by Sergey
“No,” Aspirin said.
The woman frowned. Her thick blond bangs could not conceal the two deep vertical lines on her forehead.
“Have you given her an expectorant?”
“Huh?”
The woman glanced into the living room. Alyona did not react—she still sat on the sofa, hunched over, eyes half-closed.
“How could you let the child get to this condition?” the woman asked sharply. “What’s her temperature?”
Aspirin did not reply. The woman gave him a cold, measuring stare and walked into the living room without an invitation. She wore slippers, and they slapped against the floor in accusation at his parenting.
“Hello.” She sat down by Alyona’s side. The girl finally turned her head. “How are you feeling?”
“Lousy,” Alyona said, and her voice matched her answer. “It’ll be fine. It’s just a cold. It’ll pass. It’s nothing serious.”
“Of course it will pass,” the woman said. “But we should try to break your fever. And I am going to bring you an expectorant. I have Dr. Mom, and it actually tastes pretty good. Is that your teddy bear?”
Shuddering inside, Aspirin watched his neighbor cradle the monster in her arms.
“He’s very cute,” the woman said. “What’s his name?”
“Mishutka.”
“Hold him tight, he’ll help you get well.”
The woman turned to Aspirin, all of the warmth in her voice when talking to Alyona gone.
“Give her the ibuprofen, now. Take her temperature. If anything happens, call the ambulance—this is no joke!”
The door closed behind her. Aspirin looked at the pouch in his hand, turned it over, read the directions. He understood nothing, even though the steps were as simple as they come.
“How is this not a joke?” he asked the ceiling. “I don’t understand. Because you and I know your friend is going to come over, wave his hand over you, heal you, make you whole—after all, he made your birth certificate right in his bag, one wave of his hand, yes? So what’s the point of this whole coughing drama? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
Alyona almost choked from coughing; she opened her cloudy, sick eyes. “To feel sorry? You think too much of yourself, Aspirin.”
“Of course.” He was far too tired to feel irritated. “You are in my house, you eat here, sleep here, bait me with your bear, and yet I am not worthy of your attention. I am a tool for you, that’s about it. Why are you shivering like that?”
“Because I’m sick, you idiot.”
He came closer, watching Mishutka out of the corner of his eye. The teddy bear lay on the sofa, spreading its soft paws over the blanket, staring beyond Aspirin.
“I will never tell him about that night,” the girl said, and at first Aspirin thought she was talking about the bear. “I will tell him everything . . . but this. I will find an intersection. I will play a song. My brother will hear it and he will respond. I will go and find him . . . even if he’s dead. The gates will open for us. I can see how they open, and beyond the gates I can see the sun. And there is no death. We will live for many days, and life will be everywhere. Their eyes shine like the stars, they laugh, and they float. And there is no fear, even though they know of fear. And there is no pain, even though they know of pain. But I will never tell him about that night. Never.”
She lay there, staring through Aspirin, hugging the bear to her chest, continuing to speak deliriously, every now and then breaking into a language Aspirin had never heard before, only broken up by coughing.
Someone knocked lightly on the door.
“Be quiet,” Aspirin demanded. “Be quiet, or she will know what’s going on!”
The door creaked.
“It’s me,” his neighbor said. “I brought Dr. Mom, and some herbal tea. Have you made her a warm drink yet?”
“Are you a doctor?” Aspirin asked.
“No, I am an engineer,” she said, pushing her bangs to the side, and the two vertical lines became more obvious. “And you are a DJ, I know. I listen to you every now and then. In a cab, or on a bus, you know, they always have music . . .”
“I will get her a warm drink,” Aspirin said. “Right away.”
“Is she your daughter?” the woman asked softly when he was in the kitchen making the drink under her supervision.
Aspirin sighed. “Actually . . . she was a complete surprise. She came from Pervomaysk. She lives there with her mother. She told me she was my daughter. And I had never seen her before, I never even thought . . .”
