Sample Translation of novel “CULT” into English

Translated from the Ukrainian by Peter Constantine

Translation copyright © Peter Constantine, 2008

CULT

By Lyubko Deresh

Part One

Chapter One

People always asked him if he was the Yurko Banzai. “No,” Yurko Banzai would say with a smile, and, anticipating the next question, add: “We’re not even related.”

Banzai was a senior studying biology. He was one of the top students, and so was sent as an intern to a boarding school associated with the university to teach biology. Until he was told the name of the town, he had no idea that such a place even existed. Midni Buky, “copper beech trees,” was its name.

The town was far away, two and a half hours by a train that stopped like a spaniel at every doorpost.

Banzai moved to Midni Buky at the end of August. He rented a one-room apartment in an old three-story house. A neighborhood crone, a Baptist and ugly as an atomic explosion, cornered him into subscribing to the Baptist newsletter and also to the local newspaper, Patriot, of which her son was editor. The newspaper couldn’t boast of earth-shattering popularity, but it did have a reader or two. It was up-to-date on the newest resolutions of the district council and other local events, and didn’t shy away from rape, murder, the sexual abuse of children, and other spicy features of the kind that old-age pensioners enjoy reading.

Banzai had been working at the school for a week. Classes had started on August 28—in itself a bad sign. (Nothing in this dump is the way it is in the real world, the pupils griped.) Clever townsfolk were already chopping wood and stocking up on candles before the prices skyrocketed as a result of the first electrical outages. The winter promised to be cold, dark, and morose. Be that as it may, Banzai thought, at least here in Midni Buky the water supply isn’t always being cut off, like it is back in Lviv.

Every day except Sunday, Banzai left the house with a large mountaineering rucksack strapped to his back. Even though it contained only a couple of books, a few thick notebooks, a sandwich, and two apples, he would never have exchanged it for a regular briefcase, let alone a plastic bag. Banzai believed the words of Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan-Carlos’ unforgettable teacher — whose advice was that one should always carry everything on one’s back.

Speaking of apples, Banzai had once read a study concluding that students who ate two apples a day felt better and intellectually superior to test subjects whose diet was apple-free. This fact had made a profound impression on Banzai, because he was very sensitive when it came to his intellect, which he pruned and tended every way he could. All in all, he was a modest fellow, and no one (except, perhaps, for one or two people) had an inkling of the deep symbolism that eating an apple had for him.

 ***

 Banzai’s father had hoped his son would follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. But the son — Yurko Banzai, that is —  had no intention of doing so, and had decided by eighth grade that he would much rather be a biology teacher somewhere out in the boondocks than a real-estate lawyer or other such monstrosity. Studying biology was the first major rift in his already rocky relationship with his father. Further rifts came during the course of his studies, and now Banzai wanted to pick up a few things from his father’s and grandmother’s, and then not put in another appearance in Lviv until Christmas. Or perhaps even Palm Sunday.

 ***

 During his biology studies, on three occasions Banzai ended up in intensive care.

The first time was during the spring of his freshman year. He’d tried to manufacture LSD 25 from a sort of grain mold, a type of fungus. After he swallowed this fungus a strong sensory disorder set in. Banzai’s best friend — Sergi Mokosha, who had a habit of introducing himself to people as Doctor Rain — found Yurko Banzai lying in the apartment unconscious on the kitchen floor. By a devilish stroke of luck Banzai had forgotten to lock the door.

The second time was in Banzai’s sophomore year. He had been cultivating some magical Mexican Stropharia mushrooms, which were said to contain the psychotropic substance Psilocybin. The experiment misfired because Banzi had been raising toadstools instead of the magical Stropharia. Long after they had twice pumped out his stomach he silently (but also vocally) cursed the whole mycology department, from its nerdish graduate students to its faculty and staff, including the cleaners.

The third occasion proved almost fatal. It was during the Lviv City Founder’s Day celebration, in his third year, when Banzai’s beloved Solomiya had walked out on him. He swallowed three prime specimens of fly-agaric, which he also had raised at home from spores stolen from the mycology department. He followed the Wassons’ credo that fly-agaric is the glorious Hindu intoxicant soma, and that these mushrooms unleashed unforgettable psychedelic experiences.  But to his disappointment the only hallucinations he experienced were a couple of large colored spots. As the hellish stomach cramps became unbearable, he called Emergency Services. The highpoint of his intoxication was the most hideous experience of his life. His head was spinning out of control, his joints were crushed by wild pain, and a toxic fire raged in his stomach. Everything not rooted to his digestive track came pouring out of both orifices. Neither the hospital staff nor his family (of whom there were only two members—his father and grandmother) later told him how close to the abyss he had come.

 ***

 His best friend, Doctor Rain, probed the borders of reality with the aid of alcohol, a fact that didn’t keep him from being a top student. He and Banzai were majoring in biochemistry, and both were rabid aficionados of the great Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle. They even envisioned writing a few clever and profound books on the subject. Banzai imagined opening an eminently erudite book and seeing on the final page:

      University of Kiev Press, upcoming titles:

Banzai, Y., and Mokosha, S. An Illustrated Introduction to the Allegorical Perspectives of the Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle.

Banzai, Y., and Mokosha, S. The Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle for Dummies.

Mokosha, S., and Banzai, Y. The Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle in Proverb and Folkore. (Second expanded edition, with new introduction and notes.)

 Furthermore, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to coauthor a peer-reviewed article titled: “In Defense of Fecal Therapy.” It was high time that word got around that urine is not enough for a cure.

 ***

 Banzai leaned on the windowsill by the door to the principal’s office. He wanted to find out where, when, and whom he would be teaching. The principal was chatting on the phone — with his wife, judging by his groveling tone. Banzai felt it would be more tactful to wait outside.

