And I Threw the Coin

                TATYANA MARTIROSYAN (SELF-TRANSLATION)
 

“And when I see something like that, I want to kill both a chauffeur and a woman: him because he demands a fare from her, and her because she asks for compensation for her killed son… Though I do understand how dreadful her life is… And the chauffeur is right, too… being actually a freshly-made-businessman.”
Hayk was speaking with pauses, as if provoking me to object. But I did not feel like arguing. I understood him. This was a typical piece of today’s transport situation, and listening to Hayk, I saw, on my inner screen, the furious chauffeur and the old woman uttering words of rage and pain, a certificate on her son killed at Karabakh war in shaking hands.
“… and she got a stray bullet…”
“Who?”
“Have you listening to me? My dog. I had a dog before the war. And she tagged after me. She loved me so much that she could not live without me. She was running after the lorry and whining. And I took her with me. And she got killed with a stray bullet… She would have died anyway...”
Good Lord, he is suffering from guilt about a dog!
She could not live without him and got a bullet for that.
I wonder what it’s like to get a bullet while enjoying the company of the adored owner and being sure that everything must be okay once he’s around.
Where was that bullet going? What does a stray bullet mean in the context of the principle of determinacy?
“… and there is nobody to talk to. Nobody cares about what one is suffering. Nor even parents. All they want to know is that I am safe and sound… Well, I understand. But my best friend was killed right in front of my eyes; died within a few minutes. After that, I started seeing things differently… Once I stopped dead in the middle of a battle, at its height. I was standing there like an idiot thinking, “What the hell am I doing here? What’s all this for?”
“There will always be wars.”
“Oh no!”
“You’re confused to have heard such an assertion from a woman, aren’t you? But my criteria and the threshold of sensitivity also changed… after all that. And the sense of reality disappeared somewhere. Whether all that really happened to me? Two years ago we were happy together. Why do I feel nothing but compassion now?
As to the all-world-peace… well, to establish that peace, we need either to change the nature of human beings or to impose certain conditions upon them. In both cases it would no longer be human life but something different. Life dies once a scheme, however excellent, is put on it.”
“Well, if you really think so, it’s awful.”
    “You know what? I’d like to have been at war.”
“What for?”
“May be if I were frightened of death, I would feel alive.” 
“What a rot! There is no need for you to go there. You just can’t imagine…”
“Yes, I can. You’re telling me stories, and I imagine them. But I want to see it myself. Though, perhaps I am lying. To be honest, I want to find out if I get frightened.”
“You know what, I went to war because… no, of course, it was patriotism and all that, but it was also for I needed to convince myself that I was not a coward.”
Hayk volunteered for the army, though he could have stayed at home.
Does it deserve respect?
Despite all the evil intrinsic to any war, I’d unconditionally say yes. I respect the pacifists, I also don’t condemn those who had fled abroad, but I admire volunteers. There’s nothing to be done, this is the ancient feminine instinct—attraction to a tough guy. However…
I remembered another volunteer, just a kid. He was nineteen, he left university and went to war; a mutual friend brought him to me on his first leave. The guy had that absolutely estranged, almost mad look. He never managed to focus his glance at the face of his interlocutor or even to look straight at something in front of him. His eyes as if were always falling somewhere. And he kept trying to tell something, but just repeated, “It’s all wrong, Ando, it’s all wrong!”
Sure, it’s all wrong when the best commanders are being shot in the back. It’s all wrong when a tank moves across the minefield with a virtuosity of a ballerina doing fouett; turns, then stops in front of our fortifications, and a Russian officer shouts coolly, “Hey you, guys, seen how I’ve passed through? We’ve got all of your maps! So, leave in good time while you’re whole. Today you’re expected to be retreating.” And, certainly, it’s all wrong when looters of all ranks are prospering.
Looters are the real winners in all the battles in the world.
The guy got killed by a stray bullet as soon as he returned back to the front.
