Semmant by Vadim Babenko

finished off the next automatic trader, I cut the project short and declared I was leaving. Lucco was inconsolable and promised me the moon, but my interest in him had already dissipated. To his credit, he gave me a solid bonus and very nearly shed a tear when we parted ways at the airport. I explained my departure with personal reasons – and quite by happenstance, one of the twins, whom I had forgotten to think about, appeared out of nowhere to announce she could not live without me. I was cold and somewhat rude, having not forgiven her for the Marseille saga, but she endured it and spent a few months with me – as far as I know, she didn’t cheat on me even once. We probably would have kept living together – and then everything might have turned out differently – but her cruel Siberian father tracked us down on the seacoast of Spain, and simply took her by force while I was playing tennis two steps from the house.
    I wasn’t very upset at first; rather, I was surprised by these patriarchal mores. But then, after a couple of days, I felt a relentless yearning, and did not recover for a long time, totally ignoring other women. I could see her body standing before me – slender, obedient, ready for anything. She had a weakness for perfumery, and I, as if to poke fun, would make her wash off the creams and deodorants to the last drop every evening. For her this was like throwing off another layer of clothes. She snuggled up so adorably, grew aroused so abundantly, and became ever more submissive… I was now climbing the walls as I remembered her; I hurled the furniture to the floor and ripped the sheets to pieces. Then I calmed down and just hated – her father, Siberia, injustice.
    I don’t know what cry she shouted at the sky over the frost-covered Taiga; whether she wished her father’s death, where she is now, or what became of her. I will never reveal her name, but this, the last of my losses, seemed to say to me: It’s time. After spending an awful month in solitude and somehow regaining my senses, I set to work without delay.
    I got sick of the coast, and relocated to Madrid – a dirty city, stinking of pork cocido, permeated with the smells of dust, soft asphalt, and the acerbic juice of South American whores. I found an apartment on the Paseo de Recoletos, furnished it carelessly – and forgot about the city, focusing on what was most important. I had to figure out the matters that many before me had lost their minds over.
    First, I said to myself, no half measures. It was clear: any insincerity, any attempt to win with minor casualties would inevitably lead to failure. To get into another’s soul, one has to open one’s own all the way, and I did this without batting an eye. I started to invest real money – not yet knowing the laws or the rules. Lucco Mancini’s bonus, which I could have lived on for a couple of years, was nearly all put into the project – and, in the beginning, everything went well. For a week or two I was certain that from the very first attempt I had grasped the correct path – or at least that beginner’s luck was on my side. However, these illusions were quickly shattered. The market just did not notice me at the time. Then it took notice, lifted its little finger – and all my theories and schemes, all my strategies, which yesterday had seemed so clever, were scattered like a house of cards. The digits on the screen were painted bright red. That color later pursued me for a long time in my dreams. My capital began to melt away, and I plummeted into genuine terror.
    No, I wasn’t sorry about the money itself. I knew I could always earn more. I panicked before the blind force, before the power of the random, the inscrutable. The phantom of defeat loomed in the distance – and grew nearer each day. Stocks and bonds, currencies, metals, oil – nothing behaved as it was supposed to. It hadn’t been like this before; I studied the past down to the smallest details. But