Bankfurt

By Serge Iourienen

SERGE IOURIENEN "B A N K F U R T". A STORY. /////"Hey, where are you going?" the white disobeyed.
"Oh, nowhere." He took another sip with salt. "I just got here."
"You're Russian, aren't you?"
The question to end all questions.
"Yes, I am."
"Did you hear? He's Russian."
"Russian or not, he makes me mad." The black turned away, a beer in his fist. "Leave him alone."
They continued to drink in silence. The white nonetheless was watching with stifled curiosity. He winked at him:
"Kill the Russian, huh?"
///// First published in AGNI (#38)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312785328

Book preview

cover.jpg

B A N K F U R T

SERGE  IOURIENEN

B A N K F U R T

img1.jpg

Franc-Tireur

USA

Bankfurt

Firstly published in the USA (AGNI #38)

as The Petersburg Express

By Serge Iourienen

Copyright © by Serge Iourienen

Translation © by Mary Ann Szporluk

All rights reserved.

ISBN  978-1-312-78532-8

Printed in the United States of America

B A N K F U R T

On the inside, the Hauptbahnhof—that multi-leveled octopus in Frankfurt-am-Main—turned out to be much more complex than his sluggish imagination, and so an hour went by and it started to turn dark before he figured out that over the past hundred years or so everything had gone through a process of miniaturization and he should probably be looking for a subway and not a train.

That proved to be correct. Only it was not the city subway, the U-Bahn, but the S-Bahn—the long-distance one. And you could get to it by taking an elevator right beneath the smoky, cathedral-like station arches. A pair of cement cubes in fact were elevators.

On his first try he took the wrong cube. He found an umbrella instead. It stood on its tip in a corner of the solid metal cabin— someone had forgotten it.

And providentially forgotten it: when the S-Bahn flew out onto a bridge and crossed over a motionless river, the dark glass on the outside was covered with spots that suddenly turned into streams and washed away the obtrusive reflection of his face. Two teenage girls next to him—punk types from the suburbs—sank separately to the floor. He grabbed the rail; a tousled head dyed cornflower blue swayed before his groin. Her shaved neck stuck out from the collar of a black leather jacket like a dirty pale stem. Without hair it looked like some kind of fiberglas.

Bad Hamburg station. While crossing the platform, he opened the umbrella. It was lilac silk inside.

On the station square an old woman was getting soaked. She wore thin bright out-of-season trousers