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In Ulan-Ude, as everyone knows, there’s this custom of buying ground-floor apartments from ordinary residents and cramming some little shop into them—after tearing the former apartment to shreds, of course, and remaking it. In the winter darkness that has fallen, in the gaping emptiness between buildings, signs glow above the little shops—warming the dense blue and the deserted emptiness. I’m coming back from the workshop… (The shriek of the circular saw, teeth flashing at frenzied speed. All day I’ve been ripping boards, hammering scenery together.) The whistle of wind sweeping the drifting snow, stripping away the thin dusting that has only just covered everything. I go into one little shop, another, a third. One place has no little hundred-milliliter bottle, never has had one in its life; in another shop—a lean-to tucked onto the side—all the precious little bottles have already been snapped up; the third booze joint hasn’t had its little bottles delivered yet, they haven’t got around to it. How much farther must a wanderer in the night go, where can he turn? Empty, chilly, snow blowing across the whole earth.

At last, a little hut—standing with its front to the forest and its back to me. Everything inside shimmers with Christmas-tree ornaments… Little bottles, bottles, and whopping great bottles. A big, stout—as my grandmother would have said—saleswoman fills the shop’s entire space. A very fat woman in something untidy. Eating an enormous fish. Dried or smoked

the smell is plump and warm as a Chinese down jacket

fish oil in a little spoon that the kindergarten teacher forces into your mouth

devouring a fish

the symbol of Christ

And there it is, salvation close at hand (in a little hundred-milliliter bottle)—just reach out! But what you get is disdain, indifference, the simple (worse than thieving) act of a fat, untidy saleswoman eating a fish. And where are they, the beautiful women? All those marvelous “Baywatch” lifeguards, for instance (from the famous TV series)? Slender, tanned, with outstanding busts and bottoms firm as basketballs. And so, sort of—you walk into a little tropical shop like this—bright labels everywhere on bottles of drinks. A fresh gust of wind, the ocean surf booming, the pen strokes of gulls across the air. And there you are, all tanned, in colorful Bermuda shorts, a shark-tooth amulet around your neck. You’ve leaned your surfboard by the entrance, every muscle aching from soaring onto the crests—and gliding into the abyss between mountains of waves. And behind the counter—a “lifeguard.” And everything is cheerful, friendly. The beautiful girl smiles at you—and you smile at her; and say something nice.

The bright picture flared—and went out in my imagination. But… something suspicious. Her expressionless glance sliding over me, a half-erased, sleepy face. A seemingly deliberately dirtied… smock? Some kind of shapeless robe. The stage-prop glitter of bottle tinsel, hastily piled-up scenery. But what is the intention of this unknown—and, it seems to me, sinister—director

today is Thursday fish day

and besides I’m a Pisces

a realization shoots through me! I fling myself at the door, barely manage to force it open against the ocean wind… I knew something was coming! Fuckwitophiles! They’ve bloody nicked my surfboard!!

Foaming surf, the pen strokes of gulls. Leaving barefoot tracks in the sand, I drag myself back to my own bungalow.

Source: Baikal, 2017, No. 4, pp. 101–102. Text prepared from a scan of the magazine publication.