NINE

by Svetlana Alexiyevich

  …I told myself to relax, you're not shaking, we're all in the palms of the good Lord and he's rocking us all gently in his arms… the customers phoned, I couldn't work, I smoked, went to the kitchen, had a cup of tea, returned, smoked, up and down, up and down, sat at my computer… the April sun was casting its warmth upon the windowsills… «Marina?» «Yes?» «What's up with that contract of yours?» «Dunno» «Think they'll sign it?» «I think they will, yes» «Good» up and down, up and… He rang and said «Get here now»…

  He had insolent brown eyes and a powerful smirk, we were having coffee in the restaurant of the Balchug Hotel, the clouds were floating high in the sky behind him and he was staring straight at me… «I feel so calm with you»… he was used to building people, he liked the power of it, and I didn't feel like resisting, a week before I was still in India where the mushrooms with their enormous hats would bow down to me… «I know six words of Hebrew», I said «Kamma ze olle, l'chaim and geschevt»… He smiled… «Geschevt is Yiddish»… «I used to think that l'chaim was a type of verb…» It was hard for me to explain to him about how Russian verbs conjugated just like French ones… His cell phone rang… and it was like three years ago all over again… date of birth, nationality, make of car, up and down, up and down… he moved to another table and I looked downwards, at the river, across the bridge, through a huge windowpane, and saw an almost empty restaurant room, small bunches of people at the little tables, the back of a man on the phone who was going round and round like the minute hand on a clock, and the face of a girl who was still in India only a week ago tilted backwards, and I stared at her and she at me until one of us ran up against the cupola of a hotel that was under construction… and I felt that my tilted-back head was quivering and freeing itself from my neck, and I tried to prevent it, but… «How old are you?» «Twenty-two, and you?» «Thirty-two, you got a boyfriend?» «From time to time» «And what time is it now?» «Between times, but you can never say anything for certain» «Fine, and what do you do?» «I write poetry, you?» «Precious stones» «Why Russia? You should go to India» «You think so?» «And why do you bother?» «With what?» «Precious stones» «Have you read Orwell's Animal Farm?»… The waitress dropped her tray and a sugar-cube leapt out from it and flew into my boot… I turned my head away and he used the moment to examine my green nails… «The world is a struggle for power, there are privileged animals and unprivileged ones, and I belong to the former category and don't want to give it up»… he said this all without a hint of irony… the April sun turned cartwheels in joy, spilling out light, pouring into this pathetic business reservation… my poor, poor Jewish boy, blinded by his own self-importance… I smiled… «Don't you agree?» «What do you mean, I always agree with everybody, I'm a conformist»… I could scarcely stop myself bursting into laughter… «But I know that in this world there are many essences, visible and invisible, and we can communicate with them, and I know as well that in this world there is nothing except love, and you have to feel its flow and not swim against the current»… «That's all very poetic» «So are we meeting this evening?» «Maybe» «I want to kiss you» «But of course, you're far too busy to have coffee with a girl you don't want to kiss» «And you?» «Oh I often have coffee with girls» «I'm being serious» «So am I, but unlike you I'm completely free» «And what about your job?» «My job and I are well suited to each other»… I walked along the embankment towards the metro, and the April sun stuck out its tongue, and the April wind tread on my toes and waves of energy covered me from behind, and I kept walking, stumbling on the air and getting calluses from rubbing against time, and a yellow butterfly alighted on my arm, and I could smell cinnamon and the river and petrol, and I kept thinking that our bodies are God's clothes and bravura suffering is vulgar, but only suffering wears out our bodies and only then does the body of our Lord show through them… but then I've said that my head is stuffed with all sorts of rubbish… And the customers phoned, and I went into the kitchen, and sat at my computer, and… he phoned and said «There's been a change of plan, get here now» «I'm busy» I lied, and he said «I've got meetings this evening and my flight's tomorrow morning» «OK, let's meet in a week» «But I want to see you today» «Ring me after the meeting» «That will be late» «In a week's time then» «And can I kiss you then?» «That's all spontaneous» «Promise that I can kiss you» «I can promise that I'll never make any promises» «So that means it'll have to be now»… «No not now»… «I'll ring you from Belgium»… Ha! «Get here now!» Like hell. What am I, his call girl? And then…

