Part I. Winter
So, my wife left me and cursed me out, a good-bye of sorts, performing some short and meaning ritual, consisting of mysterious movements of her arms that ruled the air flow in our room, then putting sprinkles over me and in all corners, and unclear mutter which recreated a certain rhythm – quiet and ominous invocation that did not promise anything good to me.
I wanted to hug her as a means of calming her down, to ease her pain. But she threw her arms out, with her palms facing forward, protecting herself and crying out something hostile. And I thought: “Let it be this way if it brings solace to her. Ultimately, I must be punished also since I have managed to kill the love in her. To trample the sacred.” How I succeeded in doing this – I don’t know. One day after another, drop by drop, joy and novelty of feelings left us, till the essence remained bare. We faced emptiness.
x x x
Winter printed down a snow stamp affirming its rights to the world. A couple of times my wife returned to pick up some things of hers, and then again lived a quiet and empty life. Endless days, sleepless nights.
“Oh-oh-oh, ah-ah-ah, eh-eh-eh, uh-uh-uh!” They refused to serve me liqueur in the bar. I guffaw and howl in my way, due to the unsatisfied craving. I am singing to those harmful little people, “Let flourish my love in the middle of the wi-i-inter.” They threw me out into the street to stop my howls in the place where it’s prohibited.
The sun, shadowed by the passing raincloud, encountered me, shooting down a small ray. And can you imagine, it started to talk, “So, haven’t you been in love? Is that’s what it seemed like to you?” I groaned, “Per-per-persuasion”, hardly understanding what I was saying. Then I added to myself, “I hate it”. After that I found myself in my little attic, barely warm, but much closer to heaven. Here, I crashed down to the sofa-bed, in the middle of the desperate circle dance of my furniture. With my eyes closed, I heard my inner radio, speedy dispatch concerning today’s events, ”Don’t ruin your life early. Salvation might come too late.” I waved my hand to this moralizing warning coming from THAT office and amiably cursed.
I rolled like this for a week, clambering out of my house only for the next bottle. I did not wear a protective mask like anybody else. I decided to die – let them drive me out of everywhere. In the end, I crawled into the park, to say farewell to my squirrels. There, on my usual bench, a girl with the blue stare was sitting and lured my favorite squirrel, named Blackish. And Blackish, the traitor, was taking peanuts one by one, almost off her palm. But I was not jealous.
I understood that one more vagrant appeared here, on the squirrels’ base, a youthful character, almost a child. Two pigtails are sticking out as a compass pointer, registering her movements. As the answer to my question, “Where do you live?”, she answered, “At some romantic place where the homeless stay.” Her blue gaze of a Slav born was not fixed on something particular but absorbed everything at once. The eternity was singing in the violets of her eyes. Two plates served as locators. Nobody, a magic lighthouse. What was she about – she did not know herself.
Squirrels stood stock-still at my knees, stretching their front paws out for the next charity. How could I forget about them? Peanuts began to pour out of my little plastic bag. Probably I turned numb in her presence. The fight for the food started at my feet and I did not interfere. Because she began to disappear. She stood up, turned the locators of her pigtails on, and moved towards the river. I was left to stay behind in the same place, stricken by lightning suddenly. I would not allow myself even a small step after her. Who am I to violate the sacred?
x x x
A new love.
At the height of the mortal pandemic, in the city heaped up with corpses, I was infected by the new love. New York City is under the quarantine. Not a single step outside your place without serious necessity. All of us are draped in stuffy masks. The deathly carnival ‘Covid 19’, Corona-virus pandemic.
She fed my squirrels little nuts. To be correct, she did not mind feeding them in my company. Her little face – a graceful lemon-like, with the aroma of not far-away Spring, blushed as we exchanged kisses. And here what was said by this little witch, “If you hurt me, I won’t feel sorry for you at the important hour of scary time.” I thought, pressed to her little fur coat on the bench, which became our special place, and I said philosophically, “God fights his way rarely through the clouds of our winter planet. But still comes to us sinners when there is no hope – and brings the moment of resurrection”. On the day when I met that little blond, hope flared up as a burning match in my heart. And dizziness made me unstable. Suddenly, the sun played sonata on the keys of my awakening soul. I sought: “The Caprice. A disease of loneliness.” But again, and again she developed in the depth of the park with a little bag in her hands. And again, we were feeding squirrels and chattering nonsense.
