by Sergey
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Part I Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Part II September
October
November
December
January
Part III February
March
April
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
About the Translator
Also by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part I
Sunday
A shard of glass crunched under his heel.
The streetlights had been out in the entire district, so Aspirin walked home in the company of stars.
He could have picked a long and reasonably safe route along the main street, but Aspirin was a strapping young man and had no fear of nocturnal thugs. And while the shortcut led him through foul-smelling alleys, Aspirin had developed a rather philosophical attitude toward the environment. In a matter of minutes the heavy iron door of his building would shut behind him, and all this would be closed out. Vasya the concierge knew that on Sundays Aspirin came back around one thirty—not three or four in the morning as usual—and there was even a chance Vasya would open the door for him.
Aspirin switched on a pocket flashlight before turning into a dark walkway; almost immediately he saw the girl and froze on the spot.
At first he thought the girl was drawn on the wall, so still and two-dimensional she appeared on the background of red, black, and blue graffiti. As soon as his flashlight fell on her face, though, she shut her eyes, put a hand up as a shield from the beam, and clutched her toy closer to her chest.
“What are you doing here?” Aspirin asked on impulse.
He moved his flashlight from side to side. The walkway was empty. He turned back to the girl and shifted the light away from her face and onto her arms that clutched the yet-unseen plush creature.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, this time with more conviction.
The girl said nothing.
About ten years old, she certainly did not look like a tramp or a beggar, or an unhappy child forgotten by her drunken parents. She didn’t even seem scared. The way she held her toy showed reserve rather than fear. Yet that was perhaps even stranger, because self-assured young girls standing in darkened alleys after midnight wasn’t what most people would consider normal.
Aspirin definitely didn’t think it was normal.
“Did you have a fight with your folks?” he suggested, immediately feeling like a complete idiot, although he couldn’t place why. But as the girl remained silent, he felt that was certainly adding to his disquiet.
“Are you just going to stand here like this?” Aspirin was growing more annoyed by the minute. “Waiting for the boogeyman to come and stick a knife into your heart? Where are your parents?”
The girl looked surprised at that. It was unclear what had sparked her interest—the perspective of meeting a boogeyman, or Aspirin’s interest in her lineage. At least he had her attention.
“Fine, let’s go,” Aspirin said, stifling his impulse to smack the girl upside the head. “Let’s go—I’ll take you to the police station, let them deal with you and your folks. Idiots, can’t watch their own kids.”
Aspirin was afraid the girl would start crying, shifting the situation from ridiculous to critical. If that did happen, though, it would only be for a few moments, because in reality he was planning to hand the child to his concierge and be done with it. Vasya was a kind man who occupied his free time with finding homes for stray puppies and kittens; last winter he’d even found an arrangement for some street waif. He would be the perfect person to call the police.
The girl watched Aspirin with clear, intent—and perfectly adult—eyes.
“Are you frightened?” she asked finally.
“Me?”
He was initially incredulous, but at that very moment he realized the girl was right. He was frightened—perhaps of the responsibility that fell on him from out of nowhere, perhaps of something else. It may have been the girl’s shadow over the ugly graffiti.
“What are you doing here all alone?” he asked, his voice a touch calmer.
“I am not alone. I am here with Mishutka.” She finally loosened her grip and Aspirin saw a light brown teddy bear with plastic eyes.
“Well, if you are with Mishutka, that’s a totally different matter,” Aspirin allowed. “Where do you live?”
The girl shrugged.
“Children should not be out on the street at such a late hour.” The little girl looked at him skeptically, and he didn’t blame her. Even to himself, Aspirin sounded like an old bore. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Yes,” the girl agreed. “He’s looking for me. He came for me.”
“Who?”
The girl did not respond.
Aspirin quickly scrolled through a few possible scenarios. Parents in a fight, possibly divorced. Or the mother is an alcoholic, and the father got custody. Not a common situation, but it was a possibility. In any case, the father came for her, and she didn’t want to go with him. The usual scenario. Domestic squabbles. Preteen issues.
The reasons didn’t concern him.
“All right,” he said firmly. “Either you come with me, or . . . you can stay here. So, what’ll it be?”
The girl watched him silently, her eyes round and blue, like those of a child on a greeting card.
“I am going,” Aspirin said with relief. “Family problems are not my forte.”
He pointed his flashlight onto the cracked pavement and moved toward the street. Stars glimmered above his head. How wonderful that I don’t have children, Aspirin thought, looking up at the clear summer sky. How wonderful that I didn’t marry Lucy back then, he thought, turning into a courtyard. How wonderful that I—
His reverie was cut short. A group of teenagers, drunk or high—or both—sat underneath a dying linden tree in the corner of a playground. Of course it was a playground, a perfect place for them to congregate.
He actually wasn’t sure they were high. He wasn’t even sure they were teenagers. It was hard to see in the dark, hard to count the glowing ends of their cigarettes, hard to ask for their IDs.
