Semmant by Vadim Babenko

arduous slumber. The effort of the last months had been excessive; it had gone well beyond normal. The usual means – alcohol, sex – would hardly help me recover. I was ruled not by indiscriminate indifference, but by delicate, sweet sorrow.
    Mollified and meek, I walked the streets, smiling at everyone in turn; and many grinned at me in reply, probably taking me for an idiot. I almost loved them, nonetheless – so dim-witted, insignificant, entirely self-absorbed. I wanted to do something good, and probably my looks were inviting enough. People spoke to me, asked directions; many times I personally guided tourists to well-known Madrid places – the Prado Museum, the flea market, or the Royal Palace. Along the way, I would be polite and kind, diligently keeping up the conversation. I would tell them all I knew about Velasquez and Goya, bullfighting and flamenco, the royal family and seafood paella. This soon wore everybody out, and then I would ask the questions they expected – about their cities, occupations, relatives. This invigorated them, and they talked a lot. But I didn’t get annoyed; I would obediently look at the photos of brides and grooms, husbands, wives, and children – an incredible number of children that they shoved in my face. I just couldn’t get my dander up – this probably seemed strange. Many even cocked their heads in suspicion, thanked me hastily, and quickly ran away.
    I did not take offense; I didn’t care. I forgot each chance encounter the very second it ended and never remembered again. They did not understand the most important part: it wasn’t them I was concerned about. This was just my position – Thomas told me once when he was still a financial guru: the main challenge is to take a position! And here I tried; I knew what the trick was. I wanted to give away selflessly, as if to atone for some kind of sin. No, no, I didn’t think selflessness could help us, Semmant or me. But still – there was a reason for it.
    As always at impasse, in idle times, my Brighton past came into its own. I returned to the leaden waves – with my thought, consciousness, receptors. I imagined I was wandering through the city not with the airheads from the crowd. Instead, I recognized faces – faces of those whom I knew: Mona, the thin beauty, and Kurt, the short-sighted bully, and haughty Mario, and my Little Sonya. Her, more often than the rest.
    Strangely, I almost never thought of Sonya until I found out she was no more. Not about her or our brief fling. There, in Brighton, she had been a prominent figure. Her friends recounted breathlessly her meticulousness and explosive temper, her guttural screams in the night, the Maltese flag in the window in place of drapes. She loved her things with an obsession, laying them lovingly out on the bed and giving them names. She called her electric teapot Steamy; her straw mat was My Dear Friend; the mirror by the door was Dirty Little Girl. Yet I took no notice of her, as if on purpose, though she caught everyone’s eye. And then she picked me herself – for no other reason than the irony of it. She flew upon me like an Asian typhoon – with gently slanting eyes and a round Jewish butt. Her countenance alternately flushed with incredulous savagery, hatred toward the unknown, and… desire, tenacious temptation. Many races were mixed in her, and she was better than any of them taken separately. In looks, in smell, in taste.
    Don’t think that I remember her only because of the first sex of youth. And, in any case, don’t oversimplify. I felt her orgasms on my tongue one after the other; it was with her I first learned what a woman smelled like in unbridled passion; and yet the essence was in something else. When time had passed, I caught myself thinking I was glad she wasn’t with me, that I had been freed, had slipped away. She possessed an inherent sense of chaos, an impetuous emotion of devastation – by carrying this in herself, she was sparing