  …And then, when the dark wet clay of night mixed into the dry white clay of day, and the old rabbi from the Jewish ghetto moulded the Golem from it, and the Earth rolled backwards underfoot like the globe in Picasso's picture, when in the year One the emperor Montezuma sent his ambassadors to Cortes bearing gifts to persuade him not to harm the Aztecs, and the grey ants of insanity crawled in an endless stream into Nijinsky's brain, transforming into a thick vapour that condensed quivering sticky droplets onto the inner surface of his skull, enveloping it, depriving him of sight and sound, and when the first people gather in the House of the Waters, in the lower reaches of the Vaupes river together with the beasts that were there, and they brewed beer, and nobody could tell who was man and who was beast, as they weren't that different from one another, and the first and only woman in the world was expecting a child, and when the dirty slush born of the May rains flowed along the Moscow pavements like pus, and a dark blue comet shone in the indifferent sky, and when he didn't phone from Belgium, two weeks after my return from India I knew that that soft-boiled semolina otter was twirling his moustache at that moment at the corner of Jampath Lane and the Tibetan Market, leaping out at passers-by and laying the waxy eggs of his prophecies inside them… and I decided that no-one had any right to my destiny save My Lord, who gently rocks us all in his palms, and then I wondered, «What if he knows the will of the Lord?» and I replied to myself, «But he who knows is silent and he who speaks does not know» and I felt sorry that in my fit of pride I had not «got there to him now»… And when I had a call asking me if I wanted to go and work in Los Angeles in July I remembered the fakir with his little folder and said «No»… «But we really need you to go»… «A whole month in LA, just think what you're turning down»… «No»… I knew with that unerring harsh clarity impossible to fake, that exalts and ruins lives, that I could never go there, that if I refused he would ring, he couldn't get away from me now, because I had chosen him, because summer was a time of death and because it was the law and I abide by laws, because the fiercer the enemy that kills you, the healthier you are reborn, and if I had no choice over my death, then I had the right to choose my enemy and my battleground… and I said «I don't want war, but I've chosen you, and it's late to have doubts and slink away, and whatever I do, it's the only right decision, and it doesn't matter what you think of me, and if you kill me God's will will be done but they don't speak of that»… and then I threw away my pride, and…

  …and I rang him myself and asked «How's things?» «I'm busy, ring me in two hours'time»… I rang… He said «I'm busy, ring me at seven»… I rang… He said «Today's bad, ring me tomorrow»… I rang… He said «Wait a minute» and asked someone «Guy, what do we have on this evening?» and they replied, and he said «I'm busy, I fly tomorrow, till next time»… But I knew that he won't get away… and I said «OK, you know my number at work» and I hung up… and he rang back a minute later… «Hold on, read me some of your poetry» «But you're talking on your cell» «Don't worry»… And I translated my poem into English for him:

