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On the waterfront, cold and hoarse, familiar to everyone in
the city (having seen him so many times), playing his
accordion, his fingers mechanical, the music as numb as his
ashen, bristly cheek, but making a living (it was a good site
with plenty of people, handfuls of change tossed into his
bag like trash). Children crowding by the railings –
interspersed with parents – gleefully bumping into each
other, crumbling bread for ducks (by the crossing under the
bridge). The ducks swam up to the riverbank, clambered
out on to the embankment faced with rock, rats scurrying
among them to nobody’s surprise; a swan shoved its head
down into the water, looking like a big snowy mound.
Really he was Alik (“Albert” in his passport), but friends
called him El. Having two names is good, at least I like it. A
girl asked (in all seriousness) “Is El short for Daniel?” and
her innocence was so delightful and plausible that for a
time, while they were together, he was Daniel for me and
for that Vika. Later, when he dumped her, or rather, just
left her, exiled her from his presence, Daniel was forgotten
and fell away.
I don’t think El could really love women, he didn’t know
how to do it. He loved the situations, the eventfulness of
love, the motivation and seriousness of it, but he was just
not that bothered about girls: their eyes or their lips, their
waists or shoulders, their temperament, their souls, what
actually made them them, they were not events (just
material), Alik had no opinion of them at all, and it was not