Аннотация: Версия рассказа "Стена" на английском языке
The Wall
by Igor Burakov
- Cliff, what is this wall?
"No, no, please don't ask ..."
- Fuck off, B.J., I'm busy.
A juicy green leaf flew near his eyes and scratched freckles on his face. Clifford squinted. Deep breath: in and out.
- What are you doing, Cliff? I can't see anything...
"Not surprised"
- I've told you to fuck off! It's too hard for a kid like you. Even if I'll tell, you won't understand a damn thing.
The kid behind Clifford frowned with a funny grimace of displeasure - he hated to be underrated.
- Tell me, tell me, teeellll! Or I'll tell mom that we didn't go to the playground!
"It's like you are really want to this shitty playground"
- Okay! I'm training in a special meditation technique to be able to hear my own astral essence... Understand?
"O Gods, make him buy it!"
- Ahaaa - said B.J. - why didn't you say so!
Clifford grinned - the wind whipped his wildly growing hair, leaving not even a vague hope for a hairstyle. The teenager stretched out his arms to the sides - inhaling and exhaling.
- Cliiiifff!
"What now..."
- What is this wall?"
"... heck!"
Clifford opened his eyes. A whole host of leaves broke from their places and swept wildly along grass-grown graves, jumping of the gray and black gravestones. Untidy grass that was growing along the rusty openwork wickets waved after leaves.
The silence, animated by the hiss of a powerful summer wind and the golden-crimson light of the sun, were occasionally broken by the roar of motors and the clink-clank of bicycles from the world which Clifford and B.J. left.
- Cliff!
"Get lost"
- Cliff!"
"Get lost, get lost, get lost..."
- I'll tell mom...
- Okay, okay, what do you want? - the teenager turned around and pierced B.J. with his most reproachful stare, hoping that his younger brother would immediately burn with shame, and the wind would scatter the ashes.
Nothing like this.
- What is this wall?"
- Why are you stuck with this wall? What you can't understand in it?
- Interesting! - said B.J., as if this was the most comprehensive explanation of his right to ask such questions. We can safely assume that this indeed is one of the unofficial rights of childhood. - What is this building?
- Library.
- No!
- Then the museum...
- No! Look, it's color is different.
Cliff pretended to peer into the brick wall. The City Library and the Museum of National Unity stood near from the time of the city foundation. And some old-timers say, that they were built simultaneously and even from one kind of red brick. Three floors of the library with a flat ugly roof, and three exactly the same floors of the museum. And the porch of one was often confused with the porch of another - sometimes even by old inhabitants of the city.
As a result, it occurred to someone to bridge buildings with a single passage. No sooner said than done. Frequently people remember events according to the significant vagaries of nature, giving them catchy names. In this case, the reconstruction began shortly after another large-scale flood off the Grandma Mississippi, nicknamed the "Cleansing".
In those days, water became the very death, pouring from the heavens in tight streams, climbing along the coasts and raiding this small town. The water came, greedily absorbing the dilapidated wooden buildings of the slums and the tents of the Gypsies who had set themselves up so poorly. In exchange the angry river covered streets with a thick layer of stinking slime and old corpses with decayed scraps of ropes on their necks. Everything, including the complete destruction of the whole gypsy camp and the return of the justified witches to the surface, was considered a divine will.
The pitiful tandem of the library and the museum did not suffer as much, because it was on the same high hill as the old cemetery behind it's crimson walls. And after about half of a year the library and the museum acquired replenishment - a two-story copy of it's ancestors, inside of which nobody even bothered to make a single window. Now no one could see in the aperture between the two buildings the pastoral picture of the neglected Old Cemetery.
- You're still o' so stupid. It's just a corridor that connects the library and the museum...
- That's not true! - Cliff realized that he made a mistake, calling his brother stupid. He looked at his brother as if in a mirror distorting his age by seven years - red unkempt hair and a pinch of freckles around the pale nose of the six-year-old B.J. seemed to have just jumped of from the Cliff's face. The wind still hissed in a dry voice, picking up branches of young oaks that surrounded the children in this improvised parlor behind twin buildings.
- It's true! You yourself did run along this corridor with the Higgins...
