by Sergey
Aspirin stopped. The children would have to be introduced earlier in the story. The way they sobbed when daddy left home . . . No, not exactly: how the little girl sobbed, and her older brother remained stoic, drying her tears. They did not accept the new businessman right away, but later they treated him as their own father, and when their own biological father returned, ill and humble, they met him with indignation . . . No, not like that: the brother met him with indignation, and the little girl fell apart. Would that work?
Aspirin sighed and saved the file in the Drafts folder. The story was shaping up to be rather bland: too many tears, not enough passion. If someone had added a spoonful of poison to someone’s coffee, splashed acid into someone’s face, led someone to suicide . . . But then the story would have a criminal angle to it, and Lolly-Lady stayed away from criminal subjects.
Then what if . . . a woman loved a man for many years, accepting the fact that he wasn’t in a rush to marry her. And then she found out that he already had a family, a wife, a couple of children, and that he never planned on leaving them. Upon finding out, she broke up with him but before he left, she cursed him: “If not for me, then not for anyone at all.” No more than half an hour had passed after their conversation when the man died in a car accident, and now the woman herself was considering suicide.
This piece was dramatic enough, sentimental enough, had a hint of mysticism and absolutely no criminal angle. Aspirin leaned back on his chair and grabbed his hair with both hands.
Alyona was practicing. A cold, dreary melody drifted across the room like fog. Aspirin got up, drank some water, then opened the door to the living room; Alyona stood facing the opened piano, her eyes trained on the music score in front of her.
She glanced at Aspirin, who perched on the edge of the chair in the corner.
“What do you want?” Alyona asked, putting down the bow.
She wore a pair of sweatpants and the same threadbare T-shirt with the picture of two dragons. A small Band-Aid had replaced the bandage on her head. Tousled blond hair, a short ponytail held by a rubber band.
“Listen,” he began tentatively. “Will you play me that song? You know—the one you talked about. Just a little bit. But with the regular strings, please, the plain ones.”
He smiled pleadingly. Alyona thought about it for a moment, then picked up her rosin. A scent of pine swam in the air. A cloud of white dust rose, then settled. Alyona moved the rosin up and down the bow, visibly enjoying the process.
Aspirin moved to the sofa. Alyona stood in the middle of the room, and hoisted the violin to her chin with a smooth, proud gesture. She held up the bow and closed her eyes.
Aspirin placed both hands on his knees, ready to listen.
“I’ll play the middle part,” Alyona said with nervous uncertainty.
“Go ahead.”
She played.
At first Aspirin simply listened, trying to understand how the melody affected him. Alyona played extraordinarily complex passages, the technical level of which should have been impossible for a young girl, and occasionally she would lose her place and make a mistake, but she delivered each note with such temperament and yet so naturally that Aspirin froze in his seat, afraid of spooking her.
At some point he felt as if he were floating around the chandelier, looking down at the girl with her violin and at himself from above. He truly believed that was what the melody was supposed to do to him—but only for a split second.
“Wait. That’s Mozart!”
She put the violin down and smiled, openly pleased with herself.
“‘Fool me once, shame on me . . .’ Oh come on, are you offended? Don’t be, I was just kidding.”
But he did feel hurt, and he went to his bedroom, never gathering enough courage to speak with her. He felt helpless and hollow. A runaway from a mental institution, an angel falling from heaven—everything was topsy-turvy, nothing could be trusted, and only one thing was clear: if this continued, he, Aspirin, was going to lose his mind.
He opened the window, letting in one of two instantly melted snowflakes. Outside Irina ran laps around the building following her own footsteps.
Lap after lap—this measured pace reminded Aspirin of Alyona’s zeal in music. Wet snow flew from under Irina’s wet sneakers.
Aspirin ran by her side: “I can’t handle more than a hundred laps. I maintain a sedentary lifestyle.”
Irina turned her head, meaning to say something but then probably decided to save her breath.
“Have you ever done track and field?”
“When I was a young girl . . .”
