by Sergey
He picked up his shaving kit in a leather case, a birthday gift from his father, and placed it on top of his suit.
It was at that moment that he decided not to go to London.
Was he guilty of anything? Did he owe money to anyone? Did he have a fight with anyone? And what gave Whiskas the right to scare DJ Aspirin, a popular figure, much loved by thousands?
He was not going anywhere. He simply decided not to go, that was all.
A heavy load tumbled off his shoulders. Aspirin imagined how Alyona’s eyes would light up when he told her about his decision. He rose to talk to her and make her happy, but at that moment the doorbell burst into sound, and Aspirin’s hair stood on end.
Could it be Irina? Or Sveta the concierge? Or the postman?
Or Whiskas?
Why didn’t he opt for today’s flight? He could have, it was absolutely in his power. And there was a crack in the mousetrap, but he didn’t slip out. Instead he’d hesitated, and because of that, he’d lost!
Alyona kept playing. The doorbell rang again, a long, demanding sound.
Aspirin got up, went to the door, and peered into the spyhole.
An official-looking identification document nearly blocked the door.
“Get the bear,” Aspirin croaked. “Hold him. Tell him no! Do it.”
The violin went silent.
A dozen people pushed through the door, all clad in bulletproof vests and black masks, as if Aspirin was not a DJ, but a notorious drug dealer. They brought no witnesses; the protocols for searching residences of alleged criminals must have changed since the police procedurals Aspirin loved as a child.
“Grimalsky? You are under arrest.”
“What’s the charge?”
“You will be informed later.”
Handcuffs snapped shut on his wrists.
A wave of strangers’ sweat and cigarette smoke rolled through the apartment. Men with automatic weapons spread throughout the rooms, taking over as if setting up a perimeter defense. The owner of the identification papers, the only one who did not hide his face, stopped by the opened suitcase.
“Going far, Alexey Igorevich?”
The door shut. Aspirin had no idea how much time had passed since the start of the “operation”: three minutes? Thirty?
“Alyona,” he said hoarsely. “Hold the . . .”
Mishutka sat on the sofa staring, with the empty plastic buttons, at the armed men and making no attempt at resistance. None whatsoever. Just a fluffy stuffed toy.
Alyona sat by Mishutka’s side, her bandaged head hung low. She paid no attention to the nightmare around her. It took Aspirin a few moments to realize that she was changing the strings on her violin.
Had she planned to lead the black-clad brutes to the land of kindness and love with her magical song? Right at that minute?
“Alyona. Call Irina. Let her . . . tell her . . .” His voice broke.
Alyona seemed not to have heard him. She was having trouble pushing the string through the peg hole.
“Let’s go, Grimalsky. Put on your coat.”
“Wait! I have a sick child, I have to . . .”
He was poked in the stomach—not hard, but enough. The pain made him freeze, then bend double; as he was dragged through the doors, he watched the tiles of his own hallway floor, those familiar tiles that had been part of his home, part of the normal life that he had so carelessly wasted and had probably lost forever.
“You have no right,” he managed with his remaining breath.
Alyona was tuning up her violin. The sounds were familiar to Aspirin; he’d heard them many times since he was a little boy. When his parents took him to see Swan Lake, and in the orchestra pit before the ballet . . .
He held on to the door frame with his shackled hands: “Wait!”
They hit him on the fingers, and at that moment the melody began.
This was a very different music, not the same one Aspirin heard in the underground walkway. It was neither loud nor strong; instead, it was deliberately constrained and, because of that, ominous. Aspirin slid down to the floor, but no one hit him again.
The fingers that clutched the collar of his shirt let go.
Still playing, Alyona walked out of the living room into the hallway. Aspirin saw her face: narrowed eyes enraged. Tightly pressed lips. Two bright blotches on white cheeks.
A wave of primal fear washed over him. He shrieked like a rabbit, tore away from his captors, and, no longer caring, rushed into his bedroom and dived under the bed.
