doomsday

DOOMSDAY
Dmitrii Emets
Translated from Russian
by
Jane H. Buckingham
©Jane H. Buckingham 2014
jhbuckingham@yahoo.ca https://twitter.com/translator_frog
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3463868.Dmitrii_Aleksandrovich_Emets

1
And I beheld, and heard an angel
flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe,
woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by
reason of the other voices of the
trumpet of the three angels, which are
yet to sound!
(Revelation 8:13)
My wife and I are sitting in the kitchen and waiting for Doomsday, which is coming
in 23 hours and 22 minutes, or a little less than half an hour before midnight... This time
we are not talking about the latest predictions of crazy preachers, whose leaflets we
found in the mailbox a few years ago and with which we lined the dustbin with a clear
conscience. This process and its term of completion were independently established and
mathematically calculated by scientists, predicted by astrologers according to the stars,
detected by biologists in the blood cell of a calf, and even representatives of all major
world religions, through dozens of prophecies recorded in sacred books but discarded,
acknowledge that we are all living the final hours. Thus, there is no doubt: this is really
the end of our good old, not ideal but accustomed world! Not two hours will pass, when,
punishing us for our sins, the divine hand will rise and everything will vanish...
My wife Nina, short, pretty, and very nimble, sits at the table and reads the Book of
Revelation, occasionally noting with a pencil in the margins vague places, which she
intends on looking up in the biblical dictionary. She reads slowly, time and again
distracted by all sorts of insignificant matters, for example, rinsing a teaspoon with
boiling water or changing the water in the drinking bowl of our budgie with the silly
name of Abortion. (We did not think up this name, it was given to us as well.) Despite
the proximity of Doomsday, my wife is content: the apartment is tidy, she is in fine
feather, has make-up on, with a little perfume behind her ears, even managed to drop in
on her acquainted hairdresser in the morning; her husband, me that is, is also washed,
well-groomed, and in an ironed shirt and a new tie, which seems to me especially
uncomfortable because I have to wear it at home. My wife is protected by the armour of
virtue on all sides, and the realization of having completed all earthly matters fills her
with contentment, and she waits without fear until the angels of the Apocalypse,
pronouncedly numbered by her in the margin, sound their trumpets.
We sit in the kitchen and keep quiet, immersed in our own thoughts. Next to the
caravan of salads on the table, an alarm clock stands on top of a bottle of Banker vodka
two-thirds full. Every now and then, I inconspicuously glance at it and it seems to me
that its minute hand rushes ahead like a torpedo.
Suddenly my wife tears herself away from the book and two distressing wrinkles
appear on her forehead. “What do you think, already no point in watering the flowers?”
she asks anxiously.

2
“Why not? Water them!” I say, knowing that otherwise, the issue of whether there
was any need to water the flowers will torment her in not only this world but also the
next.
She takes a plastic bottle and goes around watering. I grope for the TV remote on the
table.
“Do you think it works?” my wife shouts from the other room.
I am almost not surprised how, behind a wall and a closed door, she manages not to
lose me from her field of vision and senses me reaching for the remote control, putting a
cup of tea on a polished surface or, say, dipping a wet spoon into the sugar bowl. I
suspect that my wife has some unknown abilities not yet mastered.
However, this time she is wrong, or rather, has not counted the degree of mania of
the TV people. Unlike the disbanded drivers of public transport, the TV people prefer to
meet Doomsday at their posts and go to the bottom in full sail with the flag on the main
mast.
The first channel broadcasts the divine service of the Church of Christ the Saviour.
Except for the Easter service, hardly ever do so many bishops and top hierarchs of the
church gather in one place. The usually spacious temple is now so crammed that there is
even no place for an apple to fall. Only candles are burning, and their smooth oscillating
flicker is reflected in the thin metallic coating of the icons. The camera slowly pans to
serious, stern, but peaceful faces. We hear the distinct, slightly trembling voice of the
Patriarch, and the choristers’ deep voices, humming with hidden strength like organ
pipes, joining him, “Suddenly the Judge will come, and the deeds of each will be laid
bare; but at midnight let us cry with fear: Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O God; through the
Mother of God, have mercy on us.”1
I switch to the second channel and hit the news. News from around the world
alternates with each other with feverish haste: magnetic storms in the atmosphere; all
air flights have stopped; heads of states and cabinets of ministers in a body proceed to
their allotted underground bunkers “to coordinate” from there “the actions of the
security forces and to take all measures to suppress anarchy and disorder;” plague rages
in China, taking away hundreds of thousands of lives every minute; a third of all animal
and plant species in Asia Minor have died; the chemical composition of water in the
ocean has changed and fish are dying in leaps and bounds but the level of the ocean is
increasing rapidly so that soon Australia and Oceania will turn up below sea level and
will be completely flooded. The same fate awaits Holland, Great Britain, and a number
of other islands and coastal areas. In many points of the globe, new mountain ranges
have appeared and volcanoes have become active. Astronomers report that the
constellations of the Milky Way have gone out one by one, and the matter constituting
them is collecting into a single cloud, from which some day, perhaps, other stars will be
formed...
1
From the Troparia to the Holy Trinity of the Russian Orthodox Church prayer book.

