The Perfect Sin. I Grant You Contempt

The question remained unanswered. He either didn’t notice it – or noticed but postponed any resolution. Perhaps things would settle on their own… After all, nothing else in his life was going smoothly enough to warrant worrying over something that hadn’t even appeared on the horizon.

It so happened that every girl he met saw him as nothing more than an amusing creature: knowledgeable, occasionally funny, wonderful for friendship, but unsuitable for romance. For some reason, girls respected rudeness, moderate lust, even stupidity and loquacity. Simplified, primitive vocabularies, unrestrained crude jokes, and assertive male behavior excited them, contrary to the logic he lived by.

The more of a goody-two-shoes he was, the more courteous and gallant he acted, the more he realized that such behavior was entirely misplaced in this lower stratum of the street, among proletarian youth.

I won’t recount the full story of this young man’s worldview breakdown, but at a certain point, he treated a girl somewhat poorly, which caused a storm of emotions on her part. They didn’t speak for a while, hissing at each other. She even plotted minor mischief, yet eventually, that emotional storm brought them closer. She understood the language of strength and even disrespect, forgiving him for everything that concerned his necessary treatment of her – within reason, of course. He realized that by maintaining a high level of emotional intensity, he could build the very foundation on which their relationship could stand. According to this logic, the emotional storm in a relationship should never cease. It might ebb or transform, but never vanish. For if the foundation disappeared, the gap that had once separated them would immediately reopen, and it would be impossible to fill.

Initially, his moderately disdainful, sometimes bordering on arrogant attitude provoked outrage on the girl’s part. But after some time, by feigning reconciliation and stepping back, calming the raging storm, everything would resolve.

By basing the relationship purely on emotional dynamics, he rocked the boat one way, then returned it the other.

And it so happened that this ability gradually became a skill. A skill that became his second nature. Deep down, he remained the same positive, dreamer-type boy from the “nerd” category, yet he created a persona of a repulsive creature – which, and only which (!!!), attracted the attention of the opposite sex.

– Are you talking about yourself? – Zhenya asked, surprised by his usual naivety.

“Actually, about you!” – he almost joked, giving a subtle hint.

– It’s just a story I wanted to tell you during the onset of my transitional withdrawal period,” he quipped. It wasn’t guaranteed that Zheka caught the irony.

– Ahhh… I see, – Zheka said slowly.

– Think about it, Zhen! It’s a story of life. Who knows, it might help somehow…

“Especially since Alya seems to have swapped places with the character in my story and is striving…” – the thought flashed again, one he was in no hurry to voice.

– I see… – Zheka drew out, apparently understanding nothing at all, and was already beginning to regret the time spent.

They said goodbye fairly quickly. Zheka, it seemed, didn’t grasp the figurative manner in which the message about Alya had been conveyed. He himself had made no effort to express it any other way.

Sleep came to him almost on its own once the phone call ended. The feeling of emptiness competed with that of a person who had kept his word and thus deserved at least a personal measure of self-respect

***

Morning, as usual, arrived unexpectedly. But this time, he was not tormented by a hangover, the sunlight didn’t hurt his eyes, and the coffee did not serve as a sobering tonic but rather spread warmth and sweetness through his body.

“Well, well!” he marveled at the sensation with which he greeted this morning. He had slept just as he was, in his clothes, presumably falling asleep immediately after the conversation with Zheka.

“What did I even say to him?! Something from life…” – the thought flickered through his mind. Nothing significant, probably…

The cup was carefully set down on the table, leaving a damp circle of its bottom. He had rested. And though his body ached and residual urges to sleep had not yet left him – he had rested. Morally rested. Rested from the pressing weight of society. Rested from people. From alcohol, finally…

“If this keeps up,” he smiled, “life might actually turn out alright!” – he voiced the rebellious thought, shaped by the lessons of his previous life.

And indeed, it turned out that the world was not as one-sided or grim as he had thought. There was much to interest him – books, for example.

“What do I have here?” – a book had been lying in plain sight for months. Someone’s book, as often happens: picked up to read, and then it just stays there – unread, its owner forgotten.

Orwell. Selected Works. A battered cover, yellowed pages – clearly an edition from the transitional period of the nineties, relatively large print run, decent printing, rushed and therefore imperfect translation, spelling mistakes throughout. Otherwise – a perfectly readable book.

