Introduction
Warning 1 – this is a negative story which you may wish to choose not to read.
Warning 2 – it is better to read this explanation / introduction after reading the short story below.
I saw a video some months back, you can view if here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a9d_1376595716 . It is not nice to watch, and it does not follow the same course as my short story below, but it does serve as the inspiration. The last time I watched this video was several months agoo, and I did not watch it again before writing this piece. The perpetrators in this video posted it online themselves. They were proud of what they had achieved. Some political leaders have encouraged such acts and cast them as actions of community service. In Russia such incidents have not all ended safely for the victim. This short story takes the video as its starting point and takes it to a more tragic end.
In writing this piece, I was aiming to explore the actors in this savage act. I wanted to consider what lay behind their aggressive behaviour to the victim. My thesis is that there is a complex and poisonous mix of senses of civic duty, stolen opportunity, absence of meaning and perceived damaged national pride that underlie this vicious strand of Russian society (and perhaps other societies), and it is this that I have sought to explore in the short story.
A Death in St Petersburg
Aleksei withdrew his unsteady hand one last time. At its centre, the soft warm mass of his creation, now complete, somehow resembled the familiar warm and inviting stew of Mamouchka’s enchanting goulash. How beautiful the black-red fluid of this soup spread, like a maturing rose, invading the crisp, white snow with its flush petals. The colour expanded with an irresistible momentum, almost symmetrically outwards as it softened and dented the surrounding whiteness. A tender yet bold accompaniment to the new and haunting space after that and before what next, through which he and his committed band of social activists silently transited.
Only 15 minutes earlier – now what seemed a whole expanding galaxy away – the young, smartly attired, Dmitry had entered his life. This confident young alternate reality self-exuded all that caused Aleksei such deep, anxious, unacknowledged pain. At what must be at least five years his junior, he already cut a figure of intelligence, hope and a sense of future not yet denied. Dreams that Aleksei was sure he would not – should not – even dare dream of for himself. Not anymore. He had made his choices. Okay, they were not really his ‘choices’, he had had little ‘choice’ in settling for something far short of his dreams. His teachers had not seen any value in him. His mother – father long-since absent – was not some care-free middle-class housewife able to lavish him with boundless hope and effortless opportunity.
He now mulled over the thought – a single question – ‘why?’… Why did this single deed – that so finally expressed his dedication to his people – not envelope him with the wave of comfortable satisfaction that he had craved? This boy Dmitry, who – along with the countless non-whites and immigrants – formed the murky, cancerous heart of all that was wrong with Russia today, all that was impure, all that had stripped he, Aleksei – a true Russian – of the right to a proud future. Why did this single act of cleansing not fill that hungering emptiness at the pit of his stomach that clamored so deafeningly for satisfaction?
His once dedicated crew of Russian heroes, now edged backwards towards the periphery of their woodland stage. To Aleksei’s left, Piotr began to simper in a half-laugh, half-exclamation of nervousness, as if no longer sure to continue to revel in his courageous role as chief architect of this entrapment, the creator of the character – the richer, older Boris Petrovic – with its convincing internet profile, and the web of words that had lured the gullible Dmitry to this natural venue of justice. Was he contemplating to separate himself from this unexpected – yet evidently logical? – conclusion?
To Piotr’s left, Irina had descended to her knees. Was that a tear forming under the thick white fake-fur rim that crowned the hood of her oversized pink coat? Was this weak and cowered figure still the same Irina that – only moments ago – had screamed with so much passion, and yet without any hint of weak com-passion, at the young Dmitry? Her loud, uncompromising words forming an unassailable, irresistibly attractive (Aleksei had thought…), colossal moral mass that reproached this young accused of all that is adulterated, wrong and fundamentally un-Russian. She had exuded an almost parental authority as she interrogated him about what his friends, his family, back in Cherdyn would think when they knew – and she would make sure they knew – of his traitorous and unnatural character. Now mute, Irina’s one ungloved hand, that looked so slender and white as it protruded from that great coat, hung limply, still clasping her pink ‘Hello Kitty’-clad phone. The device, at a casually declining angle, still pointed towards Aleksei and his accomplishment. Was she still filming?
This cold silent aftermath was stirred resolutely from its stasis by a confident voice to Aleksei’s right. Decked in his trademark, unmistakable shades of blue that staked out his allegiance to FC Zenit. Maturing features buried-tight under a black woolen hat, rim turned up and emblazoned with the black, gold and white of the Romanov flag. Oleg surveyed, at once aggressively-critical, the wavering crew that accompanied him. To Aleksei he was the older brother that his own had so treacherously failed to be. Aleksei did not just listen, suspend himself, on every sage statement that Oleg summoned. He had wanted – so badly – to be Oleg, to be part of him, inside him – or Oleg inside of him – to possess, without err, that potent steadfast sense of principle and purpose. If Oleg were his mother’s borscht he would consume it recklessly until he could fit no more.
So when, just a couple of minutes before, Oleg had supplied him with that modest shard of broken glass, and injected him with that confident encouragement with a hardy knock of his shoulder to Aleksei’s – he had known that instant what should be done, his blessed mission, his path to meaning.
But there was now a disorderly semblance of doubt within him. It scratched inaudibly at his ankles, and stroked menacingly at his nerves.
It was lanced in an instant.
‘It is done’. Oleg commanded, reassuringly – no purpose lost in his manner.
‘One less pidaras to pollute our fatherland’
They walked away.
