Daughter from the Dark

by Sergey

  “What about your visa?” Mom asked after a short pause.

  Aspirin couldn’t remember if he had a visa, but he had good friends at the consulate.

  “I will figure it out,” he said confidently. “Go ahead and send me all the visa paperwork just in case, will you?”

  “Are you sure everything’s all right?” Mom asked for the third time.

  Alyona lay on her stomach, eyes shut, head moving from left to right. Sounds of Wagner streamed from the stereo: Lohengrin, the prelude to Act III.

  Aspirin perched on the arm of a chair. The girl’s eyes remained closed; his presence seemed to be unnoticed. Her face did not look relaxed—it looked as if Alyona was in the middle of an intense mental effort.

  How could a child be so well-versed in classical music? Alyona’s relationship with music seemed almost unnatural. Aspirin thought of how she found a melody on his piano that first morning that nearly made him lose his mind. He recalled the strings that she did not dare to accept, and how the camouflage-clad guest simply dropped them on the floor.

  The corner of the package with the strings poked out of Alyona’s jacket. Aspirin tiptoed over and reached for the package.

  Alyona opened her eyes. Her hand already held Aspirin’s wrist, and her grip was strong—far stronger than a little girl’s should be—and painful.

  “Let go,” he barked.

  She let go of his hand, placed her palm over the strings, stuffed them deeper into her pocket, and removed her headphones. “Why did you do this?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you touch my jacket?”

  “I wanted to make sure you’re still alive,” Aspirin said, as if it was the most natural action in the world. “Lying here like a stoned zombie. Want me to switch to some pop?”

  “I don’t want pop.” Alyona clapped her headphones back on. “Would you mind leaving me alone now?”

  “Oh really? Am I bothering you as you listen to my CDs in my apartment?”

  Aspirin turned off the stereo, and stood in front of the sofa, hands on his hips. “Seriously—how else can I be of service? Sink’s full of dirty dishes, there is nothing to eat here, bread’s all moldy! Get your ass to the store!”

  Silently, Alyona got up and went to the door. Aspirin followed her. “Three days you spent on this couch. Three days! All you do is sit around listening to music. What are you—a bloody young Mozart-in-training? You love it here, don’t you? Freeloading, no cares in the world. So convenient to hang around daddy’s neck, isn’t it?”

  “What do you want me to buy?” Alyona inquired calmly, tying her sneakers.

  “You’re the lady of the house, you figure it out! Meat, vegetables, whatever else normal people should have in the fridge. Here is the money, bring the change back.”

  He locked the door behind her and exhaled. Apparently, it was acceptable to treat her this way. Interesting. There we go. That is another way. We shall see.

  In the kitchen the first thing he saw was Mishutka nestled in the chair. The toy’s plastic eyes stared above Aspirin’s head.

  Aspirin swore, which made no impression on the teddy bear. Aspirin reached for the toy, wishing to study it more closely, but at the last moment pulled away. What are you, he thought, a chicken? He reached for it again . . . but was saved by a telephone call.

  It was Whiskas, and Whiskas was in an extremely good mood. “Luba Kalchenko does reside in the city of Pervomaysk, and she happens to be married. So your little darling must have run away from her stepfather, or just wanted to have a nice vacation. My advice—give her some money, put her on the train, and bid her good-bye.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to leave?”

  “What do you mean—she doesn’t want to? Send her away, and stop bugging me.”

  Like it was that easy.

  Aspirin forced a feeble thanks to Whiskas. Victor Somov would much rather have believed in a stuffed teddy bear killing people than in the simple fact that Aspirin had never slept with anyone named Luba. However, now even Aspirin himself wasn’t entirely sure. More than ten years had passed; he had been young, had always been game for just about anything, and it was quite possible that he took a quick trip to Crimea, pitched a tent, ate fish and clams, and watched clusters of cheerful girls with endless tanned legs stroll by . . .

  Aspirin sighed, suddenly overcome with the weight of his years. His youth remained far behind; you couldn’t pay him enough to live in a tent now—he preferred five-star hotels. Perhaps Whiskas was right—maybe there was a Luba. Aspirin once read somewhere about a surge of children conceived during the summer months, born in early April. They were called snowdrops.

