Pavlova Plus One. Season Four

The scariest thing for a pregnant woman is thoughts about the upcoming birth. What frightens you most is the prospect of expelling your real, full-weight baby from your womb right at the very start. True, later on, at the later stages, you realize there's no way back, and one way or another you'll apparently have to give birth. The saving thought of a caesarean under general anaesthesia immediately comes to mind: you get the jab, you black out, you wake up, and there's the little baby, ready and waiting. And nobody strained or panted like a little dog. People talk you out of it: Pavlova, what are you thinking, it's surgery, they cut you open, and then it all heals, long and painful. And you think: maybe it's true – suffer for a few hours, but then run and jump around without waiting for the stitches to close? And again: what if, when the contractions start, I realize I was wrong, that I shouldn't have let it get to these very contractions, and that general anaesthesia is humane and modern (not for nothing is all of Hollywood getting cut open)?
And so you agonize over this dilemma for all nine months. And closer to the birth, having frayed your own nerves and brains – and those of the doctors, relatives and friends – with the question of choice, you quite unexpectedly discover in yourself a complete absence of fear of these contractions, the birth and the pushing. Apparently the brain secretes something into the body. Some kind of very strong tranquilizer, so there's no panic.
Panic is bad. It's always harmful. In the worst, most uncontrollable situation (like those two people who'd huffed ether) panic only makes an already dreadful state of affairs worse. How many times have I held myself literally a hair's breadth from falling into the abyss of strong emotions that strip you of your human form and dignity, and thereby saved the situation. Take last year's raid at Mix, or losing my bearings in space on Tverskaya Street at eight in the evening… A nightmare. I'd walk up to people and ask, embarrassed: excuse me, could you tell me where I am? Because I did it without panic, people answered me politely. Unfortunately, I'd immediately forget what they told me, and I'd have to ask the same people again, until through their combined efforts they put me in a taxi.
«No panic!» – that's what Mishanya always says if someone can't remember their mother's maiden name, or her first name. «No panic!» – I told myself when I got lost in the million-strong crowd at the most massive and most idiotic rave of my life.
I accepted the invitation to go to the Love Parade with delight. After two weeks spent on a hospital bed in the infectious-diseases ward of one of the city hospitals, a trip to Berlin seemed like something on the order of a flight to the Moon. «Come on, come on! Give me the tickets, the visa, the addresses and phone numbers! Come on! I'm off!» – I rejoiced, examining the whites of my eyes. «It's nothing, nothing!» – I rejoiced again – «Soon you'll go red again!».
My joy was in vain. Back then I still didn't understand what such an innocent event as a parade of love could turn into for a person like, for example, me. I already understood that everyone would move from the Zoo toward the Brandenburg Gate, I understood that all the more or less decent DJs of the world were flowing there, including our own Fish, Spider and Kubikov. I understood that in any case it would be fun. Now, I can say for sure only one thing:
The Love Parade is, first of all, a terrible strain on the liver, and second – an incredible number of cheap fags and scary, clueless broads with bare tits. But let's take it all in order.
So, a day, or even two days before the parade, Kubikov disappeared. Where he was and what he was doing there was clear to everyone, but the support crew worried: what if he doesn't come back? Nevertheless, he came back. It happened literally on the eve of the event. He walked (unsteadily!) into the room, before the eyes of an astonished audience that by then had already made itself at home in Antokha's habitat – or rather, his non-habitat. In short, he undressed and collapsed into bed. Fell asleep fast. But about fifteen minutes later he suddenly leapt up, hastily dressed with his eyes shut, and made an attempt to leave the room to continue immediately. The support crew got worried and, just in case, hid his sneakers (or whatever had once been sneakers), so he couldn't go anywhere. But Anton managed it anyway. Barefoot. I'll add: he didn't even walk out. He literally tore himself from the stuffy embrace of his admirers and left the hotel at a run.
After some rather short time, he did come back and asked for a drink. It turned out he'd come to from a sharp, unpleasant sound. He opened his eyes and saw his own unshod feet on the landing of a stranger's, completely unfamiliar stairwell. The nagging sound was being made by his own finger, which Anton had pressed into someone's doorbell. The «why» and «how» were never established. Good thing nobody opened the door.
Next… No, you can't write about that… About this either… That's a total nightmare, better not to remember it. Listen, why don't I tell you instead about a wonderful little kindergarten party. The whole honest truth, I'll hide nothing: how we wiped boogers on the table, how we spat in Grandfather Frost's cognac, how we drew little turds in chocolate on the pimply Snow Maiden's fur coat… Those were the days!
Anyway, on the day of the Parade clouds gathered in the sky. «This bodes no good!» – I thought, but it was too late to back out, because we were already walking toward our platform, which, among a hundred-odd others, was slowly moving along the set route connecting… Oh, to hell with it, with that platform, because it figured in my story only briefly. The platform didn't stick around, that's the trouble.
First, as is proper, everyone lucky enough to be on the platform suddenly wanted to sleep, and for a while all anyone did was yawn. I too got kind of smeared out, I wanted to lie down. Kubikov struck up his favorite hard-sentimental electronica, and broads with bare tits and sado-maso gays began to converge on our platform from all over the route. I was terribly thirsty. «Water» – I said without any particular intonational coloring, in the hope that my brethren would understand me even without punctuation marks. «Water» – someone from the crowd responded in exactly the same way. I opened my eyes. Before me loomed a cowboy hat – a terribly fashionable thing in the year two thousand. I focused my eyes, which were scattering in different directions, and under the hat I discovered a beautiful, manly face of almost divine beauty (if not for the thin scar splitting the eyebrow). The face looked at me through the also very fashionable that year colored teardrop glasses, and with a beautiful accent of unclear origin repeated after me: «water». «I'm about to keel over!» – I realized, and reached out toward the box that held the little bottles of water kept especially for such occasions. I handed the bottle to the stranger. He asked what my name was. I said «Pavlova». He asked which hotel. I answered. The face quickly vanished into the crowd. «Well. Our romance didn't last long. No sooner had I doused this scoundrel with water than he was gone. Looks like I got played… I'll wet myself!» – I thought out loud. «Me too» – replied DJ Fish, who had been sitting beside me all this time indifferently observing the sado-maso gays, who had climbed up the tall lamp posts and could now show the crowd their bare backsides with impunity. «What jerks!» – Fish kept repeating, looking with mild disgust at the untidy male buttocks slowly floating past.
