Excerpts from
The Russian Singer
By Leif Davidsen
Never take things for granted, especially not at night, when you are lonesome and alone. It was the second night of the new year. Soon I would be forty, and I was trying to take stock of my life. I had to decide if it were still worth fighting to save my marriage to Susanne.
As often before, I was looking down upon the scarred asphalt of the Sadovaya, where the frozen mixture of ice, gravel, and snow looked like a bandage that should have been changed a long time ago. The Sadovaya is the ring road that surrounds the center of Moscow like a cigar band. It means the Garden Road, but like almost everything else in the city, the beautiful name covered an unpleasant reality. The Soviet Union is a society that distinguishes itself by describing lies as truths and staring them straight in the face before turning its back on them, pretending that they do not exist.
It was a white and icy night. The frosty air was so brittle that sounds crackled before reaching one´s ear. A petrified night, when chimney smoke and exhaust from the few cars danced in the blurred light like luring elves in a bog. A deep-frozen night, when the dark stillness of Moscow grew even quieter, so that all lonely and unhappy people did not know what to do with themselves; when the choice seemed to be between the bottle and suicide. It was early January, and the cold cut deeper than the thermometer showed, because it had come from the depths of Siberia surprisingly and suddenly after days of thaw and slush and false promises of impending spring.
Like many times before, I stood by the window smoking my pipe and looking out over the lifeless city, seemingly abandoned by people. I looked out at yellow fatades and blackish blue windows. The scaly, dark yellow color of the dilapidated buildings was mottled with black splotches. Sharp icicles hung like fangs along the roofs. The telephone rang. I answered it, and life was never the same again: it spoke of death and mutilation.
From Leif Davidsen: The Russian Singer,
Andre Deutsch 1991
Translated by Jørgen Schiøtt
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