Darkness covered him.
“Alexey?”
Aspirin propped himself up on his elbows. His wrists still handcuffed, he lay under the bed in the farthest corner.
“Alexey? Are you all right?”
Aspirin took a deep breath, exhaled, and had a coughing fit. His head felt full of iron, too heavy for him to hold up. Every time he coughed, white stars flashed in front of his eyes.
“They left,” Alyona said. “How are you feeling?”
Using his elbows for leverage, he climbed from underneath the bed. Alyona sat in front of him on the floor, looking even paler than usual.
“I played for them,” she said, proud of herself and smiling. “I did it. And you got affected along with the rest of them—sorry about that.”
“What did you play for them?” Aspirin whispered, feeling his lips crack.
“Fear. Fear is the easiest emotion to play.”
Aspirin shut his eyes. A hole in the universe? There was no longer such a thing as a hole in the universe. He was on the other side of the hole, having fallen out, like from a ripped pocket, into an alternate reality. There was nothing unusual about that. It was a perfectly ordinary matter.
“And what did they do?”
“They ran. Who were they, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Aspirin admitted. He glanced at his shackled wrists. “Do you happen to know any songs that unlock handcuffs?”
“Good morning, my darling compatriots, brothers and sisters of Radio Sweetheart! DJ Aspirin is here with you once again, have you missed me yet?”
He showed up at the station no later than usual and got into his seat still wearing a coat. Putting on his headphones, he pulled up his sleeves, making everyone on the other side of the glass stare at his wrists, on which two halves of handcuffs dangled like bracelets.
“Aspirin,” Julia said when the next song started. “What the hell?”
“I hung out at a BDSM party,” Aspirin said without batting an eyelash. “This idiot girl lost the keys. Wouldn’t be a good reason to miss my shift, now would it?”
“Are you serious?”
He bared his teeth in a smile and went back on the air.
“And yes, my dearest, I know that there are some of you who did not expect to hear my voice on air today. Indeed, some of you were not prepared to hear your aerial, ethereal Aspirin. But I am with you to ensure that your day is light and pleasant. It is a nice and pleasant thought that there is danger in sticking your paw into a wasp nest. Terrible things could happen to a bear. I am here with you, my dears, so let’s think of our lives, let’s decide how to lead our existence from now on—let’s think and, while we’re thinking, here is a new hit song from our favorite artist!”
It had taken Alyona half the night to saw apart the handcuffs. Her hands, tireless when it came to her violin, turned out to be too delicate and gentle for dealing with chains.
Playing fear was easy, she’d said, whether her audience was a human being or an animal. In a rush, Alyona didn’t get a chance to change all the strings on her violin and that made her nervous, but it turned out that only two of his strings had been enough.
By now, Alyona had already learned most of the melodies that were the same for humans and dogs. Why didn’t she say so before? he’d asked. She had no reason to. It would be weird to play fear to someone out of the blue, no?
“And if you played it at that intersection? In that walkway?”
“Why w
ould I?”
“But it’s possible—in principle?”
“Why not? But it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Nothing about her music seemed like a good idea.
Alyona had rested for a bit, then wrapped her arm in a kitchen towel to avoid blisters, then started cutting again. The unpleasant screeching noise of the hacksaw made Aspirin feel like a prisoner stuck inside forever and ever.
His idea of dumping the apartment and running away—such a natural response after being extracted from underneath his own bed, not to mention exactly what he’d been prepared to do not more than an hour before his last epiphany—was immediately rejected by Alyona.
Alyona dismissed the suggestion of another visit from the masked thugs. She was convinced that they had absolutely no reason to fear them anymore. The men would have to figure out what happened, change their soiled pants, look into each other’s eyes . . . Then they would need to figure out what to report to their superiors. Or perhaps they would chicken out of reporting, and the superiors would demand to know what happened and threaten them with repercussions, to no avail. No matter what, any or all of these things would have to happen before any new raid would be attempted.
“Why bother with a raid though?”
