Jurij Andruhovič

I forget place names, especially in Spanish. All that remains: San Francisco, L. A., and, therefore, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz. I remember those rather because of the soaps I never watched. But what about the street names? The islands, the bays, the coves? The prisons?
All right, I think I remember the names of the people: Veronica, Natalia (here I stumble, so let’s start again), Natalia, Veronica, Yaroslav B. B., then there was that Russian boy, and, of course, Longinus. And what we drank on the beach was Croatian slivovitz – just the right thing to warm up the inner world, that is, the organs, after splashing in the cold ocean. We ran into it, as if into the night, we ran back to the shore and poured Croatian slivovitz inside. All right, I remember that it was slivovitz. I even remember that it was Croatian. But what was the ocean called?

And of course, the Chinese guy, whom we surprised twelve minutes before the gong, that is, before the closing of the gates and of the kitchen, he certainly didn’t choose the best name: Dragon River (just imagine those junks and that monster beating its tail on the water and spitting fire!); but what, what was next? City Lights? Some intersection? Janis Joplin and others?
On the way from Frisco to Palo Alto we all fell asleep, including Longinus. He was at the wheel. The ocean was on the right; the moon was up high; life – like death – was ahead.

Thanks to the marina, to the English, the Polish, and the Ukrainian studies, for bringing her up just for me, thanks to all the media outlets to which she contributes, to the Russian Military Review which she reads in Berlin’s S-Bahn cars, to the music she listens, the movies she watches, the computer games she loses, for her being her being her, thanks to her grandpa who says Don’t go to Lviv; there is no such city, thanks to all the preceding generations for them congressing unconsciously paving her centuries-long path to incarnation (just for me),
I sneak into her dreams, I thank her for thanking her for the chance to be dreamt of, the chance to echo, to pulse and be grateful.

…it’s a bit like hotel rooms – you have to check out by noon, so we shut the door, run downstairs and hand in the key at the front desk.
But what about the rooms? what happens to them without us? what befalls all those tangled sheets, all that mess, all those towels and pillows, and the ash in the ashtrays?
Do the gusts of wind from the window still blow it? does the tap still drip over the bathtub? does the fogged-up mirror clear at last? what can you see in it? (as the Bard might proclaim: Oh, what would I give just to see what happens to a room that I’ve left forever!)

Obviously, the maid eventually appears, her goal to wipe away the slightest trace of us, as if we had never been there. And in this she succeeds.
Obviously, later other, different others show up, assigned to this room.
But what happens during the between? Between our departure and the appearance of the maid? In the hotel room where we lay so close, the two of us, breathing so close?

Taras is right when he says, Alarm clocks should not startle us in the morning. Mornings are a time of confusion anyway. All-encompassing anguish. The worst that could happen. The requirement to somehow get through the rest of the day pins you to the bed. Win another half hour. Reflect on what you saw.
Reflecting on dreams – it’s an attempt to bring order to nighttime adventures, make their plots graceful, make their visuals bright. What really happened? Why the hell did a drunken Thomas leave dry excrement under the seat? The sexy nun, was she demanding something when she pointed her finger at me? I also remember a clocktower. There was plenty of time to kill before departure, but no way of leaving the trailer crowded with friends. What hindered me?

It’s much worse when, a bunch of flowers in your hand, you’re on your way to visit someone who actually was killed a month ago, to their anniversary party. Why an anniversary? Another two minutes, and I will explain, I’ll catch up with the nun, I will make Thomas clean up after himself…
Reflecting on dreams leads to nothing but parallel conclusions: life slips away; the problem of mornings consists in life getting shorter and shorter. Only in dreams, where everything is stupid, does life look real. And thus eternal. Win another half hour.

The same smells, the same scented candles, and various other contraptions: bells, buddhas, new age recordings, Madame Blavatsky …
As for the rest, we left it in perfect order, the landlady might only have noticed a couple of stains on the sheets.
Sadly, we don’t know how to do it more neatly. Angels could do it more neatly, but they don’t make love. There’s no such thing as more neatly.
And then someone willed so that after a seventeen-month interruption I found myself there again: the same smells, the same scented candles, all this pseudo-indian stuff: mandalas, castanedas, chopsticks, new age bells and whistles … 

And a night so long, a loneliness so complete under this ceiling, and such utter stainlessness that chances of getting into heaven are suddenly not too bad.
But they don’t make love there.