by Sergey
The girl looked at him strangely. “I never said that.”
“But is that what you meant? And your brother—is he a fallen angel?”
Alyona stared into her cup.
“Very well,” Aspirin said, very pleased with himself. “Tell me about your bear. What happened when those bad people showed up? The robbers, I mean.”
He thought he saw reproach in Alyona’s eyes.
“Mishutka attacked them. And they didn’t steal anything from you. You could have said thank you.”
“Thank you, Mishutka!” Aspirin’s mood was improving by the minute. “And who do you know in Pervomaysk? Have you ever been there?”
Alyona stared into her cup.
“Tell me,” Aspirin prompted.
Alyona said nothing.
“Fine, last question. That man who came here, the barefoot one. How do you know him?”
“He’s not a man.”
“What is he?”
“He is . . . you won’t understand.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Here—yes, I am. And there—there I am not afraid of anything. I told you, there is no fear where I come from. And there is no hunger,” she added, rubbing her stomach. “Yesterday I was so hungry . . .”
Aspirin turned off the recorder quickly. The clock showed five minutes after eight, and he had a few hours before his shift. He had to find out whether psychiatric hospitals in the area had pediatrics wings. He was almost sure they did.
“Wonderful,” he said and got up from the table. “Why don’t you wash the dishes? I must make a few phone calls.”
He shut the bedroom door and turned on the recorder. This wonderful gadget, the size of a lipstick tube, never failed him—powerful memory, excellent sound quality. He never had trouble deciphering even the softest whisper.
“You said there is no death where you come from,” the recorder said in Aspirin’s voice. “Is that true?”
Silence. Aspirin could not hear anything no matter how much he strained his ear.
“Not everyone likes this sort of music,” Aspirin’s voice again. “But where you’re from, they not only like it, but revere it?”
He lifted the recorder to his face, stopped it, then clicked it on again.
“You said there is no death where you come from. Is that true?”
A pause. Silence. The sound of wind outside.
“Not everyone likes this sort of music. But where you’re from, they not only like it, but revere it?”
A pause. Silence. A tomcat yowling.
“You keep saying that you came from another place. What other place? Pervomaysk?”
A pause.
“Then where? Where do you want to go back to?”
Aspirin stopped the recording. There was still the possibility of the focused recording function (Aspirin could have accidentally turned it on). But then what about the noise outside the window? The yowling cat?
Alyona was cleaning the table. Actually, she was simply pushing the rag back and forth—the table was already clean.
“Please say: one, two, three,” Aspirin pushed the recorder in her direction.
“One, two, three,” the girl repeated obediently. Aspirin pressed Play. He heard his voice, then Alyona’s: “One, two, three.”
“Thank you,” he said, before returning to his bedroom.
That night at the Green Fairy he was approached by the editor of Macho magazine.
“Your article went over pretty well. No, not the one about the female orgasm, don’t flatter yourself. The one about functionality.”
“Uh-huh,” Aspirin said. A month ago, riding the wave of sudden inspiration, he’d written an article for Macho entitled simply and candidly, “Woman: Basic and Supporting Functionality.”
“Now we need to follow up with letters from the readers,” the editor said. “From different chicks. One philosophical, with Baudelaire and Nietzsche, and the author should be a total dork, and she should call the author a chauvinistic pig. And another one, from a blonde, and that one should be talking about her ‘functionality.’ And one more letter—from a housewife, the kind you called ‘the vacuum cleaner,’ and she should be offering the author a nice blow job . . .”
“You have such terrific ideas,” Aspirin said. “Go ahead and write ’em up.”
The editor stared at him in mute shock.
“Don’t you need any extra dough?” he asked finally.
Aspirin gazed at him through the screen of a thick, viscous, wretched drunken stupor. By then he’d been drinking for three hours, and yet oblivion never came; instead he felt heavy and nauseated, like in a bad dream.
“I thought you’d want to write it,” the editor said. “Five thousand characters per letter, the blonde one can be eight.”
