White and Red E-Book

Dorota Maslowska

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

An audacious, fresh portrait of marginalized, fatalistic post-Communist youth. Andrzej 'Nails' Robakoski is a tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the national economy. Dumped by his girlfriend Magda, a beautiful seductress, he turns to Angela, a proselytizing vegetarian Goth, and then to Natasha, a hellcat who tears his house apart looking for speed, followed by Ala, the nerdy economics student who was the girlfriend of the friend who stole Magda. In the background, a xenophobic campaign against the growing Russian black market escalates, resulting in citizens painting their houses in national colours, and a pageant to crown one of the girls as Miss No Russkies... or did it all just happen in Nails' fevered mind? With inventive and visceral language that is by turns poetic, hilarious, disturbing and dirty, White and Red is a powerful portrait of love, hopelessness and political burnout in contemporary Eastern Europe.

Leseprobe

White and Red

First published in English as Snow White and Russian Red in the United States of America in 2005 by Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

This digital edition published in Great Britain in 2015 by Atlantic Books, an imprintof Atlantic Books Ltd.

Originally published in Polish in 2003 by Lampa i Iskra Bo|a as Wojnapolsko-ruska, pod flag biaBo-czerwona.

Copyright © Dorota Maslowska 2003Translation copyright © Benjamin Paloff 2005

The moral right of Dorota Maslowska to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designsand Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Benjamin Paloff to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designsand Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN: 9781782396642

Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLONDONWC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

White and Red

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

FIRST SHE TOLD ME she had good news and bad news. Leaning across the bar. Which do I want first. The good news, I say. So she told me that in town it looks like there’s a Polish-Russki war under a white-and-red flag. I say, How do you know, she says she heard. So I say, Then I’ll take the bad. So she took out her lipstick and told me that Magda says it’s over between me and her. Then she winks at the Bartender like that if something happens, she wants him to come over. And that’s how I found out that she’d dumped me. Magda, that is. Even though we’d had it good, we’d had our share of nice times, a lot of nice words had been said, on my part as well as hers. For real. The Bartender says to me, Fuck it. Though it’s not so simple. The way I’d found out how it was, or rather, how it wasn’t, it wasn’t like she’d told me straight to my face, only it was just the other way around, she’d told me through Arleta. I chalk it up to her being a total asshole, to her disrespect. And I’m not going to hide it, even though she was my girlfriend, about whom I can say that a lot of different things had passed between us, good as well as bad. Anyway, she shouldn’t have said it through a friend like that, so I’d be the last to hear. Everybody knows from the very start, since she told others as well. She was saying that I’m sort of the more explosive one, and that they had to prepare me for this fact. They’re afraid that something might set me off, because that sort of always happens. She said I should step out to get some air. Gave me her shitty cig. Meanwhile, I just feel sadder than ever. All the worse that it wasn’t told straight to my four eyes, by her. Not a single word.

Leaning over the bar like some salesgirl over the counter. Like she wanted to sell me some crap, some chocolatey product. Arleta. Rusty water in her beer glass. Easter-egg dye. The candy she’d sell would be empty in the middle. All foil. Which she wouldn’t touch with her own fingers, their nails bootleg and false. Since she herself is false, empty inside. Smokes her cigs. Bought from the Russkies. False, bogus. Instead of nicotine there’s some garbage in there, some unfamiliar drugs. Some paper, sawdust, stuff the teachers wouldn’t dream of. Stuff the police wouldn’t dream of. Though they should put Arleta away. The ones no one knows but she’s always chatting up, straight to their faces. To her phone, to the ring tone on her phone.

Now I’m sitting and staring at her hair. Arleta in leather, and next to her Magda’s hair, long bright hair, like a wall, like branches. I stare at her hair as if it were a wall, since it’s not for me. It’s for others, for the Bartender, for Kisiel, for the different boys who come and go. For everybody, but all the same not for me. Others will put their hands in her hair.

Kacper arrives, sits, asks what’s up. His pants too short. And his shoes are like a black mirror in which I see my reflection, the bar neon, the gambling machines, other things lying around. Here, in a clasp, you can see Magda’s hair, an impenetrable wall. Fencing her off from me like brickwork, like concrete. Beyond which there are new loves, her moist kisses. Kacper is clearly hopped up on speed; he’s grinding his shoe. Which is why the image blurs. He drove here, is chewing mint gum. He asks whether I have a tissue. I lose Magda in the crowd.