A former teenager’s story. Ch. 25-28

CHAPTER 25

That night I came home late, when the wake had already been over, and there were just a few leftovers on the table. Gran Zoya made a bed for me in the lounge room. Even though my late grandfather had used to sleep on that lounge I didn’t mind it. Having had a couple of salmon sandwiches and a few spoonfuls of salad, I fell into bed.

Yet I couldn’t fall fast asleep for a while. The electronic clock on top of the cupboard was disturbing me – it showed past midnight. And the old three-way mirror covered with a black piece of cloth frightened me in the dark.

“Really, like a ghost” I thought involuntarily. I felt like taking off that damn cloth, and just so I did in a second. And, on the way back to bed, I didn’t forget to turn the clock backwards.

Having done it all, I fell asleep quite soon. Can’t remember what exactly I dreamed about, but some sudden fear woke me up in the middle of the night. I fancied I was not alone in the room; and, as I opened my eyes I got terrified even more – for I saw it was true.

In the middle of the room stood my grandfather and looked sternly at me.

At first I thought that he, as usual, was awake at night, wandering around the house. I had wanted to send him away; but then, it came home to me that it couldn’t be real because nine days ago he had passed into the next world. The creepy feeling of this sudden discovery overwhelmed and paralyzed me – if so, what the hell was he doing here?

“Go away… Begone!” I whispered, frozen with terror.

“Why are you so unkind, my lass? You’re being very rude to me…” he said pausing and gasping for breath as he had usually done of late, “Life is gonna be hard for you… Very hard…”

I curled up in the corner of my bed, pulling the blanket over my nose.

“How could you do this to me, darl… to your own grandfather… Dancing on my grave, having fun at my funeral…”

He took a step toward my bed and began to suffocate.

“Yes… But you’re not gonna make it… Neither with him nor anyone else… Not gonna happen… That’s it…”

I shut my eyes and tossed my head in horror.

“Begone! Go away from me!!! A-a-a-ah!”

The voice of Gran Zoya called out my name.

“What’s going on here? Why were you making that noise?”

I opened my eyes. Grandfather was already gone; instead of him there was Gran Zoya standing in her long nightgown, her plait disheveled.

“Grandfather has just been here” I mumbled still seized by fear.

“What nonsense!”

“It’s not nonsense, it’s true! He was standing there and talking to me just like you are now! I’m scared!!!”

Gran Zoya headed for the door.

“I guess, you’re having some mental issues. You need to get checked out by a psychiatrist. I’ll tell your father to show you to a specialist…”

The psychiatrist was just all I needed! I had already heard and read a lot of gruesome stories about mental hospital patients being fed horrible antipsychotics turning even the sanest person into a vegetable. It was definitely a lot more terrifying than any ghost in the world, and I jumped out of bed, ran after my grandmother and began to assure her heatedly that I didn’t need a psychiatrist, that I was perfectly well, and the grandfather coming to me had been a mere nightmare…

But it wasn’t just a nightmare. I know for sure – it wasn’t. Grandfather had really come – and it was highly likely that he had come through the very mirror I took the cloth off. He had come because he was angry with me – and he cursed me for the rest of my life.

He punished me. Not too severely – but forever.

CHAPTER 26

Several months had passed.

About the appearance of my late grandfather in the night I tried not to think or tell anyone. Even Sue despite her being my closest friend ever. Although, maybe I did tell her in passing; but we cared little of such things back those days, for we had different things to do, a lot more exciting.

Every weekend we partied at Alexis’ or had fun riding random buses to unknown destinations – as stowaways, of course. We would get off in the middle of nowhere and either roamed the streets picking up local guys we came across, or crashed at a nightclub – for the same purpose. Our flirting was rather childish – we hung out with guys just for fun, to have a good evening, and, surprisingly, without consequences such as invitations “to a cup of coffee” and the following. I never spent Saturday nights at home – I would stay the night  either at Sue’s or Alexis’ – or we would both crash at the place of some new ‘boyfriend’, not even fearing to be raped which Sue’s grandmother regularly warned us about.

“Oh girls, you’re going to get yourself into trouble someday” said her grandmother every time we turned up at her place past midnight.

Her prophecy got half-fulfilled eventually. The very next summer Sue got brutally molested in a ravine. After that she threw her whole life away, got addicted to drugs and alcohol. Her future was eventually driven into the ground; and so was mine.

But meanwhile, silly teenage schoolgirls as we were, we never thought of such things and we tried to live our life to the fullest. Luckily for us, our folks mostly looked the other way, and just grumbled sometimes which didn’t really stop us.

One fine night we had just came to Sue’s grandads’ place from a nightclub when a phone rang.

“Who is it so late?” I asked in surprise.

“Sasha! You are wanted on the phone!” her grandmother called out, knocking at the door and handing Sue a cordless phone.

I don’t know how but I guessed straight away WHO was calling. Sue changed her countenance at once and she ended the conversation very soon.

“Okay,  let’s meet up at the metro station tomorrow. Sorry, but I can’t talk to you right now. I’ll explain later.”

“Well?” said I peering closely into her eyes once she had hung up on him.

