by Sergey
Could Mishutka be killed? I managed to shoot him once. It cost Mishutka a clump of stuffing. What if I used an automatic weapon instead? That would lead to a stuffing explosion. Could Alyona fix that?
It also led to another thought:
What would happen to Alyona if Mishutka was killed?
For God’s sake, now I’m thinking of Mishutka as something actually alive . . .
He called the waitress over, paid the bill, and walked out the door into a thin October rain. He shivered, pulled on his hood, and opened the umbrella.
A black car pulled over to the curb. Aspirin recoiled, but it was only a businessman who climbed out of the car and ran into the office building. This sucks, Aspirin thought. If I jump from every passing shadow . . .
This is no way to live.
It was already getting dark at four in the afternoon. Aspirin had been awake since early morning; he should have been heading home, but he was scared. What if someone rang the doorbell and showed him a badge? Sveta the concierge would be asked to come up as a witness, a plastic bag with unknown powder would be dug up from a sofa cushion, his gun would be found on the shelf, and it would be announced that the gun was used only a month ago. An appropriate body with a hole caused by this very gun would be found quickly and efficiently. And then Aspirin (who from his infancy had his own room and from his youth his own apartment), a spoiled, privileged Aspirin, would find himself in prison for years.
Could they kill Mishutka? Even though the bear was a monster, Aspirin’s amateur shots caused some damage. Aspirin wondered how many of his three shots had found their mark.
He turned on his phone and called home. For a long time no one picked up. Just as he was about to hang up, a voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” Aspirin said, hiding a sigh of relief. “What are you up to?”
“Practicing.”
“Has anyone called or stopped by?”
A pause. Aspirin felt a chill.
“No.”
“If anyone rings the doorbell, don’t open it. Don’t make a sound, pretend no one is home. I have my keys.”
“That’s fine.” She hung up.
If he had surprised Alyona, she hadn’t let on.
He unlocked the door soundlessly. Well, almost soundlessly, the lock did click, but softly.
Alyona was playing the piano. Aspirin sneaked into the living room without taking his shoes off, leaving a wet trail.
Alyona perched on the edge of the bench. Her left hand hovered over the small octave, her fingers forcing a heavy, powerful, unkind mechanism to revolve (or at least that was how Aspirin perceived it), and her right hand wanted to survive and fought for the right to live. A melody fought through the hum of invisible cogwheels, sliding along the slick walls of a well. For a moment Aspirin thought he recognized Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor, but it was only a fleeting impression; Aspirin had never heard this music before. Moreover, he wasn’t even sure it was music at all.
The sounds that Alyona’s hands—small, with bitten nails—extracted out of an ordinary piano should not have been possible from an eleven-year-old girl. Aspirin listened, chills running up and down his spine, his umbrella dripping on the hardwood floor. In her music, Alyona seemed to portray the world the way she saw it; Aspirin’s heart seized and his lips cracked when that image revealed itself.
The iron clockwork of the music turned one more time and slowed down. Alyona’s right hand dropped on the keys, then slid off, as if having lost its last strength. The girl sighed and hunched over, still staring directly ahead.
Without a word, Aspirin turned and went into the kitchen. He boiled some water, forgot about the teakettle, and had to boil the water again. He took some salami out of the refrigerator and put it back again. He made tea and only then realized he was still wearing his wet raincoat and dirty shoes.
Alyona came out of the living room and stood in the doorway.
“So what are we going to do?” Aspirin asked out loud.
“Did you get your visa?”
Aspirin shook his head. “Monday. Alyona, how old are you?”
She shrugged. “Eleven.”
The kitchen was quiet. Aspirin wanted to say something, but words that usually poured out of him in a stream now dried up and hardened, blocking his throat.
“Take off your raincoat,” Alyona said. “You are making a mess.”
Getting up to hang his coat, Aspirin saw a strange expression on Alyona’s face.
“Are you telling me you saw what I was playing?”
