I am annoyed. I hate this woman, who calls up suddenly from the telephone downstairs, which means ‘open the door’. I am becoming rigid from confusion in me caused by Yana’s readiness to push the admission button. Yana is the bride of my son. My heart starts beating rapidly. Sure she is in the elevator already on the way to our fifth floor, and at any moment now will start banging at the door of our apartment.
What’s her problem? Why does she chase our Old Man, Yana’s father in the wheel chair? Why did she stick to him as a tick?
Sure the Old Man chatted too much about his one million dollar villa in Spain and that he wants the bank to loan him one million dollar subsidy. And then either to let it or to sell it. The whole business stretches on, the Old Man’s credit needs to be improved. Meanwhile the family – Yana and the Old Man, has nowhere to live after the bankruptcy.
Very rarely, but it happens that Yana brings her father downstairs to the yard and there the communicative Old Man makes acquaintance with the curious neighbors who are relaxing on the benches at leisure. Somebody had to take him on the hook. Now this rich bridegrooms’ hunter does not give him a break. She brings him some food, as if he is not taken care of. She makes her way to our fifth floor, knocks on the door, and hides herself so I could not see her through the peep-hole. I know that it is she any way and don’t open the door. But today Yana is at home and jumps to the door without looking who is coming.
The woman rushes in as a torpedo and dashes to the Old Man’s room. Yana is following her ignoring my demand ‘don’t let her in’. I remain in the living room, which is my territory in this apartment assigned to me by the generous state in the crowded New York City. Here, by my son’s computer, he and Yana can watch horror movies in abundance and this torture of mine yells like crazy. No matter how many times I would ask to lower the sound – I am ignored. For some reasons they consider those horrors to be a good way for relaxation. I don’t sleep well after watching them. But that monstrous thing is located straight opposite my sofa in the room. There are three of us there and the dog Nanny in the day time. I had to give my sleeping room to the Old Man with his enormous wheel-chair.
They do not want to leave my tiny apartment and to pay huge rent somewhere in the real world. Here it’s me who pays for everything. They claim that they don’t make enough money at their jobs. I am chronically embittered. Who cares? I succeed to keep the mask of benevolence. My helplessness is hidden under it. I am denied in my right to have my own refuge. They promised to stay only for two months. Two years passed. Yana is not shy to keep repeating that they will leave only through the court decision. It hurts me to bring my own son to the judge. I beg him in a peaceful way. My voice drowns in his irritation. We yell at one another. I don’t sleep after that and take my medication. And now this woman appears from the yard.
My son feeds me: “I’ll graduate, get my Masters, receive a better job and we shall find our own apartment”. Yana can’t find a job with higher salary. She does not have a talent for this. But she can intrigue. She informs my son about every word I said and what I meant (she thinks). She loves to buy fancy clothes.
As the answer to my clumsy attempts to convince them to leave, my beloved sonny gets aggravated and declares the boycott of me. The energy of his malice kills me. He knows it – I begin to breathe heavily.
Here is the knock at the door. Yana jumps ahead of me and opens the lock. Probably the situation amuses her. Immediately the woman runs to the Old Man’s room. I roll all over my sofa in rage. Why Yana does not understand that it is the woman’s hunt? And also isn’t it too many people here? Oh, Lord! How much I hate her. My hands shake. My voice disappears. I try to cry: “Take her away from here!” Yana is giggling. My son keeps watching his computer as if nothing happens. He is bewitched by the devilish machine. I am under the influence of my own horror. The blood knocks at my temples.
Where am I, my Lord? This is supposed to be my house, isn’t it? But I feel as if I am a guest in my relatives’ place. What if I die? It’s dark in front of my eyes already. Dizziness and nausea. I slept bad again. And all this is because SHE is seducing the Old Man – a presumable millionaire. Mister Koreyko is probably pleased. He is not bored today. And the worship from the beggars pleases him. I left the TV set for him in my former room, for which I also pay. Everything to please the sonny. His reply is: “You will die in your tiny apartment. You will never rise any higher”. He wants the villa for living.
