War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives…It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
—Smedley D. Buttler
The control of global politics, by the wealthiest families of the planet is exercised in a powerful, profound and clandestine manner. It is a system in which the elites thrive on war and widespread human misery, on death and destruction by design… Countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow billions more to rebuild, thus benefiting the global psychopathic elites.
—Matthew McCaffrey
I
Even assuming that everything she has told me is true, I find it difficult to understand the reasons why she rejects my proposal. I imagine her motives are complex. As I lie in our bed, observing her, her naked body—with small but firm breasts and buttocks, a long neck, and hair flowing down to her shoulder blades—is outlined against the window, illuminated from outside by the glow of a nearby streetlamp. She looks so lost in thought that she seems to be thousands of kilometres away. I would say she’s exactly 9,862 kilometres from here, in Vladivostok, with Ilya. Despite having her so close, I feel like the loneliest man in the world right now. There’s an invisible wall between us that I’m always willing to breach, but she won’t let me. All I can do is accept this situation.
II
On a Sunday afternoon at the Downsview flea market, where I run a stall selling rare and second-hand books, she approached quietly. Her grey, misty eyes looked at me with a touch of shyness. Her slightly parted lips made me wait in suspense until she finally found the words to speak. She inquired if I had the 1847 first edition of Wuthering Heights. The moment I showed her the copy, her face sparkled with excitement. While I glanced at her chest, she paid me and walked away. I kept my eyes on her until she disappeared in the crowd.
I had her on my mind all week and figured I might have a chance to have my way with her. I've always had good luck with bookworms. Still, I knew the probabilities of running into her again were low.
So I was quite surprised when she showed up the following Sunday. I was already getting excited at the prospect. “She seems to be looking for something,” I thought to myself.
“I'm not looking for anything specific this time,” she quickly informed me. “I’m just browsing. I really like your shop—the mess of books, the dim lighting, and the smell of old paper.”
The last phrase fired me up and conjured an erotic image in my mind. One of the women I dated often teased me, claiming that my love for books was so intense that even my penis smelt and tasted like paper. I played along, and we talked about literature.
“Well, of course I like the authors from my homeland, especially Pushkin and Turgenev; however, my favourites are the Brontë sisters, Edith Wharton, and Milan Kundera. How about you?” she asked in a familiar tone, as if we were old friends.
Ah! I thought, smirking slightly. She's already treating me informally. How I adore communist women! “Dostoyevsky is my favourite among Russian authors, and I consider “Crime and Punishment” to be one of the finest novels I've ever read. I am a fervent admirer of García Márquez; I’ve read all his works. I truly enjoy Albert Camus, particularly “L’Homme Révolté”. Émile Zola is exceptional; it may be complicated to believe, but I’ve read all twenty books in the Rougon-Macquart series. Additionally, many of my literary heroes are women, such as Sofía Semyonovna Marmeladov, Nora Helmer, Tess Durbeyfield, Helen Graham, Hester Prynne, Larissa Fyodorovna Antipova, and Rosa, along with the other prostitutes from La Maison Tellier.
After our lively conversation that we both clearly enjoyed, I asked her to join me for lunch at the food court, where Rafael runs a Dominican food stand. “There, we can continue our discussion about other books such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Death in Venice, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”
“Why do you have to be so morbid?” she scolded me with a laugh. “Why are you so fixated on the topic of death? What’s wrong with you?”
“Well, for starters, not all deaths are grim,” I countered. “Some can actually be amusing, like The Jeep Riding Death, for instance.”
“Death riding what?” she exclaimed, surprised and trying to suppress her laughter. “I’ve never heard of that before. What is that? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You won’t find out unless you accept my invitation to lunch.”
She raised her left hand to show me the ring she was wearing. With a frown, she gave me a look that seemed to say, ‘Sorry’ Then she extended her hand for me to shake and walked away.
The rejection didn't upset me, as it's something I experience frequently. I think that besides physical attraction, one reason I felt compelled to invite her was her pronounced Slavic accent while speaking English. What I mean is that the locals here are very aware of the different races and cultures, and they tend to keep their distance. In contrast, we immigrants—regardless of our origins or skin colour—share a common bond: exile. Be it voluntary or forced. We have all gone through the experience of leaving everything behind, crossing the ocean, and settling here. A place where feelings of dislocation, nostalgia, and isolation can be so intense, making the desire for companionship so urgent that only another expatriate can truly understand our situation. As an immigrant from the Caribbean, I think I could relate to her more than anyone else in her native country who has never stepped outside their village.