I suffered a lot in my loneliness from the moment my wife left me. The energy of this pain fueled my metaphors. I said to this little one, “You are my illumination. The new life. At last, I understood something about myself. I don’t want a metaphor for pain. I want to create with the energy of happiness. The shining ray of the Light pierced my consciousness.” Or was it the ray out of her diamond eyes?
Squirrels arranged the wedding round dance at our feet. The little one was shooting at them with the peanuts. I was free from loneliness and doomed to happiness. And all this happened amid deaths caused by the fatal Covid -19. We were above fear. We had nothing to do with it. She told me her name, Svetlana. I understood that it originated from ‘Light’, which was sent to me. Every day I waited for my little one in the park. Here my Blackish squirrel runs on me like a little train with the steam from his mouth. Hear he jumps on his rear legs stretching out the front ones as if begging in prayer, “Give me, gim-me the nut please.”
TV and radio scream about worldwide catastrophe. Me and the little one are in the center of the Universe, which is breathing with the death. That’s the end to the suicidal race invoking self-destruction on itself. The sky is saturated with the poison of the burned corpses. Our love shakes with the fragile wings like a horrified dragonfly. Death embraced us as the third superfluous one. We are lying on my sofa-bed in my attic, exchanging dangerous breaths. Our pillow is like a stone. It’s a pitiless bed not bestowing dreams unto us. And only the hot little fingers of my little one calls us to life. But like a wild wolf, the sick cough growls deeply in her chest. This is one-thousand-heads Covid-19, the slave of Corona. It devours mankind, shoving it into his stomach and digesting us with millions of others.
This little one, a tender flower, embraces me with her petal-like hands. We exist in the unnoticeable Universe. “Svet”, I call. ‘’Svetlana! It’s time to go to the hospital. You won’t survive here”. She does not react. With my convulsing fingers, I dial the ‘Emergency’ number. Life-giving 911 to my little one. Hospitals can’t try to cure seemingly impossible cases and send into the morgues all who are doomed. Folks refuse to believe in their End and keep climbing into the hospital bunks as into the miracle, squirming in the overcrowded ambulances as in the entrance halls of Hell, begging for Grace of the fast death. The line in the emergency rooms is for many endless hours.
It was hard to find the chair for the little one shaking like a last autumn leaf. But luckily somebody was called to the nurse, and I grabbed his chair and pushed the little one into it. I created space for myself on the concrete floor at her feet. I thought, talking to myself, “Don’t you collapse. With whom will she stay if something happens to you?” Past the open door to the corridor, hospital attendants escorted fresh corpses on the stretchers to the morgue. They did it cowardly, as if hiding. It was a treacherous view for those who were still breathing. The little one groans unconsciously. I pray. “Please Father in Heaven! If you exist.”
Letting out her blue gaze, she asks me, whispering. “How are you?” She does not understand where she is. And repeats tentatively, “Am I dying?” I scream to make her hear me, “Remember. I can’t be left alone. I ‘ll dye straight after you. I will wait till they bring you to that torture chamber – the hospital ward – and I will stay here all the time you will breathe alive. And I will die at your last breath.” She can’t hear me. She burns in fever. Over there, behind the doors and windows of this gigantic stonebreaker, which breaks all our bones like in the throat of the starving dragon, the wind throws clusters of snow into the eyes of the winter. We are trembling and clinging to one another in search of protection. For how long we can stay like this, I don’t know. I lost the feeling of time.
