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We really have devolved into a mad world, haven’t we? When Marina went all cuckoo I just thought that’s how some people get. Sometimes someone just goes crazy. Man, it’s not even fun to tease her when she’s like that. Anywhere else, she would’ve just been sent to the crazy room, but we don’t have anything like that in Vorkuta-5. Grachevskaya, too. How does she keep getting away with her bullshit? Everyone seems to think it’s her parents’ fault, but a fifteen year old should take some goddamn accountability. If I were in charge, there would be a special crazy room just for her. The special Grachevskaya room… yeah, that’s where she belongs. Lunatics like those two should just be kept away.
…Is what I thought, anyway. But, a bit under a week ago…
“3,223,412 despair, 6,233,322 distortion, 2,311,444 denial, coordinate 352.16, 089.12, 431.09, stability 0.110, probability 49.1%…”
“D-Dad?” Shouldn’t he still have been at work?
“Texture soft, temperature 39 C, material organic…”
“Dad, what the fuck is going on?” I rushed over to him, not even putting my coat on the rack. I found him slouched over on the sofa. The TV was on a channel I’ve never seen before. I’m not even sure if it was in Russian. “Hey!” Mom called out, in response to my language. I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. What the fuck is happening?
“Free will… Hardcoded behavior…”
“Talk to me, Dad, what is this, what the hell is this?”
Dad’s eyes began to roll up to meet mine, but no animation seemed to enter his body. Peering in, I’m not sure those were the eyes I’ve always seen on him. How much have I looked at my father’s eyes? Maybe it hasn’t been much… but I know they’re more alive than this!
Dad fell over on the couch and started screaming. He yelled outward so loudly it pushed me two paces back. Three paces, four paces… seriously, what the fuck has happened?
Mom started again, “Please stop, dear… this is the sixth time now… It’s okay; nothing’s going to hurt you, please just stop…”
“What the hell happened to him?”
She sighed, though it didn’t relieve the tension in her body. “I know as much as you do. He was sent home from work about two hours ago. When he got here, he collapsed on the sofa and started… doing that.”
“Do you know why? Why haven’t you done anything?”
“I’ve been trying. I’ve been really really trying. He wouldn’t drink tea, eat biscuits, take a nap, any of it. Nothing’s working, and I just don’t know what to do…”
“You haven’t taken him to a doctor?”
“…Are you sure he can be seen this way?” A distinct terror crept into her voice. Although, it might have been there the whole time. Even the “Hey!” to tell me off for cussing sounded more abrupt and scared. Either way, I definitely heard it this time.
I looked back over at dad. He’s writhing on the couch, making incomprehensible screams. I hadn’t seen anybody act this way since… since Marina.
“Goddammit!”
“Vadim!”
“No, do you not understand? Goddammit, he’s…” I scrambled to find any other way to explain it. Marina’s just a lunatic. Marina, Marina, Marina Marina Marina why didn’t we just send you away? A crazy bitch like her… Dad wasn’t supposed to be anything like that! He had a good job! He was a good man!
“Apparently, this has been happening for a while at his workplace.”
“Is he fired? He’s not fired, is he?”
Mom looked away.
“They didn’t fire him, did he?”
Mom turned her body fully away from the scene. “Would you like some tea?” I suppose she still has to be a mother through all this. I can’t imagine what that’s like.
Dad’s screaming dominated the entire space. All the way to the back rooms of the apartment, you could hear him. All the way across the building, you could hear him. What the fuck? Even Marina didn’t get like this.
So it is something else, right? But what other leads do I have to go on? I have to help him. I have to. And if that psycho really can help him… ugh. Ugh! That’s so fucking annoying!
“I think there’s somebody I have to speak to, actually.”
“Okay. Be back by twenty.”
“Yes, mom.”
I sprinted out of the room, down the stairs, out of the apartment building. The December air struck my face, but I couldn’t care. Something happened to dad. And I had to find Marina. Goddammit, I had to find Marina. What a stupid, topsy turvy scenario. We really have devolved into a mad world.
