Mesopotamia Read online

  “Not a single opponent—in his weight class, I mean—could even last five rounds against him!” Benia proclaimed with inflated pathos. “Just remember how he’d prepare for fights! Abstinence and asceticism, prayers and meditation, submission and confidence . . .” Benia was off on a tangent again, and he wasn’t coming back. “His skin became tougher over the years, and his bones became cold and hard. And when he was duking it out for the regional title, the city fathers stood in the stands, mesmerized by his fluid motions and triumphant shouts!”

  “They sure did!” Sasha agreed, and a blue tear descended into his glass of cognac.

  “Not a single defeat! Not one single defeat! He triumphed again and again, at every single training camp! His enemies’ dried blood clung to his hair and their howls of pain marked his every stride toward glory! The most beautiful women threw themselves at his feet!” Benia said, getting flustered once he’d caught a glimpse of Alina. “I mean the women from the boxing federation. Unions, labor reserves, you know . . .”

  Everyone started to feel a bit uncomfortable, everyone but Benia, who just kept going. I guess he didn’t know what else to do.

  “The story I’m gonna tell you happened at training camp, down in Yalta. I was there the whole time, that’s why I can tell it in such detail. Nobody compared with Marat when it came to stamina or agility. Anybody who tried to keep up with him would just run himself into the ground or blow something out and have to go home. Nobody doubted that he had a great future ahead of him. Nobody besides Black Devil. I can’t remember what his real name was. Nah . . . ,” Benia paused, apparently racking his brains. “That was his real name, or at least his real name sounded like that. He didn’t come from around here. His parents had moved here from out west, or maybe from really far east—I don’t remember anymore. Now I bet nobody even remembers Black Devil. He wasn’t much of a boxer anyway; Marat was the only one people ever talked about. Well, Black Devil just went off the rails one day at training camp. The coaches wouldn’t even let their athletes go into town—the boxers had their morning calisthenics routine, athletic regimen, and all that stuff. Well, the whole entire coaching staff had to go to some sort of league meeting. That’s when Black Devil went on the bender of a lifetime. He was just drinking by himself at first. Then he got the massage guys going. Then he got to work corrupting the younger dudes. Guess who was the only one who didn’t drink with him? Marat! Black Devil egged him on for two days, tempted him for two whole days. He tried every trick in the book. He sent the massage guys over to Marat’s room and even got the younger dudes in on it. But Marat didn’t crack. So, let’s drink,” Benia said, trying to bring his speech around to some kind of conclusion, “to our friend Marat, to his manly nature.” I saw that Alina hadn’t bothered listening to the end of the story. She was heading toward the house, the fog coldly touching her calves as she walked across the yard. Benia kept going, he just couldn’t help himself: “Let’s drink to his commitment to the sport, his perseverance, and true manly friendship!”

  Nobody was against having another drink; nobody had anything against true manly friendship either. Sasha, a skinny guy with a shaved head and a little, neatly combed mustache, looked like a chimney sweep who’d slipped off a roof but had his fall broken by a banquet table. He was quite happy with his lot because things could have gone much worse. As the sky got darker, the light shed by the lamps overhead became more disquieting. The darkness encircled us like water wrapping around motionless catfish it didn’t dare disturb.