Now! We were not admitted! No free bunks in the wards, either in the morgue. They said: “She is not dying yet. We brought the temperature down. We gave her shots. And vaccine. Next booster will be done in a month. You as a husband must be vaccinated too. Check with the nurses. Make an appointment. You are in danger. Here are some proscriptions. You will receive a phone call from us for a follow-up. There is nothing more we can do. This is medication for a couple of days. You call the pharmacy tomorrow. Take her home now and good luck.”
I raised my Crumb in my arms, and we crawled to look for a taxi. God knows, what rots in their brains, those saviors from medicine. Some madcap driver stopped his car and asked through the open window: “Hey, fella, sacrifice a hundred?” As if I had a choice. I laid my kid on the back seats, put myself down on the floor at her feet and we rushed through the black city to die at home. The city, which is clean from the inhabitants. They are swept off by the fear. Almost everything is closed. Lock out.
At home we took pills. Tomorrow I’ll go for vaccine. We even forgot that it is close to Christmas Eve. I’ll try to find a Christmas tree. Somebody will take advantage of the city’s disaster, selling necessary things for crazy money. Let my little one open her eyes and enjoy the magic of the New Year. At midnight we said the prayer and drank some hot tea. Let Christ and St. Mary give us healing and safety. I reclined at her side and pressed my palm to her chest. There, her horrified heart was beating fast. She whispered weakly, “We are alive. Maybe we are lucky and make it till the end of pandemic?” I said what I could not hope for, “Maybe”. I turned the switch inside, as I did in the whole room. Deep emptiness. Winter is around. The winter of our life.
An obsessive idea: maybe still we are lucky. I am getting tired of obsessive thoughts. I am moving all over the apartment. I am looking through the window at our Earth, wrapped up in the milky white foam of the snow. My mind does not react to the light, sound, or smell. Everything is chained by fear. Paralyzed. Seems like nothing can pull me out of the voluntary tomb, for what I don’t have the right, until this little stray sheep is still alive.
x x x
In the morning, as if eternity passed, I trudged along to the park, where after the powerful night snowfall, the skyscrapers, like the mythical Atlantes, made step into the East River with their reflections. I said, fixing my gaze on the winter sun, “Hi, Sunny.” “Hi, dear author and a computer master”, he said. “How are your metaphors doing?” this luminary asked me maliciously and built up a little friendly grimace, “Thank you”.
“For what?” I was taken aback. “You know how to live according to your calling. Those ones are protected by the God. Go home. Everything is going to be better now”, it said and hid behind the timid cloud. I was left to stay on the embankment confused and decided that all this was my imagination. But suddenly something struck me, “What if this is true? What if we are out of danger?” And I rushed through the puddles and ice, sliding, falling, getting wet, but I made it home.
There, she was sitting in the chair, helping herself to the cup of tea. She probably could not wait for me to return. We exchanged kisses and I finished her tea since I was shivering from cold and excitement. We forgot about the danger of kisses in time of pandemic. We believed in our chance.
x x x
We zealously drank the medication given to us in the hospital. And I went to the pharmacy with the prescriptions. We clammed up like mice into their burrow. At night we slept embracing one another and shared the dream, one for two. Something like Hollywood terror. My little one screamed, horrified. I rub her chest to kill the cough and to wake her up. She cries and asks for forgiveness, silly one.
Nobody calls us. We are forgotten. My vaccination I got from the nurses. Those who take it are treated with affection. They say, “more vaccines done, more chances for the development of a group immunity.” And then the crowd will get rid of its masks. But for now, they publish in the newspapers about the dangerous consequences of shots and even the death toll. The number of perished grows again. The second wave of pandemic is announced. We are lost. Difficult to say what is worse: a vaccine, or the death without it. Here is the new quarantine. Be afraid to leave the house. Don’t forget to put on the mask.
They accepted us for the unemployment benefits. The city is locked. Our neighbor, the old Greek Tammy, died. He lived alone and died alone. They discovered him guided by the smell. His suffering is over. Snowy weather takes it time. Squirrels’ base is empty. Squirrels warm up their little paws deep in the bushes. East River covered itself with the funeral veil. This veil serves it as a shroud. The brave neighbors give burial to the discovered body of forgotten old man Tammy. He is in his bed with the open mouth, with which he was trying to catch the last gulp of the air and yell the last curse.
