And if I grant that it was True, all that He set down for us in the eternal books, all that He wrote, then how am I to make right, and just, and God's? The way it came shrieking out of his throat, how he rattled, how he writhed, how the blood ran off him, how on his mother's face, on Granny Sveta's, on the face of a passer-by, a stranger with nothing of him in the DNA, nothing you could identify, how horror and pain came up through his skin forever, like a tattoo.
How am I to accept that the nausea, the guts, the revulsion, the smell of burnt meat are the fruit of Your grace, the fruit of all the good You have wrought? How do I allow that this one here, with no face, no little hands, who yesterday was a sweet little bunny, a kitten, warm and bright, who smelled of milk and porridge, who always went out in his little hat and ate his overboiled courgette, who was… and now is not that at all. Is not.
And should I forgive, as You commanded — said not on Twitter, not on a fence, but with dry lips, nailed to the cross of the tree — should I allow that in those who drowned, the wretched and the defenseless, the ones chained to their beds, the old and the small, the shaggy ones left on their ropes, the horned ones shut in and driven, that in the souls of those who wash away the work of human hands with a flood, and wash the people away too, there is also Your likeness, and a beauty, pure and free?
Tomorrow we'll forget most of it — school in the autumn, the older one needs a backpack, what good cheese, do you catch it, that noble mold, that finest thread of a smell? Nails to file, courgettes off the beds in a pile, the card — the cash machine might chew it again, you never can tell, we're off on a trip, damn, we still have to book the tickets back as well, cat's to the vet for shots, meat for the pot, less fat, get the figure ready for the season — and somewhere in the soul, soundless but sure, it is already opening: hell.
Human life is overrated, overpriced, way out of line. Yes, hold on — let me finish the thought and I'll pour the wine. Chase it with Pule, put a bowl of borscht away; you thought everyone here was slim little ladies, silly geese, fifis, nailsies-browsies-frockies. Yeah, fuck that, they've all scattered already. Sure, any day.
It was in there, not in Russian, but it was said: don't build where the rust devours and thieves dig through and steal. What are you all running about for, crying, wailing, wringing your bloodied little hands and feet, "A UNESCO monument, turrets, frills, eighteenth century (!), was standing right here yesterday, it was real!"
To alternate a photo from somebody's closed-casket double funeral with a photo of a double espresso, still warm. No, no, I'm not discussing it, no prejudice, no hypocrisy, but that, fuck it, bitch, is fucking bad form.
If you think I'm the one standing here all in white, then of course — YES. Dead right. Judging my neighbour, oh, that I'll do always, day and night. Sorting out the specks, the beams, the cataracts — in somebody else's eye. Where do you keep the stones for neighbors here? Give me a couple, the heavier ones, no, I don't need a bag, I'll pay by card, and I think I'll be off. Bye.
After the strike of the “Okhmadet” Children’s Hospital in Kyev
No, no, don't start telling me that you've got kids, and your plans caved in, and just look what the ruble's worth now, and you haven't been to Turkey in three years, and you yourself are sick to death of this war and all this trouble. Here you go, sunshine: a shrink-pack of still water (the half-litres), humility, repentance, a crown of thorns, nails, a cross, a plea for forgiveness — now let's go clear the rubble.
Out on the street, you understand, it feels like plus thirty-three in the shade today, And under the rubble, when there's a couple of concrete slabs on top of you and an iron-and-nylon catheter inside you, and you're five years old and what you love most in the world is your mum and macaroni, there it's a good plus forty-five, so come on, my dear, let's go, let's go, no delay.
Come on, come on, roll up your sleeves — they're already passing you down the chain, a length of rebar, and a teddy bear, and a piece of somebody's bed frame; don't snivel, and don't say I gave you no warning. You see, it all always gets through better if it comes through the hands and through the eyes, so look at those licked-down cowlicks on the backs of three-year-olds' heads, sitting meekly by the rubble, cut your fingers on the shards of the medicine ampoules that somebody was still praying over, the way you prayed to an icon, only this morning.
You understand, it always seemed to me that there is always, do you hear me, always room for love, for justice, for forgiving everything, for repentance, for acquittal — that to hate is only to make the trouble swell… But when I see exhausted mothers sitting out in that heat with their dying children on the ruins of a hospital, I even want every single one who had a hand in it to burn for two or three eternities in the vilest hell…