Sergei - The Goose Fritz

www.newvesselpress.com

First published in Russian in 2018 as Gus Frits

Copyright 2018 Sergei Lebedev

Translation Copyright 2019 Antonina W. Bouis

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lebedev, Sergei

[Gus Frits, English]

The Goose Fritz/ Sergei Lebedev; translation by Antonina W. Bouis.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-939931-64-1

Library of Congress Control Number 2018963467

I. RussiaFiction

He drove bulls, dogs, and white-fleeced sheep, tied together. Here the massacre began; some he struck in the head, others in the throat, others he chopped in half with his sword; some he tortured in fettershe must have seen men in them and not mute beasts.

Ajax, Sophocles

A sound.

The sound of water gushing into the rain barrel outside the house.

The overturned geyser pounds water to the very bottom. The small carp caught yesterday, half the size of your palm, swim back and forth, crazed. Swirling in the barrel, the pollen-yellow foam, the pink apple blossoms, last years brown leaves and dried apples with yellow spots of rot that had all washed through the rain spout; the spider web with bugs caught in its spiral is swirling, toothere, the flash of mica in the broken wing of a dragonfly!

The storm tears down and carries off everything that has faded and died, as well as everything that was just born and has not yet grown strong or well fastened: the remains of the past and the fruits of the future.

In the morning, when the storm has passed, the beaten grass around the barrel reveals the overflow of the night: the shriveling flakes of foam, the blossoms washed to fatal translucency. The carp will float white belly up, death depriving them of the only dignity of creaturesbeing properly positioned in space.

And you will stand there, a small child, your cheek still remembering the pillows warmth. And you will pity no one and no thing: not the fish, not the blossoms, not the fruits, as if youve seen it all dozens of times, in different places and at different times; as if of earths many sounds you love only one.

The sound of water gushing into the rain barrel.

***

K irill took another sip of wine, lit a cigarette, closed the file with the text hed started writing, and set aside his laptop.

Now that there was no one in the house, he could smoke inside. Theres the corner where he slept as a child. But theyd moved the couch. And the rain was absent now. But the season was the sameearly June.

Why had he started the text that way, with his memory of the storm?

In the distance, the commuter train started out of the stationprobably the last one to Moscow ... Until morning ... The train left, which meant the crossing would be closed.

Kirill thought about how he had been lined up at that crossing six hours ago.

The wind had cooled the dew on the grass and caused the dewdrops on hot hoods of cars to swell. To the lefthouses behind impenetrable fences, silent, unlit. To the righta small river in a hollow, looping through stands of reeds, surrounded by meadows. It was from those meadows, where the cattle were not yet pasturedthe marshy soil had not dried out from springthat the heavy fog rolled in, creating deceptive rainbows in the headlight reflections.

The wind stopped. The fog dampened the sounds. Suddenly from within the fog, illuminating its floating veils, came a blurred glow, turning into a bright yellow moving ball of light. All the drivers turned. Out of the gloom there came something as mystically ominous as a halo around the sun, a sign of coming events so horrible that they could extract an inarticulate symbol from mute matter.

An instant later, the terrible sensation vanished. Braking in the heavy fog, the Moscow train quietly rolled up to the crossing; its headlight shone brightly.

A ball of light. It set off a chain of associations that led Kirill to the night of rain.

A ball of light. The image was tied to Grandmother Lina. Kirill closed his eyes, trying to recall that stormy night long ago.

He was a child again, he heard the announcement through the hiss of interference and the singsong moans of radio waves: Forecasting a strong storm in the Moscow region, with winds gusting to eighty kilometers per hour.

That storm had been gathering for over a week, its heat oppressive and enervating. Grandmother Linas joints ached, but she went out and set supports under the fruit-laden apple trees. It was a good harvest year, she said, she didnt remember that many apples ever, except right before the war, in June, forty-one.

And on the seventh day, when it seemed that the storm would dissipate, exhausting itself in a protracted warm-up, or bypass them, thundering beyond the horizon, the radio said in the morning: Forecasting a strong storm in the Moscow region, with winds gusting to eighty kilometers per hour.

Kirill did not believe the forecast: the sky was pale, the grass and branches lifeless; even the water seemed to hunker down, weakened by the heat, and the forest brook moved listlessly.

After noon a blue-gray wall of clouds appeared in the distance. Seeing it, Grandmother Lina stopped eatingan unheard-of event, for she believed in finishing every task, movement, gesture, and phraseand hurried into the garden to hide tools and things, telling Kirill to shut the windows tight, every single latch.

Something happened with her that Kirill had never seen. It was as if ghosts of terrible, unimaginable catastrophes, wars, fires, floods, were nipping at her heels. His grandmother didnt rush around pointlessly, she picked things up with tight, precise movements, and the trajectories of her steps followed the shortest, most economical path, as if they had been calculated and rehearsed.

She was taking her own possessions out of harms waythe old pup tent she used to carry hay, the bench they used when picking gooseberries. A stray cat was rubbing itself against the porch, but she paid no attention to itthe invisible dome of her concern covered only people and peoples things.

Kirill ran through the rooms, checking the window latches; he came out on the porch, annoyed by Grandmothers anxious precautionsit was just rain, what was there to be afraid of?

Then they secured the greenhouse beds. Kirill brought smooth stones to hold down the plastic, and their weight gradually made him internalize the power of the coming storm; when the cucumbers and tomatoes were covered tight, he straightened up and turned to lookand froze.

The separate mass of clouds coming from the north was gone. The sky itself was changing color and materiality, as if a fatal and fast-moving gangrene were devouring the heavens.

A violet tongue lashed out, as if from a snakes mouth, and licked something beyond the forest.

There was a deafening thunderclap.

The slowly rotating weathervane made from aluminum at the military aviation factorya gift from grandfathers army friendssuddenly whined, its propeller humming and turning into a bright shimmering disk.