Anoushka Maximal

Anoushka Maximal

It is striking how the young woman looks at me when I go to her cash register in the small market on the corner. She is new, only here for a week. Her accent suggests Russia or Ukraine as her homeland. She always seems a little nervous, almost as if she is about to fall in love with me. Whenever I say a nice word to her between handing her money, it seems as if she is listening in confusion, as if she wants to lick the words from my lips. She waits apparently longingly for my looks and her throat gurgles thereby with gulping sounds. What's missing is that she burps. Anoushka is her name - I think it's the Russian word for "Anna".

I've been in bed for a week, I've caught the flu. On my first morning shopping trip after almost seven days, she looks at me with her blue soup plate eyes and seems to be full of happiness that I have reappeared. I think that she has actually fallen in love with me. I ask her if she would like to come to my place for a drink tonight at 19:30. She nods wordlessly and swallows. I press a small piece of paper with my address and telephone number into her hand.

Punctually at 7:30 p.m. the doorbell rings. I open to meet her with superior elegance from the doorway. Her smile drips with promise at me and I hardly know what to say at that moment. Slowly she pulls her hand out of the side pocket of her cheap lambskin jacket and steps close to me. Her perfume is somehow strange. Suddenly I feel a burning pain in my chest: is it love? No, it is the projectile from the silencer of her handgun tearing my left ventricle.

I sit on the floor and feel myself begin to float. She smiles at me, seems to understand my silent question:

"This is for my sister Natasha and you will never play with a woman's feelings again."