Instant Kafka

The publishing house Ad Marginem presents the new book by Zaza Burchuladze, "Instant Kafka". This is the second book by the contemporary Georgian prose writer in Russian translation. The collection includes the novella "Instant Kafka", describing the everyday life of the bohemian youth of Tbilisi in the late '90s, and two new stories, "Seven Sages" and "Phonogram", continuing the surrealist line of the novella "Mineral Jazz". The novella "Instant Kafka" became the first "pop-literary" text for contemporary Georgian literature. Nightclubs, glossy magazines and partying youth appeared here for the first time as the heroes of poetic prose. Some of the novella's characters have as their prototypes real representatives of the Tbilisi bohemia, portrayed here under their own names. So it's hardly surprising that the book's release was accompanied by scandal: the main heroine, or rather her prototype, tried to halt publication, and her relatives offered the author and publisher a payoff. "Instant Kafka" is yet another attempt at synthesising seemingly incompatible ingredients – the social and pop-cultural prose of Bret Easton Ellis and the classics of European modernism. We present to your attention the story "Instant Kafka":

Sometimes I forget where my cunt is.
Leonard Cohen
«Beautiful Losers»

I no longer remember how many of my eyelashes Zaza has eaten. Seventeen? Two hundred and sixty-four? Three thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine? Or more. Hell if I know! Forgot. Forgetfulness is forgivable in me. But I remember clearly how, the first time, he told me to lean in and, as if with tweezers, picked up with his thumb and forefinger an eyelash that had fallen from my face. It got very interesting – what would he do with it now? Flick it off his palm like a speck of dust, wipe it on his trousers, or... But no, he ate it. Placing it on his tongue, chewing it thoroughly, like something hard and voluminous. What nonsense! Well, how is it, – I ask, – eh? Mmm, fucking awesome, – he answers. Well, since it's so fucking awesome, then here's another one for you...

* * *

The first time I saw him was in "Berlin"... To be precise, we came to the club together in Doll-Levaniko's car, but on the way we didn't exchange a word. In "Berlin" there were about fifteen to twenty people hanging around, counting the sleepy bartender, a couple of bouncers and us. Dust hanging in the air and cigarette smoke thick as a yoke, air reeking of mould, candles flickering here and there in glasses, laser beams, several couples sunk into grubby armchairs, and music – some kind of thrash-metal, a purely Tbilisi kind of buzz... He stood alone at the bar, smoking, and what was going on seemed not to concern him in the slightest; his whole appearance said: "The subscriber is temporarily unavailable. Call back later." Soaring in his own incomprehensible clouds, he observed the crowd in the club with the face of a sort of couldn't-give-a-damn little louse. On the almost empty dance floor several zombies twitched – whether out of inertia or to please each other. Not one familiar face... No faggots, no floozies, no tarts or nutjobs. Only Meskhi – coming down off cyclodol, in women's trainers – and Doll-Levaniko with hair ruffled like a hoopoe's and a vile smile like the chipmunk in the Colgate ad. Well, and Zaza, of course... Not dancing? – I asked. He didn't answer, only stared intently into my eyes... But at once he himself noticed that he never looks anyone straight in the eyes. Hinting, presumably, that he'd done me a great honour. Un-fucking-believable, what pretension!

* * *

From "Berlin" we bolted to Zhgenti's. What hopeless dreariness you'd have to be in to go to Otto Zhgenti's. No comment. But Zhgenti blew up my mobile that evening. After a million missed calls and just as many texts, I still had to answer him. On learning who I was hanging out with, he insistently summoned us over. What could Zhgenti offer us at three in the morning? The same as at any other time: vodka, beer, a portrait of his mummy in her youth and unrestrained depression. Well, and – Morrissey, without a break, to the point of nausea.

At his place some teenager from Batumi was hanging about (with his excellent build, golden curls and rosy cheeks he resembled an ancient Greek), in love, by the way, not with Morrissey at all, but with Jim Morrison. Zhgenti couldn't care less. And the lad himself wasn't too fussed about it either. However, his peace didn't last long. Barely having arrived, Zaza and Doll set to blowing his mind. And so much so that they could have knocked not just the teenager but the very Catholicos-Patriarch of all Georgia off his stride.
– You like tits? – Doll suddenly threw at the lad, out of nowhere.
– Yes! – the bewildered lad answered sharply.
– Women's or men's?
– Well, women's, of course! – the lad even seemed surprised by the question.
– Well, you're something! – Doll recoiled from him.
– What's the point of women's tits? What century is it now? – Zaza chimed in.
– And which ones are the point, then? – the boy tried not to get flustered.
– Men's tits are better! – Zaza and Doll flabbergasted him in one go and in the blink of an eye lifted their T-shirts. – Look, what tits... How can you not love them?