“Because it isn’t worth blowing up the entire building.”
That possibility hadn’t dawned on him, and he had looked toward the windows, wondering if there could be snipers ready to take him out. He looked back at her.
“How do you know?” Aspirin asked grimly. “How do you know anything about them at all? I, for instance, have no idea which organization they are from, who their superiors may be, and what they can possibly have on me.”
“Forget it,” Alyona dismissed his worries. “They won’t touch you again.”
“But how do you know?” he insisted. “You have no idea about the rules of this game. Right now would be the perfect time—”
“Are you sure?”
“I am not sure about anything at all!”
“Exactly.”
The hacksaw had screeched once more, and delicate metal powder flew around the kitchen.
“Are you telling me you can easily play fear to anyone at all? And have you always known how to do that?”
“Not always. But I’ve learned. I’m learning.”
“And what else can you play, you magical little girl?”
“Joy. Sadness. Strong emotions, but straightforward ones, without any nuance. Flat ones, like an animal’s.”
She moved her head in time with the hacksaw. A ponytail in serious need of a cut stuck out from underneath the bandage on her head.
“Let’s switch places,” Aspirin said hoarsely. “You hold the saw, and I will move my wrists over it, back and forth. Sorry . . . that came out kind of dirty.”
“There is nothing dirty about it,” Alyona said, glancing at him. “It’s just that you are used to seeing things as dirty everywhere you look. Occupational hazard.”
Aspirin swallowed the insult. He had no energy for a fight, not when he was still shackled, and not after everything that had happened.
A long pause ensued.
“So you are omnipotent,” Aspirin muttered. “And you are not afraid of anything.”
Alyona looked down.
“That woman who hit you with her umbrella . . . could you have played her a bout of repentance? Or at least a violent case of diarrhea?”
“I can’t play repentance,” Alyona said indifferently. “I don’t know how. Apologies are so much harder than fear.”
Aspirin stopped moving his hands over the saw and hunched over in his seat.
“Plus,” Alyona added in the silence that settled in the room, “it’s a little difficult to play when someone hits you over the head. It’s uncomfortable.”
Aspirin swallowed.
“Let me move the saw again,” Alyona said. “Otherwise, we’re getting nowhere.”
He nodded, and the saw screeched again, back and forth.
“What else can you play?”
“Let’s rephrase your question,” Alyona said as she continued working. “What is possible to play with his strings, and what can I play? Because every day I can do more and more. Because his song, the one I need to find my brother, is the hardest of all. It is almost as complex as playing a person. You, for example.”
“What?”
“Yes. It is possible to play an entire person. But it would require a large orchestra, and of course, there is no way I’d ever learn how to play a person, even the simplest one.”
“You won’t learn how to play a person, but that song, all hundred and seventy-three minutes of it, that you will learn?”
“I will,” Alyona said very softly and very stubbornly. Aspirin’s chest hurt without warning.
“Can you play love?”
“Lust—yes, I can. Easily.”
“Not lust. Love, Alyona. Do you know what that is?”
She continued sawing, eyes downcast. “What you mean is a book concept. The love they write about in Lolly-Lady cannot be played. Because it’s not an emotion. It’s nothing—a candy wrapper, an empty word.”
Aspirin had still been looking for the proper response when the hacksaw screeched for the last time and the handcuff chain broke off.
“. . . And so, my dear listeners, here is what I wanted to tell you. All of us are at work right now, all want idleness and comfort and dream of vacation, and none of us realize this: music can be a hell of a lot more of an escape than we think. More powerful. Imagine this: you get home from your office, your refrigerator is empty . . . and what do you do? You pick up a violin, or maybe a harmonica, and you play yourself a pizza. That is, if you don’t have a music degree, and no musical ear whatsoever. And if you have a good ear, you can play yourself a bit of poached fish in white sauce, or mushroom julienne, or a wild parrot baked with cacti, whatever you want! And if you are a really good musician, you can play yourself a woman, and oh what a woman you can play for yourself! One to take your breath away! Can you imagine? And now let’s imagine what the next singer could sing to us? What sort of, shall we say, material results would her singing bring us? Is your imagination vivid enough? No? Then simply listen.”
