Besides, to be honest, I just couldn’t be bothered with Tatchuk anymore. There were too many circumstances and events taking shape that were totally independent of him. I felt vaguely sorry for him, so far away, out there on the periphery of my needs, fears, and hopes. First of all, I’d fallen madly in love with a she-devil I met at the All-Russia Exhibition Center. Her beautiful face was enough to make my throat constrict like it was in a gentle noose, and my soul feel like it was being tickled by a dog’s wet nose. Things were pretty much hunky-dory—riding the monorail together and the stuff of mushy romance like going up to see the view at Ostankino Park and Sheremetyvo Palace—until the day my sweetheart crossed the threshold of our dormitory room. By the time Tatchuk got back, my girlfriend already had her hand beneath my shirt and was brushing my lips with her own. So I have to say that my neighbor couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate moment to return. He sat down at the table with us, and I poured him half a glass of wine while my sweetheart continued, unperturbed, where she’d left off. As I allowed the nimble tongue, which might as well have been forked, to enter my mouth, I glanced at Tatchuk’s tense, stoney face and sent him one last silent
“Dirty whore!” he hissed, so that we jumped apart from each other. He stood up quickly and started rushing around the room, yelling that he didn’t have to tolerate such animallike indecency in his own room. “Get out of here!” he cried. “If you don’t leave, I’ll go to the dorm supervisor!”
I shot up, doubling my hand into a fist. But when Tatchuk started coughing and groping for his inhaler in his pocket, I relaxed without touching even a hair on his head.
After I returned from walking her home, Tatchuk spoke to me for the first time since our fight.
“I’m in trouble,” he said, with obvious difficulty. “It looks like I’m going to be kicked out of school.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s going on. If I don’t hand in at least one new story by May, Urusov will expel me.”
Well, I guess now is the time to confess everything. Tatchuk’s writing had suddenly become remarkably bad. “It’s weird,” students would say. “How did he manage to write that brilliant narrative his freshman year? Maybe it wasn’t his writing at all. What do you think?” My only answer was to chuckle vaguely and shrug my shoulders. What was I supposed to do, tell the whole world that I was the one who had scribbled down the notorious story for Tatchuk? That I was the one who had helped him along, correcting and rewriting most of it? We were fast friends back then, and I was totally convinced he had the golden touch. It was like we gave each other strength. I told him how to put words together, and through him I could stop feeling like such a loser. He made me feel like I, too, was somehow invincible, important, like we could make it if we stuck together.
“No,” I said, “I’ve had enough of this. Do it on your own.”
“I can’t,” he muttered.
“If you can’t, you should transfer somewhere else. It’s not
“I don’t want to study somewhere else. I won’t make it there either.”
“Do you want to be a writer or not? Anyway, that’s beside the point. Do you really think Urusov is such an idiot that he hasn’t noticed anything? Just a couple of days ago he mentioned that our styles are strikingly similar. Get it? One more pretext is all they need to kick us both out of here.”
“Please, just one last time!” he implored.
“Yeah, right.”
“Then I’ll just tell Urusov what happened, and you’ll get expelled. If you write me another story, you’ll at least have one more chance.”
“Fine,” I said. “Go ahead and tell him.”
He stopped his pleading, but I had a feeling he was planning something. Just sharing a room with him became nearly intolerable. I had only just been able to stomach the royal, all-powerful Tatchuk of old, but this new one was simply too much to bear. He turned from a generous, merciful god into a backbreaking burden. His eyes followed me beseechingly. Where could I hide when we spent at least six hours a day together?
My instincts had not deceived me. Only a week later he pulled a stunt that had me itching with such fury that it took me all day to cool off.
“A month ago you broke my nose,” he announced calmly. “The nasal septum was damaged, as a result of which I now have trouble breathing. Furthermore, my nose didn’t heal properly, and now no one wants to be friends with me.”
I stared at his unchanged nose. It looked fine to me: protruding, patrician, as always. Still, my roommate did look rather sickly. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes glassy with dark rings beneath them.
“I am in desperate need of plastic surgery. The operation costs ten thousand dollars. I have no one else to turn to. If you refuse to help me, I will have you thrown in jail. I will sue you for inflicting severe injury on me, and I have documented evidence to prove my claims.”
