Strandan'ie
Note: 'Tis rough, I'm afraid--written over summer and left; made a scattered attempt at making it neater. Piers' background--thoughts?
---
Piers slouched, elbows on the table, head in his hands, eyes stinging. The light, after nights spent upright and sleepless, began to lance. Gentle light--who had called light gentle? Who wanted to see the dawn? With a half-fist, he rubbed his face.
Legs crossed, unfased, Anastasia Levovna Ludna talked, talked…kept talking.
“Again,” said Piers, “Please, again. I forget after a minute, I think; can’t recall.”
Tasia’s appearance, even aside from clinging clothing, ought to have distracted him, as she moved--ought to have. It seemed to blur with the light. With her voice.
“There are names, you missed, da?” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Piers, listless, “I couldn’t remember to save my life.”
“Maybe you should sleep some time.”
“I do sleep,” Piers snapped, “When I can without, without… Bloody damned hell, just tell me what I missed, please?”
“Raikov, Argenev, Draeble. That’s Vasilevich, to a vostokchik, Vasilevich, Arkadyevich and Gregor--”
“A--vich,” said Piers, “I can hear that now, ‘least, repeated. Vitch.”
“Tov liked to say bloody bitch. But most didn’t get the joke on Vostok. It’s an English play on words.”
“To Hell with Tov.” Piers had both hands pressed to his eyes. “Not worth keeping track of his stupid games, and you know I can’t even keep track, track of this.”
“It changes, eezvenitie--Andreyev doesn’t keep things in one place.”
“Not an idiot,” murmured Piers.
And Tasia went on, lists of name and locations and bits and pieces of rumour, of might have beens and inferences. Piers thought his head would crack. But that wasn’t likely--more likely it would bleed out his eyes, water and dreams and names that he’d thought he’d forgotten soon as heard. At the back of his throat, breath faltered, pressured.
Without pause to think, he pushed back against the table, knocking the chair back.
“A minute,” he said, “A minute--can’t breathe.”
If Tasia watched him stagger into the corridor, he didn’t turn to see. The air was just as thick below the low-ceiling and against paper-stripped walls. Odd, he closed his eyes--he could breathe.
Vasilevich, Arkadyevich, Gregorevich.
Bloody stupid Russian names, bloody stupid Russians--Russians that weren’t Russian. Where was Russia, afterall? Gone off the face of the earth like history. Too tired to think straight, Piers swore low and furiously, swore at tiredness that blurred the edges of dream and thought, at anarchy that blurred the edges of reason and order with Hell.
He had the clinging sense that he'd lost his reason; and it felt rather like losing a soul.
“Ten more minutes, Resk--can you breathe, stay awake, that long?” called Tasia.
Piers turned back into the doorway, door ajar. “I will,” he said, “All right? One more minute…”
He spent it leaning into the wall, trying to recall if anyone had ever taught him a prayer, trying to recall what it was and whether praying was anything more than sleep-deprived superstition.
He couldn’t recall a prayer. Someone had told him Our Father. If it meant anything, it failed to make it clear.
Shoulders stiff from the back of his neck down through his spine, he slumped back over the table with a wince. “Last time,” he told Tasia.
“You’ll remember, dumayu. You’ll remember.” Somehow, her assurance came as coolly as listing names. “Ten minutes.”
Piers swore silently to himself it had been fifty. But time blurred too, didn’t it?
“I’ll remember,” he said to the table as Tasia rose, snapping flip-top screen over her pocketbook computer. “It comes back to you when you need it.”
“Sleep, Resk, or I’ll ask Teller to lock you in until you do.”
“All right,”
“You didn’t hear me.”
Piers shook his head, sick, throat dry. “No.”
“Don’t get drunk, Resk, it depresses.”
“God, only afterwards. Bloody hell, I sound like--”
“Good night,” Tasia cut him off.
Without conscious note, Piers fell asleep over the table, light flickering through lids hovering at the edge of consciousness. Not asleep, it said, not really… Despairing, he let it be. And dreamed again of drowning. Dark water and the slate-beach ocean, lapping, wearing at land until it slid away; and there was water in the streets and water in his flat and he couldn’t breathe.
Sixth-floor, flat 22-4 B, second door on the left. Lift’s dead. Corrugated steel crosses half-slid doors, rusted; interior reeks. Peripheral sight can catch the mirrors. Shattered. Flickered features and dark clothes reflect as you pass.
Palm-read; voice recog. Two-twenty-four-B still won’t open.
The narrow young man swears, long-fingers wandering to his throat, collar undone.
“Joscelyn?” he calls.
Down the corridor, broken-glass is ringing on steel stairs. Four meters further, 22-6 rattles. Worn smooth carpet is stained beneath its door.
He presses his palm against grubby sleeves, and slips it back over the read. Silence. One-two seconds. Blinking, white sheen rolls down the pad. Voice, it waits.
“Resk,” says the man.
The door clinks, stuttering inward.
“Joss?”
The flat is narrow as the man, less thin-lined and wan, just as threadbare and morose. A flipped-up comp-screen casts lurid glow below the torn sofa and over its desk, greys and dulled metallic counterfeit. Its keypad has coffee dashed across it.
Wrenched open, the window breathes stale air and city damp. Dusk-limned silhouetted skyline breaks its reflection; and in the distance, the webbed etching of the suspension over Nurya.
Again, voice falling hoarse - “Joss?” He drops the satchel slung over his shoulder, yanking at coat sleeves as he starts across the room. His hand brushes the spattered keypad - coffee clinging to his fingers.
The glass’s reflection, grey-light and final sunlit blur, catches his palm. “Good God,” he wipes frantically, thoughtlessly at the dulled crimson smeared across his skin. “Joss! Damn this - Joscelyn!”
Skinners wander into Zapad res. flats. He recalls the stubble-faced vostokchik of last year, lounging on the Transport steps, switch-blade between scarred fingers. He couldn’t have gotten in. Harried, he stares back at his blood-stamped fist. His palm. No one else had been through.
“Joss!--…God.” He glances to the window.
Glue-bound, edges frayed synthetic, his book sits, jammed between glass and frame at the corner. One page hangs, torn half-out and scrawled.
It’s darker now. The man leans, unconscious squinting, clean hand pulling the title-page.
“Don’t worry,” he reads, too low, “I’m not insane - roulette-crazy, mum says, I know. mum’s dead. I’m just ready to fall.”
“Ready…?” With a lost catch of bewilderment, the man raises his head, wan blue-ish eyes scattered.
Shadow flashes past the window. Someone is screaming. Below, vostok drifters laugh.
Bewilderment loosens into void. His hand is at his collar again, and he’s pulling where it no longer presses; and he slides down beneath the window and breathes.
He woke, hands clammy pressed to his face, breathing ragged. Dim electric light bled faint shadows in the window-panes, fell like liquid, blacking out all city luminance. “I’m not bloody well crazy,” told himself, “I’m not crazy; just tired.”
But he didn’t sleep again. He couldn’t sleep without drowning.
Tov met him some time near dawn on the zapad end of Aleksander, slight in black and slouched casually into the overhang of Vranats. Blasé, he played with a lit cigarette, without any apparent intent to smoke it.
“Sleep?” He glanced up.
“More if you could bloody well do this yourself,” snapped Piers.
“Slept well, I guess."
Gender:
Points: 10092
Reviews: 459