I couldn’t find her anywhere. Had to stop her after school the next day, and of course, that went awful too. Shubina… Since then, it seems everyone else has been going crazy, too. Even my own brother seems to have had hysterics. At least I’m getting pills for them now. The rest of the city… good luck.
Marina says it’s something to do with a “code”. She says the universe is just built out of some code and variables, and that nothing is really real. I call bull. This is the girl who, each day in middle school, would collapse to the ground and ugly-sob everywhere for three fucking hours and make it everyone else’s problem. You really think she knows shit? Since when did the world work on Marina’s rules?
But she’s also my best source at this point. After all, she’s getting the pills. Well, her brother is. And the pills work. Dad is… well, he’s not yelling anymore, at least. I’m not sure this is “better”, exactly… Marina says people don’t get “better”, but that’s obvious hogwash. Look at her. She got better. Why can’t he get better?
I must be the last sane person left. The code? Really? You believe in some sci-fi bullshit like that? Give me a break. Thanks to this, though, now I’m responsible for everything. My brother’s never been one to take responsibility even before the madness, and dad’s gone just about catatonic, which leaves it all up to mom and me. And she’s not doing so great either. I’m supposed to be out with friends, but there’s barely time anymore. It’s all gone to shit.
Today, I’m out getting groceries for the family. Mom gave me a list of everything we need, but I also want to look for anything that could help dad. I don’t even know what that would be; I just need it. The grocery store… without the sunlight, the awful yellow hue of the outdated lightbulbs is all that’s left to illuminate the place. So everywhere you look is just… yellow. It’s not like I’m not used to that, it’s just ugly. Rows and rows of random items, baked in an ugly yellow because they never bothered to install good lightbulbs, are all that’s here.
Let’s see… we need bread, milk, tea… uh huh, that too… less than I thought, honestly. Dad and brother have been eating less these days, I suppose. I brought enough cash for everything, plus an additional ten rubles, which I’ll spend on the gift for dad. What would that be? I can’t imagine I’ll find it here. In the bread section they also sell special cinnamon bread, wow, so cool; this will cure my family. A special tea, maybe? Some nonsense about homeopathy or something? I pick up this tea with a name I don’t remember. “Pu-erh”? Maybe some exotic tea is supposed to be able to help alleviate mental stress, and help with… no, of course not. Why would this help dad? Solving all your problems with a nice tea? It’s almost as asinine an idea as the “code”. I set the pu-erh tea back down. This is nothing. I place black tea from the shelves in my cart. I’ll find what I’m looking for elsewhere.
You ever heard of the village idiot? That one guy in a small village who just says whatever stupid shit comes to his mind. Makes wild theories about everything, dying on the weirdest hills, just generally a bit of a nutcase. It’s fun to laugh at the village idiot, right? Every village needs one. Makes the rest of us feel better. If a village has two idiots? Twice the fun! If everyone in the village is an idiot but me… you get the current state of Vorkuta-5. And it’s not funny anymore. The joke isn’t funny anymore.
Well, who says it can’t be? Maybe that, in itself, is funny. If I don’t laugh, what am I supposed to do? Am I just supposed to be sad about it? Am I just supposed to cry? The streets have become so empty, you could walk all the way across town and back without ever meeting anybody. Casual greetings on the side of the road have slowly vanished as sights of the most awful meltdowns fade in. Even my own friends are seeming more distant… Am I supposed to feel lonely about that? Am I supposed to wallow in that? Why not just laugh? It’s funny, right? And if it isn’t, just keep laughing until it is. Marina fakes it too, after all.
Shubina makes the perfect village idiot. Some crazies will really go after you for just trying to enjoy yourself. By which I mean Grachevskaya. Though, she can’t stop me now, right? So sure, I can laugh at her! I can…
Man, I don’t feel like it. That’s a missing person. Besides, Shubina gives better reactions anyway.
…Well, speak of the devil.
“Matches strike at the phosphorus… Smoke lays in my palm…” She’s reading something from a book. Is that her journal? Her writing… if this is her writing, it’s weirdly… I don’t want to call it good, but it’s not awkward. I could imagine reading this in some pretentious poetry book.