On the door of our house the list of the dead is attached with the request to visit the requiem in the nearest church. More power for pandemic. Only gloom is ahead. If only my little one stayed alive. She is not annoyed with my metaphors. I think sometimes: it’s probably my fault that she got touched by the curse of my demonic wife. I keep thinking about the list on the door of our housing building. I can’t go into the crowd. I am afraid to carry to my little one some deadly bacillus on the clothes. I won’t go away from her and probably I, like the old Tammy, will be buried with nobody dearest around. But until I am alive, I won’t take even one little step aside from her. She will not die of loneliness.
I called to nurses to learn more about second vaccine. They want us to wait. Only if it is a direct threat to our lives. There is a special line, and we are on it. I don’t believe in anything. But I look at my baby and understand that is our last chance. They did not come to any other ideas, those bosses on the Top. The newspapers whisper that they sell out vaccines to the other countries and make us to stay in lines according to the lists.
Part II. Spring
The ceremonial day came. The ritual of the Spring opening. And we climbed outside – to check who was alive. Emaciated, we made it to the park. Spring pierced the pregnant cloud with the little ray: “Here I am!” To my own surprise, I burst into laughter, and even more, when the beam of sun kicked the car in the parking lot. The sharp leaves of the future narcissus cut into the air with the grace of Finish knife into somebody’s side. The dog-tree ascended to the sky the ritual cups consisting out of seven purple petals in their green glass-holders. This sensational side-show of the park was in bloom only for a week and then transformed itself into the Persian carpet under the feet of those who was not afraid to create sacrilege stepping on it. And here is Sakura Japanese bended down to earth its branches poured over with the raspberry syrup of hard blossom.
“And how badly I want to smoke!” It jumped out of me as a sacred cry of my soul. “What?! How could you say this?” She was terrified. “Did you forget at what time we live? Is it possible to call it ‘life’? The storm-brain will get you. And anyway, there are no cigarettes. Drink vodka. It cleanses the body.”
“Okay,” I pronounced guilty. “I simply said what I am not thinking.” I saw my reflection in the blue mirrors of her eyes. She radiated her admiration to me. We came back from the park as if we were taking a bath in the spring of alive water after Winter burial.
The second wave. The death is narrowing circle in its hunt on our city. At night – the sirens of the ambulance and the damnations of the sanitary workers carrying the bunks all along the staircases. The officials suggest that the second wave of the pandemic can get more violent than the first one - the newspapers whisper this. The commission on health and law services is sent to China. There is a variant that the distribution of the disease was caused by the bats or guineapigs who escaped from Chinese labs. Also, there is an assumption concerning the market in Wuhan, where they sell exotic sea creatures for food. There are some ideas. Chinese people are hiding data of the first days of pandemic. Nobody wants to become a scapegoat. I covered the mirror in our cloister with the sorrowful sheets in correspondence to Slavic rituals of grieving. I am getting superstitious when there is no way out.
No, we must survive together. How can I leave her alone? She does not have anybody. That’s how she said. She dropped on my head in her mysterious way. She washes dishes. The representative of heaven out of the shelter around the corner. I am a stranger myself. They hardly nod their heads to me, such an unpolite figure I am. I deserve it. I also forget to greet them. Maybe they take offence. Fly, Tammy, fly. Put in a word for us THERE.
x x x
Our beloved doggy slams into us on the sofa bed with a screech of desperation. Some of the sympathetic ones presented him with a bone, and now he does not know where he can hide it reliably. In his wild doggy’s style, he scratches the space between two sofa pillows, hoping to create a foolproof place for his priceless treasure. The dog has his own philosophy, “He is not a bad guy but, in our time, one must be vigilant.”
