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Authors: Sergey Kuznetsov
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she should go to work for him.”
Ksenia repeats the man’s name again, and Alexei shakes his head and says:
“No, I’ve never heard of him before. But I can take a look on Google.”
“I’ve already looked on Google,” Ksenia replies and hands him the printout of his interview. “You think about how much more you can squeeze out of this psycho.”
Alexei thinks that there was a time when he would have grabbed at this opportunity. A great beginning for a Hollywood movie. An independent journalistic investigation. But it is some years now since he stopped expecting his work to bring him fame or even satisfaction. Maybe he should never have joined the journalism faculty. He ought to have been a computer programmer, or even a lawyer, if it came to the pinch. Normal human professions.
9
THE DARKNESS OF THE MOSCOW WINTER EVENINGS. A bright-colored kilim on the floor. A one-room flat for two hundred and fifty dollars a month. A matte laptop screen. A black TV screen. Ksenia, sitting in the only armchair with her legs pulled up, chewing on her nails. Stay home alone, don’t think about Sasha, watch TV, read books, surf the web. Nothing feels right, she’s all fingers and thumbs, everything’s wrong: the cheap pirate DVDs she bought at the underground station get stuck, the movies are boring and affected, like some kind of
Ripley’s Game
, tell me, who on Earth watches this stuff, the latest Murakami that came out last week has already been read and brings no more pleasure. Stay home alone, remember Sasha, stand pensively gazing into an open drawer, masturbate, stretching your breasts so far by hanging weights on the nipples that they leave bruises. Come quickly, but still feel the same emptiness inside. Stay home alone, don’t think about Sasha, remember Sasha, stand there holding a long sewing needle, figuring out the best place to jab it in. It’s a bad sign, you know it is, bad: in a little while now you’ll start cutting yourself.
Put the needle away: remember instead how it all started. You had just finished tenth grade, and Mom was just about to go on vacation to Greece, supposedly with aunty Mila, but actually with aunty Mila’s current husband. She’d been complaining for a long time that they didn’t have any money, Ksenia’s father didn’t really pay the alimony properly, she’d have to borrow, and then work for six months without any weekends off – stupid contracts, legal documents, forced labor for a translator.
“Then stay at home,” Ksenia said in a fit of teenage fury and in reply was accused of being heartless, egotistic and callous.
“I’ve no place to lay my head in my own house!” Mom shouted. “When I’m dying, no one will give me a glass of water. I do everything for you, and you don’t want to let me go away for two weeks’ holiday! Lena’s daughter’s already earning money, you’re the only millstone, still left hanging round my neck.”
Lena’s daughter was three years older than Ksenia, but that wasn’t important. Ksenia bit her lip and said she would get a summer job, and Mom wouldn’t have to work all fall without any weekends off. When Ksenia told her father, he tried to protest, and even phoned her mother, but she snapped back: “This is a very good thing, let the girl get used to financial independence. Or she’ll grow up a loser like you.”
That was the final argument in every row, and it successfully blocked all her dad’s attempts to interfere in his daughter’s upbringing. Ksenia remembered that when she was in fifth grade, just after they got divorced, her mom said she had to work harder at her studies so there was no point in her going to the dance studio three times a week. Ksenia liked dancing; when she danced she felt like she grew up and became as beautiful as her mom – in high-heeled shoes, enveloped in a cloud of perfume and wine – and her dad always came to the performances and admired her and told her “you’re my little beauty,”
Ksenia repeats the man’s name again, and Alexei shakes his head and says:
“No, I’ve never heard of him before. But I can take a look on Google.”
“I’ve already looked on Google,” Ksenia replies and hands him the printout of his interview. “You think about how much more you can squeeze out of this psycho.”
Alexei thinks that there was a time when he would have grabbed at this opportunity. A great beginning for a Hollywood movie. An independent journalistic investigation. But it is some years now since he stopped expecting his work to bring him fame or even satisfaction. Maybe he should never have joined the journalism faculty. He ought to have been a computer programmer, or even a lawyer, if it came to the pinch. Normal human professions.
9
THE DARKNESS OF THE MOSCOW WINTER EVENINGS. A bright-colored kilim on the floor. A one-room flat for two hundred and fifty dollars a month. A matte laptop screen. A black TV screen. Ksenia, sitting in the only armchair with her legs pulled up, chewing on her nails. Stay home alone, don’t think about Sasha, watch TV, read books, surf the web. Nothing feels right, she’s all fingers and thumbs, everything’s wrong: the cheap pirate DVDs she bought at the underground station get stuck, the movies are boring and affected, like some kind of
Ripley’s Game
, tell me, who on Earth watches this stuff, the latest Murakami that came out last week has already been read and brings no more pleasure. Stay home alone, remember Sasha, stand pensively gazing into an open drawer, masturbate, stretching your breasts so far by hanging weights on the nipples that they leave bruises. Come quickly, but still feel the same emptiness inside. Stay home alone, don’t think about Sasha, remember Sasha, stand there holding a long sewing needle, figuring out the best place to jab it in. It’s a bad sign, you know it is, bad: in a little while now you’ll start cutting yourself.
Put the needle away: remember instead how it all started. You had just finished tenth grade, and Mom was just about to go on vacation to Greece, supposedly with aunty Mila, but actually with aunty Mila’s current husband. She’d been complaining for a long time that they didn’t have any money, Ksenia’s father didn’t really pay the alimony properly, she’d have to borrow, and then work for six months without any weekends off – stupid contracts, legal documents, forced labor for a translator.
“Then stay at home,” Ksenia said in a fit of teenage fury and in reply was accused of being heartless, egotistic and callous.
“I’ve no place to lay my head in my own house!” Mom shouted. “When I’m dying, no one will give me a glass of water. I do everything for you, and you don’t want to let me go away for two weeks’ holiday! Lena’s daughter’s already earning money, you’re the only millstone, still left hanging round my neck.”
Lena’s daughter was three years older than Ksenia, but that wasn’t important. Ksenia bit her lip and said she would get a summer job, and Mom wouldn’t have to work all fall without any weekends off. When Ksenia told her father, he tried to protest, and even phoned her mother, but she snapped back: “This is a very good thing, let the girl get used to financial independence. Or she’ll grow up a loser like you.”
That was the final argument in every row, and it successfully blocked all her dad’s attempts to interfere in his daughter’s upbringing. Ksenia remembered that when she was in fifth grade, just after they got divorced, her mom said she had to work harder at her studies so there was no point in her going to the dance studio three times a week. Ksenia liked dancing; when she danced she felt like she grew up and became as beautiful as her mom – in high-heeled shoes, enveloped in a cloud of perfume and wine – and her dad always came to the performances and admired her and told her “you’re my little beauty,”
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