  We all knew the real story. Nobody interrupted or corrected Benia while Alina was around, but as soon as she stepped inside, I started telling everyone what had actually happened down there in Crimea; everyone else started recalling parts of that trip too. Our crew was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of confusion. Even Rustam avoided making eye contact, took out his cellphone, and started texting angrily. The “Devil’s” real name was Valera. He and Marat were kicked off the team on three separate occasions, but the coaches took them back every time. It wasn’t because Marat was unbeatable or something—he never even won the regional crown. It’s just that Valera’s dad worked for the police department and he had a lot of pull; he’d go to bat for his boy and Marat whenever they got in trouble. They were at training camp together, right here in Kharkiv, but they decided to skip town and head to Crimea. Marat had been dating Alina for some time already, and they had been telling everyone they were going to get married soon. But all of a sudden, he went off the rails. It was March; black snow covered the city’s squares and parks, the sky flared and burned, and Marat was itching to go somewhere, so he made up some story about another training camp down in Yalta. These two gymnast girls went along with them—I don’t think they’d even turned fourteen yet. Marat and Black Devil, who were both eighteen, seemed so mature and responsible to them—two manly men who were man enough for anything. They stayed at Black Devil’s friends’ place—a cramped apartment in a big concrete prefab building. You couldn’t even see the water from the balcony, but they couldn’t have cared less about the stormy sea—all it was doing was inundating the beach with ice and seaweed. On day five of their trip, when they started running out of money, champagne, and bread, Black Devil and his gymnast were trying to drag Marat back to Kharkiv—but then it was like somebody had flipped a switch. That’s how Marat would later describe what he had felt. He said that he didn’t even know what had hit him or how it all started—his partner in crime, a shy, slim girl with nothing going for her but the prospect of a dazzling sports career, went crazy for Marat . . . and he’d gone crazy for her a while before. They locked themselves in one of the rooms, crawled into bed and didn’t crawl out again for days, just wearing each other out. Marat told us that she didn’t know a thing: he had to teach her the basics and show her how to make it last. The heat was on low in the apartment; they had to hide under thick blankets, so he hardly ever saw her naked—he studied her by touch alone. When he told the story, he would linger over how tender the palms of her hands were, how thin her veins, how dry her skin. It didn’t take him long to teach her, and she soon forgot how awkward and painful it had been at first; she cried at night and laughed in the morning, grabbing him by the neck whenever he tried to free himself from the blankets wrapped tightly around them and run to the kitchen for another bottle of champagne. He’d come back to bed, slip under the covers, and they’d start going at it again. The alcohol made her reckless and tireless; she’d bite his skin and then lick his body’s wounds, whispering tenderly in his ear. He’d be thinking about how to escape and take a piss. She’d conk out, mumbling something to her mom in her sleep, then he’d bring her back to consciousness. That went on for days.

  Black Devil was the first one to panic. He knew the girls were under age. Sure, maybe that wasn’t a big deal in and of itself, but he also knew that the girls had told their parents they were going to training camp too. They had to get home somehow, and fast, because if word got out, not even Black Devil’s dad could get them off the hook. His girl started to panic, too; she broke down crying and asked him to get her a ticket back to Kharkiv. Black Devil tried reasoning with Marat. They were sitting in the kitchen and smoking their last few cigarettes. Blood was seeping out of Marat’s fresh wounds, mingling with sweet saliva. Marat said that he wasn’t going anywhere, he didn’t want to hear it, he was afraid of going back home, she’d tell everyone everything, he didn’t know what to say to Alina—she had no clue what was really going on and if she found out she’d die of a broken heart. So the best thing for him to do was to stick it out until the gymnast rode him to death or he ran out of cigarettes. Black Devil patiently presented some arguments, telling Marat that staying here wasn’t an option because the authorities would start looking for them eventually and then it was only a matter of time—they’d be the ones dying, and not of broken hearts, either: the righteous would throw the book at them, and then start looking for something else to throw, and they’d wind up getting stoned to death.

&n
bsp; “Nah, man,” Marat protested, “you just don’t get it. When things aren’t going your way, when you’re backed into a corner, it’s best to just keep still. You just gotta stand there and take it till it passes.” And then he went back to his room and started warming her cold, slim shoulders, then he warmed her palms and her stomach, trying not to think about anything in particular, trying not to think at all. For a few days, Black Devil tried to talk him into going home. He went to the post office a few times to call Alina and tell her that Marat said hello and that he was busy working out. Alina figured out what was up, but she didn’t let on. She just said not to go too wild after practice. On one of the following days, Black Devil’s girl gathered up her stuff, slipped out of the apartment unnoticed, hoofed it out to the highway, flagged down a car that took her as far as Simferopol, and made it all the way home by the next morning. It was only a matter of time until the cops showed up. Black Devil kicked in the door to Marat’s room, pulled his girl out of bed, and helped her get dressed without saying a single word as she stumbled around, getting her stockings and socks all in a tangle. Then he dragged her to the train station. Marat stayed. Black Devil’s friends came back in a few days, so Marat had no choice but to go home. Alina dumped him and then took him back. Marat’s gymnast girl tried swallowing a whole bunch of pills, but it didn’t work out for her. Well, she didn’t die, I mean.

