🎶 Playlists for the story: Youtube | Spotify
A river's backwater, the sun with an absence of mercy, young Saveliy with a net. The air seems charged, in the air dawns sadness. No, not that... something else, a feeling akin, yet different, delicate, lacy, semi-transparent, like dragonfly wings. At rest—visible, in flight—gone. Boredom? No, not boredom either. Young Saveliy doesn't even know what it is, though he's caught the word from adults. At his age, boredom is like alcohol, not sold without ID, not poured at the table, and they don't even let you sniff the cap, so one must dig trenches between dictionary lines and build towers from tomes of encyclopaedias to the very ceiling of the room or planet, to understand what this quirky little phenomenon is that so agitates some of those around. Even if he knew, Young Saveliy would have no time for it. He sits with his net, thoughts darting inside, dragonflies outside—now hovering over duckweed, now poking their bottoms into it. That's how they lay their larvae, murmured the insect atlas to him at night under the duvet, to which Saveliy only nodded and kept mum, as always, but not on purpose, just so, naturally, in his Saveliy way.
What feeling is it then? Melancholia? There are as many types of it as there are dragonflies. Perhaps nostalgic? Saveliy's too young for that. Azure or existential? Too complex. Seasonal or emerald? Romantic, perchance? ("Oh no, let those pigtailed lasses flit about and squeal.") Or maybe it's the melancholia of change or even cosmic melancholia? All amiss, all askew, Saveliy hasn't reached them yet, they're somewhere yonder, further along the road, round the bend, past the crossroads where Saveliy will turn left, for according to the map, there one ought to go straight. No matter, the time shall come, he'll catch them too, spread their gossamer wings on paper, leave them in the merciless sun to dry, and then, having assigned them a place in his personal collection, he'll gently fold them into the insect atlas with the other dragonflies. Perchance he'll arrange a silent dragonfly exhibition at school without any explanations ("They'll figure it out, it's all clear anyway...") gather a gawking corridor of classmates, youngsters senior and junior, importantly nodding teachers, proudly straightened parents, a couple of "excellent" marks in biology, a diploma for triumpth the regional contest, a handshake from the governor, universal approval and the silent sorrow of dried dragonflies. Perchance he'll show it to none and tuck the swollen atlas far into the sub-bed obscurity, to dust, lava, monsters, notebooks with F's for disobedience, self-glued books about the spy life of giant anthropomorphic dragonflies. Or maybe he'll release them, uncap the jar, wave his hand, the little dragonflies will flutter out in a swarm, say thank you, and, right after their wings do so, vanish into the distance, against the summer wind. Or maybe not.
—Tulubaika,—says the father of a youthfuled Saveliy, carving butter and smearing it on fresh bread. The slice's still on the plate, yet already crunching in the mouth with reverberations from the future.
—Tulubaika...—Saveliy's mother adds irritably and passes the jam jar to dad. The jar's straight from the cellar, sealed firmly, mum can't open it herself. Dad-the-rescuer threatens the jar with a knife, the lid pops, opens dolefully, the jam leaps onto the knife with zeal and berry aroma, and with a couple of deft movements they amicably cover the buttered expanse of the sandwich with a thick layer.
Saveliy is silent, scowling at the sandwich, shifting his whim-embroidered gaze to his parents.
—Tulubaika?—asks dad.
—Tu-lu-bai-ka...—mumbles son.
With a heavy sigh, dad takes the wrong sandwich from Saveliy, bites into it and starts spreading the right one, jam first, only then butter.
—Tulubaika?—dad asks again. Saveliy doesn't answer, for there's no time to dither—the right sandwich shan't wait.
They live either in a village, or in a city in a family of three, four, or five people, or maybe two, perhaps with a cat, one or a couple, a big dog on a chain, a budgie, better a parakeet, preferably from Australia, in a cage, so the cat doesn't eat it, or better two, because if there's only one, that incomprehensible feeling will swell, soar, bloom, decay in black hues, become a gnawing ennui. From it, be it people, cats, dogs, or budgies, they plague out. So the budgie's strident melody will dissolve in the aether, cat Dusya will be left with no potential food, will grow sad, stop purring. ("Well, who needs that?") Then, in honour of those fallen in battles with existence, Saveliy's less young sister, called Kitty, Kathryn on her passport ("Enviable..."), will stand on a little chair in the living room and play an elegy on her violin ("Very talented..."). Legions of guests, friends, relatives, friends of friends, relatives of relatives, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, all together, to the point of calluses, sincerely, sprinkling each other with tears, will clap their hands like they'll never clap for dried dragonflies, neither with their hands, nor on the shoulder.