“Such melodrama,” the woman said. “Does it even happen like this?”
“I don’t know,” Aspirin admitted. “With me—I guess so. I mean, obviously it did,” he said, pointing to the living room. “And did you see what happened to my car?”
“Yes,” the woman was silent for a moment. “Very strange. As if a grenade blew up in your trunk.”
“You have never seen a grenade.” Aspirin stirred warm, lemony liquid with a spoon. “The grenade damage is quite different.”
“So then what happened to your car?”
It was Aspirin’s turn to be silent.
“An accident,” he said finally. “You know—an accident in the global sense of the word. A hole in the universe. In the macrocosm. Or micro—in my own, individual—cosm.”
“You don’t look great yourself,” she said and suddenly placed a hand on his forehead. She had a cool touch, peaceful, calming; Aspirin wanted her to keep her hand on his forehead for a long time.
But she took her hand away. “And what happened to you?”
He looked away. She stared at the four scratches on his cheek. “So—serious troubles?”
“Could be worse, I suppose,” Aspirin mumbled, then added after a pause, “But not much.”
“A car is just a thing,” the woman said carefully.
“Of course.”
“And you don’t have much of a connection to the girl?”
“Other than being my secret daughter? Put yourself in my shoes—what if, out of the blue, a child came to you and told you she was yours?”
“Hard to imagine.” The woman glanced at the cup Aspirin held in his hand, automatically stirring the cooling liquid. “You should give it to her, she needs to drink a lot.”
Walking into the living room, Aspirin hesitated before approaching the sofa and Mishutka lying in its center. With the woman watching him, though, he finally handed the cup to Alyona. “Here, drink this.”
Alyona drank, noisily, greedily, almost choking.
“Were you thirsty?” Aspirin asked, puzzled.
“She needs to drink warm liquid, lots of it, nonstop,” the woman called from the door. “And milk with baking soda . . . I’m going to go now. Good night. Call the doctor in the morning.”
The door closed behind her. He looked at it for a while, wondering if the woman had even been real.
“Thank you,” Alyona said, handing him back the cup.
“Here is your medicine.” He gave her a green bottle and a spoon.
“Thank you.”
“Can you die?” he said, looking into her eyes.
“No,” she said, but she didn’t sound very confident. “For me to leave this place, this special music must be played. He must play it. No one else can do it.”
“Then what are we worried about?” Aspirin wondered. “You told me so many times that you are not afraid of death!”
“I am not,” Alyona whispered. “I am afraid of something different. I am afraid of people who appear to be alive . . . and then it turns out that they are not just dead—they are all rotten inside.”
“Real nice,” Aspirin said spitefully. “Here I am taking care of you, and you take a jab at me. You enjoy making those nasty hints, don’t you.”
Alyona coughed again.
“I do have milk,” Aspirin managed through grim lips. “And baking soda.”
“Can I have some, please?” Alyona asked. “And could you give me anot
her blanket? I can’t stop shivering.”
Real nice.
Half an hour later the medicine finally kicked in. Sweat formed on Alyona’s pale forehead; she relaxed and stretched out, Mishutka nestled by her side.
“When I saw you for the first time,” she said, closing her eyes and shifting as if trying to work out a body ache, “I was sure you were dead. Just like everyone else here. Frightening. You passed me, and that was fine. But you came back. And it turned out you were alive after all. I was mistaken.”
“You are delirious,” Aspirin said coldly.
“Yes,” Alyona said drowsily. “Can you play the piano?”
“I did, when I was a kid.”
“Whose instrument is this, then?”
“My parents’. And I used it to practice. Children’s songs, you know.”
She tossed the blanket to the side. Rivulets of sweat glistened on her temples, her forehead, her neck; the same T-shirt she wore to the music school was soaked through.
“You need to change your clothes,” Aspirin said.
“I don’t have anything to change into.” She kept her eyes closed. “Let me sleep.”
