Daughter from the Dark

by Sergey

  He suddenly felt terrible. Irina’s silence, the conversation with Alyona, Whiskas’s knowing look, all this nagging and minor comments rolled up into a single poisonous lump, stuck in Aspirin’s throat, and only now did he realize how tired he was of this life. He was exhausted. He felt like dying.

  Moving like a fly in honey, he put on a slow number. He needed to last until morning. There was no need for Russian roulette, all he needed was to collapse on his controller and not move. And let someone else deal with his problems.

  “Aspirin?”

  He turned his head.

  The girl was no more than twenty; she had bright green eyes, freckles, and was wearing a sailor’s shirt. Her smile held a hint of danger. Aspirin could have sworn he’d never seen her before—he would have remembered.

  “Who are you?” he asked, looking her up and down.

  She thrust out her chest, catching his stare. “They call me Castor Oil.”

  “Be nice to yourself,” he said, catching himself at the first spark of interest.

  She laughed.

  “Hey,” Aspirin said. “Can you put this disc into your bag? It’s a gift from Kostya.”

  “Wow!” The girl looked at the disc with appreciation. “Sure, I can, but I want one of those for myself. Where is Kostya?”

  “He’s sitting right over there. You can talk to him later, but I don’t want to miss the slow dance.”

  He took her into his arms right inside the DJ booth.

  The night had passed, full of uncomplicated fun. Aspirin woke up in her bed, kissed Nadya on the naked shoulder, and went into the bathroom, wrapped in a sheet. Nadya’s parents were skiing in Switzerland, the apartment was clean and spacious, and standing under the hot streams of water, Aspirin smiled as if a load had fallen off his shoulders.

  Coming out, he asked, “Got any food?”

  “I don’t know, look in the fridge.”

  They cooked a light breakfast. Nadya made some coffee.

  “I am going to become a regular at Kuklabuck.”

  “Awesome.”

  “I listen to Radio Sweetheart too.”

  “That’s dumb. Why would you ruin your taste?”

  Nadya frowned. “You’re a snob. This pop stuff feeds you, and you turn up your nose.”

  “Pop to you, bread and butter to me,” Aspirin said. “Where is my disc, the one Kostya gave me?”

  “Are you leaving already?” Nadya asked.

  “I am on air at noon.”

  Nadya got up to take the dishes to the sink. Aspirin lightly slapped her ass.

  “Hey!” Nadya jumped.

  “There was a mosquito there,” Aspirin said.

  “A mosquito? In winter?”

  “I know—lucky I got it.”

  She laughed, wiped her hands with a kitchen towel, then sat by Aspirin’s side.

  “Will you teach me how to mix tracks? I want to be a DJ too!”

  “Sure thing,” Aspirin said.

  He had half an hour to stop at home and change. The slush on the road had frozen overnight, and Aspirin nearly wiped out right in front of his building. He unlocked the door; the apartment was unusually quiet. Alyona must have been asleep.

  He changed his shirt and went into the kitchen for a beer. A fleeting thought passed through his head—how nice it would be if Alyona never existed, and if this long, difficult story had been nothing but a bad dream. Everything was working out for him right now: his work was going well, his personal life couldn’t have been better, he had money in the bank, the beer was cold, and all he had to do was to live and enjoy living.

  So, of course at that moment, the doorbell rang.

  Swearing under his breath, Aspirin shuffled into the hallway. He opened the door and saw Irina.

  “Hey,” he said cheerfully. “Sorry, I am about to run to my shift.”

  “But it’s Sunday,” Irina said.

  “Right, but someone asked me to take his shift, at noon. I have zero time to talk.”

  Irina remained standing, as if she had not heard a word he said. Her light brown hair was swept back and two vertical lines stood out against her forehead. Aspirin noticed that she had lost weight and looked pale and gaunt.

  “I have been trying to reach you. I called last night, and the day before last, and today I saw you pull up.”

  “I am sorry. I will call when I get back from my shift, deal?”