—Tulubaika!—the guests will chant.
—Tulubaika!—the stadium will roar.—Tulubaika! Tulubaika! Tulubaika!
The less-young sister's cheeks will flush guelder-rose red, she'll smile, take a bow, adjust the bows on her twin-tailed plaits and begin to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" ("Again..."). As it happens, Savelushka doesn't like them, bumblebees, they're not convenient to dry, they make the pages of the insect atlas bulge and then everything falls out, just as young Saveliy's eardrums bulge and everything seems to fall out of his head too, so much so that it can't be found again till morning.
Sensing the presence of the feeling, hanging over him like a pompous chandelier, he'll sit mutely sans visage, sans any expression, gazing not outward, but inward, into the depths where another, but still young Saveliy walks along the river with a little net and jar to catch multicoloured dragonflies. They, the goggle-eyed twigs, seem to jump in the air, eluding the attacks, leaps, and net swings of the young odonatologist. Lo and behold, the jar is full, and the net is torn, and the knees are bloodied, hands all scratched up, the sun retreats in pity, the sky is purple, stars like lanterns, a sickle without a hammer, sweet sleep after a couple of dozen pages. Savelushka sleeps, sees how somewhere betwixt the years forthcoming, he sprints after the dragonfliest of the dragonflies, body like the trunk of an old tree, oak, sequoia, or even baobab, glass wings sparkling in the air, the hum befitting them too, like a helicopter. Anax imperator, face, as per the old testaments of pareidolia, resembling an ancient deity, with a mad smile, either from paralysis or by nature, waving a paw ("Rather a pawest of paws, of course...") —hop on, it seems to say, hop on. He approaches the azure transport, but as he's about to throw his leg over, the dream up and ends.
—Tulubaika,—mum says sternly, opening the door to Saveliy's sleeping chambers. Ere he can unstick his eyes, he nods tacitly, slides off the bed, from pyjamas straight into school attire, and with the feeling ("That very one...") sighs meaningfully.
Teeth, breakfast, rucksack, half an hour's walk to school with his sister, breaks, breaks, breaks, breaks, copious breaks, and a few lessons betwixt them. Younglings play, quarrel, whilst Saveliy drifts somewhere alone but not lonely, now running from the feeling, now trying to catch it, as if playing tag, or hide-and-seek or football. Everyone has it but their own, not common, personal, hanging from the ear, but not akin to noodles, unlike anything else, with its own intensity, with different cracking of the meter used by special scientists and professors ("Or professeurs?") to measure it, the best minds of humanity, smashing their occiputs and foreheads bloody, donating hair for wigs, washing elbows with household soap before nibbling. Saveliy's meter seems to be off the charts, but only almost, always waltzing on the periphery of the permissible. The allure of the feeling is that it, just like zero, is squeezed between two infinities: minus below, and plus above, no matter how you count it—you'll wear your tongue out.
—Tulubaika?—someone tugs at Saveliy's shoulder, yanking him from his mental veil.—Tulubaika?
Young Saveliy stays mum, shrugs his shoulders. Maybe it's "Tulubaika", and maybe it's not.
—Tulubaika-tulubaika!—the assemblage guffaws.
—Tu-lu-tu-lu-tu-lubai-ka!—they further tease.
