Виктор Нечипуренко – Зов расколотого барабана. Шаманские песнопения и рассказы (страница 6)

One crow descended. It landed right on the trace. Covered it with its body. I stopped. It raised a wing – and under it was a hole. Not deep. Exactly my height. I leaned over. Inside – nothing. Not blackness. Not emptiness. But precisely «nothing,» the kind you can touch. It was warm, like a tongue, and it stirred, as if it were breathing.

«This is you,» said the crow. «Only not yet born.»

I reached out my hand. The «nothing» licked my finger. It didn’t hurt. It just tasted good. I pulled back. The crow took flight. The hole vanished. The trace continued.

I walked on. But now I knew: I was not following a trace. I was following myself. That which had not yet happened.

Then came the people. Not at once. First, their things. A felt boot, standing in the middle of the path. Then, a shirt, hanging on a holly bush, its sleeves tied in a knot, as if the tree had wanted to become a man but had changed its mind. Then, a cooking pot, with teeth marks inside. Not human. Not animal. But the kind that have not yet decided whose they are.

The people appeared at a bend. They were standing with their backs to me. All of them. As if someone had placed them there, to look at what I was supposed to see. I approached. No one turned around. I walked around to the front – there were no faces. Only backs. On both sides.

I touched one. It fell. Inside – empty. My old words were left there. They lay like fallen leaves. I picked one up. It crumbled. Literally. The letters fell to the ground, turned into small black beetles, and crawled away into the grass.

I walked on. The people were no obstacle. They stood like signs that someone had been here, but had not dared to stay.

The trace led to a river. Not the one from before. This one flowed calmly. But the water was not water. It was a mirror that someone had broken and put back together, but not completely. In each shard – a piece of my face. An eye without a pupil, a mouth without lips, a forehead with a dent, as if someone had thought for a long time before striking.

I sat on the bank. The trace ended. It did not disappear. It went into the water. Just beneath the surface. And then – down. But not deeper. Inward.

I knew: if I entered, I would not come out. Not because I would drown. Because I would come out in a different place. A place where a trace is not a path, but a sentence.

I took off my shirt. On my chest – four marks. They were pulsating. Not with a heartbeat. But as if someone from within were knocking: «It’s time.»

I stood. Walked into the water. It did not burn. It was not cold. It was the temperature of my own fear. With every step, it became lighter. Not my body. My memory. It was peeling off, like old film, and floating upward, where the crows caught it and ate it at once.

When the water reached my chest, I stopped. The last thing left was the tooth. I took it out. Held it in my palm. It was trembling. Not from fear. From desire. It wanted to return. Home. To the hollow. To the trace. To that which had not yet happened.

I raised it. Threw it. It fell. It made no splash. It entered. Without a sound. Without a ripple. It simply vanished.

And then I felt it: the border was gone. Not because I had crossed. Because I had become it.

The trace beneath my feet disappeared. But I kept walking. Not on the ground. On myself. On that which was not yet born.

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

I took a step.

And vanished.

Not I.

The trace.

Commentary on the Text and Translation

Commentary on the Text Itself

«The Trace» is a work of profound, primal, and visceral power. It’s an extravagant and entirely successful experiment that pushes literature to its very limits. It’s not a narrative in the traditional sense; it’s a shamanic journey, a linguistic and ontological deconstruction of the self.

Language as Physiology. The story’s greatest achievement is its language. It is profoundly physical, almost biological. Words don’t describe experiences; they are the experiences. «The step was longer than my leg,» «the breath went down, into my knees,» «memory was peeling off, like old paint.» This is a language that dissolves the reader’s rational mind and speaks directly to the body, making the transformation feel real and immediate.

Ritualistic Structure. The three-part structure perfectly mirrors a shamanic initiation or an alchemical transmutation. «The Border» is the separation from the mundane world. «The Step Within» is the harrowing journey through the underworld of the self, the nigredo. «Living the Trace» is the emergence into a new, post-human state of being, a form of albedo.

Archetypal and Surreal Imagery. The story is a torrent of unforgettable, archetypal images that feel drawn from the deepest well of the collective unconscious: the tooth in the hollow, the reflection that lags behind, the man made of patches, the girl with eyes for teeth, the crows eating memory, the people with backs for faces. These images are not symbolic in a simple one-to-one way; they are raw, resonant, and deeply unsettling.