I wonder if he still thinks that it’s all wrong.
  Hayk does not look like a child. He’s twenty five. He has cold, hard stare. Against the light, his brown eyes shine with yellow tigerish glitter. Nose is broken, almost flattened; apparently, it’s a payment for the black belt. He looks very handsome in his black-and-green uniform. And he has none of the complexes our nation is destined to.
Discouraged by my silence, Hayk, too, stopped talking. I took advantage of the pause, grabbed my coat, and approached the mirror.
And immediately a black-and-green shadow arose behind me.
“I can’t resist anymore”, he whispered.
A pair of very familiar strong hands squeezed my shoulders. A pair of golden brown eyes looked at me with very familiar self-confidence. However, that tigerish look did not captivate me like it used to; strangely enough, it annoyed me. 
“Stop it!”
“Why?”
“Leave me alone!”
“Oh, what a tone!”
He released me, stepped aside, smirked.
“Now, explain why this tone?” he smirked again.
“Well, sorry for the tone, but…”
“Don’t! I get it.”
“What?”
“I shouldn’t have left two years ago when we quarreled and you kicked me out… And today I came here like a bolt from the blue… after two years… right?”
“No.”
“Okay. Now, just give me a straight answer to a straight question. Do you still have feelings for me?”
Heaven knows, I dreaded that question. How to say no to a man who faces a risk every day?
And what on Earth made him to have found me now? Was it a sudden burst of recollection? Or despair of an intellect trapped in the body which they beat at trainings every day?
And what if I said yes? What if a miracle happened? What if a slumbering fire turned into a joyful and violent flame of passion?
Somewhere nearby, the arrows clinked in the quiver of the light-winged eternal child. I felt the wind hitting my face. His motorcycle, how we raced all over the town back then!
“How’s the motorcycle?”
“What?”
“Your bike, I loved it so much…”
“It’s gone. I sold it. I had to.”
“Sold? Sold the bike? How could you?”
“I had an accident. I told you, didn’t I?”
Shit! He sold the bike! It was then that I felt pain. I felt nothing when he mentioned his wound, I didn’t remember any accident, but I did feel sorry for the motorcycle. A rather terrible inversion of feelings, isn’t it? I felt ashamed.
I looked at Hayk. He understood.
“Relax, you don’t owe me anything.”
Well, he’s a psychologist anyway, at least, according to a diploma.
“You’re not obliged to have any feelings for me.”
“One feeling I certainly have: it’s warm, bright, brotherly… no—sisterly…”   
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Hum!”
The golden tiger’s skin sparkled behind the black trunks of trees. He disappeared leaving broken branches, and the thickets closed as the sound of crackling twigs faded away.
“Well, I like being with you. Even if nothing is likely to be returned… I want you, but I’ll wait until you want me. It’s up to you.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Hum!”
“Oh, what a grimace!”
“Take it easy, I just need to piss.”
I burst into laughter.
“Splendid! I do appreciate sincerity.”
“But I don’t like sincere women. Women are sincere only when they want to inflict pain.”
I squeezed his hand, felt his returned squeeze, stood on my tiptoes, touched his face slightly.
Slightly. Very slightly. Too slightly.
That’s the reason: the magic had gone. The light-winged young god had thrown away his bow and arrows and gone to sleep.
I stepped aside.
“Tell me, why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
He froze for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.
“Ah, I have no idea.”
“Sounds strange, especially for a psychologist.”
“My mode of life just does not allow it.”
“No serious relationship—that’s what it means—nothing deep, high or even broad; the only thing allowed is to glide over the surface. And what is always floating on the surface? Just guess.
“Fie! I’ve never expected you to say a thing like that.”
“Hum! Well, so, let put it this way: blinding golden specks of light are floating here, on the surface. At night they’ll turn silver.”   
“I wonder if it’s possible to glide ‘over the high’.”