Something might blow up inside of me. Something strangles with a spasm in my throat. I don’t need somebody’s villa. I need serenity. I wish I could kill that impudent Puerto Rican woman. It is a communal flat in American style. Now it is the immigrants’ one.
“Please, somebody! What is ‘the anger’? Directed into the air. The last chord of helplessness? The humiliation from the dearest people? Pig’s shepherd before the ball of freedom? (Andersen). The father unfortunately in love with his cool son? Self destructive hate to my scapegoat – the impudent old woman from our yard?
Once the Old Man rolled out to the staircase in his wheel chair to smoke through the window. This witch spotted him from the yard, forced her way to the fifth floor, barricaded elevator’s door with her pushcart, then involved him into a chat and started to yell to the others downstairs to join her. I was forced to climb to the fifth floor on foot. This is with my sick heart! Her pushcart stuck out of the elevator door.
Being indignant, I began the intellectual speech in my English: “You know you can’t do things like that. A lot of old and weak people live here, they can’t walk upstairs on foot”. She watched me in bewilderment. As if she could not understand what, the Hell, I want from her. And who am I here? At the end she removed her pushcart. I went home into my apartment beside myself from anger, which was absolutely useless emotion because nobody took me seriously. And so, until now, when I need to bring myself to an emotional state to make a decision, I remember that moment of helplessness.
I am experiencing double anger today. First, anger with myself caused by that humiliating helplessness and second, because I hate those who are using me. I see it perfectly, but my reaction is not immediate. I must collect my anger to bring it to the explosion. It’s like when something inside tells you: “Enough! Either or. Either you do it, or they will do it with you”.
It takes place irreversibly. As a longready volcano eruption. It is scary. For myself and for the one who caused it. It’s impossible to stop the volcano. The element of outburst is merciless because it’s unmanageable. The madness of the anger. The fire of self-destruction.
I am sick. Hey, somebody! Save my soul. I catapult myself. They can go further down until they hit the ground. But in this case the feeling of guilt arouses in me: “You corrupted them with your illusory helplessness, didn’t you?” Probably I am not supposed to communicate with anybody in terms of friendship. Maybe to hang a plate on my chest? : “Don’t hurt. Explosive situation”. Probably those who will read will burst out laughing. And that’s how you get caught. That’s how you swallow the bait. Now you are in my casket for the insults inflicted upon me. Those offences that hurt when recollected by me as their owner, and I feel pain caused by the fact that I let you go without punishment.
It’s okay. My time will come. I will wait. There will be my moment because your celestial score is in minus. And it will do anything to become even. Do you need a push for your fall down into the abyss? My inner clock says your hour has struck ‘right-now’.
Oh, this hellish satisfaction of revenge. And shame because you experience it. Which means that you are not completely lost for the heaven yet. But you are punished with the feeling of guilt and a chance to be punished in your turn. The scales may fluctuate. Swing of the pendulum.
The Old man, the father of my son’s bride, Yana, shits into the bathtub. Exactly into the hole for water drain. According to his senile logic, this place seems to him the only proper one for the achievement of his stomach relief. My smart children insist that they know nothing and did not hear anything about who does it. This is the insolent hint: maybe it’s you, dear little papa?
Horrified and frustrated I clean the muck. The inventiveness of my children shocks me. Here comes fear – someday I’ll find myself on the Old Man’s place. Who is going to clean after me? I have nobody but them. Will they remind me the situation with the Old Man if I send him to the nursing home? I keep silent full of hatred to miserable man. I surrender the last stronghold. My son exchanged me for the Old Man’s millions in his hope to take possession of the villa – the last wealth of the old idiot after his shattering ruin.
