We continue to introduce you to the work of young Belarusian authors. This time, we invite you to dive into several chapters from the upcoming novel by Alyona Soyka—a raw and painful story about how easy it is to “overlook” the moment when curiosity turns into a trap and someone else’s addiction becomes your own.

Alyona Soyka is a journalist and literary editor. Originally from Belarus, she now lives in Georgia. Her upcoming book is not just an autobiography, but an attempt to make sense of the experience of addiction through the lens of “autofiction.”

“I wasn’t afraid of alcohol from the very beginning, even though I saw what it turned my father into. ‘It won’t happen to me’—just get that tattooed on yourself and be done with it. I overlooked my own addiction—disease as an essence, where vodka, and lines, and injections, and unhealthy emotional intimacy are all branches of the same rotten tree. You’d want to chop it down, but that tree is your life.” — Alyona Soyka

Story No. 1: Intro

I foolishly asked him to lower the dosage so he could at least talk to me a little while in that state.

But he did what he always did—his tongue wouldn’t obey him, his eyes would close, and he’d nod off, occasionally asking me to light a cigarette for him.

Those were strange days: I’d sit by the bed, the setting sun illuminating the dust and the wrinkles on my face reflected in the window—and I’d see Zhenya’s meaningless smile. Sometimes I’d check his pulse, drink tea, touch the warm wooden headboard, and think about how good it would be to be someone else. Sometimes I wouldn’t notice the sun had set completely—usually, by that point, Zhenya would come to, and I’d go to turn on the light.

In St. Petersburg, when I met Zhenya after he got out of prison, he said he just needed to get high once to relieve the stress. But after that, after that, of course, a carefree life free of addiction awaited us.

God, it was such bullshit, but he said it. I used to watch similar scenes in movies or read them in books and think: do they really believe this cliché? They do. I said it to myself more than once, too.

In that two-bedroom apartment in Petersburg, besides us, there were two other guys, someone’s elderly grandmother with a blaring TV, and a Doberman.

While one of them was preparing everything, the other asked me:

“You in?”

“No, she doesn’t use,” Zhenya replied.

“Then why do you even hang out with him?”

I watch as they all draw up the syringes, catch the flash, fix, and lean against the wall, smiling.

I don’t remember how long I stood there in the corner—I didn’t even dare to sit—just watching. My legs went numb. When I finally snapped out of it, I realized the TV was off and the light in the other room was gone. I tried to wake Zhenya. He was like a giant sack of potatoes that I had to shove into a taxi.

I handled that task well then, and I’d continue to handle it well later.

The next morning, he proudly poured the leftover methadone (that’s what it was that time) into a kefir bottle, threw it far out the window, and went off to start a new life.

I saw Zhenya’s first overdose just seven days later. Eventually, I’d keep Naloxone in my backpack like a normal person keeps tissues.

Back then, I had to call an ambulance. When the doctors left, Medvedev pulled another baggie from under the mattress—and fixed again.

It seems to me that right then, at that moment, I should have been screaming and—running away.

Heroin has many slang names; the one I find closest is *khmury* (gloomy). It’s not a drug of joy or pleasure—not in the way bad books usually describe a high—it’s a drug of dull relief, quite a dubious one, actually.

A substance that reduces you, so big, to a pinpoint pupil. A tiny dot from the thinnest needle—that is you now.

One day I asked Zhenya to fix me myself—I wanted that dull, meaningless smile, too. He argued, of course, tried to talk me out of it. But then we found a compromise: if I wanted to do it again, I’d have to do it all myself. Well, shooting up isn’t exactly like reading *The Sound and the Fury* in the original, so I agreed, naively believing that getting hooked after the first dose was a bit of an exaggeration.

It’s true, for physical withdrawal you need longer trysts. But the main trouble is the psychological craving.

When Zhenya gave me the injection, I stretched out my legs, leaned my head back on an IKEA pillow, and said, “Fuck!”

In that moment, I realized clearly that I was caught, that this was all a mistake that would take so much out of me, if not devour my life entirely.

I got what I was looking for—a little death. It was a sample of non-existence, which didn’t have a price tag yet and which I liked very much.