On the third Sunday, just as I was about to close my bookshop, she showed up unexpectedly. Without wasting any time, she asked if I was still interested in having lunch together. We went to Rafael's small restaurant, where we ordered rice with pigeon peas and stewed cod with potatoes, as well as a bottle of root beer. She approached her dish with some hesitation, though by the end, she conceded that she enjoyed it and found it quite delicious. We discussed Siberia and the Caribbean, the Yaque River and the Yenisei, the Taínos and the Tartars, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Juan Bosch, the October Revolution and the Civil War of '65, the Gulag Archipelago, and the Short Stories Written in Exile. Two worlds so far apart, yet in some ways, not so different.
On the fourth Sunday, as we were having lunch at Rafael’s, I stared at her intently and took her hand. She didn’t pull it away. We finished our meal in silence. After settling the bill with Rafael, I suggested that she come to my apartment. She reminded me that she was married and, lowering her gaze, confessed that she also had a lover. She said that, as absurd as it may seem to me, she felt she couldn’t be involved with three men at once. Without looking up, while gently stroking my hand, she confided that her relationship with her lover was coming to an end and that she would consider giving me a chance afterwards.
III
Norilsk, situated along the Yenisei River in Siberia, ranks among the northernmost cities in the world and is also one of the most polluted. Founded by the Soviet government in 1935 as a labour camp, it now hosts Russia's largest rare metals plant. The air pollution has reached alarming levels due to the four million tonnes of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, cobalt, selenium, strontium-90 radioisotopes, cesium-137, zinc, selenium, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, and hydrogen sulphide released annually into the atmosphere. In this hellish place, surrounded by charred forests, where the snow is black and the air tastes of sulphur, Aksinya Fyodorovna was born in 1975.
She travelled throughout the Soviet Union, from Murmansk to Vladivostok, because her father, who served in the military, was frequently reassigned. Aside from Vladivostok, she never spent more than a year in any location. Just as she started to make friends, her family would have to relocate, forcing her to say goodbye. As a result, she learned to avoid getting too attached to others.
IV
The Red Army crossed the Afghan border in December 1979, when Aksynia was merely four years old. Fyodor Aleksandrovich was among the troops. During the decade her father spent fighting against the mujahideen in the deserts and caves of Afghanistan, Aksinya grew up and became a woman in his absence, ultimately reaching a point where she no longer needed him. One positive aspect of the war was that it allowed her to live in one place for an extended period. She took root in Vladivostok, which became like her hometown. Despite the emotional armour she had built around herself to avoid forming attachments, she fell in love with Ilya Ivanovich, a schoolmate, with the intensity characteristic of a first time.
Although Ludmila Nikolaevna, driven by feelings of helplessness and emotional despair, had taken Igor Petrovich as her lover, she warned her daughter to be cautious of Ilya. She asserted that all men were scoundrels who primarily sought to satisfy their primal desires. Ludmila was unaware that there was no carnal relationship between them. In truth, Ilya, who had lost his father in the war and Aksinya, clung to each other as to a lifeline, finding comfort in one another amidst the madness of the world they had been given.
In 1989—likely a consequence of Perestroika—the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan. The conflict resulted in the death of around one million civilians, 90,000 mujahideens, 18,000 Afghan soldiers, and 15,000 Russian soldiers. Among the survivors, over 50,000 suffered wounds, with around 11,000 left permanently disabled and unable to return to work. Fyodor Aleksandrovich came back to Vladivostok with only a scar on his leg from the incident involving his unit's helicopter, which was shot down by a Stinger missile fired by the mujahideens. Other than that, he was expected to resume his normal life. However, how can someone who participated in the massacres at Kalakan, Mahigiran, and Kushkeen—where Soviet soldiers burnt villages and killed nearly all their inhabitants, including children—come back to their homeland, with a shattered psyche, and still lead a conventional life?
