Виктор Нечипуренко – Зов расколотого барабана. Шаманские песнопения и рассказы (страница 5)

Years passed. I grew up, learned to mow, to plow, to build. I learned to smile when something inside was snarling. I learned to kiss girls without opening my mouth. But every night, I returned to the hollow. The tooth became my talisman: I would put it under my pillow, and my dreams were as smooth as a road no one walks on.

The border is thinner than it seems. One day, as I stood by the river, my reflection lagged behind. It stood with its back to the water, looking at me. In its eyes – the same ash as in the wanderer’s. I waved my hand – the reflection did not repeat it. Then I knew: the contract had come to an end.

I did not go into the forest. The forest came to me. First, the smell: damp, with a scent of something rotting. Then, the sound: a footstep, but not on the ground – on the bones of my fingers. I woke in the middle of the night – and could not tell where the bed ended and the path began.

The next thing I remember is warm breath on the back of my neck. Not human. Not animal. The kind of breath that is taken when the contract is torn.

I did not turn around. To turn around is to admit there is a space behind you. And there was no more space. There was only the crossing.

And then I did what I had never done: I said my name aloud. The sound fell out, heavy, as if I had dropped a stone into a well. And I heard a reply – not an echo, but a snarl. A snarl that began in my throat but ended somewhere far away, beyond the borders of language.

I took off my shirt. On my chest – four marks. Not scratches, not tattoos. The marks that time leaves when it passes over a body without asking permission.

I took the tooth, pressed it to my lips. It was no longer warm – it was hot.

And then I took a step. Not forward, not back. Inward.

The border vanished.

Part Two. The Step Within

The step was longer than my leg. I did not step – I was pulled in, as if the earth had taken a breath.

At first, it was dark. Not just an absence of light, but a darkness that had a taste: damp fur, stale breath, a drop of another’s blood on metal. I tried to raise my hand – I could not find the end of my shoulder. There were fingers, but not mine: longer, with joints that bent both ways. I wiggled them – and heard the grass whispering far away.

Then came sight. Not through my eyes. Through my back. The skin on my shoulder blades grew thinner, transparent, and through it I saw: I was standing in the middle of a clearing, but not vertically – inside the horizon. The trees were growing sideways, their roots in the sky. The moon lay on the ground like a thin plate, and shadows walked across it, leaving dents, as if in snow.

I tried to breathe – the breath went down, into my knees. There it got stuck, swelled, became heavier than myself. I fell. But the fall was upward: the earth let go, and I floated up into a space where there is no up or down, only «within» and «without» – and both turned out to be the same.

Then I understood: I had not transformed. I had delaminated.

Above – the one who remembers the name. Below – the one who remembers the trace. They were looking at each other through my own body, as if through broken glass.

And then the tooth began to speak.

Not with sound. It was spinning in my chest, like a small heart, and each rotation was a word. The words were not human. They had no beginning and no end; they had weight. The first word struck my ribs – I felt them spread, making room. The second word descended into my stomach – and began to live there, tapping quietly. The third word I did not hear. I became it.

It came out not through my mouth, but through my back. My vertebrae parted like the leaves of a gate, and from them emerged what I used to call a «snarl.» Only now I knew: it was not a sound, it was an address. Someone far away was told: «Come.»

And someone started walking.

I saw him from the side. He was not walking on the ground, but on my own reflection in the air. Each of his steps left a dent in me: first on my hip, then on my collarbone, then – in my throat. When he reached my heart, I recognized him. It was me. But not the one born of a woman. The one born of the hollow.

He stopped. Held out his hand. In his palm lay a drop of time – it was warm, like a freshly torn scab. I took it.

And everything turned over.

The clearing vanished. I was in a room. Familiar, but without windows. The floor – made of planks, with something breathing between them. The ceiling pressed down on the crown of my head. In the corner stood a stove, but inside it was not fire, but a pulse: quiet, regular, someone else’s.