3
“Like pieces of clay after the game... People, houses, galaxies, everything collapses
and returns to the box so that something new can be moulded,” I think, switching the
TV to a third channel.
On the third channel is a farewell concert – a cross between the melody of Song
about Rabbits2
and a funeral march. Singers, actors, and artists, one more famous than
the other – some with eyes red from tears, some pompous and important like a Chinese
idol – kiss and hug each other with the usual caution: to protect their make-up. Here
two old enemies kiss, affection spreading on both faces, although in reality each is ready
to chop off any toe for a chance to annoy her rival.
However, now the music is already playing. Divas and courageous divos, shrouded
knee-deep in white theatrical fog, alone, without backups, perform their best songs and
then silently leave the stage, and, guiding them, the floodlight goes out in farewell after a
few seconds...
These people, who even look theatrical in real grief and who, even suffering, manage
to do it beautifully, with pained and languishing smiles, remembering how best to show
the camera lens their profile or full face, suddenly seem to me like participants in a
stupid ridiculous farce, and I turn off the TV. The moment I press the button, I am
thinking that I have watched TV for the last time today.
I utter the words “for the last time” aloud, and suddenly a sticky feeling of fear
creeps over me for a few moments. It seems to me what scares me is not that trumpets
will sound and horsemen of the Apocalypse in fiery amour on horses breathing sulphur
and smoke will gallop on Earth, but precisely this “last time.” Is it possible that all the
usual everyday things, to which we are accustomed and which we grab as saving straws
will never be repeated? The last sandwich, the last time to button a shirt, the last time to
wake the slumbering waterfall, flushing the toilet?
My wife goes into the kitchen with a plastic bottle and starts filling it from the tap.
She has a peculiarity: she cannot stand an empty vessel; all bottles and jars at home
must be either thrown out or filled. Suddenly, there is a sharp ring at the door. The
bottle, slipping out of her hand, falls dully into the sink, and we give a start at the same
time.
“Already?” my wife breathes out in fear.
“Do you think an angel would come to ask whether he disturbs us with his trumpet?”
I joke tensely and go to open the door.
My friend from the institute Yuri Zaraiskii stands on the threshold with a friend. This
is the first time I see his girlfriend. She is tall, slim, has a beautiful wide mouth, thick
blond hair, and wild eyes. Since my time as a student, I have feared women with such
eyes: even just after one shot-glass, they tend towards aimless arguments, fits of
hysteria, and the sorting out of relationships. This couple of adventurers, like Alice the
2
Song about Rabbits is from the soundtrack of the 1968 Soviet Comedy film The Diamond Arm. It
became very popular during the late 1960s.