Meskhi didn't interfere; the cyclodol was wearing off, and he decided to amuse himself with Zhgenti's dog (she'd been waiting for just that, her heat imperiously demanded its due, and the poor thing clung to Meskhi as to her own mother's womb, and licked his cheeks like so many chupa-chups). Meskhi grabbed her in his arms, stroked her – tried his best, in short. On the television screen, needless to say, Morrissey was drenched in sweat. Shrunk into his armchair, forever drunk, forever anxious and forever gloomy, Zhgenti smoked one after another his disgusting ultra-light "Winston"s, trying meanwhile to get into the vibe (in vain, of course). On top of everything good, he imitated Morrissey, from time to time shouting out some phrases from his songs and letting a light little wisp of smoke out of his mouth, like a dragon with a cold.
I quickly got fed up with all of it. Sitting at Zhgenti's is the pits anyway.

I don't know what possessed me, but I suddenly asked Zaza: "Do you like Sorokin?" And he, as if he'd only been waiting for that, immediately forgot both about Doll and about the teenager, pulled his T-shirt back down, in an instant wiped the mocking smile off his face, let the remains of the cigarette smoke out of his nostrils and once more fixed his gaze on my eyes. Again, I think, he won't answer, leaving me to guess what lies behind these looks of his.

– In general, – he answered, – yes...

And still smirking, the main thing, like – so, you finally dared to speak to the almighty, you, dust and ashes at my feet?! Kiss my arse, you idiot!

I got very angry, thinking, right now I'll clock him one, and my hand even went up already, but something suddenly stopped me. I set to listing Sorokin's novels and novellas. He, after me... All by itself it turned into something like a contest: who would name them faster and more. We sniffed at each other like dogs, or rather sniffed into each other, as if we were already acquainted... and were merely reconstructing in memory fragments of long-ago meetings. But of that later.

– What do you think of "Ice"?
– So-so... both yes and no.

A useless answer, but for some reason I liked it. Is he putting on airs, or what? Though if anyone had asked me back then about "Ice", I'd have 100% answered the same way. Why? Damn! I don't know how to explain it, but it seems that this "both yes and no" became the one precise answer that brought me and Zaza together... As if it crowned the sum of all the other coincidences, our readiness for the encounter and the experience we had on hand – but that way you're not far off from crap-philosophy.

* * *

By the way, Sorokin himself quickly vanished from the conversation. But the ice (in the abstract sense of the word) stayed with us. Unfortunately or fortunately, it was precisely ice that turned out to be the keyword that gave meaning to our encounter. Yes, and there's this... it'll be hard for me to explain anything to those who haven't read the aforementioned novel. But here and now the main thing isn't that. Rather, it's that between us there arose something that bound us together, and there's nothing special in that – if not "ice", then another word would have been found. It would have been found, wouldn't it?

* * *

The get-together at Zhgenti's, as always, drove on melancholy and drowsiness. First Doll's eyes narrowed like a cat's, and he grumbled: I want to sleep, let's get out of here. The Batumi teenager, meanwhile, had been driven to such a state that he was ready to latch onto the nipples not only of everyone present, but of the very Catholicos-Patriarch of all Georgia. No one was looking at the television anymore, though there too nothing was left of Morrissey but a satin shirt and a little puddle of sweat. Content was, perhaps, only Meskhi: the bitch in heat licked his face with such force and rapture that she'd nearly wiped it off completely, so that even his own mother wouldn't have recognised him...

