English / 07.09.2019 / 625

Brasileiro. Chapter III

Nikolay Mokhov, author from the Dark Side of Business

Part I. Vaeroy
Chapter III. Camping

From his warm flat, Brasileiro fell into the moist, dark air. He had a rucksack behind his back.
In the rucksack, he had camping gear, a tent and some cod. Once despised fish was sun-dried in accordance with the Vikings’ recipe. He had a year and a bit on an island of fugitives and thieves, alongside unanswered questions and erratic memories, all under his belt. Brasileiro was thinking about his parents, with whom he hadn’t been in touch for many months. A phone call with them kept being postponed from one Sunday to another. Months disappeared that way. When was the last time he called home? Presumably when he was serving on that rusty vessel. A few years ago.

The man smiled to his thoughts. When he had just arrived on his very first Norwegian island, he saw a big, beautiful ship at the dock. For a few shameful yet pleasant moments, he thought that it’s that ship he would be working on.

Those dreams were interrupted by the port workers. They pointed at the rusty vessel. It was meant to be sent off to be repaired if a special inspection indicated the metal’s excessive thinness. If the vessel’s corpus got as slim as an anorexic girl, then it was supposed to be fattened. However, repairs — they’re expensive, and buying the silence of those who inspected the vessels — that’s cheap. From time to time, the vessels would sink. Nothing to do about that...

The reliable thought that «Everyone here had it this way» upheld Brasileiro’s shaky legal position

Thus, he started living a life of a seafarer. The island, on which he stumbled into his adventures, was called Karma. It was Brasileiro who changed its name to Karma.

The man’s life was tough on him, it would slap him on the back to kick the youthful romance out of him. On a rusty ship, through the boiling, freezing sea, he was transporting cargo of little importance — stones for construction work. One would think, that even a day of such roaming would be enough for the sea of romance to be swallowed by the ocean of cynicism and practicism… Perhaps, there was no sea left. But the underwater lake still fuelled Brasileiro. The long nights when he was standing by the wheel, all by himself, when the sea would get calm, and through the depth of the sky, above his head, the stars would come out… Those moments gave a purpose to his journey. And in his never-ending mental dialogue with his father, Brasileiro would say:

— At least I can see the stars…

In the recent years, even that naive excuse for the strangeness of his existence was gone. On Vaeroy, the light from the stars rarely pushed through the thickness of domestic life. He lacked the strength to lift his head up.

Brasileiro breathed in the cold salty air, nearby, there was turbulence in the sea.
Inside, everything was shrinking. The day before yesterday, he had officially quit the factory. Well, officially is one way to put it. Same as the rest of the fugitives, Brasileiro couldn’t get employed under his real name. Formally, it was the local drunkard working. Meanwhile, the drunkard, too, received a small share — the payment for his documents being used in the employment agreement.

The reliable thought that «Everyone here had it this way» upheld Brasileiro’s shaky legal position. There were no scary criminals on Vaeroy. Even if there were murderers amongst the fugitives, then they didn’t reveal themselves here. By going to the island, people weren’t trying to escape the police as much, as they were trying to escape their own bad thoughts...

From the heading

Rule of the Weakest

A dense leader confident in their authority likes to give out orders.

“Because I said so!” the strongman loudly exclaims.

The leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, comrade Trotsky, called all the shots himself. He did it to show that he was the master of life and death. Trotsky was outsmarted by comrade Stalin.

The Student

I’m watching time grinding big businesses to dust. Some of them I know quite well. Just yesterday, their owners used to think they were rich. Today they find out: a couple more months of quarantine and only dust will remain of all their treasures. And not golden dust — gray dust. Tomorrow, those who used to be held up as an example to all will be forgotten. New heroes will appear. Looking at these stories, I remember the words of my Teacher:

Superstar of Conversational Writing

Oh! Were you expecting something? That’s odd. So many people gathered, and nothing’s happening. No-thing. Absolutely nothing. Can you imagine it? You might have thought we’d have a new text for you here, maybe even a story. One with elements of philosophical and theological discussion, one filled with real stories and adapted for practical use. So many expectations, and here I am, unprepared. I didn’t write a single word. It’s embarrassing, really. Well, don’t you worry. We’ll find something to “snack on”. I can’t promise a real feast of the mind, but there will be some food for thought. Like a diligent housewife who wasn’t expecting guests, I’ll have to come up with something on the spot. That’s not a problem. I just have to find the first Word. The second one will find itself. And before you know it, we’ll have enough for some salad and a couple sandwiches. It’s no Christmas dinner, sure, but if you pull out that bottle you have stashed away…

Babylonian Squabbles

Once again I wondered: why is it so difficult to understand other people? Recently, we had a heated discussion in our chat. One of our readers pondered: what motivates young people these days to join power structures where there is “no place for individualism”? Someone suggested they could be compared to Batman: “Being afraid of bats, he decided to become one of them. So did these people: being afraid of the authorities, they decided to become them.” Someone else had a counter question, “How successful would they be had they not decided to join these structures?”