4
Fox and Basilio the Cat from the fairy tale,3
does not arouse admiration in me from the
beginning.
My first urge is to send them on their way quickly, but I understand that it is
impossible: they already do not have time to get home, and to meet Doomsday on the
road would be absurd. Therefore, whether I want it or not, I will have to spend my last
hours in the company of Yuri Zaraiskii and his girlfriend. “But then all together we won’t
have time to be scared,” I comfort myself.
We have a narrow hallway. My wife looks over my shoulder and breathes into my
ear. It is not a secret to me that she does not like Yuri because he is too unpredictable
and eccentric, and in addition has a bad influence on me. His bad influence lies in the
fact that we got hammered together once (not counting student years). Nevertheless, no
matter how my wife treated him, Yuri did not notice anything. His nature is too
generous for this, and besides he has a deep conviction that he is just difficult not to like.
Zaraiskii smiles dazzlingly with all his thirty-two white teeth and waves of his charm
sweep over us. The intuition of a first-rate likeable fellow tells Zaraiskii that the first
thing is to make us laugh, and then the laughter will reconcile us to his unexpected
appearance. He exerts himself slightly and it is as if the bright sun blazes up in our dark
hallway. The doorframe instantly becomes the frame of a ceremonial portrait called
Appearance of Yu. Zaraiskii, the common man.
Having ascertained that we have received proper pleasure from the vision of him,
Yuri unceremoniously forces his way into the apartment and starts to hug me. His
moustache smells like red wine and tobacco and he is like a big, shaggy, friendly dog.
“You, Petruchio,4
really aren’t glad to see your friend before Doomsday? Ninotchka,
my darling, let me kiss your hand! What’s your perfume – stylish! You look simply
marvellous, but then, as always... You have to excuse us for crashing. You do see how it
is... We suddenly found ourselves on a street in your neighbourhood and nowhere to
call... If we’re in the way, you just say it and we’ll leave right away...” Yuri says in his
deep voice, and all his words merge into a single friendly note.
It is possible not to love Zaraiskii from afar, when he is absent, but when he is near,
it is quite impossible to be mad at him. Almost immediately, I become ashamed of my
initial coolness, and I say, “Okay, guys... This is silly! Go to the kitchen. We’ll eat, drink,
and on the whole...”
On Zaraiskii’s face appears such an expression of gratitude that if he had a tail, he
would wag it for sure. While we go along the hallway, Yuri, already feeling quite at
home, talks incessantly, simultaneously guiding the movements of his companion deftly.
“This is fate, my brother, can’t run away from it. If it must be, there’s no escape...
Anyway, did you, Petruchio, ever think that I’d come to you uninvited to welcome
Doomsday?”
3
These two are a couple of crooks, swindlers from The Adventures of Buratino (1936) by Soviet writer
Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1883-1945).
4
Petruchio is the male romantic lead of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1590-94).

5
“Actually, I had a premonition. If it is Doomsday, then we’ll have a blast,” I say. I do
not like Zaraiskii calling me Petruchio. It was my nickname at the institute, though not
from my name but my last name, Petrakov. Now I cannot stand it.
In the kitchen, Yuri opens a package and with a broad generous gesture puts on the
table a pork roast, red and black caviar, and a bottle of expensive Hennessy cognac.
“A funny thing!” he says. “Almost all stores are open. We visited one on the way and
a Ukrainian salesgirl stood behind the counter there. I took all this and as a joke said to
her, ‘Will you give them away without pay? Already Doomsday after all, no sense
wasting the brandy!’ She didn’t understand the joke and got upset. ‘Lies,’ she shouted,
‘put everything back! Doomsday or not, still has to pay!’ And kept going. We barely
calmed her down. We paid, took the purchases, and left the store. And what do you
think? I was already sitting in the car and suddenly realized that she had short-changed
me by about thirty roubles! Well, I think, attagirl! She’ll also short-change the Lord for
at least five roubles!”
Zaraiskii talks but looks at me watchfully. I know him well enough to catch some
secret thought.
“What do you need?” I ask him a few minutes later, when we move away to the
window.
He blushes and looks back at his girlfriend, and then, looking out the window and
not at me, begins to whisper, “Listen, old man, here’s the thing... I understand that it’s
inconvenient and absurd to ask... but help me out one last time. Understand how it is
with a man... Can we have a look in your bedroom for a while, about twenty minutes?”
“Why?” I do not understand immediately.
“Why... You’re not a kid. Something like this happens all the time. Dirt on the street,
hotels closed, and we already can’t reach my place... I wouldn’t ask, but you yourself
understand, a dead end...”
“What, have you gone nuts? Now?” I ask.
“What?” Yuri is surprised. “For the last time?”
I look at Zaraiskii and see sincere, offended bewilderment on his face, like a dog that
cannot understand why it is not given the uneaten bone. “What the heck!” I say. “Go!”
Zaraiskii gratefully squeezes my wrist for a moment, cautiously glances sideways at
my wife, and pulls his companion after him. She does not understand but goes
nevertheless.
“Do you need something?” My wife takes several puzzled steps after them, but I
restrain her.
“Don’t, stay... Let the two of them be together.”
“In what sense?” My wife does not understand.
“The literal sense. People want to be together... for the last time,” I explain.
My wife’s face falls. She rushes like a puma to the bedroom door, but I catch her by
the elbows and bring her into the kitchen.

