Jaroslavas Melnikas
He crawled through the window while we were sleeping and he wanted to rob us, or maybe even kill us all. It’s why I didn’t really understand very well what I was doing, shooting at him with a revolver and aiming for his head. He, of course, was a scumbag, a criminal. But to see the death throes of the person you killed in your bedroom, well, it isn’t very nice either. And it was like he deliberately lay there dying for a whole half hour, gurgling and crying, all bloody and foaming at the mouth. My wife’s eyes were as big as saucers, her face turning green, sweating and shrieking (she couldn’t shout anymore). The children, standing in the doorway, were red from their ear-piercing screaming, which usually accompanies an endless fright.
I ran out into the yard in just my underwear because otherwise I would have lost it. My body hit the eighth degree of irritation of my nervous system, or something along those lines. Of all the windows, why the hell did he have to crawl into mine?
So, the ambulance, together with the police, took him away. Now I was supposed to go back to my good life, wife and kids. We threw out the carpet with the huge bloodstain – to hell with it. But something’s not quite right. At night I lie down in bed next to my wife, but she moves away from me. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. And I move closer. And again she unconsciously pushes me away. ‘Luba, what’s with you?’ And again I move closer. And at this point she’s almost in hysterics, whispering unintelligibly, as though to herself: ‘Murderer…’ Honest to God, I’m dumbfounded. ‘Get up,’ I say. ‘I don’t understand.’ And she’s afraid of me. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘What, would you have preferred it if he had robbed us, killed us?’
‘Maybe he wouldn’t have killed us,’ she says. ‘Just robbed us.’ What a fool. ‘Maybe,’ she says, ‘he would have taken something and left. But now…’
‘Now what?’ I ask, barely able to control myself. ‘But now he’s gone,’ and then comes the shouting and screaming.
Good God. These are the facts. So, I killed a man. I am a scumbag killer. ‘Vitek, I understand,’ she says, shuddering from the crying, ‘you defended us. But why in the head?’
‘I don’t understand!’ I shout.
And she says: ‘When I remember how he lay there dying, poor thing… right here. Dying and crying. Oh, I can’t…!’ And she starts wailing. I see the kids in the doorway, looking and once again shaking from terror.
‘Out! Go to sleep!’ No, I… What, am I suppose to go and kill myself? It’s not possible to live like this anymore.
So I went to his home. I went there on purpose to see just how much of a scoundrel I really am. As if on purpose, his elderly mother looked like my mother: she sat there and did not cry. She just held his dead hands. It was horrible. And then there were his children: a boy and a girl, who were now orphans. The girl, the younger one, was crying, while the boy stood with a look on his face that I will remember to the day I die. Suddenly the girl spoke through her tears: ‘Daddy, my dearest.’ And two teardrops fell on daddy’s forehead. ‘Dad-dy, get up. Daddy.’ She clearly loved him. The little girl with the puffy little red nose, still just a baby.
I left, holding myself up against a nearby wall. What was this? I didn’t understand. Who am I? What was I supposed to do in that moment? Now that he’s lying there, he’s so innocent, an angel, a son, a dad. God’s creation. But then, when he crawled through the window wearing his mask, he was simply a criminal, a scumbag thief who I put a bullet in – a worm who had the gall to interfere in a stranger’s peaceful life. And I suddenly had the desire to eliminate a few more of those vermin in my bedroom, so that the children of those sons of bitches would cry their eyes out, asking their dad to get up out of the coffin.
I sat down on a bench at a playground near their home. Good God, what had I done wrong? What? I was living my life, not harming even a fly, when he crawled into my home and my life. And now he’s not here anymore. What did I do wrong? Why was I suffering so much?
When I talked to myself like this it seemed to me that I was thoroughly in the right. But then I remembered the little girl, that little voice of hers: ‘Dad, daddy, get up, please.’ Oh, I can’t do this anymore. I am a scumbag. Luba’s right. Yes, a scumbag. Sure, maybe I had saved Luba and my children from being killed, but I was still a scumbag. And Luba was afraid to touch me. And yes, now I can walk with my head held up high. There aren’t many who have killed a man, who have ended a life. But I have.
And now, overcome with horror, I understood that I could never wash away this stain. I’m a killer. I will die like that, like a killer, with sin weighing down on my soul. A sin? I stopped right there. What the hell – a sin? What did I do wrong? So I sat on that little bench near their home until they carried him out – that son, father and criminal. Just now I heard real shrieking: the mother started wailing and I almost went crazy from her pain. ‘Son, son!’ It was just impossible to listen. That poor woman, she could hardly move her legs. She had given birth to him, raised him. I sit and cry a river of tears. I didn’t understand, I don’t understand anything. And then a young man comes up to me. He seems intelligent. He says in a low tone: ‘Leave. You had just better leave.’ And then he looks me straight in the eyes. But, good God, what is this? Well he’s a brother or a relative and recognises my right to defend myself and all that. But he personally blames me, only me. You hear me, guy, you were in the right in your own bedroom but now go, get out of my sight and out of their sight. Don’t stand there, you killer.
So what of all this, ultimately? I leave. Like a beaten dog. There’s shouting, crying, his kids are screaming – that son of his as well – out of grief. The mother is wailing. God, what had I done? I, I alone. With this hand right here.
