The Negative Writer

Do you play soccer on Wednesdays? We do. In the yard of a friend of ours. And later, in the evening, after the game, I was going home by subway. I was sitting on the edge of a three-seat bench in an empty car, when this guy came in. He sat down on my bench — as if there weren’t other seats in the car! But he sat one seat away, so formally it was proper.

The guy started asking questions: “Who are you? What do you do? Where are you coming from? Why so late?” My answers didn’t commit me to anything. Who am I? That’s complicated. It seemed to me I had tried myself in all sorts of things.

“I’m a writer,” I decided.
“Well, you do realize that as a writer, you’re zero,” said the guy.

Here’s what the words mean:
Mene — God has numbered your kingdom and finished it;
Tekel — you are weighed on the scales and found very light;
Peres — your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

But the guy was wrong. I’m not zero — I’m worse, negative. My Martians spent huge effort preparing me for literary work. In sixth grade, we had a new subject — Aesthetics and Art History. When graduation and entrance exams loomed, my parents hired a private tutor. And not just anyone — a Mayakovsky scholar, Oleg Petrovich Smola.
At university, my senior paper was on Jean-Paul Sartre, and my report was on the Gothic novel. With training like that, I should be able to write stories easily, at the snap of a finger.

Did you write letters — proper, typed ones? We did. If something interesting happened — a birthday party, a disco, a movie — we’d analyze who behaved how, and plan the next call, meeting, or outing. Everything stayed in our letters, typed in three copies with carbon paper: one mailed, one kept at home, and one in case the others were lost. Only, I never wrote anything worthwhile — no stories, no novels, no poems.

“Can I re-choose? I’m an artist.”
What did my Martians do? They introduced me to a military artist, Alexey Evstegneev. And, to round things out — if I was also a musician — to the keyboardist of the band Hermitage, Alexander Grishin.
We went to the sauna. The artist showed me portraits of girls, carefully explaining which one aroused passion, which — desire, and why.
And the musician showed how he played on an ordinary piano.
Not long before, we had gone to the Bolshoi Theater to see Prince Igor. In the finale, a huge bell descends — but it sounds light, like a small bell. And here, just a piano — yet we heard a real Bell. Fantastic!

But music isn’t mine, despite a year of lessons by phone.
As for painting, I limited myself to one oil illustration for the nineteenth chapter of The Book of Judges, though I had canvases and paints.
In sculpture, though, my greatest work was The Snow Woman.
If you remember what your girlfriend looks like, your hands sculpt her from snow by themselves. She couldn’t stand alone, but you could lean her against a tree. That’s what I did. She stood there for a week by the ski trail, where many skiers passed. Then some vandal destroyed her.
Apparently, as an artist, I’m zero too.

The guy boasted he was studying at MGIMO, the most prestigious university.
“Then I’m a translator too.”
I had studied with a tutor in school, using scarce textbooks by Bonk and Izrailevich. Then came the PhD language minimum, the First Certificate, and a trip to England. But I never really learned to speak.
As a trial, I translated ten pages on steel smelting — earned $80. I realized I couldn’t make a living that way.

The guy had long since left the car, but I kept going over it all.

“I’m a mathematician.”
The vocational math school was ten minutes from home — no transport needed.
My grandfather knew one of the teachers, a leader in the NTS, the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists — who agreed to coach me in math. To get in, you had to score eight points across two entrance exams — written and oral math.
I figured I’d get five on the written. In reality — three. Getting five on the oral was impossible.
So I started pleading: “I wasn’t feeling well, I was sick, had a fever — may I retake it?” They allowed it: “Go ahead — you won’t pass anyway.” I solved every problem — a perfect five. Right then, while others were still writing the written part, they gave me the oral. And I got in.

At that school, we were taught in the style of Nicolas Bourbaki, the great collective of twentieth-century mathematicians — strictly axiomatic. Everything I know about math, I learned there. At university — also half an hour from home,
where I got in not without another tutor’s help — I did nothing. And how much I could have learned, if I’d studied beyond exam periods! I didn’t. Still, enough for a profession, though not for science.

“I’m an electric programmer.”
In my building there was a bookstore. When I came home from work, I used to stop by and buy some technical book. At home I’d open it, start reading, and enter a wonderful world full of computers, operating systems, assemblers, and high-performance calculations. By some curious coincidence, all of these were American: PDP-11, IBM 360, Cray-1. And when I was called to dinner, I’d close the book, and the magic world vanished. Back to an empty room — no computer, not even a clone. So yes — as a programmer I’m zero too. I know it.
If you can program without hardware somehow, you can’t solder without it. Every part I worked with came from the dump, torn from old devices, or gifted by friends. So much effort, so much wasted time.

“I’m a G-man.”
They called me — said they were interested in my article for Open Systems, and wanted to meet to discuss everything at two p.m. near the Central Children’s Store on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. There’s a saying: “Love your kids? Take them to Lubyanka!” The joke is that Lubyanka Square was home to the KGB headquarters and its prison. I agreed — I wanted to see what the square looked like without the monument to Dzerzhinsky, the first KGB boss. It looked exactly the same as with the monument.
I laid my cards on the table: I had written a virus. Its advantage was that it didn’t copy its code, but generated it anew each time, using different machine commands. For instance, you can write C = A + B, or C = B + A. That’s what it did — choosing randomly. Thus, my virus had no signature, so it couldn’t be caught.

They offered me a position as head of a lab. They too laid their cards on the table: all privileges still applied, salary twice the market rate, summer vacation on the Black Sea with the family. Only — no foreign travel, no contact with foreigners, and work from nine to five sharp. I refused.
“Of course, as an officer, I’m zero too.”

“I’m a prince. My Martians are hosting a ball.” I’m choosing the girl I’ll marry.
Moscow State University has forty thousand students.
Half are girls — that’s twenty thousand.
Half of them old — ten thousand left.
Half ugly — five thousand.
Half foolish — two and a half thousand.
Half boring — twelve hundred fifty.
Half married — six hundred twenty-five.
Half promiscuous — three hundred twelve.
Half too picky — one hundred fifty-six.
Half homebodies — seventy-eight.
Now I have to choose one.

In a certain city, Vladimir, there lived a girl — Tanya. Her parents worked at a sewing factory. From that factory, she was sent to study law, without entrance exams. In Moscow she lived in a dormitory, and her friends were like her. We met in winter — went to movies, concerts, the circus. I brought her flowers — gladioli, color Golden Autumn. We met in summer — swam in the sea. Just like a fairy tale. We even had a place to live.
I got married.

But what about the other seventy-seven? Will my whole life pass without them?
I got divorced.

© Copyleft 2025 Dr Uhrlich. All names and characters are fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.