He wiped his saliva off the mic with a tissue.
Love, an empty candy wrapper . . .
“You, young magician, can you play death?” he’d asked her the night before, poking a screwdriver at the handcuffs.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I am going to bed.” Alyona got up to go to the living room. Before she left the kitchen, she turned around to look at him. “Do you know what my scariest dream is? It’s about a string breaking. Ding—and that’s it.”
“And now, my dear friends, we have a phone call! Tamara is on the line, good morning, Tamara! What are you going to share with our listeners?”
“I want to share how much I love my boyfriend,” a shaky young voice mumbled. “His name is Slava. And I want us not to fight so much . . .”
Aspirin’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It quivered like a fish on a hook.
“Not to fight so much—what a splendid idea, dearest Tamara! All the philosophy of love in five words. If you didn’t fight at all, I would certainly doubt the true nature of your feelings, because lovers’ quarrels are essential for a good relationship, and as the old Russian saying goes, if he doesn’t beat you he doesn’t love you!”
Behind the glass, Julia winced and rolled her eyes.
Babbling away, Aspirin pulled out his phone and saw Whiskas’s number.
The familiar shiver ran down his spine. Leaving for work, Aspirin had to fight the urge to ask Alyona—with Mishutka and her violin—to accompany him to the studio. As bodyguards.
He had overcome the urge and gathered enough courage to leave on his own, utterly defenseless.
And now, at least electronically, they’d found him.
“This song is for you, Tamara, and for your wonderful Slava!”
His phone
kept jerking and buzzing. Bracing himself, Aspirin pressed Answer.
“Hello.”
“Alexey, we need to meet,” his old friend said solemnly.
Aspirin said nothing.
“Untwist your knickers,” Whiskas said in an unexpectedly friendly manner. “You are very lucky. You don’t even understand how lucky you are, Aspirin.”
“This girl of yours is a hypnotist—a regular Franz Mesmer.”
They sat in a dark, smoky café. A connoisseur of expensive cigars and an expert on smoking pipes, in moments of trouble Victor Somov always reached for a pack of cheap unfiltered cigarettes.
“Gypsies have nothing on her, Count Cagliostro is turning in his grave, Anatoly Kashpirovsky is shitting bricks. She could be a millionaire, a billionaire, actually. Maybe she already is.”
Aspirin was shaking his head. “Hold on. When that guy was thrown up in the air and smashed against the pavement—was that hypnosis? Come on . . . when I myself was smacked against the tree hard enough for me to pass out—was that hypnosis, too?”
“Yes, Alexey. And wounds open up, and blood flows, and there are voices . . . the girl herself has no idea what she is doing—her medical file mentions a light form of mental retardation.”
Aspirin choked: “What?”
Whiskas waved his hand: “We went to Pervomaysk. Her mother, Luba Kalchenko, has been in Portugal for the past two years, maintaining no contact. The stepfather is there as well, and they took their youngest daughter with them. Alyona has been left in the care of her great-grandmother, a blind, deaf, eighty-two-year-old woman. Of course, the great-grandmother failed to take care of her great-granddaughter, obviously, especially since the girl has had a disability and went to an institution for children with intellectual deficiencies.”
“Alyona?”
“Grimalsky, Alyona Alexeyevna.”
Aspirin shook his head. “That’s bullshit. There is no intellectual deficiency.”
“Intellectual deficiency has a wide range.”
“She’s a mature, developed child.”
“Who doesn’t part with her teddy bear,” Whiskas said gently. “I have a niece of the same age, and she’s all into dances, and lipstick, and boys.” To Aspirin, that seemed a bit much for an eleven-year-old, but he said nothing. Whiskas continued. “And all those stories she fed you? Was that normal?”