S. Melnikov | Dark Fiction

[h4gen]

The Case of Varda, Ch.2: "Hello, Augusta!"

In a roped-off corner of Augusta Airport’s arrivals hall the Hellenes had huddled. They pressed together, disguising embarrassment with loud talk and forced laughter. A dozen women weighed down by pinchbeck gold and greedy black eyes, a score of swarthy men in pigskin jackets and upturned-toe shoes, and Mavrikios Vardas—also in leather, also in the ultra-fashionable Athenian shoes, yet pale-skinned and fair-haired. A stranger. He kept apart, shyly hiding blue eyes.

Citizens of Equicia walked past. Their plain, loose garments rustled softly. Fresh faces, muted colours. The Romans moved with accustomed assurance, the bearing of people who have never known want, speaking quietly, as one speaks when used to being heard. The Roman language, open and limpid, sang in Mauricius’s ears, but it was drowned by bursts of counterfeit mirth and the drawling, lisping chatter of his compatriots.

Mavrikios felt shame, yet need not have worried—no glance was turned their way. Equician eyes skimmed the Hellenes tangentially, unwilling to linger on vulgar newcomers.

An airport official in a blue robe approached the barrier. A mask covered his face. In Greek heavily laced with a Roman accent he asked the arrivals to form a queue and follow him. Mavrikios silently mouthed the words, rehearsing how the official’s whistling, slightly guttural Greek sounded. A pot-bellied Hellene with a pursed lip and ring-laden fingers took first place. Mavrikios slipped to the very end; he wished to speak to no one.

When his turn came he entered the inspection room, gave samples and DNA, displayed his luggage. The respiratored customs officers did not touch his things. He himself lifted each object from the case, unfolded it, ashamed of its shabbiness. They rolled his fingers, scanned his iris. Under cameras he walked along a straight white line painted on the floor, then ran along it again.

In the next room a clerk sat at a plain plastic table, mask now off. Behind him, on a wall painted quinacridone purple, an eagle spread gilded wings.

Mavrikios knew the state heraldry of Equicia as a symbol of faith. The banner—its hue like black-grape juice mixed with blood—stands for continuity with the Roman Republic. On Equicia’s arms the eagle holds a balance in its beak, signifying the equilibrium of crime and punishment, the keystone of Equician law. The bird looks neither sideways, as on other eagles, nor is its gaze blindfolded like the Hellenic Themis. Roman justice stares unblinking into the soul—it is not blind, it sees all. The eagle might search Mavrikios’s soul as long as it liked—it was clean. In his new life he resolved to break no law, however small; even on an empty street he would cross only on green, for from such trifles is just order made.

‘Familiarise yourself with the code for newcomers.’ The clerk handed him a leaflet and a slim green wallet. ‘Carry your temporary-residence permit at all times and produce it on demand.’

Mavrikios opened the booklet. Beneath his colour photograph ran the Roman text: ‘Mauricius Varda.’ From now on he is Maurice Varda. Forever! He tried to remain dignified, grave, calm, but his lips trembled and spread into an involuntary smile.

‘Enjoy your stay in Equicia,’ said the clerk, pressing a button. A door slid open on the right and bright sunlight flooded in.

* * *

His first day in Augusta—if one discounts an unpleasant incident—passed in intoxicating glare and haze. He emerged from customs into the car park and followed signs to the stop. A huge double-decker coach with mirrored glass swallowed passengers. Had Mauricius not been deafened by happiness before the last official, had he paid attention, he would have noticed no newcomers aboard. He approached the gates, bent to the scanner; a red cross appeared. He tried again—same result.

‘Underground,’ said a voice behind. Mauricius turned: a Roman stood there. He jabbed a finger: ‘You! Go!’—loudly, as to the hard-of-hearing—then pointed downward: ‘Underground. Coach—citizens. You—peregrine.’

‘I speak Roman well!’ Mauricius protested, stung by the hauteur.

The Roman blinked; the vulgar newcomer speaking Roman did not vanish. He rolled his eyes and repeated patiently: ‘You! Go! Underground! There—sub. Choo-choo for non-citizens.’ With an almost imperceptible movement he eased past, scanned himself; the gates pinged and he boarded.

‘Stand aside, please,’ someone said. A file of locals flowed by. The sun blazed; wind flapped their loose clothes but could not crawl under Mauricius’s pigskin jacket, his thick trousers, his dusty upturned shoes. The Romans looked at one another, the sky, the ground—anywhere but at him, as cultured people avoid glancing at a naked savage.

Mauricius peeled off his jacket; wind glued the sweaty tunic to his back. He strode quickly to the subway tunnel. The sub was sterile, empty, its curved walls of pale-blue tile devoid of ornament—at home they would already be plastered with ads. The scanner approved; doors opened. A few Hellenes stood on the platform; they waved on seeing a countryman, but Mauricius pretended to search his phone. A blunt-nosed locomotive drew a string of squat barrel cars. He boarded; the train slid forward. A glossy stripe and glowing ceiling panels receded in dotted lines, yet silence was absolute—no wheel-clatter, no motor-whine. Two cars away Hellenes sat uncharacteristically quiet.

At ‘Via Iustiniana’, the address he had been given, he alighted; the train carried his compatriots north toward Germanica, where capsule insulae fifty storeys high house refugees from poor but proud countries. He had seen pictures: narrow towers so close that sunlight barely touches the ground, cables like lianas, open iron bridges where children play and washing flaps—half-wild Dacians dance in corridors, drunken Germans brawl, Hellenes fight Ottomans to the death; no forensic team will come. Equicia ends at the fence; inside, rent is cheapest in Augusta.

The escalator delivered him into a small enclosed courtyard-cum-well. When he stepped through the arch his throat tightened. A broad avenue branched in tiers and vanished in haze. Mirror-skinned skyscrapers blurred in heat. Everything was vast, new, monumental—perfect. Equicia, a state of many dominions and protectorates, was the richest on earth, yet only here, on a central capital boulevard thick with warmed marble and a faint sweet whiff of spent fuel beneath glass towers dripping liquid gold, did Mauricius realise how feeble, how primitive his native Hellas was.

He found the building easily—a glass tower with a marble portico. He entered, Roman-fashion, sidestepping his reflection. Inside they were waiting. His new chief received him on the forty-sixth floor.

Call me by my first name, he said—no patronymics, no titles—and seated him by the window. Two stadia below, traffic streamed; drones flitted past. The height made him dizzy. A secretary smiled as though he were a consul, not a peregrine coder, and set down a cup of strong Abyssinian coffee. The patron was the first Roman to meet his gaze. He bustled, rubbing his hands, popping up behind either shoulder, left eyelid twitching, talking incessantly: how brilliant Mauricius’s test piece had been, how splendid his future, how lovely Augusta. Mauricius… Mauricius… The Roman language, beautiful and melodic, rose and fell, always landing on ‘Mauricius’.

‘You won’t be a peregrine long, Mauricius—mark my words.’

The patron summoned a driver. On soft leather, scented unfamiliar but delightful, Mauricius rode to his new home. Surprisingly, the silent chauffeur did not head for Germanica. South from Via Iustiniana, after half an hour, he stopped before a pleasant insula. Beyond a shaded boulevard the broad Rhenus glinted; across it lay the Old Town, the Forum, senate and consul. Few peregrines, fewer refugees, lived here. The driver unloaded his bag and silently handed him a key-card.

The studio was small, yet no capsule: room for a wide bed, a workstation, a kitchen-bar. Behind a sliding wall lay bathroom and shower. Everything clean, beautiful, functional—but the far wall was glass. Beyond, far to the south, the Helvetian Alps gleamed white.

‘Tyche loves me,’ Mauricius whispered, then corrected himself: ‘Fortuna.’

First he found a ready-to-wear shop. He emerged in a light linen shirt and trousers. The old clothes he folded into a carrier. By the bins he hesitated—when life has been endless want, discarding decent clothing is hard—but he shook his head resolutely and flung the pigskin jacket, the Ottoman shoes, every thread of Hellenic rags into the rubbish. In the new life there was no place for the old.

[h4gen]

The Case of Varda, Ch.1: "Farewell, Athens!"

Who will bear the name “Mavrikios”? A black field-hand baked by the sun, or a forest hermit whose animal spirit, with the passage of time, has faded into the scent of withered roses. What was Chloe Vardas thinking when she gave that name to her infant? Her boy was born fair-skinned, blue-eyed, his hair light and curly. So had looked his ancient forebears, those who had never mingled blood with the southern barbarians. Hardly any such children are left among modern Hellenes, now indistinguishable from Ottomans. Among the black heads of Athenians his pale-golden curls could be spotted a mile off—a white sheep in a black flock. A sheep carrying a shameful secret, a traitor in a hungry yet proud Hellas.

On the anniversaries of Thermopylae and Liberation Day his friends painted blue crosses on their cheeks and poured wine at the feet of a plastic Pallas Athena. They scrawled posters on plywood and bawled outside the embassy of the Republic of Equitia, the country they blamed for every Hellenic woe, while Mavrikios secretly wrote in an exercise-book: Mauritius Varda. The name sounded different then; in it, tight purple snapped in the wind against a golden eagle—Mavrikios dreamt of Equitia.

That morning the longing was keener than ever: he had been sacked. Instead of his final wage, the owner of the little outfit that knocked out shop-apps on its knee handed him a list of invented fines that swallowed the whole sum. The choice was narrow—walk home with empty pockets intact, or with broken ribs—either way, the pockets stayed empty. Mavrikios chose the first.

