Илай Колесников
Earlyborn
The novel Earlyborn is translated from Russian into English by Lazutkina Aleksandra.
Chapter 1
She was charming. As early in the winter morning things happen, and white ghosts of blizzard shine through the window, so did she appear all of a sudden every time, at the crack of dawn, and dazzled everyone with her beauty. She was thought to be named either Irochka or Mashenka, but never was it decided. A chief physician of the maternity hospital once said, coming by, “Wow, whom do we have here, at the crack of dawn, early in the morning??” And here our heroine got her name. She enjoyed sitting by the window, observing teeny-weeny people shuttle about at the footing of the Eiffel Tower. She loved to look after them, inventing diverse stories about who they were. For one:
Definitely, this small person in a short red fur coat with a bag over his shoulder is Ded Moroz1. Arguably, he came here, in France, from Italy, where he was said to be the most successful and highly paid Ded Moroz of the entire town. Arguably, wandering over there, somewhere under the lights of the Eiffel Tower, he made out its point and realizes his goal: to find a new dream. Arguably, that Italian dream was ruined, yet probably it came true—was reached. Arguably, there, in Italy, not only did our Ded Moroz just work but, perhaps, he saved up money for something. And he had become the best, as his job was exactly for his liking. Arguably, there, in Italy he was saving up money for his new yacht, craving to get it as soon as possible and sail away somewhere very far from here… Say, to Argentina. What for to act on a small scale? So, our Ded Moroz, we name him Luisian (for how can it happen that Ded Moroz has no name?), was saving up money to buy a yacht to head for Argentina. Why did he do so? Well, all that he wanted to become a cowherd of the famed Chianina cows and bulls, roaming around them and singing songs.
«Why is he in need of yacht, then?»
«Wait a min-ute!»
He needed a yacht in case some furious drunken bull… Whoops! indeed I meant “a drunken chief of bulls”… chased him, he would not lose his courage and shout, “Help me, kind people, lend a hand, give bread and salt or toss a coin!”—yet he would jump once, twice, shot out the tongue to one side, hop-hop, and sail homeward. But did our Italian Ded Moroz earn enough money to buy his long-awaited car (for we have started talking about him)? Yes, he did. Moreover, he had some coins in his pocket so that he could buy a bun and a cup of coffee from a salesman, when he was sitting in his brand-new yacht, and then, savour it, looking at all the hustle and bustle around him, and find that he had already obtained great success in life. Did he, Luisian, manage to get to Argentina, in that case? You have posed the right question, dear friends. He arrived in Argentina and did not blink. On the first day he argued with a chief, yet the consequence was not that in which the chef kicked him away from the island, conversely, he was chosen the new boss of cows and bulls; an old chef was sent back on his way, what is more, he was stupid to the extent that he did not have a boat with him. Wait! my kettle has boiled over!
That is that. Why, if everything was all right there, in Argentina, with bulls, did Luisian not look terribly content and happy here, in France? The case was next, dear friends, and I earnestly recommend you to listen to the case.
One day coming out of his ranch on a regular morning after a month had passed since he arrived on the island (he put cows out to pasture not at the continent itself, but at the nearby island, for he was paid more there with fewer cows), Luisian started marvelling at Argentina’s sunrise. It must be said that Luisian had rather good taste, and he even drew paintings in his childhood, wrote poems in his youth and during all the time before he became the best Italian Ded Moroz on call. The sunrise was this. If in summer you collected roughly ten thousand coins which are now in circulation in your country and at the full moon, midnight, got out of your house window on the rope or by a helicopter (it depends on the height of your house or a level of building you live on), and then bought a ticket to Moscow at the station, where (in Moscow) you moved some 186 miles straight away to my summer house, and after that (the final step) travelled across time to 4 August 2020, you would see exactly this dawn. However, what am I? I could say this more easily! It was that sunrise which was ten-eleven years of age! Again it isn’t that which I wanted to say… So, when Luisian saw quite a beautiful for his sense of humour and jacket sunrise, he said in Spanish, “Ah me!” It was that beginning of the story that was rather surprising, so that it could amaze even South American fur seals, although they cannot wonder. Anyway, that is all not awfully important! For us merely Luisian’s happiness from the real Argentinian dawn he saw is significant, and he was so happy that he desired to become a photographer.
