Writer and serviceman Artem Chekh is preparing to release his new novel “We Didn’t Expect You” this autumn, which he calls a “modern tragedy.” Ukrainian Vogue is publishing an excerpt from it for the first time.
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He was lying on the hard mattress in their bedroom, arms spread wide, just like then. Tired after a long day at the workshop, where he and his assistants had been pouring silicone and plaster for fourteen hours straight, he wanted to sleep but was waiting for Zoya to finish in the bathroom. For a long time now, he had been trying to go to bed earlier to avoid crossing paths unnecessarily, to avoid unnecessary conversations. They had nothing to talk about, no way to fill these domestic voids. What mattered had become unimportant, and there was no point discussing what didn’t matter. She worked from morning till night, and he also woke up before seven and rushed to the workshop. Everything seemed to have settled down, entered a quiet family routine without rapids or whirlpools. Live, enjoy… But the warmth and tenderness that should hold everything together had vanished somewhere. Perhaps, Trush told himself, we are working too much, and each of us is simply exhausted. Perhaps we should rest, go somewhere south, where thin, dark-skinned people live and sell overripe fruit, gain new experiences, drink cocktails on the coast, make love, licking the sea salt off each other’s skin, dance local dances in palm huts, in short, feel each other again… But not now, of course. Later, someday, when we finish the projects, when we dare to speak to each other in the same language we used a year ago. In a comprehensible, calm language.
Zoya entered the room and stopped in front of the mirror.
“You’re not asleep?”
“I was waiting for the bath,” Trush explained.
“Don’t you know I’m pregnant?” she asked.
“You’re pregnant?” Ivan was surprised. “Since when?”
“I thought you knew, noticed.”
“I didn’t notice and I don’t know.”
Zoya lifted her nightgown, exposing her belly. She looked at herself in the mirror, pinched a fold of fat with her fingers.
“You can’t see anything yet,” she said. “I want a boy. We’ll have a beautiful child. And I’ll be an old mother.”
“Stop it.”
“But you know, I’m not sure you’ll be a good father.”
Trush joked then, laughed at her almost fairy-tale delicacy, hugged her, and assured her she would never be old, that people like her don’t age. And then he couldn’t sleep for a long time that night, thinking about what kept him with this woman, whom it was so easy to hurt and so simple to ignore the pain of others? Other people appeared around him with noticeable frequency – easygoing and cheerful, seeking love, having love, and wanting to share it, being intrusive and aggressive in their desire to be loved, being casual and quiet, not believing in themselves or their ability to be happy, but they were also ready for adventures. Ivan, however, seemed to notice no one around, stubbornly clung to Zoya, believed in love, believed that love is chosen forever. He knew how to endure and wait for affection. He knew best how to wait. Now he lay under a heavy winter blanket, burying his nose in the pillow, realizing that he had at least ten years to understand: no matter how patient you are, how faithfully you wait for affection, how many women you overlook, sooner or later you will face the truth. And just yesterday you were skimming Amélie Nothomb on a windy balcony and marveling at her toes, and now she is burning out everything alive within you. And lying beside you, she turns you to face true loneliness.
The next morning, he immediately rushed to the workshop. He brewed coffee, sat for a long time by the glowing potbelly stove, mindlessly watching through the frosted glass of the window as the linden tree swayed in the icy wind and the smoke’s shadow stretched across the snowy surface… And then the workers he hired for big projects arrived. Cigarettes were lit, indecent jokes began.
A month later, he and Zoya flew to the southern beaches, but there were no dances in palm huts, no cocktails on the coast, no sense of unity. In the mornings, they lazily walked to the sea, swam a hundred meters, sat on chalky pebbles, and silently, to the chaotic splashing of small waves, wrapped themselves in white hotel towels and went for breakfast. Then Zoya lounged in front of the TV until evening, stuffing herself with chips and candies, while Trush wandered through the uninteresting surroundings, scraping his legs on coquina and scratching his shoulders on palm branches. He couldn’t stay in the room. The beach irritated him. Once he got drunk at the hotel bar, once he got into an argument with some Russians by the pool, he listened to Zoya complain about his helplessness three times, and overpaid a fruit vendor twice. They returned from the trip crushed and resentful of each other. Zoya’s belly grew, and Trush’s sense of loneliness grew.
And in March, he was invited to participate in “French Spring.”
“We’re not very happy, are we?” he once asked his wife.
Zoya asked him not to bother her with such questions, that she needed to focus on childbirth. He needed to focus on his creativity.
Trush did not return to this topic, instead went on his first date with Anna, and the realization of this fact made his legs tremble. After all, he reasoned, it’s just a date where two attractive people eat salads and wash them down with a tart Sauvignon. The date ended in the park on a bench, where he and Anna finished their second bottle, kissed passionately and wetly under the chestnut trees, and talked a lot about everything. And already swaying in a taxi behind the driver, he timidly sniffed his clothes, imagining that all his acquaintances and relatives, including Zoya, now knew about this strange and drunken evening. He imagined her sitting in a chair with her legs spread wide, unconscious from offense, numb from anger and pain, pregnant and beautiful. Sitting and meeting Ivan with an expression of painful reproach on her face. “Where were you, Ivan? Who kissed your mouth and touched your buttocks? To whom did you say words you haven’t said to me in so long?” But upon entering the apartment, he merely closed the door to the bedroom where his wife was sleeping, surrounded by pillows, tiptoed into the kitchen, poured some random wine into a thick mug, sat on a chair, propped his cheek with his fist, and stared at the white ribs of the plates drying by the sink. He sat like that for about an hour, refilling his wine and warding off a persistent sense of guilt.
This was the beginning of a long and exhausting journey with a double life and an emotionally complex period filled with hysterics, resentment, rage, passion, tenderness, and the eternal fear of being caught, and thus ridiculed and abandoned by the one he so eagerly clung to despite the utter absurdity and uncertainty of his feelings.
And all of this was like an endless childhood summer, when something new and unknown happened every day. A summer that lasted three years. A summer that ended in tragedy and shame, fear and helplessness in the face of superhuman pain.
“Will we be able to be together?” Zoya asked.
“We will be able to be together,” Trush replied. “We are together.”
But they had not been together for a long time.