  In the time we spent remembering that story, a thin, copper-­tinged moon dangled itself over the yard. Partially concealed by the fog, the crescent was still showing through the damp air, moving quietly over the city’s tin roofs and the black throats of its chimneys. Alina stepped outside and was drowned in the darkness that wrapped tightly around her black dress. Occasionally, her elbows and wrists would pop into view as if rising out of black milk. Everyone got really serious all of a sudden; Benia lunged out of his seat to help Alina once again, taking some bread and wine from her. Sasha started inviting her over to the table and she finally came, perhaps a bit reluctantly. The air was growing even cooler—it was as though a rain shower had just passed through and the smell of its even, frigid breath lingered. Alina hardly said a word, occasionally asking the guests what dishes to pass them, and then she kicked back in her hard chair, gazing at the blue wine in the green bottles.

  The next one to speak up was Kostyk, heavy and cumbersome, like he was all soggy from the fog and wine. He undid his tie and tossed it aside—it landed on some baked fish. He wasn’t speaking all that clearly, yet his voice was loud with conviction. When someone talks like that, there’s no disagreeing with him, even if he’s talking nonsense. Kostyk realized that, so he tried to talk even louder. Sometimes it sounded like he was attacking someone, sometimes it sounded like he was defending them, and other times he broke into shouting, and then Sem would place his bony hand on Kostyk’s shoulder, but then Sasha would nod gently at him, as if to say, “Let him be. Tomorrow morning he’s not even gonna remember any of this crap he’s spewing.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kostyk said, clearly agitated. “I’d like to say something, too. Why aren’t you letting me talk? Don’t look at me like that.” He got so riled up that he knocked over some wineglasses. The white tablecloth swelled with the dark weight of the alcohol, but Kostyk didn’t pay that any mind, he just kept telling everyone to pipe down. “Having a warm heart . . . When a person has a warm heart, he has a completely different outlook on life. A man like that has eyes that light up from the inside, and people flock to him. Both men and women,” Kostyk added.

  “Here we go again,” Benia interjected in a dissatisfied tone. “I told ya to cut him off a few drinks ago. Now that mouth of his is gonna get him in trouble.”

  Everyone knew what Benia was getting at. Everyone knew what to expect. First he’d start going on about the inner light, then he’d start holding forth about eternal salvation. He might break down crying or, more likely, pick a fight with someone. Kostyk got that way after his first stint in rehab. You generally think of drug users as mellowed out, but it’s often exactly the opposite. Kostyk got hooked as an adult, when he already had something to lose, but he didn’t quit until he’d lost all of it. He bounced around from one rehab clinic to another, not to mention all those spiritual counseling programs. He went back to his regular life after all that, but he had already started putting on weight. I figured it must have had something to do with his blood sugar. His drug use had led to some problems with his kidneys . . . and his head, for that matter. The drugs had nothing to do with his yelling and carrying on tonight, though. He was just as obnoxious at parties back when we were kids.

  We didn’t really like what he had to say, but the sloppily ear­nest way he said it won us over. All of our inner voices seemed to be saying, “That’s it, keep it up. Open heart, men and women flocking to you.” It looked like Alina was absolutely freezing; she picked up a shawl someone had left behind and wrapped it around her shoulders, shivering from time to time, as though she was reacting to a soft whisper only she could hear.

  “Having a warm heart helps us get through our tougher moments and enjoy our happier hours when they come,” Kostyk continued, inhaling a deep gulp of nighttime air, which made his white shirt puff up like a sail against black water. “It’s all about having a warm heart, guys, having a warm heart!” With that, he started crying.

  Then he wandered far afield, but it led us to a nice story that everyone could identify with; he spoke about hearts filled with goodness and hope, merciful and benevolent—those are the hearts through which mankind’s conscience comes into this world, hearts with the strength to resist temptation and reject vanity. After a long and slightly garbled introduction, he reminded everyone how warm and splendid the weather had been that September, a few years back, when this incredible story took place.

  “You know, you’re talking about being a man and all that manly nature stuff,” Kostyk blubbered. “Having compassion is the only true mark of a man, and being willing to administer first aid if it comes to that—that’s the only true mark of a man too. Let’s take Marat, for example. Back then, he was a famous sports star, a boxer well respected by the city’s youth, a thoughtful son, a faithful husband, a man of iron will and firm convictions. Ascetic and unstoppable—you wouldn’t believe his stamina—he had hit that age when nothing seems impossible, when miracles happen and the gates of heaven open high above us just so the saints can get a better look at our joyful eyes—see what color they are. That’s why he didn’t go to the Caucasus, even though he was invited to box for the national team. How could he just drop everything? Think about it! It was his sense of duty that kept him here!

