Semmant
Authors: Vadim Babenko
Published by Ergo Sum Publishing, 2013
Translated from Russian by Christopher Lovelace and Vadim Babenko
Russian text copyright © Vadim Babenko 2013
English text copyright © Vadim Babenko 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.
E-book ISBN 978-99957-42-00-3
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design:
damonza.com
Editors (in alphabetical order): Hilary Handelsman, Elizabeth Ridley, Robin Smith
To Asha
Chapter 1
I
’m writing this in dark-blue ink, sitting by the wall where my shadow moves. It crawls like the hand on a numberless sundial, keeping track of time that only I can follow. My days are scheduled right down to the hour, to the very minute, and yet I’m not in a hurry. The shadow changes ever so slowly, gradually blurring and fading toward the fringes.
The treatments have just been completed, and Sara has left my room. That’s not her real name; she borrowed it from some porn star. All our nurses have such names by choice, taken from forgotten DVDs left behind in patients’ chambers. This is their favorite game; there’s also Esther, Laura, Veronica. None of them has had sex with me yet.
Sara is usually cheerful and giggly. Just today I told her a joke about a parrot, and she laughed so hard she almost cried. She has olive skin, full lips, and a pink tongue. And she has breast implants that she’s really proud of. They are large and hard – at least that’s how they seem. Her body probably promises more than it can give.
Nevertheless, I like Sara, though not as much as Veronica. Veronica was born in Rio; her narrow hips remind me of samba; her gaze pierces deep inside. She has knees that emanate immodesty. And she has long, thin, strong fingers… I imagine them to be very skillful. I like to fix my eyes on her with a squint, but her look is omniscient – it is impossible to confuse Veronica. I think she is overly cold toward me.
She doesn’t use perfume, and sometimes I can detect her natural scent. It is very faint, almost imperceptible, but it penetrates as deeply as her gaze. Then it seems all the objects in the room smell of her – and the sheets, and even my clothing. And I regret I’m no longer that young – I could spend hours in dreamy masturbation, scanning the air with my sensitive nostrils. But to do that now would be somewhat awkward.
Anyway, Esther arouses me even more than Veronica, perhaps because she is “bi,” as Sara once confided to me. Esther moves like a panther and looks like an expensive whore. Her nipples burn like hot coals, even through her starched white blouse. Her hair shimmers purple black, and her skin is tender like silk, though it looks more like velvet. The moment she comes close I seethe with the desire to touch her. I’ve done so a few times and even apparently got somewhere – she once slapped me in response. Surely it was a game, but I doubt we’ll go much further. Here’s why: now I like Laura from Santo Domingo best of all.
Yesterday, on her evening rounds, she was really hot. Yes, her legs are not so slender and her butt looks too large and heavy, but her whole body radiates passion, a natural lust too difficult to conceal. Cats scatter when they hear her walking, and gawkers turn their heads to stare. Even paralytics and defunct oldsters get horny when they feel her vibes – and I’m no paralytic or by any means too old. She leaned over me as if to arrange the sheet, flashed her huge brown eyes, licked her lips – and I knew I would have her now or very soon. I ran the palm of my hand up her thigh to the narrow moist strip of her thong. And I’m not even sure she was wearing a thong!
Then she teased me with her slim bare foot, gazing at my face with a come-hither look. Too bad she had to leave so quickly – but this is just the beginning, no doubt!
I whispered after her, “Where are you going?” when she reached the door.
“Wait,” I murmured. “Now I won’t be able to fall asleep.”
“Yes, you will,” Laura assured me. “I gave you a good sedative.” Then she added, “Think of me!” And these words held a lot of promise.
I did think about her, and then, in my dream I copulated wildly with a busty
mulata
. She smelled like Laura – the rainforest, the sea, the sweetest of sour smokes. Likely, from now on I’ll need this mix like a junkie.
It’s two days until Laura’s next shift. Two long days of eager anticipation. I now have another goal for myself.
Thinking about this, I face the window and view the distant mountains. The sun has moved down to the side. Turning my head, I see my shadow again; it’s the only thing marring the perfectly white wall. Soon the sun will shift farther to the south, and the wall will regain pure whiteness, announcing lunchtime.
Then the mountains will change as their colors fade, the contours sharpen and stand out against the sky. The peaks will loom jagged; indifferent and cold. A guard will bring me the newspapers, and I will leaf through them vacantly, scanning the pictures and trying not to get newsprint on my fingers.
