Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  Naturally, Juliet shuddered, while the nanny flung herself at the cabinet door. It would not budge. Realizing that it was high time to be onstage, but quite impossible to be there with a wretched little ponytail on her head instead of a luxurious wig, Juliet proceeded to thrash around, knocked down a hanging rack of medieval capes, and finally collapsed onto the floor.

  A furious director’s assistant descended upon the scene, abandoning his console as well as the utterly lost and confused actors on stage. He needed to know why the hell Juliet was late. Seeing her without a wig, he froze, then burst into hysterical laughter.

  That was it. A scandal. Curtains down.

  And now captain Chernishev was supposed to figure out all this hocus pocus and find the culprit. And it’s not like he could expect help from anywhere else.

  The theater collective, as usual, was made up of three cliques. Fans of the director’s wife comprised the first one. The second, more numerous, represented her mortal enemies. The third clique was composed of those who were above this rat race and worshipped pure art. Naturally, when the sleuthing captain reasonably asked if the Juliet-wife suspected anyone, he was treated to a long list of enemies of both sexes. And then it all broke into chaos and mayhem right before his very eyes. The actors and actresses accused each other of all possible sins, the cliques took to fisticuffs, and the director begged for a Valium. In the middle of the scramble a costume designer ran in from upstairs and broke the news that the wig had been found on the fourth floor. Adorning a fire extinguisher.

  Everybody set off to see the wig.

  Left on the scene were: Berman the director, Chernishev the detective, and the theater’s electrician, the owner of the keys to the cabinet. The cabinet held his stuff, some spotlights, and other valuable sundries. The electrician unlocked the cabinet (with effort, since the lock was hardly ever used). The doors squeaked open.

  They saw shelves filled with gadgets. Not enough room to hide even a cat. Reach in there with your arm, and the arm would hit the back wall of the cabinet. As for the pitch-black hand, there was no trace of it.

  Chernishev looked at the director suspiciously: what if these people were simply making a fool out of him, an officer of the law? The director pointed his index finger at his own temple and twisted it back and forth, like a screwdriver. Juliet checked the cabinet’s integrity.

  “You know what?” said Chernishev firmly, “this is ordinary hooliganism. You know how many hooliganism cases I have?”

  No one answered.

  “If you insist, I’ll open a case. If you insist.”

  Juliet sobbed. Now that the wig had been found, there was nothing wrong with having a good cry.

  “Where’s the exit?” Chernishev asked.

  They saw him out.

  Once outside the temple of dramatic arts, Chernishev was pleased to see the burbling of normal human life, devoid of anything mystical. He headed down the street with a bounce in his step, and he even smiled at some funny-looking kid. He was leaving the schizophrenia behind.

  About two weeks prior to the aforementioned events, the director’s wife was lying on a couch at home and growing a grudge. Right above her head, the upstairs neighbors seemed to be rolling logs and barrels and stacking freight containers. Once the grudge reached critical mass, she got up and, still in her housecoat, went to straighten the neighbors out.

  A woman in her thirties, also in a housecoat, opened the door. She held a sponge, and a boy of five or so years old poked his head from behind her back. He had a toy truck on a string.

  The woman, whose name was Ksenya, would’ve been pretty, if only she’d been able to dedicate to her looks even a quarter of the attention and resources commandeered to the same cause by the director’s wife. Now, however, Ksenya was in a state of cold war with all her family members except her son; so it’s no wonder her face and appearance were paying the price. Her haircut was at least a year old. Her nail polish was peeling. Crow’s feet had shown up around her eyes, the kind one could easily beat back with fancy imported creams and massage, if only the poor wretch had the time to scout the stores for creams – not to mention perform those daily massages.

  As for Ksenya’s son, he was the cutest kid ever, with his huge, dark-brown eyes and blond curls. A complete angel. One look at such a charming child, and even a professional hitman would have softened up. But a dramatic actress – not so much. Who knows how she managed it, but the director’s wife hated children.