6
“Stop!” I say. “Why the silly hypocrisy? You’re not the mother superior of the
convent!”
“I don’t care about their instincts, but this is our apartment!” My wife is seething.
“Ours for the time being,” I correct her, “but it’ll stop being ours in an hour and
twenty minutes. In fact, the whole world can already be declared public: open palaces,
museums, and treasuries, allow people to take possession of Repin5
and Vrubel,6
give
away diamonds and the Golden Crown,7
let each console himself with what he wants
after all.”
My wife shoots me a telltale glance, illustrating clearly to me what she thinks of me,
and turns away to the sink. I feel that her inward peace has been shattered, the minutes
remaining till Doomsday hopelessly poisoned, and my rating in her eyes has
immediately fallen a thousand points. The consolation to me is that all this is no longer
important now, because in the renewed world where we will find ourselves, there will be
neither women nor men, and everything, absolutely everything will be different.
At this point, I notice the chessboard on the windowsill and remember that I have
not solved the problem, which I chanced upon three years ago in an old yellowed
magazine. Chess problems, their composition and solution, are my weakness. I can keep
myself busy for long hours, forgetting everything, as if disappearing into the fifth
dimension. If I get to heaven in the other world and am able to choose an occupation for
myself, unlimited in time at that, then I shall ask, instead of singing in a chorus of
angels, to be given a thick stack of chess problems and be left alone for about a thousand
years...
I take the board and set up the pieces from memory. The problem is to checkmate in
four moves. The question tormenting me for a long time is – does it distinguish itself by
special architectural beauty or not having a solution at all? Next to the problem in the
magazine was also a small photo of its author, a certain V. Korshunovich – a narrow
elderly face, a thin mouth, and a high forehead with high temples, like that of an old
clown photographed in a colourful cone hat – who was probably a sarcastic person. And
the problem itself, outwardly simple and with few pieces, was built with a certain subtle
mockery. Please excuse me for being worthless, but would you care?
One day, unable to control myself, I phoned this magazine, but it turned out that it
no longer exists and nothing is known about the man who made up this problem forty-
two years ago.
Now, setting up the pieces, I forget everything. Zaraiskii and his girlfriend, feverishly
striving to drink from the cup of pleasure for the last time, my wife, demonstratively and
5
Ilya Efirmovich Repin (1844-1930), Russian realist painter, the most renowned Russian artist of the 19th
century.
6
Mikhal Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910), Russian painter of the Symbolist movement.
7
Also known as Monomakh’s crown, this early 14th
century gold filigree skullcap, elaborately ornamented,
is the symbol of Russian aristocracy. Legend has it that it was presented by the Byzantine Emperor to
Valdimir Monomakh (1053 – 1125), a Grand Prince of Kievan Rus. However, historical evidences show
that it is only a legend.

