His friend sat down with a profound inner peace. His heart fluttered slightly between his ribs after running down so many winding steps, but now it was following him arm in arm again, step, stop, straighten, arm in arm. He asked for a tiny glass of the orange wine, inhaled deeply of the metallic aroma steaming from the icy glass, and felt as if someone he loved had kissed him. He took the first tiny, introductory sip and grimaced with the reflection that someone he loved could taste so bad. He drank the rest with obvious compulsion and looked around, searching for familiar, square faces. It was a bit early for warm greetings. The Condemned Man was still dozing quietly, positioned upside down next to the other chairs on the table. The music was soft and still good, though later only a low note and a steady beat. His friend had forgotten his cigarettes, so he searched first for them in his jacket pockets, then his pants, and now he sat there, unfocused. In his jacket pocket, the inside one, a rectangular shape was visible beneath the lining. He felt it again to be sure. The problem was, they weren't cigarettes. This was something his friend was supposed to take care of, he was supposed to, he wasn't supposed to lose, he wasn't supposed to, he was supposed to return it in time, and damn it, he hadn't. Now he felt very sick. The evening, once so promising, had shown its other, darker side, where it was best not to venture alone. He knew that such non-returns to others had once meant as much to others as a curb, steel-toed shoes, a cramped, stuffy trunk, and finally, a forest in the middle of the night. He had a vague idea of it, and that was precisely why he liked it, for that vagueness. He didn't even notice the third glass of orange distillate sliding down his tired throat. After all, he thought, if it had been okay for so long, maybe it would all fall apart, why talk about it, why think about it, he looked around and saw his lover, sitting with his back to the one whose name was not mentioned.
The lover was one of many young boys and girls who bestowed their first selfless love on the Philosopher, the blasphemer of all gates, burdened by a beer fatwa, pursued at every turn by the vodka anathema, who with his tobacco-yellow fingers bestowed upon everyone the sacrament of pepper chips, ennobled by his touch. The salt of our earth, in the form of swirling, pink, plump bodies, writhed ceaselessly around the one who paternalized this tangle. He stroked the unwashed heads of gorgeous intellectual boys and pinched the shapeless bottoms of ugly intellectual girls, thickened from sitting, always with the same gaze from his large, gentle, cow-like eyes. To become a respected and esteemed figure, the Philosopher spent many years of his life on various self-improvement activities. As a master of many useless talents, he was renowned and admired. But a cancer of bitterness had long been eating away at his weary limbs; sadness increasingly clouded his large, cow-like irises. The aftermath of boys and girls found him lifeless one morning on the gate's threshold, a cup of hemlock in his hand, a laurel wreath on his temples, and a trail of saliva on his rough cheek. Amidst this sobbing, snotty crowd, the loudest sobbing and wailing was his lover, a boy with eyes even bluer and hair even blonder than the rest. This boy the philosopher used to stroke especially long and kiss especially tenderly; now the boy wept the loudest.
Much time had passed since that fateful moment when the philosopher's corpse, like a less stylish Rejtan, lay across the gate. Boys and girls scattered through all the winding, romantic stone streets, pinching bottoms and stroking heads in the ivy-shrouded alleys. Only the lover remained at the gate, each evening chanting a short philosophical mantra over the thin, age-yellow corpses. Gradually, however, the lover's longing for the philosopher began to be displaced by a desire for something much more specific, like the here and now. And he felt with all his lover's heart that somewhere, in one of those philosopher-strewn gateways, sat a woman who would raise her large, calm eyes to him and ask, "Where have you been?"
The condemned man stirred restlessly in his sleep; several chairs fell from the table at the sudden movement of the condemned man. He slept fitfully, drunken, yearning dreams tormenting him. In these dreams, he pursued something very beautiful (it had a silver sheen and was enveloped in a heavenly glow), and he raced after it like a madman, unable to catch up, for anything. He stretched his arms out and spasmodically grasped the air that had formed into his Holy Grail, and all the early guests at that hour sympathized with him, understandingly, for they too had such dreams. As he leaped across a deep chasm, brushing the fatal shimmering with his fingertips, he arched dangerously, shifting his center of gravity over the edge of the table, and tumbled along the razor-sharp mountain ridges to the floor.
His friend was preoccupied with his own problems, so he automatically ordered a green one with a foul taste and returned to delicately probing the rectangular shape imprinted beneath the lining.
The condemned man sat on the floor for a moment. His dreamlike fantasies alternated between romantic and real; the condemned man had long since ceased to notice the fundamental differences between them. In his small breast pocket, he felt for the once-sharp razor blade and went to the men's room to shave. For a long time, there came the sounds of the dull blade skimming across the condemned man's hairy, square muzzle, the rush of water in the urinal, the hiss of the air freshener, the smell of the spring forest. Finally, the condemned man emerged, ready to once again chase the flickering to which his now-shaven muzzle had condemned him. He walked to the bar, reached for a glass of the green, and sprinkled it on his neck, chin, and behind his ears. He straightened immediately and inhaled deeply, each cartilage sliding into place with a soft crunch. The Condemned Man instantly grew taller and taller, his fingers more slender, his eyes more hazel. From the right angle, you could mistake him for a friend; they were so similar in that respect, though, of course, they were diametrically different.
