following stories were published in
"PYROWORDS" (Montreal), "SPEAKING IN
TONGUES" (Vladivostok), and "GOLDEN
ANTILOPE" (St-Peterburg) literary
magazines, in 1998 and 2000

The ceiling is flipping, whirling, spinning round; dusty shadows are banched in the middle of the room. She must support herself by touching table's surface: not to fall down. "Vus arbeistu nit, vus shlofstu? - Why are you not working, why are you sleeping? - This exclamation in Yiddish overtakes her as a lash. They know that she speaks Yiddish but they treat her as others: without mercy. Another cloud of blackish smoke rises to the ceiling. Some of the women are coughing. "Did you sleep this night, - addresses Luba, a fat Ukrainian, to Natasha's neighbor, - on or under your husband?" She's the most strong among them.

She was a champion in discus throwing. Her face is like a peace of fresh meat, and she looks like a mountain. But even her hands look terrible; she suffers from pain - and she wants to hide it in her jokes. An invisible, frozen column of time grows slowly, too slowly for all of them. From the other hand time is a sword in their bodies. Each minute it plunges deeper and deeper into their bodies. They feel a taste of blood into their mouths even if they don't lick the blood off their bleeding palms. Two bare lamps hang down from the high ceiling. Their yellow, tiny light just irritates but not illuminates the place.

Natasha bends more down to hide her condition. She's closer and closer to a swoon. She's thirsty, her lips are dry as a desert. Everything inside her burns. But the oversees don't let the woman drink. "Not to fall, - she whispers to herself, - just not to fall..." A scratching voice, which orders something, saves her.

According to religious rules they must wash their hands now. She moves with the others as in a dream. Sounds around her are like stones. They break some delicate, tender membrane inside her - and strike, and strike!.. She's remembering her native city somewhere in Belarus. Her grandfather was a rabbi, and her parents were keeping

Yiddish and some religious traditions despite the danger from the evil communist power, which forbidden Jewish culture and traditions just in all spheres of life.

When her mother was 16, the communists closed all Yiddish schools in her city. They

arrested and killed Yiddish teachers, actors, poets, writers. But even then they loathed that city, which some of them called "Little Jerusalem". On the other hand they didn't care to suppress all of the customs and peculiarities from the former epoch. They didn't let them to be developed and kept them as an anachronism of the previous era. When everywhere in the former Soviet Union just all private enterprises were forbidden - in her native city some small, tiny private stores, private shoes repairing businesses existed.

Private "balagolas" - carters - looked strange and ridiculous in the 1970-s with their skinny horses, but were allowed.

The Old City - the former Jewish town - was treated the same way. They didn't destroy it completely as they destroyed other big cities in Belarus, but they didn't restore or repaired it: turning the Old City into ruins. They also leveled the architectural appearance of many of its buildings changing them consciously into ugly "boxes".

Natasha could walk in the Old City for hours. She usually took the direction to the marketplace, passing pre-Revolutional huge complexes in Ugendstyle, in style "Modern" and in Eclectic. She remembers a special light of these streets, their black-and-white colors similar to Ostroumova-Lebedeva's drawings. This world was the world of Dostoyevsky and Nabokov, and the time was the turn of the last century. When a rare sun colored the streets from the top of the roofs they looked as if they were really alive - but they weren't; they were more dead then a dead men, more dead then the Egyptian pyramids, more dead then a peace of an extra-terrestrial meteorite. They were strangers and enemies here. And she felt herself a stranger, too.

She used to pass old synagogues, turned into ruins, huge beautiful areas little by little turning into slams.

Circle by circle she went closer and closed to the market. There was a square near the market: an old square with haughty old buildings. She saw nothing in her life so beautiful, so unique. The market square led to the market gates: a huge iron Constructivism construction. That enter was an enter to a different world, it gave something that was taken away from two last generations: the sense of Time.

She loved wandering here - to feel a special mood of the crowd in this place, see gestures, eyes, clothes - different from everything from outside, or to be drawn deeply into another life... She loved wandering in passwalks, in myriad of old streets and backyards, which were connected somehow. She inhaled the breath of this frozen city, its odor. It was a smell of death, a smell of devastation.