“Wow, so edgy,” I say.
“Oh.” Her face falls. Nice to meet you too. “Hi Garin.”
“Didn’t realize a girl of Vorkuta would be into such violence.”
“Why are you here…?”
“Go on, read me another line; I’m interested.”
“…Are you really…?”
“Yeah, yeah. ‘Course I am. C’mon, Shuba, let me see into your heart.”
“I feel like you’ve seen enough of it…”
“Well, think of it this way. You dragged me out away from my squad yesterday and made me throw rocks at a wall, then buy you a soda.”
“I never thought it would involve you…”
“Well, it did, and now I think you should give back a little.”
She turns inward into herself. I can see her shrinking. Considering. Man, she’s easy to sucker.
“Don’t worry about anything, Shubina.”
“Buh… Okay.”
She recites the poem. Her voice is initially shaky and unconfident—I can barely even hear her—but she picks her voice up slowly during the recitation. She speaks with remarkable diction—well, at least, tonally accurate to the weird poem she wrote. It’s definitely way too edgy, like creating a soup made half out of salt. Yuck. But she delivers it well. It sounds like she’s practiced for this. What, was she going to share to the class? …No, really, why was she reciting it aloud in the first place? It sounds… it sounds… Damn, she must’ve brought me down to her level. It actually sounds okay.
“…It’s a wholesome painting… Even if it hangs askew…”
She finishes her poem. She silently looks up at me, expectantly, and I catch her immediately reevaluate her expectations when she remembers she’s talking to me. I’m silent, too. It’s actually… Heh. Hah! I chuckle. Hahaha! I laugh. Did I forget I was talking to the village idiot? Ah, this is funny. Is this funny? Well, I’m laughing. Because that’s what you do to a village idiot. Don’t you feel better knowing there are people lower than you? Ahahaha!
You know dad’s lower than you now.
Haha… fuck. It isn’t funny anymore. Shubina has just been staring blankly ahead while I snicker at her. For as crazy as she is, she keeps herself composed. How does she manage it? Can dad manage it?
“Are you happy now?” she says.
“What’s with the aggression? I’m just having some fun! I enjoyed it, I did.”
“I don’t know why I told it to you anyway… It was supposed to… It… Nevermind.”
“What?”
“It’s okay. You know, it’s okay, because you’re… thank you.” What’s she playing at?
“Uh, yeah. You can pay me for the feedback later.”
“I will.”
I don’t understand this girl. And it’s not in the way I didn’t understand Marina, or in the way I don’t understand dad. Yesterday at the film was the closest she came to any of that. No, Shubina just doesn’t make sense. Yesterday she said her world works differently to mine. Yeah, I think her world just works incorrectly.
And yet…
“…Shubina.”
“What’s up?”
I have to know if she can help dad. If poetry can help dad. If poetry even helped her. Which means… “Did you or did you not hear me and Marina behind the school on December 20th?”
Her eyes widen, like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar. I knew it. I knew it, that liar. She jumps back. Her eyes read ‘how did he know?’ Bitch, you know how I know.
“‘Course you did. Fucking liar.”
“I—” She gets stuck on her words.
“Dammit. Dammit! And the twenty-first as well… Which means you know…”
“I only heard the very end bit! I swear!”
“Listen here, punk. You no longer have Marina, or your little pitbull here to save you. So if you lie to me now, you’re going to feel my fist, do you understand?”
“I’m being honest! I only heard the very end; I don’t know… I really don’t know anything.”
“…You don’t?”
“I know… I know about the pills.”
“You bitch.” In this moment, I want to punch her. I want to punch her so hard. She wasn’t supposed to know about dad, nobody was. I want to punch her unconscious, that eavesdropping psycho. But I still need answers from her. I still have to work with her… whatever. All week I’ve been having to do stupid shit like this. Work with stupid people… I’m over it now.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It was genuinely an accident; I didn’t realize it was even you at first; I’m just so sorry. I tried to take it back. I tried to pretend it never happened. I tried to pretend it was okay… but it was always going to come to this in the end, huh?”