He walked the broken road, past flaking walls plastered with political placards and adverts for cheap hetairae, past hawkers—noisy ones with over-ripe fruit, quiet ones with bottles of home-distilled ouzo under their coats—past bakeries dizzying the air with the smell of hot flat-bread, the sort that makes a hand slide from a pocket toward a crisp, steaming crust, and better not reach in at all. Mavrikios turned out of the alley into Patission and collided with a crowd. Thousands of angry, laughing Hellenes were marching on the capital.

“Freedom or death!” someone shouted, and the old cry rolled through the throng both ways. Once, when Hellas was part of the Ottoman Empire, those words had meant something; now, what sense was left? Freedom—you could drown in it; death—no one stops you; but the slogan says nothing of a decent life. The shout is only a way to muffle rumbling stomachs that could have been full had Equitia not turned its back on Hellas.

When the Hellenes rose, Equitia helped. It hardly strained itself: a few legions camped on the Ottoman border in Thrace, and that was enough to cool the Constantinople Sultan’s ardour toward his rebellious province. Without Equitia the Ottomans would have drowned Hellas in blood, but Hellas was freed. Like a woman rid of a tyrant husband, she tore down every reminder of the old life, pulled down minarets with mosques, and now boasted of being the only country on earth without a single mosque or minaret. Equitia, for its part, lost all interest in the liberated people. It freed them—and left them unfed. How could they not hate it?

If Mavrikios ever shared his dreams with his countrymen they would tear him to pieces and stroll on, staining the asphalt with bloody soles. None of those Yannises, Yiorgoses, Demises is bloodthirsty in himself—the crowd is bloodthirsty; once inside it, they leave their names at the edge.

"Boy, come with us! Let’s smash ’em!” a hulk barked, jabbing Mavrikios in the shoulder. Mavrikios did not want to smash anyone; he wanted to leave. In Equitia the avenues are wide, the parks thick; courteous vigils smile with restraint, and passers-by carry themselves with dignity because they are fed and sure of tomorrow. Luxurious cars glide along the roads, not mobs of frantic poor. No one there would throw a man into the street without his wage, because Equitia has law and justice, whereas Hellas has only the right of the strong.

Powerless rage beat in his throat like a pigeon; Mavrikios would have sprouted wings and flown west on the spot—straight out of this stink into clean air—but nothing grew, not even an itch between the shoulder-blades.

At home his mother and his older brother in the wheelchair were waiting. One look at Mavrikios’s guilty eyes told them everything.

“Why?” his mother asked.

“He simply wouldn’t pay—invented fines.”

She rose in silence and went to her room.

“Mum, what could I do? His brother’s a cop!” he shouted at the closed door. No answer came.

“No supper again,” sighed his brother, gripping the wheel-rims. “Markos, it isn’t fair!”

“You want fairness?” Markos jerked his head. “All right, let’s be fair. I found an interesting letter in the box today. Lovely stamp—claret, with a golden eagle.”

“Purple,” Mavrikios croaked, his throat scraping.

“Call it violet if you like. Point is, little brother plans to run off—leave us to shift for ourselves. Not that I blame you; I’d run too if I could …”

“It isn’t like that! I’ll send money—every month, more than I could earn here!”

“Oh, sure. New, well-fed life starts, and you’ll forget we exist. Fair play would be to tear the letter up. Mother bore you, fed you, clothed you, paid for school. I slaved for you too, till I lost my legs. You owe us till death.”

Mavrikios wanted to object, but Markos scowled; the veins stood out on the strong hands that gripped the wheels.

“Shut up. Even without legs I’m stronger than you. For the letter I want a thousand drachmas. I know you’ve got it.”

“How?” Mavrikios gasped.

“How I know? Here’s your third fairness lesson. I found your hiding-place and the scribbled papers. ‘Mauritius Varda’, is it?”—he spat the name like at a purple banner. “I took nothing: I’m no thief, not even of stolen goods. Everything here is ours together. Bring the money; we’re hungry.”

“What will I leave with?”

“Steal, rob, kill—do what you’ve never done! If you want to go, you’ll think of something.”

So he did, hating himself. While the stewardess in the third-class cabin—incredibly luxurious to him—patiently showed Mavrikios how to fasten his seat-belt, his brother opened the storeroom where winter clothes were kept. In place of the expensive leather jacket hung an envelope. Inside were four hundred drachmas and a short note:

“By rights. Everything is ours together.”

Markos snorted and wheeled to the kitchen. He laid the money on the table, twirled the envelope, sniffed it, even held it to the light.

“Could’ve done with a bit more …” he muttered, and tucked it under the wheelchair seat—for a keepsake.

[h4gen]

A few more photos from Red Square

[h4gen]

We took a walk through Zaryadye and Red Square on the last warm evening. The Kremlin was flooded with liquid gold. It brought to mind the “heavy gold of Kadaf” from "Concubines of Hate" by Vadim Panov. The main thing is—let’s hope they don’t release Azag-Tot from the Mausoleum…

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The chronicles of Koduma. Ch.8. The end

Without hesitation, at a hurried pace, Vesik moved between the rows. The tables were empty, the screens dark. In the entire vast hall he saw only three active panels and three black figures behind them. He approached the first.

An awkward guy, an aged-up boy with an earring in his ear and sticking hair, sensed movement behind him and turned around. He cast a surprised glance at the light-green robe.

"Didn’t expect that… You bolt from the Garda"

He leaned over the chair, looked toward the entrance.

"Hm, the colonel’s here. What do you want, Hume?"

The boy stared at Vesik with pupils narrowed to pinpoints. The table in front of him was covered with brown rings; in one of them stood a soggy cardboard cup filled with thick-brewed sigur. Wrappers and greasy paper lay scattered underfoot.

"Am I interrupting?" Vesik asked.

"Nothing to interrupt. Just sitting here staring at this thing. Checking the coordinates every half hour."

"So it’s true?"

"From one Koduman to another: we’re done for, Hume, all of us will be done for soon. Sorry if that upsets you. The colonel’s praying to his cannon, but the odds are zero—zero repeating."

"Why?"

"A monolith of unknown structure, and a microsecond pulse of five hundred petawatts is peanuts for smashing something that size. That’s already the limit."

"More?"

"More—and Koduma’s finished. Five hundred petawatts is the top, and even that’ll shake things hard. A ton of people will die from the shot alone. Some shelters will cave in. Earthquakes, hurricanes. Debris in the air, a long winter will come. Plants will die. The colonel stocked the depots, but the more people die, the longer the survivors will be able to hold out. You know, Hume, I think it’d be better all at once. Bang—and to Kurat with this Koduma, so we don’t have to suffer long. Want some?"

The boy held out his half-finished sigur.

"You look pale. Might faint."

Vesik slowly, as if in a dream, took the cup and drank. The dim light of the dome, the quiet conversations, the soothing clicks of a Geiger counter—all of it reminded him of Vyshgorod Central. Any moment now, a four-tone flute trill would pour from the speakers, a neutral voice would say: “The Alliance Arrow express train Vyshgorod–Pleskav will depart from platform B-3,” and he would shake off the remnants of this nightmare, pat his pockets, pull out his passport, check his visa—was it still valid?—the slightly raised magnetic chip with a snarling snow leopard, and run through the crowd, past people with smiling, sad, preoccupied but not frightened, not exhausted, not hunted faces…

But no—it wouldn’t shake off, no matter how he shook his head. No more visas, no more borders, Koduma had united — not as Vesik had imagined, and in space hung that thing, from which they would all soon go to Kurat.

"Who’s this?" an annoyed voice asked.

Vesik turned. Another scientist approached them—a real scientist, solid, with glasses and a beard.

"Don’t know. Came with the colonel. Doesn’t believe it."

The “aged boy” nodded at the screen.

"Lucky him," muttered the real scientist and walked away.

Vesik watched his hunched back for a long time, and the farther he went, the more the corners of Vesik’s mouth sank.

"Tell me as a scientist… What would you do if you weren’t stuck here??"

"What would I have done? Loaded the girls into a car and headed for the mountains, into abandoned shafts. I know it’s stupid, won’t save you from impact, but that’s what a Hume is—runs from danger without thinking, even a very smart one."

Vesik turned and, barely moving his legs, walked toward the colonel.

"Hey, Hume… What did they take you for?"

"For the truth," Vesik threw over his shoulder, his voice dull.

"You like the truth? I loved it when I had no one else to love. What’s your name?"

"Anton Vesik."

The scientist gave a muffled chuckle.

"I’ve read you."

"And?" Vesik turned, hope in his eyes.

"So-so, Hume. I don’t like open endings."

It was said in such an indifferent, dismissive tone that Vesik flared up, spun on his heels.

"Open endings?" he cried, his voice breaking. "You said “open endings”?! I—I am the only one on Koduma who dared to tell the truth! I gathered all the crimes of that tyrant into one book for future generations!"

The scientist looked at him half in surprise, half in mockery, fingering the earring in his ear, and under that gaze Vesik deflated, quieted, glanced furtively at the colonel at the far end of the hall.

"Cool it, Hume, you’re wasting air. So you sat in your underground palace, collected rumors and gossip, wrote your little book, or hid among your aristocrat friends. I can tell from your skin—none of your ancestors ever stepped outside without protective cream. What’s your book about? The people’s suffering? Do you even know what suffering is? Ever starved? Lived in a leaky hut? Been caught in a flash in the desert—imagine, when all that’s left from shelters is sand under your feet? Hid from a proton stream under a pig trough? I grew up in Velga—know that hole in Koduma? I’m here only because, by some freak chance, my neurons branch more than those of my countrymen, got it? You wrote a book about something you don’t know. For you, suffering is an abstraction, like “justice” or “humanism”—you can only think about it from a distance. Your book is about nothing!"

"There are facts!"

"Facts… You fool! Who doesn’t know them? Go, Hume. That thing will hit, and all your facts will burn. Wasted your time… like all of us. Nothing will remain. Get out before I smash you! You’ve worked me up!"

