125 RUS. The Far East novel. Anna Efimenko

an ashtray. Of course, there is still a bathroom with a toilet. In the wardrobe on the top shelf, there is a thick warm blanket folded, so I can live through winter in the same city. If I have some money left, of course. If not, I’ll rent an apartment in Lighthouse, my favorite area in Vladivostok.

      Lighthouse or Egersheld: that’s where the bus routes end, a pile of steel rails clinging to the ground keeps empty trains that have nowhere else to go, except into the sea waves with all the weight of wagons to the bottom of the sea… Lighthouse is the place where Vladivostok ends, as well as Russia and the whole continent, there is nowhere to retreat.

      At the very beginning of this epic at the airport, I took the wrong suitcase, brought it to the hotel and only then opened it. I decided it to be too much to go back and give the suitcase to the owner (a female owner to be more specific). Moreover, being a downright scoundrel I poked my nose into other people’s luggage. I found a voice recorder with a patient’s sessions (obviously, the current owner of my suitcase) recorded by a psychologist. She says something inconsistently, then stretches words. Sometimes it’s interesting to listen. For example, I really like this passage:

      Vladivostok stretches its tentacles in all directions, except for the northern one. There, on the top, taiga presses it down with its tiger paw, the dominions of the sea monster ends in the north. Vladivostok avoids cedars and wild animals. The city is drawn by photos of Svetlanskaya street, traffic jams, traffic junctions and sometimes – by its militarism: brave sailors, a green submarine, forts… I want to leave it from my mind, even for a little while, but it doesn’t give me a chance. Having reached Lighthouse, to the very edge, when suddenly the southern arm of Vladivostok grabs me and drags me back. A giant Octopus with searchlight eyes, sparkling in the dark not with phosphorus, but with the electric lighting of houses and street lamps doesn’t give an objective judgment.

      The one who had once lost his Vladivostok, would face a sea monster. I left the city near Trepang Bay, and the blue trepang took away my luck. You do not even see a line of fortune on my palm. My hands are smooth and slippery, always cold, my skin is wrinkled on the pads of my fingers as if I do not get out of the water for days. I try to eat very little, and my parents take me to hospitals, they feed me through droppers – oh, hell, this is making my heard hurt, yes.

      Dagon, Kraken, anyone – a sea monster does not want me to tell the rest about it. Vladivostok lets out a thick fog when I want to make a picture of high hills. It splashes water in the underground passages. Once it even drowned my piano, and let someone prove me that this is just a coincidence. Yes, yes, if I tell anyone, they can just recall that film with Holly Hunter, where the piano drowned… And the heroine is dumb, she has a notebook with a pencil on her neck… Do you remember this movie?

      I might find a link where it doesn’t exist in principle. I try to stick to this version. On the other part, a lot of things annoys me. For example, any mention of the piano reminds me of my father, let him be three times cursed. And she keeps moaning and groaning about this piano in almost every record. And she constantly repeats that it is necessary to kill Mira.

      Mira as I could understand it – is either the older sister, or the governess, the mysterious one who destroy everyone and kills. And Mira must be controlled not to put an end to the bloody massacre but in order to – attention! – gain spiritual freedom.

      Everyone has his issues, and some of them are not inferior in size to Madagascar, probably this is exactly the case of my Anya (I got her name from the voice recordings too). But what might be of interest – she’s got my bag with my diaries and notebooks. Does she read them? Does she try to grasp what was being described as I listen to her narration and translate them into the canvases of manuscripts? Life can be very random sometimes: two strangers first rummaged in, sorry, each other’s underwear, and then dissect (“hurt”) each other’s brains, still not meeting and not even having a visual idea of his opponent.

      I have a bad feeling. And it will come true in the near future. Because otherwise, nobody will be curious. Because if you have managed to get into this mess with a claim to Haruki Murakami’s lamb bestsellers, be so kind as to get yourself in trouble, warm up the audience’s interest, don’t be sceptical – it’s so boring. Better solemnly summarize in the end that this Anya with her voice recorded is your only and the last love and you are off to find her experiencing a series of incredible adventures. The public will cry of amusement. Standing ovation. Booker, awards, Nobel Prize, translation into sixteen languages, screen version. In the end, we all have to match the story.

      I must say fiery speeches, put people’s hearts on fire. But alas, I can’t. Sometimes I wonder what the hell, I have a tongue in my mouth. Taste buds? The Creator believes that it is more important to distinguish the taste of food than to pick up the phone and say, “Hello.” It’s more important than calling for help. Shout, “Fire!” Sing a song.

      Pathetic.

      Anya tells how she was given a certain thing, subsequently lost. And she gives the exact coordinates of the place where the gift has been lost. A couple of days ago, by the will of fate, I found myself in this area, at a dacha place owened by my new acquaintances, and quite accidentally, I found this lost piece literally in 30 meters from the location indicated in the record. This is a harmonica. Covered with rust, it lies on the table in my hotel room, where I put down all this. Anya says she accidentally dropped the gift into a barrel of water and never saw it again.

      I picked up the harmonica and exhaled it with all my might. And there was a sound. My mouth has not uttered a single word in my life, but I can use other means to express myself.

      In my recent dreams Marina who is a beacon of far-abandoned land, comes to me and tells me that the bay is shallow at first glance, but in fact, oh, it is very deep. Cold water is down there. But that was not Marina, but the drowned daughter of Earl De Vries. Marina is translated as – marine. What primitive parallels I am enclosed and haunted. But these parallels must be developed, two mirrors should be placed opposite each other and be challenged with uncertainty: what can you see in the mirrored corridor? For example, Marina’s face, which I held thousands of times in my hands, kissing thousands of times – in my dream, it was white and swollen staying in the water for long, eaten by fish. Sea monsters will not give back his daughter to Cornelius De Vries, the place was not so shallow as everyone used to think.

      I was just very clumsy and gnawed by gluttonous fish when I thought about her. Probably, I would like to do many things and much would have happened, if I had at least a little faith in the favorable outcome. But there are words that you do not want to use because of their pretentiousness: Love, for example. The love exalted by poets, decomposed into components of tenderness and respect, love bloodsucking ― I did not believe in it and could not believe even for Marina’s precious and admiring glance. I never managed to do something good for her, I could not write with curls, red ink, «Marina, I love you.»

      And up to this day I am powerless, and the wind blowing from the sea takes my letters to her from the table to the floor. And I’m doomed to suffer, smoke in the middle of the night, blowing smoke out the window with a view of Amur Bay – but, fortunately, this time I’m alone. I will not disturb anyone, I will not break anyone’s peace.

      Chapter 6

      F – Far-away Settlement of Emar

      …Recalled the happy times being students, when we went hiking along the area, sang with a guitar beside the fire, fed mosquitoes and roasted on the sun like savages on the sand of Yemar Bay, which was called Yumora, unlike Shamora or Feldgauzen Bay…

(The city on Muraviev Amursky’s peninsulaby V.K.Karinberg)

      …Now, Christina lived looking forward for Valerka’s vacations. She was dreaming about summer. She dreamed how they would go for a holiday somewhere to Shamora,