He found an old white T-shirt in a stack of clean laundry, fresh out of the laundromat.
“Here, put this on.”
She struggled to open her eyes. “Thank you. Don’t look.”
Once Alyona fell asleep in the arms of her bear, Aspirin went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. For over a week he’d been living in an inside-out world, and somehow life went on—he walked around, talked with people, even made a little money . . .
He felt tired now, though. And because of that, he stared into his mug thinking simple thoughts: But maybe that was just how things ought to be. Maybe what she needed wasn’t that bad. She could live here for a bit. I would buy her a violin . . . let her enroll in her music school. And one of these days she will disappear just as suddenly as she showed up. The barefoot guy in the camouflage pants will come, play a song. (What would he play it on? It doesn’t matter.) And Alyona would go back to where she came from. Where there is no death and everyone is happy.
Humans adjust, otherwise they wouldn’t survive. The scratches would heal, the thugs who robbed his apartment would plead temporary insanity and be transferred to a mental institution. Aspirin would survive, as long as he didn’t bother that strange little girl, didn’t threaten her, and didn’t touch the bear. And eventually he’d think of something. Or, if worse came to worst, he would drop everything and move to London; the girl and her bear would never get a visa. Or it would all be moot.
Outside the night was black, as dark and grim as it gets in the fall. The clock showed half past three. Alone, Aspirin sat in the kitchen desperately trying not to howl—from the dull ache in his damaged ear, from the utter despair, from fear—What if he was losing his mind? What if he’d already lost it?—when the black phone on the white table (like a dead seal on a sheet of ice, he thought) suddenly rang. Aspirin jumped up.
“I am sorry,” a woman’s voice said on the other end of the line. “Are you still awake?”
“Yes,” Aspirin said, rubbing his eyes, parsing together who this voice belonged to.
“Is she feeling better?”
Ah, right—his neighbor. “Yes . . . she’s asleep.”
“That’s good. I forgot to tell you about rubbing her down with vinegar. If the fever does not break, you take one part of vinegar and two parts of . . .”
“Yes, I know,” Aspirin said. For a second a childhood memory flashed in front of him—the smell of vinegar and a wet rag on his head.
“Very good,” his neighbor repeated and fell silent, as if expecting him to say something else. As if there was nothing more normal than calling a stranger at three thirty in the morning. Aspirin did not reply.
“Shall I drop off some vinegar?” the woman asked.
He poured her a snifter of the Armenian brandy. She didn’t refuse, but drank very little; cradling the snifter in her hands, she studied the “legs” of the liquid on the glass.
“Do you have children?” Aspirin asked.
She shook her head. “No, just nephews.”
“You must be a very kind person.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well,” Aspirin chuckled, “you’ve come to my aid. Armed with vinegar. And that, whatever it’s called. In the middle of the night. Of your own volition.”
“It’s not a big deal,” she smiled. “I never sleep after my shift.”
“I don’t sleep either,” he said, and poured a little more brandy into her nearly full glass. “Second night in a row. And I have to be on the air at nine in the morning.”
“I read somewhere,” the woman touched her lips to the surface of the amber liquid, “that occasionally . . . in some cases . . . sleep deficit and an intense workload may have a therapeutic effect. I mean, when psychological trauma is present.”
“Are you a psychologist?”
“No, I am an engineer.”
“Right. You said that earlier.”
“Yes. I’m a techie. I work at a power plant and had a late shift tonight.”
“You don’t like Radio Sweetheart, do you?” Aspirin guessed.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s just something that’s come to me.”
“I am quite open-minded.” She spoke calmly, but her eyes sparkled with a hint of sarcasm. “If someone listens to something like that—that means it’s needed.”
“It is needed,” Aspirin said. “Kids from vocational schools, and truck drivers, and office drones . . . And there is no reason to be condescending.”
