The corner of Yarsoslavska and Kostyantynivska streets is lit up like a theater stage. And there’s a Welsh Losser impersonator out in front of the Kyiv Commix Cafe. His round head swivels as his walleyes examine each passerby, searching for the faintest evidence of interest in the show that he believes he alone is meant to put on.
His voice is gruff and strangely merry.
“Nyuh, nyuh, nyuh,
Ain’t I a duff?
But the ladies and the gents say they can’t get enough.”
His suit is smooth yet creased, his tiny glasses shine in the glare. His chubby face is red and his lips all puckered up as if he’d just been kissed by someone not long gone.
Andrew’s Pub across the street is but a shadow. The other two corners are also dim, the buildings that occupy them displaying neither a distinct shape nor a definite color.
Inside sits a no-longer young man and his, to all appearances, once-attractive wife.
“John, wasn’t that an air-raid siren.”
“No, you are mistaken. I did not hear a thing.”
“Well, it’s getting late, at any rate, and we mustn’t violate the curfew.”
“We won’t, worry not, I’ve brought my timepiece along.”
The café’s single, not small room is fully occupied by an audience of dark flitting figures, whose faces are illuminated fire-red when they lean over the steaming vapor plates placed in the center of each small table.
And there’s a Josh Davies look-a-like, replete with flannel checkered shirt and workingman’s jeans, who wanders seemingly absentminded between tables and bar, only to occasionally swoop in on a party of unsuspecting guests, as if accusing them of some hideous crime, the length of his bony back bent over the tabletop, a single finger waving menacingly before their frightened eyes, before he just as unexpectedly straightens up, turns away and moves on catlike to another corner of the room.
Sometimes he can be seen in the light of one of the large glass windows, tugging at this chin as he stares onto the street, or cinching the wide leather belt that straddles his thin sinewy waist.
“John, you said you weren’t going to drink tonight. Have another herbal tea, if you like.”
“You know coffee keeps me awake at night, gives me the jitters.”
Oh yes, how could I forget?”
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to nighttime Podil.”
“Isn’t that the Half Guinea, John.”
“Yup, that’s him, all right.”
“I hope the war doesn’t interrupt tonight’s program,” the Guinea beams.
The audience laughs and it almost sounds like a recording.
“The Hunched Cornish couldn’t make it tonight. I’m told that he couldn’t find his head.”
The audience laughs again.
“What a horrible man,” thinks John Smith’s wife. But her husband isn’t listening. His eyes are riveted to the smiling middle-aged Mediterranean, and John Smith is smiling too.
“Those awful green corduroy trousers! And that black three-quarter length leather jacket… He looks like he’s dressed for a peep show,” she thinks. Her grimace of disgust is in fact the only facial expression visible in the otherwise almost fully darkened cafe.
The Half Guinea is standing centerstage, in a clearing of the small tables, and under a bright white light.
He turns to look at John Smith’s wife, his eyebrows raised in an arch, his lips curved up in a smile, the furrows of his face as deep as field trenches.
John Smith’s wife winces and then turns her head to look away. Her husband is still sitting immobile, smiling stiffly at the Kyiv Commix Café’s Master of Ceremonies for the evening.
Turning her head again, she notices that everyone else whose face she can make out has the same insipid smile on their face as her husband does.
“Are we having a good time,” The Guinea roars, still looking at John Smith’s wife.
The audience roars, too.
The cafe goes black and silent, save for the howl of an air-raid siren, first short and low, then long and screeching, piercing the night with the sound of so many unseen fears.
“John, aren’t you coming?”
“No, I want to finish my report.”
“One of these days, our flat’s going to be hit, and our kids will be left without a father.”
“I don’t like bomb shelters.”
“I don’t like wars, but we’re in one all the same. What if you die before it’s even published?”
“Then that’s where the story will end.”
“And that’s where we’ll end, too – sort of written out of existence. Can’t we just leave Kyiv, and have a real life.”
The howl of the siren is now screaming.
“I’ve told you already, countless times. This is the only life we have.”
“Well, we’re going to the bomb shelter, anyway. Who are you reporting to? Who doesn’t know by now our story?”
“Good question,” Smith responds, leaning back in his chair like a storybook detective, then fitting his fedora to his head. Although shirtless, save for a tank-top undershirt, a pair of dark suspenders stretch across his chest and below to his light-gray suit trousers.
His wife darts him one last look, then rushes out of the small flat with a young child in each hand, and her coat under her arm.
The siren begins howling once again, but the whine is cut short by a thundering explosion, and the lights go out in Kyiv, in Podil, in the flat of “Detective” John Smith.
Filed by John Smith, Jan. 26, 2024