- That's it - the corridor is not so big inside. On the other side you can even see that it is between buildings. - B.J. was unsuccessfully trying to express emotions with his meager vocabulary - And here this wall continues the wall of the library and the museum. And the wall from the other side is not as red as the library and the museum. And here the wall is even redder.
Clifford was silent, trying to decide how far his simple brother gone in his conclusions.
- Is this all you've got? - asked Cliff carelessly.
- Isn't it enough? - in B.J's voice appeared a doubt, as if he had in advance felt that the older brother outmatched him again.
Cliff turned away with a disdainful smile, pretending to be busy again. He knew that the kid continued to look at him expectantly, and, with an admirable accuracy anticipated the next question.
- This is just another extension, - he said, lying shamelessly - I were coming here often and saw how it was built. Behind this wall is a storage room for old books that nobody reads, and for furniture that nobody use. And I've heard that this is a gathering place for these anonymous alcoholics.
- Is that so? - B.J's voice was filled with disappointment, as if he had just been told that Santa isn't real.
Clifford hoped that kid is now interested in alcoholics, about whom he didn't know anything, and will soon forget about the wall. Cliff can come here later when his little brother is not around.
But B.J. didn't say anything, and Cliff was not surprised about this. His brother also felt something, let his father never beat him and did not force him to do all those nasty things. At least for now.
Teenager returned to his manipulations. Raise your hands up - inhale and exhale. Connect thumbs and index fingers together in form of pyramid and catch the setting sun in it, and then the chosen tombstone. Inhale and exhale. Clifford almost felt unseen movement in the grave, and also far beyond the horizon - at the bottom of the Mississippi. But he was interrupted ...
- Cliff!
"Blimey, what else?"
- There's a window in the wall behind this bush.
"Oh Gods..."
- It's dark in there and no bars. It doesn't look like a warehouse - bricks are green and cowered in drawings. Come here quickly!
Clifford, on stiff legs, approached his brother, who was squatting and trying to look at the patterns in dark window. The thing was growing out of the grass, like the entire wall had risen from the ground.
- Look, Clif! There are also candles on the ground and soot. And... Cliff, Cliff, isn't this dads photograph? How did it end up here? - The voice of younger brother now rang with excitement.
- Do you hear Cliff? How did it... ahh...- B.J. exhaled heavily when a long piercer plunged into back of his head. Clifford recently began to carry a piercer with him - just after that fishing incident with his father. It was the last time he voluntarily agreed to go somewhere with his father.
B.J's little pale hand crumpled a burnt and glossy patch of paper with the image of his father, and this was the last thing that his dying body was capable of. Cliff gently and without rush pushed his brother's body into the dark maw. White sneakers flashed in a blur, and B.J. forever disappeared in the darkness. After a loud splash a gaging smell of damp and rotten algae have spread from the window.
Only now Clifford's composure crumpled. He staggered and leaned against the indifferent and cold stones of the wall. He closed his eyes, in which the black dots were already floating.
The wind hissed and howled, but still it was quiet at the old cemetery. Those who by mistake entered the museum hurried along the corridor to the library. Clifford smiled at his thoughts. He gave his Gods a sacrifice far more valuable than stray dogs - fate itself brought his brother to the wall.
Now, if the Gods accept his sacrifice, if they bless him as their vicar on Earth, then...
Clifford knew that he wouldn't be able to hide this place for a long time, that people would recognize his temple for what it is and destroy it, at least when they start looking for B.J. Another reason to say goodbye to the father, his fishing and heavy breathing ... Another reason to take revenge on his mother for her connivance.
He himself will bring people here - all those who are able to understand, to find in their soul a piece of darkness left by the Gods. It will be the wall where people will go for knowledge, not to the library, the wall will unite people, and not a museum of false Unity.
Then, one day, the Gods will return to Earth, rise from the bottom of the world's abyss, only to find the reverent congregation of true believers. And they will bestow upon him, Clifford, the throne of God on Earth.
... if only they bless him...
A weak and sickly child by his very nature, offended and deceived by everyone who does not have the right to deceive, Clifford was squatting, leaning his face against the damned wall, and listened the song of the wind and the rustle of leaves, hearing only the viscous silence from the window.
And on the verge of perception, almost by his inner hearing, he heard it - a short and cold, but so encouraging - splash.