Ihor Pavlyuk

The old footbridge above the ocean was too long. Its extreme point commands the view of New York’s highest constructions – Empire State Building, and the Twins, two modern office constructions, regular as the genetic code of the simplest…
March finished licking the salt fruit-drops on the oak, barkless ribs of the footbridge whispering with his gray moustache the starlets rocked by the ocean.
– Strew on this, green starlet, the Monk told the still beautiful woman in almost girlish clothes.
Both of them were kneeling at the end of this road into the element.
– Let’s be like that for a while, she answered. One feels like thinking on while kneeling. I used to know Patrick when he was still a dear small red Irishman in his homeland, who would go fishing with his father, and, most probably, was learning his Irish aphorism: begun – one third done.
A silver casket in the hands of the woman sent several Moonshine reflections into the black tenderness of the space, and, perhaps, time…
– Then he fished, yet not from the poverty, but from the nostalgia for his distant-distant, not, probably, spiritual, nor corporeal but the spinal and brain instinct of the Hunter, the woman said breathing in the oceanic air, as if getting a treatment by salt. – And after one episode, when a big fish, caught by him fell into the sand, and, longing to splash itself on the glands with its tail, disappeared into the Earth’s distance, and he wasn’t able to hold it, and beat it in despair, and was unable to kill it…and didn’t know how to leave it, waiting for ages, until it had died by itself – he stopped fishing. He bought a telescope and gazed at the sky, and became an amateur astronomer. Over there, far away, he was looking for his Fish, his Ocean, O-ce-an…, she, his wife, told the young fair-haired Monk, resembling a Celt, though living in a Slavonic country, – We lived in the vicinity of Cork, on the Atlantic coast, there is such a… Strait of St. George. The grandfathers were fishermen, caught cods and herrings… However, when the underground military organization – the “Civil Army” – was formed, they entered it on plotting together. Participated in the Dublin uprising of 1916. Served prison terms. Escaped. Fought as guerrillas. Were happy when the Right Sinn Fein and the British Government signed the Treaty proclaiming the formation of the Eire dominion, – the Free state of Ireland… Patrick and me were born as free as the waves. Yet when De Valers government came to power again, the parents were faced with the only choice: losing the freedom (they were not afraid of death) or the Mother and. Besides, they also had us, – those who had and who will have a chance. Will have a chance… And they challenged the ocean that has brought them, it has many others, our spiritual and kindred brothers here, to its old shore, where the Myth of freedom lived, where stands over there. The Woman extended her hand in a wing-like manner. Her almost golden statue with a torch that, in case it falls, will burn the ocean, and if it doesn’t, – it will burn the sky and the wind, the wind from home” Patrick was fifteen, and I was eleven. We had a hard and happy life here”.
– And, did he beg to bequeath to burn himself, asked the Monk.
– Yes, he did. And to spread the ashes over the ocean towards the forefather motherland...
It’s fine, it’s romantic to reduce one’s body to ashes. On the one hand, I don’t mind to be... either. But, you see, people learn cloning already. So, it occurs to someone to resurrect you to, nothing will come out of the ashes.
Patrick spoke about it, with irony, but spoke. And you know it even interested his certainly – to get dispelled over the water...
To ultimately pass trough the water, fire, wind, and fall down to the ground, clay irresistibly. That, you know, seems to be the truth.
In life he, Patrick, was like this, – quick-tempered, touchy, though, he possessed the mettle, – won Marathon races, loved flowers, our daughters.
He loved me at first sight… took a Slav from a poor Asiatic country into his team. Not only, – it’s certain – for Irish – autumnal color of the hair
The Sun had scattered into minutest, tiniest pieces – the stars and was getting a lemon night.
Fidget cosmopolitan cars raced about New York, some of them being wonderful, like people nesting in tall and it seemed, rootless palaces of delusions and dreams, with their long having been rendered lifeless religions, bright yet fleeting beauties, plays of cheap words-advertisements .
The soul of the young Monk and the still youngish Women absorbed all that the way fish drinks water, starts drinking in the glass of windows gently framed. A star had almost horizontally dashed through the sky: neither down, not upwards, perhaps, rather, upwards, from the Ocean, where everything organic all that awaited a flight, got out.
– It’s Patrick, said the Woman taking the young Monk by the hand.

Translated by Ivan Teplyy