They shouldn’t, but her words disarm me. It’s probably for the better. I need her right now anyway.
“…Fine. Whatever. Now that you know that, even though, fuck you for knowing about that, and lying, now that you know that… you can actually help with something.”
“Huh? How so?”
I pause to find words. “…Does poetry help you? Does it help you stay collected?”
“What? Um, I mean, I guess it does. Yeah, it does. Even if I never expect anybody to see it in the end, it feels good to have those thoughts written down, you know? Even if they’re a bit embarrassing… as you’ve seen.”
“Do you think it could… Let me put it another way. Do you… recommend any poems? Or poetry books.”
“Oh, are you looking to get into poetry?”
“No. But… If it helps you stay grounded, it’ll help them, right?”
“What?”
“You know…”
“…I do. Hey, do you want to check out poetry books in the library together? I was going there anyway, to practice… that poem. I guess I just got overeager and starting practicing here, too…”
“What, going on a library date with you? Yeah, I’ll pass.”
“…Okay.”
I turn the other way and start walking. I still have to find groceries. Shubina herself awkwardly stands up and leaves. She didn’t even buy anything… guess she wasn’t interested anymore.
When I emerge from the grocery store, I am again hit with the frigid December air. And holding three bags of groceries… it’s heavy. Cold and heavy… that really has been the feeling this week. Trudging through the snow doesn’t help. I’m slow and miserable. But I’m determined. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.
I guess I’m a hypocrite in the end. I spent the whole day yesterday pissed off at Marina because she made me do the most stupid shit for the slimmest chance at accomplishing anything. I mean, really, what were the odds that was going to work? Didn’t Shubina say something around one in three thousand? She’s smart, with school stuff, anyway, so I’ll believe it. But what are the odds that this is going to work? Really. I’m going to go to the library to check out a poetry book, and I’ll read an excerpt to dad, and, what, he’ll be magically cured? The only reason this has higher odds of working at all is because Grachevskaya just wasn’t in her room—of course she wasn’t. So why am I doing this?
I don’t have a good answer.
A distant scream strikes out against the snow. I’m still not numb to it—but come on. How does this keep happening? It’s kind of funny. Just laugh. Man, did somebody crash against this window? That’s quite a crack. It’s kind of funny. Just laugh. This stupid world is very, very funny. Just laugh.
I try to hide myself when I enter the library. There’s so few people in Vorkuta-5 as is, I can’t just blend in. But I try to anyway. I almost never come here. If it helps for a Russian assignment, I’ll do it sometimes, but I usually like to do anything else. For me to be here is strange and unnatural, and I don’t want to think about that right now, and I don’t want to be seen like that right now.
I take careful steps into the library… Whew. Nobody noticed me. Poetry… I don’t think I remember where the poetry section is. Even if I got there, all the books would be indistinguishable to me. Damn, maybe I should’ve taken Shubina up on her offer… no. No, I’m not letting the world devolve that much. Having to work with her… I guess that already happened yesterday. Shubina would probably know what to pick. Shubina is probably familiar with all these poets, isn’t she?
I just pick up a book. Anything will work, I’m sure.
I consider disguising my face when checking the book out, but that’s obviously ridiculous. I make up some lie about a Russian assignment and swiftly make my way out the library.
I see Shubina again as I trudge back home. She’s going to the library now—guess she must have just been on an aimless walk then. I still want to punch her. Fuck it. I will. That’s the only way I’m going to feel good about this.
It’s a light punch. I don’t have the energy anymore.
She doesn’t even respond…
Knock, knock, knock…
“The door’s unlocked!”
I come home to another episode. He’s not screaming or writhing this time. But he’s clearly acting up. A low drone escapes from his mouth. He barely stops to breathe.
“Hey, dad… I brought groceries for the week!” I have to push the words out.
Mumbling, mumbling… he isn’t responding.
“Got all the things on the list… I got black tea… That’s good, right?”
