It's Time Read online

  Pavel Kostin

  ВРЕМЯ ПРИШЛО

  Translated by James Rann

  URBAN ROMANTICS

  LONDON ∙ NEW YORK ∙ TORONTO ∙ SAO PAULO ∙ MOSCOW

  PARIS ∙ MADRID ∙ BERLIN ∙ ROME ∙ MEXICO CITY ∙ MUMBAI ∙ SEOUL ∙ DOHA

  TOKYO ∙ SYDNEY ∙ CAPE TOWN ∙ AUCKLAND ∙ BEIJING

  New Edition

  Published by Urban Romantics London

  www.urban-romantics.com

  [email protected]

  First published in London, United Kingdom by Urban Romantics

  Second Edition

  Published in 2014, with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia.

  Pavel Kostin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work. James Rann has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Translator of this Work.

  Copyright © 2011-2014 Pavel Kostin (original text), 2012-2014 James Rann (translation),

  Copyright © 2014 Urban Romantics.

  All Rights Reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the above publisher.

  The greatest care has been taken in compiling this book. However, no responsibility can be accepted by the publishers or compilers for the accuracy of the information presented.

  ISBN: 9781910150726 (pbk)

  ISBN: 9781910150733 (ebk)

  The Wings of My Angel

  “Ma-a-a-ax!” She shouted, rushing forward, “AAAaa Ma-a-a-ax!”

  The resonant echo bounced off the walls. Reverberation. It’s a lovely word, when you think about it.

  “Ma-a-ax!” You could hear the desperation in her voice. “Max, dear, stop.”

  But really? Why am I doing this? But, you know, what am I doing this for? Because if you look at it from the outside it looks a lot like... Madness. Maybe I’ve gone mental? If I consider the abstract side of the matter. Look at it from a different angle. My father always taught me to look at things from a different angle. That’s what he was always telling me. But what was the point? Here I am, sitting on the roof, swinging my legs, looking down, with no idea of what I am doing. La la la.

  “Max. Pleeeaaase! Please, don’t. Whatever happens don’t.... Oh nooo....” My mum froze in awkward silence for a moment.

  I couldn’t see her face but I thought she was crying silently. You monster. What are you doing to your poor mother, eh? What exactly do you think you are doing?

  At the end of the street sirens started howling. Oh, fantastic. That’s just what I need.

  I was sitting on the edge of the roof of a ten-storey block of flats, swinging my legs and looking down with an empty smile. The hot city summer had warmed the air, filled it with the heat of the sun, but now it was sneaking off into the night. I watched, waiting for the sunset that was about to begin.

  “Hi,” someone said behind me.

  “Hi,” I said back. “Are you one of the rescuers?”

  “Nope,” the voice replied. It was clearly a woman’s voice, a girl’s even.

  “So who are you?” I asked, not turning round. Somehow I didn’t care who they had sent.

  “Lady F.”

  “Lady F?” For a few seconds my mind tried to make sense of this reply, trying to find a place for it somehow or other, but it couldn’t. I’d have to turn around.

  Standing behind me was an exquisite young woman, who was looking at me and smiling. She looked younger than me (I’m twenty five, as it happens). I looked at her and couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You don’t like my name?” she asked, smiling. “In which case, what name would you give me?”

  “Beauty!” I blurted out, and she laughed.

  “Thanks!”

  “You’re dressed weird,” I said, and it was true.

  She was wearing something like a white toga. A sort of white cloak. Golden sandals on her bare feet and a golden belt. And that was pretty much it. She had auburn hair and stunning green eyes. The girl observed me carefully and cheerfully.

  “So what?” she said. “They’re just clothes.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed.

  The thought flashed across the edge of my mind that I was behaving like an idiot, but seeing as anything else was pretty much beyond me, that was all I could do. Act like an idiot. I mean, really, who cares. I don’t.

  “Is that really your name?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh. Really,” she said. “If it’s so important.”

  “Do you like sunsets?” she asked.

  “I do,” I agreed immediately.

  “I do too. Sunsets suit me.”

  I laughed.

  “I just like them... Did someone send you here?” I asked her straight out.

  “No,” she replied simply. “No one in particular. If that’s what you’re implying.”

  “So what are you here for then?”

  She frowned. “I don’t like reasons, Max. Am I disturbing you?”

  I thought for a bit.

  “No. You’re not disturbing me. Actually, it’s nice talking to you.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice...”

  She came up closer.

  “I don’t like the question ‘what for’ at all, Max. It’s a stupid, unnecessary question. All the most remarkable things happen not ‘for’ something but ‘because of’ something.”

  “Do you think?... How come?” I was surprised to find myself contradicting her. “Over there an engineer is building a dam. A hydro-electric power station. What’s he building it for? So that we can have light.

  She smiled softly.