A girl was sitting on the windowsill opposite him, a tenth- or eleventh-grader. She was no beauty, but had a certain charm. She was listening, with sighs of exasperation, to a driveling, love-besotted youth lounging at her feet. With an imbecilic grin he was telling her a story devoid of any interest. “Umm, like, me and Andri were at her place, you know, and um, there was this thing, like, with bubbles!” He was transported by his story, choking with mirth. It was clear that he was ashamed by what he was about to disclose, but on the other hand proud that he had the guts to be telling a girl about it. “Um, so there we were, looking at the bubbles, and you wouldn’t believe it — like, her mother comes in!” He was sputtering and choking with excitement and perplexity. “Um, the bubble looked just like, um… you know… and, there was her mother… um, the bubble looked just like a guy’s, um, a guy’s…”

“Penis?” the girl asked unperturbed.

It was at that moment that the principal came to the door, and Banzai couldn’t see the reaction of the boy, who probably collapsed in an apoplectic heap as the girl coolly sauntered down the corridor.

The principal’s name was Andri Yaroslavovitch Weissgott — a Jewish-sounding name, despite his unmistakable Ukrainian features. He sat pompously in his expensive chair, his chin jutting out like that of the Hittite King Suppiluliuma I. They shook hands (it didn’t escape Banzai that the principal was acting the role of a jovial uncle coddling a five-year-old: “My, my, giving uncle your patty-cake hand just like a big boy! Say ‘How do you do?’”). The principal motioned to one of the cheaper chairs, and, chuckling into his ample whiskers, asked Banzai to sit down.

The principal sat in silence until Banzai began to feel uncomfortable. The principal pouted testily, as the last thing he was in the mood for was initiating some young whippersnapper into the intricacies of his school. Finally he sighed, and began to talk. He set out on a prolonged journey through time, delving into the origins of the school, touching on its regulations and the regulations that had served as a model for a whole series of antediluvian schools of higher education, including the one at which Pushkin had studied. He made much of the school’s unconventional approach to students and its unconventional teaching methods, and said that he was certain that Banzai’s unconventional appearance would suit the schools unconventional conventions to perfection.  With some sadness the principal touched on the unfortunate death of his predecessor, but quickly broke into lighthearted laughter — “Quite a stroke of luck, between you and me: he was an alcoholic and plagued by satyriasis.” Then he expressed his hope that Banzai would do as well with the students as he would with the faculty. The principal shook Banzai’s hand (again chuckling into his whiskers), and suggested he drop in for coffee and cognac from time to time during recess. Banzai nodded with diplomatic vagueness and mumbled, “I might take you up on that, I might well take you up on that,” and went to have a look at his office.

 ***

 Banzai’s office was on the fourth floor. His neighbors were a psychologist and the chemistry teacher, Mr. Yaroslav. The principal had spoken of Banzai’s office with such reverence that he could only imagine three mahogany ceiling fans calmly slicing the air, a gigantic ebony desk, and a state-of-the-art anti-hemorrhoid chair with armrests and a built-in “Buttock-1” massage contraption. There would also be tinted windows running the whole length of the wall.

Banzai opened the door, quickly shut it again, and continued walking down the corridor, wondering how he could have mistaken a closet door for that of an office. But having marched up and down the whole fourth floor a good six times, it dawned on him that that closet was indeed the office with the ceiling fans, ebony desk, and the panoramic tinted window.

 ***

 The office did have a window, but it was plastered over with graphs and diagrams. It also had a minuscule plywood desk and a small bookshelf, which appeared large in comparison with everything else. Banzai opened the window and the biting mountain air streamed in. The window looked out onto the forest, and if one leaned out and craned one’s neck to the right, one could see the girls’ dormitory.

The following three hours Banzai spent cleaning up his “office.”

 

Chapter Two

The psychologist and the chemistry teacher next door were odd and eccentric types.

The psychologist was a baldheaded old man with a short, milk-white beard (Banzai thought of Papa Smurf and smiled). His full name was Dmitro Dmitrovitch Horsa, though he insisted that everyone call him Dima. Even the students had to call him Dima, or he wouldn’t react. Behind his back they called him “Psyc-ho-ho-ho-logist,” because he always laughed with a hee-hawing “ho-ho-ho.” On Dima’s wall there was a black-and-white poster of the Beatles walking over a zebra crossing, John Lennon barefoot. Dima had a habit of standing nostalgically in front of the poster, muttering: “New Year’s, Myroshka, Michelle, and bathtub masturbation.” Whenever Banzai came over for coffee (and, say what you will, coffee with Dima and the chemist was more agreeable than coffee with the principal), at some point during the conversation Dima would approach the poster with cup in hand, and drumming with two fingers on Lennon’s bare feet declare: “This is a sign, a most important sign, my friend. Believe me, Banzai, this is a sign!” He kept asking Banzai when he would finally commit seppuku, though he never did explain what seppuku was.

In Dima’s office there was always a faint though pungent aroma of grass in the air. Dima secretly enjoyed watching the students sniff the air when they entered the room, their nostrils widening and trembling, like dogs picking up a familiar scent. He particularly enjoyed Banzai’s reaction — who always tried in vain to hide the nervous twitch that went through his body. Dima would jump up and hop around him, exclaiming, “Aha! Aha!”

The chemistry teacher — he was called Mr. Yaroslav, but Banzai simply called him “Slavko” for short — was also quite weird. He was gaunt, had long coal-black hair, a black beard, and a jacket with leather patches on the elbows. He spent every free minute glued to his computer, and rarely came over for coffee with the Beatles. His face had the grayish-blue hue of the computer addict, and his glasses grew a lens thicker every year, much like tree trunks grow thicker with their yearly rings.

On his door, beneath the sign that said “Biology,” Banzai used Dima’s black magic marker to write in thick letters:

BANZAI

That made it clear!

