Life Like Other People's

Life Like Other People's
Aleksandr Nom

He was madly in love with her and risked his life for her. Then she adored him and he was bored by her love. Then things changed again. Finally, they had a life like other people's.

В оформлении обложки использована фотография с https://www.pexels.com/photo/houses-in-farm-against-cloudy-sky-248880/ (https://www.pexels.com/photo/houses-in-farm-against-cloudy-sky-248880/) по лицензии CC0

“Jobs involving risk are available to men with military experience.” Ads like that are usually placed on the web to recruit mercenaries.

Mercenaries trickle down into some quiet corner of Europe where they muster to receive training and instructions as well as weapons and fake IDs. Then, one by one or in small groups, they find their way to some wretched hole in Africa or Latin America where a putsch needs to be staged in order to replace the bastards in power for some other bastards of the same kind.

When the job has been done, generous sums of money are transferred into the mercenaries’ accounts and they return to their comfortable countries to dissolve in some suburbs where they are to everyone just ordinary people. Ordinary people who occasionally go on business trips.

Some never make it back from their tours. The heirs then get insurance money. The mercenaries name their heirs themselves in the contract and they take this business very seriously.

For Kurt, a party leader, there was no question here: his only heir was his dear wife Elena. On the tours, he always carried her photo on him and, when things got hot, he took it out and whispered, “It’s for you, darling.” Along with the photo, he was carrying around a booklet advertising organic farming. A farm exactly like the one in the booklet he was going to build sometime to settle there with Elena. His henchmen saw both the photo and the booklet but nobody ever thought of making jokes about it – the thugs treated sentiments like that with respect. Also, Kurt had heavy fists.

The last tour was different. Kurt did not take out his wife’s photo. Constantly gloomy, he was finding faults with his subordinates, provoking them, and given the slightest reason, beating them up. When they arrived at the spot, the operating company started receiving reports that Kurt was putting his men at too much risk, himself sticking his neck out like crazy.

The company did not care: if a mercenary sought death, that was his problem provided he did his job. And Kurt had always delivered on the contract.

He delivered that time, too, but already after the operation had been completed his whole party got killed. According to the company’s intelligence, the mercenaries ran into a local drug trafficker band. Nothing out of the ordinary, things like that happened.

…He came to in his suburban house. He felt good if a bit strange.

He got up, walked up to the mirror and looked over himself. The mirror showed the mercenary Kurt with a tropical tan and three new scars from bullet wounds.

“It’s a miracle that you made it,” Elena said behind his back.

That was her, the woman he loved more than anything in the world. He was seeing her as if for the first time now, absorbing avidly every curve of her body, every trait of her face, and every hair – and falling in love with her anew.

She was looking at him lovingly, too, but there was something else in her look. Trace of the worries she had experienced, concern for him?

He held her and drew her to the bed. She tensed a little as if her body resisted his touching her, but then she accepted him. In their love-making, there was a happy recognition after separation, passion and tenderness.

“Something’s wrong with my head. Everything’s kind of blurred,” he said as they were having a rest after their love. “What happened to me?” He fingered his scars.

“You were wounded, badly contused, nearly killed,” explained his wife. “You have amnesia now. Don’t try to remember. You’ve forgotten all the bad stuff, but the good stuff is there with you.”

He did not try to remember. Amnesia was a convenient thing, and he only regretted he had not forgotten some more episodes from his old tours.

The days of his leisure dragged on. Kurt was sticking at home. Elena told him that the doctors insisted on a long recovery period and advised against journeys or active amusements, let alone work. Not that he wanted any of it.

He dug up his materials on organic farming and started building a model of a farm, on the scale of 1 to 20, down in the basement. A house, a barn, a shed for machinery, a windmill, a paddock for horses, a lot of minor things…

His wife visited him in the basement and watched him work.

“Why, you’re good with your hands! Just when you think you know someone…”

He smiled happily.

“Listen, why don’t we hang out with anyone?” he asked his wife once. “Don’t get it wrong, I don’t want anyone else but you, but still it’s a bit strange. Did I have any mates?”

“You did…” She told him a couple of names. “But they… They didn’t make it back.”

That was true, he remembered them. Two hardened mercenaries, his right hand and left hand in every bloody mess. He even recalled the tours that had been their last. Damn, he should not be digging into the past…

“How about you? Do you have any friends?”

“I had some but they stayed behind where I grew up.” She named a town in the South. “You took me away from there, remember?”

That was true, he remembered: he had taken her away from her home town in order to snatch her out of her old milieu so that she belonged to nobody but him. He was in love and consumed by jealousy…

“And Margo, your mother? How is she?”

“Mother?… She’s all right, doing well. I spoke with her on the phone just the other day. She sends her love”.

Embarrassed, he did not pursue his questions. He was embarrassed because Elena had lied. Margo could not send her love to him. He remembered clearly: that shrew, his mother-in-law, had always hated his guts, called him a murderer, and even his high earnings could not mollify her.

He started running in the morning trying to regain shape. He did not recognize anyone in the neighborhood, and nobody gave any signs of knowing him.

“We’ve only moved here recently,” Elena explained. “Also, the people here are not very communicative. Anyway, you said you liked it when you didn’t have to spend your time on idle acquaintances.”

That he remembered: he could not stand it when people forced their company on him.

Still, he made the acquaintance of a neighbor. The man lived in a house across the street. One day, as he was running by, Kurt noticed that in the top window of the house was a telescope of the kind that school-age amateur astronomers used to observe the stars. Only the neighbor was no schoolboy, it was daytime, and the telescope was pointed not at the sky but at his and Elena’s house.

He could rightly get mad about such prying, but he did not feel any anger. He halted and waved in a genial way to the observer. The man disappeared and drew the blinds at once.

On another day, Kurt encountered the man in the street.

“Hello. We’re neighbors, I live right across.”

The man was clearly very embarrassed. Averting his eyes, he mumbled something like, “Yes, I know.”

“I see you have a large greenhouse,” Kurt went on. “You know, I take interest in the greenhouse business myself. I’m planning to go into it big time. Could you show me what you’ve got?”

The neighbor was obviously unhappy to hear the request, but there was no dodging it, it would be impolite to refuse.

“It’s an orangery… that is, a flower house,” he muttered. “You’re welcome.”

The orangery was a gorgeous one, with cascades of fantastic flowers and mind-blowing scents. And – roulades sung by birds in hanging cages. A little paradise.

Kurt eyed the middle-aged, nondescript man with respect.

“I envy you,” he said sincerely, shaking the man’s hand. “I hope one day I’ll have a piece of such beauty, too.”

The neighbor thawed a little and invited Kurt to come again, although he was still tense, averting his eyes. “Maybe he knows something about my heroic deeds as a hired gun?” Kurt thought. “No, how can he?”

Meantime, it was not all cloudless in his own conjugal paradise.