* * *

Again we ride in Doll's car. Again the road. Nighttime Tbilisi. Any moment now it'll be dawn. Doll and Meskhi in front. Meskhi is almost asleep, his eyes shut, his head thrown back onto the seat, but his look on the whole is content. His stay at Zhgenti's didn't pass without a trace – every now and then, apropos of nothing, he shouts out in a desperate voice quotes from Morrissey songs. Doll doesn't lag behind Meskhi either; he's come to his senses and periodically delivers his signature phrase: "Everybody dance now!" – managing meanwhile to steer around the potholes, sharply cranking the wheel, though from time to time the potholes still roll under the wheels after all. We're shaken as if in one big cradle, and not as on city streets, but as on village dirt tracks...
Zaza and I are side by side on the back seat. We don't utter a word. Being coy? Hardly! That I, by my moral, physical and intellectual indicators, am no princess – that's ok, but he too has it written on his forehead that he's a mind-fucker, and no fool at that. I think to myself: and why, you fool, are you throwing yourself at this scribbler like the last slut? Thinking I think, but I don't take my gaze off him. I sense he's noticed it, but he doesn't let on, with a tourist's concentration peering into the city as if seeing it for the first time.
The deserted Nutsubidze Street: potholes, ruts, bumps – Kavtaradze Street: packs of dogs at the rubbish dumps – the Vake-Saburtalo road: the play of shadows, the darting of bums, the flicker of sleepwalkers and the lost along the roadway – Chavchavadze Avenue: never letting the feet of passers-by tear away from it – Melikishvili Street: flickering road signs, patrol cars, a yellow gleam on the cupola of a dark "McDonald's" and a brightly glowing red "M" above the "Rustaveli" metro – the Elbakidze descent: the dead "Berlin" – the Galaktion Tabidze bridge: someone frozen and subdued leans on the railing, wanting either to leap into the water, or to set his sad thoughts floating down the river's current, either a poet or a geometer... At his feet a yellow dog with deep, beautiful, enormous eyes... And finally Plekhanov Avenue: we drop off Meskhi – half-asleep, half-aroused, getting out, he throws out one last phrase from Morrissey, blows us an air kiss and doesn't so much walk as glide over the water on light feet, floats like a skiff, from us towards home.

* * *

The three of us remain. Three men in a boat. We sit and float towards home. Doll grumbles, demanding that one of us move to the front, he isn't a taxi driver, after all. Bullshit! Ginger market.

Well, now it's a long, long haul. See, I live in the arse-end of nowhere, past Moscow Avenue, in Africa. Fancy naming a district that. I myself call it a black hole. Not a single law of physics works here. It's hard to explain, but a sensitive person will understand me. Intelligenti pauca. At my place everything's arse over tit. Not to such a degree, of course, that it's not the fire engulfing the house but the house engulfing the fire, or not the person squeezing the pimple but the pimple the person. No, here everything's a little different... It's just that my dwelling is distant from the city not by kilometres but by light years. The end of the world, and beyond it – emptiness, if we use the notion of a certain clever poet: a dream is a blueprint that negates objects. Fuck! Pardon me, but in this case nothing else comes to mind. In short, we're floating in a boat, into the arse-end of nowhere... or rather, flying into it. Doll, instantly and definitively sobered up, latches onto the wheel like a Formula 1 pilot (no Schumacher or Barrichello can compare with him now!) and races down the airport highway in his VW "Golf" with such frenzy, as if we're on takeoff. The speed, of course, is nowhere near it, but is it any wonder that after the gloomy Zhgenti and the sweaty Morrissey, 160 km/h seems like flight? We won't take off, that's clear. But there was no such goal either. Our goal is far more majestic and bright.

The three of us remain, everyone's silent, and in my head, from lack of sleep, a viscous kaleidoscope of meaningless images revolves, the brain softens, and on it, as on branded cattle, the figure "three" is imprinted, and before my eyes a fiery three emerges. And therefore,

By all the merriment I am concealed,
In the rays of its radiance unseen,
Like a little worm amid silken swaddling.

To kill time, I involuntarily start counting in my mind: Three Men in a Boat... The Three Musketeers... The Hearts of Three... The Trinity... The Triad... Three Nuts for Cinderella... Three tankmen and one dog – with deep, beautiful, enormous eyes... Two Captains, no, Three Captains... Three Comrades... The Third Rome... A triton... and what's this one doing squeezed in here?.. A triangle... A three-headed dragon... Curious, though, what's the sick dragon on Nutsubidze up to right now? Probably already slipped the Batumi lad his nipples... Damn, Zhgenti again!

– Everybody dance now! – unexpectedly shouts out Levaniko-Barrichello, who'd kept quiet the whole way, and in such a shrill, screeching cry, as if he had whooping cough at its peak. You're on fire, Doll! The yell, though delirious, works no worse than smelling salts. It'd raise a corpse to its feet.