 

***

 Banzai gradually got to know the entire so-called “faculty.”

He met Mr. Lisun, the teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, who looked like an all-out homo, and his wife, Mrs. Lisun, who also taught Ukrainian language and literature andlooked like an all-out Lesbo. They were quite a pair.

He met Dershislava Cherevucha, an old crone, tiny and dried up like a dead pigeon in the attic, who taught world culture. Her hair was gray, but she dyed it violet, in homage to a certain Malvine. In her classroom hung a beautiful (in fact, enchanting) large poster that was labeled:

DOGS IN THE KANGERLUARSUK FJORD

It showed two giant mutts sitting in the snow staring vacantly at the snow-covered Kangerluarsuk Fjord. Mrs. Dershislava loved her doggies, and said that the one on the left was Eric and the one on the right Maria. Banzai had been rash enough to praise her collection of postcards of classical and impressionist painters. Mrs. Dershislava fell into a true collector’s ecstasy and declared that at home she had 3,427 postcards, postcards she wouldn’t sell at any price, even if she had to go begging for bread. Almost every day she brought Banzai new albums of postcards, and pleaded with him to come again the following day, as she would show him more postcards, really rare ones, that he and she alone knew to appreciate. Banzai did come the following day, looked through a thick folder packed with Monets, Toulouse-Lautrecs, Degases, and van Goghs. In return, he was given all kinds of interesting books to read in his free time. Mrs. Dershislava had a real cool cat, a thin, black, street vagabond, who, word had it, had lived in the school since antediluvian times. Mrs. Dershislava assured Banzai with a serious mien that when the cat was in the mood he could even talk. His name was Basil.

Mrs. Dershislava also invited Banzai for tea and cookies (not coffee, as she had high blood pressure). Banzai was puzzled. Everyone invited everyone else over, but they never left their offices themselves, eating their sandwiches in solitude.

The school also had its own writer, the geography teacher. His graphomanic creations sported titles such as Mild-mannered Mouth and Sparkling Eyes, I Shall Leave Without You, My Sweet, In Search of Chastity (the hit of the graphomanic season), and the reactionary pamphlet to which he owed his popularity: The Bourgeois from the Cro-Magnon Cave. In the magazine Tolling Bell, his story was presented as “by an author of the future, who speaks not only to the older, educated generation, but also to young people,” though he usually signed his pieces with his actual name: “Vitail Hanyhin-Chichinda.” He had a speech impediment that turned every “r” into a rolling drawl, making him sound like a third-generation Ukrainian from Canada. More likely than not he even pictured his speech in Latin characters, like in the old Ukrainian magazines published in Poland. But though his rolling “r”s might have initially been a serious impediment, his growing literary fame gave them a certain diaspora charm. He spoke bombastically — well, like a literary figure who wears folkloric peasant shirts:

“I bid you a veRRy good day, Mr. Banzai. How aRRe you this fine moRRning? I hope you slept well and aRRe fully RRested?”

With every new question Banzai was itching to shout out, “It’s none of youRR damn business how I am this moRRning, or if I’m fully RRested!”

In a word, the faculty was colorful. But this was nothing in comparison to the unfortunate, misanthropic miscreants that the school insisted on calling students.

 

***

 Banzai was very jittery before his first class. He hadn’t been this nervous since his finals, after which he’d been sure that all the endocrine glands in his body that had anything to do with emotions had dried up.

Inokenti Yarilov, the senior biology teacher (all the world called him Kesha), had bestowed part of his flock of students on Banzai, as he no longer had the strength to pollinate them all with the seed of his holy bio-scripture. The biologist now sat in the auditorium beaming with anticipation at all the fun. Banzai entered the room.

All eyes were on him: middling stature, a short, neat haircut, sideburns all the way to his chin, just like John Travolta’s in Grease.  A white, XXL T-shirt with a multicolored “YES” on it, of the kind: “Look, Mom, I can write!” The calm face of a phlegmatic. Beneath the “YES” it said: “The new art-rock generation.” Shapeless, grey cotton pants with deep pockets at the knees.

“Well, class,” Banzai sighed, his eyes flitting over the merciless faces. “My name is Yurko Banzai. You can call me Yurko.”

For a few terrible seconds Banzai thought he had nothing further to say. It was as if all his inner voices had been swallowed by a great emptiness.

Then a foolish thought shot through his mind. A young school psychologist who had come to his class when he was in high school had used the following trick to break the ice:

“I would like you all to stand in a line and tell me your name, and the one thing in your life you are most proud of.”

Banzai’s eyes involuntarily landed on the skeptical face of the biology teacher, and he again felt a vast emptiness, a vacuum. The silence expanded like a tampon in a toilet bowl. “Well, that went over well,” Banzai thought, when suddenly he heard a pleasant voice. He looked at his savior. It was the same girl he had seen earlier in the day listening so vacantly to the bubble story.

“My name is Daria Borges, and I am proud I’ve read all of King and Vonnegut. And I have a complete collection of Jimmy Hendrix records.”

A groan rose from the class, and someone murmured, “Stupid bitch.”

 

***

 The class suddenly came alive, the students were euphoric. Everyone wanted to share their Christian name and favorite pastime. Banzai tried to remember at least the names. There was one guy called Andri Semplovani, who said he was totally into electronic music and the group KMFDM. Another said he was proud he’d had a concussion, broken ribs, a broken leg, and a broken finger on his right hand, all the result of a motorbike accident after which nothing fazed him anymore. And a girl, pushy to the roots of her pubic hair, said she was proud to be going to such a good school and having such a good biology teacher. Another student, Romko Malayalam, said he was a member of the Ukraine Party of Free Peasants and Entrepreneurs, and that he played the trumpet. Of all the boys in the class, Malayalam had the longest hair. Some guys were proud that they were cool and tough, others of how they could play the guitar. Banzai had hit the mark.