He really isn’t acting like himself. I don’t think… I don’t think I’m acting like myself either.
“Um. I actually got you something. Something special. That might… that might help with this. Do you want that?”
He hasn’t moved at all since I entered the room. He hasn’t acknowledged my existence to any extent. Just the same low drone, humming out, buzzing faintly.
“It’s a poem! Poetry book, actually. I stopped by the library. You like poems. Right?”
“He needs his pills,” mother says. She’s right.
I stand up, moving the grocery bags vaguely to the kitchen while setting aside the poetry book. I look around for the pill bottle. Where is it, where is it, where is it… Why can’t I remember?
I can’t think. I can’t think right, with this ceaseless droning. I can’t think right, I can’t feel right, I can’t breathe right. Everything I try to fall back to is failing. Dad can’t be like Marina. Dad can’t go to the crazy room. There’s a good man in there.
The pill bottle is laid plainly in the centre of the dining table. I pick it up, feel the smooth, stern plastic in my hand, and shake out one pill. “Come on dad…”
His mouth is softly agape, droning, droning. I feel the pill in my hand, and it still doesn’t feel right. This wasn’t supposed to happen. My hand shakes as I bring the pill to his mouth. I cup my hand around the pill and push it in.
It falls out.
Luckily, my other hand was cupped below his mouth, to catch the pill. “Let’s try that again. And swallow this time, please.” All that comes from him is the same murmuring drone. Not a response… but he has to hear me, right? I push the pill into his mouth.
It falls out again.
“Come on!… Just eat your pills!” I tilt his head back. He seems to scream a little, his voice picking up in response to the touch… was that just me? I think that was just me. He’s already back to the drone.
I push the pill in. It stays in. I watch his throat… he swallows. “Good.”
Despite that, there’s no noticeable change in his behavior. He remains slouched, unresponsive, droning…
I search for the poetry book I set aside, and place it in my hands. I flip to a page. “Katysuha” by Mikhael Isakovsky. Skimming over it, the poem… reminds me of somebody. I return to the question, why am I doing this? And I return to the same no answer.
Just try it. You’ve gone this far.
You’ve gone this far, idiot.
Truth stings…
I clear my throat. Mom has come over to watch, though she still keeps her distance. “All the apple and pear trees are in blossom…” The words come out coarse. My throat is too rugged to perform the way Shubina did. “Morning fogs along the river creep…”
I might be imagining things, but his breathing seems to falter. I’m reaching him…?
“And the girl, Katyusha, young and lovesome… Comes the river bank that’s high and steep.”
The words tumble out of my mouth. I’m hardly understanding them. Something about love? I’m just hoping this works.
“She walks out and starts a song about
Her brave boy—a steppe dove-colored eagle,
How she waits for him, without doubt
To his letters glad she’s been and will.”
His droning is being interrupted by occasional gasps for breath—gasps that make me happy, for they indicate any life at all, but this still isn’t right. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. Maybe I should have just been alone! Maybe he should just be locked up. Somehow I know that’s not true.
A girl who takes on such a devoted expression of love… it is an oddly familiar image. But I can’t think enough to make the connection. I’m not allowed to—each gasp for life reminds me of that. There’s somebody counting on me.
I think I understand why I’m doing this now.
“Let you, song, according to her order
Fly to heights, and follow the Earth,
To the soldier at the country’s border
From Katyuska bring the greeting warmth.”
It seems I’m living in Kaplan’s world, now. The world where you just try things for fringe chances at success. The world where a meteor explodes midair and the rock debris melts. A mad world. This “Katyusha” girl shouldn’t be accomplishing anything, what, with just a juvenile song, and yet, do I find myself much different in this situation? I’m becoming just as crazy as her.
Fine, whatever, I’m crazy! I’m crazy, okay? Just bring back dad!
Just bring back…
He rocks forward. I don’t have time to react by the time he—
“Hey, hey. I got you, okay?” Whew. Mom caught him. I rush over to try to lift him back to the couch.
