I was waiting so much for the snow
It came in the night. Probably.
Quickly and a lot.
I dressed, ran to the park and dashed towards the café crunching the whiteness under my feet
After a hundred meters I turned around and froze
The black chain of footprints resembled a hieroglyph from an unknown language
I had turned on time
The hieroglyph was complete
Carefully stepping in my own tracks, I went back to the start
Standing there I’m smiling, but my heart is pounding wildly
I can’t go sideways - it’s a one way path
I’ve already walked through it – you can’t do it twice
And I can’t return home – that’s how old age is calling
The day was getting lighter. My feet were freezing. I didn’t move
A powerful burning in my groin spoke, told me me that the hieroglyph knew about me and was made not by footprints but a trail of black kisses.
I rang Renat. He is an actor – he understood everything.
In an hour he was there with a pair of skis
“These are old. You can have them”
He threw them to me to avoid coming too near and getting into something he would never be able to forget, then modestly left
And I glued the metronome of footprints together with ski tracks
It was just very important for me, that these two lines became a long “==” sign
I left the skis at the end of the trail and springing like a hare leapt off to the café.

The day begins from nothing.

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photos: Katja Pietrusky

“Behold a man who has commenced his run
Way back when dawn broke over the whole universe…”*

A corridor of a hospital.
It is not very clean and the interior is old.
Along the corridor a couple drift.
A boy warmly dressed in a sweater, 11 or 12 years old
Just behind — a man, with his head held unnaturally thrown back, with his face disfigured by burns.
He wears two dressing gowns.
And some hospital jacket on top
Pajama pants, dirty at the bottom, and completely barefoot.
At the exit door they are caught by either an orderly or a doctor.
He grabs the boy:
— Have you taken the rug?
The boy shows him a bundle under his arm.
The Burned looks somewhere above their heads, somehow through them…
They go down the steps and as soon as the man feels the ground under his feet he takes off and runs.
Apparently — it’s the hospital’s recreation park.
He runs along the wire fence.
The boy runs after him and it feels like this is their usual activity.

Dynamic shot.
But there must be a glitch:
Either the camera slows down or the fence grille becomes more aggressive, and the light flickers, gets dark

Snow cloud.

And the snow falls and melts on his face
And his cheeks flush, with death

Out of a hospital window a nurse with an unhealthy boy in her arms looks at the Burned and his young companion.
They sit on a bench.
The man’s feet are wrapped in a towel, under his feet the rug covering the snow.
He doesn’t notice it
There, far below

Very wide shot (Bruegel’s “The Hunters in the Snow”?)

There’s an almost finished snowman.
Instead of hands he has twigs. Many of them.
The urchins have conceived something and the Burned knows what.

— Take it to them

He gives the boy a box of matches,
The boy purses his lips and runs down.
He stumbles on the way. Falls slapstick in the snow. He gets up and turns around.
The Burned is lying awkwardly on his side on the bench.
The boy with a scream runs back from the bench directly to the hospital building.

The snowflakes on the face of the Burned do not melt any more.

The children down below somehow set fire to the snowman’s twigs.
Fire and snow.
The white Idol melts, a white toy!!
A carrot nose and button eyes!
This is forever!
He will burn — and take you with him!

A fool in the window:

— What rotten heathens!…

Text: Anton Adasinsky
English text editor: David Kemp
Photo: Anna Bogodist, Elena Imamova, Elena Yarovaya
* from Bella Akhmadullina, Transl. by Gregory Freidin

So we’ve been to Samara, St. Petersburg, Moscow…

Something happened to us or to the people who are here for us.
Now they all really-really want us to be and to live,
Although I’ve had some other plans recently.
And the black cloud is covering the birthmarks and the stubble…
And suddenly, as expected, there’s so much Love!
Not simply, “D’you have any tickets still?”
But crying, “I need it! I flew from Siberia…”

White snow. The colour of the morning alley in a sanatorium just as you’re going out of breath after the nurses’ words:
“There’s a visitor for you.”
“Who?” – you’re pleading – “Who?”
She smiles.
“You’ll see for yourself.”

Pyjamas, a hospital-gown; and sliding down into the park, throwing off a cast of myself on each step of the stairs, a cast of sinful, blabbing and unique me. Then an excuse for the prepared joke: “I love me, me of my own making…”*

Cold hands, a discomfort, where to put those oranges? And then – slantwise into the snowdrift. An incantation.

Text: Anton Adassinskij
Übersetzung: Rainer Jäckel
Fotos und Bilddesign: Elena Iarovaia