The scientist turned back to the screen and furiously, grinding the lead, scratched with his pencil across a sheet. And something in Vesik’s chest dimmed at once, as if that awkward elderly adolescent with a degree had reached between his ribs and snuffed the wick with sigur-sticky fingers.

He turned away. The colonel stood motionless, hands in crimson gloves resting on the railing, waiting patiently. Vesik walked toward him, and with each step his strength drained from his heels into Koduma. Behind him a child’s voice whimpered:

“Dad, I’m bored, let’s go for a walk,”

and the father’s voice, in normal language without slang, answered:

“My little star, there’s a storm above. It’ll end, and we’ll go. It’ll end the day after tomorrow, just wait,” and when the small steps faded, he added: “The day after tomorrow, everything will end.”

When Vesik approached, the colonel did not ask him anything, said nothing, not a single muscle moved on his face. In the mirrored lenses of his glasses reflected an inverted starry sky and a tiny, distorted, comical Vesik. Silently Raud turned on his heels and left the hall. Vesik followed. They returned the same way to the exit. Raud opened the airlock and nodded: go out. Stepped in after him and closed the bulkhead. The guards remained outside. Raud touched the magnetic key to the handcuffs; they opened and fell at Vesik’s feet. Raud slipped Vesik’s glasses into his breast pocket and immediately left.

The door closed; Vesik remained alone. The intercom beeped, and the colonel’s voice, quiet and sharp, said: “The condemned has escaped. Guard the artifact now, do not step away. After the object is destroyed, comb all of Koduma, but catch Vesik. Alive.” Vesik realized the intercom had been turned on for him. The outer hatch opened, dim light poured in—bloody clouds with swollen veins hung over the land. The wind drove sand across the road. On the area by the entrance stood a dusty buggy, and no one around.

Cautiously, Vesik stepped out, looked around. Carefully sat in the vehicle, turned the key—the engine started. The black needle of the stele stood exactly in the middle of the rearview mirror. Vesik shuddered and looked away, glanced at the dashboard—full tank. A gust threw a handful of sand into the back of his head—move, Vesik—and Vesik pressed the gas pedal. The buggy roared and shot forward.

He sped along a long empty street. Even rows of flowerbeds with sprawling takos plants on both sides swayed their black leaves soothingly—Paike was calm, there would be no burst. Vesik pushed the engine to its limit—the rumble hammered against blank walls, locked doors, shuttered windows, spilled into gaps, then rushed again between houses of red sandstone. Black cliffs rose higher beyond the windshield, the black tip of the stele shrank in the mirror. A Hume is a Hume—runs from danger, and the shortest path between two points is a straight line.

Further on, the road bent right; beyond that smooth curve—the northern gate, a checkpoint, a platoon of Garda. Not the Guard, but serious enough. They could roll out a barrier or block the exit with an armored car. The mesh gates themselves the buggy would smash through without slowing. Vesik still did not believe this was not another round of a game of cat and mouse with unclear goals. He could understand the colonel’s actions, but not predict them, and understanding is always retrospective. He was ready to ram, ready to run people down, ready even to take a bullet to the head—anything was better than being strapped to a black stone, languishing under Paike waiting for the burst. These were the sufferings the aged scientist boy could not even imagine. What would you say now, shaggy one, about an open ending?

Vesik’s eyes widened; for a moment, tearing his gaze from the road, he glanced at the back seat—there, strapped to it, lay a transparent plastic container with his book—“Anton Vesik ‘The Usurper’,” the latest expanded edition, and still not complete. The main event in the history of Koduma was not reflected in it. It had not yet happened.

Without slowing, the buggy passed the dead post and burst through the open gates. A couple of kilometers later Vesik braked, threw back the tarp between the rear seats. There, in rows, stood orange army crates with stenciled markings. Vesik did not know military codes, but guessed what was inside: army rations, water packs, a tent with a hydrated-material cover, a field laptop and backup power units with EMP protection. Vesik could swear he would also find stacks of paper, pens, and pencils—just in case.

He suppressed a chuckle. Couldn’t hold it and snorted—he saw himself from the outside, detached, as in a dream, a pale drop on a black spike in the middle of a wasteland. Future pain troubled him no more than past pain; “pain” was just a word, it did not touch nerve endings, but from it came a tangible, dusty-incense pull of immortality.

“What a bastard!” Vesik exclaimed in admiration and burst out laughing. He sped toward the cliffs—their slopes were riddled with black holes left by tunneling machines. Many holes, thousands. An endless tangle of intertwined tunnels and shafts beneath solid rock. One could wander there for years, and the colonel’s entire Guard would not be enough to block all exits—but that would be later, if Koduma survived. For some reason Vesik no longer doubted that Koduma would survive. Raud would not yield his planet to some cosmic rock.

So there was time. Vesik drove on, his chest burning, his fingertips tingling. The stele no longer loomed in the mirror, but Vesik felt it, the way a compass needle feels a magnetic anomaly.

The End

[h4gen]

"The Stranger" by François Ozon, review

For me, "The Stranger" (I will be speaking about the film, not the book) is about a man who refused to pretend. In a world “built on rules,” he is the only one who refuses to follow them—not because he is a rebel, but because he finds them meaningless. In a world where everyone wears a mask and plays a role, where being yourself is a crime, he naturally becomes a criminal.

Meursault is dangerous to society not because he is a murderer. Against his background, the falseness and overacting of others become visible. How could that be forgiven? Meursault is sentenced to death, and the actors—the “normal” people—rejoice. The prosecutor shakes the defense lawyer’s hand: “A brilliant speech!” he exclaims. And the lawyer accepts the praise with a satisfied smile. This is one of the most piercingly hypocritical scenes in the film. Their roles in this performance are executed flawlessly, while the incomprehensible Meursault—no actor at all, who for some reason wandered onto the stage—will soon be expelled from life, and the play will go on.

He is not condemned for killing an Arab—Frenchmen in Algeria kill Arabs all the time and easily get away with it, as the lawyer immediately tells his client. The priest is no less confident in a pardon—the value of a Frenchman’s life is far too disproportionate to that of a local inhabitant.

One would think that for a clergyman all people should be equal, all God’s creatures—guided or temporarily lost—but sorting people by the quality of their blood or the shape of their noses is so very human… Yet equality in French Algeria is supposedly intact: the banner in the hands of Arabs reading “We are all French. Vive la France!” resonates perfectly with the sign at the republican cinema with the monarchist name “Majestic”: “No tickets sold to locals.”

It is amusing that after Meursault’s trial, Djemila reacts with caustic skepticism to Marie’s claim that Algeria is his home—though, frankly, where is Marie wrong? If the French are strangers here, why is it they who refuse entry to locals in their cinemas and restaurants, rather than the other way around?

Returning to Meursault. I haven’t delved deeply into existentialist philosophy; I can only draw conclusions from the film. Meursault is neither a hero nor a monster. He is simply a man who does not accept pretense—not aggressively, but because he genuinely does not understand its purpose. In a world where everyone pretends, he cannot survive; he will be expelled like a foreign body.

One might think Meursault is an empathy-deprived autistic, but that is not the case. He loves his life, the world around him, his mother (“Yes, like everyone,” he replies to a direct question—and he never lies). He loves Marie. Just not in the way she would like. Meursault loves her not separately, but as part of the surrounding world—alongside the sea, wine, cigarettes (he smokes almost constantly, but that was the era; everyone smoked everywhere: on planes, in offices, in hospitals). He loves swimming with her, talking to her, having sex with her. He loves her smell (a detail added by Ozon) and her body. “But what about the soul?” a spiritually inclined viewer might exclaim. But how does one honestly love a soul? How do you love something you cannot see, cannot touch, and can barely comprehend? All the signs of love are present in Meursault’s behavior; only one thing is missing: words. He does not call his feeling “love,” does not say it aloud—and that is enough to deny him the ability to feel.

Love is simply one of those concepts to which everyone assigns their own meaning. Everyone has their own definition. And if there are many definitions, then there is no single correct one—only the freedom to decide for oneself what to put into the word. But there is also a social contract that determines which love counts as love and which is deviation, what is acceptable under its cover and what is not. Meursault is judged not for the absence of love, but for failing to match it to the accepted norm. He is declared insensitive not because he is, but because he does not display his feelings, does not shout about them, does not wave them like a flag—and his sensitive fellow citizens simply cannot recognize them.

The “insensitive” Meursault shows compassion for the bitter and quarrelsome old man Salamano. When his dog runs away, Meursault tells him it is most likely at the pound and that he has three days to reclaim it. Yes, he does not take the old man by the hand, does not drive him there, does not give him money—but only because the old man can go himself and pay for it. Meursault is willing to advise, but not to interfere, because in his world each person is an independent unit capable of acting on their own. Everyone is free in their actions. The old man goes, but the dog is not at the pound, and Meursault takes him home, gives him wine, and listens to his stories—stifling his yawns, of course, not because he enjoys his company, but to help a lonely man cope with his grief. What kind of insensitivity is that?

He himself lives with an inner sense of freedom and sincerely assumes that others have it too—and is surprised to discover that freedom is not in high demand. He sees himself and Marie as two independent people, while Marie wants mutual dependence. At their last meeting before his execution, she says she misses him, and Meursault replies that he does not—because their bodies no longer touch, and he does not think about her. To cope with the boredom of imprisonment, he recalls the objects in his apartment, one by one, from every angle. Such memories last for hours. A man who has lived even a single day, he tells Marie, has enough memories never to be bored. This reminded me of Paustovsky’s words:

“Try to recall any one of your days minute by minute: meetings, conversations, thoughts, actions, all events and states of mind, your own and others’—and you will see that to reconstruct this entire flow of time, one would need to write a whole book, if not two, or even three.”