“Jesus, are you okay?” I call out. “Why did you…” I can’t finish the question—not like he can answer it anyway. I should just be glad to see any animation from him at all.
Right now, mom is below dad, trying to push him up, while I stand by his shoulder and try to pull him up. Our collective strength is able to sit him back up on the edge of the seat. None of us dare move anymore.
The poem… right, the poem. I left the book down on the floor, so I have to strain my eyes a bit to read it (not to mention having to read upside-down), but it is open to the correct page.
“Let him… hear… the song true and… uh… sincere…” Reading like this is awful. “By the honest girl sent as a dove… Let him keep… safe earth… belov—beloved, dear… And Katyusha will take care of love.”
Yes, let him hear this song true and sincere. That’s what it said, right? I don’t care. I don’t care unless it helps dad right now. Mom and I look into each other’s eyes and see the same desperation. We see the same denial and despair. This needs to work.
“All the apple and pear trees are in blossom,
Morning fogs along the river creep,”
It’s the opening stanza again. It’s the beginning again. Again, again, again, nothing ever changes, nothing’s ever—stop. That’s obviously not what’s being implied. That’s not what… Isakovsky, his name’s Isakovsky… is trying to say. Does it matter? It’s all I feel in this moment. In this moment where I need something to change, but it always just goes back to absolute. Come on, come on, do something…
“And the girl, Katysuha, young and lovesome,
Comes the river bank that’s high and steep.”
Come on…
Dad begins to rock a bit more. Mom and I keep him steady in our amrs. The droning starts to die down, as he takes longer pauses between them. Is there… is there something I have to say here?
“Dad, I…” Shit. Shit, what do I say? “I don’t know what’s happened to you, or what’s gotten into you, but goddammit, I care about you, dad! Please come back to us… you have to! You aren’t just a lunatic. You aren’t just crazy. I know that. You’re a good man, dad, and nothing will ever change that. Maybe the entire fucking world will uproot itself in an afternoon, but you will always be a good man! Okay?”
I’m not sure if I see anything in him. Perhaps his eyes are recalculating, his breath recalibrating, the gears within him turning, coming unjammed, I’m not entirely sure what I can find. But there is one more thing I can do. They’re words I haven’t said in a while. Words I last wrote as a joke. A good prank. And it was a great prank, it was, but I don’t live in that world anymore. So now, for the first time I can remember, I mean these words completely genuinely, with full sincerity.
“I love you.”
The droning stops. Mom and I cautiously back away from him, never going so far we can’t catch him again. The clock… I can hear the clock now. I can really hear the clock now—it’s so loud! How did it get so loud? Tick, tick, tick, tick… how many seconds has it been? How many…
Dad falls backward into the couch, his eyes shut, and he falls asleep. Mission accomplished? I’m not sure.
“Good job, Vadim,” Mom says. “I didn’t know that side of you existed. I’m really proud of you.”
“I didn’t either…”
“The poetry book was a good idea.”
“I can’t take full credit for it. I was… inspired by a… a friend.” A friend. Is Shubina a friend? Maybe in this world she is. She helped dad, after all. Well, okay. It wasn't her idea. But in a way, it also was. I wouldn't be here without her, anyway.
And at that instant, a loud screaming picks up from my brother’s bedroom. Goddammit… of course it was all futile. Mom and I rush over to him, but what are we going to do? He won’t even accept the pills. Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit…
It’s so loud. It’s so loud, and there’s nothing I can do. There’s no chance I could even get a poem to him. So while mom runs around, panicking, trying to do anything, I just find myself stuck. I’m just stuck. I’m sick and tired of this. Of this world.
But I could help dad. I could help dad, with the support of... Kaplan... and Shubina. Shubina, the village idiot. Maybe I was wrong about her. About them. About… everything. The world I’m from clearly doesn’t exist anymore. But they know something about it. Fine. Fine, I get it. Whatever. I was wrong. I'll admit it. I was wrong. And I'll listen to them more, okay? If it will bring my family back...
A bird flies past the window.
Did… Did a-anybody else… h-hear that…?