Then goes on winter vacation
It is a chilly, chilly morning of what will turn out to be a sunny and warm Indian summer day in Kyiv – just one, and perhaps one of the last, in a fragile stretch of time, the end of which no one can predict with any great science or certainty.
It will be the type of day when you step out only lightly geared against the cold that, held off by this gift of warmth, seems to be more of an idle threat than a fast-approaching reality. Fear itself is pushed far back into the winter of one’s soul.
It will be the type of day when the air, slowly heated by the sun, will smell freshest, pulsing with the energy of light, and be at its most alive, at the very peak of its riotous persistence, no longer oppressed by summer heat and smog, nor yet bone-chilling dreary and severe, frozen in by unforgiving clouds and ceaseless winter fog in nights that never end.
It will be the smell of cold air heated to just the right distance between the end of summer and mid-fall. In the Northern Hemisphere, the only part of the Earth where this is possible, there is no greater freshness in the world.
Close your eyes and pull this air in through the nostrils of your mind. Smell it – smell this air. You still have time.
As yet, it is only 5:30 in the morning.
Josh Davies, with his dark wavy hair just beginning to go gray and a face trying to decide between old age and youth, is walking through Kyiv’s bohemian and quickly gentrifying district of Podil, church-domed flatwise against the Dnipro River.
Despite this morning’s frosty chill, he is barreling down the gridded narrow shadows of street in a short-sleeved checkered farmer’s shirt tucked tight into combine dungarees, a hard rounded-out pouch bespeaking the fearsome power of a lifter rather than an old man’s sagging flab and fat skin-stretched stomach getting in the way, throwing his weak legs off balance, making it harder to stand.
And indeed, as his short, bowed legs gun him powerfully and quickly toward the Pedestrian Bridge connecting the Kyiv mainland with the nefarious Trukhaniv Island, he somehow manages to carry Welsh Losser under his left arm, pressing Losser’s center of gravity against his hip with his forearm, while hooking his forefinger through a belt loop of Losser’s pants for a grip. To compensate for the large weight on one side, he bends but very little sidewise the other way. He’s as though powered by an unnatural force outside himself, or by a force from inside that is natural but altogether terrifying and un-human. But it may not be worth the effort of speculation. In his right hand, Davies carries his fishing tackle, some of which he appropriated from The Ferret, now sadly dead.
As he briskly walks, he hums to himself one of those noncommittal tunes with no real words or melody, going ‘dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dee-dee,’ betraying a true and rare joyfulness of his soul – such as it is. He sports one of those wristwatches that seems to tell everything but the time. He is also wearing sunglasses and black leather gloves.
The city’s still asleep, mostly… But there, there goes an old man, whose age helps lengthen his time on Earth by depriving him of sleep. He sees Josh Davies with Losser under his arm but minds his own business: he’s seen enough in his day. And there, there’s a middle-aged man walking with his still sleepy-headed young daughter, perhaps bringing her to some special class he’s having her take before the normal school day starts some hours hence. They also pay Davies and Losser no mind.
And there, there goes a babushka, bent and pushing a wide cart of her garden vegetables toward her place on the sidewalk. Davies, Losser – what does she care? She’s got enough problems.
As Davies gets up on the bridge, Losser under his arm sings:
“Humpity dumpity eshy
My name’s not Losser Welshy
Bumpity yumpity osser
The one and Welshy Losser…”
… and other non-sequitur nonsense of similar strain.
Welsh Losser is completely insane.
You can imagine the loony expression on his pink-pig child molester’s fire hydrant face, the walleyes in his head going round and round and round behind the thick glasses. A depraved Frosty the Snowman, his top hat just full of special magic tricks for the kids indeed; a wet-mouthed greeting card Santa Claus sticking perverse toys into children’s stockings, spreading his private fluids over the fireplace; a demented Elmer Fudd with a limp-noodle shotgun slavering after Porky Pig as a stuttering little baby piglet little piggy child; a drooling Pillsbury Doughboy climaxing when you push your finger into his stomach; but mostly, a Welsh Losser, who had seen his lover and best friend, the trench-coated and fedora-hatted large person-like rodent The Ferret, cut into small pieces by Josh Davies using nothing but a big kitchen knife right before his very (wall)eyes.
“All righty, now, sir, in you go,” says Davies as he slams a large hook into the back of Losser’s head, just where the skull meets the neck.
“Woo-hoo, hoo-wee” sings out Losser, his gravelly voice vibrating like the boing of a grime-clotted jew’s harp plucked into the summering air of this crisp autumn day, as Davies lowers the bait into the mildly churning waters of the mighty Dnipro. “Rigeximakfipla, nyungh nara nya,” Losser adds somewhat tastelessly and absolutely without call.
Now it is Davies’s turn to sing, and his once shaking old man’s larynx chimes with the vigor and defiance of youth:
“O, red herring, red herring,
Come out, come out wherever you are…”
No sooner than the chant rings through the Earth’s waters when, lo and behold, a giant red herring hailing from the Baltic leaps out of the river and with the big-lipped gaping jaws of its enormous mouth chomps down on Losser’s entire swinging body – cleaning the skeleton of all its flesh, except for the repulsive pink head with its walleyes goggling inside, leaving only some spine and ribs attached – before plunging back into its homeward deep.
“Smart fish,” Davies says, and, reeling up the last of Losser, with his big kitchen knife he cuts away the skeletal remainder, which falls clatter-spatter into the river, leaving just the gruesome pink round head still fastened on the hook.
Davies talks to the head and the head talks back.
They seem to speak to each other a long time. We don’t know what they are saying, except we think we hear Davies say, “That’s about what I wanted,” and in reply an agreeable “nyug-nyaaa…” and then Davies resumes his earlier high-spirited humming – “dum-dee-dee-dum-de-deeeee…”
Davies puts the head in a big red lockbox and calls it a day.
In our last scene, we see Davies reclining in a beach chair on top of a red-tile-roofed building of recreation and leisure on a hilltop in Lisbon, looking out at the sea. For some reason he had wanted to be in Gibraltar looking across the waters at the African Coast, but has only now realized his mistake. But to Josh Davies, it doesn’t really matter.
He looks down at the mint julep in his hand and says, “They don’t make them anywhere like they do in Georgia.”
“Aw, pshaw… Gramps,” he says next, shaking his head in amused acceptance, his young old face wearing a wry expression. “Good ol’ Jeb Davies…”
He puts the mint julep down on a big red box.
Filed by John Smith, October 9, 2014