“I didn’t see it,” he admitted. “I think I sensed it.”
“You don’t say,” Alyona said, and again Aspirin missed something in the way she said it.
“Listen,” he said. “The guy who gave you the strings. If anything happens, will he protect you?”
“If what happens?”
“If . . . if an enemy attacks.”
“If an enemy attacks, Mishutka will protect me,” she explained to Aspirin in the same way parents calm their children’s fears.
“And here we are, my darlings, and how unlucky we are with this weather! Alas, October is not May, not in the least! October is here at last; the grove has shaken off its last reluctant leaf . . . I saw a grove today, and it had shaken off everything, just as Aleksandr Pushkin described it, it had shaken it all off. Seeing things so bare, we crave warmth, simple human warmth, and now our warm and soft Radio Sweetheart is enveloping you in super-comfortable, super-autumnal music!”
On Friday he worked a long, dull shift at the club, pulling a set through like pulling a car along a wet dirt road. He then worked a radio shift on Saturday morning; time stretched, medieval, dusty time. He chose a saccharine song next, knowing quite well that it was going to make someone young and impressionable lose any sense of nuance and halftones. He didn’t care.
The day after tomorrow he would get his visa. They couldn’t deny him. And the day after tomorrow—on Tuesday at the latest—he would get out of here. For a long time. Probably forever. The goddamn girl with her bear had managed to destroy his life, and she was welcome to what remained.
He was recalling her playing the piano when he missed his cue. The song had ended, and now the sound engineer was swearing like a sailor behind the soundproof glass, and Aspirin just stared at nothing, trying to figure out—who was he? What was happening to him?
“My dearest listeners . . . today is Saturday. Radio Sweetheart is here with you. For the next half hour we have everyone’s favorite texting game. The first person who sends us a text . . . wait, wait. It’s too early to grab your phones . . . you have yet to find out what we want from you. And all you need to do is to think and tell us—what does a shark have in its middle? Think of an answer and text us, and the winner receives—what will the winner receive? Ah, the winner will receive two tickets to the Shark movie theater. And while you are thinking—please listen to our next song!”
When he got home, he was frazzled and cranky. He only barely noticed how pale and strangely focused Alyona looked, but it didn’t register fully.
In the afternoon the clouds parted and eventually gave way to a decent sunset. When the last of the sunlight seeped into the kitchen, Alyona picked up her violin and left with a sparse “I’ll be back” in Aspirin’s direction.
He waved her away, lost in his own thoughts. But it dawned on him then:
She didn’t have lessons on Saturday.
Out of the kitchen window, he watched her walk down the street—with an exaggerated spring in her step, as if trying to overcome suppressed fear. Not exactly knowing why, he rushed to get dressed.
He caught up with her at the intersection near the subway. Alyona looked ahead and did not notice him.
She entered the subway station, and Aspirin followed. The situation was getting really stupid, and Aspirin had no idea what he would say if Alyona noticed him in the crowd; however, she probably wouldn’t notice if a hand grenade exploded right under her nose.
>
Aspirin hadn’t taken the subway in a really long time. He’d forgotten how stuffy it was, how harsh and grim the faces of the passengers—his daily listeners. After seeing this, who would ever blame Aspirin for all his inane babbling, for trying to make their lives just a little bit livelier, just a tad brighter?
Alyona leaned against the door on which white letters clearly stated do not lean against the door. When Aspirin was a child, he liked to entertain himself during long rides by making up new words out of the white letters, coming up with “rod,” “stain,” and once even “tandoori.”
Alyona did not look entertained. She stood in the corner, hunched over, pressing the violin case to her chest. Aspirin suddenly realized that Mishutka wasn’t with her. For the first time in many days Alyona left the house without her plush friend and bodyguard, and he suddenly felt nervous for her.
He looked around. All the faces on the train seemed suspicious and unkind.
Where was she going?
Could Whiskas have scheduled a meeting with her, to get her out alone? Or someone other than Whiskas? While Aspirin babbled on air . . .
