this is a translation of a short story i wrote five years ago. I'm not sure if it's a good translation, as I haven't had to do this very often before.
when the spanish civil war broke out in petrograd in 1918, i, the snobby son of a tsarist professor and showcase model bolshevik, fell into the hands of a basque red guard, a true kulak fool from ukraine, who wished for nothing but check my non-existing papers and could have not known, and had no idea that i would be deporting him to siberia on behalf of the nkvd the next morning. as we abused each other – verbally, but the sex was not any less rough because of that – on the floor of a hay barn to the sounds of a barry white best of-vinyl, i thought about how one day i would encounter you in the metro line six:
every time i close my eyes i see it in front of me as if it was real. somewhere between the stations seestraße and philadelphiabrücke, you and your new mack, in a four seater, me, just got in, standing next to the door. our eyes would lock, but it would not be uncomfortable. i would even smile and nod, at last the spell would be broken and i would not love you anymore, would not feel miserable anymore, whenever i had to think about you, hear about you, see you, whether online or in real life.
but even back then, shortly before the falangists would orchestrate a massacre on us in petrograd, before the ukrainian would see siberia and before i would be shot by my grandfather in stalingrad as he was about to shoot my grandfather, even back then i knew, this would never happen. i will never forget what i did to you before the break-up and what you did to me after.
i knew, that i didn’t love you in a long time now, only a memory of the person you used to be, and that i hate the person you’ve become, even though i haven’t seen you in such a long time and couldn’t know what kind of person that was. there’s nothing i wish for more than you to be happy, but on the other hand, i want to make you suffer the same way i had to suffer for months, only for one minute. love, what is love?
is the handle of the bayonet up my ass love, or was it love when you promised me your love forever, and what does it matter? back then in yugoslavia i thought i could never love someone like i loved you again, even tho now i love the daughter of krupp, with whom i’ve spent the night on easter, when we did nothing but quote ernst jünger and wished for another great war, because there would not be anymore wars and we were so terribly bored.
hemingway thought he was part of some lost generation, but he knew, his war was yet to come. becoming a dandy is impossible, if there is no war. jünger knew that and he did unthinkable because of it. this is called ‘anticipated consequential damage’. there is no war for us to come, what damage are we taking from this? are we indeed lost?
when i open my eyes again, i love the krupp woman, but i also love you, and the basque somehow as well, because his sacrifice gave me back my sight, at the same time i love nothing and noone, because i know that there is no love with you pacifists, because with the war you have taken away all of our passion.
i sit on the metro and flee from franco like everyone else and i see the both of you and curse that you have survived as he takes you in his arms, then i curse myself because i have survived as well, because i was born, without ever having felt a desire to do so.
if only he was dead and you were helpless, wanting to cling to a familiar face and we would be together again, even though we both know that would be the same hell as the one from which we just escaped. petrograd, madrid, ljubljana.
paris, 1790, and my head rests on the scaffold, in the shadow of a burning church. the people want my death, and virtue gives them the right. freedom, equality and fraternity need their dead like i need air to breathe. maybe i can still take one last drag on my cigarette through the hole in my throat before the righteous terror takes me into the long darkness. the axe falls and as a dandy i have the pleasure of seeing everything before my eyes one last time.
the seine, the moskva, the danube. the blood and the lust. you. me. nothing.