  “I’m not going to argue, Max. That’s what you think now. But later you’ll think differently. Which is also ‘because of’ something, by the way.”

  At that moment my hand slipped from the concrete fringe on the edge of the roof. I swung out sharply and my heart plunged down.

  She grabbed me by the arm and held me back. I looked down in shock. Everything became very real. The warm concrete. The sunset. My mother shouting down below. This frightened me a little.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied and smiled.

  She had a very bright, sunny smile. Just amazing. You couldn’t tear your eyes off it.

  I carefully got up from the concrete fringe and set off on my way down. I was already at the bottom, closing my eyes as my mother planted kisses all over my face, when I remembered that I had forgotten to say goodbye. Well, I was in shock, what do you expect. Anyone would have forgotten.

  • • •

  A ray of sunlight crawled across the wall of the office. Its movement was invisible, imperceptible, because it was very slow, but if you focused on the reflection in the glass of the diploma you could see how, after ten minutes, the patch of light had moved a little bit closer to the edge. And after another ten minutes a little bit more.

  “Alex, you’re a smart lad.”

  “Max.”

  “Ah, yes, sorry… Max, you’re a smart lad,” Dmitri Alexandrovich said softly. “Go on, try and look at yourself from a different angle…”

  I looked at him.

  “Who told you that stuff?” Now I was interested.

 
“What ‘stuff’?”

  “‘Looking ‘from a different angle’.”

  “Well, that’s pretty run of the mill stuff…” Dmitri Alexandrovich continued softly.

  He could talk softly for hours. It was his job.

  “You decide for yourself, Maxim. A well-behaved lad, bright, normal,” he put a particularly meaningful emphasis on the last word, “suddenly starts doing stupid, inexplicable things out of the blue. Clambering into tunnels. Climbing up on to roofs for some unknown reason.”

  I said nothing, but nodded my head mechanically. Just agreed. Dmitri Alexandrovich waited for me for a little bit.

  “Good,” he said. “Imagine this. You have a friend. Misha. Have you imagined that?”

  “I have,” I replied.

  “Mm-hm. And then this friend Misha of yours suddenly, unexpectedly climbs up onto a roof and goes and sits on the edge. And he very nearly jumps off that roof. So tell me, what would you think?”

  “That he’d gone mental,” I said.

  Dmitri Alexandrovich pursed his lips.

  “No, imagine he’s your friend. Misha. A clever, normal, great guy. Just like you. And suddenly he pulls something like that. So what? You have known him for ages, and then suddenly his fate is in your hands. Go on, seriously, have a think. What could’ve happened to Misha?”

  I really honestly thought about it.

  “I guess something must be bothering him. Drugs. Or a girl. Or people had found out something embarrassing about him.”

  “Right. Very logical,” Dmitri Alexandrovich nodded, “that’s what your mother thinks too. Drugs or a girl.”

  “And what do you think? From a professional perspective.”

  “That, you see, Max, is what I am trying to figure out. Why it is that this is happening with you. Or, I might just discharge you and tomorrow you’d climb back onto the roof. And this time you wouldn’t come down by yourself. But that’s what I don’t get. I haven’t figured it out, I can’t see it. Drugs, for one, we can forget immediately. There are no symptoms, and you’re not the sort to get involved with that rubbish. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “As for a girl, so far I can’t say. After all you’re not nineteen any more. Twenty-five. That’s quite an age. Done with uni, working. By the way, you won’t get into trouble at work, will you?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m sort of on holiday.”

  “Good… Now as for a girl. Is there anyone troubling you?”

  “No, not really,” I said, and immediately remembered Lady F.

  Where is she now? Why did she talk to me?”

  “Really? But you know sometimes it happens that someone’s troubling you and you yourself don’t even have a clue about it. Is there perhaps one of your friends that you like? Can you think of anyone?”

  “No, not really. No, Dmitri Alexandrovich, I can’t think of anyone. I can’t think of much in fact. Almost nothing. And absolutely nothing that I’d like to talk about.”

  Dmitri Alexandrovich said nothing, then took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “You know what, Maxim, I understand. It can even be the case that a person is not sure about their sexuality. It’s a very common situation, as it happens. That is, not knowing for sure…”

  “No, Dmitri Alexandrovich. Everything’s OK,” I said. “I even had a girlfriend. We were going out for ages.”

  “Right, right, I’m shutting up!..” Dmitri Alexandrovich brightened up and put on his glasses. “And did you split up a long time ago? Do you like her?”

  “Nooo,” I said. “That was a hundred years ago. I don’t remember. I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Well what do you like then, Maxim?” Dmitri Alexandrovich asked inquisitively.

  I looked up and our eyes met.