1984—just the title, nothing more. He had heard something about it, and maybe even watched a film adaptation, though it had been in female company, somewhat tipsy, so only the final scene with the rats had stuck in his mind. Actually, it was because of those rats that he had decided to read the book. But whose book? Try as he might, he couldn’t remember. No matter – an hour more, a shower, getting ready, another cup of coffee, and thirty minutes could be devoted to reading… Of course, he could read on the subway, but he had long since given up on that habit, though he had once indulged in it. A couple of forgotten books there, once even falling face-first onto an open book while dozing on a bench, had cured him of that pastime.

***

The book turned out to be dark and grim, yet there was something in it, despite the fact that for a modern reader it was “out of format.”

The sense of hopelessness that he had encountered in the first pages lingered for a long time – right up until he entered the office. And there, stepping over the threshold, he finally shook off the spell, immediately plunging into the maelstrom of work.

– Last week I sent you some information about… – a blonde woman of maybe twenty-five, clearly fresh out of university, suddenly rushed at him. He might have seen her before, but now, consciously observing her, he realized it was for the first time. And what exactly she was talking about was a complete mystery to him.

– Excuse me, what’s your name? – he tried to slow things down. – Remind me, when and what exactly did you send?

She flared up, shouting something about urgency, immediacy, and other matters that constantly preoccupy newcomers. She vibrated with nervous energy, gesticulating wildly, shaking her curls, throwing out a hundred words per minute, all the while blushing and perspiring.

The young woman was striking, slightly on the fuller side, but not enough to be unattractive. He looked her over from head to toe, gauging her once more, and to his surprise, his libido didn’t perform any acrobatics demanding immediate continuation of the species… perhaps only with some delay.

– All right, I’ll try to help you, – he replied dryly – Just one request – please resend your query so I can immediately recall what it’s about!

Her face lit up; she bounced in place and ran, clicking heels, back to her workstation.

And, as it turned out, there was a mountain of such tasks piled up! They were hanging in the inbox, stacked on the table, heaped in disorganized piles on the desktop…

Even in the car, these tasks had occasionally been sorted – but the principle of that sorting was, to put it mildly, highly original.

In the “Total Trash” folder lay documents that should have died without ever being opened.

“In the Ass!” contained requests from ill-wishers and those who simply hadn’t taken a liking to him, had been rude, spoken unflatteringly behind his back, or outright denied him access to the body. “What a pig I am!” he muttered bitterly as he leafed through the folder. Here, too, were documents and requests from Karina.

“By the way, how’s she doing?” he thought. He hadn’t seen Karina. She hadn’t greeted him at the start of the workday; her presence was entirely absent.

“Well, never mind! I’ll find her later,” he shrugged for the time being.

He found the materials from the morning’s greenhorn graduate in a folder with an obscene label, suggesting that the submitter would be dealt with separately, outside working hours. He shuddered, and a deeply ingrained imp in his subconscious rubbed its hands maliciously and spoke up, as if to say: You’re aging, starting to forget things.

“Hm, interesting… did I do anything toward her? Or not? No!!” he cut himself off. “What about Karina?” – he got up from his chair to cope with the revelations that sometimes occurred on a sober mind.

Karina was nowhere to be seen. Her workspace was empty, her friends, at best, remained silent, occasionally giggling behind his back, but no more. News of their relationship had already become public knowledge, and shedding it was not easy. Now it stung him, even worried him. Meanwhile, the imps, laughing at him from the inside, whispered that just a little drink would calm the stressful situation, and the irritation mixed with giggles and other attitudes toward him would immediately vanish… But he had sworn off alcohol, so he continued to suffer.

Not finding Karina, he returned to his own workstation. The same blonde girl was there, coquettishly hugging a folder to her chest, swaying her hips, casting playful glances at him while hiding behind the same folder.

– Really? – he asked.

“Well, here’s another little question…” she said, handing him the folder.

“I can guess how she earned her grades at university and how she persuaded the guys to share their completed assignments”, – he thought.

Indeed, the questions had piled up. So many that if he tried to tackle them all at once, he probably wouldn’t have managed in a couple or even three months. Systematically dodging tasks, fending off orders, slipping into fits of frenzy and internal office intrigue, he had managed to pile so much work that even he couldn’t make sense of it all at a glance.