Soviet Reunion

A year in the life of Sergey Lemikov or the Diary of S. Lemikov! 

December 31

14:00 hours, 21 minutes 

First entry

Daily entries to follow 

Mother said I should take up journaling. That it will help with the grieving of my marriage. That it will help me focus my energy for the new year and “make something of myself”. Maybe she just wanted to re-gift the notebook her damn colleague Masha gave her, but maybe it’ll work. 

So here goes; I saw Gregor today. I had waited in line for 30 minutes to get the piece of bread and there he was; the treacherous bastard. He didn’t look any different, now that I know he’s evil. I never took him for the kind of man to steal another man’s wife. 

This year is going to be better. No. It will be. No Sergey, no Sascha. Fuck them both. This year will be about me. I’ll lose weight, I’ll cut out the drinking (I won’t promise to cut it out altogether because I know that won’t happen). I’ll find another woman, a better job, and maybe I’ll finally move out. This year has to be better. I’m going to write and reflect in this journal every single day. 

I’ll write later, but first I’m going out. Mother wants me to buy her cake for New Years. Boris invited me to the company party. Maybe I’ll swing by. I’ll fill you in on the details later! 

Until then, diary!

Sincerely, 

Serg.

January 24, 

22:06

I’ve botched all of my resolutions. Gained weight, as if possible. January has failed like my marriage. I’ve found a new route to work. It takes ten minutes longer, but I don’t have to pass my Sascha’s newspaper stand and see her anymore. I almost went by yesterday- but I won’t. I’ll be strong. I’ll write in this daily. I made a promise to mother. 

February 14, 

03:65  

written 03:57

This day is for suckers. Love is for suckers. I love nothing, not Sascha. Nope. Never did. Not her stupid blue eyes and red hair, not the way she would laugh. Not the way she always groaned and rolled her eyes whenever I did something stupid. 

I only love one thing - VODKA. I LOVE VODKA. VODKA. VODKA VOKAAAAAAAAAA.

Serg. 

Sergeeeeey

Sergey Lemikov, lover of vodka and women!

God among mortals!!!

why the fuck did she leave

March 3

13:30

I’ve broken every promise I’ve made to myself. I pass by her newsstand every day like the pathetic mess I am. 

She’s pregnant. 

Writing it down makes it feel more real. 

Either that or she’s fatter. I should hope it’s the latter. it’s probably not. If she’s just fat, it means she didn’t cheat on me. But she wanted a kid. I want her to be happy - I must be crazy. 

 If I get this new job, she’ll come back to me. I’ll move out of mother’s. Together, we’ll raise the family we always wanted. No. I’ll leave her behind. She’ll come crawling back to me, and I’ll leave her.

I need a goddamn cigarette, clear my head, forget my name, find a woman who looks nothing like Sascha and tastes nothing like her. I need to burn this before anyone reads it. This was a terrible idea. 

April 9 (or April 10) - 02:00, or so I don't know. Who cares?

Sacha’s belly was bigger today, or yesterday I guess. I watched her for a full day, sitting on the park bench across from the newsstand. I’m a cliche, that’s what I am, a pathetic shell of a man, drinking from a brown paper bag, watching - I didn’t even leave until it got dark and she was locking up. Gregor met her with flowers. I never did that. Is it because of the flowers, is that why she left? 

 I stumbled the streets until I ran into Igor; I swear it was Igor, that fat kid from primary school. If it wasn’t, it sure looked like him, the starving, thin and bones, no food, nothing in his body but the drugs, version of him. He held me up with a knife. I lost everything. Wallet, the ID card for my new job (my boss is an asshole, and he’s going to kill me) and bus fare. Broke my goddamn shoes on the walk home. 

If it hadn’t watched Sascha like the sad sack I am, I wouldn't have walked home so late, Igor’s twin wouldn’t have —- 

I don’t see the point of writing this. It’s making me more upset. It’s not helping. 

April 14 or the day everything sucked

I just got fired. FUCK. It’s all Igor’s doppelganger’s fault. Mr Ivanovich didn’t even listen to me, he wouldn’t let me explain. 

“You lost company property,” he said. He just fired me right then and there. I’m moving back into mom’s tomorrow. Pathetic, or perhaps as pathetic as living in a flat with 6 other men, half of whom are named some variance of Dimitri. Mitya, Dimi, ‘Mitri - at least mother will feed me. 

