The Ball. Volume#1. “Kuluangwa”. Michael Ouzikov

leaves. A transistor radio hung on a clothesline around his neck. The Uzbek was collecting the falling leaves with the rhythm of the song. The door, to Oleg’s surprise, was not locked, so he stepped out of the room. He found a pair of old friends sitting in battered armchairs, smoking, and playing a game of nard.

      «Hey, brother Oleshka is up!» sarcastically hissed one of the men, «And boy do you stink! Move your feet and go take a shower… you’ll find a razor and a toothbrush there. You didn’t forget how to brush your teeth, did you?» Both men erupted into loud laughter. Sometime later, Oleg came out of the shower refreshed.

      «Oh! Who are you? Look at him! It’s Wise Oleg the Second!» His «rescuers» had no limits to expressing their surprise. «And you said, „why do we need this piece of shit?“»

      «The boss will be happy this time!»

      Oleg was indeed unrecognizable. The formerly homeless man spent a good hour under the hard stream of water and wasted almost the entire bar of soap. He used up two disposable razors on his face and head so that not a single hair remained. Oleg was a creative person, «an artist in life» as he called himself. And it didn’t matter what he was doing. Under the running water in the shower, he imagined himself as a young Grigory Kotovsky, a Red Army commander. His reasoning on creativity was that the art of an «artist in life» – whether a singer, sculptor, composer, poet, it doesn’t matter who – cannot and should not be considered in isolation from their fate – or, calling fate by its real name, death. Take Pushkin. His poetry wouldn’t have been any worse had he not been killed in a duel, but it’d be unlikely that he would have been remember by anyone to this day, just as few people remember the verses of Zhukovsky, Kukolnik or Baratynsky.

      The consumer of art loves to «look to the last page» and find out that the author justly hanged or shot themselves. Or at least, they pranced around naked in a prison cell or an asylum. That means, all that an artist wrote, made, painted, or sang was the clear truth. People are pleased to know that Gogol had gone mad, that Tolstoy died in some obscure little railway station, that Venedikt Erofeev fairly died of throat cancer, and Oleg Grigoriev of cirrhosis of the liver. The genuine actor is obligated to die onstage. The singer must belt out the final note and collapse. Lennon or Cobain had to die young because that was the proper, real way to go. That’s how it’s supposed to be for the famous and truly talented. Unlike those well-known people, Oleg Pervushin himself knew how to make an exit in his own way. He was sure that he could «hop away like a bunny» from any vicious circle. Unnoticed. Disappearing like a shadow at noon.

      He was born in Kazakhstan in 1960, in the city formerly known as Tselinograd. He was an excellent student. Then he served in the army for two years the Arctic Division as a flight technician at a military airfield. After the army Oleg entered the Sverdlovsk Institute of Architecture. Many scoffed at him, «did they accept you without an exam, as a collective farmer from the country?» However, he didn’t finish the institute. Instead, he rode the rails across the whole country as a train steward and began to write short stories and diaries of his travels. Once these records fell into the hands of an up-and-coming publisher. The stories were published in the early nineties. Readers liked them, wanting more and more… Life, it seemed, started to move in the right direction. But then he vanished, quietly, like an Englishman.

      He left to the village Gostilovo in the Ryazan region, where he fathered a son from his wife, Katya, and where they all lived together, along with a dog named Bad and a cat named Marquis. Oleg would spend the evenings on the porch in satin shorts down to his knees, smoking a cigarette and staring at the sky. His wife eventually got tired of this life and left for Moscow, taking their son with her. She said to Oleg before leaving, «Other freaks can at least energetically promote themselves. Today’s «modern artists’ convert their idiocy into hard currency… thousands of dollars! And what about you? Your books have a laughable circulation, your paintings are not exhibited anywhere, and the peak of your fame was an appearance on the local news about government officials supporting culture in the villages. What culture? Goddamn you!» In conclusion, Oleg Anatolievich Pervushin could quite truthfully say, as in the words of one old Ukrainian man, «the world tried to catch me, but could not.»

      But then yesterday, everything changed, and the «world» finally caught him with its net, in a manner understood only by its own worldly sense. He remembered how an old army friend, a Kazakh as dry as an old tree, put him first on a light drug, and then on a heavy one, heroin. He never took any money from him, never. He just made him a pusher. He made him more and more addicted to the thin doted line in his arm. It’s like in an old joke: «even in a competition of assholes, you’d finish in second place!… but why only second, my dear?… because you are an asshole!» Here he was, Oleg Pervushin, an asshole-loser. Lived in some hole in the Ryazan woods – no money, no job, no glory, no recognition. If he made any trips to Moscow, it was only for pushing the shit. While he was lucky never to have been caught for that, he still found ways to get mixed up in bad stories while travelling. Usually it involved drinking in some strange company – cheerful, good-natured Oleg taking one shot after another, to health, to life… and next thing he was in a police van again. With his blue Kazakh passport, he was an easy target for the cops, whose eyes were trained to pick out individuals like him in any crowd. That was just another reason why Katya left him.

      While standing in the shower, Oleg was thinking how well everything was at the start of yesterday. He was on his way to see him son in Moscow when he began drinking with some «good people» in the third-class sleeping carriage. He recalled there were a lot of words and fraternization, tears in his fist, and the lapel of his jacket smelled of smoke. Twice he ran out to buy vodka from women at the stations the train made stops at. The last bottle was one too many – everyone collapsed. When the train arrived in Moscow in the morning, the conductor had to drag him out and push him onto the platform. Oleg walked straight to the Red Square. He didn’t have a penny nor his passport on him. Then – these «brothers» in their «crimson blazers,» a car, a mattress… what happened?

      After bathing and dressing, the «brothers» once again surveyed Pervushin from head to toe and took him to the second floor. They walked past massive and intricate Bali-style furniture, including several vases and a palatial heavy table with six chairs. When they stepped into a spacious office, the first thing Oleg saw was a large table occupied by souvenirs from exotic countries – various collectibles, masks, stands for ancient writing utensils. There he saw an antique telescope with shimmering copper sides and a vintage globe upheld by a bronze ring. Just like in the quarters of a military commander, a highly accurate map of the world hung above the table. Red pins dotted the map like bugs, likely indicating the owner’s travels.

      A short and stout man, completely bald and with absolutely no neck, sat at the table. His head grew directly from his shoulders. He was wearing a red Liverpool FC shirt. «My name is Aleksey Potapov, in case someone doesn’t know…» He patted his bald head and with a smirk looked at the similarly hairless Oleg, who suddenly realized that he had no desire to know the name of this man. He lowered his head and stared down at his feet in the Chinese-made sneakers. A chronometer ticked loudly on the table. Outside, someone was swearing and shouting. Probably the Uzbek gardener. The silence dragged on and Oleg looked up. A man named Aleksey Potapov was staring at him. Under the long glare of those unblinking eyes, Oleg felt a void and dread inside himself. A painful hangover started to take over as Oleg felt his joints stretch and back stiffen.

      «Since I don’t have much time, I will be brief with you… what’s your name again?» The bald man referred at a piece of paper under his hands, «Oleg. Oleg Pervushin. Especially because you don’t have any choice. I want to read you something.» He pulled out a copy of an old geography journal from his desk, leafed through, stopped at the right page, moved the magazine slightly as do people with impending farsightedness, and began to read. «There are more than 190 polar research stations in the Arctic and the Antarctic. They generally have enough fuel and food supplies for one or two people for a period of five or six years. For the USSR, these stations are