Minotaur by Rowan A. Smith

The phone was ringing again. Roman stood up and crossed the street to the phone booth. He entered, closed the door and answered.

?Hello, this is Roman.? He said in Russian.

The voice responded in English.?Uh, yes, hello, do you actually speak English??

Roman cleared his throat before continuing in English. ?Yes, I am fluent in English.?

?Oh, okay, good.?

There was a long pause. Roman could hear the man on the other end breathing.

?How are you doing today?? Roman asked the man.

?Uh,? The man sniffed loudly and cleared his throat, ?Not too great actually.?

?I?m very sad to hear that my friend. Why??

?Well, uh, you see,? The sound of a cup being set on a table came through the receiver, distinguishable by the faint clink of ice cubes, ?a few weeks ago Cynthia ? my daughter Cynthia ? she was hit by a car and,? There was a pause long enough that Roman began to wonder if the line had dropped, ?she died.?

Roman let out a miniscule sigh, ?I?m so sad about this, my friend.?

?Um, my name is Jerry, actually.?

?Excuse me. I am so sad about this Jerry.?

?Well, I?ve spent this time trying to sort a lot of things out, obviously. And lots of people have wanted to talk to me, or maybe more that they want me to talk. Not just to them specifically but just to talk in general. But when I?ve talked to everyone ? my wife, my other children, my friends and family? I?ve? I can?t talk to them. I can?t talk to anyone. And it?s not even that I don?t want to talk to them. I do. I want to talk. I just can?t. And I?ve spent the last few days trying to think of who I could talk to??

?And you thought of me.?

?Yes, I thought of you. I saw you on television a few years ago and then when I remembered you I looked on the internet and saw that you were still there? and now? now here we are.?

?Yes.? Roman smiled. ?Here we are.?

?Well?? Jerry began, ?What advice do you have for me??

?Do you know the English word of ?vocation?, Jerry??

?Uh, no, I can?t say that I do.?

?A vocation means a calling. It is often religiously meant in saying, but not entirely. Your vocation is what it is you want to do with your life. It isn?t your job always. It?s the thing that you do that when you do it you think, ?This. This is what I?m supposed to do.??

Ramon paused.

?Do you know what your vocation is, Jerry??

?Um, well? I?m not sure.?

?I?m sure you know, Jerry. Think hard, what is it that you do that brings you the greatest joy, the greatest happiness??

?I guess it?s? It?s being a father.?

?Right, and so the loss of your daughter has upset the balance in your life. You feel lost like you can?t find the joy in any aspect of your life.?

?Right.?

?But you still have children, Jerry. You?re still a father. Yes??

?Yes.?

?Go be a father to them. Do what gives you life. If you need me again I?ll be here, but for now you should be a father.?

?Okay. Thank you, sir.?

?You are welcome, Jerry. Goodbye.?

Roman hung up the phone and crossed the street back to his post outside Party HQ. The building was wild ? flora had overtaken the humanity of the structure, devolving it into an architectural id. Vines flooded from cracks, branches poked through broken windows. The ashes of papers disintegrated by the sun coated the floors like a fine layer of dust. But it wasn?t dust. It was just death. Roman fetched a journal from his pack and opened to the first blank page ? close to the back ? and began writing down Jerry?s information.

5/13/10. Jerry. American. Daughter killed by car. Vocation: Father.Daedalus/Icarus.May call back.

* * *

Jerry did call back on July 2nd. In that time Roman had fielded almost four hundred calls. He had escaped three raids as well. They weren?t truly raids but just a passing presence of police who knew that he was there and were supposed to take him in if they saw him. He wasn?t why they were there. He was an afterthought. They didn?t care enough to really look for him and he was smart enough to stay hidden while they were there. The phone would ring almost constantly but Roman could not answer. These days were the worst, sitting and listening to that ringing with a chest-tightening helplessness. He would sit up on the roofs reading moldy encyclopedias, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, huddled in his makeshift house ? a tent obstructed from view by a set of vents. Not nearly as nice of a place as he had made for himself in the second floor of Party HQ where he had a real bed, linens, a desk, a bookshelf and various personal affects and decorations. Up here he had only a flashlight and a bedroll. When he didn?t read he would peek over the edge of the building and watch the movement of police trucks, eating the food that had been packaged for him by a man named Oskar. Oskar had asked how he ate and he admitted to still foraging from the non-perishables that had been left behind in the city?s grocery stores. Oskar had started packing crates of food and dropping it outside the Party HQ on a bi-weekly basis ? a repayment, he said, for Roman?s services. The troops navigated the city like cancerous rats, their brains weighted by tumors and confusion. Eventually they would find their way out and Roman would come down and gratefully answer the ringing phone.

?It?s not that I don?t love being a father or spending time with my children. It?s just that I feel broken as a father. I feel like a failure.?

?You feel as Daedalus, Jerry.?

?I?m sorry? what??

?Daedalus. On the day you called the first time I wrote next to your name ?Daedalus? and knew you would be calling back with the sorrows of that mad scientist.?

?Who, uh, who was he??