Meursault did think about Marie—he scratched her outline on the wall, with her thighs spread. Why did he stop? Because he was sentenced to death. He accepted that he would soon die and stopped thinking about her, because they would never be together again. Their lives had diverged.

"The Stranger" is a film best watched knowing in advance what it is about and how it ends. Spoilers frighten the uninitiated viewer—but with our baggage of books and films, what twist could truly surprise us? When you know where it is heading, the slow, sweltering drama turns into existential horror, where the hero walks a tightrope. Each step may bring him closer to the saving platform—or send him plunging into the abyss. With every step, you—along with the surrounding actors—measure his feelings against the scale of normality.

Does Meursault grieve at his mother’s funeral? Let’s take out a calculator. Refusing to look at his dead mother one last time—not grief. Spending the night on an uncomfortable chair by the coffin—grief. Stepping outside to smoke—is that grief or not? And does quantity matter—the more cigarettes, the less grief? Agreeing to drink coffee in the morning—acceptable, to restore strength after a sleepless night. But coffee with milk? That’s different—that’s already pleasure. And if he had drunk a cappuccino, would that be a full hundred points below zero on the grief scale, or just eighty?

Gradually, you begin to understand how conditional even such notions as mourning are—and that the real cynic is not Meursault, but the one who measures others’ feelings against a socially accepted standard. It seems I was doing exactly that… How insidious, Mr Ozon!

Meursault remains calm throughout the film. Voisin perfectly conveys the detached gaze of an observer. Meursault truly is a stranger to everyone around him. Only once does he feel anger—during his conversation with the priest—and that anger is entirely understandable. In this scene, the priest insistently, almost feverishly tries to force a mask onto Meursault, one he refuses to wear. He tries to impose good upon him—to make him do what Meursault himself would never do, respecting the free will of others. It’s not enough that he has been captured—now they want to paint him like a clown before his death? Meursault lashes out, but through this outburst he comes to understand everything about himself and the world.

This remarkable revelation comes to Meursault (and the viewer) after the scene with the priest. In his cell, he looks at the Algerian sky—just as Bolkonsky looked at the sky of Austerlitz—and arrives, essentially, at the same thought. The world, Meursault realizes, is like him: indifferent, detached, calm, self-contained… a stranger. It needs no one. The “normal” people reject the world just as they reject Meursault. They cannot accept its resistance, its self-sufficiency. It frightens and unsettles them, so they drape it in whatever they can, attribute to it qualities it does not possess, populate it with nonexistent entities—God, for example.

It is Meursault who is a harmonious part of such a world, while the others are foreign elements—helpless infantilized beings, incapable of either changing the world or accepting it as it is. What remains for them? To invent and believe in their inventions, to believe all the more fervently the shakier they are, to hysterically convince themselves and others (for hysteria always goes hand in hand with lack of confidence in one's own rightness), to pretend, to lie, never to remove the mask. And woe to the one who inadvertently exposes this lie—not out of malice, but simply by refusing to play along. For such people, there is the ultimate measure of social protection: the guillotine.

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The chronicles of Koduma, Ch. 7

“I didn’t believe it. I decided it was a prank. After my shift at the museum I slept in the officers’ barracks. Tried to fall asleep. Thought about it constantly. In the morning I set a timer for three hundred and fifty orbits. Not because I took it at face value, but because dominion over the world is a fine goal in itself. If I also save the planet—so much the better. From that day on, I began filling your book with events, Vesik.”

“And… what does the timer show now?”

“The predicted time ran out one and a half orbits ago.”

“And nothing happened… Step down, Colonel!”

Vesik lunged at Raud, seized his wrist with both hands. The guards rushed forward, but Raud shook his head, and they froze three steps away. Vesik, casting frightened glances at them, whispered urgently, spitting his words:

“Colonel, enough sacrifices. Step down! No more killing, no more starving people! Let the kodumans breathe! ”

His cheekbones tightened with hatred, his jaws clenched, and he squeezed out the words in foolish hope of a miracle. Now it will reach him, now it will break through to that groomed, cold, economical monster—and it will vanish.

“Step down, Colonel!” he whimpered or growled—his voice scarcely human—but behind millions of tormented kodumans loomed the black obelisk with its small platform and restraints, and for him, Vesik, the colonel’s departure mattered a million times more than for all those millions.

Without changing expression, Raud squeezed Vesik’s hand. Vesik cried out and sprang back. The pain cleared his head. He stood, rubbing his wrist, blinking stupidly.

“Call a medic. Have him give a sedative.”

“No need. I’m fine.”

Raud flicked an eyebrow, and the guardsman lowered his raised foot. The slightest movement from Raud was instantly read, deciphered, obeyed. Vesik closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was almost calm, though a suppressed hysteria still vibrated deep within.

“Even if all this were true—why wars, why cruelty, why executions of innocent people? Koduma could have united and faced the threat together!”

“Think for yourself.”

Vesik thought. Looked at the rigid, impassive face, the hands clasped behind the back. Then at the egg—it was beautiful. Slightly curved plates, very thin, arranged in rows, creating a rhythm that made it seem the egg receded into itself, opening an oval abyss into another dimension. If you stared long enough, the scales seemed to move—different directions, different speeds—an elusive motion that existed only until you noticed it. Vesik had never seen it so close, without armored glass. Exquisite craftsmanship, a true work of art from unknown material—or perhaps known, once, on a long-abandoned Earth. And now it was supposedly a device that had spoken briefly and fallen silent forever—if the colonel could be believed. Could he?

“No… still, many deaths could have been avoided.”

“No. Even if I had been president then, not a missile captain. Civilized force can only be broken by animal terror. The timer, Vesik. Very narrow limits—within my lifetime.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“Our atmospheric rockets are useless. Our satellites are weak. The only weapon capable—hypothetically—of causing damage is a titanium-sapphire laser. The largest sapphire and titanium deposits belonged to the Louna Alliance.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“When Koduma fully submitted to me, I devoted all resources to building the laser on the night side. The most powerful weapon in human history—one shot, five hundred petawatts. Any greater power would destroy the planet more surely than the unknown object. A short pulse—one microsecond. One attempt. The weapon will not survive another. The capacitors are fully charged.”

“But nothing appeared!”

“Two cycles ago, an orbital telescope detected an unidentified object. Irregular shape, maximum length just over four hundred meters. Astrophysicists calculated the trajectory, accounting for Paike’s gravity and other factors. It will enter the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere. Estimated impact point: desert, five hundred kilometers south of Vyshgorod.”

“How?.. We must evacuate everyone to the shadow side!”

“No one will survive. Life on Koduma will be impossible.”

Vesik froze, mouth open. Then his face smoothed, his lips twisted with bitterness.

“A magnificent plan, Colonel. A weapon no one has seen will fire at an object no one knows about. And afterward, of course, great scientists will appear in the network and explain how Colonel Raud saved humanity…”

“Yes. And you will finish your book.”

“And justify you? No. You won’t get that.”

Raud smiled faintly.

“You will. Your soul is made of paper. Truth will burn it if you don’t release it.”

“Truth? What truth? That you deceived everyone again? That’s the truth I’m ready to write.”

The guards beside Raud worked their jaws. Vesik felt their hostile gaze on the back of his neck. Raud’s face, like in official portraits, remained expressionless.

“I know every sentence before you say it. Come.”

They walked through long, empty corridors. The lamps were out; a dim fluorescent strip glowed underfoot. When the guardsman ahead switched on a flashlight, a wide, low tunnel opened. Rails ran recessed in concrete along both sides. A large grated platform carried them several levels down. Then Vesik followed Raud into a vast chamber. The dome above glowed pink, scattered with black dots of different sizes. It took Vesik a moment to realize—it was an inverted star map. In places, through bright green frames, real space showed through: black sky, the shaggy crimson-ochre bulk of Paike—and in it, a wound. A black, irregular, elongated void, glowing at the edges.

Vesik stared for a minute, then forced out:

“It isn’t melting?”

Raud caught his gaze—pleading, hopeful, as if the colonel had truly become an omnipotent god.

“There is a gas trail, but very slight. The trajectory fully matches the calculations. You can walk around, speak with the scientists. I can give you twenty minutes.”

Without hesitation, Vesik hurried between the rows.

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The Chronicles of Koduma, Ch. 6

They loaded up. Vesik’s handcuffs were clipped to a ring on the roll bar. The colonel took the front seat. A worn track led to the obelisk. As they drew close, Vesik tried to make out any inscriptions, but the buggy jolted mercilessly, and he couldn’t focus. The vehicle slowed before the obelisk. Vesik pulled himself up on his arms, leaned out past the bar, and squinted for a long time at the sunlit face. There were no inscriptions. Instead, there was a platform about three meters up—small, just enough room for two feet—and above it something gleamed, blinding with bright crimson flashes. Something smooth, straight, shining like molten metal. Something very much like restraints: for the legs, the chest, outstretched arms.

His heart suddenly convulsed in paralysis, a tremor ran through his whole body, his legs dissolved, the crown of his head vanished, and a cold wind with fine grains of sand swept across his unprotected brain.

“Vesik! Vesik!” Colonel Raud was shouting from somewhere far away, and something cool and resilient was pressed under his nose. His hands burned, his wrists were on fire, but he couldn’t pull them back. Cold splashed across his face. Vesik opened his mouth and took the tube of an army water pack. The water ran past his lips, down his chin, under the collar of his coverall, and he could not remember how to swallow.

“Colonel…” he managed, spitting out the tube. “Colonel…”

The colonel nodded to the guardsman-driver, and the buggy, growling, drove on. The obelisk remained behind them. Vesik did not look back. He stared at the back of the colonel’s head, the color of iron ore—the neatly trimmed gray hair, the smooth crimson band of his cap. A strip of white collar protruded from under his tunic—an impeccable regulation three millimeters from edge to edge.