On the table – a mirror. There was no reflection in it. There was only the trace. Four-legged, with a long back and a head lowered to the ground. I looked at it – and it raised its eyes. There were no pupils in them. There was only that which I had cast out to become human.

Then I understood: this is not a room. This is inside me. And I am inside it. We have become a matryoshka doll with no final doll.

A rustle behind me. I turned. On the threshold stood she. A girl with hair the color of moonlit bark. Only now her eyes were where her teeth should be. She smiled – and I saw my name in her mouth. It lay there, rolled into a tube, like a note no one had dared to read.

«You have come,» she said. «Which means the contract is broken.»

«What contract?»

«The one where you promised to be one. And we promised to be others. Now everything is real.»

She held out her hand. I took it. Her fingers were cold, as if she had been holding them in a river while I slept.

We went out. Not from the room – from myself. The door was between my ribs. Beyond it – not a forest, not a clearing, but the place where tracks do not end, but turn into a road walked only by those who have forgotten who they are.

We walked. Not holding on, but not letting go. Barefoot, but not feeling the earth: we were walking on our own reflection in the air, and it was cracking like thin ice.

Footsteps behind us. I didn’t look back. I knew: it was the thing I had left behind, pursuing us. Not an enemy. Not a friend. Just a remnant, still trying to be «I.»

The girl stopped. Turned to me.

«There will be a river now.»

«What kind?»

«The kind you cannot step into twice. Because it flows inward.»

I looked. Ahead – water. Not black, not transparent. It was like a mirror, but it did not reflect. It absorbed.

«Cross it,» she said. «But know this: when you come out, you will be neither one nor the other. You will be the third. And your name will be forgotten even by the silence.»

I took a step.

The water was warm. Not like a river, but like a hand checking if the skin has been turned inside out.

With every step, it grew heavier. Not my body. My memory. It was peeling off, like old paint: pieces of days, pieces of names, pieces of faces.

The last thing I let go of was fear. It floated ahead, a white patch, and dissolved.

Then – a light. Not bright. The kind that comes when you close your eyes and someone else opens them.

I came out.

Onto the same bank. But the bank was different. Not sand, not grass. But a trace. A single one. Four-legged. With a claw broken in the middle.

I bent down. Touched it. It was warm.

And then I understood: I had not crossed. I had become.

The trace.

Part Three. Living the Trace

The trace did not end. It stretched into the distance, curving as if someone had been walking and looking back, losing their direction each time. I followed it. Not because I wanted to. Because there was no other path. A road is what remains when you forget who you are. A trace is what remains when you forget that you are.

At first, it was difficult. My feet would not lift – they grew into the earth. I felt roots sprouting from my heels, and each step was not a movement, but an uprooting. But then I got used to it. The roots broke off, leaving scars – two on each foot, as if someone had long ago sewn paws onto me, and now had taken them off, but the threads remained.

Day did not come. Not because it was night – because time had rolled itself into a tube and gone inside the trace. There was light, but it did not fall from above; it rose from below: from the earth, from the print, from the emptiness between the toes. It was the color of old tallow – yellow, but not joyful; the kind that lingers on the lips after a long hunger.

I walked. I did not count my steps. I counted the smells.

The first – tar. Someone had passed here long ago with burning resin, to seal their shadow. The second – blood, but not fresh. Congealed, cracked, like clay. The third – milk. Sour, but not yet curdled. The fourth – my own. I did not recognize it at first. It was like the smell of that very hut where my mother used to hold me by the wrists. Only stronger. As if someone had taken this smell out of me, multiplied it, and hung it along the path, like traps.

Crows appeared. They sat on the roots that stuck out of the ground like broken ribs. They did not caw. They watched. Their eyes were not black, but empty – in them, you could see what I had left behind. I walked past, and they turned their heads, as if I were a compass needle, but pointing not north, but «inward.»