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 neighbour 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 f*****g 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 get it for the life of me…”

“What can’t you get?” 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 a thing. Do I just tell her to f**k off or what?”

“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.