“I’ll do it,” Aspirin said. “You twisted my arm.”
The editor walked away, with a parting glance tinged with surprise. His was not the only questioning glance that night: it was obvious to everyone that Aspirin had not been himself. He didn’t step onto the dance floor, he ignored girls and avoided his buddies; instead, he sat alone in the corner and drank one shot of vodka after another—and it was anybody’s guess why he’d bothered to come in at all.
Eventually he got up to leave the dark room, decorated to resemble the jungle, and at that moment Dasha, his girlfriend of the moment, teetered in on sharp five-inch heels.
She’d come in from another party and was already rather cheerful. Smelling sweet and illegal, she pulled Aspirin into a corner, jumped into his arms and without preamble bit his lip. For the next ten minutes they slobbered all over each other, getting more and more worked up, and finally Dasha murmured, her tongue still in his mouth, “I hate everyone here—let’s go to your place.”
“You twisted my arm,” he said.
They left the club and hailed a cab. Aspirin felt marginally better: for the first time in the last few long hours he knew exactly what he wanted. The backseat of the cab was soft but cramped; one of Dasha’s stilettos scratched the driver’s ear, and the man got upset, but Aspirin promised to pay above the meter.
When they entered his building, he suddenly froze.
“Good evening, Alexey dear,” Sveta the concierge said kindly.
Aspirin swallowed.
“What?” Dasha asked, looking between the two.
Aspirin pulled her into the elevator.
“My daughter is there,” he said, choking on nervous laughter.
“Huh?”
“My daughter is in my apartment right now. Alyona from Pervomaysk. Hold me.”
“Too much pot?” Dasha inquired.
“No, seriously, like my daughter for real. I have never seen her before though.”
“Cut it out.” Dasha frowned. “Why is your rug sitting in the hallway?”
The rolled-up rug was still where it had been left the night before—leaning against the door frame like a sentinel.
“It has blood all over it.” Aspirin couldn’t stop giggling. “I can’t even tell you . . . there was blood everywhere . . .”
Dasha let go of his hand and looked inquisitively into his face: “Aspirin, have you totally lost it?”
Aspirin pressed the doorbell, for the first time in the ten years since he’d bought the apartment. After a minute of nonstop ringing, an anxious child’s voice asked, “Who is it?”
“Open up, daughter darling, it’s your daddy, and I brought mommy over.” Aspirin’s laughter turned into hysterical squealing. “Come on, open up!”
The key turned, and Alyona stepped back into the hallway; she was wrapped in a blanket, from head to toe.
“I thought you were lying,” Dasha said. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she studied Alyona with curiosity and disgust, as if staring at a tarantula. “You know what, Aspirin, darling, I’m just going to step away, to the bathroom.”
She sauntered down the hall.
“Who’s that?” Alyona asked softly.
“Non
e of your business,” Aspirin said. By then he’d stopped laughing, but his throat still smarted a bit from the unnatural laughter. “Guess what, my darling. Get your blanket, your pillow, grab a chair—and get the hell out of the apartment.”
“Where?”
“Just sit outside the door for half an hour. You won’t die.” Aspirin grabbed a stool with one hand, the girl with the other, and dragged both outside the door. “Sit here, and I’ll come get you. Don’t touch the doorbell. You touch it—you die. Is that clear?”
Alyona bit her lips and nodded.
“Excellent.” Aspirin giggled again. “I’ll buy you some ice cream later.”
He closed the door, first the top lock, then the bottom one.
Dasha peeked out of the bathroom: “Have you solved our little problem?”
“Problem has been solved,” Aspirin murmured, struggling out of his pants. “And what problem—there is no problem whatsoever.”
He took the desirable, pliable woman in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, toward the pile of crumpled sheets.
Thursday
He woke up with a start, as if from a slap.
The clock chimed seven. Dasha snored softly, her lips slightly opened.
