A Genius of Pure Beauty

Sasha waited on the concrete platform as two dull headlights cut through the fog. The wheels rasped along the rails toward him, growing louder as they neared, the wagons rattling, until a long, grinding hiss of air escaped as the train shuddered to a stop next to him. He breathed in the coal and fumes rising from beneath the wagons, then started down the platform, hammer in hand, tapping each wheel.

Tak.

Tak.

Tak.

Sasha was an odd man by everyone else’s estimation, though in his own mind the real problem was people. Always people.

Each wheel got the same two taps, and the sound told him everything he needed to know. Most days he spent more time at Leningradsky Station than in his own apartment. The never-ending arrivals and departures, the steady flow of work was what his sobriety needed. Unlike people, the station never changed.

After his inspection was completed, he spotted the notice taped crookedly to the wall of his closet-like office: “Train 09, Kirov to Perm — delayed for maintenance.” He stood reading it, actually relieved. It was well past noon; he was tired from the overnight work and decided to take the bus home.

The bus was already packed, no seats available, so he pushed his way to the far back window. A man several centimeters from his face yawned as he clumsily gripped the rail and the air hung thick with the weight of the man’s hangover, a smell that lived in the back of Sasha’s throat even after four sober years.

Without warning, he was somewhere else entirely.

Not the bus. The smell.

The nausea, his shaking hands and then the vomit.

Then the sound of his father’s voice.

The strange smell of his breath when he came home.

The swish of the whip and the crack of impact.

The key in the lock.

The bus closed in around him. Even the window offered no escape. Mud streaked the glass, leaving him with only a warped reflection of his own face.

His heart raced. His breaths came short and shallow. He counted slowly, trying to keep anyone from noticing. Sweat gathered on his brow. Then the brakes shrieked. The bus lurched to a stop, sending the standing passengers stumbling into one another.

Sasha was done. He pushed through the bodies and lunged toward the street before the conductor finished yelling about another bus coming shortly. Outside, he bent over with his hands on his knees and pulled in the air, grateful for it even with the diesel fumes.

“Breathe… breathe,” Sasha whispered.

He stayed there until his body began to settle.

Standing there on the curb, Sasha thought of his babushka Maria. She had sold sunflower seeds along one of these very streets. She knew everyone who passed her corner—the mechanic, the baker, the town drunk. Knowing people was her business.

She’d poke him in the side with her cane.

“Sasha, look up. Not everyone is your father. Life is passing.”

He was still turning the question over when he heard it: laughter with something cruel in its tone.

Near a wooden fence, two men stood over an elderly man, one of them grinding a muddy boot into his back, trying to force his face into a puddle.

“Take a sip, you homeless dog! Maybe there’s some dog piss to flavor it up!” The man ground his foot deeper into the old man.

“Drink it,” the other said, kicking water up into his face.

A woman with shopping bags slowed, glanced toward the men, then hurried on. A few meters away, a young couple stopped. They looked concerned but made no move to help. Sasha then stepped forward before he could think better of it, and the moment his presence registered, the two men left without a word; they continued yelling insults as they walked away.

Mud streaked down the old man’s face as he struggled upright. His wild black-and-gray beard had a matching set of eyebrows, both spattered with mud. There was a kindness in the man’s face Sasha couldn’t help but notice.

He helped him to his feet. He wobbled, then steadied, and brushed some of the grit off his coat.

“Thank you, my dear son. Thank you. Do you mind telling me the time?”

The question caught Sasha off guard. Why would he care, after what had just happened to him?

“It’s one minute to three. Are you… are you okay?”

A mischievous smirk spread across the old man’s face, and then his whole countenance shifted into something brighter.

“Well, you see, my son, it’s my three o’clock tradition. The best time of day for me. The time when we used to sing together.”

He then bowed, formally, as if acknowledging Sasha as his audience.

“Welcome to my daily ritual,” he continued, grinning as if he’d been waiting all day to say it.

The question rose: who had he sung with and where? Before Sasha was able to speak, the man raised a clear glass bottle, full to the brim with vodka, and began to hum, his eyes darting around as if playing to a much larger crowd than one. He swayed, rhythmically, holding the bottle above his head as he turned in a slow circle. Sasha bit his lip, fighting back laughter. Yet he could tell by the way the man hummed that a voice far grander must live inside this shabby old man.

The old man stopped moving, lowered the bottle to his side, and for a moment said nothing.

Then he began to sing. Sasha at once forgot the bottle, the filth, and the people walking past. His voice climbed with a richness and beauty that made Sasha’s heart ache.

