It's summer in the global north (which is winter in the global south), and for the month of August Literatur.Review is bringing them all together, publishing previously untranslated or unpublished stories from the north and south of our world.

Alhierd Bacharevič (born 1975 in Minsk) is a Belarusian writer. He studied Belarusian literature and linguistics at the Pedagogical University in Minsk. He has published several novels and essay collections and his books have been translated into German, English, Russian and other languages. His 900-page work Europe's Dogs was published in 2017 and translated into German by Voland & Quist in 2024.

The door on the first floor groaned and slammed shut, the neighbour's dog barked, the walls grew as thin as if she were sitting behind a Japanese screen. The people in the stairwell came up silently, but she could hear their breathing. She knew they were coming for her.

Over the past few weeks, Volha had rehearsed the scene in her head meticulously, over and over again. It consisted of four short sequences. The minute the doorbell rings, she gets up and goes to the kitchen. Then she comes back, puts the phone on the shelf next to the window and switches on the video recording. Then she goes to the door and opens it. And then she sits down and starts playing.

The first thing that bursts into the apartment is the sound of the doorbell - they're here, it announces, they're already at the door. The corrupted doorbell screams at Volha: Open up, you may as well, they're breaking down the door anyway, they know you're there. She went into the kitchen, returned quickly and ran her finger over the phone on the shelf. Went to the door and turned the key. The people on the other side kept ringing the bell, they were too busy to hear that quick sound. And while they continued to press the button, systematically, as if they were torturing someone, Volha walked slowly into the living room and sat down at the piano. 
The music immediately flooded all corners of the room, flying up to the ceiling and shattering against it, forcing the cobwebs in the corners to tremble, ebbing and flowing; it was as if the apartment was immersed in the music and could no longer escape, now breathing only these thunderous, solemn and somewhat melancholy tones. Volha looked at the notes unblinkingly, her fingers sending new and successive waves of fear into the world. The sound of the bell faded away. There, behind the door, the people had finally realised that she had no intention of hiding.

The woman was the first to enter the hallway; Volha saw her out of the corner of her eye. High forehead, short hair with grown out highlights, a blue jacket and a briefcase in her thick, swollen hands. The woman's mouth opened and closed; she was speaking, or maybe reading something, but Volha didn't hear it, the music washed away all the words, made the woman superfluous, out of place and defenceless, almost as though she could be flushed right back into the stairwell. The music flowed down the woman's throat, but she kept opening her mouth, already no longer spitting but swallowing, so that she was swollen with cold seawater, by ever new, powerful, ominous, thick-lipped, clammy, terrible sounds.

Behind the woman, the silhouettes of several silent men loomed in the darkness - without waiting for her to finish, they swarmed into the apartment, one patting down the coats on the coat rack from top to bottom before going into the bedroom. At his heels followed a torrent of cold fear and foaming, steely horror, filling the narrow little room where, frowning merrily at the splashes, their strange dreams gathered. The bed, the chest of drawers and the long-stemmed lamp - everything moved, came to life in other people's hands, nothing belonged to her any more. The man tried on her panties like a mask. His face twisted, perhaps in disgust, perhaps in pleasure.

A second man walked past Volha into the kitchen, where he swam off, rowing with his arms, throwing saucers onto the floor, souvenirs which she'd brought back from her many travels, and now they were rocking on the waves of her music, not a single one broken - only the coffee flowed unchecked, turning the music brown, black and pure.

A third man made his way round the woman, whose mouth was still twitching, and began to circle the piano, watching Volha and pulling books from the shelves at random, as if looking for a particular one for himself. As she let her fingers fly wildly over the countless keys, no longer visible, her back and neck waited for this man to grab her by the neck so she wouldn't sink, or to throw a book at her head. Not to sink, but to stop her, to finally push back this tide. But he kept running from shelf to shelf somewhere behind her, and she guessed he was trying to feel the bottom with his feet.

 There, behind the woman, were a few more. Still in the hallway, they dared not come in and, blurred in the doorway, had their eyes fixed on her as if praying she would look back, but she only looked ahead, at the notes. The woman finally finished her lecture and swam closer, standing over Volha now, trying to shove the briefcase into her hands, and something else - a pen? Or perhaps a stiff finger for Volha to warm with her breath?

Undertow, the woman's lips moved, she leaned down and looked into Volha's face, covering the notes, unaware that they were now crawling down her cheeks like ants, no longer even necessary, because there was no stopping the music now - it simply flowed into the stairwell and gushed headlong  onto the fear-flooded street.

Those waiting in the hallway were no longer needed; they had long since dissolved into the shadowy staircase chimney, having sheepishly pulled the door shut behind them. All that was left in the hallway was the old Soviet chandelier shining in the empty face of the mirror face.

Undertow, the woman said once more, then pushed herself off the piano and swam back towards the yellow light.
The one standing behind Volha threw a book to the floor. She heard him approach, spreading his arms as if to embrace her. Slowly, as if he was falling asleep as he walked.

He grabbed the lid of the piano and brought it down onto her fingers with all his might. No one heard her cry out. The music still filled the room with its roar.

Then he kicked a stool with his foot, but it didn't break at the first attempt. Now it was he who was shouting - but no one heard that either. The woman turned away, sat down on a chest of drawers and seemed to be dozing off. The piano was still booming - clothes were falling to the floor, somewhere in the bathroom perfume bottles were breaking on the tiles and their scents mingling into an unbearably sweet, bestial smell.

The one who had been behind Volha crouched down. He was hugging the stool now, as if studying its construction, as if he didn't understand why he couldn't smash it with a kick of his boot.

Vomit spilled over the broken glass of the colourful perfume bottles she brought back from each of her trips. The one who had searched the bathroom was on all fours - he tried to get up, suddenly gave up and fell face down into the warm blood still running from his severed fingers.

Volha saw them all - as if through a layer of water.

On her bed in the bedroom lay an unknown man, dreaming wildly.

In the hallway, as if suspended from an eternal iron coat rack, the woman slept, her briefcase in her arms, one finger sticking out, stiff and bluish, as if smeared with ink.

Volha closed her eyes. The music was still playing. Now they were all immersed, deeply submerged. Through the old two-room apartment in the centre of Minsk, behind thick walls of life that now let no sound through at all, ran two invisible forces of nature, catching their dreams - no one tried to separate them anymore: the music full of winter sadness and the noiseless gas, paid for in advance until March.

About the short story

The short story was published in 2023 in the volume "Pieratrus u muzei" (Alhierd Bacharevič: Pieratrus u muzei [Ператрус у музэі, Raid on the museum], Yanushkevich Publishing, Ząbki, 2023, pp. 109-114), in which Bacharevič deals with the suppressed revolution in Belarus in 2020: the protagonists are perpetrators and victims in an inhumane system, in the midst of pain, cynicism and hypocrisy. In the foreword, the author writes: "Because the best answer to the judges and executioners who ban and destroy books is to write new poems, novels and stories, free of fear and censorship, sharpened like knives, precise like second hands, angry like our curses in the dawn of foreign cities."

About the translator

Tina Wünschmann, born in Freital in 1980, studied political science and communication studies at the Technical University of Dresden. She has been translating from Belarusian since 2010, including poetry by Julia Cimafiejeva and essays by Alhierd Bacharevič. Numerous translated texts have appeared at dekoder.org and weiterschreiben.jetzt. The novel "Was suchenst du, Wolf?" by Eva Viežnaviec, published in 2023, was nominated for the HKW Berlin International Literature Prize.