  “One time in the fall, when he was coming back from sparring, through the park, he came across a man lying there on the ground, his head facing east. A woman who just happened to be passing by saw it all and went on to tell the community. What do most of us do when we see death coming for someone else? Generally, we try not to react at all, hoping we can avoid drawing its attention. We simply pretend that death doesn’t exist, refusing to acknowledge the dead and refusing to think about the living. But Marat stopped—­according to the passerby, some inner voice compelled him to bend over the lifeless body. Something hinted to him that all was not lost, that he could try to fend off the dark shadow of death already creeping up on the man from behind the crimson trees. The man was wearing an old-­fashioned coat, and his briefcase lay on the ground beside him. He looked like an upstanding guy. Marat acted quickly, instructing the woman to call the police and an ambulance, and while she was dialing the numbers with her cold, stiff fingers, he massaged the poor sap’s heart—he as good as brought him back from the other side. Then he waited around for the ambulance and police, and even drove with them to the station to give a full report. The woman went along, too.”

  Alina broke down completely then, tears flowing fast as she bolted out of her seat, heading for the house. But Sasha managed to intercept her, wrapping his arms firmly around her shoulders. She fell into his embrace, giving
in to heavy, gasping sobs. We all sat there in silence, sensing that our moment to say something, revive the conversation, keep the unbearable mounting silence from popping like a paper bag was slipping away. Everything was as Kostyk had said, almost—sparring, the park, black trees, and the lilac heavens with red spots out west—that was all true. Marat was just about to quit the team over an argument with the manager; he wouldn’t come home for weeks at a time, and things had gotten so bad with Alina that he wondered why they were still together. That day we’d been bumming around by the park, drinking in a rundown bar—basically just a tent where you could buy beer, really. We were the only ones there, Marat, one of his teammates, and me, just passing the time, waiting for nightfall, and listening to Marat going on about how he was supposedly going to chuck it all and move down to the Caucasus for some coaching job they’d been offering him for years now. In the late afternoon a couple sidled up to the bar—the guy was a lot older than the girl—he looked like a college professor. He was just minding his own business. He was wearing a light fall jacket and glasses; he hardly touched his drink. She was pretty young, but she didn’t appear to be an undergrad—she exuded confidence, ordering her own drink and recommending one for him. Marat went silent and started eyeing her; something about her got to him, resonated with something inside him. She had coarse, fair hair, long, sharp-­nailed fingers, and bright white teeth, and since she never stopped laughing or talking, Marat kept examining her smile, not bothering to be the least bit discreet about it. In an hour or so, the professor gave us a look that Marat was determined to take the wrong way. He wanted to throw down, but the bartenders broke it up and told everyone it’d be best if we went on our way. The professor tried to keep his cool, but he handed his girlfriend her coat just a little too quickly, he tipped just a little too generously, and he made just a little too much of a show of taking her hand as they were leaving. We had been restraining Marat, but then he broke free and latched on to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her against him. His movements were so sharp and unrestrained that she shrieked, and I wasn’t sure what I was hearing in that shriek—outrage or surprise. It seemed more like surprise to me—and pleasant surprise, at that . . . although she did try to extricate herself, and she kept up her angry shouting, her teeth shining and her head bobbing, but then she thrust herself forward, crashing into Marat—with bewildered eyes, she studied his sharp, unshaven face, covered in scars and cuts, gray, fiery eyes, black hair, and hard skin. And the longer she looked at him, the more intent her gaze became. When the professor darted toward them to pull her away, Marat lost control, nailing his rival with a right hook like his coaches had taught him when he was a kid; he put his weight into it—and his heart too. The professor rolled across the floor, and the bartenders jumped on Marat from behind. All three of them crashed to the floor too. Marat’s buddy and I tried to throw everyone outside, into the bluish-­red void of the eerie park that had devoured the neon fire of the bar’s sign. And there, amid Kharkiv’s golden foliage, Marat pummeled the professor, the bartenders tried pulling him away from his victim, and we did our best to pull them back.