Lev
ALAN NAFZGER
Lev – Pecan Street Press
Lev – Lubbock ● Austin ● Fort Worth
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Lev – is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Amazon edition
Copyright © 2016 Alan Nafzger
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781072013198
LEV
Written by Alan Nafzger
Lev FADE IN:
INT. HOUSE ON THE EMBANKMENT APARTMENT – MIDNIGHT
Lev
It is Moscow on June 14, 1941. Lev Vetrov is twelve years old. He knows all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057. He can do very high level math. He has absolutely no social skills. The part of his brain that processes emotion is underdeveloped. He is a high functioning autistic child.
Lev
Lev has a sort of intelligence scarcely touched by tradition and culture. He is unconventional, unorthodox, strangely pure and original, akin to the intelligence of true creativity.
Lev
Lev is in his bed in the middle of the night doing cryptography problems in a notebook. He hears a door slam. He stops his work for 2 seconds, and then we hear a cat screaming. He continues his work.
Lev
EXT. HOUSE ON THE EMBANKMENT MOSCOW – DAWN
Lev
Helenka is a twelve year old girl who Lev believes lives upstairs. Every day, Lev and Helenka meet in front of the building. This morning they walk to the rubbish bin. A cat is lying in one. Its eyes are closed. It looks as if it was running. But the cat was not running or asleep. Mrs. Grekov’s cat is dead. Mrs. Grekov is Lev’s across the hall neighbor.
Helenka
“O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!”
Lev
You know who did it?
Helenka
This is the work of an evil man.
Lev
An evil man with a kitchen knife.
Lev pulls the knife from the dead cat. And he examines the knife carefully. He is looking for clues.
Lev
The cat was called Artamon. It belonged to Mrs. Grekov, who is our friend. She lives on the opposite side of the hallway.
Helenka
She will want him back.
Lev
I wonder who killed him.
Lev is picking up the cat and about to take him upstairs to Mrs. Grekov, but she has come downstairs looking for her cat that disappeared from her apartment in the middle of the night. The cat is leaking blood from the wound.
Lev
I like cats.
Mrs. Grekov is wearing pajamas and a housecoat.
From Mrs. Grekov’s POV, we see Lev standing at the trash with the cat. From Lev’s POV, we see Mrs. Grekov and Lev glances at Helenka. Only Lev sees Helenka. Helenka is an apparition. She is Lev’s subconscious link to emotion, humanity and to language.
Mrs. Grekov
What in god’s name have you done to my cat?
Lev doesn’t like people shouting at him. It makes him scared that they are going to hit him or touch him.
Mrs. Grekov
Let go of the cat.
(pause)
Let go of the cat for Christ’s sake.
Lev puts the cat down and moves back two steps.
Mrs. Grekov bends down. We think she is going to pick the cat up herself, but she doesn’t. Instead she started screaming again.
Lev puts his hands over his ears and closes his eyes.
Later…
EXT. HOUSE ON THE EMBANKMENT MOSCOW – DAWN
The police arrive. The policewoman puts her arms round Mrs. Grekov and leds her back toward the building.
policeman
Would you like to tell me what’s going on here, young man?
Lev
The cat is dead.
policeman
I understand that.
Lev
I think someone killed the cat.
policeman
How old are you?
Lev
I am 12 years and 6 months and 12 days.
policeman
And what, precisely, were you doing here?
LeV
I was holding the cat.
policeman
And why were you holding the cat?
Lev
I like cats.
policeman
Did you kill the cat?
Lev
I didn’t kill the cat.
policeman
You don’t seem very upset about this.
Lev
The cat is dead.
policeman
You had better come with me.
The policeman tries to touch Lev, and this is when Lev hits the policeman.
INT. MOSCOW POLICE STATION – DAY
The supervisor looks at Lev for a while without speaking.
SUPERVISOR
I am arresting you for assaulting a police officer. Do you have any family?
LEV
Father, but Mother is dead.
They make Lev take the laces out of his shoes and empty his pockets at the desk in case. Lev has a nice knife with several attachments including a wire stripper and a saw and a toothpick and tweezers. It has the emblem of the NKVD on the side. He has a wooden puzzle, some coins, a paper clip and a key.
The supervisor looks at the knife.