Then I’ll do the usual set: some
hatha
poses, stretching my back and leg muscles; a tantra workout, keeping my balance with my eyes closed; and finally,
bandha yama
drills so my erection would be harder than a steel spring. I’ll think about Laura – already calling her “Lora” in the northern style. She’ll like that; it may bring us closer. Or, perhaps, we’ll even choose a new name for her.
The peaks will finally grow indistinct in the twilight. Everything will fall silent as dusk turns to night. I’ll draw the curtains, leaving only a crack so the fresh air from the mountains filters into the room. Then I’ll have dinner, drink a half bottle of wine, and begin to compose another letter to Semmant…
Listen! My confinement might last years and years, but I’ll give it to you straight: I am not afraid and have nothing to hide. Let them think I’ve lost my mind, but I know, if anyone has – it’s not me! I’ll tell them something else too: don’t count on it. I’ll say, “Semmant!” It will be like a shout, and yet the softest, the most quiet of words. Only the quietest words work for confessions – confessions of hatred, and even more so, of love.
The white walls surround me for a reason, but I will not crack up here, and he – he is my protector, my healer. Yes, at times I may lose control, and it would seem I’ve exhausted my strength, but I won’t succumb – as I can’t betray him, cannot leave him alone. Neither Esther nor Laura can help me in this – and not Sara, not Veronica. Their minds are somewhere else, I’m on my own, and I’m not that mighty. Take these notes – they reveal my weakness. But it’s still no excuse to abandon them.
I don’t look for excuses – even here, behind these walls, despite the treatments and the constant spying. Oh, I know, very attentive eyes are keeping watch over my writing. I feel them with my back, my skin, and even with my shadow on the wall. But I don’t care; I pay them no heed. I am not posturing or putting on an act. I could simply discard the paper – ball it up, chuck it aside. Even burn it – or I could keep quiet and just stare out at the mountains, which are impervious to any words. But I can’t do it; I have to write, even though it’s so unbearably difficult to get through. It’s so hard to be heard by others who are lost in broad daylight, who are blinded by their inability to see, who suffocate in their own waste. They are all arrogant and infinitely naïve. And me – I’m not so different. I, too, am blind and naïve, and arrogant in my own way. That’s why we speak the same language, saying almost the same thing.
So, day in and day out, watchful eyes see a familiar picture. The papers are scattered across my table; it’s night, darkness, dead silence. I write to him; then I get distracted and write to all of you. My fingers grow numb; at times I shiver with cold. Then the opposite: I’m drenched in sweat – and compose with delirious haste, or sometimes a mere word per hour.
It takes enormous effort, though the story is flawless, its plot coherent and logical. I drew it up myself, right up to the final scene; I started with nothing and ended up with more than I could possibly handle. It’s a great experience, no matter what; it would be foolish to keep it to myself. You may object and laugh behind my back, but I have an answer: I’ll say, “Semmant!” This may raise anger, provoke envy. But time will pass, and you’ll see that I’m right.
He will not become anybody’s hero – he’s not a hero at all. He is not a conqueror, though he knows no fear. You may be tempted to laugh at him as well – yes, his naivety surpasses mine, and yet oddly enough he is wise and discreet. No one’s mockery can change that.
It’s not easy to become his friend. And who would dream of competing with him, feeling overconfident for no reason? Who would dare to take his place? That would be reckless and dangerous. His armor shines with a genuine gleam and yet it cannot save him from any arrow. Yes, one should not expect too much from his shield. And then, I realize, it’s more important for everyone to know: what lies beneath that shield?
I could give a concise answer, but I’ll put it differently: shed your own layers one by one. Shed your clothing, your masks. Wash off the makeup. Take a long, hard look at what you see – can you make sense of it? Do this alone, since it’s embarrassing, indeed. The covers have been thrown on the floor, and the labels have even been cut out of them. All that remains is to look deeper inside, brushing away small details, with or without regret. The trick is to get down to what’s most vital, even if it’s concealed and hidden, locked away. One may grow tired and miserable along the way; and once there, may be left speechless. The unexpected may be found – some strange, unfamiliar things. Who will be able to name them properly? I guess no one, as is always the case. Everybody will be looking around: where is the hint, the subtlest of signs? And then again I’ll say, “Semmant.”