Unexpected development, is it not? So be it, Luisian as any Best retired Ded Moroz on call, had a very strong love for unexpected turns of events. For this reason Luisian had quite an interesting and curious (everything is at your disposal, Luisian!) talk where the following was discussed: “Is it possible for an untrained person to fly to the Moon, but why necessarily to the moon if Costa Rica is a good place to start with?” This thought dawned on Luisian as a spring thunder blast. It was a deal. Luisian and a tipsy chef of Indian buffalos left their bulls to their fate that very minute and set out for an Argentinian market to buy a very old caravan. The one, you know, which can be usually seen in romantic films where you certainly need to shed a tear and a young couple is going to the South. Such motion pictures are often filmed in Brazil. Well, so is true for Argentina, thus friends managed to buy it for quite a sum of money. It was that very evening when the purchaser of Luisian’s yacht—by means of which Luisian had arrived here—was found, yet what on earth am I telling you? How, by your favour, would Luisian come back home? Basically, he left his idea to sell the boat, just like he left the purchaser who had quite a sum of money for Argentina in hands, and, moreover, Luisian got slightly angry, took his yacht, and sailed away. Huh! And why did they buy that caravan? Once Luisian made a circle and came back to the place where he wished the purchaser goodbye, but there was no one there. That was splendid. It turns out, Luisian went away to take a test shot with his camera (for his desire to be a photographer was not in vain, right? All the photographers without any exception are rather weird people. I tell you that for sure as I am a photographer myself :)), and he got a pretty nice picture. So he did his best, justly it is he who was the chief Ded Moroz, though retired. And what? Every person can retire. What’s resignation in general? That is merely the rank which was given to those who worked harder than their colleagues did; they grasped that a great move forward was needed. The more so since Luisian quit his job. Anyway, they went to Costa Rica. Yet we still do not know how and why Luisian got to France and where his beloved yacht was now. Never mind, I will answer all your questions. They would pull the yacht behind their caravan: they had found a platform with castors and put up scaffolding at which they placed the boat.
But now they for some reason were not driving. Why? They mended the caravan. Damn all impostors who sell goods and do not know a thing about prices of broken machines! If they fixed high prices, it would be clearly seen that the car is worn out and you should not buy it… But they are so silly and insecure and there is no drop of Jewish in them! They fix the low price and suppose, “Here is a dignified family of indigenous Argentines who decided to say goodbye to their loyal friend and give him a chance to work for the benefit of others.” Naturally! They gave machines a chance to work for others! It does not matter, as Luisian at long last knew that his father lived in France.
And here is the denouement, my dear friends, is it not? Nothing of the kind. Not yet, seemingly. But all right. So his father lived in France (after all, Luisian arrived to a decision to work as a Ded Moroz only on account of looking for his father when going to various houses. And then he could imagine a simpler and more achievable goal, the one which would not do harm neither him nor the deed—he sparkled with his eyes much). While the tipsy chief and he were repairing a dead carburetor, Luisian suddenly learned in an informal conversation where his father was. “Yet why did his father leave him?” you ask again. And that is a good question once more! You are like the tax inspectorate or… What am I, however? His father simply did not know that he had a son since his future bride did not reveal the details upon parting. But he, he was calmly sitting there, under his caravan somewhere in Argentina or already Brazil, and mending the carburetor when his passport, where the age of twenty-five is filled in fell out of his front shirt pocket. Why, then, the chef of drunken bulls was aware of his father? Happy coincidence? Is it a fairy tale? No, no! Simply, everything is simple. That boss of drunken bulls used to live in one provincial town in France with a mayor. That mayor was Luisian’s father. They arrived in Costa Rica with no trouble and bowed to each other. Luisian gifted his camera to the chief, and the chief gave him the keys to the caravan. The chef did not step back, for he loved to control the animals and settled down in Costa Rica where he became a manager of the crocodile farm. :) What a human! Dauntless! Luisian sailed back home selling the caravan to one local Costa Rican, which made him a bit rich to buy some fuel. And that was he now, in Paris, France, walking… He was wearing a heel-length fur coat, as he decided to call to mind the old days feeling sad because there was no money for a ticket, and his father was due to leave his provincial town to reign in some South French colony where it was hot, yet was no connection… Daybreak caught Earlyborn at the window of an ancient house, pondering about that tiny human at the footing of the Eiffel Tower.