7
loudly banging the dishes, and our whole dying world – everything suddenly moves onto
a second plane and fades like the silhouettes on an old photo.
I suddenly have the confidence that the problem will definitely be solved and become
a certain epitomizing feature of my existence. So, to work! I lean towards the board and
massage my temples. In the majority of cases, I began to solve the problem most likely
with an attack of the knight or the rook, but now I bravely move a far pawn, seemingly
insecure and completely hopeless. After the pawn, I move the rook, cutting off the top of
the field for the black king. Suddenly everything becomes clear... Enlightened, I begin to
move the pieces quickly, arranging them around the black king. He, helplessly lifting the
skirt of his long robe, rushes around the board, but all is in vain, there is no escape.
Checkmate! A joyful exclamation is already about to escape me, but suddenly I realize
that I have checkmated in five moves instead of four. It means I have again suffered a
defeat and the mordant V. Korshunovich has again the upper hand. “Ah, you cheat!” I
think. “Doesn’t matter, I’ll see you soon myself.”
I am already packing up the pieces when Zaraiskii and his girlfriend appear from the
room. Both are confused and unhappy, and I surmise that they spoiled their last time
with the rush and the nervous tension.
My wife also senses it and feels a little better. “Well, now... Let’s have a bite...” she
says wearily.
Yuri and his girlfriend sit down at the table and are silent. We are also silent. Each of
us understands that the most important moment in the history of mankind has begun
and is just about to deliver the concluding period, but we are at a loss and do not know
what to say and what to think at this moment.
Since it is already impossible to change anything, my wife generously decides on
reconciliation. I am surprised, because I know what it costs her. “Let’s at least get
acquainted! One can’t meet Doomsday with a person without knowing his name,” she
says, addressing Zaraiskii’s companion. “I’m Nina.”
The companion smiles tensely. For some reason she does not want to introduce
herself but it would be impolite to remain silent and she says, “And I’m Anya.”
“So that’s your name! You didn’t tell me!” Zaraiskii is naively surprised. The naive
surprise does not prevent him from wielding a spoon and loading a plate of Olivier
salad8
for himself.
“What do you mean, she didn’t tell you?” My wife is thunderstruck. “Aren’t you
friends?”
“Why not friends?” Yuri was offended. “About an hour and a half already. Not long,
but it’ll pass for a first anniversary, especially as there won’t be a second one. Isn’t it
symbolic that I found the girl of my destiny precisely on Doomsday?”
8
A traditional salad in Russian cuisine, also known as Russian salad in other parts of the world, it was
invented by Lucien Olivier (1838-83) in the 1860s when he was the chef of the Hermitage, one of
Moscow’s most famous restaurants.

8
I barely restrain myself from reminding Zaraiskii that he had also found the girl of
his destiny on many other days, and every time soon discovered that it was a false start.
“Perhaps,” I think, “Anya is really the girl of his life, not because she’s the one for him,
but because he simply doesn’t have time to be disillusioned.”
We unseal the brandy and drink the first toast to rendezvous. The Hennessy is
indeed good, which is not surprising since a bottle costs as much as I earn in a fortnight.
“Where did you meet? At a club?” I ask, knowing that Yuri likes to go to nightclubs
from time to time.
“Why at a club?” Zaraiskii says, turning away from the salad with regret. “Simply on
the street! I was coming to you, got to the traffic light, and here saw a girl kissing a cat. A
cat so wet, shorthair, a tail like a rope. I got out of the car and said, ‘Take you
somewhere? Don’t want to intrude, but such an occasion after all... Nasty to be alone at
such a time.’ That’s how we met. I just didn’t ask her name...”
On my wife’s face momentarily flashes the fastidious wonder of a calm, self-
respecting woman who does not befriend or kiss homeless cats on the street, cats that
may be full of ringworms. From my wife’s point of view, exactly such unbalanced, wacky
broads as Anya, who indulge in debauchery in the homes of strangers with someone
they just met and kiss wormy cats, forgetting to feed them at the same time, are to blame
for our world dying.
“I myself don’t know why I kissed it, but it had such a lonely look...” Anya says, as if
not fully understanding herself.
“Poor thing... You at least fed it?” my wife asks compassionately.
Anya either does not hear her or rather pretends not to hear, looking somewhere
over our heads at the dark window. She is indifferent to my wife and me. She does not
want to justify herself to anybody, does not want to change, wants to remain as she is.
Drunken shouts and deafening bangs can be heard from the street. We think at first that
these are shots, but from the bright lights flying up understand that they are
firecrackers.
Suddenly Anya turns to me and asks, “In your opinion, what is a soul?”
This question is so unexpected that I am a little lost, but answer all the same, “Uh...
Well, how to tell you... there’re different definitions of the soul... One of them says that
there’s no soul at all, but conductivity of nerve impulses in the cerebral cortex exists.”
“But what do you personally think?” Anya tries to find out.
I honestly think about it and say, “I think that the soul is what we are minus the
physiology.”
“It’s impossible to subtract the physiology from me,” Zaraiskii protests. “If it’s
subtracted, less than zero of me remain and less than zero isn’t a real number.”
“The main thing here isn’t physiology,” I say. “I recently read in a magazine a
conversation with a priest. He contended that our biggest sin, for which we are
punished, is ingratitude and the inability to love. We were unable to appreciate what
was granted us.”

