Semmant by Vadim Babenko Read Free Book Online

It’s as if we are falling into our star, losing our orbit, unable to resist the gravitational pull. Or the star itself, contrary to calculations, just now decided to spit out its last thermonuclear blast from the remaining hydrogen. One way or another, we’re out of time – as we always were, to tell the truth. All the efforts, all the attempts are in vain and will not be needed – ever, by anyone.
    And right then I felt that universal chaos was neither an abstraction nor a joke. It emphatically, impudently had just interfered in my life. I saw it in everything: in hostile stubbornness, in the heat suffocating all that lived, and even – later – in the streams of air beneath the wings of the airliner carrying me away. I imagined that here, this instant, sudden turbulence would throw us into a tailspin. I was expecting a catastrophe any second…
    A full hour after take-off passed before I tried to regain my senses. I tried to calm down and put everything in perspective. I even formulated for myself what I recently told my doctor at the clinic for psychos.
    “No offense. They’re just unfortunate. You’re luckier than all of them anyway!”
    “You know your strengths, what more do you need?”
    “Never bear ill will toward the talentless, the weak. Never hate or blame or despise them!”
    Much changed that day – both in me and in my life. I convinced myself to bear no malice, and this was a mistake. My courage was left with nothing to latch onto. The sensation of hopelessness lodged in my consciousness, put down roots, and won space for itself. Even my passion for fulfillment subsided in its presence.
    Bitterly, I recalled fair-haired Natalie – for some reason more often than the rest. I tried to find a substitute for her; I met women, then dumped them right away, some even before I had slept with them. Wherever I worked now, everything ended in scandal. People hired me eagerly, expecting miracles from me – and, as always, I would start out well. But soon the subject would bore me to death and my colleagues would become repulsive. I would make scenes, engage in direct conflict. Several times, like in France, I had to leave before getting a result. Something snapped in me; I became intolerant and coarse. My friends withdrew, one by one; and my bosses didn’t know how to get along with me anymore. I was on a downward spiral that was closing in, but there was nothing to grab onto. A destructive impulse I could not hold back grew inside and burst to the surface. I saw in it the depth and power of a murky wave.
    I wanted to fight the whole world, to demolish everything in my path. I drank a lot and got into drunken brawls. It became easy for me to insult anyone for no reason. Bad rumors spread about me, many of them true. I stopped getting invited to join projects, interviews, or anything else. It got to the point that it was hard to make a living. I started to give private lessons – for the sons of Arab sheikhs or the progeny of the nouveau riche from Russia. It was the Russians in particular who pushed me to the very edge – and left me there, on the edge, barely keeping my balance.
    They were twins, very young girls, from faraway eastern Siberia. They didn’t like to study, but adored gin and tonics and an unabashed ménage a trois . We spent passionate hours in my Paris apartment, and they blew my mind with their identical pink asses and chiseled legs. When I was with them, I forgot about everything. It was a welcome release, as if the destructive whirlwind had lost all its strength. I just wanted this time to go on and on without end. I sensed that something dreadful was waiting beyond it, something from which there was no salvation.
    I lived then in an attic on the Rue Boucherie, and the chimeras of Notre Dame would watch us through the uneven curtains. The days rushed by; we saw each other more and more often and were increasingly insatiable. The twins became a single whole for me, indivisible from