Once, when Marianna, the bully editor in chief of the publishing house, where I volunteered as a word-processor, found herself in the psychiatric clinic on the edge of the death, my son asked me – was there anybody who would help her out? I said that according to the legend there is a daughter somewhere and social workers are busy looking for her. Listening to this, Yana sang sweetly with the white-teeth smile of the inquisitor: “Someone must be considerate towards those from whom he can find himself dependent in the future”. I put it in my mind. The ghost of helpless old age appeared to me, clanging with the bones of his skeleton. So again I keep silence. But I lose my love. Everything that I ever had.
My beloved son insists that I robbed him of everything what any mortal has automatically: the homeland since I brought him to this country at five years old,, certainly not asking for his wish and now he yells to me: “I hate here everything”. His mother, with whom I have been divorced and took him from her, who was always drunk, through the court. Our room in the communal apartment.
Listening to my justification that it’s impossible to live in Russia, he says, as if he knows what he is talking about: “Now everything has changed there. And the room in the communal apartment is possible to sell to ‘new Russians’ for big money, and to buy the private apartment. He can’t forgive me in his monologues: “My mother had died and I even did not have time to get used to her. You deprived me of my roots and I hate you. Look what happened to me. I am trying to kill you for many years and can’t succeed”.
I catch hold of my heart. This is killing in immigrants’ style. Our kids put guilt on us for everything that we did and what we did not. He threw at me the terrible accusation and the terrible verdict. It has been long since I was waiting for the end and finally got it. I am not angry any more, but I am suffering from pain in my sick heart.
I am lowering to the floor. I don’t know for how long I stayed like this before they discovered me there. Somewhere at a distance I hear the howl of the ambulance siren. In the chaos of the pains some thinking survived. Last thoughts before the coming end: “Just let it be sooner”. “He killed me, my Lord. I am worn out and exhausted”. That’s what the doctor is saying in the hospital.
Nothing interests me anymore. The death will come as a salvation to me. My emotions do not set me free. I do not believe in my own prayers any more. I pray only for the freedom from my close people. Faster. I invented even the word for this: ‘now and forever’. I am afraid that my sonny will find me over THERE as the easy prey and will start sucking me out again. He needs my energy – of love and suffering.
Something inside of me trembles nervously. I am afraid of coming back home. My free proud soul can’t take humiliation any longer. It’s easier for me to keep my silence. That’s why I am in the hospital.
The pain in my heart comes again. I am dizzy. My head is spinning. I feel unsure when moving. The thought is dancing: “Is it so important to be good?” It’s a temptation for the hunters with the killer instincts. My sonny with his bride kill me. Staggering, I am trying to make it to the hospital chair. I sit down gathering the poisonous energies of my family around me into a dancing flock. I concentrate and send this flock back to my beloved sonny, my unanswered love. I close my eyes. I see how they surround him, swaddling him tightly. My soul pain lets me go. I whisper low: “Now you belong to it. This is your new address”.
I accomplished what was the FALL according to my conceptions. I surrendered to what they did to me. Now it is with me till the end. This betrayal of the God. For as long as I have left.
I surrounded myself with ‘the mirror’. Now the negative energy will be reflected from me striking those who sent it to me. I bought life for myself, for those moments that’s left. The doctor said: “Emotions, emotions, emotions! You never found how to channel them. This is the game of the cool blooded mind, which is winded into the dead end by the disorderly dance of emotions. Attacked by the mad Brownian motion. People like you will always find somebody who will absorb your precious energy, leaving you naked at the exhibition of the crazy fellows. This is the cabinet of curiosities for the doomed geniuses”.
I won’t make it home, my beloved torturers. But I feel sorry for you. The emotion of guilt is heavier than the emotion of anger. Don’t condemn yourself to it. It’s okay if I won’t make it home. I don’t want it.
2018
Faina Koss. Was born in Ural Mountains, 1942. From 1946 lived in Leningrad. Graduated from the Leningrad State University. Philologist. Started to write short-stories being a student. Participated in non-conformists movement. From 1980 lives with the daughter in New York. Author of three novels. Published several books. Also published short-stories in Russian-American magazines and newspapers.
