Sin

Six cigarettes and so on

By his hands I could tell that he wasn’t my enemy.

So I relaxed immediately.

He entered loudly, clinking the keys on his finger, the poser.

I looked out the window: sure enough, outside under the quiet rain falling from above, in the light of the street lamps, his long car was parked, pretty as a fish.

He spoke rudely to the barman with the nasty voice of an old pederast, sat on a tall stool opposite the bar, loudly moved the ashtray closer and threw the cigarette packet on to the table. A poser, as I said. He was wearing an overcoat.

“Are you asleep, you big-mouthed shmuck? The work day hasn’t started yet, and you’re already asleep. Give me a lighter, how long do I have to suck on an unlit cigarette?”

The barman Vadik extended him a lighter.

The poser took a few seconds to light up, looking at Vadik, and deliberately keeping the cigarette away from the flame. Vadik moved the lighter towards him, and the poser moved his head, mockingly moving his fat lips holding the filter.

It’s my conviction that people like this should be killed immediately, and that no one should ever regret it.

But I’m the bouncer here, I get paid for doing other things.

I’m not even obliged to protect Vadik. Barmen are crooks, at the end of the night there’s bound to be a scandal: one of the customers will discover that they have been charged for several dishes that nobody ordered.

I’m surprised that barmen don’t get beaten up: customers prefer to beat each other up, and break the dishes.

Although I feel sorry for Vadik now.

“Why aren’t there any girls here?” the poser asked, finally lighting up.

Vadik mumbled something in reply, to the effect that it was probably too early in the day.

“Maybe I should screw you, how about that?”

The barman rubbed the glasses, not replying.

The poser smiled, not taking his eyes off Vadik. I saw all of this from the store room, where I was tying my shoelaces.

It really gets me down to see men acting incapably like this: poor Vadik, how does he live if this is what he’s like. He’s taller than I am, and of average build. He’s a pale, quite charming guy.

He has a girlfriend, quite striking, she sometimes turns up before the club opens, and reads a textbook — she’s a student. Vadik pours her some coffee, and she drinks it neatly, not tearing her eyes away from the page. If she could hear this now, if only she could see it.

No one prohibits Vadik from saying something insulting to the poser, to call him a mud toad, a fatlipped scumbag.

And if the poser tries to hit the barman, then I will have to intervene.

But Vadik just keeps furiously rubbing the glasses.

I tied my shoelaces and came out, and sat on a stool at the bar, next to the poser.

And here I realized that he was not my enemy. His fingers were puffy and pink; his fist was feeble and soft, like a frog’s belly, he hadn’t hit anyone with this hand for a long time.

“What are you carrying on for?” I asked, looking at him.

He didn’t show any sign of alarm, of course — he reacted to me calmly.

“It’s all OK, we’re just talking. Right, Vadim?”

The barman had his name written on a tag attached to his shirt.

Vadik nodded.

“Can I get you a beer?” the poser offered.

“Sure,” I said.

I wasn’t allowed to drink at work, but the owner hadn’t turned up yet. Also, I drink a bit every night anyway, and pretend to hide this from the owner — and the owner, in his turn, pretends that he doesn’t notice how badly, without inspiration, I hide this from him.

Vadik poured me a beer, and with pleasure I drank almost the whole glass in one gulp.

Sometimes I swear not to drink at the customers’ expense, so as not to get close to them, but every time I break my word.

Now the poser will start talking to me. He’ll start probing with his fingernail, half-joking, half-insulting, and see what reaction he gets: it’s the usual habit of a lowlife — to find out who you’re dealing with.

“Where were you hiding when I came in?” he asked.

“I didn’t see you. You’re not noticeable,” I replied, got up, and pushing away the glass, went to my usual spot.

It’s a wooden counter by the entrance to the club; to the left is a glass door that leads outside, to the right is a glass door to the club. There are two tall stools by the counter. I sit at one of them, Zakhar is my name, and my partner sits on the other, he’s called Syoma, but I call him Molotok, Hammer, because he has the wonderful surname Molotilov.

Unlike me, he doesn’t smoke and never drinks alcohol. He’s also about forty kilograms heavier than me. He knows how to hit a person in the chest, say, or in the abdomen so that it makes a noise like hitting a pillow. A dull but juicy “boom!” I can’t do that.

I’m sure that Molotok is stronger than I am, but for some reason he considers me to be the one in charge.

He’s always in a good mood.

He came in with his usual smile, out of the evening cold after the rain, with his jacket swishing, stamping his boots, a great, reliable guy, with a handshake with a pressure of four atmospheres, and a bag of sandwiches over his shoulder. He needs constant nourishment.

And he himself is designed simply and honestly, like a good sandwich, without any distracting thoughts or any melancholy. The conversation will start with the fact that it’s gotten colder outside, then he’ll ask whether Lev Borisych, the owner of the club, has arrived, then he’ll tell me how much weight he lifted today in the bench press.

“Who’s that jerk sitting there?” Syoma asked, nodding towards the poser.

I shrugged. I didn’t feel like telling him about Vadik.

The first customers started to arrive. Businesslike young guys, stern pale girls: the usual night-time crowd, everyone still sober and quite respectable.

It’s unlikely that any one of them can seriously upset us. Young people wear too firm an expression of confidence on their faces — but this is what reassured us. To get the better of them, all you had to do was to make their confidence waver for a second.

In general, you need to work extremely quickly and aggressively here. A fight starts with an abrupt noise: something falls down loudly, a table, a chair, dishes, sometimes everything at once. We react to noise. Syoma always works silently, I may sometimes shout angrily, Everyone sit down! for example, although sitting is not necessary at all, and perhaps it’s even better to stand.

We single out the loudest — and throw them out the door.

These seconds on the way from the scene of the fight to the door are the most important in our job. Here a ferocious onslaught is indispensable. The person has to understand that he’s literally been carried out of the café — and hasn’t been hit once. He loses confidence, but doesn’t have time to get angry. If we hit him, then he will have the right to get angry, and try to hit us in response. Getting into a fight with the customers is vulgar dilettantism. We try not to do this, although we’re not always successful, of course.

I’ve heard that in neighboring clubs there have been situations when angry drunken groups beat up the security, and threw the bouncers out on the street with their faces smashed. I’d be very unhappy if something like that happened to me.

But you’ve got to admit that there’s nothing unusual about this: for every bouncer there’ll always be some animal that is stronger and more persistent; especially if there are several of these animals.

But there are just two of us, Molotok and I. For a club like this, four bouncers wouldn’t be enough, but Lev Borisych, who as I already said is the owner, is incomparably economical.

The young people showed us their tickets — blue strips of paper with a stamp and price on them. Syoma cocked a cheerful eye at the girls.

