Аннотация: абсурдные представления о божественной канцелярии, на английском языке; первая (очень шероховатая) попытка перевода собственного произведения
Death in Paradise.
During the last night hunkering poplars at the end of the alley had clung closely to each other, forming a dead-end of entwined branches; and a dirty fallow shroud of the decomposing foliage had covered the ground. The street seemed to be absolutely desolate - rustling rainy mantras swept nearly all every-day activities away, only the apathetic black cat melancholically balanced on the edge of the roof, and few random passers-by were hiding round the shadowy corners, but no one was seeking them.
Having traversed the empty labyrinth of the concrete rubic's cubes, Ana opened the door leading to the local diner, which traditionally welcomed its customers with a vibrating jingle of aluminium cutlery. A noble family was sitting at the table in the middle of the hall; two brothers, Siamese twins, in the identical sailor's suits helped themselves to chew the grey content of their plates with delicate tooth-shaped toenails. Without even opening the menu, Ana ordered mushroom soup. After having found a small table in the corner, she carefully squeezed a portion of hot and peppery tears into her plate. While eating, she fixed her vacant gaze on the mesmerizing broad window in the ceiling, covered with old newspapers. Suddenly, she startled: the buds of nuclear amanitas had already started blossoming in her stomach. The girl rushed to the exit. Not sooner had she paid the bill, as the ill-mannered door pushed her outside. The rain continued to fall steadily.
After she turned round the corner, the yellow bus stop came into the view. A threadbare, but well-trained fur rug was trailing under her feet, galloping from time to time in order to keep pace with the girl's walk. Ana's heart sunk under the gloomy gazes of looming above her concrete edifices. If only I could come back home now, hide in a far corner and send an obedient body outside, she thought drowsily, huddling in the fetal position inside herself. Feeling her eyes closing, Ana nearly slapped herself on the face, but at the last moment her hand slipped in the pocket of her black coat, as if being stopped by a stream of air.
On reaching the bus stop, she nervously looked around: the rain with the persistence of old rheumatic pendulum continued to whistle the melody of Strasbourg waltz absolutely out of tune; the sickly sweet evaporations of the rotting leaves had become completely unbearable. The fur rug got wet to the skin and Ana felt obliged to send it back home. There were no buses yet. Suddenly, she felt a stream of hot air sneaked from behind her back and got into her pocket, pumping it from inside. Surprised Ana turned around and realised that she wasn't alone at this bus stop - as there was also a deep-breathing child, aged 6 or 7, clad in dirty rugs.
Gypsy, she thought in disgust, in a minute they would swarm around her, begging, cursing, hanging of her sleeve. But to her surprise, it didn't happen - on the contrary, it had become even quieter, the air strained; Ana heard the muffled beats of her heart, felt the blood congealing in her veins, her body heavy and numb. Seized by a strange panic, she unsuccessfully tried to run, but couldn't move or speak at all. Her gaze was fastened on the child's mouth, twisting in an attempt of articulation. His whole body seemed to be controlled by the hand of some inexperienced animator. Gavroche found his strength in her, and the world was spinning round its unstable axis.
The landscape round the paralysed Ana had been changing very quickly: the blocks of flats stepped aside, giving the way to the walls which were quickly growing from behind the ground and strung together by the wooden membranes of the slamming doors. The edifice - at this stage looking like a hospital of some kind - had been hastily overflowed with busy, running to and fro, people in blue uniforms with gas masks on their faces. They moved in a normal, working rhythm, not paying any attention at the slowly passing streams of air and late echo - the whole picture created a bizarre effect of superimposed dimensions. Not far from Ana a long-necked woman lay on the floor, jerking spasmodically. Although a group of young doctors crowded round her at a little distance, all of them nodding the short trunks of their gas mask, but none of them wanted to approach the patient closely.
'She had epilepsy, and it spreads by airborne transmission in no time. Nothing helps,' as if feeling her uneasiness, explained the old man in a purple frock coat without opening his mouth. He lay in the open wooden coffin and held the hand of his wife, who comfortably huddled in the adjacent coffin.
Suddenly the head of the hospital - a stout, florid man - appeared in the hall, frightening a group of young nuns, who ran away in different directions. He rolled out a small howitzer of a rapacious appearance.
Ana didn't see what ensued as her petrified body had been picked up by two constantly giggling paramedics. As if dealing with a statue, they carried her down the long corridor, all the time moving only backwards and sideways. After leaning Ana against the wall, they retreated without any explanations. The walls trembled in fear, catching the echo of the distant explosion. In the next moment the nurse moved Ana into the room, where she finally started coming to her senses. Light electric spikes went through her muscles. She felt tired. The amorphous mass of her conscience, washed out by the whirlpool of today's metamorphosis, carelessly waved away the unfathomable, convulsed world.
