Well, hello, Geworg, nice to meet ya, buddy, thanks for not trying to start a conversation. Actually, lately I’m quite lucky with cab drivers, even in Moscow, I dunno, maybe they are being trained like that in Yandex, it’s a new professional ethics. Funny, you’re balding too; we have something in common.
The car smells of something, perhaps a little bit of cheap perfume and cigarettes. If he asks me whether I smoke, I’ll say I don’t, but he may, no worries, good health, I even enjoy the fragrance, that last one might be a quote from Lukjanenko… Actually, I do want to smoke like hell, but this time I won’t, I will even try to stay away from the nicotine chewing gums, or maybe not completely away, but at least not every day, because I lose my grip lately, and it takes the toll, a heavy withdrawal by the evening, so good to use the vacation to rid of all this stuff, my body can’t handle all these bad habits, I’m not twenty anymore—thirty, actually.
Same with the shisha. Will I smoke shisha this time, though? Before, I used to smoke it in Moscow only with Vika and Galia, but both Vika and Galia are married now, so it’s kinda awkward. Weird, everyone keeps convincing me the marriage is not a death sentence, meaning it’s still the same person, and we’re still friends, and there’s no problem, and I kinda get it, that if I ever manage to get married myself, then I’ll try my best to maintain all the old connections, and let’s be fair, either with Vika or Galia, there had never been anything but friendship, oh well, actually with Galia there had been once… but it’s been a long time ago, and we have never come back to it. Maybe that’s why it feels awkward now, because there was nothing but friendship?
Is it me, or is the internet really slow now, is it my subscription plan, or is it being suppressed because of the drone attacks? Wait, the app does not show that the ride has started, am I even in the right car? I think the plate was correct, but he did not confirm the destination when I hopped in, should I ask Geworg, if that really is Geworg, but what if he decides it’s an invite to a conversation, and we’ve started off so nicely, in silence. Ah, the app seems to get updated now, seems we’re riding right. Now it’s a good time to snooze for one hour, but I don’t want to, it was a mistake to drink that coffee on the second plane, it’s a bit late for a coffee, seven o’clock in the evening, now I won’t fall asleep even at home, I’ll have to take my sleeping pills. Have I packed the pills? Think I have. But maybe, a whole day on the road will be enough to knock me off.
Yeah, this time I’ll arrange myself a detox. I’ll loaf on the couch, write, translate, paint, and maybe watch movies and series every now and then. In the first plane, in the list of movies there were ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and ‘Breakfast Club’, both about breakfast, both I have not seen, both have been catching my eye regularly, so that must be a sign to finally watch them… And I won’t meet anyone, except Sanya, Max, and Marina. Vika and Galia are married, Zhenek went completely Z, he is a nice person, of course, but it’s been hard talking to him lately. Oh yeah, Kolyan will also be in Moscow. He comes with Tessa this time, he will probably take her everywhere, and she will admire how cheap a taxi is in Moscow, and how comfortable (and cheap) public transport is. Well, it is truly comfortable and cheap.
I’m wondering if Kolyan will take her to Skoltech, to Triokhgorka, will he show her that house we rented while doing our master’s, broke, but full of hope for the future? Will he show her the new university campus, the beautiful one? Perhaps no, they’re only here for a week, they will stroll around the city center, Arbat, Okhotny Ryad, Teatral’naya, Kitay-gorod, Boulevard Ring. It’s summer, so that’s how it should be. And Tessa will see this city through Kolyan’s eyes, and most likely she will be impressed, astonished, and she will later tell all of her Dutch friends how cool Russia is.
I’m wondering, will she see even a tiny bit of what I see here? And what if Kolyan is right, and his point of view is the correct one, and it’s me who has a prejudice, and I’m inclined to see everything in black, just because I hate something, and I project this negativity onto all around me, and I cease being objective?
Outside the window is the Ring Highway, black walls of trees are flashing by, beyond them—skyscrapers, suburban districts, glaring in the dark. Why I don’t like this city so much? Maybe it does not deserve my hatred? Maybe it is truly, as Kolyan says, the best city for life, and my eyes are just blindfolded, and I refuse to admit it, because admitting it is equal to betraying my values to me? Maybe I actually do love it? Did James Joyce love Dublin? He was born, raised, and studied there, and he left when he was rejected publication of his stories, and I think he never came back, lived in Italy, the Balkans, Switzerland, but he had been writing about Dublin his entire lifetime… “Dubliners”—they are all about the city being paralyzed, the whole country paralyzed, catatonic. Maybe in fact I love Moscow, and I love Russia, just like Joyce loved Ireland, and what I do not like, are the people here, because they are, just like Joyce’s Dubliners, all paralyzed, drowsy, can’t wake up and prefer living in a dream, in an illusion that everything is alright, and the most disgusting is the fact, that they are truly feeling alright, so their illusion becomes flesh. And in fact, I envy them. They are stronger than I, they stayed and learned to live in the circumstances given to them, and I left, but did not learn to live. Silly. People can’t be blamed. But who is to blame?