As always, Lev Borisych entered swiftly, carrying his enormous stomach past us lightly; he nodded to us, barely noticeably, without opening his mouth for a greeting.

Molotok greeted him, but without any sign of servility — he’s just friendly in general.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t even nod in response. Lev Borisych passes by so quickly, that I could quite easily say hello to him when he can no longer see me, as he opens the door to the club. Let him think that that’s the way things are: the heavy glass door has long been swinging before me, barely dispelling the thick scent of the owner’s eau de cologne, and I’m still saying “…ello… ysovich!..”

I have no idea why he’s in such a hurry. He’s going to sit in his office with a cup of coffee all night, occasionally going to the ticket seller’s office, counting the earnings and looking out into the street to see if there are any new customers. Does he really need to be in such a hurry for such important activities?

Sometimes Lev Borisych comes out into the club, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, and if a fight breaks out, he vanishes very quickly. But he knows about everything that happens at the club, for example, how many mugs of beer I drink a night, or how much the barmen steal over the same period of time — and he does not fire the barmen every day, because new barmen will also steal. However, the staff still changes constantly, only Molotok and me are left alone. Perhaps because we’re not particularly worried about keeping this job, and perhaps because we’ve never screwed up.

I’ve been inhabiting a nightclub for so long that I’ve forgotten about the existence of other people, besides our customers, taxi drivers, a few gangsters, a few dozen idiots pretending to be gangsters, prostitutes and mere sluts.

Although I see all these people every night, I have no idea what they do, or where their money comes from. Well, it’s more or less clear with the prostitutes and taxi drivers, but what about the rest? I work here every day, but I would never come here to drink: you could spend as much at the club in fifteen minutes as I could live on for a week. If they took me on, these generous people, I would protect them for an additional payment, I don’t care. Neither does Syoma. What do we care about you.

But they often care about us. Many of them think that a bouncer was created so that they could measure his strength and stupidity against theirs. The main thing is to get seriously wasted and then come to us in the foyer: What are you looking like that for? Want to throw me out? I’m with friends…

But even they are not the most problematic clients, of course.

There could be problems with the people who just walked past Molotok and me, for instance.

Five guys, and they just went through the door sideways, with big shoulders, big arms, and a heavy calm on their faces. They didn’t even notice us — that always makes us tense.

They were dressed in jackets and light sweaters — and, as I said, they had big shoulders. I have big shoulders too, but I’m wearing two sweaters and padding, hence the shoulders. Molotok is larger, of course, but he can’t compete with them either. He’s not even embarrassed to admit this:

“Did you see that?”

And he shakes his head.

Molotok, of course, isn’t scared, and he will stand to the end, if he has to. But his chances are zero.

Molotok and I call them “serious people.”

They’ll never get disgracefully drunk. They sit at a long table partitioned off by a heavy screen, in the corner of the club, away from the dance floor. They talk unhurriedly, and sometimes laugh. Lev Borysich walks around them. They called him over, quite affably. Lev Borysich sat down on the edge of a bench, like a compressed balloon — just waiting for a chance to fly away. And he did, as soon as they turned away from him, mumbling something vague about things to do or a phone call: someone was supposed to call him. At three in the morning, sure.

They rarely come here, once a month probably, and every time I’m surprised at how tangibly you can feel a real human power emanating from them.

And they don’t pay attention to the women, I noticed, watching them take their habitual seats behind the screen, moving the table as if they were at home.

They don’t pay attention because they’re not interested in women, but because they already have women, any women they want.

They gave the vase of flowers that was on the table to the waitress who came over to them, and didn’t even say: Take it away — she worked it out for herself, after standing for a moment with the vase in her hands.

In the dance room, the music started blaring. The first pair of young people went in, indecisively, like people entering water.

That’s OK, in half an hour everyone will relax.

Sometimes, as morning approaches, I go into the dance room, and quite stupefied, I look at these ruddy people in motion. I get a feeling like you do in childhood, when you’re hot and frantic, and you’ve been storming a snowy slope for five hours in a row, and suddenly you fall out of the game and look at everyone for a minute in surprise and think: who are we? why are we making all this noise? why is there a ringing noise in my head?

How strangely these people behave, I think, tired, in my morning mood, sleepy, looking at all the backs, heads, legs and hands. They’re adults, why are they waving their arms around like this, it’s so stupid…

But the next day I go to work again, and this feeling is almost forgotten. If I remember it, I don’t understand it, I can’t feel it.

“The boss wants to see you,” Lev Borisych’s secretary said to me, having stuck her bird-like, dark, small head with its bright lips between the glass doors.

Lev Borisych has never wanted to see me before.

“What’s this about?” I asked Molotok cheerfully.

He made an uncomprehending face. We both thought that we had probably been fined. But we couldn’t quite work out when this had happened.

I leapt off the stool, pushed the door, and saw Lev Borisych coming towards me and waving his hand: stay, I’ll be there shortly.

“Outside, let’s talk outside,” he said quietly; he has the habit of repeating every phrase twice, as if testing its weight: whether he gave it away too lightly or cheaply.

We went out, and walked for a few seconds in silence, away from the club doors, and the people smoking by the entrance. I glanced sideways at Lev Borisych’s stomach: Doesn’t he get cold, just wearing a shirt… I thought.

“Can I rely on your confidentiality, Zakhar? On the confidentiality of our conversation?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to say this very seriously, and even sincerely.

“Good, good… We work together, I see how you work. I’m happy with your work, I’m happy with it. There are a few little things… little things… But essentially I’m happy…” Lev Borisych said all of this quickly, looking away from me, into the bushes, at the asphalt, very attentively, as though hoping to find a coin that someone had dropped. “And we want to expand… The time has come, there are possibilities. Red light, you understand? A red light, that’s what we’ll have here. I’d like you to be the head of security. You understand, there can be all kinds of… excesses… excesses. Right?”

Now he looked at me for the first time, briefly and attentively.

“I agree,” I replied simply.

For some reason this amused me. A guard at a brothel, isn’t this what my mother always dreamed of… A wonderful job. Wonderfful… with two “f”s.

“Good, good,” Lev Borisych immediatley interrupted me. “We’re probably going to need to expand the staff. I just don’t want you to leave the bar — you’re experienced. We’ll hire a person… Do you know anyone? You don’t know anyone? We’ll hire someone. One person. Think about it.”

And Lev Borisych walked away. I lit a cigarette — I wasn’t going to follow at his heels. I ran my boot through the water in a puddle. A car honked its horn, and I looked up: a jeep was coming around the corner, with its low beams on, a very powerful jeep, with Moscow plates. The driver, looking at me disdainfully from behind the windshield, made a harsh gesture: he raised his hands, palms up. What are you standing there for, slowpoke! is what this gesture means. The jeep was rolling along in neutral, but I didn’t move out of the way. I would have had to move too quickly to let it past: I’m not supposed to move in a hurry, I’m not a waiter.