Your pulse slows down, your heart rate drops—and you slowly fade out. What else does a person need who never learned how to live, how to be an adult, or how to endure?

With the second injection the following day, I managed by myself, albeit not very skillfully.

Story No. 2: Puppy

The sun is setting. I’m hiding in the neighbor’s maple tree, hoping my mom won’t call me home for a while. I don’t want dinner. Or sleep. Or to watch TV. I want to breathe in the overripe air.

Summer is at its end—the evenings are already cool. But my body, having run around plenty, is hot. I want to be left alone. There is no longing or sadness in this. There is something cat-like about it.

Though I am a puppy. I have always been a puppy. It seems I’ve remained one, with only light (rare!) flashes of never needing anyone.

I remember once locking myself and my girlfriend Vika in a Minsk apartment—just so she wouldn’t leave me, just so I wouldn’t lose the relationship.

But I lost it exactly when I was asked to return the key. And I wouldn’t. I shook my head and wouldn’t return it. I held that damn key in my cold, sweaty hands—and I was losing it, losing it.

How many times did I walk behind someone in tears in my dreams, trying not to breathe, just to be there for a little longer, behind their back. How many times did I agree, make peace, and act as someone I wasn’t because I didn’t know who I was.

Erasing yourself in love—

It’s like looking for a cigarette butt that you can still light. Breathing through your mouth when your nose is blocked. Returning to clothes you decided to give to the donation box long ago. Unbuttoning the top button when your pants are too small.

When everything ends.

When everything ends—it’s the desire to sleep.

Cutting a collage, imagining that it’s the world around you, that it’s you. To think of yourself as a necessary object, remember where it lies, and try to forget.

This connection with Zhenya was not much different from others in my life. I honestly believed that he (like everyone else) was doing me a favor by choosing me. Zhenya, even if it was in the past, had been someone—an artist with exhibitions, adventures, cool photos. And I was a lost person who had simply watched too many movies and read too many books. But they didn’t teach me the main thing—how to *be*. Yet that is what all great books teach.

Codependency, for all its pain, is convenient and understandable: you don’t have to choose yourself; in fact, you wouldn’t even know how. Because it’s not clear what to choose: the important, necessary—but not yours—voices from books? The ability to mirror, to speak softer? I remember Zhenya saying that my favorite orange beret was ugly; I resisted (I loved that stupid hat), but then I took it to the trash anyway. And I did the same with everything that was important to me.

And I didn’t leave him because I’d found my own worth—I just didn’t want to die.

I already wrote that Zhenya was lucky, but I didn’t write that he was very charming. It was the perfect combination for a rogue and it helped him survive.

How many examples do you know where a person gets out of prison and a room in Moscow at Kitay-Gorod is waiting for him, which he managed to arrange while incarcerated? But Zhenya didn’t just fail to appreciate it—he felt that people had always borrowed from him and now others had to pay him back. So he demanded, and demanded, and waited, and demanded again.

That’s how he ended up in an abandoned house at Chistye Prudy. They say the desire to fight addiction should be strengthened by the “bottom” (everyone has their own) that you need to push off from. But Zhenya, as always, hoped that someone would definitely pull him out and gift him the most picturesque shore.

“Zhenya, wake up, your mother died 15 years ago, unconditional love is over, there won’t be any more. Zhenya, do you even understand what love is?”

No, he didn’t understand.

Every evening, when we finished our beer at the ponds, he’d just ask me not to leave, ask me to spend the night with him there, in that abandoned house, on a mattress someone had given him.

And I’d say no—uncertainly, knowing that at any moment he could push me, but I held on. I couldn’t give in. Giving in then meant a resolve to die. And I didn’t want to die. Or rather, I didn’t want to die LIKE THAT, on the street, on someone’s unwanted mattress, without light, miserably lost in the floors of a house where no one wants to live.

I could hardly bear his childish, harsh, naive, and stupidly selfish gaze, but I’d still leave shortly before the metro closed—I still had somewhere to go.

Zhenya was killed in that house later. It’s not clear what happened: either some drinking buddies stabbed him, or the cops went too far and beat him to death.

