Real and Phantom Pains: An Anthology of New Russian Drama. John Freedman

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СКАЧАТЬ out by helplessness, uselessness, moneylessness – I left my wife. I went to another city to live with a friend. I wasn’t doing anything at the time, just playing some music, writing some poetry, and I remember how everything just came crashing down on me. I was writing these really gruesome, depressing poems with suicidal overtones. They came under the title of “Me Searching for Glory.” They were about this guy lying in a bathtub who slits his wrists and realizes that the only thing tying him to the real world is his girlfriend who he really loves and empathizes with. These poems were colored by the dramatic experiences of a friend of mine – he’d split up with his girlfriend, too. She was a ballerina. And the last line went like this:

      She’ll return to me, of course,

      Some other Monday morn.

      But today the end is my goal.

      A knife is my compass,

      My heart is my atlas.

      And then it all ends with a lot of howling. The only things I had to my name were a towel, three books, forty rubles and 200 records. Two hundred records was the sum of my life. That’s the exalted state I lived in at the time. I was a genuine maniac. A maniac of despair.

      MANIAC (Peering over SNOWFLAKE’s shoulder): What are you reading?

      SNOWFLAKE: I’m rereading Nabokov.

      MANIAC: You break my heart. That’s my favorite writer.

      LENOCHKA: So what do you do when you’re not working?

      MANIAC: I swim. That’s why I have big shoulders

      ORANGINA: That’s beautiful (Takes MANIAC’s photo.)

      BLIZZARD: I like track and field, myself

      LENOCHKA: You run fast?

      BLIZZARD: I wanted to run to the sun when I was a kid

      MANIAC: What is that food you’re eating?

      BLIZZARD: Bread, mushrooms and cheese

      MANIAC: I’ve got greens of some sort

      LENOCHKA: Vitamins

      MANIAC: I wonder who the first guy to eat greens was

      LENOCHKA: Our neighbors used to complain to my mother that I sniffed the grass

      SNOWFLAKE: You get in trouble?

      LENOCHKA: She says, what do you sniff grass for?

      MANIAC: Really

      SNOWSTORM: My mom still has no idea that I smoke and use psychotropics

      BLIZZARD: Is that already a beer you’re drinking?

      SNOWSTORM: Beer and coffee

      LENOCHKA: Ooh, yuck

      MANIAC: What are your blinies with?

      SNOWFLAKE: Kiwi and strawberries

      LENOCHKA: Mine are with chocolate

      ORANGINA: Mine are with honey and lemon juice

      SNOWSTORM: Don’t non-conformists live well?

      MANIAC: But we die young

      (VOLODYA walks along the street outside, stops in front of a woman’s lingerie store, goes inside, warms up his hands, looks at his watch, gets embarrassed, leaves, goes back in the opposite direction, enters the previous store, tries on hats again – one, another, a third. Finally chooses one and buys it, puts it on and goes back out on the street.

      In the café the six pay their bill and prepare to leave. Someone washes his hands, others endlessly keep putting things on while somebody helps someone else put something on.)

      BUSHY-TAIL (Looking over the business card. To ORANGINA, who takes her picture): What do you do?

      ORANGINA: I’m a designer. I make everything beautiful. You know how that is?

      BUSHY-TAIL (Nodding in the direction of Maniac): What about him?

      MANIAC: I have the luxury of doing nothing whatsoever at the moment. Sometimes my friend and I (embraces BLIZZARD) hire prostitutes and we film it on video

      (BLIZZARD gags. BUSHY-TAIL’s eyes get real big. ORANGINA takes advantage of the moment and photographs it.)

      LENOCHKA: Ooh, yuck

      SNOWFLAKE: That’s his stupid idea of a joke

      BLIZZARD: Want some chewing gum?

      LENOCHKA: Is it strawberry?

      ORANGINA: My favorite

      SNOWFLAKE: My perfume is strawberry

      SNOWSTORM: I’ve been wondering how come it smells so sweetly of strawberries

      LENOCHKA (Takes the chewing gum from BLIZZARD’s hand and then takes his hand in hers): What an interesting hand. Now, now, now, now, now – let’s look at this in the light

      MANIAC: What about me?

      SNOWSTORM: Do you believe in palm readings?

      MANIAC: Tell my fortune

      BLIZZARD: What do you see?

      MANIAC: What are you looking so hard for there?

      SNOWSTORM: Careful, Lena. He’s jumpy

      LENOCHKA: You have a very strange life line

      BLIZZARD: Why?

      LENOCHKA: Because it breaks off

      BLIZZARD: Okay –

      SNOWSTORM: So now you live on with the weight of this painful paranoia hanging over you

      MANIAC: How much time does he have left?

      LENOCHKA: You have about –

      MANIAC: The years are numbered

      BLIZZARD (Pulls his hand away, hugs it to him): Knock it off. I don’t want to know.

      LENOCHKA: I realize, you probably shouldn’t do that

      SNOWFLAKE: That’s serious stuff

      ORANGINA: You have a beautiful T-shirt. What’s that written on it?

      LENOCHKA: Angels don’t weep

      ORANGINA: What about yours?

      SNOWSTORM: Masturbating is no crime

      MANIAC: What do you think?

      ORANGINA: СКАЧАТЬ