The driver slammed on the breaks when the jeep had almost hit me — all of this didn’t take more than two seconds. I took two steps out of the way, stepping in the mud on the roadside. The jeep drove past. The driver didn’t look at me.

I saw two men getting out of the jeep — one was quite short, but moved energetically, waving his arms, and kept turning his little head on a powerful neck in different directions. Even by the back of his head, I thought I could see that he smiled a lot.

There’s a lot of cars today, I noticed, walking towards the club.

Molotok was looking at me with curiosity.

“Well, what was it about?” he asked in a cheerful whisper.

“They want to open a den of whores here,” I replied, instantly ignoring my promises to Lev Borisych.

“And so?” Molotok asked.

“They want boys to work there as well as girls. Boys are in demand at the moment. He asked about you. He was embarrassed to ask you directly. How about it then? Want to earn some money?”

“Fuck you!” Molotok chuckled, and I also laughed.

“They need security,” I said seriously, but without wiping the smile off my face.

“Why not?” Molotok said cheerfully. “What difference does it make! Will we get a raise?”

“Yes, we will,” I said confidently, and then remembered that Lev Borisych hadn’t said anything about the pay, not even a hint.

“Where’s the turnstile here?” a new customer asked, slightly tipsy, with a moustache and a smile, but with an unpleasant strange look in his eyes. He was probably around forty.

“What turnstile?” Molotok asked.

“To put the ticket in,” the man replied, smiling crookedly.

Molotok took the ticket from him with an unfriendly expression, crumpled it and threw it in the trash. The man froze there with the smile still on his unshaven face.

“Go in, go in, what are you waiting for,” Molotok said hospitably.

Good on you, Syomka, I thought cheerfully, but from the expression on the man’s face as he walked into the club, I realized that this was not the end: he would come back when he had thought up a reply for us.

I smoked a couple of cigarettes, traded a few jokes with Molotok, and together we appraised tonight’s strippers — they arrived in a car and walked past us quickly — they always walk past quickly, never saying hello, they’re unfriendly. Each one of them had a large bag over her shoulder. I always wonder what they have in their bags, if they appear on stage in a tiny top and skirt which would fit in my pocket. Maybe shoes — and that’s it…

The strippers were flat-chested, and up close they were not attractive at all — with the rare type of ugliness that women can detect themselves. You often see that kind of face among prostitutes in the provinces.

At midnight, at the height of stupid, drunk merriment, with plenty of smoke breaks, the local gangsters turned up — they like to drive from club to club until morning, four young guys the same age as Molotok and me, and Diesel — one of the city authorities,” friendly, battered-looking and grey-haired. When he said hello to us, he called me by name: Hi, Zakhar, how are you? — and every time I noted to myself that I found it pleasant, damn me, that he remembered me, that he shook my hand and smiled.

Why the hell shouldn’t I find that pleasant? I snarled to myself.

What are you so happy about? I replied to myself. Why did you wag your tail, you mutt? You think he’ll be there for you when you need help? He’ll step over you without noticing, he’s a wolf, wolf spawn, with the evil blood of a wolf…

Diesel entered the room with dignity, glanced sideways at the table of “serious people” that was visible through the open screen, and immediately turned away, as if he didn’t care.

Oh, Diesel, I thought poetically. What a strong man you are, how experienced you are, people are afraid of you and respect you — but next to these men you’re just a crook… Your time is coming to an end, Diesel.

At one o’clock in the morning, winking to Molotok, I went to see the first striptease number. There were usually two numbers during the night, and Molotok and I watched them in turn — I watched the first one, he watched the second. Or we just said to hell with it all, and both went into the hall, only glancing at the entrance from time to time, to make sure no one was barging in without a ticket.

The girls were still dancing on their skinny white legs, when there was a crash in the hall. I rushed in a few seconds later, but couldn’t work out what was going on: a large Caucasian, just under two meters tall, was standing alone in the middle of the hall, in a jacket for some reason. It was immediately obvious that he was one of the people responsible for the noise — but who was with him, or rather, who was against him?

I saw that the crooks and Diesel were sitting at a table in the corner, and had turned away, as if it was nothing to do with them. And the poser is sitting with them, I noticed out of the corner of my eye.

The crooks’ heads were tense, and also a few customers sitting near them were looking sideways in their direction.

It’s them, of course, I realized, but didn’t do anything.

“We’ll meet again!” the Caucasian said loudly, in no particular direction, as if to everyone at once; and the meaning of his words essentially came to down to an overdue attempt not to lose his dignity. “We’ll come around tomorrow and talk!” he promised with an accent.

I went up to him, took him by the elbow and pulled him towards the exit:

“Come on, you can talk outside…”

For appearance’s sake, he held his arm back a little, but I know gestures like this and easily tell if the person intends to resist stupidly, or if these intention can be nipped in the bud.

“Come on, come on,” I pushed him in the shoulder.

“But why me?” the Caucasian said indignantly, but without much confidence; two girls followed him, both of them non-Russians, both frightened.

“Go on, go on…” I said, hearing in my voice the same unfeigned tiredness, which I know sometimes has a better effect on people than stupid shouting.

As we left the hall, the Caucasian immediately fell silent, and evidently was satisfied himself that everything had ended like this, without any bloodshed.

“What happened?” I asked Vadik, after I escorted the Caucasian out and returned to the bar. Vadik is usually aware of what goes on, he sees everything from behind his bar.

“Those guys, with Diesel… one of his guys kicked the chair out from under the Caucasian, when he went past. The Caucasian leapt to his feet…”

Well and good… I thought about the incident. … well and good.

As I walked away from the bar, I ran right into one of Diesel’s companions, and it seemed to me that he snorted triumphantly.

What a scum… I thought, shuddering. The guy had the eyes of a maniac, white and stupid, chapped cheekbones with blond stubble, bad teeth and a narrow forehead.

I didn’t feel like watching the striptease any more.

Molotok and I went outside — I had a smoke, and he got some fresh air.

Two sweaty guys jumped out of the club, one of them with his shirt unbuttoned down to his belly button, and the other all red and oily, as if he had come out of a frying pan. They were obviously going to have a fight. Their conversation, as is usual in such cases, was completely meaningless.

“So, what do you want?”

“I don’t give a damn, you understand me?”

“You’ll answer for it, I swear.”

“Don’t swear…”

“What do you want, huh?”

Molotok and I went up to them and stood there. They kept repeating their oaths, twisting their drunken, red-lipped mouths, and clenching their fists.

“You wanna fight?” I asked “Go behind the bushes and fight then, don’t hang around here.”