“Colonel,” Vesik repeated, but after that word his throat clenched, and he could not go on.

“This is a research center, Vesik,” Raud said, pointing with two joined fingers at a wide warehouse with slanted walls.

The hermetic gate rose. The engine noise faded. A guardsman unclipped the handcuff and pulled Vesik from the vehicle. His legs would not obey him, and the soldier had to shake him hard to make him stand straight.

They pushed him after the colonel into a spacious hall. In the center, on trestles, stood a low wooden crate filled with mineral wool. In it, pointed end up, was a black, scaly egg covered with sensors.

“Do you know what this is, Vesik?”

“Y-yes.”

“Water?”

“No.”

Vesik’s mind had already run through a dozen harmless possibilities of what might have gleamed on that obelisk. He believed none of them, but the very act of sorting through them steadied him.

“What is it, Vesik?”

“No one knows for sure. An artifact from Earth. A sculpture made of unknown metal. They say it symbolizes the continuation of human civilization. Complete nonsense.”

“Nonsense,” Raud agreed. “But I don’t know what it is either. Nor do any of my scientists. What is known for certain—it isn’t a sculpture. More than three hundred orbits ago, it spoke to me. Since then, it has made no sound.”

“That’s…”

“Madness?”

Raud removed his glasses for the first time and stepped close—so close Vesik could see every burst capillary in the sclera. Raud’s eyes were pale, watery, almost transparent, like those of a very old man, though he was no more than sixty standard years.

“I was on guard duty at the Museum of Colonization. That night everyone was celebrating one of my comrades’ name day, but alcohol never interested me, nor sigure extracts. While they drank, I wandered among the exhibits and suddenly heard a rustling—a strange sound, as if all the leaves had fallen at once from a dried tree. It came from the display case with this egg. I ran to it—but the egg was gone. In its place lay a round, scaly disk. It didn’t fit the case, its edges stuck up. I put my hand on the glass and felt a faint vibration. Then I pressed my ear to it and listened. The sound was faint, the voice weak, I could barely make out the words. It spoke in an archaic Venese dialect. I even thought it was a transmission from some Louna Alliance spy. At the academy we studied it as the language of a potential enemy. So I not only listened—I wrote it down.”

All this time Raud stood close, looking straight into Vesik’s eyes without blinking, and Vesik had no strength to recoil or even exhale.

“And… what did it say?”

Raud put his glasses back on and stepped away to the egg.

“It said that in three hundred and fifty orbits around Paike, Koduma would be destroyed by a celestial body.”

“How did they calculate it? Why didn’t they come themselves? Why hadn’t they contacted us before? Who was speaking? Who are ‘they’? The mythical Earth?”

“The mythical Earth, in the myths, perished. I don’t know, Vesik. I think it is easier to observe than to travel. In several centuries we still haven’t left the system.”

“The main question, Colonel—why did they speak to you?”

“I don’t think they spoke to me. Most likely they repeated and repeated. This thing is faulty. It kept folding and unfolding; the sound, already faint, would appear and disappear. Then the transmission cut off mid-word, and the object returned to its original form. It has never come alive again.”

Vesik stepped closer and bent over the egg. The scales were perfectly shaped, precisely and tightly fitted together, like the leathery cones of ever-red firs. Nature does not tolerate such precision and symmetry.

“A wonderful story, Colonel. I can guess why you told it to me. You think it will justify your crimes before future generations?”

“I need no justification—from them or from you. You like truth; I give it to you.”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! Nonsense!” Vesik shook his head.

The colonel turned, and Vesik recoiled.

“You couldn’t have believed it, Colonel,” he rushed on. “You simply couldn’t. It’s fantastical, monstrous, illogical.”

“I didn’t believe it."

To be continued… (I’ll translate the next chapter and post it tomorrow)

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The chronicles of Koduma, Ch. 5

The door opened, and Vesik was brought in. Raud switched on the light.

“You’ve been gone a long time, Vesik,” he said.

“Prison food, you know, Colonel, does nothing good for one’s digestion.”

“Times are hard for everyone now.”

“And that only proves that the military cannot run a state!” Despite his defiant tone, Vesik perched on the very edge of the chair. “Before your mutiny, the Kodumans lived differently, but on the whole they were well-fed and prosperous. Now everyone lives the same—half-starved. Where are you putting all the resources, Colonel? I simply don’t understand how much more you need to gorge yourselves.”

“I’ve already had my fill, Vesik. The accumulation is over.”

“Remarkable cynicism! Essential goods are rationed. The rations are so meager people can barely stay on their feet, shifts are longer, factories and mines run nonstop. And what do you do when a hunger riot breaks out?”

“I suppress it with utmost brutality. You described it all very precisely in your book. Why the rhetorical questions?”

Raud stood up, and Vesik drew his head into his shoulders, his right shoulder creeping forward again, his knees tightening together. Raud grimaced.

“Stop contorting yourself, Vesik. I’m not going to beat you. I have trained men for that. Now you and I will go somewhere else and continue this conversation.”

“No, this is unbearable, this is simply impossible,” Vesik muttered.

“What are you mumbling?”

“It’s impossible!” he shouted, shaking his cupped hands. “Do you understand? Impossible! It’s beyond human strength. Kill me, Raud, please, kill me—just leave me in peace. I’ve already been with you in this office for hours, like in a cage with a monster, a wild beast! No, with a snake—a fast, deadly, venomous snake. I keep waiting and waiting for you to lunge at me, to bite me. Just bite me already, I beg you, I implore you! Is there anything human left in you at all? Just let me go!”

“You’re hoarse, Vesik. Have some water.”

Raud tossed him a pouch of drinking water; it slapped against his knees. Vesik didn’t move, and the pouch slid to the floor.

“Calmed down? Caught your breath? Pick it up.”

Without looking at Raud, Vesik twisted awkwardly and reached for the pouch. He tried to stay on the edge of the chair and not drop to his knees before the colonel. Raud stood before him, leaning on the edge of the table, waiting. At last Vesik settled himself on the chair, tore off a corner, and squeezed the contents into his throat. He did it too hastily; a струйка ran down his chin, staining the pale green fabric of his prison robe. Raud held out his hand, and Vesik gave him the empty pouch.

“I expected you to torture me, to beat me, but you’re far more subtle. You’re torturing me with this waiting. What comes next? Colonel, will you sentence me to a painful execution and put me in solitary, and I’ll sit there waiting until I go mad? Is today’s conversation an announcement of my fate?”

Raud scooped up Vesik’s book from the table and flipped through a few pages without looking.

“The one who wrote this book didn’t think about himself, and today all I hear is ‘I,’ ‘me,’ ‘mine.’ Perhaps it wasn’t you? Say so, and I’ll let you go. I need the author of this book, not an impostor.”

The door opened; a guardsman entered, planted his feet wide, thrusting out his powerful chest. Vesik looked up at his square jaw, met his contemptuous gaze, and looked away.

“Are you going with him or with me?”

Raud rocked the book in his hand, waiting for an answer. The printed words “Anton Vesik, _The Usurper_” drifted into shadow and back into the light.

“You’re playing with me…”

“I’m not interested in that.”

They walked down the corridor—Vesik in front. Tall, awkward, stepping cautiously on his left foot—he had twisted it during the arrest, and it still hurt. Raud followed. The energy-saving lamps burned at half power, every other one, and only along one side. The prisoner’s tousled head, with tufts of overgrown hair above the ears, blocked the light; it filtered through the messy strands, thinning and darkening them. A crooked, faltering step—and his dirty gray, dust-covered crown emerged under a lamp. Another step, it dissolved again, and only the sickly green robe glowed like rot in the darkness. Two steps in the light, four in shadow, a straight empty corridor, even rows of doors. The stingy light pressed on the eyelids and choked. Light had nothing to do with oxygen levels, but the brain refused to believe it. There was a sudden urge to hurry, to make Vesik run, to burst out into fresh air—but Vesik limped on, from light to shadow, from light to shadow, while behind them the guards’ hobnailed boots clicked. Raud tugged at his collar with a finger and stifled a yawn. The corridor was less than a kilometer long, and the most dangerous thing that could happen to Raud was the thought that his strength was running out. He drove it away, tried not to think of it—but it is impossible not to think about what you are trying not to think about. There had been some saying of his mother’s about a prehistoric animal, but Raud had forgotten it. Outward bends of the corridor, a section with proton-flow shielding, an armored hermetic seal—light, wind, air.

Vesik stopped at the edge; beyond, the slope descended gently toward the center. Fragments of walls jutted from the sand, a pedestal of the monument to the first colonists broken at an angle. The wasteland was crossed in an X by protected power lines on twenty-meter pylons, just like in the fairgrounds of the agricultural sectors of the Ring—only the colorful flags were missing. And in the center, beneath the crossing of cables, a pillar stood blackened, turned half sideways—triangular, like the blade of a stiletto. One broad face glowed crimson in the sunlight.

“In whose honor is the obelisk, Colonel? Those you’ve killed?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you rebuild the district? Why not cover up the traces of the crime?”

“I will, later. There’s no time for that now. Next year there will be a domed park here. People will walk here. Get into the buggy.”

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The chronicles of Koduma. Ch. 4

Ch.1 | Ch.2 | Ch.3

Strategically, it was a very sound move. The network exploded with outrage; the loudest indignation was over the colonel’s mother’s death, but that wave proved even shorter and weaker. Raud erased not only the city of his childhood, but also the last hope the people of Koduma had for his humanity. A parade of accessions began, and the first to rush to his blockhouse was the ambassador from Rebel, the city neighboring Izbork. The ambassador unfolded a screen and played a video address from his president. A well-groomed, red-faced old man, so fair-skinned it was obvious he wouldn’t even look out a window without necessity. Curled mustache, neatly trimmed white beard, every hair in place—like a soap opera actor cast as a noble father, a pillar of society—and for that reason he was doubly, triply repulsive to Raud. He droned on at length about unity, weaving elaborate verbal patterns. By the tenth minute, Raud was tired and slapped his palm on the table. The ambassador jumped, hiccupped, and stopped the playback.

