Ode to Zheka

Olga Krause
Translated by Grace Sewell

Zheka is tired of dealing with everything on her own. She’s been trying to find someone for almost half a year already. Zheka is on the hunt for a girl without complexes or bad habits. That is, a girl with a Petersburg residence permit, a respectable salary, and her own accommodations, close to the city center. Basically, the only thing she hasn’t done yet to spread the word is shout from the rooftops. Although Zheka’s pictures are plastered all over the dating websites, she’s pinged most of all by riffraff from out of town or from the industrial areas.

But Zheka is also tired of clawing her way out of the only lesbian club in the city on the weekends. Everyone there has known her inside and out for a long time. Besides, Zheka has already made up her mind about them, too.

Then it so happened that Zheka read an advertisement for a women’s poetry festival. So, Zheka thought it over, and then thought it over some more. Of course, poetry’s good for nothing. Rich people chew on it, but they’re already full. As for the rest of us, well, read a poem to your grumbling belly and see what good it does you! However, at least there won’t be any of those run-of-the-mill sluts loitering around. Respectable ladies will turn up, who might even roll into the poetry festival with a hookah in their hotshot convertibles. Anyway, the festival was free, and Zheka loves a freebie. So, off she went.

What a total shitshow! Ugh. Poor Zheka! Zero music whatsoever. The screens in the bar show exactly what’s happening onstage, but the stage oozes misery that sticks to you like sludge. The girls drone on in their insufferably nasal voices, muttering some sort of crap about exquisitely transcendent love, leaving you with no choice but to strangle yourself. There’s not even anything to dance to. Meanwhile, some drunk, unshaven old dude in the audience keeps shouting, “Bravo!” He’s not the only one there. There are a lot more wasted old aunties who are also looking for something, go figure.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, a bald, slobbering dude who just won’t shut his trap slides on over to Zheka: “I understand you lesbians so well … oh, it’s just so elegant and exquisite, two women rolling around in bed. How cute, or as the French say, charmaaaaant. But two men—that’s totally nuts. How gross! A terrible eyyy-bom-i-nay-shun! It’s just so unnatural. But women …” He suddenly starts regaling Zheka with crazy expensive cocktails, but Zheka’s no fool. If that trash wants to blow through his money, then let him. He has absolutely no idea what a tipsy Zheka is like.

A tipsy Zheka is never boring. There’s already a melody taking shape in her soul, to which Zheka can sing and sway, or, if the mood strikes, sock people in the face. That is Zheka’s “poetic voice,” which nobody else at this festival knew or fathomed. Their loss.