They kept standing opposite each other, pretending not to notice me.

“What did I just say?” I asked, two notes higher.

The one in the unbuttoned shirt didn’t have enough strength of character to maintain the pose, and with a disgusted expression he ducked back into the club. The second turned his back to us, and lit a cigarette, loudly exhaling the smoke. The smoke swam in the light of the street lamp, slowly. Rain was falling, barely noticeable.

The worst time at the club is after one in the morning. The guys start dividing up the girls, accidentally hitting each others’ shoulders, and sorting out other stupid things like that. This goes on until four in the morning. In the last hour, they are all tired and leave slowly, without saying goodbye to us, not even seeing us, looking at the floor, while others sway and can hardly move their dull eyes. At quarter to five there’s hardly anyone left in the club — two or three people, who are very sluggish. Usually, I’d noticed, they didn’t have any money for a taxi, and they slowly and submissively went out into the night, when we made them leave.

Laughing, we returned to the counter. Molotok stretched, cracking his strong bones. The jacket on his back tightened when he stretched out his arms.

A girl ran past us outside, and I didn’t get a chance to see her face. From the back, she seemed familiar.

“Is that Vadik’s girlfriend?” I asked Molotok.

Molotok nodded.

“When did she come here? I didn’t see her.”

“You were out walking with Lev Borisych…”

“What’s with her?”

Molotok shrugged his shoulders.

The girl was evidently agitated about something. She was running toward a taxi — the drivers always park some distance away, we don’t let them park by the club, so they don’t stop customers from leaving their cars there.

“She forget her purse,” Molotok guessed, when the girl swiftly ran back to the club.

She probably had a fight with Vadik, I barely had time to think, when suddenly Vadik himself, his face covered in pink blotches, ran into the foyer and stopped, waiting for his girlfriend.

“Where’s my purse?” she asked in a subdued voice, walking in.

“With him,” he replied.

“And what?”

Vadik looked at her constantly, as if he was trying to read the answer to the question on her face.

The answer came of its own accord, opening the door to the foyer with its shoulder — it was the pale guy with the bad teeth. A woman’s purse was dangling from his hand.

“Why did you run away?” he asked the girl, ignoring everyone else in the foyer.

She turned away, looking through the glass at the cars, waiting for Vadik to solve the problem somehow.

Vadik was silent, looking around with a gaze that wandered without focusing on anything: he didn’t see the guy with the purse, us or his girlfriend.

I didn’t want to get involved, but I said:

“Give her the purse.”

“Let’s go in to the club, you,” said the pale guy, walking past Vadik and not answering me, and dragging the girl by the elbow. “What are you acting up for, fuck it…”

“I’m talking to you, pal,” I challenged him. “Give her the purse.”

“I’m not your pal,” he replied, without turning around. His voice was unpleasantly calm. A person who replies with this voice may turn around and aim a short and nasty punch at the face of the person who asked the question.

“You’re no one to me,” I replied. “Give her the purse — and go and hang out with your friends.”

“We’ve got our own things to sort out, who’s asking you to butt in?” The guy finally turned to me, and he looked completely unfriendly. “I’ve known this girl… for a long time. And I’m with her now,” he said slowly, almost painfully, uttering the words as if he had difficulty talking. “Who are you? The vice squad? Didn’t anyone explain your duties to you?”

“My duties are no concern of yours,” I replied. “The purse isn’t yours, even if you shared a potty with the girl at kindergarten. Give her the purse, and off you go.”

The guy was silent, smiling . After a pause, showing that he wasn’t obeying me, but was making an independent decision, he replied:

“I’ll give it to her, but don’t you stick your nose in again.”

The guy gave the girl the purse, and she grabbed it, but instead of going outside she went into the club again.

“And you can go away and hide behind your bar,” the guy said to Vadik, and followed the girl back into the club.

“What a brainless girl!” I said angrily, when I was alone with Syoma. “Why the hell did she go back there?”

Molotok also swore — in the sense that the pale guy was a real jerk.

She’ll put a strain on his nerves all night… I thought about Vadik’s girlfriend.

I felt like smoking, but unable to resist, I went to see what would happen with them next.

I didn’t see the guy or Vadik’s girlfriend. Vadik himself was mixing a cocktail for someone.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I said angrily over someone’s shoulder: you couldn’t get to the bar, it was so crowded.

“She went upstairs, to the changing room,” Vadik replied, not looking me in the eye.

Why did she go there? I wondered. No one who doesn’t work here is supposed to go there.

I had never been there myself. I went up the staircase, looking around. There seemed to be just two rooms there: for the DJ and for the dancers.

I looked into the first one — a stripper was standing in the middle of the room, topless, and adjusting her stocking. For some reason seeing her breasts didn’t affect me at all — they were just breasts, I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if I had seen her elbow or knee.

“Did you see a girl here?” I asked, looking at her.

“Svetka? She ran out through the other entrance. That jerk was chasing her. He came in here, he knocked.”

“How do you know she’s called Svetka?”

“Svetka? We studied together. She came to watch me dance tonight. You should do something, you really should, he’s completely nuts. He was shouting…”

Without replying, I closed the door.

I went down the other staircase, didn’t see anyone, and returned to the foyer.

“Did you see them?” I asked Syoma.

He hadn’t. But they came back themselves: the girl, Svetka, now completely hysterical, with disheveled hair, and the guy behind her, with his angrily tight cheeks trembling angrily, insolent, stupid and stubborn.

“Come with me, and today I’ll fuck you…” he pulled her by the shoulder, catching her by the door outside.

“You’re getting on my nerves,” I said.

“Who’s getting on your nerves?” the guy looked at me, baring his teeth.

“You are.”

I jumped off the stool, and Diesel came out — loud in every movement he made, slightly drunk, smiling — perhaps he had already found something out, perhaps from our appearance he realized that there would be a fight, but he reacted immediately.

“What are you doing here?” without malice, but loudly, with a father’s honor, he questioned his pale colleague. He turned him around, and with a heavy blow with two hands on the shoulders, he thrust him out of the foyer, outside.

“Sorry, guys, he’s acting the fool… Keep working, don’t worry,” Diesel said to us, smiling.

They left immediately.

Svetka came back to the club again, stayed there for a minute, and then Vadik came out to see her off with a tender expression.

I shook my head, thinking about Vadik, and Svetka, and about that… nasty…

“Next time we should knock him out straight away,” I said to Syoma.

Syoma nodded. He agreed.

I was a bit nervous, why hide it.

But Syoma wasn’t. Or he had already calmed down.

“Zakhar, I don’t understand, where do they get these cars from?” he asked me for the umpteenth time.