“Yeah, I’d call it to soar.”
“And ‘over the depth’?”
“Yeah, if you drown.”
“If you drown and stick to the bottom …”
“You’ll have been lying there for a year, then for two, then…”
“Then some son of a bitch comes and demands something...”
“Not ‘something’ but fragrant freshly-opened roses.”
“Roses… Fair and fresh were the roses…”
“A free retelling of Turgenev’s poem?”
“No. A guy from my unit… Once they delivered us to… to some town. And it happened to be his native town. And he said, ‘I wish I could see home!’ So, we went. The building was destroyed, as it might be expected, to the ground. But the garden survived. And the roses, they were freshly-opened, as you said, they were blossoming. He then fell to his knees and cried. Then we picked a huge bunch of those roses and brought it to his mother on our return. And she said right away, ‘They’re from our garden. How have you managed to get them?’ She recognized them by smell.” 
“You, bastard! You always turn it so that I feel guilty.”
“You, silly little thing! Why should you feel guilty? Quite opposite, it’s me who should ask for your forgiveness.”
“What for?”
“For I’ve been a fool.”
“And now everything depends on me, doesn’t it? Pity, coins are out of circulation, otherwise, I’d bet on heads or tails.”
“Yeah, this is a severe drawback of our financial system. When I am elected President…”
“In eight years. Are you willing to wait for my decision that long?”
“Why eight?”
“Two years ago you said ten.”
“You don't say so! Time’s flying.”
“Go get ready with your election speech.”
“It’s ready—‘Come to me!’ Well, my precious electorate, are you pro?”
“First set forth your program for at least the nearest six months.”
“Well, I’m to fly a mission next week. Possibly, won’t come back.
“Oh my god!”
Horror-pity-admiration-guilt… Once again that thrilling mixture has seethed and foamed burning me with its hot splashes.
Hell, no! Non bis in idem.
“I hear a flourish of trumpets; I see young virgins crowning the hero… And you’ve come to me, keeping this in mind! After two years… Hell, you’ve even given me your unit phone number… What for? I would call you up some day just to hear that you’d got killed. Bastard!”
“No, no. It’s all wrong. You got me wrong. I wasn’t going to say any of that. I just wanted to see you. It was nostalgia for those times.” 
“Well, forgive me. Forgive me for all I’ve done.”
“Sounds like farewell.”
“Do you know what the most important thing in life is?”
“No. But I bet, whatever you said, I’d find something more important.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Well?”
“It’s the sense of reality. Now tell me something you consider real. If anything stops to exist, then it’s not real. If a living thing can be killed, if a feeling fades, if an idea can be profaned, then none is real. A man goes to war for freedom, fatherland, faith and finds a tissue of lies...”   
“But this is the law: life creates itself through death.”
“But I… I just don’t like it!”
“Well, then forgive me for all I’ve done.”


I watched him disappear. The black-and-green jacket was swaying on the strong, broad shoulders.
But back then he was wearing a black leather jacket. And when we were riding his bike, I used to press my cheek to the cool leather to escape the wind. Sometimes I stretched my arms like wings and he shouted, “Hold tight!”
Three days later I dialed the unit number. A nasty bored voice of the orderly answered that Hayk was absent.
The green leaf, the only one among his yellowed brothers, tore off and fell down, on the black wet concrete.
“And when is he expected to come back?”
“Not for today. His wife called this morning, their child had fallen ill… Are you there, lady?”
When the grey fog in front of my eyes lifted, I flung the window open, tore the sheet of paper where he’d scribbled the phone number in small pieces and poured them onto the cupped hands of the autumn wind. I hesitated a moment, and then tore the coin he’d once presented me for good luck away from its chain.
The wind failed to hold the coin. With a clink, it hit the ground right at the feet of a beggar-girl. She looked up. I curved my lips in an attempt to smile. The girl murmured something, picked up the coin, squeezed it tightly, and moved on.