  “I like it, Dmitri Alexandrovich, when the tarmac is warm. When the sun has heated it so much over the course of the day that you can touch it with your hand and it’s hot. And there are little cracks in the tarmac and it’s a sunny day with a clear sky and you don’t have to hurry off anywhere and you can climb up somewhere, and hide away where there’s absolutely no one around, but it’s warm and bright and you can feed the pigeons and think about nothing at all. I like it when the sun sinks amongst the distant silhouettes of buildings, and the whole city turns golden-orange and you want to completely dissolve in that colour and I like looking at the sky, at the high, transparent clouds and feeling, really feeling like you could just fly right up there. That this could actually happen. Not in fantasies, not in make believe, not in dreams, but you could physically fly there, in real life, right now, but you’ve forgotten how. I like it when there’s space all around, when you can see for miles, when you’re on a plain or a long road and there’s a lot of sky, and you feel that reality is right next to you, that you can touch it, and you need to do something with it, that you have a destiny, that you’ve been able to do it for a long time, and you’ll be able to do it in the future, but for now you’ve totally forgotten and you’re suffering because you can’t do this thing and it’s really good that this thing exists at all. I like travelling, without a start point or an end point, when a new road appears over the horizon and there’s someone with you, or even better two people, and you can listen and smile and stare at the road and admire the endless sky. And I like it when there are big trees, huge trees and the leaves rustle loudly and swing slowly back and forth and you see how huge they are and how there is a whole other world of their own above them. And I like ice-cream too.”

  Dmitri Alexandrovich took off his glasses again and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  • • •

  Viktor is strange. Somehow. I’m strange too, but I’m generally strange, not in a specific way, while Viktor is strange in a very specific way. About very specific things. Viktor loves to take photos of strange objects. And then makes very special photos out of them. That is to say, it’s not that he takes photos of strange, unusual objects, but that he doesn’t photograph them. Instead of that he takes photos of the most ordinary places. A bit of road, for instance. Or a car tyre. Not a particularly memorable piece of road, and not some tyre that was in an accident, but the most ordinary random bit of road you can think of and a completely unexceptional tyre on an unexceptional car.

  Normally it goes like this. We’re walking along talking about the sort of thing people talk about. You know, films or girls or other things entirely unconnected to the photo that he’s about to take. And then suddenly Viktor sees that ordinary bit of road, and he just gets this mental block, and he chucks everything and dashes off to take a picture of this bit of road, without even finishing his sentence. An example.

  This morning we’re walking along, chatting away.

  “And after that they let you go?”

  “Uh-huh. Told me to take these pills.”

  “And you’re taking them?”

  “Nah. I tried them to see what it was like – nah. Your head gets heavy, you don’t want to do anything. Although nothing bothers you.”

  “Did they make you promise that you would?”

  “Well officially they made me. Promise right then. But I didn’t even do that…”

  Viktor jumps from where he’s standing and heads for the path next to us, tugging at his camera case to undo it as he goes.

  I shut up and wait patiently. I’m used to it.

  Viktor photographs a bit of pavement. There is nothing, absolutely nothing unusual about this bit of pavement. Little stones, grass, cracks. That’s it. Passers-by are looking. They must be thinking that we’re in forensics. You know, detectives on a murder investigation. I imagined this for a moment, and was suddenly amused by the fact that if I really was a detective and Viktor a forensics expert, then at this very moment we’d be doing exactly the same thing, and we�
�d have looked exactly, exactly the same as we do now. That is, both this reality and the reality where I’m a detective and Viktor is a forensics expert would coincide for this fragment of time. A strange thought.

  Viktor’s camera is good, expensive. He could do wedding photography with it, or take pictures of puppies. For money. But instead of that he takes pictures of bits of road and tree bark. And then he even prints these bits of road and chooses the ones that ‘work’. And his job... you are going to love this one... industrial designer. And not a designer chairs or cars or anything like that. Just ordinary, unglamorous everyday objects. For example, he designs barbecues. Or garden furniture. Well, what did you want? Someone’s got to design barbecues too. So they don’t get warped in the heat, so the legs stay strong, so that the ventilation holes are in the right place. It’s a serious job. A big factory. Production lines and offices with engineers. A special project, an office, a workspace, a chair. And Viktor.

  In fact, thanks to him they gave me a job there too. I wouldn’t cut it as an industrial designer. I work as a security guard. It sounds stupid, but that’s the official title. To be more accurate, the factory is guarded by a special firm with tough guys, and I do the following: I make sure that all the sections are locked, move the forklifts, and walk through the empty corridors closing the windows and doors so that I can turn on the alarm in the office. A night watchman, more or less. But I tell everyone I’m a security guard. Although it’s not as if security guard sounds much better. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s OK. It’s a big factory, there’s a lot of work. You even get tired every now and again.

  Something shuffled along the tarmac. I turned round and saw Lady F. She was in her toga and sandals again. I wasn’t even surprised, just pleased.

  “Hi!” I said.

  “Hi!” she said. “How are you?”

  “Really good,” I replied. “How are you?”