  The director’s wife said that the child needed attending, that lately he’d been running roughshod over everyone, and that she would complain. She pointed out that her stressful job required – demanded, in fact – that she, indispensable as she was for the arts, rest completely and comprehensively when at home. Remember, by the way, the director’s wife concluded, how the child had flooded the bathroom, not a month ago?

  Ksenya nodded, sighed, and agreed with everything. She apologized about five hundred times. At long last the director’s wife ran out of steam.

  “See now, Mishka,” Ksenya told her son when she finally managed to close her door, “I told you, didn’t I, not to roll your truck around. Now we’ve made the lady upset.”

  Mishka felt at fault, and so he hugged his mom and hid his face in her tummy.

  “You know what?” Ksenya said, “I’d like to go take the garbage out. But you have to sit quietly and watch TV. Okay?”

  “Okay. And after that?” asked Mishka.

  “After that we’ll have supper, and you’ll go to bed. And I’ll do the ironing.”

  In order not to lose time, Ksenya put a kettle on the stove, turned the iron on, pulled a coat over her housecoat and ran downstairs with the garbage pail.

  Upon returning, she discovered that she hadn’t taken her keys. It wouldn’t have been a problem if another adult had been in the apartment. Her husband, however, had moved in with his new wife-to-be, and her mother-in-law hadn’t come near them for two weeks now. On top of that, Ksenya and her mother had fallen out over the impending divorce, and had left town to live with her other daughter.

  As for Mishka, he was absolutely forbidden to come to the door if the doorbell rang, or to enter into conversations with strangers. That’s because just recently some thieves had taken advantage of a child’s innocence to break in – and that incident had made news all over town.

  Anyhow, Ksenya stood by her door, completely at a loss. The situation was both stupid and intractable. Suddenly, noises came from below: wheezing, some unintelligible but ferocious voices, and dull thumps. Then a man ran up the stairs.

  He was rather short – just about as tall as Ksenya herself, but astonishingly broad-shouldered, stocky, and red-haired, besides. His skipper’s beard was most impressive, a tad darker than his hair and bristling out every which way. He wore a blue beret with a red pompon and a roomy blue blouse along with blue pants tucked into humongous laced boots.

  Halting, he asked the petrified Ksenya, “Hanging out?”

  Naturally, she did not answer.

  “You hanging out here, or what? I’m asking you,” he urged impatiently.

  “I’m locked out,” she said plaintively, while trying to put some distance between the man and herself.

  “Stepped out without a key, huh? You silly woman,” the red-head concluded. “Hold on, let me see—”

  He took a bunch of shiny metal objects out of his pocket, and Ksenya realized that she was facing a hardened criminal. She heard footsteps down below – undoubtedly the police were chasing the red-head. She should have screamed, but – as often happens under such circumstances – her voice was altogether gone.

  The redhead inserted something long into the key hole, jiggled it, and the door unlocked. Then with sudden nimbleness he pushed Ksenya inside, jumped in after her, and slammed the door shut.

  Ksenya dashed into the corner of the entryway and froze. She had to do something, she thought, scream, call for help, protect her son. But it would be useless, wouldn’t it: on
e squeak, and the redhead would take her down.

  He, meanwhile, stood by the door, put his hands on his hips, and began to hum a tune.

  “All right then,” he said. “Ma’am… look. I reckon I’ve broken your lock. But that’s okay, I’ll fix it. It’ll be better than new.” He went about messing with the lock. Once he opened it up, he pulled out of his pocket another strange object – a snuffbox made of something golden, semi-translucent, and very pretty. Inside lay three rainbow-colored wafers. The red-head took them out, regarded them, wiggled his nose, returned two out of the three to the snuffbox, shoved the third one into the lock, and followed it up with a screwdriver.

  “Excuse me—” Ksenya addressed him timidly.

  “Not to worry. I told you, it’s going to be better than new.” He listened to the noises coming from the stairwell, and chuckled. “Boatswain Gangrene’s word is golden.”