Now, the battle for the empty apartment will ensue. They call it ‘packing’. And we shall meet with the new neighbors. Happy ones because they stayed alive. Some noisy family of paupers will appear. Open doors to the staircase, the drum roars of the heavy rock. Snotty babies creeping on the landings, some fling balls into our door. My cheeks are trembling. So hard I need a cigarette. Instead of this I receive a little shot glass.
Telephone calls. “You are on the waiting list for the second vaccine. Don’t worry. Be patient.” Not enough medication for the population. “That’s what happens when you are trying to save the world”, indefatigable journalists whisper. As if we are not on the nerve utmost without them.
We are concerned about our morning regime. First climbing out to the park. And there: shrubs with the green volley shoot with the new suckers. One chagrin: today the falcon committed something disgraceful in our park. “You! Red nit. Bloody dandy. He is backtracking our new little squirrels. The new life is hardly glimmering in them, and there he is, ready for killing. What if right now I found myself, you, and I, in Siberian taiga, as it was long ago in the delirium of my young years, I would take you off with one shot out of my rifle. For the dummy. Streight into your incomparable shirt front.”
x x x
Now we have made ourselves comfortable on our sofa bed and I said to my little one, white as snow of the melting park, “Let me kiss you. What’s eating you away? I want to pick up from you that unhealthiness. Kiss me. Give me your disease. I want us to die together. I am not destined for love. Because I destroyed the love of a woman.” “Oh, no!" She could hardly open her crystal eyes. "Covid gives up. You saved me. You conquered. But the disease comes back even if it seems all right. We must go through the next vaccine again if they will find it for us. Television warns us concerning the perfidious second wave.”
Listening to my little witch, I surrendered to her fears. I was the cause of her suffering. The curse was addressed to me not to her. At night I was visited by my wife. She was laughing at me, “You love nobody. You don’t give to the world anything except your metaphors. You are not our kind of person. Nobody will be happy with you. Nobody likes renegades.”
My little one, feeling the enemy, half-opened her eyelids. “Light, my light, Svetlana”, I called her, not believing to myself, making my way to her through the feeble screen of helplessness in front of the curse of a powerful enchantress. “What’s this?” asked my little one. “You are shivering. Is it she again?” “You are not supposed to know this”, I said slightly stammering. We clasped to one another, protecting ourselves behind the one screen of our hope.
x x x
In the spring park the power of flowers and plants was going through the change. The dynasties appeared one after another. Like from some underearth vases, the bouquets of the silky daffodils crawled out. The heavier blossom of Japanese cherry creeped to the earth like naked brain, covering not visible branches. The last little tears of the dog trees poured down into the orange innards of the emperor tulips.
The second wave of the pandemic was crawling along the world by the new different kinds of Covid. They could not be fought any more since the vaccines got adjusted to the battle. There was need for new vaccines. Long ago in the history of medicine it was taking years to create a new vaccine, now there was not enough time anymore. First appeared the British strain as a type of Covid. And then, one after another, Indian, where kilns of the crematoriums melted from being used too much, then South-African, and more all over around the world. We were fed up with this tv information, staying on our sofa-bed after the park. Like anybody else we hoped that the danger wouldn’t get us.
But once I awoke in the middle of the night and was terrified by what I heard and saw when I switched on the light. My little one writhed from asthma again. I reached for the phone. I began to dress her. The siren screamed behind the window. We were on the way to the hospital. The violators passing by scattered as frightened apparitions in white masks. The little one did not open her eyes. An oxygen device was on her face. And I held it.
The same hospital. I was removed from the janitors’ way and sent to the waiting room. They took her to the admittance hall. I found myself without my little one. In a couple of hours, they informed me that she was taken to the special chamber. I began to hit my head on the wall from hopelessness. But the attendant in the white gown intercepted me: “Would you like to find yourself in the psychiatric ward? I can arrange it for you.” I sat down on the floor. There were no free chairs.