The nurse indifferently looked right through Ana, who felt herself sliding into an exhausted sleep. Her thoughts had turned from side to side without sleep for a little while, but then the last doubts surrendered. In her dream Ana was a little girl again, who found herself in the unknown big parlour. She approached a dusty piano, timidly opened it, her fingers groping through the confusion of random sounds. Ana tried to tear her hands from the instrument, but as if in a frenzy they didn't follow her anymore and only plunged deeper into the cacophony, gradually turning into the octopus's tentacles.
She woke up with a start and instinctively hid the deformed hands behind her back. Upon rising her eyes, she couldn't keep a scream. There was a stranger sitting still on a chair just in front of her. His hair was slicked back with oil, he turned to Ana the right half of his badly damaged face, which now reminded a colourful palette of an avant-gardist.
'I want to know what is going on, ' Ana couldn't help laughing inwardly at the pathos of her tone.
That's a pity a gentleman in the coffin in not here - he would definitely explain everything, thought she
'Well, a distorted interaction between the possibility and reality, in fact, it is a sort of restoration of irreversibility,' the nurse suddenly became increasingly agitated.
'You must have met on the island seven years ago. The compatibility's 87 per cent, chances of conception - 93,' said she after consulting her notes. 'And the moment of death - in a car crash, as you can see - turned out to be very suitable - the eclipse of the autumnal equinox'.
'But...', Ana still couldn't find the right word.
'Of course, you've never heard about any island,' the nurse anticipated the possible question, she seemed to know absolutely everything. 'The project had never been completed as it was rendered commercially unattractive and technically unrealistic; nobody wanted to invest their money in a romantic idea of creating a place of eternal darkness and ice, illuminated only by the dim reflection of the stars.'
'Wait a minute, but what do I have to do with this story? If it didn"t happen, it means something different occurred, doesn't it'
'Well, just try to imagine the whole multitude of unrealised possibilities, which are heavily concentrated in non-entity, but, you know, as well as amputated limbs are itching from time to time they also feel uneasy. By the way, possibility as a perspective is the only way to apprehend the world you are living in, because you conscious is too callous to be able to squeeze between the seconds, to separate every sign.'
I'm just being manipulated in some strange way, thought Ana, and it's funny how quickly I started forgetting everything about myself; I wonder how they managed it?
'A minute for a child is far longer than for an adult,' continued the nurse, not paying any attention at Ana's thoughts, 'because with increasing age each time unit is a smaller percentage of the person's life. It works on the personal level, but can also be applied the entire humanity if you regard all the people who ever lived on Earth as the members of one animate whole, amorphous aged Leviathan. Modern children can hardly notice how they grow into old fogies -as they swallow their childhoods, schools, divorces in one sip. It"s become nearly impossible to perceive quickly changing reality.'
'We don"t have any personal prejudices and are trying to create a unique effect on every suitable occasion, though it"s not easy to manoeuvre between the entangled lives, frequent confusions of providence and will.'
' I just can' t comprehend how many steps one needs to step back to imagine the possibility you are talking about. It's absolutely abstract speculation, it"s nothing, simply nothing," in despair Ana felt she was losing her last chance.
'We-e-ll, well, well,' the nurse gave a shrug, 'let me put it in the right order: first of all, nothing doesn't exist - it's a linguistic trick and also a conventional notion, and after all it is not a quantity of steps, but a proportion that matters. But, please, don"t ask me about formulas - it"s not my specialisation and we are running out of time...'
As if according to the script, the door flung open and the same paramedics who delivered her to the room some time ago, appeared again, this time carefully carrying a heave silver tray with a giant snow-white egg on it. In harsh fluorescent light scale-covered skin of the snake coiled around it reflected rainbow colours. Suddenly the reptile hissed suspiciously; a single crack appeared on the smooth surface, then - in a blink - second, third ones. Without even uttering a sound an ugly, almost shapeless infant with the body of dirty yellow colour appeared from it; he shook off the pieces of the shell and endeavoured to make a step forward, but being not accustomed to it, didn't keep the balance and fell on the floor, then without losing another second he rose to his feet again and rushed forward, controlled by his aim on the vegetative level . Both paramedics and the nurse deferentially drew back. In a blink of the eye he reached the couch and tried to drag his clumsy body on it, after the short struggle he eventually accomplished it with a great difficulty, sweating heavily. He pulled the lap of Ana's coat and broke the awkward silence with the noise of tearing silk. With her eyes closed Ana felt the splinters of the broken glass growing inside her. Tomorrow she was to get up in a perfect amnesia of her entirely new life.