Tim is a filmmaker, I am at Law School. Despite his seemingly cinematic romanticism, he is quite practical and grounded.
“You, Russians, make everything too complicated. A little Dostoyevsky sits in every one of you…”
Tim accepts life as it comes. Goes with the flow. It just seems so easy to go with the flow. In fact , this is art .
“You, kinky whore…” I said , fighting him off . – You will be late for your audition and will ruin your entire movie career. The great star unborn. Don’t blame it on me then…
-Oh, fuck the movies… fuck the career…
Tim rolled up “ one zaftig joint ”, our usual breakfast.
– I am dying for a cup of coffee… Would you make some for us, please…?
I brewed strong coffee in a Turk. Then we went to the shower together.
– What are we doing tonight? – Tim asked, pouring shampoo over me.
– I have to go see my parents, remember? It’s their wedding anniversary today.
-Oh, I am sorry, I forgot. My good boy is going to see his mammy and daddy tonight. They are having their anniversary…
– Oh, shut up, you bitch, and scrub my back…
– And whom my good boy is going with to his parent’s an-niv-yor-sa-ry tonight?
– You know very well whom I am going with…With Jeannie, of course, whom else…
– Oh, my good boy is going with his cute little beard Jeannie. Jeannie, the beard from the bottle…
– Oh, shut up, Timothy. Do you want me to go with you instead? So everyone would point their fingers at us and whisper: “Ooo, look: these two fags came…We always knew their son is a fag…”
– No, Mitya-boy. I don’t want you to go there with me. I want you to go with your cute little beard Jeannie and enjoy yourself .
Tim put foam on my chin and I spanked him. It turned out loud and strong. I threw a towel at him and spread him out.
“Aahh,” he howled , “he is going to rape me!” Finally! After all these years! What did I do to deserve this? Oh, it feels good!
– Don’t even dream about it. I will keep you frustrated and salivating. And what are you going to do tonight?
-Oh, I think I will go to an S-and-M club and get myself fucked to death.
I wrapped a towel around his head and went to make more coffee. Tim, pretending to be a blind man, with outstretched trembling hands, began to fumble around me, approaching me with small, stumbling steps.
– Ah, here you are… I thought you were going to rape me, what happened? You don’t like me no more? You dummy Russian…
– Be careful, coffee is very hot…And now you are really late for your audition…
– Yes, I know, they will give me fifty lashes for this…
Hastily gulping down his coffee, Tim jumped into his jeans and tucked in his shirt. And he was already at the door, pecked me on the lips and couldn’t stop, pecked me again and again, stronger and longer, dropped the backpack from his hands, hugged me, and, drunk, whispered:
– Fuck the audition… I will stay for a while longer…
And I couldn’t stop either. We got up again only at noon. When Tim left, it immediately became quiet and empty. I finished smoking a couple of roaches…
The aging lion was driven out of the pack by his sons. They returned and drove him out, as before, as soon as their mane began to show and fluff, he drove them out. Just as he and his brothers were once expelled by their fathers.
They returned – matured, stronger, tempered by wandering male loneliness. For half a day he and the new young leader stared at each other, fiercely and menacingly, growling and fanning themselves with their tails. When, having accelerated, they began to run and collide, the young man contrived and bit him in the thigh. He could have held on for quite some time and, most likely, in the end, would have outsmarted, outplayed and defeated the self-confident, but dull and inexperienced newcomer. But fatigue had accumulated, and, most importantly, he understood that the pack needed young blood and they no longer needed him. And so, after growling and jostling for order, he finally backed down and left. Now he could not catch up with even the weakest and slowest gazelles. And I didn’t have enough strength to look for new places. He had no choice but to sit in ambush for hours and wait for people. Human meat was bitter and tough, but it was easier to hunt them: their sense of smell was not so sharp and they allowed you to get closer to them.
A rumor spread through the Libyan villages, west of Alexandria, that a lion had appeared in their area, devouring people. He was called the Moor – the king of the Moorish lions. Life stopped, horror hung in the air, carrying, as it seemed to everyone, the stench of remains and blood; the fields and arable lands were empty.
When Adrian was informed about this, his eyes sparkled, his back straightened, and even the pain in his constantly aching, long-broken collarbone dissolved and went away. Pater Patrii [30] will protect his children. He put down the papyrus and waved the scribe away.