A foreign car drove up, and inside were two guys who were virtually teenagers, but overflowing with their own expensive worth. Of course they opened the doors, and turned the stereo up loud enough to drown out the din of music in the club. They called over some girls they knew, who happened to be nearby — and the girls quietly went over to them, transfixed by the sight of the car. The teenagers smoked and laughed, nodding their heads, revealing their white necks, which Syoma could have broken with two fingers, and smoked again, and laughed — without actually getting out of the car, reclining on the luxury seats, alternately stretching their skinny legs out of the car, or tossing them up practically on the steering wheel.

“Shall we take a closer look?” Syoma called me. “It’s a great car.”

We went outside. Molotok went up to the car and stood next to it with a look as if he were thinking: shall I take it off them, or shouldn’t I bother just yet.

Syoma had a reverent attitude towards cars. He had a beautiful, slender, large-breasted wife, whom he sometimes beat a little, because she didn’t want to cook. His wife would take offense and go and stay with her mother, but then come back, because essentially he was a good guy and loved her very much.

But as I said, all he dreamt about was a car.

I stood on the steps outside the club, breathing in the fine night air and calming, calming myself down.

I couldn’t care less about them, I thought, with a clear heart, which was now beating evenly. All I need to do is finish the day’s work, and that’s it. And tomorrow will be a new day, but that’s just tomorrow… Who cares, that’s right. I don’t care at all about them…

At home I have a young son and a tender wife. They’re asleep now. My wife is keeping my empty place in our bed, and sometimes she strokes her hand over the space where I should be lying.

Our son wakes up two or three times a night and asks for kefir. He isn’t quite yet two years old. My wife gives him a bottle, and he falls asleep, smacking his lips.

My son always looks as if he were sitting on a riverbank, swinging his leg, and looking at the swift water.

He has flaxen hair which gives out a soft light. For that reason, I call him “Birch bud.” The name suits him very well.

Smiling at my thoughts, I went down to where Syoma was standing.

He certainly liked the car. But not the guys in the car.

He seemed to be chewing on a crooked smile, as he walked around the car. The girls were already staring at Syoma, and the guys started spitting a lot, in long streams.

“Piggies, right?” Syoma finally said loudly, he was standing on the other side of the car, by the trunk.

I raised my eyes in surprise.

“The piggies took money from papa and mama and are showing off,” Syoma explained.

I started choking with laughter.

Molotok walked past the driver, who was smoking, with his legs crossed, and the girls who had suddenly stopped talking, and shrank back in fear at the sight of the sullen security guard.

Suddenly Molotok stopped, and went back to the open car door.

“Right?” he said loudly to the guy behind the wheel, as if speaking to a deaf person. Molotok even inclined his powerful head, as if he seriously wanted to hear a reply.

“What?” the guy asked, instinctively drawing his head away.

“Nothing,” Molotok replied in a go-to-hell tone of voice, and pushed the car door. It hit the guy’s legs, but not hard.

Out of the club, opening his mouth either to the wind or the absent rain, came the guy who had asked us where the turnpike was.

“We didn’t go around like that in Afghanistan…” he said with drunk irony, looking over Molotok and me as we returned to the foyer.

He’s in the mood now, just as I thought…

“What did he say, I didn’t understand?” Molotok asked, when we sat on our stools.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t understand either. He himself didn’t even understand what he had said. But he needed to open his mouth, sluiced with vodka, so he did.

He was clearly dying to say something else: in a hurry, taking several drags in a row, he smoked half a cigarette and returned to us, after some confusion as to what side the door opened on. He entered the foyer, and stood there, swaying and smiling. He didn’t shut his mouth, and you could see his nicotine-stained but still strong teeth. For some reason he undid the bag from around his waist, and held it in his hand.

People coming in off the street avoided him.

“What are you standing in the middle of the road for, like a weed?” I asked with interest.

“Am I in the way?” he asked maliciously.

I didn’t reply.

He came over to our table and put the bag on it.

He fumbled for a long time in the pockets, looking for something, cigarettes evidently.

He put some papers out on the counter, and small change.

He finally found the packet with broken cigarettes in it, covered in tobacco.

“Keep an eye on my bag,” he said, squinting with a drunken, mocking look. “I’ll have another smoke.”

“Take it away,” I asked him simply.

“Go on,” he said, and turned to the exit.

I lightly hit the bag, and it flew into the corner of the foyer, by the garbage bin.

“So that’s how you are,” he drawled, turning around. “In Afghanistan…”

“…A mushroom looks like a man. I told you: take it away.”

He stood there for a while, rocking on his heels again. Then he picked up the bag from the floor. He looked it over for another minute.

He came up to me, and unexpectedly threw his right arm around my neck, either to embrace or strangle me.

“So that’s how you are…how you are…” he muttered, hoarsely and maliciously.

Molotok looked at me, swearing, but by my face he realized that everything was all right.

Without hurrying too much, with my right hand I found the thumb of the sinewy, strong hand encircling me and pulled it hard, jabbing the man in the chest with my left elbow at the same time.

Grunting, the man let me go. I grabbed him by the chest.

“What’s with you, Afghan jerk? Don’t wanna dance? Huh? Why don’t you dance, soldier? You bored or something?” I shook him. “Get out of here then!”

I pushed him out on to the street, almost roaring with irritation. I couldn’t control myself, and rushed after him, and pushed him off the stone steps of the club.

Syoma also came outside. He looked at me, smiling tenderly.

“Angry?” he asked me, looking at the “Afghan,” who had started searching for cigarettes again, not far away. “Angry, Zakhar?” Syoma asked me again, but in such a way that I didn’t have to answer, and it wouldn’t offend him. And I didn’t answer. Just because I was immediately distracted.

Something nasty was happening in the car park.

The Moscow guys who I had met outside had parked their massive jeep so that it blocked a smaller jeep. But in the smaller jeep, the five “serious people,” as Molotok and I called them, were sitting.

For three minutes now, their jeep had been blocked. This is a long time for “serious people” — three minutes. To start with, they honked their horn — when I was talking with the “Afghan” I heard the horn — but no one came out to them.

Now, two of the “serious people” had climbed out of their car, and one of them, with a certain zest, was kicking the wheel of the Moscow guests’ jeep. The alarm went off, it blared for 10 seconds, then stopped, and he kicked the wheel again, getting angrier each time.

I should probably go and call to those… Moscow bastards… I thought, but I didn’t go anywhere, and decided to stand and smoke, and watch: it was impossible to tear myself away from the sight of these furious, very strong men.

“Now something’s going to happen,” Molotok said cheerfully. Even he got this feeling, though usually his intuition is napping.

I nodded my head slightly, as if in time with the music: going to happen, going to happen, going to happen.

The Muscovites turned up, languid, smiling, when I was already looking the cigarette butt over, working out where to throw it: to walk over to the garbage can or let it lie here, under my feet.