Two more hours passed, and I was informed: “The cough comes down. You must wait.” I decided not to leave the waiting room. What if they decide to send the new information. Some drop of hope. I grabbed a chair – somebody had left. I made myself comfortable as one of the hundreds of seeds in this enormous cucumber full of waiting people. Some hospital attendant appeared from the upper floors to catch a breeze, in grey wrinkled dressing gown and little hat wet from sweat. The real angel from the nether land.
I came up to him, empty inside, without hope. I asked softly: “How much will you take to find her and bring me to her?” I gave him a bit of paper with the little one’s name. He goggled at me and hiccupped from fear: “You, lad, out of your mind. There is no exit from there.”
I said, persuading him carefully: “It means they will have to bring both of us from there and to bury us in one grave.” I shoved the last one hundred bill into the pocket of his gown. He almost dropped down from fear half with greed. “Well, you certainly are mad,” mumbled he. And then, “Wait here. I must find out where they put her.” He disappeared behind the door leading to the corridor – that way to death.
I thought he would never come back. I lost the feeling of how long I was waiting, pressed to the wall in the corner, hoping not to attract somebody’s attention. But he appeared – that honest herald of the kingdom beyond the grave, trembling from excitement, with the gown and mask for me on his bosom. I put all of this on in the man’s room and he mumbled what I could hardly catch: “Follow me.”
We took the elevator to the ninth floor. I told myself: “Dante. The ninth circle of the hell.” I heard groans. Hospital staff have not reacted to our appearance yet. This shaking fellow pointed to the door of the ward and ran for the elevator on his bent-up legs. I went into the room. Immediately I saw my little one in the hospital room of four. Nobody paid attention to me. They were busy with the process of slow death. Some groaning, some squealing, with oxygen pillows.
I sat down on some stool at the bed and sent a message straight through the little one’s closed eyes, “you won’t die. We are strong with our love. I am giving you everything that saved me. I will share it with you. My defense, the power of my immune system, all my miracle cells. Everything that you will need to revive. Take it because we are the whole. Take it as the mystics. You are immortal. Now we have life for two.” I was not conscious of what else was getting out of my mouth. I kept talking. The Great Wall of China could crash down under my pressure. I don’t remember exactly but suddenly, from under the sunk eyelids of the death-dealing person a little weak ray appeared, warming up and getting blueish. In her agony the perspective of life opened. Corona killer weakened its grip.
They drove me out with the horrible scene. They wanted to call security. And I was yelling to them, those nurses, and doctors, “She is alive! She is alive! You can do with me whatever you want. Any kind of shots and pills. If she is breathing. And she is.” They pushed me out, to the staircase, and shoved me into the elevator. I refused to leave the waiting hall. I decided to outsmart the death. I was sitting at the door to the corridor, counting the corpses still not packed on the way to morgue. She was not among them. I felt how she associated her heart beats with me, pushing pendulum mine and hers. We lived with one life. We did not divide it between us. Only one whole. That’s what I begged her to believe in. Our love rolled up into little ball to warm us both from the near death.
In the information window, that I bombarded every half an hour with my question “what’s new?”, they gave me a positive answer. “Her crisis is behind. She is transported to another department, but there is no guarantee. And please go home. Take a break. You will be called.”
My head was spinning. My physical strength betrayed me. My spirit was exhausted. I hardly reached home and fell on our couch. First the stars appeared in front of my eyes. And then oblivion came. I was still waiting to see if they would call from the hospital. And finally, I became unconscious. Weightless. Not existing. I was excluded from the world of living beings and the world of suffering.
Part III. The summer
I came back to life in the afternoon. The phone kept silent. I wanted to break it but realized that I just got mad with the idea of the Death. From my fear. I tried it on myself. I wanted to go through the same she did, my little one. I was wandering along the house and crumpled her things in my hands: clothes, books, diaries. Rubbed them against my skin after I unbuttoned my collar and breast. I licked hard the unwashed plates, drank water out of her cup. I scratched my skin until it bled and spread blood over the entire arm, rubbing it into the body. In this wild form and shape I was appearing in the park, covering my swollen snout with the mask.