“We’re going hunting tomorrow,” he announced. His movements were filled with elastic, young strength, and an excited smile of anticipation wandered across his face. Hunting was his sweetest joy and hobby. In it he became himself again. Most of all he loved to hunt lions. This was precisely the duel worthy of Caesar.
We left early in the morning. Adrian, apparently, accepted me into his retinue, and I was given a tunic, a horse, a sword and two lances. I was paired with Lucius; Hadrian and Antinous are in front, surrounded by horsemen and a pack of hungry dogs squealing with impatience.
The gentle coolness of the night, blown by the north wind from the sea, was still felt, but the sun rose higher and higher and became brighter, turning unbearably yellow; Another sultry September Egyptian day was approaching. From under the hooves of our horses, road dust, drying from the morning moisture, began to swirl ever thicker. Seeing from afar the motorcade of the emperor-pharaoh-god, peasants from nearby villages prostrated themselves, not daring to raise their heads until he was out of sight.
“Oh, you don’t know what Rome is,” Lucius habitually muttered to me, carefully straightening his curls, sprinkled with golden glitter, and wincing from the dust. “This is a satiated whore who is aroused only by the blood of gladiators flowing in sufficient quantities, and understands only the language of the whip.”
He complained to me about his capricious and hysterical wife, who did not want to let him go to Egypt, about the eternal intrigues of senators, about the treacherous unreliability of slaves and about the acquisitiveness of creditors. Not really understanding who I was and where I came from, he nevertheless decided, seeing my position in the imperial retinue, to enlist me as an ally.
When we got to the hunting spot where we saw the Moor for the last time, the dogs became nervous and began to howl, their tails between their legs and their noses moving in the wind. The horsemen cordoned off the thickets in a circle and, banging their swords on their shields and loudly hooting, began to slowly close in. We waited in an open clearing in the center. Our horses pranced anxiously, flaring their nostrils, shaking their muzzles, and snorting madly.
The Moor appeared suddenly. Jumping out of the thickets, he saw us and stopped for a moment. Letting out a deafening, piercing roar, he braced himself, preparing to jump, digging the ground with his front paws and whipping his sides with his tail, raising pillars of dust. Antinous, with a spear at the ready, pulled the reins, spurred his horse and stepped closer to the Moor. They stood almost close to each other. Antinous could easily pierce the red-singed mane of the Moor with his spear, but he hesitated and waited for something.
Adrian, swinging, threw his spear, but not at the neck or even at the heart of the lion, which he could have easily done, but under the ridge, towards the tail. The spear got stuck between the bones and was thrown around in circles, tearing the wound. The Moor went mad with pain and rage, and, standing on his hind legs, aimed at Antinous’s horse. Strung by the reins, the horse reared up, raising its hooves over the gaping grin of steel fangs, exuding the heat of animal breath and the roar of the lion’s mouth. But even now Antinous did not pierce him with his spear.
Adrian watched them calmly, absorbedly, confidently. And only when, having slashed his claws along the silky horse’s neck, the lion fell over backwards under the horse’s hooves, raising his paws and waving his stuck spear and, preparing to jump up again, pointed his outstretched claws at Antinous, Hadrian struck his blow: quickly, powerfully and accurately; with an experienced, trained hand, to the very place in the thick of the thick mane from which a scarlet fountain stream splashed.
The Moor, stretching out and moving his paws, wheezed and choked on blood and impotent hatred for these incomprehensible, puny creatures. He remembered his mother, the intoxicatingly sweet taste of her milk, the warmth of her skin, games with her brothers, the ringing crunch of antelope bones under his teeth, the first days of marriage and the languid moan of his lioness, when he convulsively bit into the folds of her neck, her stunning, making him forget everything the rest is the smell. And her indifferent, indifferent look when he was expelled from the pack; her anxious gaze, following their doomed lion cubs. The Moor wriggled in convulsions and kept trying to get up, but his mane, stretching in an even velvety wedge along the bottom of his belly to his hind legs, swelled redder and thicker, became darker, bristling with wet tufts and dropping ruby petals onto the sand.
All this happened so quickly that when Lucius and I rode up from the other end of the clearing, where we were waiting for the lion, it was already over. Adrian carefully, holding his sword at the ready, pushed the Moor with the toe of his sandal and, making sure that his eyes were glazing over, stepped victoriously onto his mane. Lucius, straightening his curls with his usual movement, stepped on her too, as if posing for a portrait. The Moor suddenly twitched again, uttering his last, dying roar. Lucius, to Adrian’s satisfied laughter, jumped back in fear, but, having recovered and come to his senses, bowed in a graceful court bow: “Only a king can kill a king…” The lion’s convulsions began to gradually subside.