After class, a few eager girls came up to ask if he’d like them to do any homework, but Banzai couldn’t take his eyes off Daria Borges, who was sitting alone in the back row looking sadly out the window. Not for the first time that day he accused himself of being a pedophile.

As the stampede of eager girls subsided, Banzai caught sight of Andri Semplovani at the blackboard, rubbing chalk all over his hands and then licking his white fingers clean. He had short hair with red highlights, and what Banzai correctly diagnosed as a computer-nerd pallor.

“By the way, Semplovani …”

Semplovani looked up, visibly pleased that he had been noticed.

“What’s KMFDM supposed to mean?”

“Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode,” Semplovani said, and went off to the canteen for a sandwich.

 

Summary of Chapters 3 – 9

As Banzai settles down to life and work in the small backwater town, there are humorous flashbacks to his high-school experiences in Lviv. His interest in Daria grows. Irina, a cruel and popular girl, aggressively flirts with him in class, humiliating Daria (she runs out in tears), and in retaliation Banzai gives the class a lurid and very comical sex-education lesson. The terrified pupils believe every word.

As the town slips into an uneasy, chilly autumn, we come upon the first signs that something is wrong. Evil lurks behind the provincial tedium. Banzai has vivid, recurring dreams in which he is in an ancient and esoteric library, reading specialized books in strange alphabets and languages. One day, to his horror, Banzai sees that Roman Kori, the school porter, is reading one of the esoteric books on Polynesian religious cults that he saw in his dreams. One night, as Banzai wakes up from what is to be his last library dream, he walks to the window and, horrified, sees the porter levitate from the courtyard until he is hovering outside the window. “Kori smiled. His eyes were black with blood.”

All through these unsettling events, Banzai continues to be captivated by Daria. She comes to visit him at his apartment, and he cooks dinner.  He asks her to spend the night, and she tells him that that was her intention. After nuanced descriptions of their flirting over dinner, they begin to make love, but Banzai stops: she is underage, and he realizes that she is seeking to be close to him because she is vulnerable and an outsider among her classmates.

In the deep Ukrainian provinces autumn progresses. Old traditions mix with new. After a rollicking stint with Daria at a wild Rockotheque, Banzai again comes face to face with the sepulchral school porter Kori. There is a psychedelic confrontation in which the porter warns him not to cross him. Banzai wakes up from a faint. Though he and the reader imagine this might have been a vision, Daria has witnessed the exchange. For both of them now, fear and horror lurk everywhere.

 

Sample - B

Part Two

Chapter One

Nobody could understand why the surrounding forest was exercising such a strong attraction on owls. It was seething with them, and at night the air was filled with low ominous calls.

Banzai went to see the psyc-ho-ho-ho-logist in his office. He found him in a bad state, sprawled in his chair as if he were in the grip of the Hong Kong flu. Unabashed, he was swigging brandy straight from the bottle; usually he confined himself to a discreet shot in his coffee.

“I’m not feeling well,” the psyc-ho-ho-ho-logist told him. “I don’t know what your views are on the goings on in this town — don’t breathe a word of this to anyone! — but don’t you agree there’s something fishy going on? That something’s — how can I put it — not quite right?”

Banzai shrugged his shoulders, but felt a cold shudder running down his spine.

The following day the psyc-ho-ho-ho-logist ended up in intensive care in Skole. He had overdosed on tranquilizers. He pulled through by the skin of his teeth and was sent straight to a psychiatric clinic. He had been having incessant dreams about monsters and gigantic, terrifying worms.

No wonder he went off the deep end — was the general consensus at school — always having to listen to other people’s problems.

Banzai didn’t dare visit him in the clinic. He was terrified of what he might tell him.

There were the first cases of flu in those stormy days, and also isolated cases of measles. No cause for alarm: only five or six people had fallen sick. But Mrs. Lisun and her best friend, the young nurse from the hospital ward, were convinced that there could well be a pandemic, just like there had been the year before. In the excitement, they were irresistibly drawn to one another.

Banzai and his retinue — Daria, Malayalam, and Semplovani — were now rehearsing feverishly. Nobody had an inkling what they were cooking up. During one of the rehearsals Semplovani suddenly asked, “Hey, you guys, don’t you get the feeling something’s fishy in this place?”

The poor Psyc-ho-ho-ho-logist had used almost the same words. Banzai glanced at Daria, but she shook her head as if to say, “No idea what you’re talking about. Something’s fishy? Where?”

Banzai thought he saw Malayalam throw Semplovani a warning look. Semplovani said no more.

During this period there was also a marked reduction of stray dogs and cats on the streets: a marked reduction.

Furthermore, three girls from school disappeared without a trace. They had packed a few things with the idea of heading home for the weekend, and set out in the evening to the train station. Their parents in Stari Sambir were convinced that they wouldn’t be seeing their daughters before Christmas. The girls walked into the wet, dark fog and were never seen again. They simply vanished. Nobody had asked them the reason for their sudden departure, except for Roman Kori, the school porter. That was in keeping with the rules of the school. The explanation the girls had given him was that they slept two to a room, and had roommates who had already come down with the flu. They informed the porter that they had no activities this weekend and so were heading home.

They walked into the darkness and never came back. Their parents only began to worry about them on December 25th.

When the principal asked the porter why he had let the girls leave without informing anyone, he replied that the girls’ excuse had been acceptable: flu-ridden roommates, calls to their parents, train ride home. He swore that that was what they said. He could have also pointed out to the principal that he wasn’t a man to be crossed; there was, after all, that nurse for whom the principal had developed an unhealthy obsession now that his wife was out of town. Of course he could have pointed that out. But it’s never a good idea to show one’s hand, waving around all the Aces one is holding, showing all the trumps one has hidden up one’s sleeve.

