, which possessed some innate intelligence. His expressive dark eyes seemed to hide under the frowned eyebrows that changed their form only when he smiled, but after quickly came back to the former state. A thin nose, the same thin lips, and a narrow chin – everything in his face adhered to the same direction. However, to make out his rare attractiveness, first a person needed to study him very attentively.

  Now it was not an easy task, for he was virtually hiding in a big, leather chair of black colour. His distrustful look was wandering about the room from the very beginning of the conversation, but at the same time, there was an impression as if he fixed nothing at all and only designated objects for the subsequent and already more detailed studying.

  “To me?” as if without having caught the question, he asked again with ambiguous astonishment and immediately caught on himself an impatient look of Tumenov. “But I thought that you would tell me…” Victor pronounced these words unexpectedly even for himself, having forgotten exactly for one moment that he had come here only for saving his friend’s reputation and leaving back home afterwards as soon as possible.

  “Ah yes,” Tumenov took away the stare and stretched to a framed photograph standing on the far-away side of the table.

  Thus Victor came to a standstill, without knowing what to do next.

  “This is my wife,” with these words Tumenov turned the front of the photograph to Victor and showed him the biggest achievement of his life.

  Something strange happened at this point. Victor suddenly felt something he had never experienced before. He was peering at this portrait, but could not believe his own eyes. All this seemed to him a meeting after many years of separation. However, in reality, they parted with each other less than a few hours ago. Without a shadow of a doubt, it was her, much younger, still embraced by her youth, but already beautiful, not touched by many thoughts yet, but already thoughtful, seemingly still free, but not belonging to herself completely any more. In this picture, she was standing near a big window that let inside a room the lulling light from the street lamps; dressed in a long black evening dress, she was holding a violin and a lowered bow, looking somewhere aside. All this picture was imbued with such grief and romanticism that he just could not help admiring it.

  “Mariam,” as if reading a spell, Victor pronounced her name without looking away from the photograph.

  “What did you just say? How can you know her name?” Tumenov suddenly rose over the table and quickly turned the photograph in the opposite direction. “Was it Eduard who told you this?”

  “No, I assure you, I was not privy to the details of the subject of this meeting,” Victor answered with a steady voice, having at once realized that the price of each following word just multiplied up many times. “I’ve met her this morning, just shortly before our current meeting. We happened to find ourselves at the same little table in a small street cafe.”

  “Where was it exactly?” Tumenov demanded the answer with first sparks of true anger in his eyes. “Where was it? I need the address right now!”

  “I ask you, please, try to calm down. It was in downtown, one stop away from a big shopping center, I rent an apartment there. We ne
arly became witnesses of an accident there, having got to talking in consequence. It was the most ordinary conversation, I assure you,” Victor hurried to report additional details in order to make the story as credible as possible for his restless employer; although he was looking straight into his eyes and telling virtually nothing but lies.

  Having heard this irrefragable answer, Tumenov calmed down a little, fully got up from his chair, took several steps to the next wall and back, wiping his tired eyes, and then sat down again.

  “Yes, yes, everything is right; there is a music school that she attends as a teacher. And you… I’m speechless… I cannot believe that there are such coincidences in this world. So, it appears, Eduard really told you nothing about all this?” Tumenov was extinguishing in himself the last centers of doubts and attentively studying the behaviour of his guest at the same time.

  “There is no reason for doubts, we had a conversation in the morning, but it was very short. He told me about the time of the meeting and then I immediately went here. So, as I understand now, you want me to check fidelity of your spouse?” Victor made himself more comfortable in the chair, having started turning from a diffident person into a true professional of the business.

  “Of course not!” Tumenov was about to cry out a flat refusal, but something stopped him. “I mean, yes, maybe, in a sense, but not the way by means of which, as I understood from the conversation with Eduard, you do it regularly.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I do not fully understand the course of your thoughts,” Victor frowned, with every minute the current problem became darker and darker.

  “Oh, please, I would love to ask you about one thing, too; leave these meaningless formalities and useless apologies for someone else, or even yourself. What are you begging my pardon for after all? However, it does not matter. By the way, how old have you said you are? You, it seems to me, are very young,” the concerned husband suddenly changed the theme of the conversation.