Аннотация: Перевод рассказа "Гости". Оригинал здесь http://zhurnal.lib.ru/p/palij_s_w/guests_sp.shtml
Sergey Paliy
(Translated by Polina Pali)
Visitors
I only recently understood why people have hands -- so they can make fists. Only stupid retards think that we need them to create warmth, art and to maintain life... What is life, by the way? I still can't understand it, although I've been thinking about it for a decade or so...or probably even longer. It is hard to say.
This time it was Lida who showed up closer to the evening, and she brought a painting.
-- "Look, I drew it myself!" -- she yelled happily, running towards me, and kissed me on my cheek. -- "Take a look, Honey! Come on, take a look!"
I didn't even glance at the picture.
-- "When did you draw it?"
She raised her thin, finely shaped eyebrows and seemed surprised for a moment.
-- "Hmm, I don't remember. How come?"
I was absolutely not interested in a long thorough conversation.
-- "Because! This is not your picture. You can't draw at all! You can't even sketch a house! You cannot do anything, absolutely nothing! You are a damned wretch! You are a bitch who needs a stud!"
My temple began to burn from the slap in the face. Excellent. Come on, Lida, get really pissed off!
Lida starred at me with her wet eyes which were slightly crossed.
-- "What did I do?! You are a pig! Rude pig!" -- she shouted out in a trembling voice.
-- "And you are a cross-eyed bitch!"
She covered her face with her hands, slowly lowered herself to the ground and started crying. I spitted on the ground right in front of her, slowly turned around and, yawning, started walking to the house.
"She'll show up in a minute. Oh, I know how much she hates anyone mentioning her crossed eyes! She gets so mad she can kill..." -- I grinned at this thought, tried to get comfortable and put a knife on my lap after taking off my shirt. -- "I should clean up around some time tomorrow, it is getting very nasty. Why did she bring a picture today, she could never draw even a straight line. I am getting so sick of everything..."
I could hear her crying outside and trying to fight the tears. She'll come soon. Probably for a minute or so she will be rubbing her eyes spreading her tears all over the face, pushing her lips out, and then she will dig her hands into her hair, to fully show her desperation. "What do you know about desperation, Lida? What? You probably think that if somebody is rude to you, it is a reason to get desperate? You are a silly thing, my dear silly thing. It means absolutely nothing. You can't even imagine how pleasant and fair it can be! I would love if somebody could be rude to me forever!"
Oh, she showed up.
She walked in barefoot, stomping on the floor, came up to me and ran her fingers through my hair.
-- "Honey, please don't upset me again".
-- "You don't need any honey, all you need is a stud" -- I said calmly.
-- "Shut up! How do you dare! " -- She started running around the room, twisting her hands. Her face was slowly getting red. -- "Shut up! What are you doing? Why?"
I was waiting with my smile still on my face.
Suddenly Lida stopped and glanced at the knife, there was something predatory in her eyes. Her face, which was scary enough as is, started changing and became more animal-like. I shook my head and looking straight into her eyes, whispered separating every single syllable:
-- "Cross-eyed bitch".
I could taste my heartburn in my mouth, it was bitter sweet. I swallowed, and at this moment Lida jumped to the knife making hoarse sounds...
It is good that today everything happened so fast and without unnecessary scenes. But this is due to my efforts as well: when you know somebody very well, you can get to them almost immediately. And especially if that person is a woman. Especially a woman who has been close to you ... whom you loved for a long time... long time. I could feel sharp pain exploding and growing within my heart, and then everything became dark...it was so fast, pleasant and scary...
I can't stand this feeling -- your head hurts, like from the worst hangover, you can't move your arms, and it feels like your stomach is full of crap! But what is the most annoying is that I was not drinking yesterday. And didn't even eat.
I haven't eaten or drunk for ten years. Every morning I wake up in the same spot -- on the slope of a hill located in the middle of a vast plain. I come down from it, making huge steps and stumbling. And first, what I see in front of myself is a long skinny shadow, twisting like a snake on the uneven gray ground. And there is always a sun behind me that has just risen up.