Aspirin got up and took a walk around the apartment. Biting his lip, he looked into the spy hole, then unlocked the front door.
Alyona was sleeping on the floor, wrapped up in her blanket like a little ball. Tears had dried on her face, making random grooves on her cheeks.
“Do you want to try on this dress?” Aspirin’s voice cracked under the weight of his own generosity.
“No, thank you. I don’t need another one.”
They had been getting quite a few curious looks from the saleswomen in the children’s clothes department. The middle-aged one with the dark hair clearly longed for melodrama—the way she looked at Alyona was triggering within her thoughts of a new Cinderella. From provincial poverty to city riches, from orphanage into the arms of a loving father, and everything the child deserved would be hers: a fancy apartment, a handsome groom, a law degree. The young bleached blonde preferred a true crime scenario: she glared at Aspirin as if he were a demon seducer, purchasing a child’s soul with a few cheap dresses. Fortunately, the blond clerk was called to the cash register, and they no longer had to deal with her unwanted attention.
Alyona spent some time choosing tights, socks, and underwear, while Aspirin continued to suffer. Then it was time for larger purchases; a life-size mannequin stood by the entrance, clad in a ballroom gown complete with a crinoline. Aspirin glanced at the price tag and decided it was high enough to soften the pangs of his guilty conscience.
“Why?” Alyona said. “Where would I ever wear something like this?”
“You can take it with you to Pervomaysk.” Aspirin was getting more comfortable with his role. “You can show your mom. Or you can wear it to school, for the New Year’s Eve ball or something.”
The dark-haired clerk almost swooned.
Alyona lifted a corner of her mouth. “No, thank you. I would rather have a warm jacket. Because it’s almost fall, and I get cold in just a T-shirt.”
Trying not to look at the clerk, Aspirin followed Alyona into the depths of the stuffy store smelling of new clothes. They bought her a warm jacket and a tracksuit.
“Let’s find a new bag,” Aspirin said.
“What for?”
“To pack all this stuff in. How are you going to take it all to Pervomaysk?” He had been saying the town’s name a lot, as if invoking it would make it where she was truly from.
Alyona said nothing. Aspirin chose a backpack with an image of Winnie-the-Pooh and stuffed all the purchases inside. Still saying nothing, Alyona strapped the backpack to her back.
“By the way,” Aspirin said casually as they passed the school supplies department, “do you need anything for school? There are only a couple of weeks left until September—first day of school and all that. Notebooks? Daily planner? Pencil case?”
“I am not going to school,” Alyona said.
“Meaning?”
“I am going to start music school.” Alyona stared past him. “I told you—I need to learn how to play the violin. I don’t need anything else.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Aspirin said, discovering fatherly, almost sadistic notes in his voice. “Children have to go to school. Every day. At half past eight. Didn’t you go to school in your Pervomaysk?”
Alyona said nothing. Aspirin noticed the cashier listening to their conversation. He grabbed Alyona’s hand and led her toward the exit.
Her hand was soft and limp. Aspirin realized this was the first time he’d ever held her by the hand—the first time since he brought her to his home. It was hard to believe only three days had passed.
“If I am to be your father,” he said, making his way through the thin crowd, “I must be responsible for you. Right? I must check your homework. Attend school conferences. Discipline you, if the need arises. This is my parental responsibility. So you should think about it—wouldn’t it be better for you to return to Pervomaysk today?”
Alyona climbed into the backseat without a word.
“Because we’re pretty close to the train station.” Aspirin started the engine. “I can buy you a ticket. Give you some money for dinner, et cetera. What do you think?”
“Wouldn’t hurt to have lunch first,” Alyona muttered.
Aspirin sighed, paid for parking, and started driving.
Friday
Late at night, when the crowds at Kuklabuck cooled off, Aspirin was approached by Whiskas. “Are you still alive, buddy?”
At that point Aspirin was nothing but a burial ground for used-up adrenaline. His resources for today had been spent fully; he had no ability to converse with Whiskas. Aspirin opened his mouth to inform Whiskas about this, but didn’t quite make it.