* * *

A noisy clucking sound brings her back to reality. She sees the source of that sound: round pieces of wood in women' hands. The same rolling-pin is in her hands, too. The woman are standing around a long, enormously long table. She has an impression that they execute a strange and mysterious procedure. Rolling-pins are like strange tools in members' of a mysterious sect hands. A sudden thought shocks her. Yes, they really commit a horrible barbarian procedure. They give away their lives here as in a satanic sect because this slavish exhorted labor slowly kills them.

The same repulsive voice reminds them that they have 15 minutes to eat something.

They go no-where -because there is no other place, no other room here. They must eat -standing on their foot in this dirty from smoke and soot room.

Every woman takes out her dinner. They are doing it in a hurry because it is a single break during the day here. Only when they eat they realize where they are. She realize now that she's no longer in Belarus, neither Israel. Her consciousness returns - and that is worrying her. Because when she goes back to reality she feels pain in her palms, in her wrists: an unbearable pain, wild and burning. Her palms are bleeding, her hands are dangerously swollen.

According to Jewish rules the matzos production must be immediately stopped in an occasion like that. Not only a direct fall of blood in matzos, but even a contact with a surface, which contains dropped blood makes matzott not kosher. "How ridiculous to order us to rinse our mouths after this dinner-break, to wash our hands every 15 minutes, - thought Natasha, - to pray in the beginning of each circle, if they violate the very basic rules and Commandments?" Everything what happened in that room looked as a horror movie. The only difference is that it was real. Too real to believe. And that's why Natasha had an impression (since she began to work here) that she's still in Bnei-Brak, not here, in in Outremont, Montreal.

They were taken to Israel from Moldova. She was visiting her cousin in Tiraspol, a small Moldovien town, when fighting between Moldavians and Russians have erupted. It was a true war. How many people were killed by then? - only God knows... She and her relatives escaped in panic. Everything was lost behind. Even the documents were lost. They ran without property, without identity. They lost their personalities and became just Human Beings - different from stones and from grass only biologically, not intellectually.

At least they didn't know where to go, they were completely lost, and dangerous sounds of a distant battle have reached their ears.

There were about 30 more people with them. In that moment three man in clean and fashionable suits appeared. They were fresh shaved, their white shirts were new and expensive. A deputy, and a chairmen of a local Jewish council were among them. "We came to save you, - they said. - We must evacuate you from here - because this place is dangerous". (Like if they had no chances to know that themselves).

- Let's go to the buses! (There were really buses behind them in a little forest).

• Let's go out of here!

The only person who was suspicious towards the three men was an old invalid, a war veteran. "Where are you taking us to? - he cried.

But his words were ignored. Nobody listened to him. Less then 12 hours separated them from a knowledge that he was the most clever person among them.

Because after 12 hours they were already in Tel-Aviv.

She remembers her first impression from an enormous and crowdy room.

They were treated like cattle.

(be continued)

LEV GUNIN

DREAMS OF PROFESSOR GOLZ

TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN ORIGINAL (an extract)

1

" Miaow, - said the Cat. And what else cats can say? He has narrowed his pupils and started circling around a wide round table, tenderly stretching himself and yawning. It was him, Golz, turned into this table. He stood here on a thick leg and surveyed everything that surrounded him. They began to call him "Golz" at university, which happened after an argument with one ignoramus: whether there is such an aristocratic game "golf". Now, when he stood as a table, he intuitively felt an affinity of his nickname with wood *, from which tables are made.

