Linoleum

Linoleum

Sometimes it seems to me that this winter will never end. The blame cannot be placed on snow or bone-shattering cold; on the contrary, it is their absence that makes the season seem infinite.
I look out through the train's windows, only briefly resting my gaze on the white snow-islands. The majority of the ground's surface is covered by grey-brown polenta. They promised a decline in temperature by the evening. Then the slush will freeze up a bit, only to melt again tomorrow. Such a feeling of transition between solid and liquid slush.
I ride with two bags and a rucksack. I am the only passenger in this car. I have a long way to go, till the last stop. I gape at the window again, for lack of any imagination to think of a better pastime. Outside, the white snow-islands still float by in the evening light, except, they are no longer white but light purple. And then I see HER!
Heavens! How old my memories are!
She walks along the tracks, observing and checking something. She has on the same old warm jacket as she wore that day. Over the jacket is thrown a uniform vest, orange with a grey horizontal stripe.
A long, long time ago, I slipped on some freshly washed linoleum in her kitchen, and, falling, cut my eyebrow on the corner of a stool. She took out an emergency kit - a small silver-colored case -, and I noticed on it the emblem that conductors wear on their vests - two crossed hammers and a whistle. That was when I first learned of her profession.
That means she still works on the railroad. So how many years had it been?
I knock on the window, then open it and shout. She turns in the direction of the sound and sees me. A sad smile appears on her lovely face. I lose my mind when she smiles. Only she can smile like that. I see that she is glad to see me. O, and how happy am I!
Of course, such an encounter is almost completely incredible and probably even impossible. If I were sober, I would not believe my eyes. But I am drunk on happiness. In moments like these, I do not think. I simply drown in her sun-gaze, in her sad and beautiful smile, and there is then nothing more.
The train begins to slow down before the station. She gestures to indicate that she will be awaiting me on the street by the vegetable market (our favourite place for our past meetings), and suggests that I leave the train. I grab for my bags...
Her gestures were always precise and flawless. If there was ever any ambiguity in them, it was that which she chose to implement. Watching her, one could literally observe the world silently and effortlessly organizing itself onto sunlit shelves. The most elementary concepts - love, protest, agreement, mood, common daily actions, wishes, feelings - fit into a gesture or two and do not need to be voiced. More complex, multifaceted ideas - irony, sarcasm, uncertain situations, mixed feelings, cause-and-effect paradigms - are usually marked by one concise, catchy word. And finally, unfurled descriptions of occurrences, explanations of phenomena or the passing of an informational bouquet (one still has to earn the bouquet, aha), painted with the rainbow of her shining person, her philosophies and her world, which is much wider and deeper than the world of word-building-blocks and atom-orbs (units of material), - easily happen by means of one, sometimes two or three short sentences. Her words whipped, nailed and stamped like the blow of a slipper stamps a cockroach into a wall. Anyone who dared argue with her was a pitiful sight.
So, I grab for my bags. The doors open, and I move towards the exit with  the bags. God d****t, my backpack is not with me! There it is, under the seat, how could I forget about it!
I rush back; I lug the backpack towards the doors. Then my foot slips on the linoleum of the train floor; I lose balance and drop my bag. I bend to pick it up. My second foot betrays me and slips. I fall and jump up, hugging all my bags to me at once.
But the doors are already ruthlessly closing.
Damnation!
Everything falls from my hands. I stand, murdered, destroyed, squashed. The train already rushes on amid the idiotic purple snow-fungus. Damnation!!!
We had it planned; she's waiting for me down there! It does not happen this way; it cannot be this way! How long will she wait for me? What do I do?
I shout in the empty car. I howl, I sob, I jabber. This is a catastrophe, a tragedy! Ridiculous, funny. Owwww-oooowww!!... I sob, I howl, I beat these ridiculous, funny walls.
Where am I headed, why? Why do I live, exist? Who am I?!
I drag myself somewhere, without the bags. I wander in the darkening air, amid the little black drifts. The question of self-identification falls away; my minds are tangled; they are not there.
I walk through some door and descend into a basement-space, down a flight of filthy stairs, coated with peeling linoleum. Does it matter?.. I sit on some chair; computers and people are around me (it seems I have wandered into an Internet-cafe). Here I certainly do not have to think.
To the left of me is a queue before a small dirty window. Beneath the ceiling hangs a foggy clock, showing some time. I stand in the queue and soon am before the window.
"How may I help you?" - a ratty, androgenous creature measures me with a glance, leaking lazy hatred.
I've forgotten where I am, and I don't care. The glance wants me to speak.
"I don't know or want to know what you're doing here; what they're doing here [a movement of the head to the side] and who you all are. But I assert straight away, so as to avoid any intermisinterpretation: I do not need anything from you. You can think of me as a stereo, if you need some sound-background. But you cannot think of me as a tableau or a geometry book. Inside me is a void, like in that clock. And what about you? What is in you? Have you ever looked inside yourself?"
The ratty one's glance becomes wooden.
"When I was a child, I really liked listening to the radio," I say into the window. "I don't remember much, of course, but I remember this exactly: in the evenings I could hear the sounds of sirens; not sounds so much, more... I don't know... a pressure of sorts. I went into a basement... and there - people, exactly like me... thousands, hundreds of thousands... just like now... almost. The scariest thing was that after the bombings it was always... empty, I guess... for some time. Like now... And so. When they turned on the televisoin, I saw the General Secretary reading off a sheet. Every time. You don't know how that is... YOU DON'T KNOW!!!"
The last words were whispered. But even before them, the "cashier"(?) presses some button. Emptiness, alien absence. What more can I say? I cannot and don't want to say anything; I did not say anything and I won't.
I go up the stairs, but there, on the spit-speckled threshold, I am already awaited.
"Captain Morozov."
"Sergeant Kozlov."
The captain resembles Lukashenko.
"Have a good game?"
I look at "Lukashenko's" moustache. Nothing actually exists; everything is drawn on the vulgar, dirty linoleum.
"I didn't... play."
The linoleum freezes for a moment.
"Let's talk," - says the captain with sudden kindness, gesturing to me to move away from the entance, since I am not allowing people to use it.
We leave the threshold.
"You're not embarrassed?"
"I'm embarrassed," - I agree.
"She's still waiting for you."
"Still," - adds the sergeant.
The linoleum can be broken. But what does one do if there is emptiness beyond it too?
"Really?"
"Really."
Then who am I? I am also drawn. Break?
Now I know how easy it is to commit suicide. Too easy. When the linoleum is torn, and beyond it - a void... You don't know, you don't know anything...