On the night before All Saints’ Day, seven young men from Midni Buky were sitting behind the school building, drinking cheap wine, and whistling up at the windows of the girls’ dormitory. One of them had brought along a pair of binoculars: the louts wanted to see something hot. Just as they thought one of the girls was about to undress with the curtains open and the lights on, they heard a low tone — too deep for it really to be audible — a vibration on the eardrum. From somewhere in the recesses of the school came a deep, throaty chant. Then suddenly everything fell silent: the song, the voices from the dorms, their own drunken whining. Only the owls that had gathered in the nearby trees hoo-hooed in unison. Then the shaman’s chant came again: a stream of incomprehensible tones, an ominous song of death. Shadows flitted over the brick walls as if someone were brandishing a burning torch.

But there was no torch. No light came from the forest. So there was no reason for the flitting shadows.

The vibration became stronger, and one of the youths said, “I guess I’ll be going.”

Nobody called him a coward or a killjoy. They all quietly stood up and left as fast as they could. None of them was ashamed of running.

About the same time, a young couple, seniors from school, had gone hand in hand for a walk through the woods when they came upon a clearing. The girl had brought a camera to take a picture of herself and her boyfriend (for her photo album). The clearing looked as if a gigantic tank had come furrowing through, sweeping away the trees on either side. That something big had caused it was obvious enough. The girl photographed everything and gave the boy a picture as a souvenir. An uncle who came to visit the boy at Christmas saw the picture, and said he had once seen something similar when a plane had crashed in the woods.

Otherwise, everything was fine.

Except that people were somewhat worried. Or to be more precise, frightened.

Except that Banzai would cringe at the slightest noise, and let out a muffled cry if someone spoke to him unexpectedly.

Except that Daria was afraid of walking through the dimly-lit corridors at night to get to the toilet. But as she had no friends except for Banzai, she remained alone with her fears at night.

Except that Semplovani and Malayalam, in whose room a girl had hung herself in ’76, and Genik Brevnov from across the hall, whose roommate had been run over by the Mukatshevo-Lviv Express in ’98, were slowly losing their minds because of the dreadful dreams and terrible noises they heard in their rooms at night.

But otherwise everything was fine, if one can call it fine. The town was in the grip of a sort of idyll after the plague: clean and empty streets, neat lawns, an abandoned manicured park.

But I would warn against walking the streets after dark: one could easily get lost.

It would not be the first time.

 

***

 They were preparing for the performance in a quite unconventional way. On the one hand they carefully planned the stage set and the action, on the other even Banzai wasn’t sure what they’d do on stage when they got there.

Malayalam brought in a huge old TV set that he had found God knows where - “the devil’s box,” as V. Relanium (a.k.a. D. Elenium) once called it. Semplovani had managed to get his hands on a camcorder and a projector. Everything else had been left up to Banzai and Daria.

The idea was to shock the entire school, to shake and rattle it down to the archetypal depths of its subconscious by an act of resistance to everything gray and banal.

On Friday, a surprising number of people came to the performance: not just the dorm crowd, but also Shkrab, Gaden, Floyd, and even the utterly unknown decadent poet Vlodko Relanium (a.k.a. Danko Elenium), who, a suspicious-looking cigarette in his mouth, was resting his black army-boots on the back of the chair in front of him. He had with him the paraphernalia of an unknown and unappreciated celebrity of the Lviv underground who had been cast out and forgotten: a black leather traveling case packed full with poetry manuscripts, and a black leather jacket à la Kerouac.

The electricity came on again at a quarter past seven. Banzai mused that the scheduling of electrical outages in the town had to be in the hands of inmates from the insane asylum, who were encouraged to play with the levers and switches of the municipal generators as part of their therapy. All those who wished to have their virginal consciousness despoiled entered the small auditorium and sat down on the chairs and benches that were arranged in traumatic triads in an amphitheater-like semicircle. The gigantic loudspeakers stood waiting in the dark.

Banzai peeked at the audience from behind the set: students, colleagues, and people who were, well, just acquaintances (such as Genik Brevnov and the pale, prepubescent-looking redheaded girl who never left his side). Irina was there too, scowling. There was an excited buzz. From time to time someone laughed out loud.

Suddenly the lights went out and the performance began.

 ***

 And this is what happened:

Almost at the same instant the lights went out, the first insidious chords of Jimmy Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” were heard. They swelled slowly to such a volume that the innards of the audience (who were attending the performance despite all the warnings) began to vibrate. Out of the darkness a blurred image appeared on the ceiling, becoming lighter and clearer with the mounting music. The entire ceiling served as a screen onto which a Jimmy Hendrix video clip was projected.

Suddenly four spots bathed the stage in a sharp, bright light. There was also a red projector and a big flashing strobe. The stage was filled with piles of junk, in the middle of which Banzai was sitting casually on a classroom chair. Malayalam was holding a trumpet like a young Miles Davis, and Semplovani had a bass guitar. Daria Borges was standing on the huge TV set in very tight shorts and a flimsy checkered shirt, her arms timidly folded over her breasts. The TV set came on, and Daria began dancing on it. The idea was for her to portray greed, sex, and salaciousness, which she did quite well.

Jimmy Hendrix ebbed away, and the boys’ turn came: they played Grieg’s Solveig’s Song, accompanied by John Bonzo Bonham, Led Zeppelin’s legendary drummer (an allusion to mass culture?). It sounded crazed, but also melodic in a way.

Banzai sat on the chair with a small book in his hand, declaiming poetry. He declaimed his favorite poets. He began with the poor devil Tychyna, the later Tychyna whose first-rate impressionism had been turned into fodder for the Soviet beasts by the agents of socialist realism. He read out a short classified ad in English:

            Wanted:

Tychyna Pavlo Grygorovych

(«Tychynka»)

a talented young impressionist poet.