I suggested going to the toilet. For that you only had to jump off the platform and quickly run over to the portable toilets, and then just as quickly run back. The platform was moving very slowly, so making it back was no problem. At least that's how it seemed to us.
In short, we got off. And, as you understand, no one saw us again after that. Yep, exactly, we got lost. But we had a reason: we were in shock. That is, at first we simply walked up to the neat row of portable toilets and began to politely wait for at least one of them to free up. But when we glanced around a bit, opened our eyes, as they say, we immediately gaped: the real Love Parade was happening not on the route but right here, in the sparse bushes of the tree belt, as if specially created for the placement of latrines. If I were to describe in a few phrases what was happening beneath the canopy of the centuries-old trees, it should probably sound like this: on the right – they're fucking, on the left – they're sucking, dead ahead – brisk trading, and a bit off to the side the cops are cuffing a dealer. «And the main thing, look! – Fish said with delight – they're cuffing him somehow quietly, politely». Yeah, no noise, no fuss, cuffing him for sure. Europe!
I don't even remember whether we waited our turn or peed right where we stood. Not sure. But when we came to our senses, all our people had already driven off somewhere.
We rushed to catch up with them. Breaking through the crowd, constantly bumping into the ubiquitous sado-maso gays and broads with bare tits, I kept buying beer and asking Fish «no, come on, tell me, did you play yet or never got the chance?». He'd answer me, I'd forget, and when I bought a new bottle of beer and had nothing to open it with, I'd turn to Fish for help, and again ask: «no, come on, tell me, did you at least play?». Fish was already sorry he'd gone to the toilet with me. The crowd got thicker and thicker. My liver protested against the beer, and I explained to it that this was the only alcohol here, and if we were at home I'd have knocked back vodka long ago, found the platform, and put an end to our suffering. But here, in Berlin, with these faggots… «Only beer, dear, only beer» – I whispered to it.
After several hours (or years?) of searching for the platform, we finally lost all human qualities except the ability to still want something (namely: «home» «to mama» «to lie down» «something strong!»), and ended up in the thinned-out crowd at a gas station. The filling station was under assault from unhinged Love Parade participants. Disheveled women with bare tits were forcing their way into the little shop in search of cold beer, or maybe something stronger; sado-maso gays demanded condoms. Ordinary ravers bought soda and gum to occupy their jaws, which were working overtime. Fish and I sat on the curb and watched all this. «We're screwed! We'll never again… I'm dying… Pavlova, why the hell did we go to those %;№?:%;(* toilets!» – Fish groaned. And then a brilliant thought occurred to me. I thought that «we're in Europe, after all! There's service here and all that, they won't refuse us!» I walked up to some guy, bummed his mobile, in my hallucination found the number for a taxi, and I'm yelling into the receiver: «Geben Sie mir bitte eine Taxi! Ich bin…» and immediately hand the receiver to the owner so he can explain where Fish and I «ich bin». And Fish, poor guy, aged some twenty years, sits on the little curb so forlornly, shaking his head. In despair. Yeah, I think, some trip to the toilet that was. And no sooner had I thought that than I look: the crowd parted, and for real, a taxi pulls up. Never in my life have Mercedes cars made me so happy. And what happened to Fish, I simply can't convey.
«Calling a taxi to the Love Parade. Absolutely gone…» – grumbled Fish, shaking sand and leaves out of his pockets. «That's nothing, I got out of the hospital a month ago. Was being treated for hepatitis, you understand» – I answered, and poured several handfuls of quality black earth out of the cuffs of my jeans. «Where's all this dirt from?!» – Fish marveled – we were at the Love Parade, and it feels like we dug up a whole vegetable garden». «Oh that» – I say – «that's where we fell down there, by the toilets, remember?» «Nope!» «Yeah, yeah, we fell, and didn't want to get up!» – I told him. «No, don't remember!» – Fish refused again. «I'm telling you! Some guy even came up to us and asked if we needed anything, or maybe go halfsies, remember?» «Don't remember, don't remember anything!» – Fish wouldn't give in. «Well then I don't remember a damn thing either!» – I agreed with him.
No sooner had I collapsed into bed, no sooner had I closed my eyes, than I hear: a knock at the door. «Fish! – I say – Get up, open it, it's probably Kubikov or the sado-maso gays come for our souls. Somehow I can't get up». Fish crawled to the door with a groan and opened it. Behind the door – a refined male voice, not in Russian. «Pavlova! There's some. Foreigner. Asking for you». «Cute?» – I ask. «Don't know. Looks like a fag» – Fish answers. I jump up, run to the door, and sure enough. There's that guy in the hat. «Well, damn, finally! Here it is, real love, or maybe at least I'll get a proper fuck in my old age!» And the guy in the hat says: «Look, I've got fifteen minutes and I can't stay long, because work tomorrow, and I need to get to Prague, home, but you're very nice and come on, quicker, let's smoke this beautiful joint, I'm dying for it». «Won't get fucked, so I'll have a smoke!» – I agreed. Not bad either. And when he left, Fish and I unanimously figured out that even for losers like me, there's no Love Parade without love.