Near Zero
by Natan Dubovitsky
translated by Bill Bowler
Yegor Samokhodov was happy as a youth in the Russian heartland but now, in Moscow, in middle age, he is estranged from his wife and daughter, and his low-paying job as an assistant editor is going nowhere. Looking for a way out, he joins a criminal gang, the Brotherhood of the Black Book. The Brotherhood is involved in forgery, theft of intellectual property, black-marketeering, intimidation, extortion, bribery, murder, etc.
Yegor’s girlfriend, Crybaby, invites him to a private screening of her new film, although she cannot attend. Yegor goes, hoping she may show up, and is horrified to discover he is watching a snuff movie where Crybaby is slowly murdered. After the screening, Yegor finds that Crybaby has disappeared. He sets out to Kazakhstan, to find and kill her murderer, the film director Albert Mamaev.
The story is set against a panoramic backdrop of Russia during and after the collapse of the USSR. Yegor’s quest brings him into contact with a cast of characters from a broad spectrum of Russian life, culture, history, politics and government.
| Translator’s Foreword | Cast of Characters | Table of Contents |
Chapter 46: Sorok Shest’
conclusion
Towards morning, Yegor began to hallucinate. A nameless gnome took him to the car parked by the drugstore in which the Chief had sat, when, on the first day Yegor had joined the Brotherhood of the Black Book and when, young, healthy and handsome, he had strode around Moscow in Keds soaked with the blood of Fedor Ivanovich.
The gnome scurried along with Yegor, marching him through the empty dream square, sometimes ahead of him, sometimes behind, catching up, overtaking, falling behind again, and howling, howling: “Dear fellow, dear fellow, don’t kill me. I won’t do it anymore.”
Yegor answered: “The son of the king is not obliged to converse with some kind of SpongeBob SquarePants, let alone kill him.”
The gnome was insulted. “Take you me for a sponge, my lord?”
“Precisely! Go away!”
“Don’t kill me! Have mercy!”
“Away!”
“How can I go away without persuading you, without asking, begging you, my dear fellow, not to kill me?” The gnome caught up to him.
“Away!” Yegor sped up, suddenly feeling the lethal weight of ten rounds of steel in his mangled palm.
“Don’t kill me, please,” muttered director Mamaev, crawling on all fours out of Yegor’s disintegrating nightmare onto the wrought-iron stairway of the grandiose country house.
Yegor woke up and discovered himself pursuing Mamai, shooting from the pistol at Mamai’s athletic spine, at the silken boxer shorts with little steam engines and scooters, and at the mouth and eyes, twisted around to look back and wide open in horror.
The pursuer and the pursued climbed up from the living room, which resembled an ugly, overfurnished salon with four fireplaces and two aquariums, to the second floor and, as it soon became clear, to the bedroom.
After each shot, Albert scratched the bleeding wound, groaned, laughed, cursed, and begged not to be killed. A wide track of some kind of sticky mucus trailed behind Albert and, Yegor, afraid he would slip, held with his free hand onto the wall lined with fake sandstone.
Yegor finally came to himself and thought: Lord, what am I doing? I don’t want to do this, I want not to do it! He remembered his lunacy and Nabokov’s novel in which the sleeping hero smothers his sleeping wife.
“Remember, Yegor Kirillovich, it’s just like in Nabokov, in Lolita,” wheezed Mamaev, crawling into bed and digging into the pillows, sheets, bathrobes, magazines, pajamas and blankets.
Yegor countered: “No, not Lolita, Albert Ivanovich. It’s in another of his novels. I’ve forgotten the title. There’s a character in it named Person, sleeping...”
“It’s in Lolita, my dear Yegor Kirillovich,” insisted the director. “It’s in there in the bedroom, Mr. Humbert, Mr. Quilty...”
“Oh, you mean that part. Well, yes, yes, it’s true.” Yegor continued to shoot at Albert.
“Crybaby, save me, tell him to stop!” cried Albert Ivanovich, finally having dug the quietly snoring beauty out from under the sheets and pillows.
“Stop it, Alik, and stop screaming in the middle of the night. And you, Yegor, at least screw on a silencer. Have a heart,” answered Crybaby without waking, rolling over and snoring a bit louder although in a rather pleasant way.
So they did use special effects. There she is, the bitch, alive, Yegor thought with approval.
And he shot Albert in the heart, a heart green and cold like a frog that was croaking loudly, trying to rip itself out of the already helpless body, gallop off under the bed, and squeeze under the baseboard. It was done.
It seemed to follow that Crybaby should also be destroyed, but Yegor had no thought for her now. His adventures in the South had been paid off in full. He was annoyed, like an alcoholic who is about to quit but suddenly grabs a bottle and gets drunk and sees now that he has to drink more and is sucked back into the familiar quagmire.
That was the last time. I won’t do it again. Why should I? What kind of a rag am I, huh? thought Yegor. “Albert Ivanovich, how are you?” he whispered to the person he had shot.
Albert was silent in reply, either because he was dead or was simply insulted and did not wish to converse.
“Maybe he’s alive. I have to check. Maybe it’s not too late,” Yegor said to himself. He took the phone from the night table and dialed some number, EMS, the police, the Federal Emergency Agency. He handled the telephone somewhat more poorly than the pistol, but on the third try he heard the promise of urgent dispatch.
Here his annoyance passed. Yegor sensed its silence, it eased him. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, as is our habit before going out on the road, then rose and headed for the exit.
He hesitated at the door, turned, and looked back in farewell at Crybaby and Albert and at himself, seated on the bed. Coming out on the street, he bumped into two ambulance medics of gargantuan proportions. They paid no attention to him, as if he did not exist, ran through him into the house, and stomped up the wrought iron staircase.
Epilogue - “Outro” - Утро (‘Morning’)
Immediately outside the door began, never to end, an infinite kind of field or sea of wavy light. It shimmered like the tall, sleepy rye over the abyss of the Lunino sky, pouring over the edge of time and illuminating everything from all directions, so that there were no shadows.
Before entering into its waves, Yegor touched them with his hand. The light was warm, like silk warmed by sunlight. The first person Yegor met in the field was his daughter Nastya. She took his hand, turning out to be half a head taller than her papa. He understood that he had shrunk to a five-year old boy and that the recompression of his life exploded back into the wholeness of eternity would continue headlong.
Igor and Nastya strolled through the entire world, meeting children everywhere, children in whom they recognized the future Ryzhik, Olga, Antonina Pavlovna, Yegor’s mother, his father, Crybaby, the kerosene speculator, Nikita Marievna, Igor and his father-in-law, Sergeich, Albert, Sara/Yana, the Kagan and Ktitor, Nastya’s mama, Muza, Savina, Zalekha, and everyone, everyone, everyone.
They were all alive. All were well. Everything was renewed. Everything could be made right.
translation © 2019 by Bill Bowler
