Writer and serviceman Artem Chekh is preparing to release a new novel “We Didn’t Expect You” in the fall, which he calls a “modern tragedy.” Ukrainian Vogue is publishing an excerpt from it for the first time.
***
Advertisement.
He lay on the hard mattress in their bedroom, arms spread wide, just like then. Tired after a long day at the workshop, where he and his assistants had been pouring silicone and plaster for fourteen hours straight, he wanted to sleep but waited for Zoya to finish in the bathroom. For a long time now, he had been trying to go to bed earlier to avoid crossing paths more than necessary, to avoid talking more than necessary. They had nothing to talk about, no way to fill these domestic voids. Important things had become unnecessary, and there was no point in discussing trivialities. She worked from morning till night, and he also woke up before seven and hurried to the workshop. Everything seemed to be settling down, entering a quiet family routine without rapids or whirlpools. Live, enjoy… But the warmth and tenderness that should hold everything together had disappeared somewhere. Perhaps, Trush consoled himself, we work too much, and everyone is simply exhausted. Perhaps we should rest, go somewhere to the south, where thin, dark-skinned people live and sell overripe fruit, gain new experiences, drink cocktails on the coast, make love, licking the sea salt off each other’s skin, dance local dances in palm-thatched huts, in short, feel each other again… But not now, of course. Later, someday, when we finish the projects, when we dare to speak to each other in the same language we spoke a year ago. In an understandable language, calmly.
Zoya entered the room and stopped in front of the mirror.
“You’re not asleep?”
“I was waiting for the bathroom,” Trush explained.
“You know I’m pregnant?” she asked.
“You’re pregnant?” Ivan was surprised. “Since when?”
“I thought you’d noticed.”
“I didn’t notice and I don’t know.”
Zoya lifted her nightgown, revealing her belly. She looked at herself in the mirror, grabbed a fold of fat with her fingers.
“Nothing is visible yet,” she said. “I want a boy. We’ll have a beautiful child. And I’ll be an old mother.”
“Stop it.”
“But you know, I’m not sure you’ll be a good father.”
Trush joked then, laughed at her delicate tact, hugged her, and assured her she would never be old, that people like her didn’t age. And then, he couldn’t sleep for a long time that night, thinking about what kept him with this woman, whom it was so easy to hurt and so simple not to notice others’ pain. Other people appeared around him with noticeable frequency—light and cheerful, who craved love, had love, and wanted to share it, were intrusive and aggressive in their desire to be loved, were casual and quiet, who didn’t believe in themselves or their ability to be happy, but they were also ready for adventure. Ivan, however, seemed not to notice anyone around, stubbornly clung to Zoya, believed in love, believed that love was chosen forever. He knew how to endure and wait for affection. He was best at waiting. Now he lay under a heavy winter blanket, burying his nose in the pillow, and realized that he had at least ten years to understand: no matter how patient you are, how faithfully you wait for affection, how many women you overlook, sooner or later you will face the truth. And just yesterday you were skimming Amelie Nothomb on a windy balcony and marveling at her toes, and now she is burning out everything alive within you. And lying beside you, she turns you to face true loneliness.
The next morning, he immediately rushed to the workshop. He made coffee, sat for a long time by the glowing stove, staring blankly through the frosted glass of the window as the linden tree swayed under the icy wind and the shadow of smoke stretched across the snowy expanse… And then the workers he hired for big projects arrived. Cigarettes were lit, and indecent jokes were heard.
A month later, he and Zoya did fly to the southern beaches, but there were no dances in palm-thatched huts, no cocktails on the coast, no sense of unity. In the mornings, they lazily walked to the sea, swam a hundred meters, sat on chalky pebbles, and silently, under the chaotic splash of small waves, wrapped themselves in white hotel towels and went for breakfast. Then Zoya lounged in front of the TV until evening, stuffing herself with chips and candy; Trush wandered through the sparsely attractive outskirts, scraping his legs on shell rock and scratching his shoulders on palm branches. He couldn’t sit still in the room. The beach annoyed him. Once he got drunk at the hotel bar, once he got into a fight with some Russians by the pool, he listened to Zoya’s complaints about his helplessness three times, and overpaid a fruit seller twice. They returned from the trip crushed and offended with each other. Zoya’s belly grew, and Trush’s sense of loneliness grew.
And in March, he was invited to participate in “French Spring.”
“We’re not very happy, are we?” he once asked his wife.
Zoya asked him not to bother her with such questions; she needed to focus on the delivery. He needed to focus on his creativity.
Trush didn’t return to this thought; instead, he went on his first date with Anna, and the realization of this fact made his legs go weak. After all, he reasoned, it was just a date where two attractive people ate salads and washed them down with slightly sour Sauvignon. The date ended in the park on a bench, where he and Anna finished their second bottle, kissed passionately and wetly under the chestnut trees, and talked a lot about everything. And already swaying in the taxi behind the driver, he timidly sniffed his clothes, imagining that all his acquaintances and relatives, including Zoya, now knew about this strange and drunken evening of his. He imagined her sitting in a chair with her legs spread wide, oblivious to resentment, numb with anger and pain, pregnant and beautiful. Sitting and meeting Ivan with an expression of painful reproach on her face. Where have you been, Ivan? Who kissed your mouth and touched your buttocks? To whom did you say words you haven’t said to me for so long? But upon entering the apartment, he merely closed the door to the bedroom where his wife lay asleep, surrounded by pillows, tiptoed to the kitchen, poured some cheap wine into a thick mug, sat on a chair, propped his cheek with a fist, and stared at the white ribs of the plates drying by the sink. He sat like that for about an hour, refilling his wine and warding off the persistent feeling of guilt.
This was the beginning of a long and arduous journey with a double life and an emotionally complex period filled with hysterics, resentment, rage, passion, tenderness, and the eternal fear of being caught, and therefore ridiculed and abandoned by the one he clung to so desperately despite all the absurdity and uncertainty of his feelings.
And all of this was like an endless childhood summer, when something new and unknown happened every day. A summer that lasted three years. A summer that ended in tragedy and shame, fear and helplessness in the face of superhuman pain.
“Will we be able to be together?” Zoya asked.
“We’ll be able to be together,” Trush replied. “We are together.”
But they had not been together for a long time.