Here I realized that the summer came deafening by its colors. Greening bushes were clustering along the lawns with the lattices. Tulips of all the rainbow shades made their way through the impassable grass. Water in the East River was swaying tenderly, licking the stone supports of the bridges. The fed-up summer squirrels permitted to lure them with the peanuts from the stretched-out hands of the park visitors. Little sun hares enjoyed themselves dancing on the wet bald patches of the fat passers-by. I stuck to the pavement of the quay. Look at that! Right now, from under the Williamsburg bridge a muzzle of a patrol-boat crawled out with the eyes-headlamps on its nose.
Suddenly, I felt deathly ill. As if inside of me a malicious animal found home and reared my flesh apart with his sharpest paws. Was it a dragon from the fairy tale? Violent black charm belonging to my former wife, who promised me pay off for her disappointment in me? Or the legendary monster Covid-19 finally got me also? Then I grew angry. No way. What I knew about myself was the following: I appeared to be fused together off iron and steel and coiled by the flower of lilac. I took a bench and dialed the hospital number. No news. But the situation stabilized. At least this is better than nothing.
x x x
No strength to go home.
It was the real reign of Summer in the park. Heat strangled. Even the aroma of the new generation of roses was poisoning the air. That’s, I decided, to make me, the sinner, to choke as a baby. Enormous green bushes were strewn with roses as with the spices. I stood up. Nowhere to go. Frightened squirrels ran out from my feet in different directions. I forgot about peanuts, and they did not understand the sense of my presence, but guessed instinctively that this is better to be afraid of me. I was alive but I carried death. I had to go back home and collapse to the bed till I got dragged into the swamp of dark emotions. To reach home where it was possible to fix my own suffering in a couple of fresh metaphors.
Heroically I hobbled along the park on my painful joints, choking through my mask. But I endured this torture and immediately took out the telephone one more time, again and again, to check for the miracle. Just to hear “you have to wait.” Only after that did I allow myself to fall on the sofa-bed and stop reacting to anything.
At night the fever came. Every attempt to breathe was torture. According to all this I got what I wanted. Covid, the son of that cholera Corona, heard my wish. I waited for the ambulance for eternity. The city was overloaded with new candidates to die. They grabbed me without any words. I sneezed, coughed, writhed in convulsions. I was taking what I called for in full measure, but yelled to be brought to the same hospital where the little one was. The siren was howling, breaking its way through the red light, shied the night apparitions in their white masks.
I was immersed in the cot in the reception room. I was afraid to lose consciousness. I had to be accepted close to the little one in any reanimation, but they told me that it depends on where the free place appears. Probably somebody was on the edge of dying, in that desperation I lost perception. I do not remember how the night passed. But I awoke on the ninth floor. At that familiar ‘the ninth circle’.
They did something with me. It seemed to measure blood pressure, check the temperature. I had difficulty breathing. They brought oxygen, took my blood for analysis, and shots, shots. I thought all this takes place in some kind of movie, but I was here and close to the place where my little one was suffocating.
The morning checks.
I asked the nurse all in white except there were not little wings, to transfer a message to the little one if she finds her, that I am here and there is nothing to be afraid of. The nurse was smiling with the little porcelain teeth and nodded her head. She agreed. Then I was out again. Probably I fell asleep, but maybe it only seemed to me. My neighbors in the ward were groaning. Somebody was taken away and not brought back. I realized that it was morning outside and the check with the doctor started. The doctor impressed with his majesty in this wretched place, where you would not find the yesterday patients. I met him with my cough and my hoarseness. I had difficulty talking.
Doctor asked me how many vaccines I had and, realizing that only the first, looked confident as an honored teacher in the primary school, demanding from me to give agreement for the second one. I decided to bargain if the little porcelain nurse, that Barbi doll, the consolation for the shelter of the doomed, will let me down. I asked the doctor when he was in the ward where the little one stays to give her my greeting and tell her that I am OK, and we shall see each other soon.