She got nervous.

“Let me explain… It’s not exactly what you’re thinking…”

“So it was Shurik, right?”

She nodded.

“How interesting… So it’s all behind my back…”

“No, it’s not!” she cried heatedly, “We just have a little phone talk sometimes, just like friends do.”

“Why doesn’t he call ME, then?”

Sue sighed a sigh.

“But he did, back then, on the New Year’s eve, at my request”

Oh yes, of course he did. He did me a favor, so to say. After me begging Sue all night to ask him to call me, mentioning my severe depression and my need of his attention. I really had had a depression – if my then obsession with Shurik or, rather, his complete indifference to my person could be called so.

And he called me. At her request. I can’t perfectly remember our conversation back then – there was some problem with the line, and Shurik was speaking very fast and quietly; and I was being too shy to interrupt him and keep saying “come again”.

“Don’t be upset… You’re gonna be all good… You’ll definitely meet someone special, I’m sure…”

“Will you call me again?” I blurted quite inaptly, when he had ran out of his scarce arguments and, not knowing what else to say, he fell silent.

“Will you?”

He paused.

“Why?”

“Oh well… Just…”

Shurik didn’t reply. And I took his silence as a “yes”.

“Or I will call you one of these days” I said.

“We’ll see,” he answered. “I gotta go now”

Of course, he never called me. At the Christmas holidays I got up enough courage and called him as I had promised. But Shurik was not in the mood to talk to me.

“Let me introduce you to a more talkative guy” he suggested, and, not even waiting for me to say yes, he passed the phone to some mate of his, who was present at his place that moment.

“Who are you?” I asked as I heard a strange male voice on the line.

“I am Nikitos”

“What the heck Nikitos?”

“A cute brunette guy”

“I don’t like brunettes” I muttered impolitely.

“That’s too bad”

So, long story short, my conversation with Nikitos didn’t last long either.

And now it turns out that while I was suffering from Shurik’s emotional neglect for myself – he was hitting on Sue, my best friend!

“Are you going on a date with him tomorrow? Right?”

Sue averted her eyes.

“Well, I made a promise…”

“I’m going with you!”

Sue turned away from me.

“How on Earth do you imagine this?”

“Oh well…” I paused for a while, “Let’s make it this way: you’ll tell him you are going out on a date, but it will be me instead of you…”

“What next!”

“Or, no, it’s better this way: you will go on a date, and I’ll follow you two… I’ll be watching you for a while, and then I’ll show up quite unexpectedly!”

She burst out laughing.

“He’ll recognize you a lot earlier, on the train!”

“I’ll be watching you from the next car, wearing sunglasses lest he should not recognize me!”

“You’ll look even more suspicious that way”

“Why?”

“Come on, use your head!” she said angrily,  “Wearing sunglasses. In the subway. In winter!”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You are an idiot”

I took offense and rolled to the wall.

“Then you’re not going anywhere” I muttered in the pillow.

“You can’t forbid me -”

“You choose. Him or myself. If you go, you’re no longer my friend”.

Sue mused.

“Alright. I’ll call him and cancel the date”.

“Good idea” I replied coldly.

 

CHAPTER 27

That night I couldn’t get a wink of sleep.

I might have blamed it on being in a strange place – but that circumstance had never really affected my sleep quality. If there was one thing you could say about me it’s that young me could sleep through absolutely anything. No matter where I slept, at home or other people’s place, in a camp or on a train – I was such a heavy sleeper that even a hurricane wouldn’t wake me up. If to sum up all the beds, cots and bunks I ever hit and stack them on top of one another, they will probably make a tower from the Earth up to the moon.

But that night I couldn’t sleep at all. I lay on my back and stared at the half-covered window waiting for the dawn. But the dawn wouldn’t come for it was winter, and for want of anything better to do I examined in the dark the shabby interior of the narrow pantry-like bedroom piled up with cardboard boxes and all sorts of rubbish just like Sue’s hut in the country.

Gosh, where on Earth do the poor take such a lot of junk from?

Meanwhile, the morning had already come despite the outside still staying pitch-dark. I made this conclusion because the upstairs neighbor stamped his bare feet on the ceiling over our heads, cleared loudly and coarsely his throat – probably after heavy drinking – and turned on music, “The Bricks”:

“If you have a… bad hangover…

Cursing such a… dreary morning…”

Oh yeah. Such a dreary morning as on that Sunday I had never experienced even on working Mondays.

Finally, the darkness outside the window began slowly dispersing, and the apartment building opposite began taking shape. And I, not waiting any longer, woke Sue up immediately.

“Okay, buddy, call Shurik now and cancel it.”

“At this hour? Are you **** nuts?” she muttered in annoyance, rubbing her eyes, “He might be still asleep!”

“Doesn’t matter – you call him right now. We’ve wasted a lot of time anyway.”

Cursing under her breath Sue bent from her bed over the floor where lay the cordless phone, and dialed the seven simple figures.

“Put on the loudspeaker”.

“Why?” she said.

“Just do it”.

Shurik picked up after four beeps, and his voice sounded a bit husky. Evidently, we had woken him up.