Upon returning home, there was no triumphant welcome. Many believed the war had been a national disgrace, and both the official media and the government shifted blame for the defeat on the troops. Although the fighting had ceased, the memories and traumas of war continued to haunt those who returned, forever changing their lives. The act of killing, often without clear justification, in a war whose reasons they did not fully comprehend, profoundly affected these soldiers, many of whom were barely eighteen when drafted. Many of them suffered from mental illnesses. And addiction to drugs and alcohol was widespread among them. During their time in combat, they came to depend on these substances for their daily survival. Drugs provided them with the necessary strength to carry 40 kilograms of ammunition across mountains, cope with the grief of losing comrades, and manage their fear of death. This long-term impact, one of the most devastating consequences of the conflict, came to be known as the Afghanistan Syndrome.
Like many of his comrades, Fyodor Aleksandrovich was compelled to get by on his wife's earnings and the sporadic government subsidies they received. Aksinya paid him little attention, while Ludmila merely focused on cooking his meals. It could be said that instead of being pleased with his return, they regarded him more as a burden.
While Aksinya was confined within an invented reality centred solely on Ilya Ivanovich and the school, Ludmila Nikolaevna devoted her to the factory, Igor Petrovich's bed, and household chores. Amid all this, Fyodor's mental state continued to decline. He often went on drinking sprees, shouting and making threats. Whenever he managed to get some sleep, he would wake up in terror, screaming, drenched in sweat, trembling, haunted by the sounds of Kalashnikov assault rifles, the blades of MI-24 helicopters, the roar of MiG-21 jets, and the screams of people being shot or consumed by flames.
On multiple occasions he struck Ludmila in the face, causing her to bleed. The day Fyodor pushed Aksinya to the ground and kicked her in the stomach, Ludmila made the tough choice to flee. After packing up a few belongings, she headed to the schoolyard, where her daughter was in tears, promising Ilya that she would write to him and return when she turned eighteen. She did not know that she would never see him again or find love once more. Her mother yanked her away from Ilya Ivanovich's embrace and dragged her to the Trans-Siberian station, where they boarded a train that travelled 5,190 kilometres to Krasnoyarsk, where Ludmila’s sister lived.
Chekhov once described Krasnoyarsk as the most beautiful city in Siberia. Yet for Aksinya, who had grown used to life in Vladivostok and the company of Ilya, the neighbourhood where she lived near Krasnoyarsk-Passazhirsky held no appeal. Ilya’s silence—never responding to the weekly letters she sent—drove her into a deep depression. One bleak night, as dark as the despair within her, she cut her veins. When her mother found her, she was still breathing, and at the hospital, they were able to save her.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 signalled the beginning of the end for the church. During Khrushchev's leadership, most places of worship were shut down, leaving only about a dozen in the Krasnoyarsk eparchy. By the late 1980s, the new Glasnost policy introduced some liberties, allowing the Russian Orthodox Church to resume its activities. Numerous temples were restored and returned to the church, and several monasteries were reopened. In 1991, following 70 years of atheism, there was a revival of faith in the diocese, resulting in a significant increase in the number of churches.
Aksinya was trapped in a profound sorrow from which she found it impossible to escape. Ludmila, unsure of how to help her, sought comfort in the church. Both of them attended services regularly, and the nastoyatel became their advisor and confidant. I can't say exactly how events unfolded, but it is evident that Aksinya began an affair with the much older priest and became pregnant. He pressed her to have an abortion. Without informing her mother, she followed him to a rundown clinic in Krasnoyarsk, where a so-called doctor terminated her pregnancy. As they drove back, in the old Lada driven by the priest, she wept mournfully for the child she had just lost. What she didn’t realize was that she was also mourning the children she would never have, as the procedure performed by the unqualified mechanic had rendered her infertile. Coming out of that tumultuous relationship, Aksinya found herself in an even more fragile mental state than before.
A few years later, following the death of her mother, Aksinya, who had ceased meeting with the priest, weighed down by the emptiness and loneliness that had become part of her everyday life, packed her belongings and moved to Leningrad (which was renamed Saint Petersburg after the dissolution of the Soviet Union). Before her departure, she found out that Fyodor Alexandrovich, still in Vladivostok, had blown his brains out with a Makarova pistol.
