Entries found in Vanya's private diary
Friday 2 October - A blackbird died on my roof sometime during the night. I think it was the cold snap.
Saturday 3 October - It lay there, on its side, one wing limply folded, an eye upturned, glassy - lifeless of course, in summary; and I stayed out, shivering as the purple-black sun vanished behind the Gazprom building, and I observed that some feathers that during the day had blown off the corpse (?) had mingled with my speckled cigarette-ash, and the slowly-falling darkness, until they were imperceptibly intertwined, because I had had two-thirds of a bottle of Scotch by then, given to me the previous week by someone obsequious who works for me - as if for a wake, ha, ha! - and I said fuck it, you were drunk and sincere with everyone you met and I was alone on my vertical-cold roof terrace, with a dead blackbird, so I drank most of it and shared the rest with the neighbours who were up on their terrace talking about gym training and whom I'd never met.
Sunday 4 October - I cried over my ex-girlfriend, chain-smoked four cigarettes and 'manipulating' a pink plastic dustpan and brush, squeamishly I fed the dead bird into the whisky-box, its displaced bottle empty to the dregs and lolling gently in the roof-gutter like a loose tongue.
PS - The hardest part was getting the edge of the pan under the body to tip it in there, without touching it. Some people would just have picked it up with their hands. I can't touch anything dead with my hands right now. I had to force the wing in with the brush and close the cardboard lid. The rubbish bag went out promptly today.
Wednesday 7 October - This morning, I found a bird's feather in my bedroom, beside the bed. I don't know how the fuck it got here. It makes me want to call somebody.