Doll – that lightning caught and locked in a glass, a "Duracell" battery, a perpetuum mobile. With one exclamation, one idiotic antic, he can so pep you up, so charge you with energy, that at once you feel a powerful surge of joy between your legs, in your belly and in your temples, and not only there.

– If not for you, we'd be like inconsolable relatives at a funeral right now, – already full of strength and love (though for the life of me I can't figure out what the hell I need them for right now), I say to him, not knowing what else to add.

– And now? – he smiles at me from the rear-view mirror, like a chipmunk.
– And now it's more like coming back from a funeral.
– From the dragon's funeral, is it? – Zaza asks indifferently, as if thinking aloud, and squints his sour gaze off somewhere to the side and up, examining the advertising billboards along the highway, and distances himself from what he's said, as if he'd not only said nothing but hadn't even heard it. Whether he's with us or not here at all. In short, the subscriber is again temporarily unavailable.

I begin to feel sorry for him and very much want to embrace him and press him to me. Surely I have a Mother Teresa complex, wanting to caress every invalid and cripple. Of Zaza, it seems, only an emptied case is left... Nothing awaits him but the dusty roadside of life. It's well known that in a person's soul there are always stored radioactive waste, the deadened refuse of the everyday, and that it's precisely this waste that occupies all the space of his life, leaving in it no room for living feeling, for living thought. And Zaza seems to be crammed with this garbage to the brim.

* * *

I'd have managed to chew over a good deal more, but we'd already arrived. Doll braked so sharply that we skidded another ten metres or so with a deafening screech. For a finale he once more shouted out his "Everybody dance now!" Just as I was about to get out, Zaza stopped me, caught with his thumb and forefinger folded like tweezers a fallen eyelash, tossed it onto his tongue and, as I've already said above, set his jaws in motion, as if chewing dense fare. Well, how is it, – I paused a little, – eh? Mmm, fucking awesome, – he responded. That was the first eyelash of mine that Zaza ate.

* * *

At home the first thing I did was kiss my sleeping mama on the forehead – I love her very much, mama is my idol, right, mummy? I quickly went to my room, threw off my clothes and dived under the blanket. After the round-the-clock rave my whole body ached. I thought I'd collapse into bed and sleep like the dead, but no such luck. For about half an hour I tossed and turned, until I realised I was straining in vain. In that moment everything under the sun became hateful to me – all around is vanity, and all is a chasing after the wind. In my head a lightbulb seemed to flash: I don't give a fuck about anything. I was dreamin' of the past. Well, I got up, washed as best I could, ate some cold beans... A pig, a real pig! I didn't even feel like eating, and the beans were God knows how fresh, but I stuffed a whole bowl into myself anyway. I got dressed, dashed out the door and rushed on a minibus from my arse-end into the city. The road, it seemed, lasted more than a century. But on the whole it wasn't all that bad. The main thing was, I had cigarettes. It's been said, if there's a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, then things aren't so bad for today, right? Having knocked about the city and smoked the whole pack, I called him on his mobile. He wasn't at all surprised. He'd been sure in advance that it would be so, meaning 100% I'd ring him. As he picked up, right away: "Almost eleven." As if we'd arranged it that way, and I was late for a business meeting. To say –

Ask not, reader; speech is too poor;
To write of it is not worth the labour.
I was not dead, nor was I alive either –

would be untrue, but I hadn't expected such a thing either. Damn! I tried to work out what this "almost eleven" meant. Lately I'm not catching a lot of things.

– Where are you, – I ask, – and what are you doing?
– At "Del Mare", eating khachapuri.
– Where's that?
– On the corner of Paliashvili and Kavsadze.
– Alone or with someone?
– Me, Nene and Levan.
– Doll?
– No-no, that's Nene's boyfriend.

I don't know why, but I asked whether I should come or not – only afterwards did I realise it came out badly; I meant something else, in the sense of, won't I get in the way of their important conversation. And what, in principle, can Zaza, Nene and her boyfriend be talking about? What can there be of importance, apart from khachapuri?

– In ten minutes.
– In ten from city hall I won't make it, – I set to explaining. To whom? To Mickey Mouse – that's what he calls himself. Though if one part of your acquaintances calls you a bum, and another part – a paedophile, then you're not even Mickey Mouse, but just a compromising of him.
– Well, as you like, – he answered and hung up.

To be continued...