  And like snowdrops, it was just as likely he had forgotten about a random one ten years ago.

  He wondered about Alyona’s birthday.

  He reached for his desk and pulled out the laminated birth certificate. March fifteenth. Interesting.

  Rain came down harder, and the apartment grew darker. Aspirin sat on the sofa, smiling. Let it all go to hell, he thought. Enough puzzles, enough mystery. Let’s assume there was a certain Luba. Let’s assume a trip to Crimea did happen. Let’s assume he had an illegitimate daughter—fine, I’ll accept that. And that would mean the barefoot man was her stepfather, of Albanian descent.

  Why Albanian? he wondered. Aspirin wasn’t sure.

  The recorder? It broke or had a technical glitch.

  Mishutka the bear? Aspirin giggled. Bears love honey. But really, he didn’t have an answer for that.

  No, let Whiskas be right—that Alyona is his illegitimate daughter, she had a difficult family situation, and she wanted to have a nice vacation. He decided all the rest—the bear, the shoeless stranger, the deaths, the frightening song and frigid apartment, the fact that her “stepfather” had been okay leaving her with him—had explanations that he didn’t need to contemplate. He had enough to process for now.

  So, new daddy, what are you to do now?

  He’d taken her to McDonald’s, tomorrow he would take her to the zoo. After that, he’d take her to the train station. If anyone mentions child support—not a big deal, he’d send some money to her mother (a percentage of his official salary, of course). He was no deadbeat. He would send her presents on major holidays. Someday he’d buy her a trip somewhere. Luba was married, so he didn’t have to worry about taking care of her . . . whoever she was.

  Still smiling, he went back to the kitchen; a cigarette called for a cup of coffee. He reached for the teakettle and froze.

  Mishutka’s chair was empty.

  Aspirin bent down expecting—hoping—to see the bear on the floor, under the chair. But there was nothing, aside from a few bread crumbs.

  Dammit, Aspirin said to himself. No one came into the apartment. Or . . .

  He ran through the rooms, peeked into the bathroom, glanced at the balcony. Cursing everything under the moon, he looked under the bed, opened the closet in the hall. He saw no signs of intrusion, but neither did he see any signs of the bear, and there was no way Aspirin would have missed Alyona’s return from his position in the living room . . .

  Plus, Alyona didn’t have a key.

  Rain was coming down harder. It was so dark that Aspirin had to turn on the lights.

  I saw him, Aspirin said to himself for the hundredth time. I wanted to pick him up . . . and then Whiskas called.

  Aspirin searched the entire kitchen, peeking into every single drawer. There was no bear. A window rattled in the bedroom, making Aspirin jump.

  “Who’s there?”

  He thought he heard footsteps in the living room, but it was only a plastic bag rustled by the draft.

  He went to the closet. Standing on tiptoes, he reached for his gun. Instead, his fingers touched something soft and fuzzy, and he screamed and jerked his hand away. Moving back, he saw that the teddy bear lay on the top shelf, his chunky plush body blocking access to the gun. How, goddammit, could the bear turn up in that particular place?

  With t
remendous difficulty, Aspirin pulled himself together. He used a vacuum cleaner nozzle to nudge the bear and push it to the floor. The teddy bear landed softly, as befitted a plush toy. Eyes fixed on the bear, Aspirin felt about on top of the dresser. Yes! At least the gun was in the expected spot. Aspirin caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: a whey-faced unshaven thug pointing a gun at a plush teddy bear.

  He swore. Clutching the gun, he went into the kitchen and made coffee. The smoke from his cigarette refused to draw out of the window and twirled above the table in a bluish cloud.

  Just wait until you get back home, Aspirin thought. I will not let you off the hook. Either you make your bear settle down—in the heat of emotion, Aspirin was not thinking of Mishutka the way most adults think of stuffed animals—or you both get the hell out of here. Go to hell, into the devil’s clutches, to Pervomaysk—I don’t care!