Of the Moscow guests, only the driver looked annoyed — it was his car, after all, that was being kicked. But from all appearances it was clear that the driver was not in charge. Two of his passengers initially didn’t even go down the stairs of the club to the car, but talked about something, looking around, laughing.

The taller one squinted, looking at the back of the driver walking towards the jeep. The second, who seemed to be just one and a half meters tall, cheerfully shook his head and rubbed his small hands together. For some reason, it seemed that his palms were rough.

The driver approached the car with deliberate slowness. The “serious people” were waiting for him, not moving. Their faces were calm, as usual.

At the door of his jeep, the driver stopped, in no hurry to open it. I didn’t notice who spoke first, he or the people waiting for him, and I also didn’t hear what they said — the music blaring in the club drowned it out.

The tall Muscovite seemed to want to go to the car, but his companion with the rough palms held him back by the sleeve. There was something devious about the short man’s behavior — he was clearly not afraid of anything, and even… on the contrary… he was waiting for it, yes.

The poser came out of the club, but went back in immediately, sensing something.

Something seemed to have happened by the jeep, they just pushed the driver lightly in the shoulder, and he also swung his arm, but that’s hardly a fight, or a cause for one. There was no fight or cause for it, nothing — but swiftly, the short guy, as if he were on all fours, leapt off the steps, and I lost sight of him, only guessing what had happened a few seconds later, when two of the “serious people” standing by the jeep suddenly disappeared from view. They fell down.

Not believing my eyes, I moved towards the jeep. At the same time, another three “serious people” jumped out of their car.

While Molotok and I approached, these three also fell into puddles. But the two who were the first to fall got up — but didn’t remain standing long either.

There wasn’t any fight. No one swung their arms or jumped, and there was no nasty sound of people being punched in the face.

The short guy, as if amusing himself, moved from one opponent to the next, knocking them down with an imperceptible movement, and they, all of them as large as bears, all of them already dirty, with sweaters torn at the collars, fell over immediately, not even managing to swing their arms, or whatever else you can swing when you really want to hit someone.

Out of inertia, I plunged right into the thick of the fighters — or rather, the people who were trying to fight — and ended up just two meters away from the short guy. He turned to me. He still had the same smile on his face, and it seemed that he winked as he moved towards me with dancing, gentle movements.

I realized that in a second or so I would also be lying on the asphalt.

“Take it easy there!” I said cheerfully, looking him in the eyes, only his eyes, as I moved back, stretching out my arms in front of me with my palms open, and still hoping to hit him at least once, or better, more than once, if he made a movement, any movement towards me, against me.

“I’ll kick him… I’ll kick him in the shin, in the bone,” I decided, smiling happily. For a few seconds, like brothers, we looked at each other, with love.

Here he was distracted, as one of the “serious people,” who was rolling in the mud in a very non-serious way, jumped up from the side, and immediately fell over, but the short guy was already moving off, cheerful and lively.

His companion, I noticed, wasn’t fighting at all, but was shouting very fiercely, running up to the people who had been knocked over, and grabbing some of them by the hair.

“What’s wrong, assholes? Don’t feel well? Bet it’s a long time since you got a fright like this,” he said.

By the time that the man who had been knocked over had stood up, the Muscovite was standing by another who was rolling in the puddle. It seemed that he found it more convenient to talk to a person who was lying down. Their driver got into the car and was warming the engine, even smoking while he did so.

He’s the one I should talk to, I realized.

“Don’t get involved!” I shouted to Molotok, and I ran around to the driver of the Moscow jeep.

“Get your car out of here!” I shouted at his face. “Get it out of here, I said!”

He reacted to my voice, put the car in reverse and then stopped, unable to see anything in the rear vision mirror.

“Molotok, if there’s anyone under the wheels, drag them out of the way!” I shouted.

Syoma nodded, dragged someone out by the legs, and waved at me to let the car drive away.

The jeep, reflecting light off its powerful body, drove off, and I followed its movement with my eyes. I happened to notice that the two teenagers in the foreign car whom Molotok had harassed were standing not far from the club.

They’re waiting for us to get beaten up, the jerks… They want to come and finish us off, the vultures…

The “serious people” had already figured out what to do without my help — at least, one of them had. He got behind the wheel and also tried to drive away — to get out of there while the road was clear.

“Molotok, put them in the car!” I shouted.

Waiting for the jeep belonging to the “serious people” to drive out of the car park and on to the exit road that was lit by streetlamps, I opened three of the doors, except the driver’s door, and started to gather up the guys who had been beaten up.

“Go on, get out of here!” I either asked or ordered, lifting up the heavy but limp men, and dragged them over to the car, pushing them inside.

Another two were left. The cheerful, dwarf-like guy was patiently waiting for them to get up so that he could knock them over again, and was not letting anyone near his victims.

“Calm your friend down, let them go,” I addressed the tall Muscovite, who was red and agitated.

“They should be crushed, those animals!” he shouted. “Who do they think they’re dealing with! Crushed!”

“Come on, get him out of there, I’ve had enough!” I shouted, and pushed him unexpectedly roughly, and this had an effect on him.

Throwing out his arms as if to embrace him, the tall man blocked his short friend for a few moments, and this was enough time for Molotok and me. We pushed the remaining two into the car. One of the men had blood running down his face, from somewhere under his hair. The jeep belonging to the “serious people” drove off.

The armored black beast from Moscow once more drove back towards the club building, slowly parked and fell silent.

“Go get them! Crush them!” the tall Muscovite shouted again stupidly, but the short guy waved his hand and went back into the club, almost jumping up the steps.

Lev Borisych appeared — first his head poked out from behind the door and looked around swiftly, and then the rest of him.

“What happened? Did something happen?” he asked quietly, casting his eyes all around, as if to see if something valuable had fallen to the ground somewhere nearby.

“Everything’s fine, Lev Borisych,” I replied, smiling. “People got a little bit carried away… Everything’s fine.”

“Nothing got broken? No one got hurt?”

“Nothing’s broken, everyone’s fine, Lev Borysych.”

And he left, looking around, but without finding anything.

“Zakhar, good on you!” Syoma acknowledged cheerfully. “Ah? That damn samurai would have wasted us. How did you guess that they had to be driven away?”

“I looked into his eyes, and realized it immediately,” I replied, also smiling.

For three minutes or so, we couldn’t stop laughing, re-telling each other how it all happened.

It’s a good feeling when you think that the worst is over. There wasn’t much time left now: soon it would be morning.

A girl wearing a dress that suited her wonderfully came out to us in the foyer, smiling. She had a large, pure face, definitely beautiful. She had high heels, calm hands and manners. The only thing is that she was not so young, around thirty-three. But can you call that a shortcoming?

“What happened here?” she asked, only looking at me.