9
“But what were we granted? Nothing!” My wife is suddenly angry. “We lived, bustled
about, spun around, kept irritation to ourselves, and blamed each other for something,
that’s essentially all. Give us five more lives, everything will be the same...”
Zaraiskii’s hand freezes halfway to the goblet. I literally see the thoughts seething
and foaming in his brain, striving to bubble out like sparkling champagne through the
aperture of a mouth. “Now there’ll be a monologue,” I surmise and am not mistaken.
“And indeed you’re right about the five lives! Give us at least thirty-three paradises,
all the same we will grumble,” Zaraiskii exclaims, showing off slightly. “So, the whole
point here isn’t in the outside world but in ourselves. Together with the apple of
knowledge of good and evil, we ate the worm of discontent gnawing us. Pithecanthropi
lived in caves and grumbled, ‘What a life! The glacier crawls, the chief’s a fool, and the
mammoth is tough.’ Some thousands of years passed, the mammoths became extinct,
people started to live in cities and all the same, to them this or that is wrong: the Tatars
play tricks, the teeth hurt, the wife’s a shrew, the kids are ungrateful, the roof’s leaking...
Another five hundred years, and here we sit in apartments with running water, fly in
airplanes, and still we’re dissatisfied and miserable. The Lord is probably tired of our
eternal grumbling! ‘Must kill them,’ thinks the Lord, ‘so that they won’t suffer.
Otherwise, how universal am I, and then soon I’ll acquire an inferiority complex.’” He
pauses and, satisfied with his speech, chases with his fork after an elusive piece of
herring.
“Finished philosophizing?” I ask. “Then pour the brandy!”
Zaraiskii laughs, pours the cognac, and we drink to the ladies, and then immediately,
almost without a pause, to everything good we had in life. The cognac covers the mouth
and the throat with a pleasant tart viscosity, and almost immediately spreads a pleasant
soothing warmth through the body. I begin to think that our final hour will not pass by
so badly when Anya suddenly, without any reason, begins to laugh hysterically. My first
impression was correct: she should not drink. Zaraiskii hugs Anya’s shoulders and starts
to rock her gently, soothing her. However, Anya breaks loose and shouts at Zaraiskii an
offensive and sharp, “Swine! Get away!” Yuri releases her and moves away, though not
offended but rather puzzled, like a big good-natured dog kicked for no reason at all.
Anya is raging, getting more and more wound up. She screams insults, stomps her
feet, jumps up and wants to run somewhere, but suddenly falls on a chair and starts
crying. All three of us awkwardly calm her and give her a drink of water, but her teeth
knock against the glass and the water splashes onto the floor.
Ten minutes later, Anya finally quiets down. She is no longer laughing or crying, but
sits, lack-lustre and bent, like a squeezed lemon. She lights up a cigarette, and having
searched unsuccessfully for an ashtray, shakes the ashes off right onto the oilcloth. My
wife fidgets in the chair, and I literally feel how she is suffering. The ashes burn her
immortal soul together with the oilcloth.

10
Yuri looks guiltily at me; he is already not happy that he stopped at the traffic light.
Besides, he could have raced through the red light, especially as traffic cops had already
vanished from the streets.
“Make tea?” My wife asks me with hope. She cannot sit still: habitual matters draw
her.
“Do!” I reply, and imagine vividly and in detail how on judgment day, when the evil
spirits read out all the incriminating materials collected on my wife, all of her sins and
vain thoughts, and the Lord listens to them with sadness, my wife will suddenly ask
quietly and not very confidently, “You must be tired. Do you want me to put the kettle
on?” The Lord will look briefly at my wife, assess the entire depth of the sincerity of this
question, and, with a sigh relieving her of all her sins, summon the next person.
However, my wife has not yet managed to plug in the electric kettle when the light
unexpectedly goes out. Anya and my wife scream at once; it seems to them that
Doomsday has already arrived. I want to get up and go to the fuse box, suspecting that
there is an overload caused by the coil of the kettle, but I glance out the window and see
that not a single window is lit in all nearby houses. Stop the engine! Electricity is gone,
probably forever. Maybe someday in the world, which God will build after ours, they will
invent electricity again, who knows...
“Why don’t you turn on the light?” my wife asks.
“It’s not just us, it’s everywhere...” I reply.
The women sigh in resignation.
“Do you have candles?” Zaraiskii asks in a business-like manner.
“Yes, of course. I have a store of them just in case!” my wife instantly responds. She
is happy that someone is in charge. Even if it is Zaraiskii, whom she does not like. Yuri
flips the lighter, and now trembling lights highlight our pale faces and the face of the
alarm clock.
Suddenly Anya, silent for a long time, speaks. The candlelight has probably brought
her out of her daze. “You don’t understand, no one understands... it’s shrinking. It has
been shrinking for many years and now it has become very small.”
“What’s shrinking?”
Before answering, Anya winces and shivers as if cold. “Time,” she says. “Once, when
I was a little girl and in school, time was big and ample, but now it’s small and
shrivelled.”
Zaraiskii provokingly slaps the table, “No need to arrange a requiem here! Let’s do
what we’ve wanted all our lives but have always denied ourselves!”
“What have you denied yourself your whole life?” I ask not without irony.
My question stumps Yuri. He scratches the bridge of his nose, glances appraisingly at
Anya, and after making a prognosis distressing for himself, answers with a sigh, “Yes, in
principle I have denied myself nothing... Except that I haven’t drunk a good cognac for a
long time. And haven’t been on a motorcycle for a long time, only in a car. But I would