Chapter 2
She went to the kitchen and brewed a second portion of excellent Dominican coffee. A clock with croissants, which did fit the interior, where a true French lady dwelled, said just the beginning of five, well okay, six in the morning. Meanwhile Ded Morozs were long walking in the streets… Or had it only seemed to be so to our heroine? What was she thinking about when sitting by her window at that jolly time? What did gnaw away at her thoughts, at her, who looked as the one who had everything? What did the solitary woman at the zenith of her power need if a flat with a balcony in front of the Eiffel Tower was at her service? Not to mention that it was on the sixth floor… Out of the eight available. I guess that is a rhetorical question and I believe in absence of necessity for me to put in italics the world “solitary” in one of the sentences above. Or is it worth doing it? What for? She went to the kitchen and brewed a cup of excellent Dominican coffee… She sat at the bar counter, took a whole saucer of ripe wild strawberries and got down to business—started to mix coffee with berries. She turned Russian, she was (under no circumstances will you think of her age) twenty five years old. She was born in Irkutsk, in the family of one Soviet military man and, as it befits, she had lived in a military town for all her childhood. It was a good dawn to spend the rest of the days in France, was it not? Earlyborn sat now, running her cold fingers, which were coarse from life, through some fresh wild strawberries. She reminisced the time of her youth. The air of this Paris kitchen filled with a question, appeared as the yellow awning of the summer above the dark winter, “Where is better? Here, in France, with no soul and no spark for which I wished to be kicking, or there, in the childhood, in the spring of life, where there is the mother, the father, the sister, a lot of friends and plans for the future, and I was plied with wild strawberries—there were that many of them; there was no Paris only?..” Sipping real Dominican coffee and admiring her impeccable fashionable tailor-made attire, Earlyborn started to comprehend: not all is gold that glitters and it is not everywhere where there is an answer to where questions were interweaved in the same way as Podolsk workmen pull electrical cables. Well… Had she ever thought that she would see the New Year in utterly alone, but in smart clothes and a new flat like a coconut forgotten somewhere on the beach, drowned in the sunbeams? It was face to face with palms and wanted to show off in front of these trees, which (the coconut understood that just now) ignored the large nut and would never appreciate its beauty. Earlyborn had a one-bedroom apartment; the first room (not a bedroom) was not used for something special, but Earlyborn enjoyed ornamenting it according to the season that was behind the window and the heroine’s mood: there were some paper snowflakes and figures of thousands of spruce or statuettes of red deer in winter; it was full of butterflies and bouquets of flowers in summer, literally the room turned out a blooming greenhouse that time; she filled the room with herbariums and baskets of apples, chestnuts and apples… The second room was, obviously, a bedroom, yet it was not less cozy, there: for example, there was a balcony with cane armchairs, where you could sit till the morning, reading some novels under a lamp post, which stood lonely in the silence of the street in summer, and observe these Ded Morozs with a prophecy to herself that she would be cold in her dress, yet with giving no damn about it and slowly drinking coffee. There was a kitchen as well.
The day began, and Earlyborn could not sit idle in her attire, besides, the jar of coffee was almost empty. Earlyborn decided to go to the supermarket for she had always been fond of short walks, yes, short (merely five-six hour lasting), she loved roaming around snowbound streets in Paris. No sooner said than done! She quickly put on some cloth that would warm: woolen boots, a scarf made of crocodile and… Ouch! I was jabbed with a pine needle right now! So she took all her clothing on and went outdoors. Although her house entrance had nothing extraordinary itself, our lady, who was a daydreamer and, therefore, had a flair for painting the reality in bright colours (let us bear in mind Ded Moroz), played with images born in her brains that someone genius, yet, lived in her entrance and appeared to change all her life right now. It had never come true, nor had it come so this time, however, when she tackled to leave the entrance door ajar, fighting with that still nasty wind which made her go out of the balcony, she ran into one young man.
«Ouch!»
«S-s-sorry!»