I lost a lot of energy to pronounce so much and started to cough with convulsions. The Doctor looked melancholy at the door of the ward. I turned to the wall to give him a chance to retire with dignity. The last act of courage from him was to dictate necessary medication for me with the necessary doze. I, emaciated by this little circus, poked into my pillow, trying to stop coughing. And again, I was somewhere in nothingness.
In the evening, they gave me vaccine by the name ‘Moderna’ – the second and the last action. Especially in the evening so I could sleep. That’s what they told me. The porcelain little nurse, tiny angel, shining with her teeth, brought ‘privet’ from my little one. It meant she was alive and feeling better. She got the second vaccine also. Alive I wanted to express my delight with the words, worthy of the mystical resurrection of both of us, but began to cough and suffocate. And shoved the pump into my mouth as if for helpless baby.
I closed my eyes and saw the green field, covered with the bloody tulips (was Matisse himself, who came to help me?). The cough growled somewhere in my stomach. It was ready any moment to break away and to chop my worn-out lungs. I grabbed the pillow and tried to breathe not deeply.
At night it became worse. I was in delirium: alarmed squirrels rushed about all over our park. Hop! Hop! As round balls and maybe fleas. The narcissuses made bows to us with the little one and to everything that escaped into the world alive out of the Covid-19 pincers.
The little one babbled joyfully: “I want to sing on the highest note of the coloratura soprano.” I realized she is getting well and opened my eyes. Groans and stench did not frighten me. I whispered: “Soon we shall see each other.” And else I said: “I’ll leave for you my best metaphor if I die. That’s all I can do”. She laughed: “Yet we are just pittance if we lived and did not create anything”. I succeeded in falling asleep soothed.
x x x
Heat. We were discharged from the hospital on the same day as we asked. Our doggy Nanny was out of his mind from the joy and liberation from the dog’s nursery. He almost rammed my chest with his front paws. The superintendent brought our keys.
I moved the door of the apartment a little bit and suddenly, I felt terrible. The Covid-monster opened his embrace. I renounced. All the time it was here as a host. Even the windows were closed and draped. The capsule of horror. Here, hermetic, the power of the curse was maturing. The dog Nanny howled and moved backwards and pressed itself to my knee trembling with all its body, pursing tail, and ears.
The little one, still not understanding what’s going on, suddenly burst into tears and pulled me by my sleeve back to the elevator. Something revealed to her with her intuition about the danger. The elevator was not summoned by anybody from downstairs, so we had a chance to get into it and reach the ground floor, leaving the door of the apartment not closed.
To whom could we ever reveal that the spirit, terrorizing the whole planet, left us – such a miserable loot - homeless. But yes, we were marked by the curse.
The super stared at our quick-as-lightning return: “Did you lost anything?”
“Let’s run!” I yelled. The dog rushed behind us.
I knew only one place in the world, created as a refuge for the Miserable – our park. Here we rushed into its depth, into the heart of what was sacred. Here ripped roses, that found themselves in the heat, burned and rolled up their delicate petals and drooped with their heads.
Siesta. Fed squirrels dozed in the bushes. It is painted with all nuances of color green, this city forest from my dream. On another side of the river the skyscrapers lead discussions with the clouds. I and my little one simultaneously fell on our bench. We learned to keep silent after heart-wrenching shouts and wheezes in the hospital. Both of us have hoarse voices now.
Somewhere there at the end of an empty avenue – the way of the arrow of recovery – the familiar figure moves slowly. The one belonging to our tormentor and our enemy.
Suddenly she stands stock-still and, o boy, she waves to us with her hand. Without any hesitation, not discussing questions between the two of us, we are waving with our hands as the answer: “Go with peace!” We are free.
The end.
Faina Koss was born in Leningrad in early Forties (Blockage times). She graduated the University, participated in dissident movement and came to New York in early Eighties. She is the author of several books of prose published in USA and St. Petersburg. Lives in Downtown of New York.