So I calmed down in a café. Now they are putting him in the ground. So, what is there left to do? Did I really understand what I was doing when I grabbed the revolver from the nightstand? He approached with a knife, for God’s sake. All right, maybe he wasn’t planning to kill me. He most likely just wanted to scare me so I’d lie in bed without resisting while he emptied out our drawers. Then… Now I understood Luba. Goddammit, so in other words, let’s just say he would have robbed us and disappeared, it would have been better than what’s happening now. So what, we would have taken a hit financially, but everything in our hearts and minds would have remained just like before. And what now?
I went home, but Luba didn’t even say a word.
‘So, what’s wrong now? How can we live like this? Luba, do you hear me? Don’t be silent.’ And instead of answering she’s silent. ‘Don’t be silent, or I’m going to smack you!’ And then she looks at me. ‘So, why are you staring at me? Huh? I’m a murderer, right? You see a murderer?’
And then she, incomprehensibly, says with a shaking voice: ‘Yes.’
And she runs out of the kitchen and cries alone in the bedroom. So I start breaking the dishes and the furniture. I broke a stool and the table then fell right down onto the floor. And here I cut my hand, the blood’s running. What am I supposed to do? Luba began to wail even louder. It was good that the kids were at kindergarten. I was going to go crazy.
‘I’m going to kill you!’ I say. Suddenly I leap up and Luba, seeing me in the doorway, retreats to the corner, her eyes glazed with terror.
‘Don’t kill me,’ she screams.
So, I think to myself, those are the facts. It’s not far to the mad house for me. My nerves are totally frayed. I turned around without saying a word, took out a half-litre bottle from the cupboard and drank from the bottle, right there.
And that was what saved me. I knew that I was acting like the biggest lush in the world, but I put it to my lips and emptied it right to the bottom. And ten minutes later I collapsed to the floor. Of course, it would have been better to take some strong sleeping pills – a triple dose of Tazepam. But we didn’t keep anything like that in the house. Ultimately, I needed to relax for a long time because otherwise my nerves would have gone haywire and it wasn’t clear how it all would have ended. So I acted correctly in getting drunk.
Luba was still somewhat hysterical all alone in the bedroom (she told me that she had pushed the chest of drawers in front of the door so I couldn’t get in, though she knew she was acting the fool – she scared herself deliberately). Afterwards, when everything quietened, she calmed down a little. The foolishness evaporated from her head. She put the chest of drawers back in its place and went into the kitchen to take a look. I was lying all twisted up on a pile of broken furniture. Of course she started to scream, thinking I had killed myself. Afterwards she found the empty bottle and she understood everything. While I was lying there I felt sick a few times. But having lost consciousness, I don’t remember anything.
I slept something like thirty hours. I sobered up in the bedroom and even smiled. Somehow my soul felt good.
The sun was in the window. Luba came in. ‘So, how are you feeling?’ And she came to hug me. Good God. Everything’s fine again. I remembered that something horrible had happened, but it was like I saw everything through some sort of filter. In other words, I gained a little perspective. My nerves calmed and my heightened senses subsided as did Luba’s. She would have a cuddle with me; it was entirely different now. It seems that she also got some sleep.
A year later and I had forgotten everything. An unpleasant feeling remained, but there were no more recollections of how that man died, crying in our bedroom, and the other family came to terms with it and got used to living without their son and father. That lonely old mother and that girl with the swollen little nose continued to stand there before my eyes, but in time they disappeared as well – especially after the one time when I was walking by and saw that very same mother angrily arguing with a neighbour. I didn’t feel anything good and noble towards her then.
Lately for some reason Luba and I have been fighting over petty things. We came into a little money, but it seems we aren’t happy. Our eldest, Vova, goes out partying and doesn’t come home to sleep. I’ve noticed that Luba looks at me like I’m not even here. ‘Take out the trash,’ she says while she is scraping at something in the kitchen. ‘The Yelizarov’s are flying to Paris this week.’ Now she apparently wants to go to Paris. ‘Luba,’ I say. ‘What?’ she says annoyed. ‘Nothing.’ And I take out the trash.
Good God, what a life. What is going on with us? Are we bored with each other or what? The trash. Vova. Paris. Money, and what’s more, it seems that I killed a man. Yes, I did. I’ve got work tomorrow morning. Yawn, I’m getting sleepy. Neither feeling nor meaning. Still, back then, in those horrible days, I lived to the fullest. I cried out of grief with that old woman and I suffered.
In the evening I said ‘Luba, do you still remember that incident?’
‘What incident?’
‘When I killed that person?’
‘And what were you supposed to do? Wait until he killed us?’
And she taps her spoon so nervously against her plate, thinking to herself.
‘I’m a killer, after all.’
‘Stop it, you acted like a proper man.’
It was nice to hear, of course, but then came the comment: ‘Fix the sink in the bathroom. How long can you put it off?’
I went to his grave. A horrible longing overcame me. I thought it would get me feeling. I’d remember how he died right before my eyes. Maybe something would tremble in my soul. But I didn’t besides the crooked cross and the headstone with ‘Pavlov Gennady Konstantinovicius’, I didn’t see anything. I didn’t feel anything. The grass and the remains were under the ground.
I ended your journey, friend. You could forgive me.
Translated by Jayde Will from Jaroslavas Melnikas, Rojalio kambarys, Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers (2004).
Jaroslavas Melnikas (born 1959) was born in Ukraine, studied literature in Lviv and Moscow, and later settled in Lithuania. He has written books of prose, philosophy and criticism. His work is distinguished by his paradoxical way of thinking, his philosophical narrative tone and his humorous renderings of existential situations.