[en]
Every morning & late afternoon I
sit in the Elektritshka. Before & after, the Витебский train
station benevolently harbors my brief walk across its steely spine,
before I'm off for Pavlovsk. Very old ladies holding their newspaper
right in front of them, a little too close. Clinging their fists and
crunching the news with their bare hands. I haven't seen such vivid
obsession with words in a long time. I sense riddled judgment in
their eyes, because my own judgment doesn't amount to a living thing.
Instead I fantasize about things never performed, endless piles of
wishes and skinny choices. So I sit quietly with parallel knees and I
think I can see no mischiefs.
A voice asking for money behind me.
With a headset, must be. No one can
carry sound like this, unless the sound is strapped to his body. A
hidden speaker, a screaming third kidney. Meanwhile, steamed windows paint landscapes,
smearing a grin away, as my faithful train shoots through purring tracks; as
the cold ground escapes behind us, the train pretends to stand still,
though speeding gallantly. One ride, is 40 minutes each direction.
The voice closes in.
& I remember, Monday is the sleazy
flogging-the-cage-day. Days of days. Slayer of May's promises. Pouring boiling Miso over the strokes
of mid-day, middle compartment of the else-filled drawer: the only
soup has left the building.
The voice,
though successively
purifying, doesn't settle and swiftly borrows a skeleton from a
passenger. One of the old reading ladies must do, of course. For a
repeating cause. She complies, but begs
the voice to
never borrow like this again. Only than she fleeces her bones off & hands them over to the incorporeal
threat. Suddenly -in a way-, new rattly steps of
the same voice
draw even closer to my silly back. Hissing tendons, moist flesh &
gorgeous hairs flex & tighten up around the selling carcass,
speaking of handy booklets & eternal knowledge on its further path to my sitting self. By the
time it passes me, the voice has stripped & forged entirely into a breathing sales man, making
it hard to believe the voice has ever used to come by without a host.
There are many sales people selling.
Books, lighting lamps, discount catalogs, maps and household items
are among the hooks thrown in our wagons. Many hosts with eyes of tender moist. Knights of rough boldness, serving also as casualties of past misfortune & hopelessness.
Nothing to feel sorry for; rather do I admire, until my skull bursts open and sets free a feverish swarm of ants, thanking for those hidden suffrages inhabiting the present. I let myself step out with a bland wonder, to walk the rest of the way to the orphanage.
One walk, is 20 minutes each direction.