"Hello, friend.
" "Hi Condemned Man, I have a little problem."
The Condemned Man didn't like his own problems. He liked other people's little problems much less than his own.
"I don't like your problem. So let's not talk about it anymore. A lot of bad people woke me up today.
" The friend shifted uncomfortably.
"What bad people?
" "They were big and off-putting. Heavy-shouldered, square-figured. Their metal-toed shoes clattered as they walked. They woke me up with that damn clatter. Try sleeping while ten idiots walk across the room, each one clattering...
" "And what did they do?"
- Besides waking me up, they stood there for a moment, looked exactly at the place where you are sitting now and left, but they left as if they were going to come back.
"Did they look like they were going to look at this place again?
" "That's exactly what they looked like.
" "Damn, not good. "
The condemned man looked around.
"Oh, the lover is standing there somehow stupidly.
" "Indeed, he's standing there mysteriously.
" "Because once with a lover..."
Because once with a lover, on a clear moonlit night, the man condemned by his face to fame, he walked swiftly and bravely. They were looking for beer and two chairs, they wanted to smoke cigarettes and talk about unimportant things. Their intellectual posture was poor, they nervously walked, glancing over their shoulders every now and then. The local boorish element lurked in the dark alleys. Figures passed on the edge of their gaze, drunken giggles echoed in the empty streets they passed. On evenings like these, you have to get the hell out, not parade down the middle of the street.
"We'll have a drink soon, Lover, don't worry," the condemned man reassured himself more than his lover. "If only there was room. Because sometimes it just wasn't there."
Someone cleared their throat at the height of the lover's left ear.
"And even if there's nowhere to sit," the lover added quickly
, "we'll wait until there is. And then we'll have a drink, oh brother, you have nothing to fear." They walked nervously past the illuminated gates, which poisoned the industrial night with a corpse-like glow. The beating came from there so evenly that the hearts of the lover and the condemned man quickly picked up the dull rhythm, and now they walked, tossed along with a rhythmic hiccup. And in these gates stood girls truly out of this fairy tale, at least not from the terrifyingly tragic fairy tale of the condemned man and his lover. Girls with beautiful hair, ample breasts, and sad eyes sang urban songs about love and oblivion. With those eyes, they gazed at passersby with both tenderness and lust. But there was also a sense of dread in these girls, for behind them, in the shadows, stood their truly serious guardians. Stocky, blunt-edged figures ran up to unwary travelers who had been carried a step in the wrong direction, and struck them in the mouth with all their might. The condemned man and his lover would gladly have fallen into this trap, so they thought, looking at their eyes, their breasts, and wherever else their gaze had slipped.
But the instinct of self-preservation, concerned with their biological existence with a consistency worthy of a better cause, put Nelson on their backs. They walked, clinging tightly to the center of the street.
They had already seen their place on the horizon when everything fell apart in an instant. The hopelessly desperate night visitor brushed his calf with his nymph, clumsily pretending to stumble. The calf vanished faster than a sigh, and in its place appeared the evening companion, truly expert and professional in his mouth-slapping. Cursing, he slapped him savagely across the face, slammed him against the wall, and when he fell, he drove the metal tip into his soft flesh with almost musical mastery. It would have ended as usual: ambulance, duty, night shift, nose, teeth, please spit in the sink. But the night visitor's friend ran up to the companion and cunningly smashed a bottle of wine reeking of cork and yeast against the back of his head from behind. Without further delay, all the rabbit's relatives and friends began crushing each other's jaws, crushing testicles, jumping on each other's heads, and stabbing each other with cleverly concealed knives. Amidst the intense violence and aggression, the condemned man and his lover stood, afraid to move in any direction. One particularly daring competitor ran up to the condemned man and aimed for his famous face. However, the muzzle defeated him without a fight, causing him to retreat and pretend he had dropped something. Then he simply left.
Suddenly, a strange and significant thing happened. Someone wanted to gouge out someone's eye, shatter their jaw, extract a tooth—it didn't matter, anyway, they missed, and by millimeters, but they missed. The swing, beautiful and imaginative, missed the head, and the momentum spun the fighter around. The opponent didn't budge and spun in the other direction, to which the former responded with a somersault. Then they passionately intertwined, and instead of breaking their fingers, they launched into the most stylish waltz the lover and the condemned man had ever witnessed. The waltz, like smallpox, spread throughout the blood- and sweat-drenched tangle. Every so often, someone wiped a rubbed nose and timidly asked to dance. An orchestra of four trumpets and an accordion formed at their side, fiercely playing a lively and bawdy melody. The condemned man called upon his lover, and the two, with inexperienced skill, reached the gate. Then the police locked them all up for disturbing the peace. Washing is allowed, dancing is forbidden.
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