I
For days and years, he's been drunk, unshaven, and has nothing to say. His jacket, trousers, face, and hair are rumpled — he's completely rumpled and barely remembers anything. Ask him, "Why did you fall like that?" He'll answer that he has serious reasons — basically, only one reason, and he's unable to overcome it. Are there things over which a person is powerless? — yes, yes. He's in the same situation. But kill him if he tells you that reason. And there was one, there still is... And it's not a matter of secrecy. He's fallen so many times to erase his memory—to forget, to let go, and now — he's forgotten. He just drinks. And that, too, is a reason, and before it, he's powerless again. "How can I change this world for another, better one?" he screams at himself, unable to understand the words, the meaning...
And dying is scary.
II
And he's used to leaving.
Have you seen walls, sat by them? It's not him.
Did you see a train, an elevator, a bullet, a mosquito? Did you manage to jump away, leap out, dodge, swat? It's not him.
He's used to leaving, and it's no wonder he's a ghost.
Does this hurt you? - No. Does it hurt them? - No. Does it hurt him? - What do you care?
But honestly, has He ever come to you? A ghost. Alone in the void.
III
"What are you doing with your grabbers?! Shut up!"
"Blah, really, what am I saying? I'm so ready..."
Father and daughter are drunk. They'd never heard the word "incest," but today they're just going crazy. It wasn't malicious at all.
"And you, my dear, are all grown up... Sorry, that's not right... Well, I was drunk. Well, consider it a mistake."
"Come on, Dad, you're a real dad, not some diner type."
"It's all because of the resemblance — your mother at 16, and you at this age — they're the same person! I look and look and I just want to cry — they're the same person! They're a dead ringer for your late mother..."
"Dad, you're so out of your mind!" his daughter interrupts. "Dead!" Why are you burying her alive?
" "And she, my daughter, when she left us, she was dead to me. Period. Dirty."
They're drinking, and the father, with his misty eyes, looks at his daughter for a long moment and then tries to touch her breast again.
"Come on, Dad, why are you acting like a little kid? Not now."
"Oh, I don't know myself! I haven't seen a woman in a long time, and now this vodka, probably some leftover stuff, is going to my head, that's why you seem like a woman. But that's it!"
"I've been a woman for a long time, Dad."
"What?! And what bastard managed to do that? Well, that's how things are these days!.."
"So your friend, your drinking buddy, up there, did the work..."
"Since the fifth? What a bastard, a faggot! A fucking faggot! So he's practically mine, a year younger, he could be your father!.. Well, you freak, I'll kill you!" They sit in silence for a while longer, the father processing this "unexpected tragedy," then slams his fist on the table and asks, unexpectedly calmly:
How long ago?
- About a year ago...
- And after who?
- Well, Dad, what kind of questions are you asking?!The father reaches into the cabinet on the wall, then into the stinking, peeling refrigerator. Empty.
- Did it hurt?
- I don't remember... He got me drunk. Then it hurt...The father rummages around again and looks questioningly at his daughter. He takes out crumpled bills — money — and mumbles guiltily:
- You, buy this from Klava, or Galya. For the last time. And tell her it's for me. Otherwise they'll slip me some poisonous crap again, but for me... they'll try... respect me...
While his daughter goes to Klava's downstairs for vodka, the father smokes long and thoughtfully on his cigarette; "How could he do that, to his daughter! By the breast, under her T-shirt! If anyone else had said that, they'd have broken his arms! And this little bastard walked around drinking like a man, and look at him... Garbage! And she, beautiful... Just like her mother. Breasts like melons, sticking out in all directions, unwrinkled..."
And, waking up in the morning, the father finds his daughter's sweet sleeping face somewhere below his belly. He would have forgotten everything, wouldn't have remembered, but then something flashes through his mind. He feels sick, and he doesn't know why — maybe from Klavka's bad vodka? He looks long and thoughtfully at his little girl's long, fluttering eyelashes, her upturned nose, which gives her such a mischievous look, her half-parted lips and still-white teeth. And next to her, something shapeless and crushed, gray — dead. Like a toad...
With this, he once gave her life.
©1999 Mikhail Dmitrienko, Almaty