Listen – I admit my idea was different. I had a less ambitious plan. Everything was supposed to turn out simpler. Some may even blame me: I was following the footsteps of evil. And yes, I relied on the blindness of the crowd. I indulged others’ greed, but my intentions were pure; they were good. At least I was unselfish; perhaps that vindicates me somehow, though I seek no vindication whatsoever.
I don’t seek it because I feel no guilt; I’m even proud of myself, pleased. I might have done many things wrong, but now I know where I erred. I recognize the most horrible delusion, which could confound anybody.
Others can learn it too, if they have the patience to hear me out. Which is not likely. But I continue.
Because the only thing that matters is to keep moving forward.
Chapter 2
I am Bogdan Bogdanov, a genius in cybernetics, an expert in everything expressed in digits. Almost nobody knows my name, but those who do look back on that fact gladly – or, at least, so they pretend. I also remember all of them; that’s just the way my memory works. Though I admit that it – my memory – is rather sparsely populated.
My childhood was checkered with events, but they left no visible traces, and even the earliest of them got seriously messed up. I was born in a small village in the Balkans, but my family soon started moving around a lot with a depressing urgency to get away from police and creditors. As a result, another place was listed in my documents: some nondescript city with an unpronounceable name – I never did learn how to spell it. My aura of Indigo was identified by an ugly old woman from Ziar when I turned twelve. She stank horribly, but I’m grateful to her: after her discovery, a lot fell into place.
My life as an adult was quite eventful as well. I went from job to job as I traversed all of Europe. I was poor, then earned a decent living; got filthy rich, then ended up with nothing. I’ve been living in Madrid for three years now – through circumstances beyond my control. This city is alien to me; I don’t like it at all. It tolerates me though; or at least it did, until it started to take revenge. I had a penthouse in its best barrio, drank
sidra
with its taxi drivers, breathed its foul air, and even made friends with a real countess. And now – now I’m in the nut house.
Of course, they call it something else. A hospital for VIPs, that’s its official title. But you can’t argue with the rumors, as everybody knows: the VIPs who land here are pretty far gone, most of them irreversibly so. That is not so unusual and, frankly, doesn’t even imply anything bad.
To tell the truth, my perceived importance wouldn’t allow me to belong there. Had it not been for Countess Anna Pilar María Cortez de Vega, I should have ended up in a dirty clinic for poor psychos instead of in this domain of comfort. Thanks to her, I’m now in the company of aristocrats.
Señores
and
señoras
– all from distinguished families, as a rule – languishing in adjoining chambers. Some cracked up over money, others over broken hearts. Then there are a few who went mad over love and money at the same time. But that’s just what I imagine when I’m alone with my thoughts. Most likely their problems are born of degenerate minds that are the product of hereditary decline. The gene pool has become too small; the ocean of diversity has shriveled to the size of a puddle. This is the fate of the noble elite, unwilling to compromise.
As for my gene spectrum, everything is just fine. Degeneracy poses no threat to my offspring – if I ever have any. And, as far as my mind is concerned, I live by a different set of rules – and I do not accept compromises either. I act as if they don’t exist. This has absolutely nothing to do with nobility.
My father came from a line of cobblers and had reeked of goat glue since he was a child, while my mother, quite the opposite, grew up all prissy in a banker’s family that lost everything when the pound sterling crashed. My parents got along well, despite their different backgrounds, united by a contempt for their hapless ancestors who gave them no chance at all. At least my mother never blamed her husband for the countless adversities we met – the troubles that befell us with the persistence of capricious fate. And as far as I could tell, he was gentler with her than was the custom in the places we lived. He probably regarded her more highly than was the norm. Which, to be fair, is really to his credit.
Still, my father’s way of thinking was always quite straightforward. I would even say it was predictably crude, albeit quite sly and shrewd. He never mastered his profession, but then, it didn’t interest him in the least. He was a vagabond by nature and, on top of that, locked horns with the authorities all the time. So we wandered from village to village for many years; we had no permanent home and didn’t stay anywhere for very long. The neighbors never liked us, and the local police instantly sensed the opportunity for easy pickings, but that was just an illusion – my father always managed to leave them empty-handed. We traveled all over the Balkan Mountains, through the Rhodopes, the Pindus, the Dolomites, then reached the Danube and went all the way to Budapest. That was where we settled down for a while. My father started to sell pottery, and my mother ran into a long-lost cousin who taught her how to read tarot cards. Our life took on some semblance of stability, and I got twin brothers and a sister who were one year apart.