Aspirin felt hot and sweaty. It was not too late to approach Alyona, confess to his creepy tactics, and squeeze the truth out of her. If she complied, of course. If not, he could simply stop her from going, he could scare her, physically force her to return home.
Or he could follow her and find out who was after her this time . . . and then decide if he cared enough to rescue her or was truly ready to be rid of her.
At the next stop the train filled almost to bursting with people. Aspirin had to stand on tiptoes to see Alyona. She remained hunched over in the corner, staring straight ahead, visibly nervous. The doors opened again, the human vortex twirled, and Aspirin almost missed Alyona leaving.
She made a dash for the door, and Aspirin followed. A girl in stilettos swore at his back, her voice unexpectedly jarring to his ear. Aspirin squeezed between the closing doors onto the platform; Alyona was far ahead of him, carried by a throng of people.
In turn slowing down or rushing through the crowds, Aspirin caught up to her and positioned himself about ten paces behind. All Alyona had to do to discover him was to turn her head, but—again—she never did.
They left the station and found themselves in a long, underground walkway. Alyona’s gait was growing less and less determined. Aspirin was pretty sure she was about to change her mind and turn back from wherever it was she was going, but Alyona shook her head as if ordering herself to shape up and marched on, passing a small pharmacy, an entrance to a café, and a round-cheeked seller of wind-up toys (his assortment of mechanical kitten monsters with glowing green eyes shrieked incessantly, while camouflage-clad soldiers crawled and shot each other). Alyona reached an intersection where two underground human streams collided, and stopped by a soda machine.
Aspirin paused a few paces behind. Was the meeting supposed to happen at this intersection? In this dark, crowded place, in the middle of an underground walkway?
Alyona crouched down and placed the violin case on the pavement. She unzipped her jacket, opened the case, picked up the rest pad, and tied it onto her neck in a smooth, practiced movement. She then took out her instrument. Passersby walked on, occasionally glancing in Alyona’s direction, but Aspirin soon saw the backs of their heads.
He kept watching her though, already knowing what she was going to do and somehow experiencing simultaneous relief, aggravation, and anger. There was no meeting scheduled. The girl was simply going to panhandle with her violin.
Alyona lifted the violin to her chin and picked up the bow. Aspirin noticed for the first time how lightly and delicately her fingers touched the instrument.
She waited a few seconds, then started playing. Aspirin expected to hear anything but the clearly false, harsh sound that came from her bow.
Commuters continued on, paying no attention. Alyona dropped her arms and stood for a minute or maybe longer. Aspirin saw—or rather felt—how she tried to calm her trembling hands and how (not right away, but eventually) she succeeded.
She took a deep breath, picked up the violin, and moved the bow once more. Maybe she couldn’t quite control her fingers, or perhaps the piece she chose was too complex, but the sounds that flew under the damp underground arches elicited nothing but bewilderment in him; it seemed the child had picked up the instrument for the very first time.
Passersby walked on.
Aspirin took a few steps around the corner. He could hear the distant meowing of the monster kittens and the racket of the toy soldiers’ automatic rifles. Hundreds of shoes shuffled along the pavement. Alyona led her bow over the strings, repeating the same sequence of sounds, and suddenly a melody broke out of the grating of a beginner’s exercise.
It lasted five seconds, maybe ten at the most. The roar of the child’s violin was intense and terrifying. Both human streams around Alyona lost their rhythm. Someone stopped, someone broke off a conversation, someone dropped a bottle of beer on the ground and it broke in what seemed like absolute silence. All the faces turned to the girl with the violin, and she continued playing, her face focused, eyes narrowed, like a skier on the Olympic trail.
And then a woman of about forty, well dressed, holding a long, elegant umbrella, threw herself at Alyona and brought the umbrella down on Alyona’s head.