“What’s up?” he asked in his husky voice, having exchanged greetings with Sue.

“You know, I won’t probably be able to see you tonight” she said, “I’ve got a problem…”

“A problem? At eight-thirty a.m.?”

“Yes. A problem. At eight-thirty a.m.”

“Oh, I see,” replied Shurik after a pause, “I guess I know what you are talking about. I actually know the name of this problem. I just can’t understand…”

“What can’t you understand?” asked Sue.

“Why on Earth does she think she’s entitled to make decisions for you and me… for us? We are not committed to give in to her whims, are we? After all, it’s not my fault, that she…”

“…Loves you?” she finished his sentence.

Shurik snorted.

“Come on, that’s childish…”

“So you go explain it to her,” said Sue.

“Explain it to her, how? She doesn’t seem to understand. Do I just tell her to fuck off?”

“No, that’s too rude…”

“Rude? Well, I’m out of ways to convey it to her, since she’s such a dunce.”

To say how painful it was for me to hear it would be an understatement. What sense does it make to describe the feelings of a miserable human being, a lovesick girl who got rejected in such a rude way! But I was just sitting there in silence and listening to his abrupt, crushing, ruthless phrases.

“So look. I’m not calling her. And you tell her not to call me either. Because I’m really getting sick of it.”

Sue ended the conversation and hung up the receiver.

“Well, you heard him”.

“Yes, I heard him” I uttered in some unemotional, paper-like voice, sitting numb and motionless.

“So what now?”

“Nothing. I’m going home”.

“Going home, like that?”

“Like what?” I repeated numbly, staring into space.

Sue looked closely in my eyes.

“Are you sure you won’t do anything to yourself?”

“Yes, I’m sure”

But I didn’t go home. That day I roamed around the dusk winter streets and howled like a wounded wolf, not even wiping tears from my wet, chapped face. The thought of “doing something to myself” did cross my mind, though, but my surviving instinct got the better of me. So I was just wandering around until dark with my coat unfastened like a drunken homeless woman, and wept, wept bitterly – not just because Shurik had blown me off (it was quite expectable) – but because I felt damn sorry for my own self, such a miserable sad sack.

CHAPTER 28

A year had gone by.

The wound struck into my heart by Shurik had gotten healed bit by bit. Another took his place… The ‘another one’ appears in another story, “Not meant to be” its name is. So I’m not going to retell it here. I will only mention that things didn’t work out with that guy either, despite all my efforts. Apparently, my grandfather’s curse was still hanging over me like the sword of Damocles.

It was the very summer Sue had got raped in the ravine. A thing like that can break down any teenage girl. Just so it did to my best friend, and along with that our friendship went to hell in a handbag, too.

I was spending my summer vacation at Gran Zoya’s villa. My relationship with her had already been hopelessly ruined by then. Both of us – Grandmother and I – hated each other, and we both had our reasons for that. Grandmother couldn’t forgive me for grandad’s death, still blaming it on me, and I hated her for parting me from my crush – the guy I thought I was in love with.

Can’t remember what I had fought about with Gran Zoya this time, but I left home again. And I came to Sue’s. But she, sitting crouched on her iron bed and embracing her knees, didn’t even turn her head.

“You had better go home” uttered Sue not looking at me.

“I have nowhere to go. I’ve left home…”

“Well, what can I do?”

I was shocked. Sue had never, ever been so indifferent and cruel to me like that. Tears welled up in my eyes, and, without saying a word, I turned round to leave.

“Alright, you can stay,” she said, “We’ll play some chess”

I suppressed my bitterness, gulped back my tears and, returning back, sat down on the bed beside her.

Sue had always used to beat me at chess and checkers. Not only had she been more attractive and successful than me, but smarter also. But this time she wouldn’t even try to win the game. Sticking her earphones in and turning her player on full blast she swayed and dissolved in the music that I could hear very distinctly even through her earphones.

You’re gonna wake up one wonderful morning
And see your happiness round the corner,
And nothing will matter when you have it coming
One wonderful morning, one wonderful morning.
You’ll fall in love – you’ll be happy together.
Your happiness’ll find you – once and forever.
And nothing will matter when you have it coming
One wonderful morning, one wonderful morning.

I couldn’t stand this song, calling it disdainfully “crappy pop”. Every time I had heard it on the radio I changed the radio station. But this time something happened to us two. Like some kind of electric shock the song struck her, then me, then my eyes filled up with water… Sue squeezed her eyes shut and suddenly broke out in tears.

“You’ll fall in love, you’ll be happy together” she sang through convulsive sobs, “Your happiness’ll find you… once and fore-ever!..”

The chess fell bump down off the board. I wept, Sue wept – we both cried bitterly, choking on our tears. We cried over our downtrodden, miserable youth. We wept because we already knew that we both were doomed. We knew that for both of us there was neither “happiness” nor “love once and forever” which this sappy, deceitful song teased us with; that nothing of what it sang about was ever going to happen to any of us. Instead, she was going to face the wretched death from liver cirrhosis, and I – to end up my life in a shabby single hole in the middle of nowhere, absolutely lonely, forlorn and forgotten by everyone.