Once—why lie—I did stay the night. I didn’t sleep; I thought that this was my bottom, and I remembered the maple tree. The maple tree where I was happy simply because I existed.

It has now become an important habit—to return to that branch, to that summer flight—carelessly scratching childhood knees bitten by mosquitoes.

Story No. 6: The Exhibition

The exhibition was held at the newly opened WeArt gallery on Nikolina Gora. Its owners were trendy Moscow types whom Zhenya’s old friend had connected him with while he was still in prison. They liked Zhenya (the exaggerated Modigliani-style life apparently still has its magic) and they liked what he did. He created the sketches for this exhibition in prison. Paradoxically, prison was one of the most productive periods of his life. At one point, Zhenya managed to get out of peeling potatoes in the kitchen and got a job in the library—the quietest place in the colony, where he could mind his own business.

The concept of pedestals that reinterpreted success in the modern world could hardly be called fresh, but the objects themselves were done very coolly by Zhenya’s friend Kirill. So, everything looked really great in the gallery space.

Zhenya went there in the morning while I decided to finish my own business: I was still temporarily living with an ex-boyfriend and needed to pack my things. At Kievskaya, where I caught the minibus, I wanted to buy Zhenya some sunflowers. But it was the day before March 8th: the flower market was packed, and prices were sky-high as usual. And then I caught myself, remembering how I’d once bought him food and fruit at the Narkomfin building, and he’d cast the bag aside with such contempt that I felt pathetic.

“If you have extra money, you can just give it to me.”

That’s how it was: by showing care, I always felt like a philistine in Zhenya’s eyes, someone trying to “bridle” him with affection and attention. Though the word “bridle” always associated with a selfish motive for me. But I had nothing to take from Zhenya, I didn’t need anything from him—what did he think of himself?

I ended up not buying the flowers after all.

Jägermeister flowed like a river at the opening. Zhenya was throwing back shots quickly, and I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stand by the end of the exhibition. It’s probably how people eat popcorn at the cinema when they’re watching a gripping movie. Though no—they do it slower.

Zhenya was a womanizer, and this was his moment of glory, but surprisingly, he didn’t leave my side. Maybe that was his form of apology for everything that had happened to us in February.

There’s a photograph where I’m gripping my own hand so tightly out of terror that you can see it turning a different color even in black and white. Zhenya knew how to drift away and enjoy the moment, helped by the free cocktails; I, however, couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that we had nowhere to sleep tonight.

I couldn’t even get drunk: I didn’t want to embarrass myself, didn’t want to be awkward when you’re already the clumsiest person here, nervous, embarrassed.

Among very well-dressed, wealthy people, it’s easiest to notice the frayed edges of your own backpack, a poorly fitting coat, or the look of pure stupidity in Zhenya’s eyes when he’s drunk.

The exhibition went well; it seemed there was potential and Zhenya might be able to revive his career. “Just don’t let him ruin it, just don’t let him ruin it”—you don’t know who you’re praying to in that moment, but you pray.

When the main guests had left and Zhenya was passed out in a back room somewhere, Alexey Sosna, the director of the Zverev Center, unexpectedly dropped by. Universal providence—nothing less—to see a familiar face.

He just hugged me and asked:

“Does he have somewhere to sleep?”

I shake my head.

“And you?”

“No,” I say, “no.” He said he could let us stay at his dacha for a few days, but he asked me to promise there would be no drugs in the house.

“That I can promise, we don’t have money for them anyway. But as for alcohol…”

“Alcohol is fine; a drunk Zhenya doesn’t scare me.”

We woke Zhenya up, shoved him into the car somehow, and hauled him to bed. He started snoring immediately. If a heroin addict’s sleep is quiet, an alcoholic’s is the opposite—Zhenya successfully alternated. Alexey gave me towels and wished me goodnight. When the lights went out, I went into the large living room; I’d noticed a bar when we came in. I took an open bottle of whiskey and sat in a chair in front of the TV. I took a greedy gulp and closed my eyes. Immediately it felt painful, as if I’d bumped into the leg of a bed upon waking—I wanted to scream, long and sharp.