I finally enrolled in school there – two years behind schedule, which served me well. Reading, writing, and doing math were things I had already learned; besides that, I was bigger than my classmates, so they were afraid to pick on me, whether they had a reason to or not. All they could do was eject me from their circles since I was so obviously foreign to them in every sense. I took it all in stride, without even realizing why. The teachers were just as hostile, but the coursework came to me effortlessly. As for the animosity, I had learned to ignore it since my earliest days. My family life wasn’t the best either. My younger siblings only irritated me with their squealing; I didn’t have any feelings of tenderness for them. This greatly upset my mother, and my dad complained that I wasn’t worth anything. And I probably never would be, he added, judging by my aimless look and inability to get along with anyone.
There was only one person who understood me well: a girl four years my senior, an exotic performer in a traveling circus we met up with near Miskolc after we had to flee Budapest in a hurry. She had a large mouth and a searching glance that belied her childish features. She could curl her ears up and straighten them out on command, and the only friend she had until I came along was a toy frog that blew soap bubbles. Her smile taught me to dream, and her hands taught me something too, though she was completely innocent – just desperately and endlessly kind. When she danced in the arena I knew her heart pounded there, under the circus floor, under the heels and the ponies’ hooves, under all the sets and sawdust shavings. Nobody wanted to see her wings, but I could make out their transparent shadow. I could even hear them flutter – and I felt sorry for her, and she came to me in full-color dreams. Later, we crossed paths more than once: the circus headed north like we had, making its way toward Warsaw, but it lingered for a long while near Tatry and then returned there again and again, as if enchanted by the beauty of the place and the scent of mountain pines on the air.
By then, we had settled in Liptov, where my father got involved in improving the local medicinal waters with the aid of common table salt. He also made friends with the circus troupe, especially with a magician named Simon, as he saw big potential in that line of work. It was there that I turned twelve and the old woman from Ziar peered into my very soul with her dusky eyes. She looked at me in shock and for a long time whispered to my mother, who absently shuffled her cards. I overheard her say, “Are you sure this is your child? Do you know the father? Maybe the devil impregnated you?”
Neither of them could figure it out and they were rattled, indeed; but my mother told my father everything nonetheless. Knowing no better confidant, he grabbed a bottle of
slivovitz
and went to see Simon, supposedly to learn a silver coin trick.
The circus was touring the thermal pools then, entertaining fat cats with ailing livers. My girl did not dance there anymore; she’d suddenly grown up and run off with some Romanian officer. I bore her no ill will and wished her the best, for somehow I knew: wings are just not meant to last. As for Simon, he remained true to his top hat with the stars and his tattered black tailcoat. His trade implied a certain erudition, and he knew about the phenomenon of Indigo. Once he heard about me, his ears pricked up. My father took notice, and for the first time he began to think I might finally be of some use. After draining the entire bottle, they decided to make me a whiz kid in the circus. Simon convinced my father that the talent for doing quick calculations, if I was found to possess the ability, was all the rage now and could bring in good money. I think that was his best trick ever.
My dad, now that he was in better spirits, started asking around about how to turn me into a whiz kid as fast as possible. To his misfortune, he crossed paths with an official from Mikulas who was crafty and quick, and who reported my existence to the very top. That set the bureaucratic gears in motion. Highly important people came to see me, and soon my fate was decided. They made my father sign the papers by reminding him of a few of his sins, and a month later I found myself on a ferry crossing the English Channel en route to a special boarding school that had been established by the Crown with funding from one of its less innocuous ministries.
The waves danced below. I was nauseated and understood nothing, only sensing I would never see my parents, my brothers, or my sister again. That’s pretty much how it turned out, which doesn’t bother me at all. I’d just like to know how far that official went in his career – whether he was given a high position, a secretary, or a government car.
That, you could say, was where my childhood ended. I’m not complaining; it usually doesn’t last much longer anyway. The mountains and forested hills were gone from my life and replaced with plains covered in yellowish-gray sand, low, heavy clouds, and the sea breeze.
“
Go catch yourself a fish, throw it to a pelican. Don’t you cry for it, what’s the point? Let your cheeks be salty only from the ocean spray.”
I repeated this nursery rhyme to myself, but it wasn’t me who made it up. I don’t remember who did, and it’s not important. It was one of us from the island, at any rate. One of us from the School.