“Summarize,” Raud ordered curtly.

Stammering, the ambassador explained that Rebel very much wished to join the new planetary federation, but hoped, as the first signatory, to retain partial independence.

Raud sat for a long time, watching the ambassador’s twitching eyelid—just as nobly red-skinned as his president—not because he was choosing his words, but because he was calming himself so as not to burst out laughing. Still, he couldn’t help it; he snorted, quite undignified, and hurriedly added:

“I see no obstacles.”

Raud kept his word. All the other states entered the Federation of Koduma as equal subjects, while cowardly, pampered Rebel remained a protectorate with curtailed civil rights. The Federation introduced a complicated visa regime. Playing on the fine strings of communications and supply, it gradually brought both the media and economically significant assets under its control. But most important were Rebel’s children. The colonel never forgot about children.

He introduced mandatory certification for schoolteachers, but only citizens of the Federation were eligible—and under interstate agreements, the laws of a protectorate could not contradict those of the metropole. Every child of Rebel, upon reaching the age of five, was sent to study in one of the Federation’s schools. Twelve years later, having received a school certificate, they could continue at an institute or a military academy, or return home—but whatever they chose, they no longer felt like natives of Rebel, and regarded their hometown with poorly concealed contempt.

The people of Rebel learned not to grow attached to their children. Bonds collapsed, families fell apart, morale declined. Deprived of children, society lost its connective tissue—something binding, restraining, demanding examples and standards—and disintegrated into isolated, self-contained cells, colliding chaotically with one another. The colonel was satisfied.

He flew to Rebel about ten years later. Some idiotic fashion had come in—rags wrapped around the head, men lining their lower eyelids with white paint. A couple of cycles earlier, they said, everyone had been bleaching their faces completely. Raud smiled a lot, shook hands, clapped shoulders—for him all these outward excesses were signs of inner emptiness, and he was pleased. He walked the streets of Rebel often, waving amiably at passersby—people averted their eyes and hurried away.

The next cycle, long before the start of the work shift, he and his guards set out in four buggies toward Izbork, away from decaying luxury, ingratiating smiles, and pomaded mustaches. For a long time he wandered the sands with an old map of the city, searching for any familiar landmarks, foolishly hoping to find at least a fragment of an unusual violet color—there had been no other houses like his mother’s in Izbork—but the desert had erased all colors except shades of red. He stood in the city where he had been born, and which he had destroyed, a city now completely swallowed by the desert, and thought about how cowardice preserves walls, while courage preserves spirit—and the more ancient buildings a city has, the weaker the people who live in it.

Two cycles later, he launched an offensive against the Louna Alliance—the last state that had not joined. Strong, wealthy, but too softened. Having conquered nearly the entire inhabited ring, Raud had devalued their capital, and the people of the alliance valued their lives more than their freedom. After brief resistance, Raud took the first settlement—not even a city, just a mining outpost near an iridium shaft. He gathered all the inhabitants in the square and carried out a decimation. Every tenth person was chosen at random, bound, and laid out across the square. As soon as the takos—sensitive to radiation fluctuations—began curling their huge glossy black leathery leaves, the remaining inhabitants were driven into the tunnels. The condemned, like enormous caterpillars, crawled after them—screaming, roaring, howling—men, women, awkward teenagers, children—the whole square surged with that undulating motion.

“A few hundred lives for the lives of millions,” Raud told himself once again before the shaft gates closed. He had said the same thing before destroying Izbork. He had thrown it in his old woman’s face when she surfaced from the darkness beneath his closed eyelids, with her ever-tightened, pursed mouth: “Your life for the lives of millions.” She said nothing. She still comes to him in his dreams in silence, unable to forgive.

Next chapter

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The Chronicles of Koduma, Ch. 3

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

As soon as the door closed, Raud switched off the lamp. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his tired eyes for a long time—until it hurt, until the ghost of an iris shimmered in the darkness. Thirty years had passed, ninety revolutions around the star, and still his mother could not forgive him. Back then he had begged the proud old woman to come live with him in Vyshgorod, but she dug in her heels. A tough, dried-up woman, a widow of corporal of the squad “Desert Snakes”.

Raud barely remembered his father; in the blurred panes of early childhood vision it might not even have been him, but one of his comrades. A beret cocked sharply back and to the side revealed a forehead pitted by sand. Raud did not remember his eyes—they were always hidden behind glasses that shifted the spectrum from red to an alarming green, the only remedy for scarlet blindness. Skin black—blacker even than Raud’s—thin aquiline nose, a narrow mouth like a crack. Teeth stained orange from dried sigura leaves—the Snakes chewed them on raids.

In the desert there are no landmarks, only packet signals from city stations. The lead navigator marks a point on a paper map by triangulation, correcting the course; the others follow. Crimson sand merges with the red-orange sky, and overhead hangs a vast mottled sun, scarlet, veined with cinnabar streaks.

The desert is endless, flat, blood-red. Buggies roll over sand ridges up and down, up and down, rocking the fighters like babies in cradles. The sun hangs motionless, the landscape never changes, and it seems the buggy isn’t moving at all—only swaying on its springs while the wind blows into your face. The mind begins to slip, starts sketching what isn’t there, and only the steady movement of jaws and the bracing bitterness keep one conscious. Without sigura and spectrum-shifting goggles, it’s best not to enter the desert at all.

The desert brands everything with its mark. The Snakes have rough, low voices, slow speech—vocal cords slashed and scarred by sand can be no other way. Their movements are economical and precise—every extra motion means another dose of sand under the fabric. Their skin is ridged, deeply black—the darkest on Koduma—no one on the planet spends as much time under the sun. Lean, sinewy, desiccated—extra moisture does not linger in their bodies. Enduring, stubborn—without that, any emergency would end in death. It happened that after crashes or sudden storms, the Snakes crawled all the way to the inhabited ring—with failed equipment, burned, irradiating like an ancient reactor. And they survived.

When Raud destroyed the government district of Vyshgorod, the network erupted in outrage. The scribblers dubbed him “the Bloody Colonel.” He liked the nickname so much that, even after subjugating the entire planet, he remained a colonel—only changing branches, from strategic missile forces to internal security troops. Three additional ranks were enough to preserve his status as the highest military authority—there had long been no lieutenant generals or full generals on the planet, just as there had been no wars.

All the neighboring powers hurriedly rattled their weapons—but cautiously, warily. They rattled, then stopped. Very quickly, everything went quiet. No one had expected such disregard for collateral casualties. All his actions so contradicted Koduma’s proclaimed humanist doctrine that the planet froze in shock. That was exactly the effect he had wanted.

At the edge of the amoeba-shaped crater in Vyshgorod, they quickly dug a bunker with a massive blockhouse. From this new residence, delegations set out to all independent cities and unions. Each of Raud’s representatives carried a letter proposing voluntary accession to the federation he was creating. Governments adopted a wait-and-see stance. Everyone awaited the decision of the strongest player—the united southern segment of the ring, the Louna Alliance—but they, too, remained silent. Only Izbork, Raud’s native city, rose in revolt.

The Snakes seized the Vyshgorod embassy and took it deep into the desert. Raud never found their remains. Later, the military commandant of Izbork called him and, in a hoarse, quiet voice, described how and in what positions Izbork would have both cowardly Vyshgorod, and Raud, and his entire pampered army. He did not mention Raud’s mother—the widow of a Snake was sacred. After hanging up, Raud rocked his head for a long time with an admiring smile, then sent a punitive corps to Izbork. The rebellious city prepared for a long siege and drawn-out street fighting. Raud had no doubt his stubborn old woman would be on the barricades in the front ranks.

An assault on the city threatened heavy losses, and dispersing his forces would have been deadly. He contacted the commandant, offering the Snakes a chance to surrender and join the federation’s armed forces as an elite corps. He was told, at length and with elaborate phrasing, to go to hell. Raud did not bother listening to the end and gave the order to begin a missile strike. The first missile vaporized the district of his childhood. All he could do for his mother was to kill her quickly. He hoped that at the moment of impact she was there, and not on the barricades. By the end of the strike, bombers flew over the ruins of Izbork and dropped bunker-busting bombs. A solar flare and a stream of protons half an hour later finished the job.

Raud took a sip of water. Sand grated on his teeth. A regime of the harshest economy—he himself had ordered the interval between filter replacements doubled.

Next chapter

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The Chronicles of Koduma, ch. 2

chapter 1

Raud shook his head and flipped through a few pages.

— “Rocket attack on the Vyshgorod government district.” A fine piece of work… An impenetrable anti-missile dome, the densest on our planet. Two things helped me: the government’s confidence in its invulnerability, and my old classmate. He slipped the right man into the system. When the missiles entered the air defense kill zone, not a single launcher activated.”

“I didn’t know. I assumed it was a virus…”

“The virus was Major Geller from Internal Security, and a small gray rat with sweaty armpits, nickname Sniffer. The real name doesn’t matter. The rat completed the task and died in the bunker during the cleanup.”

“And Major Geller? I’ve never come across that name.”

“Major Geller was very proud of his role. So proud he might have interfered with me. He died heroically, defending the president’s underground office. That’s what your predecessors wrote, Vesik. That’s all I could do for an old friend.”