Left his house & didn’t return

Appropriate reward

Help!!!

 At Banzai’s feet was a porcelain toilet bowl he had found on a garbage dump, and next to him a cassette player with a pile of cassettes. Behind him was a stack of large cardboard boxes, packaging for refrigerators and furniture. They were covered with paintings by old masters. All the way in back were stacks of old magazines and a sledgehammer.

Suddenly one of the spots went dark, making the flashing of the strobe more intense.

Malayalam and Semplovani’s music was becoming more dissonant. Daria’s hands fluttered over her body — her hands were spellbinding. Banzai stopped declaiming from Tychyna’s poetry book and threw it into the toilet bowl. He took a lighter from the drawer in the table and picked up a stack of tabloids. He lit one after another and threw them into the toilet bowl, where they burned with a surprisingly bright flame. Before he could return to his poetry and poetics, Daria jumped off the TV set and began burning some magazines for locksmiths, sanitary engineers, and homemakers; Liza, Soap Opera Weekly, and an entire serial of Cool, until Nathalie, the rampart of bourgeois resistance, went up in flames.

Another spot went dark and the TV screen came alive (they had discreetly hooked it up to the camcorder): scenes from Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, Ukrainian Idol, What’s that Tune?, and Big Brother, all of which Semplovani had combined into a surreal Buñuelesque dream. Daria was again dancing her snake dance on top of the TV set.

The poetry became wilder, but no longer ended up in the toilet. Banzai recited from memory Pokalchuk, Antonytch, and Andrukhovych, laced with a little Rimbaud. The music — loud, imposing, irritating — clashed in every possible way with what was being read. Banzai turned on the cassette player (for a few seconds Semplovani, Malayalam, and John Bonzo Bonham fell silent), and traditional Ukrainian songs sounded forth.

(There was a murmur of approval in the auditorium.)

Banzai turned up the music, and finally the audience (with a few exceptions) began having fun. But Banzai seized the sledgehammer, and with all his might brought it down on the cassette player. Sparks and black shards of plastic flew in all directions. The music slowed down but didn’t stop. The next blow annihilated the cassette player, which fell crashing to the floor in a maimed tangle of wires, tape, and plastic.

The next spot went out. Now only one was left, together with the red light and the flashing strobe. The boys’ instruments were making crazed and heated sounds, the rebirth of the forgotten but immortal art of noise. Malayalam was experimenting by covering the bell of his trumpet with a wet sponge; Semplovani tore wildly at the strings of his guitar. Daria again jumped off the TV set, and she and Banzai began tearing the paintings off the cardboard boxes, throwing them on the floor, and trampling on them. On the ceiling projections from Mrs. Dershislava’s postcard collection appeared.

The last spot went dark. Banzai took up the sledgehammer. The auditorium was drowning in the noise pouring from the speakers like an avalanche. The television was showing snippets of daytime soaps and talk shows, interspersed with clips of Banzai and the students in rehearsal. Banzai hoarsely yelled out the lines of the poet James Douglas Morrison:

            The moths & atheists are doubly divine

& dying

We live, we die

& death not ends it

Journey we more into the

Nightmare

Cling to life

Our passion'd flower

Cling to Cunts & cocks

of despair

We got our final vision

by clap

Columbus groin got

filled w/green death

(I touched her thigh

& death smiled)

We have assembled inside this ancient

& insane theatre

 The lonely strobe flashed like the eye of a Cyclops at the moment of death. The loudspeakers raged, aggressive music spewing out of their orifices. In the terrifying flashes of light Daria could be seen slashing the paintings with a sharp razor. Banzai raised the hammer, and with great force brought it down on the screen just as it was showing a scene of their performance. Myriad glittering needles sprayed in all directions, and the shattered TV spat white and blue sparks (Banzai had seen to it that the chairs in the auditorium were far enough away from the stage). He brought the hammer down on the TV's box, and it shattered. The audience’s reaction, if any, could not be heard above the din. Finally the strobe went out and the music faded into the darkness. There was an utter dulling of the senses, like on the dark side of the moon.

Suddenly the spots blazed up  — all at the same instant — and the audience saw an empty stage. The actors were gone. All that was left was the cardboard set and the toilet bowl, from which gray smoke was rising. The doors of the auditorium opened as if by themselves.

A wave of shouts and curses rose from the audience.

Within ten minutes the auditorium was empty. The actors crawled out of the cardboard boxes, congratulated each other on their incredible success, and began clearing the stage.

 

Sample - C

Part Two

Chapter Two

Banzai felt that Midny Buki was very much like Zhdanovo had been. In both places he had found a hunchbacked old man at the train station, penis in hand, sending a stream of fiery yellow pee onto the platform. In both places it was oppressively hot, the pee drying almost instantly. After both old men had relieved themselves and repacked their floppy meat into their pants, they had turned around and, to their surprise, found themselves standing in front of the steaming cars of the South-Ukraine Express.

The year before (in other words, the year before Banzai visited Zhdanovo in 1995), a kid from near Mariupol had come to stay at his house as part of a pupil exchange program in which children from Lviv were sent to Ismail and Donetsk, and children from Ismail and Donetsk came to Lviv. Banzai’s father had attended a parents-teachers meeting at Banzai’s school for the first time in many years, and, in an inspired moment of enthusiasm, had decided to offer asylum to a child from the southern provinces.

And so Banzai got to know Arkadi “Cobra” Svarogov, the most notorious resident of Zhdanovo.

The following year Cobra invited Banzai and his best friend Doctor Rain to come to Zhdanovo to spend some unforgettable days.

Banzai and Doctor Rain had stood on the platform, which was hellishly hot and empty, except for the hunchbacked old man. The train left immediately, as if it were frightened of remaining in the station longer than absolutely necessary.

