Moscow Noir

Ha ha ha ha! Ho ho ho ho! Hee hee hee hee!

When are they going to settle down? First brandy, then beer, then brandy. How will he get home? How? The trolleys will stop running. So will the subway. I’ll call my mother. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Evidence. They’ll ask his mother, When did your son come home?

Phooey! He’s in trouble again. Don’t do that. Go home. Jerk off as much as you can. Until you can’t, ha ha.

Shhh. They’ve turned off the lights. Gone to bed? Bolt too? With who? Quietly by myself … Super! The terrace door creaks. Ryabets presses up against the trunk and tucks his feet in. The shadow from a nearby bush hides him. A rustle. Lidukha with the big tits. Mesropov. They stop and whisper.

“I won’t without them. Where did she throw them, the fool?”

“Over here somewhere. It’s dark, where should I look? I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“You promise but it’s my ass!”

“Lighten up, will you? I swear, I’ll be careful!”

“Uh-huh, and then it’s you and Nadya?”

“What’s with you? I didn’t invite her, you did. You and I have all day tomorrow, don’t we? When are your parents coming back?”

And he paws at her, the Chuchmek, he paws at Lidukha. He pulls her to the ground and lifts her skirt, goddamn decameron!

Ryabets goggles at the silhouettes fornicating. He feels like coming out and … kicking, kicking! Just be patient. Wait and be patient. Lidukha gives a faint cry. And Ryabets notices her look out the window. Her profile is sweet, but her eyes are harsh. That means she sees everything and isn’t going away. Why? Why? Mesropych rolls off the girl. Like a tick. Nadya spins around and vanishes.

They stand up, shake off, and leave. They close the door. Lock it. Very good. Wait.

Ryabets, crouching, moves toward the house, right where the couple was. There’s something kind of white in the grass—condoms! Two packets held together by a rubber band. Why did they leave them here?

Ryabets is standing behind the bridge pylon watching. The flashes he could barely make out a minute ago are visible now, and furious. The pinos are burning, the pinos! Like candles!

He stands and watches. Another ten minutes and it’ll be dawn. Two fire engines speed past. And an ambulance. Too late.

He descends to Novikov-Priboy Street, finds a telephone booth, drops in a two-kopek coin, and dials. His mother doesn’t answer right away, she mumbles incoherently, and Ryabets is relieved. She’s drunk. If she’s drunk, that means his father’s been asleep for a long time too. No need to hurry.

Last man standing. How powerful is that? Like Mesropych. Boltyansky once asked Zinaida Leonidovna, the lit teacher, about The Decameron. Had she read it? That idiot four-eyes exploded. “Who gave you permission to read books like that?” And Boltyansky said to her, “But it’s a classic. It says so in the preface.” “A classic?” Zinaida Leonidovna hollered. “I’ll give you a classic, Boltyansky! I worry that’s all you think about! It’s never occurred to you that The Decameron is primarily an anticlerical book. Go to the board, Boltyansky. Tell me about the images of Communists in Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don and Virgin Soil Upturned. Or should I fail you immediately? Tell your parents to come see me tomorrow!”

“You mean we shouldn’t read Balzac either, Zinaida Leonidovna?” This was Tregubov, a top student. She wouldn’t dare yell at him. “What Balzac?” She was buying time. “Droll Stories, Zinaida Leonidovna!” She blushed deeply, removed her glasses, and put them back on. “Today we will continue our study of Virgin Soil. Open your notebooks …”

Ryabets finds an open doorway and hides under the stairs. He can wait here a few hours, in the corner, and then the trolleys will start running. And the subway. Don’t cry, you’ll wake people up. Don’t cry.

THE DOPPELGANGER

BY GLEB SHULPYAKOV

Zamoskvorechye

Translated by Sylvia Maizell

Once there lived an actor in Moscow. For many years he performed in a celebrated theater and appeared fleetingly in TV serials. He was considered famous although he never made it as a popular icon. And this didn’t bother him in the least. It happened long ago, about twenty years or so—he had the good fortune to play a small but impressive role in a famous film about the Revolution. Eventually he settled down, having decided he’d made his mark, that he’d already been inscribed in the history of cinematography.

After that film they recognized him for many years on the streets. But without any frenzy, without their eyes popping out. Hey, look who’s coming, uh, what’s his name … And there followed the name of the character he played, since no one remembered the actor’s real name.

He lived many years alone in a tiny bachelor apartment the theater provided for him, in a Stalin-era building by the Paveletskaya station, in the Zamoskvorechye neighborhood. The theater administration had offered several times to move him to a new place on the other side of the river, closer to work. But each time the actor refused. He liked living here. Over time he had grown fond of the mysterious silence of the streets on Sundays; more and more often he imagined another life that was long gone in its sagging mansions; in the evenings, when he strolled the narrow streets, it seemed to him that this life hadn’t ended one hundred years before but still flickered—there, behind the dusty panes, behind the chipped wooden shutters. He was fond of the amusing and naive residents of these streets, who were on a first-name basis with each other, who at the streetcar stops exchanged rumors about a maniac from the chocolate factory; about a sect that met in the abandoned church by the metro and devoured ancient ecclesiastical texts; about the corner house with the rotunda that housed a secret brothel.

And so on.

His daughter used to come from Germany to visit him here in Zamoskvoreche. She’d clean the room and stuff the refrigerator with provisions. She’d bring medicine for his chronic cold. Photos of his twin grandchildren. And then she’d be gone for a year.

He kept a photo of the twins with a stack of fan letters in a desk drawer. He’d study the identical faces with amazement and disdain, making out, through their German imprint, the features of his ancestors.

His hobby, his passion, was telescopes. Spyglasses in particular. He assembled them, with his own hands— after shows or in the morning if there were no rehearsals. He calculated angles and radii from magazines and handbooks. And distances. He’d send a list to his daughter and she’d bring him first-class German lenses. He’d fit them in a tube made by the theater metal workers (for some reasons these workers loved him). Thus a telescope on a tripod made an appearance. And he’d pull heavenly objects somewhat closer to Moscow.

What can you see in the blurry Moscow sky, where only the moon—and that with difficulty—makes its way to the viewer? Nonetheless, right after a performance, he’d rush to Paveletskaya. If the night was more or less clear, he’d sit down on the wide windowsill and sharpen the focus. Or he’d spread maps out on the floor and make calculations. He’d determine the favorable days and segments of the sky in which a constellation would appear.

And so he lived this way from year to year. He went on film shoots and tours, to festivals in Sochi and Vyborg. He took on a lover from the theater orchestra. He’d call on her at the dormitory on Gruzinskaya Street. But mostly he spent his time between the theater and the stars. Until, ultimately, this thing happened.

One March morning he set out for the laundromat, as he did every other Saturday, to drop off his underwear and shirts. The establishment was close by, two stops on the streetcar. Since on the weekends you can wait forever for Moscow’s public transportation, and since it was sunny, he decided to go on foot. He had just set off when suddenly, ringing and rumbling, a streetcar came bounding down the street.

It simply emerged from the flow of traffic and flung its doors open.

There was nothing to be done. It was fate. He was in luck. He made his way to the end of the car and set his