“That’s monstrous…”

“You think so? He wasn’t exactly a man of the highest caliber. So much came out after his death… Better you don’t know. Even I felt disgusted. I decided it was better not to mention him in the official chronicle, and what the opposition spread was quickly forgotten.”

Vesik wiped his sweating lip and nervously pulled his hand into his sleeve.

“So you’ll strangle me, otherwise why such frankness…”

Raud opened the book at random in the middle. He glanced quickly at Vesik.

“You look pale. Not about to faint, are you? Maybe some water?”

“Y-yes, please.”

Raud took a sealed water pouch from a standard army ration and tossed it onto the table. Vesik bit off a corner and squeezed it into his mouth. His teeth rattled nervously.

Raud grunted and tapped the page with his finger.

“There’s an inaccuracy here. Unverified data. Shame on you, Vesik, passing foolish rumors off as truth.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The execution of the leadership of the Union of Civil Liberties Parties.”

“That’s not a rumor. It’s firsthand information.”

“Whose, I wonder? Yarvik’s?”

“Yes, Yarvik’s. You killed his children.”

“He wasn’t very forthcoming with you. I did, in fact, concern myself with the fate of the conspirators’ children. Their headless parents got twenty years of hard labor for treason, but children shouldn’t answer for their fathers’ sins. All of them, from the youngest to the oldest, were placed in state boarding schools.”

“Many of them died…”

“Not many, don’t exaggerate. Yes, children die. From illness or their own foolishness. That happens not only in orphanages. If you like, I’ll request statistics for you on mortality rates in state children’s institutions. They’re no higher than in intact families.”

“Why would I need that?”

“For the triumph of truth. Isn’t that what you’ve devoted your life to? Why are you turning away? Or do you only need certain, convenient kinds of truth, and can live quite well without the rest?”

“Yarvik said his children were dead. He couldn’t have lied to me.”

“Yarvik probably didn’t specify that they were dead to him. I arranged a meeting with their father three years later. By then, the elder was a cadet at an aviation academy, in good standing, and the younger… oh… an energetic "Little Lion", an athlete, excellent grades. He ran a political column on the school portal, telling his classmates about world events. As a journalist, Yarvik should have appreciated that, but the meeting with his son upset him. The children weren’t very eager to speak with him either. There was a certain tension. I watched the recording of the meeting.”

“You brainwashed them!” Vesik shouted.

“Or, on the contrary, I shielded them from brainwashing. It’s all relative.”

“Demagoguery!”

With that word, a drop of saliva flew from Vesik’s mouth, and he shrank in his chair, twisting sideways, presenting his thin right shoulder toward Raud.

“I am a demagogue. In the original, uncorrupted sense of the word: a leader of the people. Why are you shrinking like that? Do you need the restroom?”

“No! Yes! Yes, I need the restroom. May I go, please?”

“Of course you may. No need to suffer like that.”

Raud pressed a button under the table. The door opened, and a guard in a crimson camouflage jumpsuit entered, raising his fist to his shoulder. Raud acknowledged the salute with a nod.

“Take the prisoner to the latrine, then bring him back.”

Vesik stood, limped crookedly to the door, then turned back.

“Why are you tormenting me, Colonel? Why waste time? Don’t you have enough to do? You’re going to kill me anyway. You kill everyone. You didn’t even spare your own countrymen.”

The guard flicked his wrist, snapping open an electric baton, but Raud shook his head.

“You’re my business now, Vesik,” he said calmly. “Go relieve yourself, and then we’ll continue our conversation.”

Chapter 3

[h4gen]

The Usurper. The Chronicles of Koduma, Ch. 1

On the day Colonel Raud was born, the red dwarf Pyke hurled out an especially powerful prominence. Thirty-four minutes later, a dense stream of protons pierced the atmosphere—but it could no longer harm the charred bodies of those who had failed to reach shelter in time.

Emma Raud—thin and sinewy like a seahorse, her back arched for balance—raced down the steps of the Izbork medical center. Her waters broke on the second-to-last landing. She didn’t stop, only clutched the hem of her hospital robe tight beneath her belly. Behind her, someone cried out, a body crashed to the ground, someone screamed in pain, others burst into curses. Emma slipped through the narrowing gap of the closing blast door, scraping her shoulder painfully. She glanced back into the shrinking slit—on the staircase, a tangled heap: arms, legs, faces gray with strain and pain. She had made it. There was no time to pity those who hadn’t—Emma had always set her priorities straight.

Raud came into the world a couple of hours later, to the clicking of a radiation detector and his mother’s roar: “Come on, get out already, damn you!”

Her skin prickled, her hair stood on end, her mouth tasted of rusted iron; between her legs burned and throbbed as if someone had kicked her with a boot—but Emma was happy.

“Well then, you little bastard, who’s been torturing Mommy for eight whole cycles?” she cooed, taking her son in her arms, and Raud reached toward her with his crimson little hands.

Six hundred cycles later, Colonel Raud, in a crimson glove, pulled a thick sheaf of eight hundred and forty-eight paper pages toward himself, run off on a prehistoric printer. On the title page it read: “Anton Vesik *The Usurper*.” Along the edges ran messy streaks from a worn-out cartridge.

— My own copies are of better quality. Surely they’re not reprinting them in the office? — said Raud, turning the title page. — Which edition is this? I already have twenty-three in my collection.

— May I?

The prisoner in a lurid light-green robe stretched out his hand. His fingers trembled noticeably. The room was dark; the only source of light was a desk lamp on a flexible neck. Raud angled it so the light fell onto Vesik’s knees. The bare concrete floor and walls lit up, along with the ventilation grate behind the chair. A strip of paper tied to the upper slat barely stirred. The room smelled stale, like rotting nuts.

— Please.

Raud handed him the sheaf. With shaking hands, the prisoner opened it in the middle. Brushing the pages with the tip of his nose, he began to flip through them.

— They took my glasses, — he said apologetically.

— Naturally, Vesik. What if you broke them and slit your veins? I need you alive.

Squinting, Vesik stared at Raud. His long, aristocratic face, a pale crimson hue, twitched nervously; his thick graying hair stuck out in disarray.

— Why? Why do you need me alive? To let me rot in prison? — Vesik spoke quietly and hurriedly, the way beggars speak when they spot a policeman. — You won’t execute me, no, you won’t—there’s no use in my execution. You’ll quietly strangle me in your dungeons…

— So which edition is it? — Raud asked, as if he hadn’t heard.

— The latest edition, the latest, the most complete.

— That’s good.

Raud took the sheaf back, weighing it in his hand.

— A paper book, — he said. — It could use a proper cover… You’ve done very well, Vesik. In an age when advertising doesn’t work and no one cares about the news, to make a printed book go viral… Samizdat in its ancient, original sense. I’m impressed. You should be working for the state, not indulging in foolish dissent.

— No, absolutely not. Spare me. I refuse!

Vesik kept worrying the fabric of his robe between his fingers—the stiff, paper-like cloth scratched his skin unbearably. An ordinary koduman wouldn’t even notice; their hides were tough as leather. But Vesik had worn silk and soft natural wool since childhood. Hypersensitivity was the curse of the upper class.

In recent years, his quality of life had deteriorated. The first edition of *The Usurper* had been published abroad. Vesik had proudly put his name on it. When the borders disappeared, he regretted it—but by then it was too late. He had to hide in the secret compartments of his friends—every large house on Koduma had one—but even those hiding places were a hundred times more comfortable than the squalor surrounding him now.

The dim glow of the emergency lights made him constantly nauseous; black motes drifted across his vision. The water reeked of chlorine, and even a dog wouldn’t have touched the food. But what awaited Vesik ahead was worse still. He was afraid, and his fear spilled out in foolish, affected phrases; even as they still hung in the air, he was already regretting having opened his mouth.

Raud shook his head and flipped through a few pages.

— “Rocket attack on the Vyshgorod government district.” A fine piece of work…

Chapter 2

[h4gen]

How many times had I walked past this exhibit without a second glance—and then, suddenly, the light fell differently, or I looked from another angle… The eye sockets no longer seemed like meaningless holes in yellowed bone; they were looking at me with pain and reproach. Perhaps I’m becoming too sentimental, or I feel more keenly the moment when I myself will become such an empty shell.

The next day, at the same hour, I brought my son here and placed him in the same spot.

“So, Father?” he asked. “What am I supposed to see?”

My son respects me too much to roll his eyes, but I noticed his eyelashes tremble.

Recently, I attended the school competitions—unacceptably cruel, dangerously inspiring. When my son stood on the top step of the podium, I felt both proud and miserable. He looked upward, above the jubilant and disappointed faces—young, taut with the strength filling him, with red patches on his sharp cheekbones. His upper lip lifted, revealing the tip of a canine, and it seemed to me it had grown slightly longer and sharper. A rudiment should remain a rudiment. Could evolution really be moving in circles, turning us once again into predators?

My son smiled—with my smile, warm and indulgent—and said:

“If we hadn’t wiped them out, they would have destroyed us. It’s the law of nature. Come on, Father, I’ve got training.”

I have a very intelligent boy, but he is wrong—I can feel it. We could have coexisted peacefully and complemented one another. It’s a pity our distant ancestors—the saber-toothed cats—wiped out all the humans, to the very last one.

[h4gen]

Dream of subleutenant Zamfir, 1916, The Kingdom of Romania

Zamfir hung in the meat section of Obor Square. A steel hook pulled at his rib. The frozen body felt no pain—only the metallic taste on his tongue and the tickling of melting water droplets on thawing skin. A commissar, accompanied by his greased-down adjutant, approached the counter. He jabbed a thick finger, encased in brown suede, at Vasile.

“How much for this one?”

Zamfir wanted to snap to attention and salute—but his arms and legs refused to obey. He tried to recall: should one salute a superior officer while hanging naked on a hook? But the manual he knew by heart said nothing on the matter..

