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The sleeping bag was back at home, and I was in the barracks, so there was nothing to hug or sniff, and I had to pick where to go on leave: to the sleeping bag or to the living Sveta? In the end, I chose the real girl. But Sveta didn’t know that we had closer contact – I’m talking about the sleeping bag – and again looked at me funny, probably because I was sitting on the sofa with half-closed eyes, combing the dog. Then I plucked up the courage, moved to her table, and my hand slowly started to sneak up to her hand. It took ages. I watched my hand in horror while it lived its own life, almost touching Sveta’s, then crawling back and climbing into the sleeve. Then I mentally commanded it to act, and it quietly covered Sveta’s little hand. Sveta smiled and said that she couldn’t write like that. But I no longer needed any words; I didn’t even listen, didn’t hear them, beautiful poetry sounded in my ears, and I immediately began to write it down right in the taxi on my way back to the academy, and I called it – Sonnet #1
If I love selflessly, then let the whole world love you!
If I love tenderly, then you’re my only one!
In my eyes, nobody could come above you,
My love for you will be forever young!
I was smiling when my taxi neared the barracks, and I beamed at the realization that I had no money to pay for said taxi. The car stopped, I was AWOL – I escaped from the barracks without a leave. But my happiness was so great, I held her imaginary hand in my hand and flaming verses – talented and beautiful – in my heart! I opened the taxi window and, again with a grin, shouted to our platoon commander Goncharov.
«Sir!» – my face shining in the darkness like a lantern – «Can I have five rubles for the taxi!»
The sergeant was so shocked by my impudence that he pulled out a banknote and gave it to the driver. To me, he only said, «We’ll talk later.» But what we talked about later, I, of course, do not remember.
Love catatonia and an unsuccessful proposal.
After I held Sveta’s hand, my life completely changed. It was clear that Sveta was madly in love with me, which I spent whole nights explaining to my roommates while they inspiredly masturbated and nodded their heads sympathetically in the dark. I mostly stopped studying and walked around with my head hanging on its side, my mouth agape, smiling like an idiot. Somehow, my second New Year’s Eve in the barracks was about to arrive. I continued to write incredible, as it seemed to me, poems.
Look out the window in the morning
I see the trees covered in white.
And just like that, without a warning
Fall turned to winter in a night.
White fluff is falling from above,
Enveloping the land around us.
As soft as feather on a snow-white dove
It’s wrapping up the world in silence.
I insistently urged my friends to read my exceptional works, but they got too tired during the day to exert themselves intellectually at night. On the days of my inspiration, our room fell asleep earlier than usual. I couldn’t expect them to understand my sudden gift if their hearts weren’t opened with love like canned stew with a can opener! But I wouldn’t leave them without a life-giving sip of poetry. By the light of the lantern outside our window, I quietly read my beautiful works to my sleeping comrades, trying to convey all my tenderness towards them, who were devoid of love, preaching love with the perfection of the word.
Rejoice! For our very purpose
Lies not in solitude or dull philosophy
That only does a man a great disservice
And robs him of his curiosity.
It’s only love that matters in our lives,
Love is what moves the world around us.
And when love cuts us like a thousand knives
It also is the thing that heals us.
The whole humanity’s existence is reliant
On loving hearts’ reciprocal pursuit!
Throw out your old books and become aspirant
For letting love inside your heart take root.
I hoped that with me muttering those words, my friends would see beautiful dreams filled with love and joy, and if one of them tossed and turned, I started reading from the beginning so as not to spoil the process of poetry penetrating their hearts.
The New Year was approaching, and Sveta invited me to a party with her older sister’s friends. I came in my sorry little suit, and as it was terribly cold outside, I put on a pair of thick snow-white grandfather the general’s long johns under my trousers. The party was okay; the trouble started when everyone quickly moved to the floor to sing and talk after eating. I sat there focusing on a single thought – how to prevent my trousers from riding up and revealing my snow-white underpants that glowed in the semi-dark room. I was constantly smoothing down my pants. The suit was bought when I was sixteen, so its sleeves and trouser legs were a little short, but it wasn’t obvious when I sat on a chair or walked. But sitting on the floor, who does that? Those nasty underpants flashed like moonlight with my every movement, and it seemed to me that everyone was looking at them, so I sat in a daze, did not sing, did not laugh, and did not even notice a couple of questions addressed to me. White long johns, white long johns – spinning in my head, even forming into stupid little rhymes – long johns, strong bonds, drone songs, morons…
Sveta must have thought it was because of love and ignored my catatonia. We left the party at about two in the morning, I accompanied Sveta home. The edge of the unfinished Kupchino was deserted, and the northern lights shimmered above our heads. I walked and dreamed of only one thing – kissing her. But we were walking; how could I go about it? Just stop and kiss her? It would be rude! And there are the northern lights overhead; she and I were seeing them for the first time in our lives. You can’t interrupt admiration of beauty like this. Sveta was silent, and I was even more silent. For forty minutes, we walked to her house, forty painful minutes, during which I tried with all my heart to turn to her, take her hand and kiss her. But my body continued as if nothing was happening; it did not obey me! In the elevator, while we were riding to the top floor, an enormous weight fell on me so that I could neither raise my hands nor open my mouth while the seconds flew by, counting down heavily the last moments of my evanescent happiness. She said «bye,» and I stood in the elevator until its automatic door closed and answered «bye, Sveta» to the already closed door.