“I thought so. You still have the professional athlete’s approach to movement.”
The road turned a corner and went uphill. Aspirin’s breathing got heavier; they passed a parking lot, a bus stop, turned another corner, then went downhill. Aspirin sped up. Irina kept her pace. By the next turn Aspirin slowed down, got his breathing under control, and allowed Irina to catch up with him.
“I see you running every night.”
“Not every night,” she said evenly. “Sometimes I am on call.”
“My work gets busy too. But I wouldn’t pick up running in any case. Running is boring.”
She said nothing. They ran across the courtyard, took another turn, and the road went uphill again; wet snow fell, threatening to glue their eyes shut. Puddles sprayed from underneath their feet.
“I don’t even own sneakers,” Aspirin said, his shoes thudding in the snow.
They passed a parking lot, a bus stop, turned a corner, then ran downhill. Another lap around the courtyard. He could see Irina’s breath in the cold air.
The road went uphill. Aspirin fell a little behind, then leaped ahead to catch up with Irina. He stopped her, and she didn’t protest. He held her shoulders and turned her to face him.
Snowflakes sparkled on her face. Brightly lit distant windows reflected in her eyes.
He held her, so thin, so tense, belonging to no one. Their mouths met, and her lips felt chapped, like cracked desert soil, and he licked them like a dog licks his master’s wound.
Snow fell like down from a ripped pillow, refusing to melt.
He woke up in the darkness and knew Irina was awake.
It was morning. Water pipes grumbled, the elevator screeched. The front door slammed shut. Aspirin pulled his body back under the blanket like a snail back into its shell. He didn’t want morning. He wanted rest.
Irina remained still. In the darkness he found her shoulder, goose bumps all over her skin.
“Are you cold?”
“No. It’s time to get up.”
“No, it’s not,” Aspirin murmured.
Irina pulled away. In the darkness she climbed from underneath the blanket, slipped from the room, and he caught a glimpse of her silhouette against the door frame. The door closed.
He was irreversibly awake.
“Good morning,” a tall woman of about forty said. “I am your doctor.”
She had on a uniform with an emblem sewn on her chest. Aspirin would never have believed that average clinics supplied their staff with such outfits.
“And you must be Alyona Grimalsky?” the woman asked, baring her teeth in a professional smile. “Hello.”
Alyona was playing her scales, and the quick glance she threw at the woman over her bow did not bode well for the future. The woman wanted to come closer, but after taking a tiny step, changed her mind and sat down on a chair, pretending to listen to Alyona’s exercises. Aspirin winced: he would have preferred that the doctor reprimand the girl, saying that an adult is addressing you, and you . . . But the doctor listened and smiled, behaving exactly how—in Aspirin’s mind—specialists in pediatric intellectual disabilities were supposed to behave.
What if the girl moved from the scales to playing fear? Or (Aspirin’s hair stood on end) lust?
He began to panic, but at that moment Alyona finished the scale and brought down the bow with a flourish. She placed her viol
in in its case, sat down on the sofa, and pressed Mishutka, the silent witness to the scene, to her chest.
“Is this your teddy bear?” the woman asked sweetly.
Aspirin flinched as if something flew over his head—he recalled Irina asking the same question in a similar situation. But Irina had come right over, Irina wasn’t afraid of anything; she had to help a sick child, and she, unlike the uniformed woman, had no ulterior motives for asking that question.
Apropos of nothing he thought of how infinitely loving Irina was in bed. Thinking of the scent of her skin made his nostrils flare. His fingertips remembered her breasts—like a pianist remembering a melody; meanwhile, the uniformed woman beckoned Alyona to come closer: “Let’s take a look at your stitches.”
Alyona hesitated for a moment, then went over, leaving Mishutka on the sofa.
The woman examined the stitches on Alyona’s head, nodded, murmuring something unintelligible, asked to see Alyona’s throat, and listened to her lungs.
“You are not afraid of shots, are you?” she asked cheerfully.