A jailer is about to put Lev in a holding cell.
SUPERVISOR
Where did you get this knife?
Lev
My father.
SUPERVISOR
What does your father do?
Lev
He is a policeman.
SUPERVISOR
What kind of policeman?
Lev
I don’t know; he wears a suit.
The supervisor thinks.
SUPERVISOR
(to the jailer)
Put him on the bench there; I’ll watch him.
The supervisor’s tone changes. Lev isn’t so afraid.
SUPERVISOR
(to the Lev)
What is your dad’s name?
Helenka sits next to Lev on the bench and whispers something humorous in his ear. Lev chuckles but the supervisor isn’t amused.
Lev – typically a first name
The name Lev may be of different origins.
It is typically a first name, or less commonly a surname (e.g. in Czech Republic) of Slavic origin, (Cyrillic: Лев) which translates as “lion”. Cf. Germanic form Löwe or Löw.
It is common with German Jews with Levite origins. Names like Leffmann, Levitz, Levy, Levi, etc.
It is also a common Israeli surname and uncommon first name which translates as “heart” (לב, Loeb, Löb) in Hebrew.[citation needed].
The name also appears in the forms Liev, Lyev, Leo and Leon.
People with this name include:
- Leo I of Galicia (Lev Danylovych in Ukrainian) (c. 1228–c. 1301), Knyaz (prince) of Belz, Peremyshl, Halych, Grand Prince of Kyiv and King of Galicia-Volhynia
- Lev Alburt (born 1945), chess Grandmaster and chess writer
- Lev Artsimovich (1909–1973), Soviet physicist
- Lev Berg (1876–1950), Soviet geographer, biologist and ichthyologist
- Lev Brovarskyi (1948–2009), Soviet football player and Ukrainian coach
- Lev Chernyi (died 1921), Russian individualist anarchist theorist, activist and poet
- Lev Dyomin (1926–1988), Soviet cosmonaut and Air Force colonel
- Lev Grossman (born 1969), American novelist and critic
- Lev Gumilyov (1912–1992), Soviet historian, ethnologist and anthropologist
- Lev Hakak (born 1944), Israeli-American academic, novelist and poet
- Lev Ivanov (1834–1901), Russian ballet dancer, choreographer and Second Balletmaster of the Imperial Ballet
- Lev Ivanov (football manager) (born 1967), Russian football manager
- Lev Korchebokov (1907–1971), Soviet football player and manager
- Lev Kamenev (1883–1936), Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician
- Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970), Soviet filmmaker and film theorist
- Lev Khrshchonovich (1838–1907), chief architect of Kazan
- Lev Landau (1908–1968), Soviet physicist and Nobel laureate
- Lev Avnerovich Leviev (born 1956), Israeli businessman and philanthropist
- Lev Binzumovich Leviev (born 1984), Russian-Israeli Internet entrepreneur and investor
- Lev Loseff (1937–2009), Russian poet, literary critic, essayist and educator
- Lev Mei (1822–1862), Russian dramatist and poet
- Lev Naryshkin (1785–1846), Russian general in the Napoleonic Wars
- Lev Perovski (1792–1856), Russian count, mineralogist and Minister of Internal Affairs under Nicholas I
- Lev Pitaevskii (born 1933), Soviet theoretical physicist
- Lev Polugaevsky (1934–1995), Soviet grandmaster and author
- Lev Pontryagin (1908–1988), Soviet mathematician
- Lev Russov (1926–1987), Soviet painter, graphic artist and sculptor
- Lev Sedov (1906–1938), son of the Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky
- Lev Shatilo (born 1962), retired javelin thrower from the Soviet Union
- Lev Shcheglov (1946–2020), Russian physician
- Lev L. Spiro, American television and film director
- Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910), often translated as Leo Tolstoy, Russian author
- Lev Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshteyn) (1879–1940), often translated as Leon Trotsky, Russian economist and revolutionary
- Lev Vladimirovich Urusov (1877–1933), Russian prince, diplomat and tennis player
- Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), Soviet psychologist
- Lev Weinstein (1916–2004), Soviet world champion and Olympic bronze medalist in shooting
- Lev Yashin (1929–1990), Soviet-Russian football goalkeeper
- Lev Yilmaz (born 1973), American independent filmmaker, artist and publisher