11
like to take a run with a powerful motorcycle on the empty, smooth highway, straight as
an arrow.”
“Ye-ah... a motorcycle is good,” I say absent-mindedly. To me the words
“motorcycle” and “car” mean nothing more than “a self-moving vehicle.” If you have
never learned to ride or drive one, then now there is already no point. Since the time I
fell off my bike in tenth grade and shifted the meniscus at the same time, I have avoided
all wheels by walking not less than five metres around them.
The conversation is strained. We finish drinking the cognac and begin to wander
aimlessly around the apartment. My wife goes into the bedroom and feverishly searches
for something in boxes; I hear something similar to beads spilling on the floor. Zaraiskii
tries to call someone, but the line is busy for some reason. He dials the same number ten
times with the same result.
“What blockhead can talk at such a moment?! Are these asses at the phone exchange
disconnected?” he says angrily and goes into the bedroom too. My wife asks him
something and he replies.
Anya and I find ourselves at the table and she begins to eat black caviar straight with
a finger. After thinking for a bit, I follow her example. The taste of the black caviar
reminds me of something I do not like, but I cannot figure out what exactly and eat just
to remember. Soon the jar is empty.
“We’re right not to waste good stuff!” Anya says. She puts a hand on my shoulder,
turns, and looks me straight in the eyes. The candlelight is reflected in her pupils and
makes her look like a beautiful, passionate, and hysterical witch. Her face is so close that
I can feel her breath, smelling of brandy and caviar.
“Maybe we can play chess?” I ask. “My first move: knight b1 – c3.”9
Anya removes her hand from my shoulder, laughs, and moves away. “I like you,” she
says. “You’re not like that one!”
“This is the first compliment I’ve been given in my life,” I say.
Soon we all gather in the kitchen again. We can hear the neighbour with a disability
swearing at his grandmother on the other side of the panel wall of our home. Grandma
calmly listens and clatters the pots, she is used to it. Then the swearing, having reached
the maximum tension, suddenly stops, and a rollicking, well-known, and rather sad
Russian song is heard. The neighbour’s voice is cracked, destroyed by drink, but he has
an ear. Zaraiskii, after listening for some time, starts to sing along. The neighbour hears
this and, pleased with the support, sings louder. A strong male thread of mutual
understanding stretches out to both sides of the wall.
When the song ends, Zaraiskii invites his new friend over to drink with us and the
friend sort of agrees; but I explain to Yuri that although the apartments are next to each
other, the disabled person actually lives in the neighbouring entrance, and on top of that
9
A chessboard has 8x8 squares, with the horizontal rows (ranks) numbered 1-8 and the vertical columns
(files) named a-h. A move is denoted by the combination of the file and rank of the squares the piece
moves from and to.