One woman paused, leaned over, and whispered to Sasha. “Such talent,” she said, shaking her head at the man. “A voice like that, wasted on the streets. A disgrace!”

Only then did Sasha realize his face was wet, the warmth of tears sliding down. As he continued, others stopped to listen, a few tossed coins in his direction.

Sasha took two steps back, embarrassed at himself. He quickly placed a few rubles down and then backed away before the song finished, giving him only a polite nod.

That day, Sasha gave him a name of his own — the Opera Man — easier, somehow, than asking for the real one.

**

For the next few months, Sasha heard his voice, never failing, always rising at exactly three o’clock. He began to look forward to that hour and loved hearing the old man’s voice somehow rise above the city noise below. It didn’t matter that Sasha lived in a concrete high-rise on the tenth floor — that voice found its way to even those heights.

At times, a small circle of people gathered around him, laughing and cheering him on. On one occasion, he became a human statue, standing perfectly still while pigeons settled around him, even on his head. Then, without warning, he pulled out his bottle and let out his first note, sending the flock scurrying wildly in every direction. Some people clapped, while a few yelled at him for being a public nuisance.

There were days when no one gathered. He performed anyway to the pigeons, to the empty street, to whoever might be listening from a window above, even on a few occasions to a statue of Lenin.

“You had your revolution,” he whispered, patting the statue’s boot. “I have my three o’clock.”

He smiled and placed his empty bottle at its foot, and then gave his customary bow.

One babushka was not a fan. She shook her cane at him whenever she got the chance, her face scrunched in a scowl at the very sight of him. One day, he reached into his coat and produced a red rose, singing lowly a familiar song. A child passing with his mother immediately joined in, singing the next line before his mother shushed him. Her expression slowly softened, just this once, into a reluctant smile.As he extended it, his sleeve slipped back.

On the inside of his forearm was a cheap ink tattoo that looked self-made. Dates. “My beloved Dima.” Sasha opened his mouth to ask, but hesitated.

He looked away before he could read the years between them, distracted, not for the first time, by the way the Opera Man’s hands trembled.

Still every day at three o’clock his voice rose.

***

One day, anxious to get home after work, Sasha squeezed onto a packed bus, at once regretting it. Rush hour turned the bus into a living sardine can. He was pinned against a burly, red-headed man whose paint-splattered clothes marked him as a painter, one who looked like he wanted nothing more than to throw him out. Sweat gathered along Sasha’s spine.

Then he saw him — the Opera Man — sitting at the back of the bus, staring out the window.

Sasha checked his watch. His heart leaped.

Ten minutes to three. Would there be a performance? Would he dare?

On buses, silence was the general rule. Loud talking was reserved for teenagers or the occasional drunk. The conductor moved through the crowd collecting fares, her bulk sending ripples of discomfort through packed bodies, a collective groan following wherever she moved. Bodies pressed close enough that people could taste each other’s breath.

Sasha looked down. His watch hit three.

The Opera Man stood up, grinning. Sunlight caught his four front teeth. Passengers assumed he was getting off. Others thought he was possibly drunk.

They were wrong, or maybe not. He began to sway back and forth, eyes closed, drawing a few strange stares. Then he raised his hand, and let his voice flow, soft at first and then soaring, climbing to a pitch that made everyone go silent at once.

Beside Sasha, a woman's whispered argument with her husband trailed off.

The conductor forgot momentarily to collect money, and heads turned down the aisle until every face pointed toward him; even those pinned against the windows craned their necks to see.

He lifted his voice higher, singing in Italian. The conductor pushed through the crowd toward him, her face reddening.

“Quiet back there, you drunk fool!” she yelled.

The bus had become his rolling stage, and from the light in his eyes, he seemed to be enjoying every second of it. With a deft, mischievous switch from Italian to the local dialect, he launched into a playful serenade aimed squarely at the conductor:

To you, my love, my sweet dear little bunny,

It is for you that I have traveled;

oh, it is for you that my heart now sings—

Like stars in the night sky, your eyes shine so bright.

He dropped suddenly into his speaking voice, addressing the bus in a monotone, as if at a lectern: “As our great Pushkin once wrote —” then lifted back to a pitch the entire bus felt:

“A genius of pure beauty!”

Laughter erupted. Sides ached. Even the red-headed painter grinned. The whole bus rose in applause even as the conductor shoved toward him, cursing.

She seized him just as he lifted his bottle to his lips and hauled him toward the door by the collar of his oversized black coat. He went willingly enough, still smiling as the crowd applauded.

“You’re the genius of pure beauty!” one young lady shouted across the bus.