The melody stopped. The crowds began moving again, most people walking away briskly, emphatically gesticulating and showing how busy they were. Others rushed over to Alyona—to see what was happening. A man in a black jacket caught Alyona; she struggled to remain on her feet, holding on to her violin, even though a thin stream of blood ran down her face.
“What are you doing?” the man in the black jacket barked at the woman who had assaulted Alyona. “What’s wrong with you? I am going to call the cops . . .”
The woman with the umbrella scowled like a character from a horror movie.
“The cops? For me? This bitch—this stinking bitch needs to be put away! This human trash doesn’t belong here!”
The man gaped at the language, unsure of what to say. Fearful the woman would attack Alyona once more, Aspirin ran over to the young girl. She stood in the middle of the intersection, very pale, with a blood-stained forehead, but she was perfectly calm and even smiling a little. Aspirin tried to take her violin, but it would have been simpler to remove a rabbit from an alligator’s jaws.
The woman screamed again, hissing and suffocating in her hatred, and it looked as if she was going to strike Alyona again—then suddenly, as if recalling something important, she ran. Someone near the scene tried to grab her by the sleeve, but she shook off the champions of justice like an old wolf shakes the hunter’s dogs off its hide, and disappeared in the crowd.
The man in the black jacket turned to Aspirin. “Did you see that?”
Aspirin said nothing; he picked up the violin case and handed it to Alyona. She placed the violin and the bow inside, and Aspirin pushed down the locks. Alyona hugged the case like her favorite doll. Aspirin grabbed the girl by the collar and dragged her outside, aboveground.
He didn’t have to think very hard. Everything happened as if following a script: he stopped at a pharmacy to get some first aid supplies, then grabbed a cab (good thing he’d brought his wallet), and told the driver to go to the nearest trauma center. There was no line. A middle-aged surgeon examined Alyona (a black satin pad still dangling around her neck) and said there was no concussion, just a laceration. He put in a couple of stitches (“purely cosmetic”) under local anesthesia and gave her a tetanus shot. Alyona seemed to feel no pain.
“You are quite a little soldier,” the surgeon said with a great deal of respect.
“I wish,” Alyona said softly.
Pale, with her bandaged head, she looked pathetic.
“Why did you follow me?”
Aspirin sighed.
“I thought Whiskas wanted to meet with you.”
“Who?”
“
That guy who was interested in you, in Mishutka, and all the bloody mess.”
“Ah,” Alyona said, smiling faintly. “That’s silly.”
They sat in the kitchen, with the opened violin case on a chair between them. Aspirin looked closer—the strings were . . . perfectly ordinary at first sight, metal, with a dull silvery glow.
“Yes,” Alyona closed her eyes. “I put on his strings. I was afraid . . . in any case, I succeeded a little.”
“You succeeded?” Aspirin asked. “Your goal was stitches?”
“You heard it,” Alyona said softly.
Aspirin shuddered.
“What was it?”
“His song. The first few measures.”
“And that crazy broad?”
“She is not crazy. It got to her.”
“I think it got to everyone there,” Aspirin offered.
Alyona shook her head.
“Not all. You see, this song—if you play it properly—it’s like light for a blind person. And all blind people suddenly realize that they have never seen light—and never will, and the most terrifying thing is that it’s no one’s fault but their own. It’s a horrible, revolting feeling, and they hate it—it feels foreign and wrong. That woman, she . . . It was physically uncomfortable and painful for her to realize that she could have, but didn’t, or was too scared, or just didn’t have enough willpower . . . Do you understand?”
“No.”
“That song is perfection,” Alyona said softly, “playing in the world where perfection does not exist.”
The clock was ticking. It was pretty late; somewhere at the club Zhenya waited for him, angry and confused—he was supposed to meet her tonight. She called his home number and his cell, but he had turned everything off—the person you are trying to reach is unavailable at this time—and that was it.
He’d had enough of crowds and other people today. Maybe forever.
“Why did she hit you? To punish you for the perfection?”
“In a way. She wanted to shut me up. No one likes seeing their lives—and lies—exposed.”