In the meantime cat has divided, and his second half went towards the first one, and, when they have again incorporated, a high marble mushroom has grown at a point of this incorporation: a kind of a round lid on a stem-leg in a self-excitation cafe. Golz now became simultaneously both the table, and this marble mushroom. He has once again surveyed - first him as these two objects, - then - a place, where his two parts stood. This was a room in an old wooden house, a room with two pairs of two-folding doors: one pair was opposite to windows - and another one - in an end face: right against the shining (behind a piano) windows of a terrace. Between the windows, in piers, there was a large black ancient mirror, and to the left of it - an old large radio receiver and TV set; opposite to the mirror - at a parallel wall - an armchair, and on walls - pictures hung. When Golz has finished this survey, regaining his conciseness, and paid attention to himself again, he already wasn't standing so solidly, as before, on a flat horizontal surface - for had this tiny demerit, which is peculiar to all living beings: he has again become a person. It forced him to be frightened - and he trembled, as though from weakness; he suddenly looked unbelievably defenseless and small, helpless and weak....

Then there suddenly was a movement inside him. As though with some slapping-floundering sound the second half has squeezed out of him, but he did not saw her (this half) yet: and did not know, in which of two halves there he was. Then he has involuntary looked into the mirror. It wasn't Golz, who stood there. That, in the mirror, was a dense - of small growth, and almost bold - lout with half-goggle eyes, under a sight of which Golz has mechanically huddled up. Professor looked at his own hands and shoulders, and was convinced that here - it's him, and in the mirror - not. Now you are - Valentin Franzevich Kibrich, has presented himself that guy in the mirror, and - by a gesture of his hand - has invited (him) into Behindmirror. Professor stepped - and merged with Kibnch, at the same time still feeling his own identity.

From the back of the mirror there was the same room, only with everything on the contrary: it wasn't a day, but night (in the window); instead of the table - a hole in the floor; instead of the radio receiver and TV set - were empty boxes; and on piano's place a naked babe stood....

Right on Golz's eyes Kibrich has turned himself into a small infant; the space, as a carpet, has wound and enveloped - and has become dozens of dilapidated rural hovels, and everything together now occupied a space, not greater, than the former room.

" Give mug, - babbled Kibrich to somebody invisible from the other world, - " Pah, - spite the baby directly into the face of someone, who stood "for the staff". A juicy slap in the face has been delivered in darkness - and Golz has staggered from its force. "Chadzemce siudy** (come here!), - Kibrich was already older; he, a rosy-cheeked child (again calling somebody invisible) has approached to a huge, occupying the whole horizon, naked lady, big-breasted and bloated by fat, whose bosoms hanged down in height like two large white - red mountains. Again calling somebody the child has dipped his macro-forehead bully head into her magnificent lap. The bosom has made an intense " uio... " - as a drunker after a good drinking-bout, - and puked-belched up Kibrich. That one, growing bigger directly on eyes, with an idiot's, already adolescent, smirk on covered by vomit lips, has hurried to take a stroll down the hamlet, bragging about that vomit and showing his head, decorated with pieces of something inexpressible and loathsome, to everybody.

Some non-sharp motley strips were carried by - and here is Kibrich, - already on a lean horse, awkwardly jumping upon her back, riding somewhere - downwards - and, simultaneously, upwards. There were cracking and then leaving away under animal's hoofs: boxes with machine tools and with test tubes, busts of scientists and mathematicians, oily eyes of the dean and professors, extorting bribes. Transparent underpants of girls-schoolmates from student-hostel, curve lips of secretaries-prostitutes, hangover in a comer of smeared by excrements and befouled by indecent inscriptions Institute's toilet: were the only supernumeraries of this scene.

Golz screw up his eyes, when lights were lit in a big hall. Everyone applauded, there was public around, flowers, new costumes. "... the Honorable diploma of a new Semi-Ignoramus is entrusted to Kihrich Valentin Francevich, - has been resounded above ear. And again - someone has clicked the switch, and everything was dissolved in a fog.

In this shapeless non-darkness-non-light, in this eye-sticking mass - space has focused on a dark stain, a kind of a clot, which has gradually got sharp outlines, fumed into an inky-formless, rough semifrog-semisnake with tens of small and terribly - green human beings on her back, opening their sharp-toothed stinky mouths. Golz internally shriveled up and prepared himself for a wild fight, but Kibrich - in a voluptuous impulse - has rushed to this terrible caterpillar, embraced her: and was instantly eaten by tens of small stinky mouths. Then the semi-caterpillar has began to be poured by something red and blue-violet, then has swollen (more), burst, while the rags of her external pall have tear, decovering a new Kibrich - dirtied by slime and associated with a frog. He could breath only forcedly, with efforts, by his bloody mouth, and looked straight before himself by his red pop-eyed lenses.