  Gangrene? The criminal sound of the name stupefied Ksenya.

  The redhead closed up the lock and turned to her. “Don’t think ill of me, ma’am.” He opened the door, and went out, shutting it.

  Finally recovering her courage, Ksenya yanked at the door and found herself face-to-face with a group of men. They were dressed even more strangely than boatswain Gangrene. Above their blue blouses and pants they wore countless belts, criss-crossing their backs, hips and thighs, and snugly attached to these were all manner of terrifying things: Japanese nunchakus, knives sheathed and unsheathed, tubes with handles and other thingamabobs – these had to be firearms – and many other god-awful devices.

  “I’ll kill the red-headed bastard,” exclaimed the leader of the crazy gang. “Feed him to the sharks!”

  “A female!” another cried out, and all the cutthroats instantly fixed their eyes on Ksenya.

  “My lady,” the leader said chivalrously, “Would you be so kind as to… a certain gentleman has advanced up these stairs… red-haired and of a firm build. It’s quite likely that you, madam, may have seen this… this scoundrel, may an anchor get stuck up his—”

  “—his stern,” interrupted the cutthroat who was first to notice Ksenya.

  “Yes, yes, his stern,” agreed the leader. “Have you seen him, madam?”

  “I did,” said Ksenya, utterly confused. The boatswain had just left her apartment. He had to have fallen right into the bandits’ arms. So where was he? She had to assume that he had somehow flitted like a bird up to the top floor and was cowering there now…and of course, a trap door to the attic was there…and to the roof…

  “Madam,” the leader reminded her reproachfully. “The clock is ticking and we are waiting—”

  Silently, Ksenya pointed up the stairs.

  “We’ve just been there!”

  This puzzled her so much that she couldn’t even shrug, and just stood there like a statue. The bandits got nothing more out of her.

  “He escaped,” stated the leader. “Virgin Mary, what a man won’t do to save his most eminent adornment!”

  The gang guffawed and tumbled down the stairs.

  Ksenya backed into her apartment and quickly locked the door. All of this was terrifying and inexplicable, but at least she was still in one piece, and what’s more important, she’d managed to get back into her apartment. Then she remembered about the kettle and the iron…

  There was no fire yet. The kettle was boiling, but hadn’t boiled dry. Not that long ago, she had completely forgotten about a boiling kettle, so its spout had come unsoldered and fallen onto the stove with a clang, which then had drawn Ksenya back to the kitchen. She’d had to buy a new kettle and she was nearly broke. Her husband had done the part where he dumped her quite promptly, but had yet to begin the part where he paid child support.

  Despite all that, as she was making supper for her son, Ksenya more or less recovered her senses, and by fairy tale time she was back to her usual self. A fairy tale at Mishka’s bedtime was a must. Without it, Mishka refused to go to bed, period.

  It all began when Mishka had intuited the sadistic nature of a children’s tale called “Little Doughball.” Namely the fact that in the end, despite all his resourcefulness, the Doughball nonetheless died in pain, devoured with gusto by a cunning fox. This realization had made Mishka cry inconsolably, so his mother’s solution to the problem had been to come up with a different, happy ending for the fairy tale.

  Yes, she’d headed down the path of least resistance.

  “Don’t cry, Mishka,” she said, “Give me the book. Here is the fox, here is the Doughball. And here are some bushes. Do you know who’s hiding in the bushes?”

  “W-h-o-o-o?” wept Mishka.

  “A fairy. A beautiful fairy with a magic wand. When she saw that the cunning fox was about to eat the Doughball, she came out of the bushes, struck the fox with the wand and put a spell on it. The fox froze and the Doughball jumped out and rolled off on his way.”

  They say that no initiative goes unpunished: Mishka liked the new ending very much, and the Doughball’s story turned into a series, sprouting new adventures each evening. Little Doughball had close calls with the evil witch Baba Yaga, the hateful wizard Kashchei the Immortal, the villainous Karabas-Barabas and other unsavory characters, and each time the beautiful fairy would spring out of the bushes and strike foes left and right with her magic wand.

