Smells

      Igor had had an exceptional sense of smell since childhood, and everyone prophesied his fate as a famous perfumer. The elder Grom grumbled that his son would choose what he wanted to be, but he tried not to smoke his heavy cigarettes in front of him. However, their apartment still smelled of that tart Belomor. And Igor remembered him with those odors. For him, his father forever remained the smell of strong tobacco, burnt eggs with pieces of the cheapest sausage and bloody dust with gunpowder.       Uncle Yura always smelled different. Some unchanging expensive perfume, gun grease and the fragrant smoke of cigarillos. Dad sometimes brought these odors on himself. They never talked about it, but Igor understood.       As Igor grows up, surrounded by the smells of home and comfort, like Aunt Lena smells, he is plunged back into the world of tobacco, smoke, gunpowder, and gun grease. He practically hates this world, but he masochistically grows into it, smelling the St. Petersburg backstreets.       Dima Dubin smells almost like the house from his childhood. The same one where Aunt Lena makes pancakes and Uncle Fedya brings the smells of summer rain from the street. And Igor almost falls in love with that smell, but quickly realizes that it’s not that. And it’s not. Dima is like a little brother that you protect from all the other stench so that he continues to carry the scent of coziness and light.       Then sweet-smelling perfume, decorative cosmetics, and fruity wine burst into Thunder’s meager world. Yulia Pchelkina smells like freedom and recklessness. She wears an incredible amount of fragrances on her. Igor can guess by them what business she’s on at the moment. Often he is silent or not much angry. But when Yulia brings the scent of blood on her, Igor can’t stand it. He explodes, growls and slams the doors, leaving into the exhaust-smelling night of Peter. Dima stays by Yulia’s side. Yulia takes offense briefly and admits guilt. They don’t talk about it ever again. But they remember.       Oleg Davidovich Volkov smells of strong cigarettes and tart perfume. Igor tries for the first time to break these odors down into their components.       Sergei Viktorovich Razumovsky smells like a light flurry of champagne and obviously expensive toilet water.       Igor feels something connecting them — the same note of fragrance on the two of them. Igor stays out of it. It’s none of his business. Yes, both of them have caught his eye, but it’s not his policy to meddle in other people’s relationships.       A couple of weeks later, Igor meets Oleg Volkov in the sweat and blood-smelling hall of the Booster. Oleg comes to talk. They talk in the ring. Oleg smells of tart musk and pine. And also hot skin, freshly smoked Winston, shot from a regular in the hall, and an elusive note of gun grease. Igor is interested for some reason. Oleg smiles at the corners of his lips and says it’s a kind of morning ritual, like meditation. Igor nods.       Igor doesn’t smoke. Igor inhales the cigarette smoke exhaled by Oleg and thinks about his father’s Belomor, which is probably no longer for sale. And about his service weapon, which is now lying in Prokopenko’s safe and sometimes only cleaned.       Sergei Razumovsky smells of sweet soda, which he just drank right in front of Igor almost in a volley. And also strange notes of flame. But they come and go. Just like golden sparks in bright eyes. Sergei mixes some pills with energy drinks and immediately pours it all with a glass of champagne, ignoring the disgruntled Oleg next to him.       Sober Sergei’s words are as quick and sharp as the bubbles in the fizz. The tipsy Sergei speaks slowly, pulls a blissful smile, collapses on the couch, becomes one of the best exhibits in the makeshift museum on some dtsat floor. A tipsy Sergei smells dangerous. Almost like Uncle Yura, who twirled brettes on his fingers and smoked fruity cigarillos.       Sergei doesn’t smoke. Sergei drinks pills and alcohol, stirring sweetness and bitterness on his tongue, along with the caffeine and acidity of marmalade worms. Sergei reaches for Igor first, spooning him with the smell of fruit and strong tobacco — it’s from Oleg.       Oleg leaves a rough palm on his neck. The odor of cigarettes and gunpowder mingles with the chemically sweet fruit.       Their night smells of alcohol, spices, sweat, heated bodies and chemistry.       