Instantly (directly before him: there, where he stood) a massive table with a writing device appeared from emptiness: with two ordinary and two radio telephones, with wood-trimmed walls and red carpet path, leading to the table; there was an armchair and the regular portrait of a bald person in a framework.

All this stood on a huge corpse of one - killed by those, who has then put his body on pedestal of glory - giant; and the folk fussed senselessly around, harnessed in common shaft and held down by a join chain, - rotating a huge horizontal wooden wheel with study Kibrich .

"Your Listable Highness, - loudly reported a little man, pushed out softly from below, now dragging behind him not a heavy chain, but a thin file, , - the Fifth on the list called, and asked you to go for him in bathssy, to pester for him his hairy-shaggy. Kibrich has tremendously bend, half-raised - and the little man was like spite out. Next there was the type with a surname Kostochkin looking as an eternal provisional schoolboy. Kibrich's eyes could not see far, so he was catching everything, which was under his hands. Therefore a human material, from which Kibrich has made himself a test, was composed from degenerates of his own village, schoolmates, kinsfolk and orgies' buddies. Kostochkin was from that material. "Third on the list, - reported Kostochkin already more quietly, - has told that loves to walk in a summer garden at winter. Kibrich has risen so, that, under him - as under a statue - the whole pyramid gnashed, coughed (heads of two bystanders fell from their shoulders) and mumbled: "...a Greenhouse for one hundred million, - and no nails! "

Then Valentin Francevich took his own head by hands and turned it by 180 degrees, and a luscious, suggary-sweet physiognomy of another Kibrich has appeared. He hailed a maid sitting in front of a typewriter at doors of his office and dragging on herself a moderate chain. "Off you go, - he shouted. - On place!" She packed up on a leather sofa, pulling her knees apart. "Kostochkin! - That one immediately appeared. - Check up readiness!" That one has checked up. "Sit here and look waiting... When it's time - and you will know - deliver then a vine-glass for both of us".

Three guys with hammers entered. "Knock louder, - squeezed voted told Kibrich from behind a screen, muffling the squelching sounds, - everyone will think, that nothing can be heard in such a noise and will be preoccupied by blackening. And you catch each word.

The mouth of the owner of the office at each determined moment involuntarily ajared and threw up: "Do not lift "bashka" (bean)! Do not lift bean!" Everyone, who wasn't affected by these holoes, was instantly dumped into a hopper where there was no way out, and all others have spite together into the hopper, until that, who fell, has sunken in it. Only two fishes with Jewish noses swam out, and then Kibrich has called mistress - superior over hammers, and told Her: "Throw the two fishes onto frying-pan! "

The third fish has turned to be a submarine, and could not be roasted on frying pan. Here something guggled from under the ground, and from a heap of shit, spreading tremendous stinking, someone green and dangerous appeared. "Sign the contract with our Commission of State-Uselessness, - it told him, and we shall roast your underwater boat". However, even for Kibrich, who got used to smell stinking food-garbage, the smell of that monster seemed intolerable. He refused, - and the monster left, while informing-instructing Valentin Francevich by an ordinary human voice that there is another side of the mirror, and that no one could cope with her laws without his, monster's, help. And immediately occurred: from behind the mirror a mousy nuck was heard without. It piped that Kibrich's heelers are doing none know what in factory's hostel, almost raping girls and arranging drunk boozes.

It was summarized with a past-future incident, when Koctochkin & Co were catched on smuggling truck-cars with the State shit. In the latter's opinion, he did not commit anything reprehensible; on this side of the mirror it was equivalent to an innocent student's joke: like when they suspended a bank with mohom above a tight as a drum - drunk prostitute, with such an intention that, as soon as she began to budge, the contents the bank was poured out on her face.

With this mousy pip Kibrich could not be at odds: he did not know that it is not necessary to do and that is necessary - to make this pip disappear.... Certainly, he could just ignore the pip, but the only fact that some sounds were pealed from the opposite side of the mirror brought him into madness.

