Viktor And Jenny

Viktor with no legs moved along the streets using the strength of his arms and two plastering boards. They were gripped in his hands and were used more like shoes at the end of his arms than crutches. Crutches, even small ones, were too dangerous; a bad fall was inevitable. When the girl spoke to him he had already stopped propelling himself along the sidewalk. He was exhausted and he had done less than half of his proposed trip, a lot less than half. She looked kind and concerned and awkward but at least she stopped.

"Can I help? In any way?"

She was confused and of course she didn't know what to do, but Viktor couldn't be bothered to explain.

"Have you got any water?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't have any." She looked at him with her big eyes full of sympathy which wasn't going to save him. "Shall I see if I can get some?"

"Yes."

She crossed the street and went along to a small store. Viktor tried to move his head to see what kind of store it was but his neck ached and the exhaust fumes were hot in his throat, so he looked back down at the pavement. She took a long time coming back.

"I asked them for water because someone wasn't well but they just wouldn't give me any; I had to buy a bottle. They were just so unsympathetic, it really gets me angry."

"I'll pay you for the water," said Viktor.

"Oh no, that's no what I meant at all. I'm just angry with them."

She didn't sound angry, just complaining. She took the top off the bottle.

"Right. Here it is."

"Pour it into my mouth," said Viktor.

He could have balanced with one arm but it was a big effort, bigger than he could stand at the moment. So she put the bottle to his lips and poured it carefully for him. He closed his eyes and listened to the traffic and the footsteps of other people who stopped talking when they went past. It was a big bottle and he drank all of the water. He thought vaguely of a mother and then of a breast and he guessed that she'd be thinking something like that as well. He tried to smell her hair, he tried just to see what her face was like, but he felt too tired.

"This is weird for you I know," he said.

"It's okay. Really it's okay."

"Why? Do you work with disabled people or something?"

"No, I don't."

"Well this must seem pretty abnormal. Surely."

"I try to understand," she said. "By the way my name's Jenny." There was a pause. "Anyway, when I was at school we spent a day pretending to be blind, walking around the city with someone there just to tell us when we were going to crash into something. It really made you see - well, to realise how hard it must be."

"Why on earth did you do that?" said Viktor.

"It was part of what they called 'different ability' week."

"You mean 'disability' week."

"Well they called it 'different ability' week."

A couple went by and peered down at the half-man and the crouching girl with the hair nearly as long as him.

"See anything you like?" called Viktor. "Will you join us?"

Jenny touched him on the shoulder.

"Do you need to get home?"

"How are you going to do that," he said. "Do you have a big rucksack? Or a wheel barrow?"

Jenny shrieked with laughter and then put her palm to her mouth.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It was meant to be a joke, you can laugh."

"So where are you going?"

"I was just trying to get to the other side of the city."

Viktor had been moving since the early morning. He had looked at a map and found what he thought was the quickest route to the other side; he wanted to get just past the city limits, then he'd be satisfied and come home again. He probably wouldn't walk back as well, he'd ring for one of the cabs that knew him. It was further than he normally went, maybe three times as far as he'd ever been at one time before, but it had seemed possible. Now it didn't. It was a hot day, he'd packed no water or food or even the map and he couldn't see well enough to be sure if he was on the right route. He'd set himself a challenge which should have been straightforward, but now he'd got to the part of the city which he didn't know so well and he was on the point of failing, failing by a long way.

"What happened?" said Jenny.

"I just wanted to get to the other side of the city," said Viktor. She probably meant what had happened to his legs but he didn't want to tell her and watch all the sympathy and maybe tears come into the big eyes. "Just for the hell of it. I didn't want to work today so I thought I'd take a big walk."

"What's your work?"

"I sell dyed chicks." He shrugged and laughed at the same time.

The day before he'd been selling dyed chicks outside the metro. They were dyed bright green or pink and they strutted around on a piece of cardboard. Five dollars for a chick. He could hardly believe how few he'd sold over the previous three months. People looked and children laughed at the chicks or at him but hardly anyone bought one. Of course they'd probably die and if they didn't who wanted a chicken in the city anyway? He wasn't even sure if they were chickens or just young birds of some other type. At the office, which organised work to make him feel useful in some way, they gave him a different bunch of chicks every day, so he never saw them grow.

"That's unusual."

"I don't need to work," said Viktor. "I get a pension and disability payments. I'm poor but I get some money."

"Do you want to go home now? Could we get a cab?"

"I want to get to the city limits."

"I think you're too tired."

"I am too tired. But I want to get there without paying for a cab."

"I'll pay," said Jenny.

"It's the same thing."

"No. If I pay, you've managed to get there without paying. You've used your wits to complete the journey. Your strength for the first part and then your wits."

"My wits. Like I fooled you into helping me?"

"If that's how you want to think of it, then yes. Why not?"

Viktor looked at the pavement again and he knew he was way too tired to make it any other way. Other people were still walking by, looking at them, not stopping, so he was lucky that this girl was here.

"Okay Jenny. I'll call my cab. It's quite a few miles though."

"It's alright. I've got money."

In the cab he could see nothing but Jenny talked him through the route. She knew the city well and told him the names of factories and churches. When they got to the outskirts, she didn't say so much.

"I'm Viktor," he said, to break the silence. "My legs got blown off by a mine in Africa."

"Oh. My God."

He didn't look into her face. When he had joined up, his parents were always saying how amazing for a second-generation Russian immigrant to be an American soldier. They used the phrase 'second-generation immigrant' a lot and he hadn't known what it had meant for most of his childhood. By the time he became a soldier he knew and they were right, it seemed pretty amazing.

But after two years he was with a peace mission- a real peace mission, not just one by name- and he got his legs blown off.

"How much help do you get from the government?"

"Some. Enough not to starve. They call occasionally to make sure I'm not stranded somewhere."

When he had discovered that his legs had been blown off he'd thought the world would cradle him and sing its sorrows until the day he died. He thought he'd be put in a home somewhere and spend his days in the gardens, propped up by a nurse to look at the trees or the clouds or whatever he wanted to look at. But they gave him money and a social worker who was meant to be there when he needed him and that was that. He'd had to find his own flat, sort out all the normal crap with the landlord and getting repairs done and he got no help with transport apart from a free bus and train pass.

The plastering boards he'd found himself; he hardly used the wheelchair or the crutches now. So he moved around the small part of the city which he was stuck in, clacking along the sidewalks and building up his arms so much that they looked almost stupid against the rest of his body. Occasionally he'd look up just to see how people were looking at him. Sometimes there was sympathy or laughter, mostly there was unfriendly interest.

"Shall we get out?" said Jenny when they arrived.

"I guess so."

The driver carried him out of the car and Viktor told him to wait. They were on a small road surrounded by a few closed industrial units.

"Not much here," he said. "Not much of a trip is it, really?"

"At least you're outside the city limits," said Jenny.

They looked around for a while longer at nothing much.

"Okay," he said. "We can go. Look, I'm going to get the cab back to my apartment, so I can pay the driver anyway. And I can drop you off where you want to go."

"No. I mean you can drop me off, but I'll pay for the trip here."

"Okay."

He thought of asking her back to the apartment but he only had some beetroot soup and very cheap coffee to offer her. Even if she didn't want any, the apartment smelled strongly of beetroot soup at the moment. She would be too polite to say, but of course she wouldn't want any, not the coffee or the soup. In any case, she might think that he was going to play on her sympathy and try to get her to sleep with him. They got back into the cab, she gave him the fare so far and they talked a little more for ten minutes while they drove back into the city. Then Jenny got out near a metro station and they said goodbye and wished each other luck.