  The rain slowed down. Alyona had not returned.

  About fifty minutes had passed since she’d left. The grocery store and market were nearby, and at this hour there wouldn’t be any lines; she should have been back a while ago.

  Was she waiting for the rain to stop completely? Raindrops no longer banged on the tin roofs, slow circles melted in the puddles, and the sun was about to peek through the clouds. She should have been back by now.

  Another half an hour later Aspirin put on his jacket and threw a nervous glance at the teddy bear still sprawled in the hallway. A vision came to Aspirin: he comes back home, unlocks the door with his key, and is greeted by . . .

  He shook his head and found in himself the irresistible urge to kick the bear hard enough to send him flying into the bedroom, under the bed. Would he have the guts to do it?

  Aspirin took a deep breath . . . and kicked.

  The bear turned a cartwheel in the air, flew into the open door, slammed into the foot of the bed and remained still, facedown on the bedroom floor.

  He walked out of his apartment feeling more like a man than he had in the last week.

  Vasya the concierge had seen Alyona leaving the building an hour and a half ago.

  The rain had stopped, but outside it was still cold and raw. Aspirin shuffled around the market, went into the store, but Alyona was nowhere to be found.

  Could she have taken the money and gone to the movies? Or to the park? Or back to McDonald’s where she had such a good time on Thursday?

  Of course. Aspirin had hurt her feelings—imagine that, he would not let her listen to Lohengrin, and now she was mad at him. She was probably just walking around, pouting.

  Aspirin peeked into the lobby of a nearby building, an old property with a bad reputation. The security lock had been broken a while ago, and no one bothered to fix it. Mailboxes yawned, showing their iron insides, multicolored ads were strewn around, all the lightbulbs were broken, and the dark lobby smelled of old urine. Aspirin shuddered and thought that Whiskas was right—this was a particularly bad area of town.

  He walked out, waited for a bit, sighed and went home. On the way back he shrugged, turned back, and—just in case—checked the other entrance of the old building.

  He found Alyona crouching in the corner, with her back to the wall and her head hanging low, to her knees.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She jumped up as if trying to fly into his arms, but at the last moment became self-conscious and only held his hand: “They took everything. Forgive me. I didn’t get a chance to buy what you wanted.”

  Then she wept.

  She had hid from the rain in the lobby, and that’s where she encountered three fourteen-year-old boys. The teenagers first asked her for a cigarette, then demanded money, and then, drunk on her fear and their own impunity, began “frisking” the victim. It was a regular workday, the lobby was empty, with all the retirees staying inside afraid of the rain. The boys took all her money before they found the violin strings in her pocket; that was when Alyona came to and began struggling for dear life. A door opened a floor above; the boys took off, ordering her to sit still and make no sudden moves, or else . . .

  “You should have fought them from the very beginning!” Aspirin paced around the kitchen, dropping cigarette ashes on the table and windowsill. “You should have screamed—these jerks are afraid of attracting attention!”

  “At first I lost my voice. And then they covered my mouth.” Alyona gagged but kept it down. “With their hands.”

  “If I see them, I will kill them,” Aspirin promised, clenching his fists. His early accusations had—as so often happens when men are confronted with victimized women—turned into righteous anger. “If you recognize any of them, if you see them anywhere and recognize them—tell me right away. Do you understand?”

  Alyona nodded.

  Mishutka sat in her lap. She passed her hand fitfully over his head, his face, over his plastic eyes. Aspirin suddenly wondered what would have happened if the teddy bear had been with her inside that old building?

  His imagination obediently served up images of mailboxes splattered in blood up to the ceiling. Aspirin squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Listen, I thought you were tough. I thought you were afraid of nothing . . . except that barefoot goon of yours.”

  “I am scared,” Alyona admitted softly. “Every day I feel more afraid. I didn’t think it would be as scary as he told me. And he never lies, but still . . .

  “I guess when you grow up without fear, you can’t possibly realize how much of it there is in this world.”

