That Play

by Dmitry Vedenyapin
translated by Yuri Vedenyapin

They were showing on TV:
a man in a bowler hat,
a thief,
enters a house,
which, he thought,
was empty,
but the landlady is home.

And so she—
it was probably very good acting—
falls in love with the thief.

That is to say,
soon after their chance meeting—
she begins to look at him
in a special way:
without vaudeville carnivorousness,
but in such a way that even I, an eight-year-old,
guessed
that this woman in her sundress,
with bare shoulders,
a tender neck,
and slightly silly curls,
wants this man with a moustache,
to kiss her
and help her out of her sundress and…
There my imagination stalled,
but I remember distinctly,
that the actress’s “special” glances
were promising “unspeakable delights,”
and, in fact,
not so much for the thief,
as for—there you go—myself.

It isn’t inconceivable that
according to the authorial design
the thief was first supposed
to enter the house,
then to enter the woman,
then—through the woman—
to fall into himself,
and then finally to self-destruct,
as a thief,
or, even more likely, completely,
because he could not be
anything else,
while to fall deeper—
at least, in that play—
was not an option.