A faceless lad drags Saveliy by the sleeve after him, just as that faceless lad would drag girls by their pigtails, or years later would drag his unruly little son to school, or a bag of banned books to the recycling, or a stubborn donkey by the reins to Jerusalem, but Saveliy doesn't go, jerks his arm, turns around and walks away along the path of tattered linoleum ("You lot got it too..." Savelushka concludes to himself). This feeling is thinner than wings, but stronger than diamond, but the main thing is not to get tangled in it like a kitten in a polythene bag, lest one accidentally snuff it. This feeling has an ubiquitous presence, it's on the gentle autumn wind, sticks to leaves on trees, falls with them into a heap of rot, smells of gooseberries, tomorrow of silage, creeps into books, into holes in letters, into dots above Ё, into wrinkles of pages, bookmarks, granddad and granny's foreheads, unironed sheets, into music, into scratches on Yngwie Malmsteen's records, into dust on the stylus needle, into the darkness of dad's out-of-tune guitar, into mum's out-of-tune head, into the intricacies of musical notation, into the tornado raised by a bumblebee's flight, into cassettes, into the lyrical voice of a foreign performer, hammering tirelessly "Tulubaika, Tulubaika, Tulubaika..." until the tape tears or a vein tears in the brain, into films, notably black and white ones, notably 4:3, notably with a cheerful plot and sad music, into cartoons, a small part of them, mainly Soviet ones, into old photographs, rarely into new ones ("They have a thin layer of time..."), into drawings drying by felt-tip pen, into ink blots on a shirt ("The pen leaked on its own..."), into paintings, into the reproduction of Repin's "Dragonfly" ("Which, for some reason, has a girl drawn in it..."), into the smell of fresh paper, burnt plastic, heated dust and phosphorus, mushroom soup, the aroma of mother's perfume, the stench of grown-up sister's perfume, into explosions and gunshots on TV, into the black stripe on Pikachu's tail, into meteors falling in batches, asteroids, planes, leaves and snow, into watercolours spreading across the table, into the eyelashes of a broken brush, into eyelashes covered with snow in winter, into black ice, into freezing cold, into melting snow, into melting ice cream ("Better pistachio..."), spilled into a backpack that's flown off a cliff behind the schoolyard into an open field, into fields of ruins of ancient empires and fields of solar panels, into the first day of September, into the last stamp in a passport, into the first kiss on the cheek, into the last five seconds before midnight on the doomsday clock, into vacuum, dad's bald spot, dog's mange, the stench of boiled eggs, corn, into a parade of crop-dusters for the 9th of May, into wafts of poppy seed buns, with cinnamon, with custard ("With pistachios..."), the fragrance of dandelions, nettle soup, sour sorrel, bitter cough syrup, into the rumble of thunder, into the last lullaby, into rain and slush, everywhere and anywhere, in screams, laughter, in silence, in tears, their concealment, in words, their absence, in explaining the inexplicable, in darkness, at dusk, and in light, be it sun or moon ("Eyes need time to adjust to the light"), in thoughts by day, at night in dreams, and in sickness and in health, and for richer, for poorer, till death do us part.
Lo and behold, Savelushka, tiny tot, seemingly just born, not even three years old, and already turned blue, little heart slowed down, eyes round, no strength to cry. Behold them whisking him off to the village wise woman, a busybody, a healer, a holy misfit. He lies on the table on a goose feather pillow in her miniscule kitchen, where in the nook, in lieu of an icon, hangs a black square, not to shield from the saint's countenance, not to unlock some extrasensory chakra, and not even out of love for Russian avant-garde, but because she's blind—whatever she looks at, in essence it's all just a black square. Behold the granny's shrivelled paws pour herbal elixir from a spoon into his mouth, rub his pallid little hands and feet with a stinging liquid, whilst her wrinkled lips and tongue gibber somewhat in her own village-granny lingo.
—Tu-lu-bai-ka... Tu-lu-bai-ka...—that's all one can hear, she grunts, showering mantras.—Tu-lu-bai-ka... Tu-lu-bai-ka...
And thus it goes on repeat, whilst tiny Savelushka lies on the pillow, shivering, afraid to blink, pupils hiding in the irises, examining with childish gazes the worried adult countenances and the black square hanging above them. It smells of spirits, linden, dog-rose, mustiness, a handful of the past, mountains of the future. You, Saveliy, hang in there, it's alright, you shall thaw out, erupt in tears, slumber serenly ("Tu... tulubaika?").
After all, you've got your whole life ahead. You'll mount the emperor dragonfly, grip tightly its azure body. Your transport will drone like a helicopter, wings aflutter, and lo, the entire world lies beneath you: ant hills of metropolises, hamlets, barely visible rivulets, the shimmer of reservoir surfaces, endless expanses of oats, the flame of September rowans, the gold of birch groves—all will run breathlessly into the distance trying to catch up with you. The wind will ruffle your hair, tickle your cheeks, nip at your squinting eyes. Clouds will drench you with rain, pelt you with hail. The sun will blind you, burn you with fire. But you, brave rider, will care not a jot. You'll return home, salute the dragonfly farewell. It's off lakeward to the children, you're homeward to tackle arithmetics, and the world—somewhere on the back burner. The feeling will clear up anew, dawn, settle cosily in your head. There's no word that could express its elusiveness, except, perhaps, one... (“Oh, and did you know? Dragonfly eyes are like magic! They're made up of lots and lots of tiny peepholes, all stuck together like a big puzzle. Each little peephole shows the dragonfly a picture, so it's as if the dragonfly has thousands of itty-bitty windows in its eyes! That's why dragonflies can see everything so clearly, even the teeniest, tiniest bugs flitting about. It's like they have the sharpest eyes in the whole wide insectverse!”)
This story is also my submission to the Soaring Twenties Symposium. The monthly theme was "Flight".