  Aspirin drowned his cigarette in a half-finished cup of tea, absorbing her words. Finally he said, “My advice to you: go back home before it’s too late. If you get scared by every jerk in every dark corner, you will not fare well around here. You encounter a roach like that—you slam your fist in his face, you kick him in the balls, you scream at the top of your lungs. And then you run.”

  Aspirin stopped short. Out of the blue, he wondered—if he really had a daughter, would he have offered the same advice? Or would he walk her to and from school, shaking with fear and never letting her out of his sight?

  How did modern parents keep themselves sane?

  Tuesday

  “Good morning, my little darlings! And it is Tuesday again, and nothing can be done, it always follows Monday and brings hope for imminent Wednesday . . . But Radio Sweetheart is here with you! We have long, soft arms, and with our long arms we have gathered in one wave all the easiest, lightest, the most comforting, carefree music we could think of, and that means you can curl up in your cozy office chairs, forget about your troubles, open up your ears and listen, listen, and that’s all, and if you suddenly feel the urge to share, call us or text us, because from ten to ten thirty we have our special segment, ‘Public Confession,’ and that means you can admit anything—stealing your friend’s candy when you were a child, or being afraid of mice . . . you can declare your love for your one and only, or for not so much yours and not the only, or your neighbor, your classmate, your gym teacher, your biology professor, anyone at all, as long as you remember—life is beautiful, and you are loved . . . Radio Sweetheart loves you . . . Listen to our program and dial that number, you may get lucky!”

  Aspirin took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, and wiped his mouth with a tissue. Speaking passionately for a long period of time always made him spray saliva, and there was nothing he could do about it. His spraying problem was part of why his attempt at hosting a morning program on a music television channel had failed so spectacularly. Although, no, that wasn’t it. The management hated his progressive style of livening up the broadcast with an expletive or two. That said, the management had also voiced its displeasure in expressions that even Aspirin himself had never heard of, so he was pretty sure the spitting had played a role in his ousting.

  Radio, though—he had a mouth for radio. A mind too. In all his years on the radio he had developed a few audio tracks in his head: One played a common, average tune, the equivalent of white noise, designed to block one’s ears from per
ceiving anything outside the norm. The other track, the one Aspirin considered his base, presented absolute, sterile silence, of the sort that can only be achieved in a soundproofed space. Some nights in the country could be that quiet, but it had been a while since Aspirin woke up in his family’s country house in the middle of the night.

  Right now that played in his mind, and he did not want to move—he wanted to sit there, think of nothing, listen to the silence, process last night’s dream, come up with more new details: he and Alyona are boarding a plane going overseas, to the States or Canada, and just a minute before takeoff Aspirin gets out and tells the flight attendant that he changed his mind . . . but would not take her with him.

  That wouldn’t really be possible. The flight would be delayed, the crew would have to check the luggage, Aspirin himself would have to be checked, and the element of surprise would be gone. They’d realize he’d come aboard with her, and then he’d be in even more trouble. Aspirin didn’t think he could climb out of a plane taking off through a chassis opening, like Stallone . . . or was it Schwarzenegger?

  He wasn’t either of them.

  Behind the glass window, Julia, the show’s producer, took a call from a listener. Aspirin could read lips a bit, and now he saw Julia say: “Stay on the line.” She nodded to Aspirin: yes, we have a caller, which meant they had someone they thought was interesting enough to put on the air.

  . . . he could put Alyona on the train, just as Whiskas had recommended. The problem was that she wouldn’t go voluntarily. If she really came from Pervomaysk, he could force her to go back home. But what if she hadn’t? This nice little father-daughter game that Victor Somov bought hook, line, and sinker was being performed only for strangers. With Aspirin, Alyona was perfectly blunt: I came from another world, I am looking for my brother, and until I find him, I am not leaving you. Period.

  He could escape to London. That would mean financial loss though, and, worse, damage to his reputation. Aspirin was everyone’s sweetheart, established and successful and all that, but the fickle public forgot far more successful favorites within a month. Plus, how would he explain it to himself, about just who exactly was forcing him to leave, quit his job, and change his lifestyle so drastically?