  As Mishka got older, his mother, being a romantic at heart, began to feed him Celtic myths, medieval legends, and generally all sorts of fictions involving fairies.

  “…and then the prince touched the doors with a branch of lilac,” She would say. “Who gave him this branch?”

  “The lilac fairy,” Mishka would whisper, his eyes glittering.

  “That’s right. He touched the branch to the doors – and they opened all by themselves. So he started walking… and came to a throne hall. There, everyone was asleep: a king and a queen on their thrones, dames and knights, valets and maids, and cooks and cooks’ apprentices. Only the evil fairy Karabas was awake. She sat in a corner with her spinning wheel, and around her swarmed huge rats. But the prince did not fear rats.”

  “And where was the lilac fairy?”

  “She was nearby. She wanted the prince to free Sleeping Beauty all by himself. Well, if the evil Karabas turned out stronger than the Prince, the lilac fairy would have lent a hand, of course.”

  The only problem was, even this tale was one she’d already told and retold about fifteen times. And she was wondering where to find another plot with fairies in it. Unbeknownst to her, the plot had already emerged, weaved itself into her life story, and set up its traps. One extra step – and she was going to fall into the first of them…

  In the mornings, Mishka traveled to his preschool like a child of privilege, in a company car. That’s because the neighbor’s daughter Angelica went to the same preschool as Mishka, and the neighbor was a man of importance and had a personal chauffeur. After preschool, though, there were no cars. Ksenya picked Mishka up.

  It was the morning after the lock incident. “Ksenya, sweetie, can you do us a favor,” said the neighbor’s wife when she collected Mishka. “Can you pick Angelica up tonight? My husband won’t have time, I’m afraid. He’s got a business meeting. And it’s across town for me.”

  “Of course, not a problem,” Ksenya said.

  “And have her stay with you for the evening, all right?”

  “Yes, of course, no worries. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Mishka rode off, and Ksenya was alone in the apartment. She had about twenty minutes to wash dishes, brush her hair, and get dressed. She looked out the window. It was raining. She had no desire whatsoever to go outside. Still, there she was, standing in front of her door with her purse and umbrella. Because life hadn’t been kind to her lately, instead of the nice things associated with rain – the fresh air, for example – she was already envisioning all the unpleasant things that come with it: rain splatters on her hose, wet feet, catching a cold. Schlepping through puddles to the transit stop, pushing through
wet bodies in the trolleybus…. Ugh. If only she could open this door – and teleport right to her work, to her warm, dry office.

  As she was exiting her apartment, her inner vision produced an almost one-to-one image of the office: four desks aligned pair-wise, a china rose on a windowsill, and Ms. Yeremeyeva, who was always first to come in. Only Yeremeyeva for some reason was wearing a denim dress, which was fashionable, yes, but an odd choice for a fifty-year-old, to put it mildly.

  Ksenya stepped over the threshold and instead of a stairwell, she saw in front of her a room with four desks, a china rose, and Yeremeyeva in denim.

  “Ksenya, is that you?” Yeremeyeva was surprised. “This early?”

  Stunned by the fact that an apparition could talk, Ksenya backed up, shut the door and for about a minute couldn’t collect her wits. She’d had enough sleep, so there seemed to be no reason to have hallucinations… She opened the door once again, praying for a stairwell – and there it was, the stairwell.

  Naturally, Ksenya went on to soak her feet through and get rain splatters all over her hose – what else? But the most peculiar thing yet was still waiting for her at the office. When she entered, Yeremeyeva looked at her with great suspicion.

  “Hello, Galina Petrovna,” said Ksenya to her coworkers. “Alex, hey. Alla Grigoryevna—”

  “We’ve already greeted each other today,” said Yeremeyeva. “Are you in your right mind, deary? Have you got enough sleep?”

  “What are you talking about, Alla Grigoryevna?” said Ksenya, going cold inside.