  Romeo with LSÄ under his tongue Juliet in silver âuskins

  SÍ akesp, are is resting

  Banana rags stir in overflowing penguin rubbish bins

  Our parents lead a ealthy lifest le and drink eõclusively

      Absolut vodka I'chaim

  I'm too healthy for the ill, too cragy for the ÿppies

  Froi nine to six it's yes
sir sure sir r, ally meaning fuck þ sir

  The Kremlin DJs cruise round Moscow in their Auäis

  My generaÒion are colourful flying hoî ops for games of hula

  They say the national eêonoi ic crisis will usÍ er in the

      diêtatorship of the Eros of War

  SecÒhnts of Chi x ikov will buy up all the dead souls in Ñ Írist

  It's OK baby just taste it baby this is ecstasy nothing dangerous

  Peace peace on earth let us pray to the Lord amen and

      everyone's dancing

  …He asked «Did you write that just now?» «I translated it just now» «You're a genius» «Me, sure» and I hung up the receiver again… And I felt waves of energy, up and down, flowing up and down over me, and I wandered the streets for hours, I didn't just wander, I hurtled, along the Arbat, along the Vozdvizhenka, past the building site of the underground mall on Manege Square, across Red Square, down past St. Basil's, over the bridge and along the Ordynka to the embankment past Oktyabrskaya Square, along the alleys of the Taganka, and I couldn't eat or drink or sleep, I smoked and lost weight and trembled for days on end, sounds and smells reached me late, the rains came, the sun peeped out, the phone rang and a female voice said, «Don't be afraid of anything girl, you have a double life-line, take risks».. Moscow was washed, scoured, cleaned, painted, pulled down and rebuilt, and I popped home, went to work, I touched objects and creatures, I should have done something with this insane energy, somehow find an outlet for it, inside me… at nights the May wind blew out of the holes and the gaps beneath gates, out of sewage gutters and cracks snatches of conversations, parts of bodies, handfuls of smells, flashes of light, chunks of open space and scraps of paper, and by morning it would mould the city afresh from all of them, and every morning newly-made people and animals, houses and cars, roads and yards, shops and restaurants, newspapers and films, trees and statues, would all wake up and not remember who they were, and lived as best they could, and didn't notice the disparities, and I would wake up in the morning and wonder who can guarantee that on waking I was the same person who had fallen asleep the night before?..and then I didn't sleep at nights, and lay in wait for the wind, so as to ask it this, and when it didn't come I reasoned that immortality was mistakenly linked to eternity, because everyone is so sure that life belongs to time and that consequently immortality — life without death — belongs to a very large slice of time, endlessly large, and that is eternity, but in actual fact eternity is not a very long time or the absence of time — it is any given moment lived out totally and utterly, here and now, as one rabbi said… and you can be immortal and never know eternity, while you can be eternally mortal, and the main battle of the immortals is for this very moment, and…

  …and then they rang me again and said, «Let's go to England, come to England in July» and I said «No» «Come», we'll go to London, and then to Wales… and I recalled London, cut out of my dreams, and I remembered the feeling in my stomach in Trafalgar Square, and in my hands in Leicester Square, and the swans in St James' Park, and the vortex of Camden Town, and the metallic voices at the railway stations «Clapham Junction, this is Clapham Junction» and the black beauty in a white blouse and tailored blue suit who stared straight at me all the way from Brixton to Oxford Circus, and the sculptures from the Kenyan carnival in the Museum of Mankind, which made your hair stand on end if you looked at them close up, and walks round the centre along cobbled streets, and the crowd in front of the departures board at Victoria Station who were tensely awaiting the announcement of their platform numbers, and the Chinese restaurants of Chinatown, and the green hedges, and the cold stones and echoing galleries of Westminster, the synthetic coffee in polystyrene cups, and the feeling of miracles behind your back, and I agreed «Let's go» and I sent the fax to London and got my reply, and…

  …and then he rang… «Marina?» «Yes?» «Eto David.» «So you speak Russian?» «A little» «Aren't you a sly one» «But of course, I'm a Jew»… he said all this in Russian, so he understood everything… «Shall we meet up?» «Maybe» «Now?» «Nowit's 11:30» «Is that late?» «I have an exam tomorrow» «I've just flown in»… and I remembered that we are all in the palms of… and I said, «I'm on my way»… And when the taxi-driver had heard «to the Balchug Hotel» and smiled knowingly, and when the May wind had gathered up the cigarette smoke out of people's mouths to save it for tomorrow's drags, and when the doorman had forgotten to open the door for me, allied with the taxi-driver's guess, and when my father had said «You have no self-respect, you run off at his call» and when the two girls at Reception had accompanied me with their knowing gaze across the lobby, past the armchairs, and when the saxophonist in the bar had broken off his tune as the metal instrument could no longer withstand the surging night with its throat, I said, I had a dream that we were walking somewhere, and you were leading me by the hand, and I suddenly realized that it wasn't the same outer you, it was the inner you, it was someone strange and terrible, and I recoiled and wanted to break away and run off, but I couldn't change anything because, well, when I said you were leading me, what I meant was we were floating like stage scenery, as it were moving and standing still at the same time, and you couldn't oppose this activity or inactivity, and I felt short of breath and suddenly let go, opened up inside and said «It doesn't matter who you are, I'll still take you whatever» and I relaxed, and I felt I was walking a centimetre above the ground, though from the side nobody could notice that centimetre, there it was all the same, and that centimetre of air decides everything… he puffed on a cigar, «Was that good or bad for you?» «There's no such thing as good or bad, only a feeling of harmony or its absence» «I don't understand you, there's always good and bad» «look me in the eye» «No» «OK»… he smiled, and I thought, damn what he thinks, all that's most important happens within, he doesn't even notice that he's killing me, he doesn't even feel it… and the thunderstorm began, and the avalanche descended, destroying road signs that laconically stated «Rappelez!» and whales beached themselves on the shore, and uprooted trees re-fenced the roads, and the elephants sounded their trumpets and Anna Nicole Smith stopped sensually stroking her legendary bosom on the muted TV screen and fainted somewhere between Nice and Magadan, and panes of glass cracked and shattered slowly, just like in a computer game, and the female praying mantis choked in surprise on the head of her beloved, and there were smells of lime buds and Tibetan fragrances, and a clattering truck with Californian plates and hardened stains of peat on its sides did not turn at All You Need is Love, and I gazed down at bodies now separated from each other and thought, «Is this all? Is this how it always is for everybody? And is this how it will always be for everybody? And…» and I thought on… «Could he have been right then, the one on the corner ofJampath Lane and the Tibetan Market? Can even death not alter this?»… and then I lay in the darkness for a long time after, looking at the emptiness of the yawning window frame, at the velvety clouds, and the angels tugged on the strings again…