At the bottom of this unusual hill there is always a house waiting for me, well built, with a nice tiled roof and a balcony which was once covered with glass. There is a garden right next to the house surrounded by a small rocky area. All this looked very strange in the middle of the plain that could be seen all the way until the horizon. But it didn't look strange to me anymore. I can't get surprised anymore, I can't cry, I can't be happy or sad, I forgot what hate and love are.
All I have left is desperation.
During the day I can rest in the shade of my house, because it gets way too hot closer to noon, or I can go inside of the house, go through all the junk that I picked up in this area during the last several years. I could also throw my knife into the wooden wall, luckily, I learned to do it better than any mortal human being. He-he! A mortal being. I think it sounds funny. I can also go somewhere to kill time. Just go for no reason, so I would not go crazy from all the waiting and, should I say, loneliness? But it will not be completely honest to say that I am lonely, because I get visitors every day.
I know all of them: friends, family, my wife Lida, even my son shows up once in a while and just people that I know. They come one after another. You can sit with them, chat, argue, you can even play... They are always so happy and nice.
And then they kill me in the evening.
In the beginning, for the first two years or so, it was most difficult when my wife or son came to see me. Well, and, probably, my father. I remember I was very happy at that time that my Mom never visited me. I still don't know why. Probably she was too busy.
Anyway, they kill me at night. No matter what happens. At first, my guest would get slightly irritated for no reason, then get mad and grab a knife... And nothing or nobody could help me! I tried everything I could think of, everything any human being could come up with.
Originally, when I first kind of realized what was going on, I've tried to explain to my visitors what it was all about. They laughed at me, joked about it, didn't believe me, thought that I lost my mind, and then slowly they would get mad and... I cried, begged for my life, moaned and screamed! But they still killed me every single time by stabbing me in the heart. I woke up every morning on that hill, and I could still remember how it felt to have cold steel in my chest. My visitors always came back although they remembered nothing. They were so happy to see me, they smiled and hugged me...
After some time I've decided to try to escape, get away from the house. But you can't get too far away in a few hours! They would catch up to me. They would call me by name, really surprised that I was going somewhere so late. I would run as fast as I could and as far away as I could, but they would cut across, show up in front of me, pat me on my back, making me shiver... They would grab my hand, and treat me like a small child who got too far away from the house while playing, and they would take me home. They would talk in their soft voices to me, feel sorry for me, hug me, act surprised and irritated... And then murder me. I would jump to the side, scream, fall down and try to crawl away, but they would be faster.
"Why?" -- I kept asking myself slowly losing my mind.
In response I would always get cold steel going under my ribs... And then the next morning, healthy, upbeat, remembering everything and, most important, still sane I would run down the hill back to my home.
There always comes an end to human patience, and I made a decision on the fourth year of my life here. I remember that it was an old school friend -- Boris Narkashin -- who came to see me that day. When we got to the argument, I was the first one to get my knife from the table and slid his throat... And then I was running somewhere, all covered in blood, out of breath... I was throwing up, I was yelling something in the darkness of the night. I just don't remember... After this I was up for three days and then I fell asleep.
I woke up looking at the long skinny shadow just in front of me! In desperation I was biting dirt, punching the house, which I hated so much, until my fists were bleeding, I was trying to commit suicide by cutting my veins... but I would always wake up walking down the hill...
I don't have birds or animals in my world, I don't have water, fire or books either. I just have visitors, whom I would kill myself now, until my son Alesha showed up one day. I couldn't murder him, so he killed me instead...
I was trying to change the whole situation without any result, then I started looking for a cause. I wasn't taking any action, I was thinking.
I've immediately declined the idea that it was a dream: not a single person will ever have a dream like this. Then I was hoping that I've gone insane, and the awful sunny world around me is just a vision of my sick mind. Then I've eliminated this idea as well by doing one simple test, confirming that everything around me is real. I murdered my father because I knew he would come back no matter what... I knew that my sub consciousness simply couldn't come up with a reaction to such a well thought-out act. I was right.
