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The following pages were found in a Children’s Hospital in Mazyr, Belarus, by an American journalism student during the filming of a documentary.
I
Dear Reader, whom I do not know, who may never be, I write not for you but for me. I write because I can’t sleep. I write because Polina is dead.
Currently, I’m drunk from three capfuls of vodka on a three-day empty stomach. I have Nurse Natalya to thank for this. She is the only one who knows how destroyed I am. She is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother, and I know she thinks of me as a son. Like any good mother, she watches over me.
For the last two days she’s checked on me every 15 minutes. She checked on me seven times tonight, and every time I was wide awake. On the eighth time she discretely entered my room with a bottle of vodka. “Open your mouth, Igor,” she said. “It’ll help you sleep.” She poured a capful into my mouth, and I coughed and heaved. As she pulled away I grabbed her arm and asked for another. Hesitantly, she produced another capful and emptied it down my throat. “One more,” I demanded. She glanced at me menacingly as if to terrify me from asking again, but nevertheless sympathetically poured one last capful down my gullet. Now I feel right. It’s not enough to get me to sleep, but it is enough to help me write.
I need to share this place with you, Reader. I need to share my friends, and I need to share my beloved with you. For if I don’t document our world right now, on this ambiguously stained paper, with my fading pen, in my delirious left-handed penmanship, we will risk fading into the foam of history without mention. Reader, I hope after this you understand that we are entitled to more than that.
II
I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Igor, I’m 18 years old, and I live in an asylum for mutant children in southern Belarus. I’ve never met my parents, but as far as I know, my mother took one look at the abomination that had been cooking inside of her for nine months and dropped it off at the doorstep of the nearest hospital in fear that she had fallen victim to the national curse that she had heard so much about on the radio.
I have nothing to compare my hospitalities to, but from what little I know of the outside world, I am fairly certain that my comrades and I live in hell. For most of us the hell is our own bodies; for others the hell is in our heads. And there is no mistaking that for each of us hell is in the blank, empty, listless, catatonic, uninspiring, smudgy, white brick walls that enclose us.
I, for one, am hideous, and consequently I’ve developed a crippling phobia of reflective surfaces (and anything else that reminds me of what I look like). But I will bravely face this fact for the sake of my story and describe to you what nature dealt me. My body is horribly incomplete. In fact, I only have one arm (my left) and the hand attached to the end of it is deficient in digits (two fingers and a thumb). The rest of my appendages are short, asymmetrical nubs that wiggle with fantastic effort. My skin is nearly transparent, revealing the intricate tapestry of my under-utilized veins. Finally, the muscles in my face are only loosely connected to my brain, resulting in a droopy flat affect, which makes me look like an idiot, especially when I talk. Of all my privations this one has come as an advantage, since for most of my career as an invalid, I have been able to feign a comatose state, which has allowed me to remain largely undisturbed by my doctors and peers.
About Scott Stambach
