Cristina Boncea

You know what happened next, things were going well for us… We were going to change the world. I trusted them. But that night, Alek had brought a hammer from home and a couple of paddles to use as oars. He gave us both some compote, then we got in the car and drove back to the boat in the shack we’d just discovered. It was secured with a rusty chain, which they managed to break with another tool I can’t remember. They used the flashlights on their phones and made a lot of noise; there were village houses nearby and, at one point, we even heard footsteps in the leaves, but it was only a dog that had nothing to do with us. They managed to break the chain, freed the boat and we climbed in. It was green, it was late. I didn’t want to get in, I was wearing a cream Zara trench coat and a skirt. We eventually managed to squeeze all three of us in, although we were rocking like hell. I found out the shack was actually called a “boathouse” and thought that was funny. I sat all the way in the back, and I think David was in the middle. That’s a first.

We slowly moved away from the so-called boathouse, away from the shore, using the two paddles to move forward because we didn’t have any oars. We were moving slowly because the water was filthy and full of plants and garbage and probably rubble. We could hear frogs croaking as we headed farther out. My ass was freezing and I already wanted to turn back, but, on the other hand, I was trying to enjoy the view, the darkness, the silence, the moon, the fancy houses along the shore. I imagined how cool it would be to live in one of those houses, to have direct access to that stinking lake. We actually wanted to knock on one of their doors when David jumped into the lake and nearly went into hypothermic shock. His clothes were soaked and there was water in the boat, and I was worried we were going to sink. Of course, while I was screaming at him to at least sit down on the little dock in front of one of the houses, Alek was busy worrying about dear David instead of just sitting still in the boat himself…

Yeah, that’s when he told me I didn’t have to worry, that even if I fell into the water, they would save me – them, who were no drier than I was. David’s dick looked pretty funny, all shriveled up and smaller than usual. He managed to get back into the boat and it seemed to me that if I hadn’t been using all my strength to keep us balanced, we really would have capsized into that disgusting water. I wasn’t a very good swimmer. We finally decided to go back, to return the boat. Since we were already out there, I’d had the idea of heading straight out into the lake, just to see where we’d end up, but Alek had to get home. His strict father was coming back. As we moved through the water, we could sometimes see car headlights on the opposite shore, where there were no houses, and we were afraid someone might come after us – although I think that was just me being afraid. The two of them were worried about each other; actually, David didn’t seem to have a care in the world, even though he was the one who ended up walking to the car in his underwear and we even passed people along the way. No questions asked. Alek gave each of us some dry clothes, but I could barely believe nothing disastrous had happened. Either we could have been caught for stealing the boat, which couldn’t even be chained back up because they’d broken the rusty chain, or we could have sunk – I had my phone in my pocket – or one of our parents could have called – I was still a minor. And so we made it back to the shore of Lake Snagov. I think that’s when my hatred for the two of them finally surfaced.

Because they didn’t care, they didn’t think. They wanted to die, to escape, to run away – they didn’t care that I wanted exactly the opposite. To live, to stay, not to fucking drown, for fuck’s sake! “What could possibly happen?” Even the thought of touching that filthy water with anything other than my hands and ass made my skin crawl. And I paddled like hell to get us back to that goddamn boathouse. It seemed like they didn’t care anymore, like they weren’t making any effort at all, like the paddles had only accidentally ended up in the water… Like I was doing all the work. That was when I realized that, actually, this was generally how things were. They never complained about anything – well, David complained all the time, even in his sleep. But not in a real way, not in a way that would make him change anything. I was pulling us back to shore. I was the one worrying. David only did it because Alek wanted to, and Alek had a taste for adventure. Why the hell would you swim in Lake Snagov late at night? Why would you make your friends panic, put them in danger in case something happened to you? Where’s all that altruism, where’s the computer science logic?

I don’t want an explanation. The cold in my bones, the fear, the anger, all mixed together. I never want to touch that lake again, not even with the bottom of a yacht. I never want to hear the dogs barking, to be afraid of getting stuck in the garbage, of being stranded out there because of a couple of idiots, because I wanted us to be three, always together, while they were thinking about completely different things. I never want to feel even the moon judging me for how stupid I was, to see car headlights and wonder whether the police are going to pick us up and charge us. They were always telling me they could handle things, they could bribe anyone, they’d sort it out… Hello, wasn’t that exactly the system we were trying to escape!? Fuck the shore of Lake Snagov. Fuck my tears. Fuck our threesome. I wish we had never gotten together, that I were still a virgin, that I hadn’t rushed into things – but then I would never have known any of this. It was a night like one of those massages with needles, acupuncture, except they weren’t needles, they were spears, they were stakes – and they drove them straight into me!

I never want to go back there, to think about that place. Their hands on my skin, our cute pictures that mean nothing. All the things only I could see while they couldn’t, because they didn’t give a fuck. How each of them cared about something else and neither of them cared about me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have jumped out of the boat. Otherwise we wouldn’t have stolen the boat. Otherwise, maybe, there wouldn’t have been three of us. Maybe that’s the ultimate proof that there was never any love or loyalty, although I’m contradicting myself… Polygamy is a nightmare for my fragile heart, worn far too thin by everything I’ve been through. Becks’s death, my childhood, the boys who fucked me. If you loved me, how could you love someone else? The ultimate truth is that each of us loved only one person. I loved David, David loved Alek, and Alek loved me. Who should we blame for this disastrous mismatch… I know! The shore of Lake Snagov, the goddamn lake that opened my eyes, chilled me to the bone, estranged me, hit me over the head and made me bleed inside, made me see the brutal truth. That what we wanted was impossible, that we were sick, that we had all chosen badly. That the boat wasn’t ours, just as the love wasn’t ours, that all we had were ourselves, weak, stupid, inept. That even those pond frogs had more sense than we did, enough to stay where they belonged instead of crawling into other bodies, foreign, cold, fake. And the only people we ever lied to were ourselves, because none of what we were doing made any sense.

A useless abstract story, complete with Alek’s villa, my love for David, all the places we used to go together and the classes we skipped more and more often, the Starbucks coffees and the endless conversations, the fights. None of it meant anything because all three of us failed to see the most obvious thing: the boat could be ours, but the water would always feel different. David had always taught me that: the means don’t matter when we’re not headed for the same destination. Love only works between two people for me, which is why I’m not angry that they stayed and I left. It could just as easily have gone the other way, but three is too many for love, believe me. Me and Becks. Becks and Natalia. Becks and Basti. But never three. We ruined everything, made a mockery of it all. All of it on the shore of Lake Snagov.

This excerpt is from the novel Antidotul (The Antidote) (Herg Benet, 2016) and has been translated into English by the author.