I left the building, the northern lights disappeared, and my soul hurt and howled, but then my consciousness forced out everything unpleasant. Only the northern lights, our walk, and the memory of spending New Year’s Eve together remained. And joy poured out in a rhyme.
A tender melody is pouring
From my no longer troubled soul;
There’s no more stifling control
That often comes without a warning.
It isn’t nearly the springtime
And yet my heart is full and soft.
I do not know what this is called
I only know it is sublime.
I don’t remember the road home or how I went out to visit Grisha Litvak; I only remember that for the first time in my life, I got so drunk that I danced with his friends’ girlfriends, they pressed into me, and I pulled away, afraid that they would feel my stone-hard erection. The girlfriends were cute, and I was drunk. And then my hands slid down from another girl’s waist, no, not on purpose, I just hadn’t slept in two days and dozed off a little during the slow dance while Grisha’s friends looked at this, silently laughing. Grisha – the only honest person among my friends – said that your poetry, Anton, is shitty, and you need to read better poets, or better yet, give it up completely. I was dancing, clinging to someone’s girlfriend, a young nurse, and Grisha shook his head disapprovingly – presumably as the most seasoned alcohol connoisseur among us – and moved my hands from the girl’s bum closer to her shoulder blades while the girl only giggled and said, «Grishka!»
Then, closer to the morning, vodka suddenly needed to be outside my body, along with mayo eggs and Russian salad. Aleksey Grigoryevich, Grisha’s dad, a well-known typhlopsychologist – Grisha showed us his doctoral thesis printed in Braille – thoughtfully helped me vomit from the balcony, very sympathetically saying, «Here-here, it’s okay, it happens, that’s it, good, here, wash your face and let’s get you to bed.»
I was sleeping, but I heard the door slam, and a friend of Grisha’s parents, some physicist, was telling them how he went out in the morning to get some beer, and there was a queue. He had an officer’s cap with him for just this type of situation, and, briskly walking up to the stall wearing the cap and a sheepskin coat, he chirped, «Guys, so sorry, I just got off the plane from Angola, let me get a bidon* for my fellow soldiers!» The queue timidly asked, well, how is it? He grunted, finishing his glass, and answered, «it’s hard, but we’re advancing!» Then he took the bidon and fled. I returned home determined to go to Sveta and propose like the physicist ’from Angola.» Alcohol was still gurgling inside me, along with poetry, and a military march sounded in my ears. Sveta immediately opened the door, and her mother offered me something to eat. There was soup on the table.
Sveta and I sat in the kitchen, and everything was so prosaic: lukewarm soup, her mother in a ratty bathrobe, and an unsmiling Sveta. Sveta sharply asked her mother to leave the kitchen, and her voice did not sound like magical singing about the sleeping Svetlana… I got up, turned to the window, and proposed to Sveta with a memorized text, standing with my back to her since it was too scary to face her. The proposal sounded very unconvincing, something like we are no longer schoolchildren and should get married. Not a word about love, not a word about poetry, not a word about our delightful future. Like back then, in the elevator, I became more wooden than Pinocchio. Several minutes passed between words, so I was unsure if Sveta could even piece my speech together. «I don’t know,» she replied. No, I did not expect such an answer. I was waiting for a quiet Yes, or a joyful Yes. After all, I held her hand, and we saw the northern lights! At worst – Yes, but next year?! The skies collapsed, and I saw clearly that there was nothing between us, and there would never be anything between us; we didn’t even talk except for that one time with the sleeping bag. I silently gathered my things and stood at the door for a while. Sveta was also silent. I left, and on the way home on the tram, I wrote:
I will leave and let the snow conceal
Every step I took along the way.
I will go and let the rain reveal
Empty space where I was sure to stay.
I will leave forever, as in death,
Turn my back on her, who never was.
Let my heart feel winter’s frigid breath,
Close my ears to tired and useless words.
I’ll descend from daylight into night,
Draw a line under my broken soul.
Disappear forever out of sight,
Burn to ashes like a piece of coal.
* A Soviet bidon is a kind of keg or churn used for carrying liquids.
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