It wasn’t hard to know he wanted nothing to do with them.
“Hey, you! Come here!”
It was a young voice, but insistent. It sounded like it was used to getting what it wanted, despite having nothing to back up that bravado. Aspirin moved his flashlight over the group. About half a dozen kids, one girl. And what’s worse, one pit bull.
“Drop your flashlight, shithead!”
Aspirin heard a low growl.
He switched off the flashlight and stepped back into the street. Couldn’t they just leave him alone?
No such luck. He was destined to be accosted by the young this evening.
“Come here! Better for you if you do!”
“What do you need, children?” Aspirin inquired in a businesslike tone. “I am DJ Aspirin.”
The group sniggered. Either these kids didn’t believe him, or they never listened to the radio.
“Aspirin, Oxycontin—got a light?” the only girl in the group asked cheerfully.
He took a few steps back, watching the dog. One of his buddies had a dog like that. That dog once bit off his owner’s finger.
“Keep your dog on the leash,” he suggested coolly.
They l
aughed, the girl louder than the rest. Such an unpleasant combination, Aspirin thought, that broad and her dog.
“Abel, get ’im! Get his balls!”
That was all he needed to hear.
Aspirin turned and ran. A stick, please, a metal bar, an iron one, or a shiv. There’s not enough time to find a brick, it’s too dark . . .
And as he sprinted away, he cursed the fact that the pepper spray he normally kept in his bag was now safely tucked away in the trunk of his car back in the garage.
A streetlight came to life by the entrance to the courtyard. Its dim glow was just enough for Aspirin to avoid crashing into a trash barrel. He sidestepped at the last moment and glanced back to see the pit bull that resembled a pale stuffed sausage fly across the courtyard, followed by eight legs stomping, eight arms flapping in the air, four mouths shrieking something unintelligible . . .
Only now did Aspirin think of the girl who was likely to still be standing there, in that very archway, clutching her teddy bear to her chest.
He picked up a broken brick and threw it at the dog, almost hitting it. The animal slowed down, but only for a brief moment.
“What are you doing, you asshole?” the broad screamed. “Abel, get him!”
Wasn’t he already trying to get me?
Aspirin dived into a concrete archway illuminated by the streetlight. Despite Aspirin’s hopes, the girl had not run away; she pressed herself against the wall, listening to the screaming, stomping, and growling.
Aspirin grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the courtyard. Considering that even without such ballast Aspirin ran more slowly than a short-legged dog, it was probably a mistake.
The archway ended. The girl pulled her hand out of Aspirin’s, turned around, and tossed her teddy bear back into the archway, toward the shadows dancing on the walls.
He cursed, thinking she’d ask him to go back for the bear, but instead she just stood there, waiting. He was going to ask her what her problem was when he heard the scream—nothing like the wild, raucous yells of teens having a lark. No, this was a shriek, a wail.
It sounded like the kind of scream that ripped apart someone’s vocal cords.
A second later he saw an enormous shadow growing on the concrete wall over the graffiti.
The dog groaned. There was a sound of flesh slapping the wall—a horrible, viscous noise—and then everything was quiet except for the sound of stomping feet, which died down in the distance.
Lights came on in the windows of the neighboring buildings.
“We’re leaving,” Aspirin said, not thinking clearly, led solely by instinct.
“One minute,” the girl said, “I need to get Mishutka.”
“We don’t have time—”
But she had already entered the archway, picked something off the pavement, patted it clean, and pressed it against her chest. Aspirin glanced over her head: the immediate courtyard was empty. However, in the opposite far corner of the courtyard, the dead body of the pit bull lay on the ground.
At least, one half.
“Let’s go,” the girl said.
“Yes . . . let’s. Um. Go.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her away, trying to stay in the shadows and avoid the eyes of the sleepy residents, whose heads were now popping up in the windows and balconies all over the street.
“Weird night tonight,” Vasya the concierge said when they got to his building. “Did you hear all these dogs barking like crazy? I heard someone shriek—scary stuff. Any trouble on your way home?”
“No trouble,” Aspirin lied. “But I met this—this kid here.”
The girl watched the concierge with polite interest.
“In the middle of the night?” Vasya marveled. “Were you all by yourself?”
“I was with Mishutka,” the girl clarified.
“Ah,” the man said, humoring the little girl.
Aspirin didn’t see how anything was funny about it.
The elevator arrived. Luckily, Aspirin caught a glimpse of Vasya’s face through the narrow gap in the shutting doors; he stepped forward, preventing the doors from closing.
“The child is lost,” he explained to Vasya. “Tomorrow morning I will call the police—need to find her parents. But I couldn’t leave her on the street, could I? Not with wild dogs and whatnot.”
The concierge’s eyes softened. “Yeah. These . . . these people leaving kids all over the place. If it were up to me, I’d execute people like that in the public square.”