Alyona raised an eyebrow. Aspirin stood very close to the woman as she rummaged through her doctor’s bag; for a second their eyes met and the fingers of Aspirin’s hands went numb with fear and revulsion.
“Why do I need a shot?” Alyona asked innocently.
“It won’t hurt at all, it will just pinch for a second,” the woman chirped, filling up a syringe. “Your stitches are not healing all that well, and there is a chance of infection. But I have this wonderful Swiss medication—a quick injection, and by tomorrow you will forget anything ever hurt.”
“It doesn’t hurt right now,” Alyona informed her. “And the surgeon at the clinic told me my wound was healing perfectly, didn’t he, Daddy?”
She stared into Aspirin’s eyes; this was the first time she’d ever called him Daddy. It was a signal, perhaps a threat, perhaps a reproach, or maybe it was a cry for help. Standing in the middle of the room, Aspirin had no idea what to do. Was he supposed to pick a physical fight with this woman?
“At the clinic,” the woman said with contempt, “they simply didn’t have this medication—it wasn’t even delivered until yesterday. Are you really that scared? It doesn’t hurt at all.”
Alyona looked from Aspirin to the doctor and back.
“Excuse me,” Aspirin said hoarsely. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
“Can this wait?” the uniformed woman asked with a hint of aggravation. “I have the syringe ready to go.”
“And we’re not going anywhere. I would like to hear a little more about this medication,” Aspirin said. “Alyona has allergies to certain drugs.”
“Really? Well, not this one. This medication does not cause allergies.”
“May I see the label?”
Now visibly annoyed, the woman stared at him. “Are you a medical professional? What is the point of arguing?”
“I don’t need any shots,” Alyona said. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
The woman threw a quick glance at Aspirin. He shrugged as if saying—not much I can do here. The woman’s eyes measured the space between her and Alyona. The syringe twitched in her hand like a stinger.
Aspirin held his breath.
Several things happened at once. The woman threw herself on Alyona like a cobra, Aspirin rushed to stop the hand with the syringe, the upstairs neighbors turned on their stereo system, and a low growl spread across the room like distant thunder.
The woman shook Aspirin off and jumped over to the door. Alyona sat on the sofa, her teddy bear pressed to her chest; Mishutka’s button eyes stared directly at the doctor and no one else. Aspirin would have sworn on his right arm that that was the case.
The bass of the neighbors’ stereo made the wall shake and the chandelier sway back and forth. The doctor breathed heavily. Aspirin imagined Mishutka leaping out of Alyona’s arms and growing, becoming gigantic right in front of their eyes, his claws at the ready. He imagined sprays of blood marring the ceiling, the blue uniform turning brown, skin hanging in shreds, and the screams stopping abruptly . . .
The doctor caught his eye. Behind the walls, the stereo hummed—just like distant thunder. The doctor looked from Aspirin to Mishutka, then to Alyona . . .
She was in such a hurry to leave she almost forgot her bag.
“So you have been planning to hand me over.”
Seemingly unaffected, Alyona had been sliding the rosin over the bow. Aspirin paced around the room, his hands shaking, his fingers still numb. He looked at her as if she hadn’t just seen him defend her.
“Who was that woman? Did you ask her to come?”
“You would really ask me that? You really think that little of me? You know what?” Aspirin stopped in his tracks. “Get your violin. Go ahead, play for them. Play fear, scabies, diarrhea, anything at all. They will come, and you will give them concerts. Go ahead. They will arrest me over and over again, you will get me out over and over again, until some sharpshooter peeks into our window from a helicopter and shoots the hell out of both of us.”
“Calm down.” She looked at him over the bow, the same way she’d looked at the doctor. “No one really cares about you. No one is going to abduct, maim, or arrest you. And as for me, I can stand up for myself. Don’t worry.”
She began another scale.
“No!” he barked over the sound of the violin. “You can’t stand up for yourself. Call your mentor, your guru, whoever that barefoot jerk was. If you don’t, they will take you when you are asleep, or on the street, or during your music lessons. They will inject you with something and take you away, and I won’t be able to do shit about it!”