The Dissolution of the Self. This is the story’s core theme. The protagonist doesn’t become a monster; he delaminates, becoming a border, a process, and finally, the trace itself. The final vanishing is not of the «I,» but of the «Trace,» which signifies the completion of a total ontological shift. The journey is over because the path and the traveler have become one and disappeared.

Notes on the Translation Process

This was the most challenging text to translate because its power is so tied to the sound, rhythm, and physical feel of the Russian words.

Maintaining the Visceral Quality. The primary goal was to find English words that felt as physical and strange as the original. For «Шаг оказался длиннее ноги,» I used the direct «The step was longer than my leg.» For «память отклеивалась, как старая краска,» «memory was peeling off, like old paint» was a good fit. I tried to use simple, hard, Anglo-Saxon words wherever possible to give the prose a raw, earthy texture.

Rhythm and Incantation. The text has a hypnotic, ritualistic rhythm. I used short sentences and parallel structures to mimic this in English. The repetition of «Not…» in the final part («Not because it was night,» «Not because I would drown») helps build this incantatory feeling.

The Subtitle. I added the subtitle (A Shamanic Invocation) to frame the piece correctly for the English-speaking reader. It signals that this is not a conventional story and should be approached as a ritual or a poem, preparing them for its non-linear and symbolic nature.

Untranslatable Feelings. Some Russian words have a specific weight that is hard to carry over. The smell of «сырой хлеб» (raw/damp bread) is a very specific, primal smell. «Raw bread» was the closest I could get. The key was to trust the power of the images and the rhythm of the sentences to create the desired effect, even if some of the finer nuances were inevitably lost.

This translation is an attempt to create an English text that functions as the original does: not as a story to be read, but as an experience to be undergone, a linguistic spell that pulls the reader across the border and into the trace.

Священный полёт

Свечи догорают. Я сижу на каменном полу обсерватории – здесь, на вершине Анд, воздух разрежён, каждый вдох даётся с трудом. Вокруг – ещё несколько человек, лица скрыты капюшонами. Дни голодания и травяных отваров стёрли границу между телом и чем-то ещё.

Шаман бормочет на кечуа. Его лицо изборождено морщинами. Я не понимаю слов, но чувствую: он говорит о готовности. Не о чистоте рук или мыслей. О готовности исчезнуть.

Я дрожу. От страха и от жажды – оба чувства неразличимы.

Потом – вспышка.

Не мягкий рассвет. Ослепляющий свет, который раскрывает зрачки настежь.

В этом свете – Он.

Не Инти. Не Куско. Дух, имя которого старше пирамид. Он держит перо кондора. Просто держит. И в этом касании – всё.

«Смотри», – говорит Он без звука.

Перо падает в каньон. Ветер подхватывает, кружит, разрывает на нити. Они тают в воздухе. Но в сердце этого распада что-то не ломается. Новое крыло пробивается сквозь хаос, тянется к небу. Кондор парит над горами.

«Ты – перо», – выдыхает Дух.

И я лечу к Нему. Или Он ко мне. Мы сходимся, как две реки. Не объятия плоти – сплав. Моё бренное «я» касается Его бесконечности, как камень в реке становится гладким от воды.

Я – тот же. И другой.

В этом слиянии открывается: кондор падает в ущелье, но его падение – страсть. Подъём – плод этой страсти. С каждой зарёй он несёт из тьмы не только свет. Ещё и крик.

Дух раскрывает Себя: Он – и ветер пустыни, и ликующий дождь. Засуха и потоп. Ночь и утро. Конец и начало.

Я впитываю этот ритм.

«Здесь твоё бессмертие», – шелестят Его крылья. «Не то, за которым гонятся глупцы. А подлинное – соучастие в перемене. Ты уйдёшь. Твоя оболочка вернётся в почву, как перо в землю. Но то, что узнало Меня, – не угаснет. Оно взлетит с новыми ветрами».

Страх смерти тает. Вместо него – озарение: я не исчезаю. Я меняю форму.

Дух ведёт меня к краю обрыва после бури – голому, мёртвому на вид. Но Он учит видеть: в каждой трещине – обещание. Пустыня плодовита. Ничто чревато всем.