beginning of a short story vi

Sveta the Flower Dealer Has An Ass That Will Stop Someday But Not Today My Friends

Sveta the flower dealer in the perekhod under Pushkin Square knows very well you can’t sell flowers in even numbers – they’re reserved for funerals, and it’s very bad luck to encourage a funeral. And Russians are a superstitious bunch, when it comes to spilling salt, or opening umbrellas inside, or giving knives as presents, or sitting at the corner of a table, or not spitting thrice over your left shoulder when you wish someone too well. In fact, sometimes it’s amazing to imagine that such a superstitious nation managed to get people into space. And them bring them back.

Of course Sveta has heard all of the tales, from those who tell tales in her line of work, of what happens to you if you sell someone an even denomination of flowers – it was far worse than what happens to the people who actually purchase them, and just slightly less worse than what happens to the people who receive them. It was an inconceivable thought, and one she had considered only about as seriously as she had emigrating to Azerbaijan.

Florists – though florist might be the wrong word for what Sveta is because that usually implies some idea about flowers, their origin, their upkeep, their significance, etc., all knowledge Sveta lacked completely and unapologetically – would much rather sell three flowers than four, showing an very unusual and very un-Russian-serviceperson-like disregard for the folded notes in their customers’ wallets.

Now, as to where Sveta works. It’s probably the busiest perekhod in the entirety of the Russian Empire. Perekhod is technically the Russian word for “underpass,” but such a translation does the word a grave injustice. Because, you see, an “underpass” is a slim, half-lit walkway under a street. It’s all business, and it’s all about getting you from one side to the other. A perekhod, on the other hand, runs the gamut from a simple passageway all the way to massive, sprawling, self-contained underground cities, filled with: crowds of teens in leather jackets banging away on electric guitars with friends nearby aggressively asking passers-by for pocket change; groups of youth drinking canned alcopops and beer out of the bottle because it’s cheaper there than in a bar and no one has any room at home; amorous embracing couples, on their way into and out of the metro, ducking the wind on the streets but not in any hurry to their cramped privacy-less apartments; long lines of shops seemingly built into the walls selling alcohol, pirated DVDs, bakery-fresh bakery-goods, counterfeit watches, panties, CDs, batteries, machine-painted Russian kitsch, (and flowers); the browsers trying on the hats and watches and squinting at themselves in tiny mirrors; strolling guards who have probably been drinking since the morning before yesterday; packs of police looking for the odd foreigner speaking in loud foreign tongues or darker citizens of nearby-by republics for document checks and the odd fine; stray sleeping dogs; homeless men, long relieved of what once seemed like an instinct of propriety, pissing against the walls.