  …and summer arrived. And death arrived. And he rang, and I wasn't in, and I rang, and he was busy, and the road to the British Embassy for a visa lost itself in the depths of Woland's world, dodging and snapping off, and I arrived at work and discovered that it was easier to work when dead than when alive, and the rain washed the kid's sand moulds in the playgrounds, and they told me, «Marina, he's a mercenary, a soldier, he has no feelings, he makes money for his clan, and nobody will allow him to spoil a setup they've been creating for years because of a dead Russian girl» and they kept saying «are you mad, Marina, remember all that's happened, you've had this all before, Jewish families trading in diamonds are linked with the secret services, remember who your granddad was, remember who your father is and forget him»… and Cortes accepted the gifts and yet slaughtered whole towns during the night, spilling blood in the wilderness scorched by drought, and the rabbi Lev ran all night through the narrow streets of Prague to save himself from his creation, sliding on
the slops thrown out of windows… And he left, and returned again, and I was surprised that he didn't even notice that I had died, and Taku guzzled acid and escaped from himself in the ultraviolet light of raves in Manali, and they told me again, «Marina, passions and business are two incompatible things, you wrote a story with his energy, and he more than likely didn't even understand what was happening to him»… «But I didn't steal his energy, I gave him something in return, it's all fair»… «He was probably not able to do anything with what you gave him or did he simply get scared and slink away?»… and the grey monkeys swung on the railings of the bridges, and a flash of lightning lit up the plants and trees, and in the flashlight it fashioned a child's head, hands and feet, its whole body, and one day he didn't come back, and I waited for July, so that…

  I didn't know why. And we got our visas in a day, but we couldn't leave, and I did my work, but nothing went right, and I looked round and saw only mirages and ghosts on the walls of the cocoon of my death, and I was neither woman nor man, and all around there were no men or women, but only beings opening their mouths, stirring, swarming, exchanging objects, giving off smells, coming together and parting in bustling pointless pas de deux, curtseys and lunges. I visited people and found empty rooms of fugitives, sealed with the wax of fear, I left home and the wet flakes of everyday existence fell and evaporated and melted and streamed down my arms and face and down streets and became an almost living rubbery mass, enveloping and devouring all these objects and beings, and they didn't protest, and I looked at my travelling companion and shook my head… «I don't understand, Vaclav, why everything's made so strangely, I don't understand how everyone and everything has their names and prices, their sizes and quantities, their models and limits, I can't imagine how all this comes into being and reproduces and moves and breathes, I can't…» and he replied, «Don't think about it Marina. While I was dancing and not thinking about anything I understood everything, but when I tried to explain and started thinking hard…» And every time I tried to go away my huge blue and black guardian angel with the appearance of Shaquille O'Neal took me by the scruff of my neck and returned me to Moscow, and I rocked in the hammock of death and dreamt, and one day I dreamt that all the men with whom I'd ever been were all together, but none of them could see the others, and each thought they were on their own with me, and I thought I was on my own with each of them, and didn't notice all the other women with whom these men had ever been, and when I realized this, I saw twisting whirlwinds and currents piercing right through all of us, and I suddenly felt that no-one has any right to anything, we're all free like the May wind in the palms of our Lord, and I came to realize that every time I had been with one of those men, I was with them only because we knew that everyone else did this and that's how we confirm our human form, and I heard the words I was saying, half-heard words, and I saw my gesticulations, the moves of a Hollywood actress, all rights reserved, for home viewing only… and I remembered the words of the apostle, «Love is never-ending, though the prophecies may cease, and tongues may dry up, and wisdom be outlawed»… and I wanted to hide myself from shame, but I went forward, and July came to an end…