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It struck me that a further objection could be added to all of these: the wars started in order to test new weapons and those ended in order to lower the price of a barrel of crude oil. And a good many other negative aspects of things besides. But I let Vi
"I'll see what I can do. I can't make any promises. You know, we have plenty of doctors here and then some. But I have a friend who may be interested in your experience as a doctor in Chechnya. I should get a reply within-um-let's say four or five days."
That was the story I had quickly concocted with Shakh: an army doctor on the run from the Caucasus via Turkey, who had landed in America. Very sketchy, it had the advantage of corresponding to my former profession and being relevant to Vi
I needed words that would have eclipsed the sun, obliterated the whiteness of the sand, stilled the shouts and the peals of laughter. Words that would have been night, the dark, damp granite of cobbled streets, solitude. I realized that I had never left that night and that Vi
"He forgot the sugar. I'll go and ask him for it."
I got up and went to the bar at the other end of the terrace. I had to wait for the barman to emerge from a cupboard where he was noisily stacking empty bottles. The ornamental pillar that extended upward from the counter to the ceiling was covered in small pieces of mirrored glass. One of the fragments gave a view of the table I had just left, as well as the one behind it, occupied by a young man reading a newspaper. Throughout our lunch I had been aware of the rustling of pages. Now, reflected in the mirror, I could see his face clearly. He had lowered the newspaper and was talking, without seeming to address anyone in particular. Vi
So Vi
"Watch out for sunstroke," he warned as he left me. "And thieves. They can smell foreigners five miles off. Especially the young blacks and the Latinos, too. What a crew!"
"I see, I thought the melting pot…"
"Now, look, that's just between the two of us, as one Russian to another. Don't repeat what I said or you'll get yourself lynched."
That evening the taxi moved along slowly, often held up by cars trying to park near restaurants, and by the crowd of young vacationers embarking on their night of celebration. There was a fine, warm drizzle. The ta
The taxi dropped me in a quiet, narrow street, a street of small villas that already seemed fast asleep. One could hear the rain, heavier than a moment ago, and somewhere in the depths of the thick vegetation the voices from a television set, probably the dialogue from some science fiction film portraying a civilization in the twenty-fifth century All that remained of the sparkle at the town's center was a halo of faded brightness in the sky. As I walked along, the sound of conversations between men of future centuries gradually passed out of earshot and I could only hear the rain. I recognized Vi
The darkness was punctuated by bluish areas around the street lights. The alternation between this harsh glare and the dark foliage transformed my arrival there into a strange negative of my first visit, the day before, in the morning sun. Everything was repeated so precisely that it left me the leisure to observe brief gaps of absurdity and silence between words and actions.
The caretaker appeared, dressed in a windbreaker, looked at me through the gate and disappeared into the sentry box. The intercom hissed, I spelled out my name, then the name of the man who had recommended me. The caretaker's drawling questions came back at me, unchanged since the day before, as if in the rhyming refrains of a children's game. Vi
"Over here in the West you know, arriving like this at ten o'clock at night without warning is the best way to give your acquaintances a heart attack. Try doing it in Paris or London. Ringing the bell on the off chance and when the door opens a
I realized that within a few more seconds this tone would again make it impossible to say what I had to say. Vi