Who Knows?

Masha on her way home.

On the bridge near Echo Park, there’s a bundle. Wrapped so tightly that it’s hard to tell: a jacket or a sleeping bag, breathing or not. Above the bundle there is a billboard—on the billboard—orange, bright, three-eyed. It’s looking up at the sky. Masha’s looking up too—at the billboard.

The bus is spacious at this hour. A man sits by the door, wrapped in a blanket up to his head. No one says a word. She looks away, too.

The man starts banging his head against the glass.

She hears it. She isn’t scared—she’s seen this often and could do the same herself. She just doesn’t feel like it right now.

She remembers who she is.

Once, a man (also wrapped up like a bundle) turned around and threw off his hoodie. He wanted to touch her and wanted to hear something from her, and started swearing. So Masha said what she knew: “Иди ты нахуй, черт лысый!”^[1]

But this time, no one turned to her.

The man just kept banging his head against the glass.

The bus slammed on the brakes. (The man staggered and nearly fell to the ground, but then gathered himself and resumed banging his head against the window.)

This is her stop. She gets off. She walks down the street.

And a minute later, she’s not thinking about the billboard or the man on the bus. She forgets. She came from a very big city. There she worked at a small organization—helping people live outside the institutions. But in this city, everyone looks at the billboards. And the billboards glow.

Next year, she might buy a car.

And her gaze will be beautiful and rested.

And her gaze will be fixed on the road, on the signs, on the pedestrians. So no buses.

She drives in comfort. Her friends fill the passenger seats, talking over one another.

“Who cares?” one of them says. Masha laughs loudly.“Да кто его знает!”^[2]

______________________________

^[1] “Get the hell out of here, you bald demon!”
^[2] “Who knows!”

Petr Lobanov was born in Moscow, Russia. He holds a BA in Journalism and an MA in Creative Writing from the Higher School of Economics. His debut publication appeared in the journal Znamya. He is currently a first-year PhD student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at USC. You can follow Petr on Instagram here.