"Have you ever tried to kill your own Dad? Even if he has already taken your life six times. Have you?"
Later on I've started trying to figure out why I couldn't get out of these crazy surroundings. Even if you assume, that every day I wake up in the same place and begin living the same day, then I can imagine that it is an effect of some kind of a time cycle, but according to physics it is not possible at all; however, my memory proves the opposite. I guess it means that my own time just moves linear. May be, it is its vector... Anyway, I was going crazy coming up with hundreds of hypotheses and assumptions, but I couldn't explain anything.
And my visitors kept coming, and I kept walking down the hill feeling the cool ground underneath my feet, and hot days, one after another, all led to my death.
I got used to my local "life" in about seven years. Of course, if my mind wasn't returning to me every morning, I would go crazy in a week. But my damned common sense, as a shock from being hit with a whip, brought back my consciousness time after time.
Slowly all my feelings became dull: surprise at first, then bewilderment, anger, hate, fear, pain and sorrow. When I only had my faith left, I had to start believing in God, because you always have to believe in something, and when there is nothing left to believe in, you begin to endorse your faith in Him... I've prayed awkwardly, talked to Him, was pleading to Him, cursed Him for his indifference, asked for forgiveness... And then I just got tired.
All I had left was desperation, and may be a little bit of indifferent curiosity, because my visitors acted a little bit differently each day. Sometimes our meetings lasted for a few hours, and once in a while -- only for a few minutes. It's not important. In the last little while I've started provoking my visitors into a confrontation, just to finish it off faster, like yesterday, for example... I perfectly understand that none of them is guilty of anything, sometimes I make myself believe that it wasn't them who came to me but some kind of empty bodies or dolls with implanted thoughts and behavior of those people, whom I used to love the most. I've tried to calm myself down with this thought while hurting them, offending them, but somewhere deep down in my soul I could feel some movement getting quieter, whispering to me that it is them coming to see me... it's them...them...
These quite movements reminded me of noises made by mechanical watches when their wind up comes to the end.
I was lying down on the hot hill just starring at the sun, not even looking away. I think it is about noon. I could not see because its bright yellow light was burning my eyes. Tears coming out of my blinded eyes were drying on my lips, leaving a salty aftertaste.
A long time ago, unimaginably a long time ago, so long ago that my mind has only very distant weak memories, I led a different life. In that life I would go to different places; there was lots going on, lots of vanity and misunderstandings, and I also had feelings that filled up my soul. I could feel streams of energy coming from other people, and I was full of good energy myself. That old world of mine was filled with endless happiness.
I often recall how once we went to the park with Lida and Alesha. It was raining very hard for the whole morning, but we still decided to go. We didn't take our umbrellas on purpose. We could hear thunder, the cold autumn wind was absolutely freezing, but Alesha was running in tall grass screaming from joy, trying to take off his absolutely wet shirt. "Dad!" - he yelled, running into my leg. -- "Dad! We urgently need chaise-longues". He loved using any new word that he just learned, time after time. And Lida, giggling non-stop, would pat him on his head. She would also call him: "Kitten" when he was relatively far away, because "this is not what you call big kids".
We had so much fun in this rain until the night. Then, when we came home, we drank hot tea with raspberry jam for over an hour, laughing and recalling how we fell into a puddle. And then the next day the three of us got sore throats ...
I will never understand why my old world came to an end. All of a sudden, forever. What happened? Where did I make a mistake? I've endlessly analyzed myself, I've visited the darkest corners of my sub consciousness, but I found nothing.
And now I just have one feeling, one desire left...
"Don't come to see me!!! Alesha, Lida and Dad, please disappear! Do you hear me? Never ever return to my personal hell to kill me! No, I don't feel pain anymore, I don't care about the pain, I can't feel anything anymore, but I don't want you, people whom I loved, people who will always stay in my tortured heart, I don't want you killing me. Because I know that you also suffer when you do it! And your pain is a thousand times stronger than mine, because you will never get used to it...
You are just visitors here. Please don't come again..."