Every city has its own smell.
by Maria Galina
translated by Anna Halberstadt
Every city has its own smell. Odessa smells like sea, seaweed, thrown on the shore, hot and dry, but first of all, like Privoz. Rotting vegetables, dirt, oozing under your feet, a fat boy stands in the courtyard, paved with cobblestones, his fat mother, leaning out the window, yells—Monya, time to eat. Monya, a grown up for a while now, bald, mother—in sheol for a long time, in gray mist, but still in the window, Monya, she screams, Monya, come home, you shmendrick! Monya fixes his tie, his jacket, pulls on his shirt, slowly comes up the stairs, presses his arm to his left side, mother stands in the doorway, says, you wish me dead…
Lvov smells like moss, wet cobblestones, like sewers—in the historic center, what’s to be done, if they had not been touched by a man from the times of the Kaiser, pale shadows are walking among tourists, they don’t get it, how come Japanese, why so noisy, why are they laughing, making selfies, by the way, what does it mean, where’s Abraham, where is Sarah, where‘s pani Elzhbieta, where have they gone? Why strangers in our apartment, and why don’t they notice us, everywhere restaurants, practically in every building, at every entrance, how many does one need, even though we aren’t against them, we are foodies too.
St. Petersburg smells like freshwater wind, enveloping face with wet sheets, particles of light moving around, light nets swaying in the wind, shadows tearing them and drowning, wet granite, a semi-transparent girl waves, she, like most, wanted to be a ballerina, all right, a painter, at night she hears someone walking in their apartment, the parquet squeaking, in the old cupboard crystal wine glasses shaking, grandma says, that’s her mom there, she smiles, turns into a photograph in the old album… Light shrinks into a dot, into a pin head, wet wind comes from the bay, autumn seems getting denser and denser, a snow net sways behind the window, hands are transparent, for some reason, and wrinkled.
Moscow smells like all the pipes in the world, gas, cinders, plastic flowers in colorful tubs, metro inhales steam, time after time it pushes outside pale inhabitants of underground, they say, it also smells of rotten cabbage, a flat place, surrounded by flat garbage dumps, the small river is insignificant. He came here as a really young poet, drank with everyone, slept with nearly everybody, became famous, gossips spread about his third wife, very young, she controls everything, speculates with his fame, he wakes up, the pillow next to him is empty, he gets up, puts his skinny feet into his cold slippers, drags himself to the kitchen, makes breakfast, a soft-boiled egg drips on his knees. If he had a cat, he would tell him, that both of them are great guys, and how they love, when someone strokes them on the back, but for some reason there is no cat here as well.
London smells like Clorox, like perfume in a shampoo, like
rotting tide, wet planks, tiny waves, upright vertical light. Women
in black overcoats, thin ankles, in pumps, chin is slightly tilted, otherwise close to perfection. We are strangers here, let’s stay, turn into shadows under the bridge, trains will rumble up there above us, decent citizen will be reading the news, something is again amiss in the royal family… No one will find us, nothing will brush against us, we are shadows ourselves, among the shadows of frightened female city dwellers, finding their way in the docks, in the wet blocks of buildings, someone follows us, dark and scary, someone stands in the fog dark and scary, someone keeps silent across the street, dark and scary, someone follows us, someone goes after us.