“Fifteen rubles. Exclusively for Your Nobility,” Vasile heard Saburov’s voice say.

The commissar disdainfully pursed his plump lips.

“In lei, please—you’re in the Kingdom of Romania, not at an Odessa market stall!”

“As you wish, Your Nobility. One thousand five hundred Romanian lei.”

“Good heavens—for such a price? Just skin and bones… Ah, pardon…”

The commissar flared his crimson nostrils.

“Filth.”

“But you, Your Nobility, should know meat! Look: lean fillet, with the finest fat marbling,” Saburov bluntly spun Zamfir around and slapped his buttock.

“Dietary product!” proclaimed the lieutenant. “Perfect for convalescing wounded soldiers—and highly beneficial for ladies and gentlemen watching their figures,” he added in a lowered, confidential tone.

“Teach me how to choose meat!” muttered the commissar under his breath.

“I’ll take the whole carcass for thirteen hundred.”

He turned to his adjutant.

“Take this straight to Dobrogea—to the hospital.”

Zamfir, swaying slowly, turned back toward the commissar. On either side of him, in the half-darkness of the hall, stretched endless rows of carcasses—just like his: young and old, thin and muscular, pot-bellied and flabby, pale and tanned, tall and short, frosted and glistening with moisture. Some faces looked familiar.

Saburov wrapped his arms around Zamfir and yanked him off the hook. For the first time, Zamfir saw the lieutenant clearly.

Saburov’s usually tousled blond hair was now combed into a straight part and liberally smeared with brillantine. Red beet-colored circles flushed his cheeks like a Russian shopkeeper from a vaudeville play. Over his greasy shirt, with sleeves rolled up, he wore a long canvas apron, thickly splattered with blood.

“You, Vasya, don’t be afraid,” Saburov whispered. “It’s only scary if you’ve got a head—and we’ll fix that right away.”

The lieutenant pulled a cleaver from behind his back and winked at Zamfir.

“Shall we begin the butchering, Your Nobility?”

“No, no, no!” the commissar hurriedly replied. “Though… you said it’s dietary? Cut off the shins separately—I’ll take them home.”

“Forgive me, my friend,” Saburov shrugged, winking at the sublieutenant, “but someone must go to the front, and someone to the goulash. All for victory! C’est la vie.”

The lieutenant, testing the weight, pressed the cleaver against Zamfir’s bare feet. An unbearable cold radiated from the blade.

Vasile awoke, barefoot and freezing, under a thrown-over tunic. His arm, awkwardly tucked beneath his side, had gone numb. He pulled his knees up to his nose, trying to hide his frozen feet beneath a uniform jacket that was far too short.

Excerpt from the novel "The Liquid Life of Sublieutenant Zamfir" by Sergey Melnikov (me)

[h4gen]

Uncontrolled flights

Let’s continue the theme of dreams.

My relationship with heights is uneven. I’m not afraid of flying on airplanes at all; I even flew a glider about five years ago. But I’m not sure I could jump with a parachute—unless it was on a dare, out of embarrassment at seeming a coward. Maybe even a thin sheet of aluminum under your feet adds a sense of security. I’m wary of approaching the edge of a roof, and I wouldn’t linger long at the edge of a cliff.

Right now I live on the nineteenth floor. When I step out toward the elevators, there’s a glass door in front of me, and beyond it an open balcony with ordinary railings. And every time I pass through that landing, something pulls me there. As if a warm, soft hand slips between my ribs under my heart, gently cups it from below and pulls—softly guiding me, carefully—through the door, past the trash chute, onto the balcony, beyond the railing...

(“The Downed Ace” by Deineka, one of my favorite paintings as illustration is attached)

It’s like a dream I had as a child—the only nightmare I ever had about flying. I dreamed I woke up on a small sofa in a large room. I’m a teenager, already grown tall, and the little extendable sofa is too cramped. It’s dark. Outside the window, tree branches sway; through them a streetlamp lights up the two-story houses opposite. Above me on the wall hangs a greenish-brown carpet with a lacquered Kamchatka crab (all my childhood they told me the lacquer was poisonous, that I mustn’t touch it). Silence.

But something is wrong: I can’t feel the weight of my body. I’m being lifted. I slowly rise above the bed, grab the headboard, but whatever is pulling me is stronger. My fingers slide over the polished surface; I’m carried through the hallway into my mother’s bedroom—empty. I panic, clutch at doorframes, the refrigerator handle, a curtain—but nothing holds. I can feel texture, temperature, material, but everything slips away, and I’m carried forward, toward the open balcony door. Beyond it is Matyushenko Street; everyone calls our whole neighborhood “Matyukha” after it. The streetlights are off; a rough dirt road with private houses along the sides climbs up a hill toward Simferopolskaya. A full moon hangs over the intersection. It’s pulling me there, toward it. I burst out onto the balcony and grab the railing. My legs are swept forward; I’m hanging over the road, I feel the rotten wood crumbling under my fingers, my hands slipping, opening… Then I don’t remember anything—I must have woken up—but the feeling of helplessness, inevitability, the unknown, that sense of doom—I remember it to this day.

I'll talk about controlled flights later

[h4gen]

When I say I’ve been writing for four years, I sometimes wonder: am I lying?

If I think back, as a child I loved stationery more than toy stores. On the second floor of the Sevastopol “Children’s World,” they sold pens, pencils, paints. There were sketchbooks and squared notebooks. That’s where I was drawn; the ground floor with toys didn’t excite me. In Gadzhiyevo, up in the Arctic, stationery was sold in a small separate shop. It had a wonderful smell of watercolor, chalk, and paper.

In that small town, we were moved into a two-room apartment already occupied by another family. In our room there was a small cabinet. I opened a drawer and found brushes, a few jars of gouache, pencils, a box of cracked watercolor paints. I remember telling my mom in amazement:

“Mom, you can paint a whole picture with this!”

Back then it seemed to me that the only thing standing between me and a great work of art was the lack of tools. I remember her skeptical, slightly pursed chin. She turned out to be right—I never painted that picture. I mostly just smelled the paints, licked the brushes, or dried them against a lit bulb (the moisture would hiss amusingly) until it burst.

Around that same time, in first grade at the Gadzhiyevo school, I borrowed Tolkien’s The Hobbit from the library—it had a waiting list. The Hobbit impressed me so much that I begged my mom for a notebook and started writing a story about two dukes: a light one and a dark one. I don’t remember the name of the light one, but I called the dark one Black Angerr. In that medieval world, the dukes flew helicopters, and during one such flight the dark duke crashed and ended up in a hilly sparse woodland (very much like the forests of my native Crimea) inhabited by giant spiders. I never finished that story. Probably the light duke, whose name I’ve forgotten, would have saved him, and they would have become inseparable friends.

This is me from the time of the story of two dukes in helicopters:

In fourth grade, our young homeroom teacher, Tatyana Andronikovna (how we loved her!), suggested that the class write a fairy tale. In mine, a boy found a magical chest that could transport him anywhere on Earth. That was the first time in my life I thought about moving away from clichés. While the boy was doing his homework, a fly buzzed around him. At first I wrote “annoying,” then changed it to the rarer epithet “clingy.” It’s amazing that I still remember that. I also remember writing a little poem in the margins, sideways:

Under the scorching foreign sun,

Beneath a tall, wide-brimmed hat,

You were the first to guess it, one—

That we had reached Anapa, that.

I had never been to Anapa, but I included it in the story as one of the hero’s destinations.

Later I turned one of the Crimean legends into verse—I had this little book, worn to shreds, Myths and Legends of the Peoples of Crimea. It was a legend about the cornelian cherry, the devil’s berry. It began like this:

"Once Satan came to Allah’s sight,

The unclean one, both sly and bright;

With honeyed words and cunning bent,

He slipped into the Almighty’s tent",

and I don’t remember the rest.

There was also some legend about a ring, also put into verse.

At thirteen I read "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov and immediately read it again. It felt like something miraculous and unbelievable—that words could be arranged in such a way that you want to dive into them and never come back up. I wanted to write like that. I remember trying to compose something adventurous, but I probably didn’t finish it, because I reread it and realized: I couldn’t write the way Bulgakov did. It didn’t have that music.

At fourteen I was sent to the children’s sanatorium “Volna” in Feodosia. During “quiet hours” we were bored: the sea wind burst through the window, bringing the murmur of people on the beach, the sound of waves, the clatter of passing trains—and we, fourteen-year-olds (as we saw ourselves, practically adults), had to lie in bed like little kids. The attendants made sure we didn’t get up, so all we could do was talk. One time I retold Sheckley’s “Watchbird.” The guys liked it and demanded more. From that day on I was appointed the “Chief Sci-Fi Storyteller.” Every quiet hour turned into my microphone-free theater: Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, Bester’s The Demolished Man, Gansovsky’s Day of Wrath, Hamilton’s The Star Kings. If I forgot an episode, I just made up a new one. And sometimes I simply started inventing my own stories—naive ones, like about a carousel from which aliens abducted people—and claimed it was a novella by some American sci-fi writer whose name I invented on the spot. It worked.

Then the school year started, and I fell head over heels in love with a newbie girl and began writing poems about my love. My mom found them under the mattress and gave me a serious scolding. I wanted to die of shame. That night I took the poems to the kitchen and tore them into tiny pieces over the trash can. I promised myself I would never write another line—this was not a worthy occupation for a real man. I kept that promise for more than thirty years.

Those poems didn’t disappear back then. In 2001 I found them in my grandmother’s bag after her funeral: she had carefully glued the scraps onto notebook pages. I was overwhelmed with burning shame again and destroyed them completely.

And then, in 2021, at the age of forty-six, I started writing my first work of fiction. Should I count everything that came before as writing experience? I don’t know. What do you think?