“So what do we do now, Mr. Banzai?” Doctor Rain said. His hair and face were sticky with sweat. Banzai felt just as miserable. But suddenly —

Yes, suddenly Cobra appeared on the horizon, like the Lone Ranger, like the rising sun. It was Cobra and no one else. No one else wore such ripped jeans, sported such a grimy jacket. No one but Cobra had such long and oily hair. In the summer haze he looked like a hip-hop genie released from its bottle by reckless punks. 

They shook hands. No, they hugged — for damn it, they’d really missed each other. Cobra was wearing a steel peace sign around his neck. Banzai recognized it right way: the year before, Doctor Rain had traded it to Cobra for a poster that was still hanging in his room. It showed an array of Disney characters skipping happily through a magical forest, with a naked Snow White riding her prince, her face raised to the sky in ecstasy. Beneath the picture was written in a childish Disney scrawl:

 Who killed Bambi?

 They’d had some good times! Cobra took them to his place. He was living with his grandfather, a retired mathematician who made a living by giving idiots private lessons. In his free time the grandfather immersed himself in ninja culture. His body had an entirely non-European flexibility. In his shed he forged swords, knives, throwing stars, and tridents for slicing through aortas. Cobra told them how, on autumn nights, his grandfather would don his black homemade outfit, put on his mask, strap his sword on his back, and walk their enormous Newfoundland dog. Cobra was certain that his grandfather would snap one of these days and mow down all of Zhdanovo. But the truth was, there was hardly anyone to mow down: all the young people had left for nearby Mariupol to find work, and only a few old people and children remained; the latter could be counted on the fingers of one hand: Varya, Anya, Masha, and Julia. The first two were ten, Masha was twelve, and Julia thirteen. When Doctor Rain asked Cobra how he got by without girls, he coolly answered that there was always Julia. Doctor Rain quickly dropped the subject.

Cobra’s grandfather also liked to drink green tea and gaze in meditation at the glints on the blades of his weapons.

But what was most interesting was not Julia, and not the mathematical ninja grandfather. What was most interesting lay outside the village: a gigantic, rampant, untouched field of hemp, promising an endless supply of weed.

They sampled it on the very first day, and continued smoking all month long, and a second month that Banzai had managed to wrangle out of his father over the phone. They hung out in the field singing “Birds of a feather will flock together, flock together in fields of weed.”

Day after day.

They consumed the weed in every possible way — roasting it, boiling it in milk, crushing it with sugar — and they smoked and smoked. They smoked themselves into unprecedented planes of consciousness. Banzai once even saw paradise. The paradise of junkies: a gigantic red sun setting on the horizon, and the silhouettes of the hemp plants, tall and striking, enticing you to try them. And loud zither music. Celestial tones, unbelievably beguiling oriental zither sounds.

He saw all kinds of other interesting things too, but a vision at the end of July made him drop the weed and rush back home to Lviv.

While smoking he had had a hallucination. A man in white, with the beard and long hair of a hippie, held out a hemp plant with roots, leaves, and buds. A female plant from which the good stuff comes. The man in white held it out to Banzai, “Take it, it is yours.”

At first Banzai thought the man was Jesus.

He was alarmed by the craziness of such a thought. The man in white kept holding out the plant, encouraging him with a gentle smile and eyes that were warm, pleading, and insistent.

Banzai toppled into eternity. Somewhere in the depths of eternity, after he had fallen for centuries, he landed in a gigantic swamp that was as immense as the primeval Tethys Ocean. He lay there on his back, his face to the sky. He knew the swamp would swallow him. He was never to forget the red sky, the barren heat, and the thick miasmas rising from the waters. A man came through the swamp toward him in frayed battle fatigues; he was young, tanned, and exhausted from incessant battles. He stopped next to Banzai. The man was very strong — he exuded energy and life. But Banzai sank deeper and deeper.

And deeper.

The man could have bent forward for Banzai to grab hold of him, but didn’t. On the sleeve of his fatigues was a pointless badge that said “UN Peacekeeper, Special Branch, International Northern Rescue Initiative.”

— Pull me out, pull me out! I’m sinking!

— Think whether you really want me to pull you out. Whom will you choose, the man in white or me?

— You! You! Pull me out!

The swamp had practically swallowed Banzai up, but the soldier was in no hurry.

— One hand washes the other. Agreed?

— Yes, yes, I’ll do whatever you want! But pull me out!

The young peacekeeper leaned forward so Banzai could grab his hand. The soldier pulled with all his might (God, what a relief, what an incredible relief!) and

Banzai got up and ran across the empty beach near which they had been smoking. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, terrifying the seagulls and stray cats.

When Banzai came to his senses he packed his bags, gave Cobra a hug, and, propping up Doctor Rain, who was stoned beyond help, made his way with him back to the train station. There they took the South-Ukraine Express back to Lviv.

From that time on he never again touched grass.

 

***

 Daria’s vision also deserves attention. What she had seen was almost as important as Banzai’s vision, if not more important.

She gazed upon the creation of the world.

Bright, fantastical arabesques danced before her inner eye as space was born. She felt vast emptiness open up before her. In the emptiness

(emptiness?)

she saw an old, gray-bearded man in frayed robes of coarse linen decorated with bright strips of cloth braided into patterns. The man with the long gray hair and beard was dancing an archaic dance, stamping and hopping. In his arms he held a large bagpipe of red leather. As he danced he played strange and wondrous melodies that seemed to draw Daria into the depths of the emptiness.

The emptiness was a white fog.

The old bagpipe player played on and began to dance in a circle, a loud drumbeat joining the melody. At the sound of the arrhythmic magic tones, the fog began to disperse.