12
we are on the fourteenth floor, the elevator does not work, it is dark in the stairwell, and
the neighbour is drunk as a skunk.
Yuri contemplates and shouts through the wall so that the neighbour will not come
over, but it turns out that he has already taken a lantern and, wasting no time, is on his
way to us. Zaraiskii intends to meet him, but hesitates. “He’ll come himself,” he says.
“You bastard!” Anya comments.
Zaraiskii and I go out onto the balcony in the chilly autumn night. The dark, unlit,
massive homes around us are reminiscent of half-rock, half-theatrical scenery. Although
the half bitten-off moon is still visible in the sky, the stars are kind of a muddle. Some of
them are already gone; others have crawled together a little to the central part of the sky,
like sheep bunch up in a flock on hearing the call of the shepherd. I only now realize the
scope of what is happening and I become terrified. It is one thing to know about
Doomsday as a kind of impending threat, but quite another to see the seemingly eternal
stars disappear.
“It seems not only our world will get it. The Lord has undertaken a big cleaning of
the universe,” Zaraiskii remarks. He says this in his usual declarative fashion. Speaking,
he seems to be listening to himself, as if he is both the actor and a spectator evaluating
this actor’s play.
I painfully caught my foot on something. It is an old sled, which I would have thrown
out long ago if not for my wife. I take the sled and want to drop it from the balcony, but
for some reason I become uneasy, as if I am committing treason, and I put it down
again.
“I still don’t understand the reason to obliterate our world,” I utter. “If you want to
build a new one, build, but why wipe out this one?”
“What if it’s getting boring? How long can you busy yourself with a game?” Zaraiskii
asks.
“If it’s getting boring, then entrust it to someone or let someone have a go at it. Let
the last people be the first at the same time, and all history of the earth will start anew,
but in a more complete loop. Like toy train tracks going in a ring and interfering with no
one,” I suggest.
My theory appears vague to me, but I feel that there is something in it. I try to
develop it further but get confused by the question of whether our earlier memory
should be preserved for each new loop, or whether all of mankind, for example 10 or 20
billion, should leave like spare players and only let a part out on the field
simultaneously, say, 2 or 3 billion.
Yuri listens to me indulgently and even seems to smile, but smiles not because it is
funny to him, but because he should do something with his facial muscles. “Then it
would be a mockery,” he declares. “Everything must have a beginning and an end. The
fact that there’s already a beginning demonstrates that there should also be an end,
otherwise it turns out as an endless tedious series.”

13
We smoke, leaning our elbows on the wet railing of the balcony, and then, finished,
throw down the cigarette butts red as charcoal. Mine falls straight down and quickly
extinguishes, but Zaraiskii’s rotates in an arc and scatters sparks absurdly.
“Okay, let’s go to the women before they start a boxing fight...” I announce and we
return to the kitchen.
To our surprise, my wife and Anya are sitting peacefully side by side and, their
foreheads almost touching, conversing quietly about something. Both fall silent upon
our appearance, as if the conversation was not for our ears. We sit down beside them.
“Soon everything will end...” my wife says. She puts her head on my shoulder and
closes her eyes. Her closed eyelids quiver slightly, and I see a streak of ink on her right
cheek by the eye.
I look at the alarm clock standing on the table, the hands of which move inevitably
closer to the fatal mark, and suddenly realize that we have only ten minutes left. The last
ten minutes to accomplish, think, or utter something really important that we have
postponed our whole life due to minor and bustling affairs. But what this really
important is I do not know.
My entire life – not passionate and not cold, not sinful and not righteous – the usual,
the most ordinary life floats past in front of me. I cannot remember any serious
transgressions, everything was so-so. Worse than that, I cannot remember any great
achievements, any feats, or any special sacrifice. Obviously, now we must repent our
sins, using the last opportunity, but my main sin is my inability to take decisive, clear,
and beautiful actions, and I do not want to repent this. I also do not experience
particular remorse, only a gnawing discontent with myself, and the wish that everything
would soon end.
I do not know what the others are thinking, probably each about himself. Our souls
are frozen in anticipation of the leap from the physical shell, and their small, still
immature wings tremble.
“The neighbour hasn’t come, got lost somewhere along the way,” my wife says
sympathetically.
“He is sleeping somewhere on the stairs, an empty bottle under his head,” Anya
declares.
When one minute remains and anticipation becomes the most painful, Zaraiskii
suddenly gets up and solemnly stretches slightly trembling hands to us. For several long
seconds he stands so still, and we sit and look at him.
Suddenly understanding everything, we also get up, join hands firmly, and squeeze
them with all our strength in order not to be lost in eternity. Maybe we are not all angels,
but it is better not to separate us.
11:22. Everything happens instantly, without fear or pain... We do not hear the
trumpet, but the world suddenly collapses exactly like a chessboard, and all the pieces
are put away in the box.

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