Остров Крах (The Crack-Up Island) presents two women telling their singular stories. They barely know each other, yet a magic liaison exists between them, because one of them is a newly self-initiated amateur astrologer and reads in the stars that a coming crack-up is threatening the other. Each of the women knows only her part of the story and the narrative pieces – two personal universes, so dissimilar yet so alike – have to be fitted into one whole by the reader, like in a puzzle.
And so I threw my bag over the back of my chair and made for the flashing light zone. I started out falteringly, and when I got to the round podium I stopped in my tracks. I realised why their faces were so stupefied and that this had nothing to do with the music. It simply turned out that the floor was revolving and that was why their world was spinning. That’s why their faces looked like this and the only thing that surprised me was that I saw no one throwing up. Sea sickness. Very cautiously I tried to wiggle my body to a non-existent rhythm. I succeeded, because the lights set the rhythm. Photo-flash, dark, flash, dark. That way. And you shouldn’t forget the revolve. The revolving lights, which made the floor look as if it was turning. So, at last, I began to even hear the music. It was so loud, that up till now I hadn’t heard it. Some kind of rhythm, it changed, then another rhythm, then again it changed into something absolutely ludicrous, but there it returned to two beats from the beginning, that meant there was some structure and, look, I almost managed to dance to it. But I could manage more. I could manage a lot more. I could drive myself crazy over this music which I didn’t like at all and had nothing in common with me. But I could become the music. I could become even the worst music. I could turn into it. I could go wild to every separate rhythm, and then on to the next, as I continuously changed the steps – the only way this mish-mash, this musical stew could be danced to. And now I wasn’t swaying cautiously, but I just went crazy, with short steps I broke into others’ floor space and returned to a fast cadenza. I am really brazen. And around me now a circle had formed and the obscenely young had left me in the middle and were dancing with their faces turned towards me and alert, ready to make way, when I decided to mow into them like a mad woman or who knew what, ready to react. And now I’d turned into the centre of the black cube with no windows, and all the lights came from me. I could command them. There I could delay the flash. If I wanted to I could turn the floor the opposite way and then everyone would fall on the ground. But I didn’t do it. I hadn’t done it up till now. Saturn. The black cube without windows is Saturn and I don’t know where this rubbish came from. Saturn.
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