She isn't quite sure why, some time later in Saint Petersburg, she agreed to marry the teacher from the school where she was learning English. She wasn't in love, and the Canadian was much older than her. From what she has told me, she likely got swept up in the fantasy of leaving Russia for Canada, where, she thought, her life would improve. Instead, once in Toronto, she found herself facing both loneliness and boredom. Although her husband was a decent man who treated her kindly, and despite her lack of interest in sex, she began to seek out lovers. With them, she experienced her first orgasm and became involved in sadomasochistic relationships with men of questionable character, who merely exploited her for their own ends.
V
Since she started giving me a chance, our lives have settled into a fairly predictable routine. She comes by every Sunday when I’m closing my bookshop, and then we head back to my little apartment in Parkdale, where we spend the remainder of the day wrapped up in the sheets. I feel myself growing closer to her, while she keeps her distance. It’s been several months since our weekly meetings began. Whenever she breaks her silence, I pay close attention, and I’ve been gradually stitching together a patchwork of names, places, people, dates, and events, filling in the blanks with my own assumptions. This is the story I’ve been able to weave from the incomplete details she’s given me, every time she is overtaken by a melancholy so profound that it prompts her to say things as if she were talking to herself, eventually breaking down in tears with her jaws tightly clenched.
There are still things that remain puzzling to me. When she talks about her father, her words are often unclear and indirect. She was 14 when she stopped seeing him; yet, she claims she hardly remembers him. At times, I wonder if she has deliberately suppressed those memories, which leads me to suspect that Fyodor Aleksandrovich may have molested her. I also have difficulty figuring out whether the priest abused her or she allowed it to happen as a means of escaping the despair that was consuming her.
What she’s told me about her husband is also contradictory. On one hand, she’s described him as a good-natured person who treats her kindly, expressing that she would never leave him. On the other hand, she revealed that her affairs began after he suggested a threesome with one of his friends. That shocking proposal upset her, leading to feelings of resentment and a withdrawal of their intimacy in their relationship. It was during this time that she began going out alone, without informing anyone where she was going or what time she would be back. She started frequenting bars and would often go home with the first person willing to spend the night with her.
I will never understand why she married him if she didn't love him or why she stays by his side after so many years, despite him being twice her age. It puzzles me why, stubbornly and decisively, she has chosen to take seriously the vows of “for better or for worse” and “until death do us part”. Additionally, I don’t understand why she prefers to keep cheating on him, engaging in fleeting and self-destructive relationships. Now and then I feel as though being with me makes her feel guilty, as if she is deceiving not her husband but Ilya. It’s possible that some women can only fall in love once, and she did so long ago. Since her love for Ilya was never fully realized but rather cut short, it will always remain alive and latent, like a wound that refuses to heal. In her memory, he will forever be young and flawless, the ideal and perfect partner.
I’ve suggested that she leave her husband and move in with me. Her response is always the same: she would never consider it and insists he doesn't deserve that. I'm prepared to give her anything she desires, even though I'm not entirely sure what it is she wants, seeks, or needs. Maybe what she craves cannot be fulfilled by just one man. Her husband provides her with certain things; a lover offers her something else; and the memory of Ilya completes the rest. I've asked her several times if she needs a new lover, if she's grown tired of me, or if she wants to stop seeing me. She consistently answers, ‘No’. I’m convinced that, aside from Ilya, no one else will love her the way I do. Yet, my feelings on the matter are not consequential. Perhaps she has already found the balance she's been longing for in this complex relationship involving three men.
From my bed, I’m observing her closely, wishing to express all the thoughts swirling in my head. She meets my gaze and smiles, her expression tinged with sorrow, as if to say she understands the unspoken words reflected in my eyes. She seems to be telling me that, unfortunately, those desires cannot come to fruition. At that moment, she returns to bed, curling up beneath the sheets with her naked body pressed against mine. As my heart quickens, she lies peacefully, almost lifeless, next to me. I smile, realizing I've never explained to her what The Jeep Riding Death is. Well, I suppose the right moment for that conversation will come some day. In truth, I’m fooling myself into believing she won’t leave me, thinking that I am one of the three anchors she needs to avoid drifting away. I also reflect on how her life has been one of the unforeseen consequences of the war, yet another symptom of the Afghanistan Syndrome.
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© Translated from the Spanish by William Almonte Jiménez, 2026.
© Spanish title: “El Síndrome de Afganistán”.
© William Almonte Jiménez, 2016.
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