“Who is this homicidal maniac in your apartment?” Whiskas asked softly. “How did he do so much damage to two serious dudes?”
Aspirin was about to ask, “How did you know?” but held his tongue. Whiskas had a complicated biography: before Kuklabuck, he’d worked as a bouncer at a fancy casino, and before that he was somewhere else, and before somewhere else he was allegedly working for the government, but how and in what capacity, Aspirin didn’t really want to know. So any of those past lives could be the source of Whiskas’s information, and all of them were less frightening than the other possibilities flitting around in Aspirin’s imagination.
“I was on the air,” he said in a sleepy, bored voice. “The apartment was locked.”
“But you didn’t set the alarm,” Whiskas specified.
“I forgot,” Aspirin mumbled. “I’ve got so much going on right now—it’s easy to forget your own mother.”
He described the events of Tuesday in minute, painstaking detail. It was almost morning, and the club was nearly empty. Whiskas smoked, nodding and frowning.
“The two guys are now in the crazy house,” he said after a particularly long drag of his cigarette. “That might actually help them get a shorter deal . . . although I doubt it. Both have priors.”
“A monster,” Aspirin said with a chuckle. “With paws and claws. With fur. Those two belong in a crazy house.”
“This is a shitty situation,” Whiskas said anxiously. “And I have no idea where this shit is coming from. How much would your place go for right now, do you know?”
“Ummm,” Aspirin stammered, “in what sense?”
“It just doesn’t compute.” Whiskas stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. The filter end squirmed like a worm. “Two rooms, seven hundred square feet, a nice building, but a crappy area. It’s not enough for serious people to make any effort. No, that’s not it. This is very strange. Mystical.”
“It is mystical,” Aspirin confirmed. “Victor, listen to me. If you get rid of this girl for me, along with everything she has—”
“I saw you yesterday,” Whiskas said, lighting a
nother cigarette. “At McDonald’s.”
Aspirin stopped talking.
“It’s interesting.” Whiskas waved away the smoke. “One moment you want to choke her to death. Another moment you take care of her, take her to McDonald’s, make her tea . . .”
“I feel sorry for her,” Aspirin mumbled. “It’s obvious the child has been taken advantage of, forced to do this. And she’s not that bad. She’s pretty smart. I’d say way too smart for her age. And she loves music.”
“You should feel sorry for yourself,” Whiskas said coldly. “Make a copy of her birth certificate and give it to me. I’ll check my channels.”
Watching Victor Somov move through the room—like a master of the ring, a predator on a savannah—Aspirin suddenly thought of his words: “One of these days I am going to send a couple of thugs over just to teach you a lesson.”
Maybe he already had.
Monday
Monday morning started with a telephone call from Mom. There was no reason for the call. Perhaps, it proved that such a device as a “mother’s heart” truly existed, and that it was activated by the offspring’s troubles.
“Everything is fine,” Aspirin lied, watching Alyona, headphones on her head, sprawl on the freshly cleaned sofa. “How about you?”
For the past ten years his parents had lived in London. Both worked for the BBC. In the beginning, they tried very hard to get Aspirin to join them, but he refused. At that time he had an insanely awesome girlfriend, a girl of nineteen, with nineteen rings in different parts of her body. She subsisted on eggs and raw carrots, wore a nun’s veil all year, and slept only on the naked floor and only with her head toward the east. Instead of a watch, she wore a tiny compass on her wrist. She and Aspirin fell in lust at first sight and made love like wild cats—on a park bench, on the beach, on the hood of someone else’s car. They were as happy as they could be, and Aspirin never even considered moving away.
Three weeks later they had broken up, but still—he hadn’t thought about going to London.
“Everything is fine,” Aspirin made sure his voice sounded upbeat. “Mom . . . I was thinking. I have been so f . . . so busy lately. It would be nice to get away for a bit. What if I come for a visit?”