Nothing. Can. Be. Done. About this. It’s not that I can’t do anything; I never could. Zhenya can’t anymore either: there are addicts who would rather die than quit.

The darkness in the room was heavy, like the weight of someone else’s plea for salvation. I really wanted there to be no tomorrow, because tomorrow we’ll ruin everything, he’ll ruin it, and I’ll help him, because pray or not—we’ll ruin everything, everything.

Story No. 7: After the Exhibition

When I woke up, Zhenya wasn’t there. I grabbed a towel and washed my face. I walked through the living room and into the kitchen. Alexey was making breakfast while Medvedev confidently poured someone else’s vodka into a glass.

Zhenya always used flagrantly, not hiding, not considering it anything special—it’s like how people sometimes ask where the bathroom is while unzipping their fly on the go.

In those vulnerable moments, I’d look even more closely at the faces of those around us, trying to see if it angered them and how much. Because if it did—we probably wouldn’t be staying long.

I always asked Zhenya to be more delicate and polite, and it wasn’t about being subservient, as he thought, but simply about gratitude. But the meaning of that specific word was the hardest thing to explain to him: he was, after all, a “holiday-man,” a “firework-man”—what do you mean, you don’t like something?

Alexey was calm, poured me some coffee. We had breakfast, he showed us where to leave the key; we had to be out by Monday morning. I exhaled: a week is a long time for homelessness. Alexey gave us more time than he’d promised yesterday. I say thank you, I want to do something else, but I don’t know how.

When Alexey left, Zhenya pulled out a five-thousand-ruble note and waved it in front of my nose, saying, let’s have a good time, buy some nice food, watch a series.

“Did you borrow that money or steal it?”

Zhenya gets offended.

And I never understood why he pouted.

“Medvedev, why are you offended? Have you never stolen money before? You’ve been to prison twice in Russia alone, why are you playing the innocent?”

He told me, of course, that he’d borrowed it from Sosna, but how was I supposed to check? I wasn’t going to call and find out.

For several days now, we’ve been living in some suburb of Moscow, waking up hungover to the sound of cars outside. We have no part in life; truly, we don’t even know which life we’re not part of, but it doesn’t matter. We’re living in this suburb, but Zhenya doesn’t want to live here. “Then you won’t,” I say, “what day is it, when are we moving out?”

“I don’t want to live here at all, do you hear me?” I hear you, you want to live in an apartment in the center with high ceilings, where slender young ladies bring you cocaine on a beautiful tray. You’ve said it, you’ve said it many times; I know your desires better than my own.

We smoke a final cigarette and go to the shop.

As we walk, we see snow—it’s a cold March—and trees. A strange kind of nature, cheerless. Just like you? Or me? Some comedians we are.

We return with two bottles of vodka; nothing has changed in the house—I should clear up the bottles. I don’t like it here, in this suburb. I plug my ears, I hum a song, I don’t want to hear this whining.

And how is your health in these days of yours?

That’s how it always happened: we wanted use so we wouldn’t have to live through the horror, we wanted to drink “civilized,” watch something funny, go for a walk.

But you drink one glass, a second, you get stupid, weak, savage, you sit there helplessly, drowning cigarette butts in various glasses—the main thing is not to take a swig from them later, but you’ll do that too. The space swells with trash, just as you swell from the booze.

What day is it? I need to clear the bottles, whatever day it is. But to clean up, you have to stop, you have to stop drinking. I’m already sick from the vodka, but I take another sip and go to throw up.

My whole body is shaking; I don’t remember how many days we’ve been drinking. It feels like the third day. I come out of the bathroom, and Zhenya joyfully puts his phone in his pocket and says that Danya, his Danya, is going to Omsk to stage a play, which means we can live in his apartment on Oktyabrskaya for a month.

“Can you imagine?”

I feel nauseous.

“Who is Danya? Let’s just sleep.”

“I don’t want to stay here anymore, do you hear me? Soyka, do you hear me?”

I might not have been listening to him then, but the Universe always answered his requests. Though I kept telling him it wouldn’t always be that way. It’s a pity that in those moments, it was he who plugged his ears.