Simple Things (2022)

   The first thing that always strikes you when you step off the plane is the air. After the unusually cold Moscow spring, the contrast is especially noticeable. Here, the air is thick and hot, filled with the scents of greenery and flowers. It envelops you from head to toe, pleasantly touching your skin.

Day One 

8:30 AM

  A green wall of trees rushes past on both sides of the road, occasionally interspersed with solitary houses and fields. The drive takes about two hours. During this time, the man behind the wheel manages to say several times that we’re almost there: “five minutes, and we’ll be there.” I repeat this to my sons, who whine and fidget in their seats out of boredom. We’ll be there soon. We’ll be there soon. Yes, yes, we’ll be there soon. I crave silence and want to close my eyes. But I peer into the green blur outside the window, I can’t miss anything, because we’re in paradise.  

  2:30 AM

  Have a good rest. Rest your soul. And physically. Thank you, darling. I don’t know. I sat on the beach today and cried. It’s so hard to reconcile everything. Everything that’s happening, and this beautiful world. And that I’m here. Rest, my dear, we’re all just tired, you have a chance to rest and think everything over properly.  

Day Two 

12:00 PM

  The water crashes in with a roar and with such force that you convulsively clench your toes in an attempt to grip the shifting sand. At first, the ocean tries to knock you down, spit you out onto the shore, and then furiously drags you back in. I go into the water. Almost immediately, I find myself weightless, the bottom drops away into the depths, a moment of panic washes over me, I pull myself together. With all my might, I swim towards the horizon line, now leaping over a wave, now diving under it. I feel my muscles starting to tense and fatigue from battling the current sets in. I look back and see how far away the shore is. Men-dots stand at the water’s edge, peering intently in my direction. I turn to swim back, and a wave covers me. It spins me, throws me around like a disembodied, will-less, nothing. I surface, frantically gasp for air, and immediately the next wave covers me. Inside, hysteria and anger.  A sharp desire to disconnect from the circumstances, to pretend that this isn’t happening to me, to stop resisting, to cancel everything with a snap of the fingers. I don’t understand how I cover the distance back. I come ashore on trembling legs, my body feels numb and heavy. I’m shaking from fear, physical exhaustion, the realization that I could have drowned. I catch myself thinking that, on the whole, it might not have been the worst way to die. One of the men on the shore gives me a thumbs up.  

Day Six 

11:30 AM 

  Market stalls. A mixture of the smells of fresh and decaying fish. Large and small fish bodies laid out in rows. In the sun, a silvery, firm belly covered in scales glistens with moisture. A fly, flitting busily from place to place, crawls over it, nervously probing the slime with its proboscis, sucking in the juices. On the cloudy bluish surface of the ice that surrounds the fish bodies, a barely noticeable blood trail in the form of a thin thread.  

 3:00 PM

  Madam, how are you? Good. Where are you from? Russia. Madam, have you been on any excursions yet? No. Would you like to go? No. 

Day Nine 

11:30 PM

  At night, I go outside the hotel. I walk along the asphalt road on the second row for half an hour, then I dive into an alley towards the sea, and on the first row I turn back towards the hotel. Rare roadside lanterns cast light, snatching fences and lush green canopies from the darkness. I peer into other people’s spaces. Behind the fence of one of the houses, on an open terrace, men are lounging on sofas, protruding their bare bellies, watching television. A dog’s sharp, strained bark betrays my presence. I hastily retreat. At one point, it becomes so dark that it’s impossible to take a step, so I turn on the flashlight on my phone. I hear the sound of an approaching motorbike. A light emerges from the bushes and rushes towards me. Two men. They slow down slightly as they pass me. I feel fear, but I don’t show it. I walk past without turning around. A flash of lightning silently cuts through the sky. Somewhere nearby in the darkness, waves crash onto the shore with a roar. A solitary lantern casts a dim light on the bulging bottoms of fishing boats, piled up in a row on the sand, scraps of fabric — pennants — flutter in the wind. Around the bend in the road, a three-meter-high wall of the hotel rises, behind which the light from the floodlights can be guessed, music plays softly, and tranquility beckons. Next to the entrance, the sign of a fish restaurant flickers, but there’s no one inside. Two elderly women are sitting on chairs opposite. One of them turns to me, draws a circle with her hand, nonverbally asking about the trajectory of my walk, and shakes her head. Dangerous, madam. Not allowed.  

Day Seven 

12:30 PM

  A white splotch of crow droppings lands on my hand. I can’t remember what was before it. Or what was after. Crows are everywhere here. Now, in the off-season, there are more of them than hotel guests. They stroll around the grounds. Black spots on the green carpet of the lawn. It’s paradise for them here. They have multiplied and lead a perfectly decent existence, sipping water from the pool with their beaks and stealing food from unwary vacationers.  

3:45 PM

  I run my hand along his trunk. Hot, rough. I direct my gaze upwards, trying to find the elephant’s eyes among the gray, corrugated mass of skin. I find them. It seems to me that he is looking at me. The elephant twitches and takes a step to the side, pressing against the mahout with the stick. It hurts me.  

11:30 AM

 I have one life.

9:30 AM

  Do you know what paradise is? No, I don’t. Neither do I. Mom, are you going to tell me what paradise is? I told you, I don’t know.  

Day Three 

11:30 PM

  In the evening, I wandered around the hotel. I discovered a large closet filled with books, newspapers, and magazines in different languages. Judging by all appearances, someone from the hotel staff had been collecting and storing these books and magazines, left behind by vacationers, in this closet for many years. Everything was old and battered. A sharp smell of dampness, mold, and time hit my nose. Advertising magazines with hotels and paradisiacal corners from all over the world, newspapers with news from long-gone days, magazines designed to entertain the reader with sensational stories from the life of humanity — wars, revolutions, shipwrecks and dictatorships, movements of human masses for freedom and against it. When you leaf through the pages, your fingers become covered with a layer of sticky dust, so thick that the skin on your fingertips becomes dirty-brown, and your sensitivity is dulled. The closet is located in one of the corridors on the top floor. The air here is hot. After 5 minutes, my whole body is covered with droplets of sweat, after 10 my clothes are soaked with moisture, dripping from my forehead. There’s no one around. Sounds of life reach me from below, music plays, voices and footsteps are heard. A pleasant feeling of solitude washes over me. But with each closer sound, my heart freezes with anxiety, all attention goes into listening. A tormenting fear appears that someone will come up to this floor. It seems that I won’t survive the encounter. After half an hour, being in this inferno becomes unbearable. I take a few magazines and take a step to the side. Immediately, a piercing cry, either of a bird or an animal, comes from somewhere under the ceiling, echoing and reflecting off the walls many times. Frightened, I search for the source of the sound with my eyes, I find no one, I turn sharply and practically run away down the corridor.