(Daria danced with him, and in an ancient dance they whirled in a circle)

and all around them Being came to be, glittering before the wet, dark-blue darkness.

(Let there be light.)

And there was light. It pierced the deepest cells, shone through the most distant neurons, and freed consciousness. The melody grew louder, embracing everything. Strange visions moving to the music flashed before Daria’s eyes.

She saw the creation of a thousand universes, nebulae, galaxies, saw star systems come to be.

Daria saw eternity. As the music reached its height, a grandiose apotheosis of all melodies, she felt that something unbelievably important was about to happen.

Out of nothingness Light burst into Being, flooding everything with its whiteness.

She saw the bagpipe player at the gates of dawn.

 

***

 To everyone’s surprise, the principal called a mandatory teacher’s meeting.

During recess the teachers gathered in front of the principal’s door and carefully prepared themselves for the unpleasantness ahead.

It was snowing outside. It was the first snow of the season, and the only snowfall in all of western Ukraine. The feathery flakes fell heavily onto the earth, quickly melting like afternoon daydreams. Banzai was standing next to the chemistry teacher, who with half-shut eyes was looking out the window into the whiteness. 

“Once I retire,” he told Banzai, lost in thought, “I’ll go to Antarctica, to a research station where there’s a lot of snow. I’ll try my hand at breeding polar crocodiles. Though come to think of it, I can’t imagine having much success. The damn monsters would croak.”

Banzai winced. Fear had wound itself around him like a chain, he couldn’t shake it off. He had the unbearable feeling that he was caught up in an amazingly realistic dream. The horror of it trickled into his heart like thick, dark honey, spreading through his body and coating his inner organs. The horror was heavy and inescapable.

The meeting was delayed. The principal’s heavy door remained shut. God knows what the principal was up to on the other side. Was he plaintively watching the falling snowflakes? Was he playing Fiddler on the Roof on his viola? Was he longing for the warm, sweet eyes of Alicia, his true love? Or was he furiously masturbating over the December issue of Boys at Play? Who knows.

The door finally opened, and the teachers went in. Banzai smelled burnt coffee instead of the anticipated odor of sperm. The assembled pedagogues distributed themselves around a big table in the conference room. The chemistry teacher was again gazing out the window, the ladies teaching English huddled anxiously together like a gaggle of hens, and the venerable Spanish teacher — an imposing Hassidic Jew with the kindly face of Shalom Aleichem — sat clutching the golden pommel of his walking stick. The senior biology teacher was telling Mr. Lisun dumb-blonde jokes.

The principal was true to form. He didn’t just digress a little — he really digressed. The gaggle of alarmed English teachers held hands under the table and sank as far as they could into the plastic cushions of the cheap chairs.

The principal was gaining momentum, his voice growing deeper. Even the experts in elocution were impressed at his rich intonation, while the amateurs were crushed and cowed. He was in an exceptionally bad mood, which greatly heightened his artistry.

The long and the short of it was: he meant business.

“You are all a bunch of, ahem, smart-alecs, aren’t you? You think, ahem, that I haven’t noticed what you’re up to, trying your best to dodge your teaching duties? And you,” — the principal turned to Banzai with a theatrical flourish, bowing so close to him that it looked as if he were about to kiss him, or with a sudden snap tear off a piece of his nose. Banzai stared into his eyes, his heart beating wildly at the impending unpleasantness. “And you, Mr. Banzai, ahem, you, in my considered opinion, have sunk lower than the lowest ditch! What induced you to tell our eighth-graders that washing their hands is unhealthy?”

Banzai had in fact told them that, but as far as he was concerned his conscience was clear. “Well, how shall I put it?” he said. “When we wash our hands, we wash away not only dangerous bacteria, but also useful ones. The chance of catching a bacterium with clean hands is far greater than…”

The senior biology teacher burst out laughing, throwing his head back and banging his hand on the tabletop. “A bacterium! This is too much, ha-ha-ha, a bacterium!” He almost choked.

“Silence!” the principal shouted, slamming his fist on his desk. The biology teacher cringed and fell silent. A shudder went through the room.

“And didn’t you suggest that hemp be grown in the garden? And not just in any garden! No! In the school garden!”

“Well, the long and the short of it is,” Banzai began, “that hemp in fact not only provides us with you know what but also with good-quality paper, and fibers that make first-rate cloth, not to mention rope, and…”

“But that isn’t all!” the principal barked, pausing for rhetorical effect. “You had the gall to approach, ahem, girl pupils! Well? Well? Isn’t that, ahem… Damn it, this is no joke! What it is, is criminal!”

Banzai froze — from his eyebrows to his shoes.

The senior biologist again broke into crazed laughter. “Criminal! This is too much, ha ha ha, criminal!”

“Silence!” the principal shouted, his voice ricocheting over the lacquered surface of the table. There was utter silence, as if all the teachers had crossed into the beyond, taking every sound with them.

“I see you all think you can pull the wool over my eyes? Well I’ll show you, and you, Banzai! I have a lifeboat, but do you have one? Does anyone else here have one? You think you can put one over on me? Well, you have another think coming!”

Dead silence. One could hear the secretary’s computer outside humming its enigmatic Java-script song. One of the English teachers broke into loud sobs.

“We’re not going to put up with this sort of intimidation,” the chemistry teacher said. “We all have our lifeboats, not just you. Our lifeboats are there,” he added, nodding in the direction of Midni Buky’s cemetery.

The room grew even more silent, dead silent, like a corpse’s mouth. Even the principal had nothing to say to this. The bell rang, announcing the next class.

The principal freed himself from his trance. “Go to your classes!” he barked. “And as for you, Mr. Banzai, I want to see you after the next period. Do I make myself clear?”

Banzai left the office on unsteady feet. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that everything around him was just a dream. Especially when he shut his eyes.

But it wasn’t a dream. For the time being.