Translated by Max Nemtsov
Patriotic War
A patriotic war is when in the woods, at night you shake under fire in a lorry. It’s frightful, dark, and cold, but your father’s at the wheel, and this is why you’re calm inside, for who else should you believe in? He’ll defeat all enemies, he’ll protect all children— this is the only way it happens in a patriotic war.
Branches whip at the canvas. You wouldn’t want to fall out. Good thing there wasn’t any rain, it means you won’t get stuck. You peer into the dark cab seeing those dashboard lights, and suddenly you realize that someone else is at the wheel.
Who are you, you? Why do you have those horns and that tail? For whom do those Roentgen red eyes burn? Why do you drive your lorry down a straight road to hell? Where did those terrible ugly hooves come from that you press into the wheel splitting your sides with laughter? It doesn’t look like it’s a patriotic war anymore, does it?
There begins a panic in the lorry, but it’s not caused by the fire this time, although that never ceased. The most desperate ones jump into the salutary emigration of the roadside bushes, careless of the speed; others scream with fright and press kids to their breasts; still others voluntarily cast each other as jailers, stool pigeons, and punitive raiders. The difference between a war and a patriotic war doesn’t count anymore.
In most cases, everything ends when a lorry drops into an abyss and blows up; those few survivors hug each other and cry; the driver dies of course, and it turns out he was a liar, a sadist, and a psychopath, of course he didn’t have any kids, and to call such a war “patriotic” was the pinnacle of demagoguery and baseness.
But all this would happen much later, and now the lorry rushes through the woods at night, and every bullet is meant for you.
Where Has the Cat Gone
“Mom, dad, our cat has gone! We’ve looked in the nursery, we’ve looked in the bedroom, we’ve looked in the bathroom, we’ve looked in the kitchen, we’ve looked on the balcony, and even in the toilet!
We’ve looked for it on the staircase, we’ve looked near the elevator, we’ve looked in the yard, we’ve even looked at the carpark!
We’ve asked the neighbors, we’ve asked the street cleaner, we’ve asked the district cop, and even the physician!
We’ve looked in Southern Medvedkovo, we’ve looked in Northern Medvedkovo, in Babushkinskaya, Sviblovo, at the Los’ Station, and even in Mytishchi!
Mom, dad, we’ve tried everything we could, we’ve remembered everything you taught us— so what, what, what should we do now?”
“Our sweet children, you’re so grown-up, so clever and strong, you’ve become so outstanding as we’d never dreamt to see you. We gave you everything we could, we love you, children, we love you to tears and so we just don’t know how to say it to you that our cat is not in Medvedkovo, Babushkinskaya, Sviblovo, not in the Los’ Station or Mytishchi, but it’s in Chernihiv, Hostomel, Irpin, Bucha, Mariupol, Melitopol, Kharkiv, Enerhodar, Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk, and it will never, our dear ones, return back home.”
Humongous Traffic Light
History always keeps mum at first regarding seemingly irrelevant things. Initially, no one studied Hitler’s paintings, no one marveled at Mao Zedong’s poems, and that’s why we may only hypothesize how it happened that he looked to the left once, then furtively looked back to the right, and crossed, for the first time, he crossed the road at the red light.
It probably happened when he was just a kid, and later it must have happened many times in his youth, without doing any harm at first, however the more power, the larger the consequence— so he decisively crosses at the red light the Kashirskoye Highway, the Guryanov Street, the Nord-Ost, in Volgodonsk, Beslan, Chechnya, Dagestan, in the Moscow subway, in the Petersburg subway, at the Volgograd railway station. His appetite grows, and he picks up major thoroughfares crossing at the red light without hiding in Tskhinvali, Abkhazia, the Crimea, Donbass, and all the way through Ukraine.
He crosses at the red light everywhere the green light is on. He claims that it’s his sacred right. He believes that it’s his national identity. He declares that it’s his historical mission.
It would’ve been strange if he got mad only by himself, so he has a horde of armed adherents who promote crossing at the red light. If you prefer going at the green light, you will be declared an enemy of the people and stripped of your civil rights, so I can understand those mommies with their perambulators in parks who understand everything but won’t say anything— for, when the Motherland issues the most terrible order, they will be the first to be shot at, together with their children, and unarmed husbands, and no one, but no one, will save them.
The worst thing though is that the traffic light gets finicky; at first, it started to switch from the red less often, and now, they say, it has frozen completely. There is just no option of crossing at the green light, only sometimes, late at night, you can see the blinking yellow. Then there run some people from the roadside bushes, dropping their belongings, trying to manage and save themselves, while the unofficial political emigration still works, but they open fire, run the current through the wire, and the unlucky one dashes back head over heels, and the fugitives go on being afraid even abroad.
I think the sights are always trained on us for those who cross at the red light have been instilling family values in us, like “we’re the family, that’s why everything here is mine,” “now the dad will come and belt you,” “I’m the elder brother so I’m the chief here,” “bear with it, you can’t choose your family,” “bloody blood ties to our brotherly nation.” The citizenship of the empire is a codependency that can be broken only completely.
So here’s the history story, the Russian folk tale. Those who cross at the red light like to play with us, and their games are tougher and tougher. Intoxication with blood is worse than heroin, and before everyone who has crossed at the red light dies of old age or an overdose, we’ll never see the green traffic light.
Rats Eat Mice
We ain’t got no learned helplessness for we’d never learned the skill of shouting to our kids, with all our might, “Spread out, duck into cracks, abroad, wherever, just stay alive!”
We ain’t got no comfort zone, we just haven’t reached it yet. If you go right, there are Kashirka, Guryanova St., Beslan. If you go left, there are Mariupol, Bucha, Hostomel. If you stay here, there are Khovanskoye, Mitinskoye, or, at worst, Nikolo-Arkhangelskoye cemeteries. Over there, yes, there are peace and rest there.
We ain’t got no present; we’d love to close our eyes but that nightmare won’t disappear.
We ain’t got no past; it’s long been pasted over with bouquets, ribbons and nailed to the schedule of holidays till it bled.
We ain’t got no reason to hope for the future, when everywhere around one can hear only choked wheezing, bones crunching, and all of it is in complete silence.