So he got off to the monster by his own. He, in his accurately ironed from above, and blurred from within by various opiowax, breeches, has began to go down to hell, cliping his nose. The monster has resurfaced, piqued him by a large needle under the scapula, and told by an ordinary human voice: " dear Va-a-lllentin Fr..Fr-Ivanovich, you see, you are in shit up to the ears. "I do not know myself! - babbled out Kibrich, but the whole barrel of the same essence, which already was on his ears, have been suspended to his legs, and he was ordered to rise. The accusers of Valentin Francevich's adjutants were blown away - as by a wind. All of these, who signed some paper both the first, and the second time, were dumped into bathos.

In the meantime something dingy-green absorbed gradually Valentin Francevich with his office. At the end of this absorption a 15-years old schoolgirl appears - as though purposely make the pip from behind the mirror leaking out again, yet even a more afoul! By a dexterous maneuver putting this 15-years old girl onto a place of somehow imperceptibly appeared earlier wife and a child, Kibrich has stopped this piping - and continued his sitting in the solid armchair, his hatching put eggs. Each second lorries with tons of money, which Kibrich - as well as all others like him - accurately buried into the ground, drove up to the factory named after a comrade-in-arms killed by comrades. The Director himself, as soon as the door was shut down, took (put on) a hen's appearance and loudly cackled, lustly imagining the nestling.

Some time has passed, and there was knocking at the door. Kibrich nervously shuffled but remained the hen. The door has swung open - a monster was standing in door's aperture. Kibrich has taken off his head with a nib - remaining in the armchair. The monster has lifted the hen, took out an egg from under her, has brashed out by fire; - and Kibrich's ashes in the egg, now large and transparent, have moved in the Department of the Valuable Compromises, where a new Kibrich has hatched out from an egg and to be engaged in heavy uselessness in an industrial version.

Now Kibrich was like an empty place. A huge part of space was tired out on him, but it was a collapse. Only the place has played a role, but not that, who occupied it. Not trucks any more but whole trains with tens of tons of money, which Valentin Francevich has accurately dug in the ground, have drove in now.

- 5 -

As true boodles - like fallen autumn leaves, - in heaps - tribesmen, Institute's schoolmates of Valentin Francevich, his colleagues on their shity work of the dugging of the money -and the sexual sport, which all of them together (so is more cheerful!) were practicing in a rented by Kibrich apartment somewhere on yksdargogloV, whether on ogoksvonilaK Street, "vegetated" around. However, Valentin Francevich all creaked and shaked, as an overused tractor, because the nature has gifted him by features of the owner of harem and chief of orgies, and practicing this perfect sport "as an equal " among smarming themselves crowds went "against the wool" for him. But Kibrich - this spider by nature, who is drugging his victim in a dark corner, this corky man in everything - knew that only by a common... eh .... eh... "this present" gates into the lightly future are won through, and failed to act up not just the first people on the list, but even those, who stood in the list further then him.

Golz, until then - it seemed - peacefully sitting in Kibrich, already came into conscience after the following one after another one shocking shakes - and has began to beat desperately, hoping to pull out. However, these convulsive movements did not render any influence on Kibrich, and professor could not separate from him. Valentin Francevish has acquired by thick and wrinkled, as at hippopotamus, leather, but this leather was hidden under an imitation of a human skin, therefore wasn't visible from outside. However, Golz, who even without that could not bear sitting in Kibrich any more, by feeling this leather, has become to be immersed in something black and sticky, realizing, that loses his consciousness.

When he has regained consciousness, to a new Kibrich's kennel with a parquet floor, and a smart table - throne, an imperceptible small man in glasses and in a poped acock mask came. He demonstrated one tiny box to Kibrich, a box, which issued plaintive screams and screeches. That has declined the head to the box with a terrible grimace and with an admirable ferocity, as if within the box there were thousands of tortured people. A funny bargain between the owner of the office and the small man in glasses and in mask took place...

(END OF THE EXTRACT)