Antinous had little interest in the dead lion. He washed the wounds of his horse: four bloody stripes; two deeper ones – in the middle, and gently stroked and calmed him. The excitement of the recent fight was still playing in the eyes of both of them. Sensing my silent question, he whispered: “Only a king should kill a king,” and a barely noticeable grin ran across his swollen lips. Only I could notice her. Or maybe it just seemed to me.
After the hunt, Adrian was in good spirits and agreed to attend the feast that the Alexandrian nobility had long planned in his honor. In the Ptolemaic palace, on a small island northwest of the coast of Alexandria, Hadrian received guests. His toga stood out among others with its wide purple imperial border. He was cheerful and affectionate towards guests and joked a lot.
Lozinsky closed the notebook, put it back in the safe, carefully, trying not to make noise, left the house and got into the car. Restaurants on Emmons Avenue and cheerful fireflies of fishing boats flashed. The late night crowd slowly strolled along the bay, lay on benches, picked their teeth and laughed contentedly.
– I think I owe you this, said Tim . They were sitting in a small restaurant not far from Gramercy Park , where Tim now lived. He called and asked Lozinsky for a meeting .
– I don’t know why it happened. I don’t think he killed himself. I think he was reasonably happy. I think we were happy together. Though, just like all of us, he did have his moods too… We went to the beach together and he did not come back. He said: I’ll go for a swim. And it was getting cloudy and darker. It looked like it was getting stormy. I told him: don’t go into the water, Mitya-boy, you’ll get caught up by the waves. He said: don’t you worry about me… And he was a good swimmer, you know. He stayed in shape. Weather in Rockaways might change like a switch, without a warning, and surf is high. He said: don’t you worry about me. I can swim over the ocean… I didn’t like it. I watched him and then I went into the water myself. I searched for him everywhere, I screamed. He was nowhere in sight. The next thing I remember was the face of a lifeguard who pulled me out.
– Would you like more wine? – the waiter smiled sweetly and knowingly .
– I miss him. I don’t know why it happened. I cannot explain it.
Two years later, Masha accidentally learned from mutual friends that Tim died in San Francisco after overdoing it on “ snowballs ”. They said that he went to clubs and looked for Mitya.
Lozinski entered the highway and sped toward the Rockaways bridge . He walked along the dark, deserted beach, muttering to himself. He fell into the sand, rolling over the dunes, screaming through clenched teeth and tearing up the grass with the butt of his Colt. And he shot at the stars, aiming at the very constellation where the star of Antinous twinkled, but could not find him.
On his way back he was stopped by a policeman.
– Did you hear any gunshots, sir? – he asked worriedly .
“No,” Lozinsky answered in surprise . – I didn’t hear anything. What happened?
Mitya was sitting next to him; the same as always, only very pale.
“Fasten your seat belt, just in case,” Lozinsky wanted to tell him out of habit, but suddenly realized that this was not necessary and remained silent.
“Mother is all worried about where you’ve been, what’s going on…” he just whispered.
Arriving at his workshop, he found a baseball bat, hidden just in case at the gate, and began to destroy Mercedes, Fords, Audios and BMWs with it , waiting for their owners after repairs.
The next morning, when Jose called him, Lozinsky still could not understand what he was talking about, distinguishing only “ problemas … problemas …”
“ Well , call the insurance companies,” he finally squeezed out , half asleep . – They will take care of it.
Mitya grabbed his finger and did not want to go into the water.
“Warm, warm,” said Lozinsky, dragging him along.
“Don’t torture the child,” Masha shouted at them. Let him sunbathe here with me.
“He must learn to swim,” Lozinsky answered her. – He will learn!
“The child is three years old and can’t swim,” Masha muttered disapprovingly and, adjusting her umbrella, turned over on her other side.
Mitya floundered quite cheerfully, and when he winced from the tart sea water, Lozinsky slightly caught him under the belly, on top of the oncoming wave.
– It was important for you to teach him swimming, said Dr. Stein.
– You wanted to be a real father for him. In everything…
“In everything”, thought Lozinsky.
– Did your father teach you swimming too, asked Dr. Stein.
______________________________________
Michael Novakhov (Mike Nova), 718-998-4402.