And how do I explain it to them?... To hell with them, how do I explain it to myself—why have I returned again, I told myself last time, that I won’t come back, enough living in two worlds at once, in a limbo, not here, not there, and let’s admit that for a long time I’m already way more there, than here, meaning my ‘here’ is now there. How do I explain it to the parents, especially mom, and especially when I get furious? The best way to convince someone is to be calm and confident, but how do you keep calm and not get enraged when you’re being asked, ‘Why don’t you come back for good?’, and all of your reasons why are the things that make you angry? They will never understand; their age is not fit to change their worldview, but it does not make it any easier. I want to be sincere, maybe it’s the only real reason why I come back at all—because I hope to speak frankly, and yet every time my intentions smash against this wall, and then it’s easier to keep silent, and if I keep silent, then why return? Especially when it’s this very silence, the necessity to avoid sharp corners, pretend that we have something normal to talk about—it’s the thing that drives me insane the most.
In the plane, an old lady was chelping passengers and stewards, and she threw a total scandal by the end of the flight. Why do I see those things only in the planes mostly occupied by Russians? Or am I just unlucky? We pass by a car accident; a white BMW is prowling between the lanes, then sneaks beyond the orange safety cones into a lane closed for maintenance, oh yeah, smartass, now the cops will get you, here they are standing by the way, and an ambulance is here too, damn, that’s a few cars had smacked into each other quite badly. The white BMW, it seems, managed to sneak away and dived into the parallel road, and no one is pursuing it, no one gives a shit, whatever, the person might be in a hurry.
An ‘Ecolines’ bus passes by. Strange, what is it doing here, on the Ring, they come from the Baltic countries and have a terminus at ‘Planernaya’, and we’re now around Mozhaika. Ah, maybe this one is from Belarus, actually, then it goes to ‘Teply Stan’. Once, I took the same one to travel from Moscow to Minsk, the summer sunset in my eyes, the golden stripes shining and soaring against the deep grey, and the warm touch of her fingers on my wrist, when she tied that bracelet she had woven herself, as a memory, her face flashes brightly and fades, no, don’t think about her, it will cost you another panic attack. It’s been seven years. Wild.
I’ll see Marina, though. Can’t miss her. She says, she has a husband too, though they are not officially registered, they don’t even live together, what kind of husband is that, she used to be mine, she confessed to me, held my hand when we strolled in a park in high school, and then later, during the master’s… Oh, those nights on a wreck of a couch, her grandma is sleeping behind the wall, the dawn is nigh, and we have not slept a wink, what the hell is that husband? But no, it’s so strange, it’s all, too, in the past. We’ll meet again, and again we will be chatting about nothing, again I will leave in a taxi to sleep at home, and both of us will stay in an empty apartment, accompanied by their principles. But this time at least I am at peace with that. I’m used to it, the scars on my heart have got their tissue.
That’s it, we have left the Ring, wait, stop, where is he going, ah, alright, I just did not recognize it, there is a new building standing at the corner, everything looks different, every time I come, I can’t recognize familiar places. Hell knows what they are making again on the Warsaw Highway, some construction site, an estacade, some new forty-something storey shoe boxes. Previously, there had been small brick houses, four floors, and everything had been drowning in greenery, and my home had been here, too, and now it’s gone, demolished, the last time it was here, and now it’s only a pile of rubble and gravel, surrounded by a fence. We pass it by. A yard, a children’s playground, all pooled in orange from the streetlights, but there are no children, no one at all, yet for some reason the swing is swinging: back—and forth. Back—and forth. Must be the wind.
The brother is probably happy: for the first time in forever, I’m coming at a reasonable time, he does not need to wake up at 3 a.m. to open the door for me, I bought expensive tickets, and not that I’m rich, just scared, at night, drones attack, so airports get shut down. That’s it, thank you, Geworg, I hope I did not drive you too far away from your home. Hope you can get a nice next ride here, in this godforsaken place. Thanks too for being so soulfully silent the whole trip, did not even turn the music on, perhaps, you also got swept away with your own thoughts, thoughts of your home far away… damn, we really have so much in common, not just balding, what if we had been thinking about the same things all along?
Outside, it’s warm, stifling, a smell of poplars in the air. The hand freezes for a second before touching the buttons of the door phone—can’t remember the apartment number immediately. And it’s not even been a long time ago.
July 2025