Zeitgeist 20, Chapter 1

by Lever Rukhin

(an excerpt)

Helmet Suggests The Torching Of My Drawers

Helmet, Fulcrum and I were half-frozen in a Siberian blizzard when I tried to set fire to my underwear.

“Try again! Don’t you understand—we are completely FUCKED!” Helmet screamed, clinging tightly to my head. Its fiberglass was shrinking or, perhaps, my head was swelling, my hair drenched with sweat, my mind racing. The frigid and miserable winds spat past us as we stood in the middle of the dirt road. The temperature was falling so fast that my clothes, also soaked in sweat, were beginning to gel. The icicle that had formed on my beard had grown substantially and pulled my jaw open as if there were a spring between my teeth. My toes had been numb for over an hour, but the fear of them being frostbitten kept me from checking them. There was a sensation all around me of vague fear.

Still, I gave in to a strength born of hope and desperation that either death or rescue would come swiftly, without too much headache, preferably with a cigarette between my teeth. It was between these violent gusts, when the quiet and darkness pervaded, the panic would momentarily leave me and I quietly stared into the peaceful darkness. There was a road down there somewhere, shouldered by tall verdant firs and thick Siberian birch trees. And even further, just out of reach, village houses clustered amid rolling hills with picket fences, window shutters intricately painted with bold festive colors. A muzhik somewhere returning from the river with a rod and a bucket of fish, a woman with large blue eyes hanging clean linen out on the line to dry in the sun.

"Don't worry. We'll make it. Somebody has to drive down this road eventually." I tried assuring Helmet softly under my breath. "We'll surely make it… But I am not desperate enough to set my underwear on fire… I refuse… at least for now. Let’s wait and see what happens."

A strong wind detonated in my face, as if someone opened the door to a whirlwind and punched me in the face, screaming and pushing into my chest with such might that I stumbled backwards. I tripped over the spare tires that must have fallen off Fulcrum's back seat and toppled on top of them, my arms draped over the side in resignation. At that point my arms were felt as if they had been made out of lead. I summoned all my strength and raised my watch up in front of my face. Nothing but black. I took the flashlight out of my inside jacket pocket: 2:13 a.m. Six more hours until the morning hours, when a bread truck or maybe a delivery vehicle would drive through this area on their way to the next town up the road.

“Boss, please. Please get up. I beg you—I’ve never asked for much. As your protector, I have to advise you that it must be –40 with the wind chill factor right now, and you’ll lose consciousness soon, you see? We can survive another hour, maybe two. But you have to do something—if you just lay there we’re all dead. I’m telling you, no, I’m asking you: burn your fucking underwear—you can start a fire and stay warm until someone finally drives down this forgotten road. Where is all the luggage? And where is Fulcrum? What have you done with her?” Helmet didn’t want a response. It shivered on my head rhetorically, indicating in an exaggerated way the futility of my indolence.

I turned my head in the direction of where I remembered seeing her last. Poor Fulcrum was recumbent somewhere in the pitch dark, beaten and exhausted and in shock, unable to go on. The iced-over mountains with the thick layer of snow on either side of us were impassable, and beyond them the closest village was, according to the last person I spoke with hours ago, 40 kilometers away. With all the gear on her and a full tank of gas, she weighed 1200 pounds and from having lifted her every time she slipped on the ice in the past few hours, the ligaments in my forearms were strained and pulled. The thought of her laying there in her condition made me shudder.

“The underwear idea might work if we had some sticks. Here, hold this,” I exclaimed sticking my flashlight between my cheek and Helmet. I wrestled myself out from the tires and clambered up a wall of waist-high snow shouldering the road. The faint, orange beam emanating from the flashlight bounced ahead of me as I ran toward the dense forest through the knee-deep snow.

Lever Rukhin is a photographer and writer. He has almost died several times.