Moscow Noir полностью

“It wouldn’t hurt them to follow your example. Let’s rip off the No Smoking sign from the college bathrooms! We could hang it up next to our door. I’ve dreamed of getting one of those signs for ages. Hey, you could snatch one, couldn’t you? You’ve always been good at stealing random junk. Remember those books you stole from the school library? I didn’t tell on you; I took pity on you then. Why should I ruin your life? I thought. It may seem funny now, but back then it was a criminal offense. You should keep that in mind. What would have become of you if you’d been caught? Now you’re a student at an elite college in the capital, but you could have ended up in prison, a TB case coughing up blood … What are you laughing about? Cynic! You think you’re off the hook now? You think that because no one’s going to come after you now that you can take a deep breath and relax? What a fool you were, two years ago. What made you do it, anyway?”

“A thirst for beauty,” I said seriously. “I loved those books with an almost sensual passion. The gold lettering, the leather binding. And when I ran my hand down the page, I could feel every letter, like Braille to the blind.”

“You’re supposed to love women with sensual passion,” he chuckled. “Honestly, I think people like you have a knack for crime in your genes. You have the same lowly origins as the majority of people we went to school with. But you’ve done all right for yourself, you haven’t become a plebeian like the thugs back home.”

He’d had my number for half a year now, because I was guilty of childish mischief for which there was a very adult punishment. But was this the real reason I was so dependent on him?

It had all started three years before in the world of shabby apartment blocks, at our school in Novoshakhtinsk. It was a world of severe, crudely carved faces, a world of thieves, violence, and the ceaseless toil of a miner’s existence.

A world of losers and scumbags with unblinking eyes who were trained to harass the new guy, and a world in which a merciless fate awaited them: high school, then community college, the army … then working the mines after that. Beer after work, soccer on the weekends. Or a short stint in organized crime followed by the inevitable bullet in the head. One day, out of nowhere, a boil appeared on the multiheaded body of the proletariat. An alien, with its head held high and a beaked nose: my present roommate, Tatchuk. He was insultingly different in every way. His clothes made the heavy-duty pants and jackets of those around him look like rags. His perfect, eloquent speech, the squeamish way he touched anyone else’s possessions, even the inviolable, neat part in his thick jet-black head of hair.

He had everything I lacked in excess, bravery in particular, which he used to reinforce his inner me. In fact, he was almost disgustingly devoid of cowardice. Every minute of every day he had to answer the hateful stares and the all too predictable hisses (“Freakin’ fairy!” “Faggot!”). And, indeed, he answered back, with his characteristic cool laugh and that remote smile that made you want to hit him, so full of superiority and righteousness.

He said that most people were like fish, only able to live in the waters they were made for. And if one day they decided to go deeper or higher than their stipulated habitat, they would most certainly kick the bucket. Just looking at him gave me hope that I might one day rise to a higher level of society and be able to avoid certain death at the same time. We became friends, and with that the possibility of easy ascension on the social ladder dawned on me; it was something like infatuation with an older brother who always protects and cares for you. And lo and behold! Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that things would turn out so well. We grew close, and he told me about how awful it was to be ordinary. He made me see that the two of us were not cut out for the wretched life of our town. And I believed him, like the ancient Argonauts believed in their specially invited guest, the favorite of the gods, whose sole purpose on the boat was to attract good luck.

It was a quiet evening at the dormitory. Suddenly, we heard cries of anger, plates crashing in the room next to ours, hysterical shrieks. We jumped up, sensing a scandal brewing. In room 620, Suskind had revolted. He lived there with Samokhin. Samokhin was always having friends over, drinking, hanging out with girls. Suskind, on the other hand, was an unsociable recluse.