Without doubt, it was impossible just to picture that our wonderful heroine would come across with so not less wonderful a character as Ded Moroz, given that it would happen in her very entrance, when she would dare go out to purchase a jar of coffee, was it not? :) Do you think I am so naive?? Well, obviously, our heroine met Ded Moroz since it was morning, January 1st, but who, who told you, pray, tell me that he was exactly that Ded Moroz, whom she imagined? And why was she supposed to make up a figure of Ded Moroz, not a firefighter sitting by the window that night on the sixth floor? Single women, I dare to say, are likely to love courageous Paris firefighters. Thus, there was somewhat particular in her mind, which led her to dream about Ded Moroz. So we must have someone unique there. Who was he? Right! It was her darling brother whom she was waiting for there, in France, to see the New Year in, but who, seemed, could not come due to family circumstances. And yet he was here, taking off his furry cap with a pom-pom, then, a cotton beard, scrupulously attached to his real one; Earlyborn was bewildered and scared since her thoughts which she cherished suddenly were brought in life. There was a sensitive conversation between siblings, then came tears, embraces and screams. Hearing all that, an old sleepy lady who lived on the first floor came out and explained in French, with no slight accent, if they were not about to stop making noise, she would call the police squad. Well, when the brother and the sister started whispering to each other in a bit abusive Russian, with no slight accent, it dawned on her that those people were her compatriots. Of course, after a frank talk lasted for an hour, they understood everything, and they three came to the old lady roughly at 7 a. m. to try her new cake, which, according to her words, was prepared of custard, a mash of mango, mint and a blend of berries, and an informal speech started. Oh, I know all that! Like I face these family and not scenes in the entrance of my house! It looks as if I, myself, live in France and buy fried chestnuts and acorns every day while my morning walks. Oh, all this is so familiar to me as those woolen boots or a crocodile scarf. The case did not stop with the cake, moreover, it was only the beginning, and Earlyborn’s brother, let us call him Zhenia, with no idea of what to do next, took off his shoes in order not to soil the table, stood on the table and gave her a present: the New Year trip to nowhere or anywhere Earlyborn wished and a ticket for a cruise to Antarctic. Earlyborn waited for that gift so long since it was her only dream, as a consequence, she started squealing (for a romantic person cannot switch to things at once), and that old lady who invited them and accepted their peculiarities, yet gripped the hem of her dress and was nearly to call the police. There was something in the air. Zhenia felt a shiver through his body; it was that shiver which appears when a person either surmised something or turned out very lucky, and now he was so to speak twice cheerful: individually and for oneself who was perplexed. This was in the air. As to the old lady, she put up with oddities of her guests and the wish to call the police, and she got red in face and the youth touched her wrinkles; she even began sharing the stories from her childhood. The New Year Eve is the time of miracles, that is why Zhenia and Earlyborn immediately felt like little kids, and their mood flew far away as was with characters from Esenin’s poem: “What’ the matter? Speak and speak!” And the granny spoke! She, as it befits not a young woman, gave her speech at ease, with the confidence in voice and, besides, with interest, like a good teacher who is young and full of his creative powers. There were not any fairy tales or Heaven forbid! simple recollection of irretrievable adolescence and the baggage of lectures, but there were worth listening intelligent memories, which nearly constituted a difficult to understand parable, formed a whole thing, as already fallen snow in February did with drifting snow; people could get it only given that they were bright enough to make some speculations… The old lady spoke:
“Well, surely, I cannot conjecture what was the reason for that unprecedented story to happen, however, I say, why unprecedented? Have I never seen what the human brain can reach together with the progress? What can the human language reach? For my long life, I have seen stranger things occur, yet that time the stars formed not so usual constellations that they made me ponder this way… Imagine: the USSR, fields around, rivers, groves, lakes, Gorky, 1965… Summer. If I am not mistaken, it was June, or, perhaps, July – anyway, all that happened sometime between the first and the hottest months of the summer… Here came the night, crop fields, just fields… The air was filled with warmth and, seems, moths were flying or stars falling… I, maid, stood on a hill awaited a tryst with my sweetheart, which was arranged at 3 a. m. precisely there and everywhere; he promised that he would show me literally everything, and if I wished, we would go to the sea… And there, elsewhere far away, few cows were put in pasture, a cowherd was sitting on the grass and flicking his cigarette lighter as if he was playing with the night: he winked her, and she, as he thought, should have sent him something in return… Silence! It was so quit that if I were not Liubava Sergeevna, but a popular Soviet poetess, I would definitely be famed for a poem about that silence… It was so quiet that I managed to hear the Volga river rippling, sturgeons and carp splashing around and a lost tractor mourning his last hope and aim in life. It was so quit that I started singing my song. That song was a song of pure love, and it even calmed down the tractor, so that he moved forward and roared; as to me, I saw my beloved and experienced those sweet feelings, which now Zhenia had when he guessed with the present, Earlyborn. And the morality of such a parable is that if you are unhappy or exhausted and reckon that you simply cannot get down to business—just walk a bit and wait; there is power in waiting—come out and gaze at the stars if not in the sky, try to find them in your imagination and inner world. It won’t take happiness much to appear, then. So you got this joy today: you, sad, went to buy some Dominican coffee, yet at heart you were waiting for you dreams to come true. You’ve met your expectations, and any day now you are going to Antarctic… So did you, Zhenia, you were getting here, to sister’s, with no knowledge of how she would welcome you, but you travelled, travelled and waited, and the morning, January 1st, could not be better than it is now. Either way, I assume, if it wasn’t like this, it would be so tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or it would be already like this yesterday; all this keeps the secret of life—to wait, to live and wait, and try to see the beauty everywhere. The case was that I didn’t go anywhere with my sweetheart, moreover, we didn’t marry, and everything happened not according to the plan, but that day gifted me the idea of the importance of waiting, and my life never lost the meaning…”
The cake was delicious, and the brother and the sister spent all their time almost till lunch sitting at her table.