Before he could respond, the conductor, who was much sturdier than he was, shoved him out of the bus onto the curb, he stumbled forward, gathered his balance, turned and gave a long, theatrical bow, blew a kiss, and then drained his bottle. Sasha was still applauding long after he was no longer seen.

****

Winter had arrived at thirty-below, and still he came. It was the type of cold that burned everything it touched; his beard white with frost, vapor moving from his mouth in labored clouds, his face twitching against the bite of the cold. The entire ground was a solid rock of ice, and very few people were out at the moment.

He tried to sing, but his voice was hoarse; he kept having to stop, coughing, before he could gather himself again, each note a struggle. When he finished his ritual, he bowed to the empty street.

Then he reached for his bottle and held it to his lips. Finding it empty, he shook it several times, then hurled it against the concrete. It shattered, the sound echoing down the frozen street.

He stood among the pieces for a moment. The vapor from his mouth moved in the wind as he said things barely audible, pointing at the broken glass while moving his arm back and forth as if accusing it of something.

Then he walked away, beginning to talk loudly to himself, and sat at the bus stop, pulling something out of his pocket, placing it into the palm of his hand. Sasha watched him for a few minutes. The Opera man remained hunched beneath his coat, staring at whatever he’d taken from his pocket, and muttering to himself.

Sasha started toward him feeling the urge to buy him a warm meal, or perhaps finally ask his name. Then he stopped.

Another bottle by his side. The shaking hands. The talking to himself.

He checked his watch instead and walked to work.

*****

One morning, several days later, Sasha hurried toward the gazebo-style bus stop.

It was early enough that he was almost the only one venturing out beneath the streetlights. The wind was relentless and piercing. Snow moved in thin veils around him, lifting, turning, drifting in every direction possible.

As he drew closer he noticed a small figure curled on the old wooden bench, hands tucked into his pockets. He moved quickly, and found him. It was him. The Opera Man.

Sasha did not move. He did not want to look.

His skin had taken on a bluish tint.

His eyes were open, they looked vacant and haunted. Frost had gathered around his beard. Sasha could not stop staring at his eyes.

He crouched down, looking away as he closed them. Then he placed his hand on the man’s neck. His body was ice-cold. Still no pulse.

Sasha pulled off his own scarf and wrapped it around him, some part of him insisting this could still help.

He pressed his fingers to the man’s neck again, hoping again for a pulse. Tears forming. Was he breathing? He watched his chest for a long time. There was nothing: all the warmth of his body gone. Sasha sat on the bench for what felt like hours.

The ambulance finally pulled up. Two men got out, pulling an old stretcher between them.

“Another one, I bet… frozen stiff,” one said, chuckling under his breath.

“From the look of him… he won’t even need the fridge tonight.”

They caught the look on Sasha’s face and let the joke drop.

“Homeless?” one asked, as if bored.

Sasha stumbled over the words. “I… think so.”

“Death by hypothermia, more than likely.” The medic searched his pockets.

“No identification,” he said. “You knew him? His name? Where he lived?”

The question pained him, and he stood there in silence and did not answer at first. Sasha had stood close enough to hear him breathe, yet he didn’t even know his name.

“No,” he muttered. “No… I don’t know.”

Among his things, they found an empty bottle and a worn photograph. A medic held it out, and Sasha took it without thinking. In the picture, the Opera Man had his arms wrapped around a smiling woman, a small boy between them, grinning, bright-eyed, and almost entirely without hair.

On the back, in faded pencil: Ward #9, three o'clock.

“Are you Dima?” Sasha whispered.

His words came back to him: “Three o’clock is our time.”

He looked at the boy’s face. Then the woman’s. Then back at him, younger, whole, a man who belonged to others.

Then the old man’s body landed on the stretcher with a thud; loud enough that Sasha flinched.

“Could you not be more careful?” Sasha scolded them, tears freezing to his face.

Neither medic answered him at first, hoisting the stretcher into place.

“Sorry, he was a bit stiff,” one finally said. The other jabbed him in the side, and rolled his eyes.

They placed him in the ambulance, closed the door, and quickly departed. Sasha stood at the curb, watching the rear lights shrink into the distance until they were gone.

“Sasha, look up. Not everyone is your father. Life is passing.”

Maria’s voice, decades old, arrived without permission, and this time, he couldn’t argue with her.

The photograph snapped him from such thoughts, as he noticed the paper was soft at the edges, thinned by years of handling. He looked a long time at the happy faces. He slipped it into his pocket, tapped it a few times without knowing why.

He remained there well after the street emptied. His hands stung, his body numb.

The photograph was warm, at least, and Sasha missed work for the first time in years.