Being reminded of executions in the streets, Aspirin took a deep breath, stepped back, and pressed 5. The girl said nothing; she simply gazed up at him, stroking her bear’s head.
The elevator made a grinding sound and stopped at the fifth floor. Aspirin had to take a few more deep breaths before his hands stopped shaking and the jumping key found its way into the keyhole.
“Come in.”
The lights switched on. The girl just stood in the middle of a spacious entrance hall, squinting—just like back in the courtyard. Aspirin shuddered.
Without taking off his shoes, he went to the kitchen, opened a drawer, and found a bottle of brandy. He poured a splash into a teacup and downed it. If he felt any better, the effect was marginal.
The girl remained standing in the middle of the hallway, but now her shoes were off. Aspirin was surprised by her perfectly clean socks, new, white with narrow red stripes.
“What is your name?” he asked, breaking the silence.
She gave him a reproachful look. “What is yours?”
“As—” he started, but then bit his tongue because “Aspirin” was not exactly an appropriate introduction. From what he’d gleaned of her attitude, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be impressed by his alter ego. “I’m Alexey.” He walked over to the hall closet, rummaged around, and pulled out something. “Here, put these on.”
She stuffed her feet into a pair of women’s slippers, about five sizes bigger than her own.
“Are you hungry?” he asked coolly and nearly howled from frustration with this situation. It was just so unnatural, so false—all this nonsense: slippers, kitchen, pelmeni, tea . . .
Where the hell did this girl come from?
And what was he supposed to do with her?
“I am not hungry, but Mishutka is,” the girl said solemnly. “Do you have any honey?”
“I guess . . .” The request—to feed her stuffed animal—seemed the most normal thing this little girl had done all night.
In the kitchen she sat on a stool, put her bear on the edge of the table, and folded her hands in her lap. Mishutka sat leaning to the side, staring ahead with button eyes, plush paws limp by his sides.
A shard of glass protruded from one of the paws.
Shuddering inside, Aspirin removed the glass with a napkin and tossed it into the trash.
“Mishutka says thank you very much. So how about that honey?” the girl asked.
“One moment. Should I put it into a saucer, or can he eat out of the jar?”
“Either way,” the girl said.
“Buckwheat, linden, or wildflower?” Aspirin inquired.
The girl glanced at her toy.
“Flower would be best. But it’s not crucial.”
“Of course,” he said hoarsely. “And does he need a spoon?”
The girl smirked. “Where did you see bears eating with a spoon? In cartoons?”
“Mmm,” Aspirin said noncommittally. He placed a jar of flower honey in front of the bear, struggling with the tight lid. Finally getting it open, he stepped over to the sink, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared, as if expecting the button eyes to blink, and the bear to reach for the jar with its overstuffed paw, scooping out honey and aiming it at the mouth embroidered on the plush face . . .
The toy remained still. Because of course it did. Aspirin needed to get some sleep.
The girl took the bear’s paw, sniffing and wrinkling her nose in delight. “Mishutka likes it a lot. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Aspirin sighed. “And now that he’s eaten . . .”
“What do you mean ‘now that he’s eaten’? He’s barely started.”
Aspirin looked at his watch. It was half past two. By the time they ran from the scene of the crime, by the time they made it home by back alleys, by the time Aspirin figured out what to do . . .
“Do you have a home phone number?” he asked without much hope.
“No,” the girl said, pretending to scoop out the honey with the bear’s paw, smacking her lips with pretend pleasure.
“Are you planning on returning home?”
The girl picked up a napkin and wiped the bear’s face clean. She had short pink nails and clean untanned arms. Her freshly washed T-shirt was adorned with two flying dragons and the words krakow. learning to fly.
“Have you ever been to Krakow?”
She didn’t respond.
Aspirin poured himself more brandy. His hands had almost ceased shaking.
“What was it, exactly?” he asked, staring at the girl’s striped socks.
“Where?”
“There, in the alley. What exactly happened last night?”
The girl sighed.
“He came for me. And I don’t want to go with him.”
“Who is he? Your father?”
“No, he’s not my father.”
“A stepfather?”
“It’s just Him.”
“‘Him’? Him who?”
The girl sighed again. It was unnerving seeing a young girl so exasperated. Especially one who was also so calm after the night’s events. Aspirin rubbed his palms together nervously.
“Who killed the dog?”
Without hesitation, the girl nodded in the direction of the toy bear. Aspirin thought of the pale pit bull torn in half.
“Actually,” the girl said thoughtfully, “they killed it. A while ago. When it chased you, it was already dead.”
That made no sense. None of this made sense. The dog looked like it had been blown apart. “But there was no explosion,” Aspirin mused. “Maybe . . . maybe they had something like . . . something fell in the dog’s path and blew up.” But again, he hadn’t heard anything.