But Alyona kept playing, paying him no attention. Like a kicked dog, Aspirin shuffled into his bedroom and spent the rest of the night on the Internet, drowning his anger, frustration, and fear in a muddy stream of useless information.
That night, unable to resist, he went one floor below and rang Irina’s doorbell.
The snowstorm continued for days.
Located right above each other, their apartments had at some point been identical, but in the last ten years each apartment had been remodeled according to its owner’s taste. And now Aspirin felt like he was living in two parallel realities, and the road between them consisted of only two sets of stairs, an Escher-like loop. Coming back to his own place, he sighed with relief and sadness.
Cars got stuck in snowdrifts, municipal services struggled with multiple issues, and the city overall suffered from blockage. Children shrieked with glee, jumping in the snow and having snowball fights, but they seemed the only ones to find any joy. Alyona continued attending music lessons, her boots squeaking in the fresh snow, a plush head dusted with snowflakes peeking over her shoulder.
For the first few days Aspirin felt extremely nervous. He was worried Alyona would not come back. However, she would return as usual, have a bite of supper, and pick up her violin. To all Aspirin’s questions she would give the same answer: no. Nothing happened. No one approached her. No one asked her anything. Nothing was different.
The expectation of a catastrophe had been building up. Aspirin felt frozen in midair, like a mutant snowflake, as if he were floating in zero gravity, his stomach somewhere near his throat.
Irina had a habit of keeping her windows slightly open, letting warm air out into the cold. Every time he looked up at her window, Aspirin knew he had to make some decisions. He would attempt to do so, but enough time would pass, and he’d have to get ready to go to the club, or to see an editor, or some other place he absolutely had to go. And then he would leave his apartment and escape into some other reality, a noisy, cheerful one, where he, Aspirin, was loved and admired by all. He would become himself again, easygoing, sarcastic, indifferent. He would think it was forever.
But at midnight a light would switch on in her bedroom, a dull green light behind tightly shut curtains. Coming back from the club, as if returning from Mars, Aspirin would see that ligh
t and fly toward it like a happy butterfly, strangely emerging from the cocoon of his “regular” life into a being unrecognizable to the outside world.
No one knew when this strange snowy romance would end—until one day it did, on the first calendar day of winter. Aspirin had stayed late at the club. Upon his return home at five in the morning, he looked up and saw that all of Irina’s windows on the fourth floor were completely dark.
For a while he stood under the falling snow watching the dark windows. That night all the babies and all the sick people slept well—no one got up to get some water, and no one feverishly composed poetry or stared at shadows. All were asleep except Aspirin, who stood under Irina’s windows feeling the effects of alcohol wear off, thinking of nothing, regretting nothing at all. The snowfall slowed down, then stopped. The clouds parted quickly, and the winter sky revealed a multitude of stars.
December
“My doves, winter is here! I mean, we have all noticed it before when we had to work our shovels, digging out our cars, but now it’s here officially, proved by the calendar, and that, my dears, is no joke. Soon we’ll hear the growl of a blizzard—are you frightened? You shouldn’t be! Remember, Radio Sweetheart is here with you, with its soft paws, ready to protect you from the frost! Stay with us! Call us, text us, and we will play the warmest, coziest winter music for you, the music you deserve!”
Irina never called him. Aspirin never called her either. Thank God they no longer needed to figure out who dumped whom, like a couple of resentful teenagers.
“We have Vita on the line! Hello, Vita. Whom shall we make happy today? Who is going to receive your musical hello?”
The previous night Alyona had performed at a city-wide student winter recital. Aspirin drove her downtown, to the old Center for the Arts, where the flat stage still kept memories of past assemblies. The concert hall was nearly full—most of the audience was the teachers and parents of the performers. When the MC, a girl of about sixteen, announced that the first-year student Alyona Grimalsky would perform the Gluck “Melodie, Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Orfeo ed Euridice, a slight murmur ran through the concert hall—the audience was surprised.