?Daedalus was a man in the stories of Greeks who made the Labyrinth to hide away the Minotaur. After that the King locked him and his son Icarus away in a tower so they couldn?t share the secrets of the Labyrinth. They escaped by making wings and flying away. Do you know that story of Icarus and his wings??

?He flew too close to the sun.?

?Yes he did, and he fell into the ocean and drowned. Most people talk about this story as being a moral lesson of desire, but in regards to you the focus is not on Icarus but instead on Daedalus. You are Daedalus and you watched your child fall and the weight of blame is crushing you.?

??Yes??

?The weight of Atlas, almost. Do you know Atlas??

?Uh, he carried the world on his back??

?Yes, and Atlas cannot lose that weight. He tried to give it to Heracles ? Hercules ? when he came questing for the golden apple. That weight is something that can?t be lost, it?s something you learn to live with and hold onto with some sort of grace.?

?But how??

?Time. Time will bring great change, it is said. I?m sure you know it to be true. Think about yourself as a boy, when you were fourteen or when you had your first girlfriend and then think about now and how different you are. Those pains, those wounds, those old loves are such dull aches now in your heart you can hardly remember how it felt to feel that feel in the first place. Such will these aches pass, that much I can tell you for certain. Until that time you much learn to shoulder this weight well, and don?t forget to be a father to your other children Jerry. They need you perhaps even more than you need them.?

Roman decided to remain silent until Jerry would respond. He knew Jerry remained on the line as he could hear the sounds of ambience from the background.

?May I ask you something?? Jerry said.

?Yes.?

?Why do you stay in Pripyat??

?Pripyat is my home.?

?But it hasn?t always been.?

?Yes, it has.?

?But the city,? Jerry said with obvious confusion, ?they evacuated the city during the meltdown.?

?Yes they did, but I stayed behind. I was left behind, I guess, by my father who no longer wished to care for me and saw it as a great opportunity.?

?An opportunity for what??

?To get rid of me.?

Really? That?s awful.?

?Yes it is, but it was so long ago it is hard to ache.? Roman stared up at the sky through the towering ruins. Overcast today, the grey clouds were supposedly moving, but the blanket of them was so thick that the motion was imperceptible.

?But why did you stay?? Jerry asked.

?Where else should I go? I do not know. I stayed here alone, hiding from the military and the curious until one day the phone rang and this cycle began.?

?But, I mean, why do you keep doing this? Keep answering this phone and talking to all of us??

?It is what I was meant to do.?

?You mean your vocation??

?Yes, Jerry. Exactly. I spent my life wandering around Pripyat, reading the books in the library, learning English and educating myself. I learned so much, experienced so much, but nothing ever struck that chord for me. I never felt that spark until the first day the phone rang and I answered and spoke to another person for the first time in almost twenty years. I had been locked away here. In many ways Pripyat is my Labyrinth, I am the Minotaur locked inside, doomed to never find my way out. But perhaps, through this phone, I can still do some good for the world.?

Roman smiled, pleased with the concise metaphor he had formed. Jerry?s silence did not seem like that of someone who is at a loss for words. Rather, the silence of someone intensely scrutinizing something.

?I don?t know,? Jerry said, ?Perhaps, though, there will come a time when you have done all you need to do and you will be able to leave and see the world.?

?See the world?? Roman laughed and trailed off. ?I think I have seen all of it I need to see right here in Pripyat, Jerry.?

?Are you sure about that, sir? I mean? Why won?t you leave? I?d imagine it?s a struggle to stay there ? stay in a city that?s been forgotten by the world.?

?Eh. It?s not so hard as you might think. It is my home, I do not want to go anywhere else.?

There was a long pause before Jerry spoke.

?Are you scared to leave??

?No, why should I be??

?Because you never have. There?s a whole world out there but you?ve never seen any of it.?

?I know what the world is, Jerry.?

?Yeah, you?ve read about it in your books and seen your film strips. All of them are probably censured by the fucking Soviets. It?s not reality. Your life?? He let a sigh pass his lips, ?Your life is not reality.?

Roman leaned back against the wall of the phone booth, letting his whole weight push against the frame despite feeling the metal give under it. He felt slightly elevated, felt some sort of fuzz in his head. His chest seemed to swell and burst in quick cycles. Jerry was right.

?I?m just not ready yet, Jerry.?

?What do you need to do to be ready??

?I do not know.?

?I think,? Jerry sniffed, ?I think that you aren?t ever going to do it if you try and do it on your terms. You said you hide from the police ? from the military. Maybe you need to stop. Maybe you need to get caught, to get brought back to the city. Back to the world. Jarringly. Against your wishes.?

Roman coughed.

?It?s the only way. At least,? Jerry sucked in air through his teeth, ?That?s my experience ? how I?ve experienced it.?

?Maybe. It is something I will give thoughts to.?

?Okay. Good.?

Roman nodded through the silence, forgetting that Jerry would not be able to see it.

?Thank you again? Jerry said.

?You are welcome, Jerry.?

?Good luck.?

Roman heard the line disconnect. He hung the phone back up on the receiver and made his way back across the street to party HQ. He extracted the journal and turned to Jerry?s entry, no longer the last, and added below the initial entry:

I am the Minotaur. He knows now. Will not call back.