Memoir of a Russian Punk

30

Early the next morning Eddie emerges from Vovka Zolotarenko's shed, where he spent the night completely frozen. He didn't feel like going home. He didn't want to see the sleepy face of his mother, he didn't want to answer her questions, and he didn't want to refuse the food she would offer him and have to listen to her complaints about the fact that everybody else has children who are children, whereas her son is a rogue who comes home at four in the morning. Eddie-baby wanted to be alone and think.

Vovka gave Eddie the keys to the shed a long time ago, "just in case." Eddie had never used them until now, when that "in case" finally came along. Vovka didn't tell Eddie that the shed was full of rats, although it's possible he didn't know about that.

Clambering up onto an old door that he had placed on top of two barrels, Eddie lay there calmly for a little while, or rather, not so calmly, since he was thinking about what Svetka had said to him, but at least the first few minutes in the shed were quiet. Then Eddie heard the first rustling sound, and soon the whole shed was filled with an invisible clamor. Eddie-baby first thought it was mice, but in the dull light of the shed's single half-meter window, he suddenly, even with his nearsightedness, saw eyes. He was chilled to the bone, and he started lighting matches one after another in an attempt to see what was going on…

Dozens of rats were wandering around the shed. Squeaking, long-tailed, and disgusting, they poked in the corners and scurried around some boards, pattered on the old suitcases and baby carriages belonging to the large Zolotarenko family, and jumped up onto the Zolotarenkos' coal pile. Eddie-baby felt that the whole horde of rats was quite capable of climbing up the barrels to his door, or of dropping down on him from the ceiling, which was full of chinks and did not at all inspire confidence, and he therefore decided to take drastic measures. Picking up his notebook of poems, Eddie started tearing out the blank pages, setting fire to them, and throwing them at the rats. The rats were in no hurry to get away, although it was obvious the fire did frighten them. They moved away deliberately, and not all at once. They merely gathered in the corners of the shed, as far as possible from Eddie and his burning missiles, and there in the corners they squeaked invisibly.

When the blank sheets finally came to an end, Eddie, after thinking it over for several seconds, decisively tore out the first sheet with a poem on it and lit it. The lines of "Natasha" curled and writhed in the fire: "In a white dress on a sunny day / You've come out to take a walk…"

"In a white dress," Eddie whispered bitterly, and hurled "Natasha" at the rats. "In a dirty dress… In a greasy dress… In a dress covered with lard…," he whispered maliciously. "In a Ukrainian peasant dress, in a dress covered with lard!" he said out loud, and then resolutely climbed off the door.

Standing in the corner for who the fuck knows how long, obviously from some previous holiday, was a Christmas tree, or rather the skeleton of one, with a few reddish-brown needles still attached to it here and there. Eddie-baby dragged the tree into the center of the shed and set fire to it, using one of his poems. The tree burst into flames, and for a brief instant the flames almost shot up to the ceiling of the shed.

"I'll burn up!" Eddie thought, but for some reason he remained wistfully calm. "So what the fuck if I do," he thought, "I'm already burned up anyway."

Frightened by the bright flames, the last rats withdrew into their holes, pulling their tails in behind them.

Eddie-baby sat by his improvised bonfire and passed what was left of the night, setting fire to whatever wood was in the shed. He sat and thought and waited for the dawn.

And finally the dawn arrived…