To be honest, I had noticed her when she arrived at the club — alone. And then, when she was sitting on a tall stool, sipping a cocktail at the bar, also alone, I saw her again. I thought: She’s very beautiful, and so no one goes straight up to her. They don’t believe that she came here by herself…. And as if those kids are going to go up to her, the jerks…

Molotok immediately grasped the situation — he has no instinct for anything, but at these moments he does.

“I’ll go and look how things are going inside…” he said quietly and left. I didn’t need him to do that, but Molotok wouldn’t believe me.

“There was a fight, a bunch of idiots…” I replied, calmly looking at the smiling face.

I’m no psychologist, and not a collector of thin hands open to be read, or hot and compliant bodies — but I guessed everything from the way that she looked at me.

She looked at me without taking her eyes away — right in the eyes, with a clear smile on her occasionally trembling lips.

“Why do you always wear a beret?” she asked.

Just as I thought, she didn’t care about the fight, who was fighting whom. She had to ask me something, and so she did — and forgot about her questions straight away.

“A beret?” I asked and got a cigarette — not because I was anxious, but just because I hadn’t smoked for a while.

While I was taking it out of the packet, I thought that she had to notice the wedding ring on my ring finger.

But she was indifferent to the ring, and kept smiling, looking me over, sometimes slightly tilting her head to the side.

Grown-up women like this can hold pauses, listen to pauses, and not hurry at all. You don’t have to keep a conversation going with them, you can look at each other, as if playing a simple game: well, what are you like? You’re beautiful, right? And looking at me? Why?

And she answers all these questions without saying anything.

Her answers were also in the form of questions: don’t you yourself understand? — this is how she replied silently — you’ve understood already, haven’t you?

Yes, I had.

“I wear a beret because I don’t have hair on my head, and if I sit like this all evening, without a beret, the customers find it very interesting, and sometimes amusing.”

I took off my beret, revealing my shaven head. This was a very open gesture, almost intimate: look, you asked me to. If she had taken off her shoe and placed her foot on my knee: … look at how I’ve painted my toenails… it would have been almost the same thing.

She stretched out her hand — to stroke my head, to see if it was prickly — but I caught her by the wrist with a light, almost cat-like movement.

“You’re so… nimble. Do you really object?”

You talk so well, I thought. Many girls have talked to me here, but none of them asked me like this: …do you really object…

“Please don’t,” I said, and having held it less than an instant, I let go her hand, which pulsed in my fingers, with thin veins, warm and tender, like a bird.

If I had held it, then the melody which it seemed that we had already begun to play, listening to each other, would have continued. But I didn’t.

She didn’t believe it right away: she probably didn’t want to believe that everything had been cut off so quickly. She thought that I was a little embarrassed.

She smiled, recovering, but the smile hung in the air, as no one responded to it.

I took a long drag, and slowly breathed out the smoke. Finally, I also smiled, but with a different smile, in a different register: nothing’s going to happen, no melody, I’m not playing. And I put my beret on.

“Well, I’ll go and dance some more,” she said cheerfully.

“When you dance, I’ll come and watch you,” I replied in the same tone.

She went away, and I knew that she would never come back to me again. And I didn’t regret it. I looked at the filter of the cigarette. It was just the sixth that night. What a horrible night, it was protecting my health. Sometimes I manage to smoke a whole packet. And this was just the sixth, which I threw away, missing the bin.

I looked at the clock: it was a little after three.

No, had I really smoked so little… I took out the packet. There were only six cigarettes missing, indeed.

My head was aching. I wanted to go home, I was sick of everyone.

The waitress came running over, she was new, Alya was her name. I didn’t know what sort of name this was, Alya. Perhaps it was short for Alina.

“Listen, go and tell that prick not to touch me. He keeps touching my leg,” Alya said, flaring her nostrils.

“What prick?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

Why does she think it’s my job to drive men away from her, I thought lazily, sliding off the stool. She’s put on the shortest skirt you can imagine. And she shows her legs… they’re beautiful… to everyone. ‘Come on, I’ll show you’ — that’s a way to talk… after all, I don’t tell her where to go.

She has long legs, yes, only she herself isn’t attractive. But her legs are wonderful.

“That guy.”

I nodded and went up to the table where the three Moscow guests were sitting. It was their driver who had been stroking the waitress’s leg. He watched me coming over.

“Please, don’t touch the waitresses anymore,” I said, leaning over. “OK?”

The driver shrugged his shoulders.

“I didn’t touch anyone.”

“All the better,” I replied and walked away.

Silly sheep, I thought again. She should wear a more decent skirt, she’s not at a children’s matinee performance…

I had only just got back to the foyer — it was empty, which was not allowed, because someone could get in without a ticket — I had just walked in, when the tall Muscovite stopped me, touching me on the shoulder.

“You insulted my friend,” he said.

“I didn’t insult anyone,” I replied, tired. But this was a different, almost weak-willed tiredness, not the one I felt at the start of the evening, that arose from predictable human insolence, which I could break so easily.

“He didn’t touch anyone, and you insulted him, you ruined his evening.”

“What do you mean, he didn’t touch anyone, if she’s complaining?” I said. Molotok was still away somewhere.

“He didn’t touch her,” his voice was well-modulated, and as he talked he trembled with an approaching fury that was prepared to break out, which I had nothing to resist with. “I think you should go and apologize,” he said.

To hell with it all, I thought and went back to the table.

“Your friend says that you didn’t touch anyone,” I said to the driver, who was looking away. “If that’s so, then I apologize. I hope everything was as you say. In any case, our girls should be left alone when they’re working.”

The short guy, the one whom Syoma called a “samurai,” was drinking juice through a straw, and his face grimaced, like a little monkey about to sneeze.

I still went back into the foyer, and even went outside, feeling as if I had suddenly lost a lot of blood.

Thirty meters or so from the club, the foreign car still had all its lights on, and the teenagers whom Molotok had insulted were sitting in the car.

Vadik came out, seeming embarrassed.

“Zakhar… That tall Muscovite… He told Alya that they’d kill her if she complained.”

I nodded, unable to decide what to do.

I held a cigarette in my hands, and for the first time I didn’t feel like smoking, I felt a little sick, and my head was spinning. I went into the hall, and the first thing I saw was the poser. His drunken and sweaty face was blurred, as if he had no face muscles.

Molotok appeared from somewhere.

“Everything OK?” he asked.

I nodded again: all OK.

“Where were you?” I asked, although I didn’t care.

“That ‘Afghan’ is in the club again,” Molotok said, not hearing the question. “He ran in while we were getting rid of those jerks… Shall I throw him out?”

“No, don’t,” I replied.

The poser walked past us, brushing me with his shoulder.