That’s something to be glad about, I suppose. 

Who am I kidding? Sascha’s gone. It’s all hopeless. 

June 28

08:15

I have seen no one. Not Sascha, or mother, or Gregor. No run-ins with primary school lookalike drug addicts. Nothing but the four walls of this factory. Mother got me the job in early May. The pay is shit. So this is settling, this is death. 

14:55

This journal has been nothing like Dante’s Inferno. It has not fulfilled some unknown dream of being a writer or tapped into unknown potential. It has been a slow suicide letter, that’s all. Maybe years from now someone will find this and think “what a pathetic bum,” they'd be right. Shit - I have to get back to work. 

August 31

23:45

Sascha is sick. Watching the bodega for three hours from the park bench today proved that. 

September 7

10:34

A Saturday. A respite from the work and the grey walls, grey overalls, grey life. The day is hot today, sweltering. Sweat beads are trickling down my face. I’m sitting in a coffee shop, sipping espresso like the Italians do. Olga from work has told me about a new band. I bought their record with my savings and haven’t stopped listening. Maybe I’ll ask her out. I could take her to that cafe Sascha always used to drag me to. I can’t remember the name. Women like it. Maybe if I had listened to Sascha and taken her there, she wouldn’t have invited her coworker into our bed. Maybe I’ll stop by the bodega and ask her the name.

Time has passed. 

I’m fine now. 

Really, I am. Seriously. 

I don’t cry to sleep anymore. 

Instead, I hum the songs Olga has taught me. I don’t think of Sascha anymore. Things are changing, maybe it’s been long enough. Maybe Mother was right - writing it down helps. 

15:17

I’m sitting on the bench across from the bodega. She’s lost the baby. I knew this would happen. Why did I think his would be different? That it should work this time after we tried so much? I shouldn’t care. She’s thin. Too damn thi—

A pigeon nearly attacked me. Sascha saw me. I’ll finish this entry lat—

November 18

01:34

I saw Gregor on the bus today. Drunk, barely able to hold his liquor. I held mine better. I didn’t even vomit until I was off the bus into a wastebasket on the street that already smelled like booze and cigarettes and sick. He fucking followed me. 

“I need a friend right now,” he told me. “She’s left me,” he told me. I wish I could say I sent him packing, that I told him to get lost and kicked him to the curb. I wish his snores weren’t keeping me up. Mother’s going to kill me in the morning. 

December 26

06:08

Everything has changed. Even as I write this, I can’t believe it. Sascha is pressed against me, I can’t stand to wake her, for the movement of the pencil against this notebook to wake her and for her to realize she’s made a mistake. That she shouldn’t have showed up at my door last night with the earnest promises I have been waiting all year to hear. Everything has ch— 

Mother’s knocking. One second—

14:55

Everything has changed. 

I’ve pasted the newspaper clipping below. I don’t know what this means. What will the world look like? 

Gorbachev’s world is over. Communism, over. Everything we’ve been working towards — Jesus, the end of a 75 year long reign. They’re making an announcement. 

16:16

Today has been a whirlwind. I don’t know what this means. We are getting reports from the outside. Maybe the protests will finally end, or maybe this will only be flame to their fire. Fodder for their so-called revolution. 

Will I have work? Christ, I know I should be confused, and scared, but I’m hopeful. Mother is not. She does not welcome change. She does not believe it, that this will change nothing. That things do not change, not really. It would take more than this. I do not think she wants this change. She says this is the best life has ever been and now, we will truly see the horrors of the west, we will see how bad everything else and we will know how well we had it. 

Sascha says no matter what, we will be together. We can finally leave. She says they will change the name of the cities, even.

How do we rebuild? What will the future even look like? Is mother right, is this a temporary action that will change nothing? It is a pebble of change against the drop of sea of the Federation. This cannot make everything come crashing down, surely? 

02:16

Perhaps it is real, and mother and the older generation are holding out hope it hasn’t, for fear of change, for fear that everything they have been working towards and sacrificing will come crashing down around us. I don’t know what to feel. Perhaps I should have been tracking my moods in this diary, but they are scattered. I think of nothing but Sascha, but fixing everything since that monster Gregor ruined us. She said it was my baby. As the world changes and she tells me this, I don’t know what to believe. 

Sasha says that whatever this is, it’s just the beginning; that we will create a new normal, the world will never be the same, but one thing is certain, we will be together.

//Fin