She inclined her head. “Alexey, I’m not asking what happened to you. But perhaps you should sleep for a few hours, and then you’d be in a better position to decide—”
“There is nothing to decide,” Aspirin said quickly. “Everything is going to resolve on its own . . . or not. Whatever I do to try to fix things only makes them worse.”
She studied his face; tactful, she didn’t ask what sort of violence one had to endure to have a trail of four claws on one’s face.
“Have you tried contacting the police?”
Aspirin groaned.
“You should take a time-out,” the woman said touching her lips to the brandy. “Just go to bed.”
“I will try.”
Walking her out, he suddenly remembered. “I am sorry . . . what is your name?”
Saturday
“My darlings, today is a special holiday for all sensible mankind. The work is finished, Saturday is again upon us, and we’re anxious, we’re willing, but not all of us are able. . . . It’s a glorious Saturday morning at Radio Sweetheart, the last weekend of the dying summer, and it’s sunny outside . . . What a silly heavenly body—in the morning it rises, and in the evening it sets, and if only it were the other way around . . . But we digress, and my producer tells me we have a caller. We have a lovely caller. Hello, we’re listening! Tell us who you are and what you desire in this life! Oh no, I suspect our girl is shy—she hung up. But no fear; at least now we can listen to our next performer, and what will she sing for us, I wonder . . .”
Aspirin spoke with his eyes closed.
A minute, then another. Commercial. Weather report. A minute, then another, minutes following minutes. Aspirin’s measured, upbeat, occasionally even stylish mumbling filled the interiors of cars and apartments, whispered in headphones, and roared from speakers. If I am mad, Aspirin thought, lifting his eyelids for a split second, then you are certainly insane. I am pulling your leg, babbling in your ears, lulling you to sleep, I bleed nonsense, and I can right now, without changing the tone of my voice, share my entire story, and nothing will change, nothing will happen. Another idiot will call in with a song request . . .
In the morning a doctor from a local clinic made a house call, listened to Alyona’s chest, and diagnosed bronchitis. She took a long time writing a prescription, even longer to explain to
Aspirin how to use mustard plasters, and why cupping therapy was barbaric and belonged to the previous century. She threatened him with the possibility of pneumonia, which would definitely happen if he didn’t take certain measures, and told him about a few cases in her own practice, in which children would have to be hospitalized even though everything started with a simple cold.
Aspirin pulled the doctor into the kitchen.
“Would it be best to hospitalize her right now?” he asked, expressing a great deal of trust in modern medicine. “Because, you understand—my work keeps me very busy, and she may be better off . . .”
The doctor looked at him as if he practiced cannibalism. “You know, this is the first time in my practice someone has asked me this. Usually parents are strictly against hospitalization . . . it gets downright ridiculous! But in this case, I strongly recommend that you keep her at home, she’ll be much more comfortable.”
When the door closed behind the doctor, Aspirin felt relieved.
Still burning up, Alyona continued to cough, but she had antibiotics, and they should kick in soon. The doctor promised improvement by the next day—quite possibly in the morning, but definitely by nighttime. Before he left, Aspirin put a thermos filled with hot tea by the sofa. The bear lay on Alyona’s pillow; Aspirin did his best to look the other way.
The cab got stuck in traffic, and Aspirin made it to work just in time. He put on headphones sideways to avoid touching his injured ear while everyone in the studio glared at him through the glass. He closed his eyes to shut everyone out, longing to see nothing; he began muttering like a voodoo man: “Just recently we sang praises to summertime, and all our worries were postponed until September. And here comes September, it’s almost here, but we don’t care—all our worries will happen next September, next year, or maybe they happened last September, and now we can all forget them as stories from our past . . . Children are getting ready for school, but keep your chin up, this too shall pass, and someday your school years will emerge in your memory as a fondly remembered holiday or a long-forgotten nightmare. Here is the top of a new hour, and we greet it by playing our favorite game—Finish with Radio Sweetheart! And when I say ‘finish,’ I, of course, mean finish a sentence, and forgive me for an inadvertent vulgarity . . .”