“Something has to be done,” I thought. “Something has to be done. I need to pull myself together. They’re like animals, they sense everything…”

“He’s got a glass,” Molotok nodded towards the poser.

“Sir, you can’t take glasses outside,” I said to the poser.

He stared at me disdainfully, took a sip of wine and spat it out on the steps, almost hitting the girl who was standing below.

“Go back inside,” I asked again.

“Weren’t you already told how to behave?” the poser replied, turning his blurry, disgusting face to me; in his thick-lipped open mouth, like something alive, ready to fall out, his moist, thick tongue moved.

God, how does he know, I thought miserably.

“Behave like you were told,” the poser said.

I swallowed thick saliva and saw that the “Afghan” was standing nearby, making strange movements with his fingers, as if he was flexing them, and was listening to us.

The rain began to fall again, slowly and sparsely.

The tall Muscovite walked past us, haughtily, with a very satisfied expression on his face, and was already walking down the steps, when he suddenly turned around.

“So, you got it, right?” he said to me loudly.

I didn’t reply. Molotok looked around uncomprehendingly, looking me in the face a couple of times.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the Muscovite asked, turning back and walking right up to me.

“I can hear everything,” I said distinctly.

He nodded and went to the jeep.

The “Afghan” behind my back laughed hoarsely. The poser made strange movements with his face, as if he wasn’t letting something inside his mouth jump out.

“You were told, you can’t take glasses out with you,” Molotok, who had no idea what was going on, finally said to the poser.

“Don’t touch me,” the poser replied, and turned back, accidentally splashing wine on Molotok’s chest, and returned to the club.

“Shit!” Molotok cursed in a whisper and began to brush the wine off his chest.

“You got wet, guys!” the “Afghan” shouted and laughed again.

“Fuck off,” Molotok said to him, and the “Afghan” found this even more funny, he was already hoarse with laughter.

We returned to our counter and sat down on the stools. I leant my head against the wall, pushing the beret to the back of my head and revealing my wet forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Molotok asked. “I don’t get it. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “You can see for yourself that nothing happened.”

“Why did that tall guy talk to you like that then?”

Molotok fell silent, dissatisfied. He didn’t like my replies. He thought to himself, and you could see how hard it was for him to think without expressing his thoughts out loud.

The club patrons began to disperse.

I sat at the counter, trying not to see anyone or think about anything, but for some reason I imagined that everyone walking past was looking ironically at me. It seemed intolerable — but I endured it, I put up with it, and smoked…

The packet was running out. I didn’t take it off the counter anymore.

The girl who had come up to me — …imagine, I didn’t ask her name… I thought — also walked past me without saying a word, without even nodding her head. She took a taxi and drove away in it without turning around. I looked at her from behind the glass, for some reason waiting for her to turn around. It was important.

Molotok kept silent, sometimes watching me taking out a new cigarette, then turning around immediately as soon as I lit up — so he didn’t have to look me in the face.

The “Afghan” stood on the steps for a little longer, still swaying, and sometimes twisting his face into a smile. Then he waved a hand in our direction, and, swaying, walked away.

At about five in the morning, once he had calculated the takings, Lev Borisych rolled past, and left without saying goodbye. He never said goodbye, in fact.

Disdainfully clicking her heels, Alya went out to smoke. Twisting up her unattractive face, taking a deep drag, she stood to us half-turned, so I could see her and understand what she thought of me. Vadik came out after her, cheerful for some reason. He also lit up, to keep Alya company. He smokes one cigarette a night — right at this time, at five in the morning, when the sun is coming up.

What a sour sunrise it was today. It was swill, not a sunrise.

The Muscovites were almost the last to leave. Devoid of emotions, with an empty head, I waited for the tall guy to stop again and say something to me, but hiccupping loudly, he was talking with the driver, and walked past me as if I no longer existed.

The poser followed him, and stopped in the foyer to put on his coat. I watched him waving it around, bathing us in the stench of barely perceptible rot. The poser was in a hurry, and wanted to say something to the Moscow guests, but he was too late, and they drove off, stepping on the gas and brazenly honking at everyone who was wandering in the road.

The poser went outside. When Vadik saw him, he dived back into the club, but got a chubby hand on his backside. The poser grinned happily at Vadik’s vanishing back, and when he saw us he loudly gathered a mouthful of saliva and spat, hitting the glass door. The thick yellow spit, like a crushed and chewed mollusk, ran down the glass.

I jumped off the stool, and it fell down, crashing behind me.

The poser hurried down the steps.

He hailed a taxi, waving his arm. …He doesn’t want to drive his own car, he’s drunk… I realized. The taxi drove towards him — but I got to him first.

Turning the poser around by his shoulder, I did something that I never allowed myself to do to the club patrons — I punched him in the face, in the jaw, with a good, solid blow. I caught him by the coat, not letting him fall. I grabbed him by the hair, which was oily and slippery, straightened his head up and punched him again, aiming for his teeth.

I let the poser go, and he fell down face forwards, dripping blood, spit and something else.

“He’s not going anywhere,” I said to the taxi driver in an even voice. The taxi driver nodded and drove off.

Molotok, with a red face, kicked the poser in the ribs with his heavy boot. He jolted from the blow. Coughing, he got on all fours and tried to crawl away. I stepped on his coat.

“Don’t go away,” I said to him.

Molotok kicked him again — in the stomach, and I thought I saw something fall out of his mouth.

His arms weakened, he couldn’t stay on all fours, and he fell face down, with his chin in the pond, blowing red bubbles which kept bursting.

I squatted down next to him, grabbed a firm hold of the hair on the back of his head, and several times, seven I think, I smashed his head, his face, his nose, his lips, against the asphalt. I wiped my hand on his coat, but it still remained dirty, slimy and disgusting.

Only then did I notice that the foreign car… with those teenagers in it… was still there. They were watching us from behind the glass.

Looking around, I found a rock. They realized what I was looking for, and they rapidly turned the car around, its brakes squealing.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I shouted, throwing the rock, but it didn’t reach them.

Molotok also found a rock, but it was too late to throw it. Rocking the stone in his hand, he threw it into the grass by the roadside.

“Bye, Syoma,” I said almost inaudibly.

“Yes, let’s,” he replied hoarsely.

At home, my wife was sitting in the kitchen.

“I’m very tired,” she said, not turning around.

Taking off my boots, tearing them off, as they were stuck, I looked at the back of my wife’s head.

The child in our room began to cry.

“Could you go to him?” she asked.

I went into the bathroom, and turned on a jet of cold, almost icy water. I put my hands under it.

“Could you?” she asked again.

I stubbornly rubbed my wrists, palms and fingers with soap, so that the soap got under my clipped nails. I put my hands under the water yet again and looked at what was pouring off them.

The child cried in the room alone.