Morning for Igor smells like pine needles and lavender — both sides of him being held in four hands. He smells these odors himself — he catches up with them for the second time in the shower, where everyone foams their shower gel on him as if marking him.       Morning for Igor smells of coziness and home-cooked food. Sunshine and awkwardness. Bunched sheets entangle his legs.       Coffee and green tea. Sweetness of condensed milk from a tin can and openwork pancakes. Oleg smokes some expensive cigarettes with a smell so similar to the notorious Belomor. Sergei drinks colored capsules with a can of berry morsels stolen from the fridge. Too many notes stir in the air, but they all add up to a pyramid of the best perfume.       Igor has been washing that smell off him for three weeks, interrupting it with the St. Petersburg drizzle of autumn and back alleys, avoiding the sour sweat of Buster’s lounge every time he notices a dark familiar car, sucking in air with his nose every time someone nearby starts smoking. Notices how Dima’s scent changes. Dima himself is changing. Dima doesn’t speak, but you can tell. And you can hear it. He smells a different odor, a perfume, a person unfamiliar to Igor. Igor doesn’t mind. Igor sees only a glimpse of the dark one, but he knows he won’t hurt Dubin.       Igor sniffs the dusty air of his cold apartment, looking for something he wants to hear, but he avoids it.       Prokopenko’s apartment smells of pickles, raw meat, and something that only Soviet apartments smell like. It smells of home and childhood. Aunt Lena smells of her favorite perfume, which seemed to be forever embedded in her skin and clothes, and also of fragrant soap and light sweat — the kitchen is stuffy from the water boiling in the pots.       Fyodor Ivanovich grins into his moustache and smells of cigarettes and cherry nalewka. He says something about “you need a vacation, Igor, and a family”. Fyodor Ivanovich wipes his forehead with a cloth handkerchief and gives another batch of dumplings to Lenochka. She chirps something about “leave him alone, Fedenka, he’s an adult, he’ll figure it out for himself”.       Igor doesn’t figure it out himself. He pulls in the air with his nose, smelling of ozone and St. Petersburg night, smells the tart, pungent odors of expensive perfume and sits in the tinted jeep. No one forces him, but Oleg smells a gun hidden in his holster.       The office is greeted by a familiar pyramid, but now there is a lot of fire and ash.       The bird smells of iron and gunpowder. The bird smells of death. The bird screams and flails its arms and hates soda and sweetness. The bird strikes back, weaving more iron into the overall perfume picture. The bird greedily licks the blood from his lips, glints the gold of his eyes, and bites painfully into his shoulder. The bird smells of resentment and salt. The bird fills all space with itself. The bird demands attention only for itself. The bird does not forgive, but leaves its marks on Igor’s body, which cannot be washed off. The bird calls Igor a cop’s dog and presses him into the damp, sweat-smelling sheet. Bird is replaced by Sergei only in the morning.       Oleg flashes his back scratched with nails in the doorway and leaves. Seryozha tiredly and somewhat resentfully, lazily kisses each mark on someone else’s chest and falls on top, braiding his arms and legs — not to be torn off. Seryozha smells of home and lavender, and also of fire and pine. Igor inhales his scent from his hair.       Their day smells of home-cooked food and the heat of apologies. Also promises and ointment for a scratched back and scarlet flower-marks. Igor inhales the odors and clings to her white thighs with a growl. Their evening is caressed by iced tea and cocoa with marshmallows, lavender and pine, cigarettes and fruity sweetness, expensive perfume and heated skin. Igor drowns in it and he dreams of phantoms from his childhood: Uncle Yura arguing with his father about what to cook for breakfast, Aunt Lena and Uncle Fedya carrying jars of raspberry jam, and Igor’s noisy birthday party when they were together.       Igor leaves in the morning. By evening he’ll smell the St. Petersburg backstreets again and breathe the musty and dusty air of his apartment at night, only to find himself back in the arms of lavender and pine at the weekend. And maybe fire. Until eventually all these smells become part of his day.