  She kept gazing up at him. Unnerved by her stare, Aspirin glanced in the mirror to make sure everything was in order. A trace of lipstick on his collar? But he’d just put on a fresh shirt.

  She flared her nostrils. He could have sworn she could smell the scent of another woman, like a she wolf, even considering that Aspirin took a shower, changed his clothes, and was generally preoccupied by other things.

  “Irina, did you want something? I seriously don’t have even a minute . . .”

  He saw her pupils dilate. It was like an explosion, the birth of two new black holes. He took a step back. “What’s wrong?”

  She opened her lips but said nothing; she turned and went down the stairs. The door on the fourth floor slammed shut. Everything went quiet again.

  Aspirin swore through gritted teeth. He really did have very little time before his shift, and the roads were icy.

  A sleepy, disheveled Alyona stood in the doorway of the living room, watching him with a great deal of interest.

  “And here is February, my friends, the shortest month of the year. New Year’s Eve and Christmas have already been forgotten, but St. Valentine’s Day is coming up, hope everyone remembers that! We have discounts for lovers, tours for lovers, washing machines, Paris, Lake Baikal, new computers—everything is marked with a heart, everything is for lovers, and so is Radio Sweetheart! Today we are listening to songs about love. When do we ever listen to anything else, you may ask? Never! But now, if you have a free moment, if your boss has left the office, and your trusted coworkers won’t sell you out to him, dial Radio Sweetheart’s number, guess a song about love, get a pass for a party at the Digger club, and listen to the song! Ooh, we have our first caller, that was quick! What is your name?”

  “Igor.”

  “Attention, Igor, you must guess at least one song—where they take it away, where they let it go, and where they play! And the timer is on, where they take it away, where they let it go, and where they play! Which one can you guess?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “Let us all think about this. A song about love where they take it away—any ideas? Oh, short beeps, our Igor must have gotten scared, but we have another caller on the line—who is this?”

  “Rita!”

  “Rita, Rita, Margarita, so nice to hear your voice, so, any guesses?”

  “Where they take it away—‘Landslide’?”

  “Bravo! Bravo, Rita, stay on the line, the pass to the Digger club is all yours, and we are listening to ‘Landslide’—‘I took my love, I took it down’!”

  Aspirin took off his headphones. The studio felt stuffy.

  “Jules, tell them to turn on the air-conditioning.”

  “Are you nuts? We are freezing our balls off in here.”

  “And I am suffocating, like a dragonfly in a vacuum chamber! What are you laughing at?”

  “You crack me up, Aspirin. Will you sign a photo for my niece?”

  “Sure, do you have an extra photo?”

  He had forgotten—and then remembered again—Irina’s widened pupils. She was more of a private investigator than a woman, for God’s sake. How did she figure out he’d been with another girl? He imagined marrying someone like that and then spending the rest of his life apologizing.

  It was abundantly clear that their relationship was finite. But couldn’t they simply part as friends? Especially since they were neighbors.

  Against his will he remembered that night back in January, the night when Alyona disappeared. The night he and Irina were closer than . . .

  Than who?

  Aspirin
knew that Irina tried to get Alyona to trust her. Irina was worried that Alyona didn’t go to school, worried about the violin that had to be replaced, and she worried about the most important thing: What happened on the day Alyona left? Where did she go? Alyona must have known that her father had been going crazy with worry for a full forty-eight hours!

  Father—that’s what Irina called Aspirin in her conversations with Alyona. He couldn’t quite decide whether this upset him or not. Aside from the incident with the suspicious doctor’s visit, Alyona never called him “Daddy,” and that was just fine, it would sound fake anyway. But “father”—the head of the family, overworked, exhausted by all sorts of problems.

  He would prefer that Irina did not poke her nose into their business.

  He expected Alyona to behave as usual—to glance at Irina with her icy blue eyes and put the woman in her place, the way it had happened to Vasya the concierge, and the way it routinely happened to Aspirin himself. To his great surprise, the girl took pity on their neighbor. Patiently, she explained: she would start school next year, it didn’t make sense to enroll now. As for why she had left—it was a stupid thing to do. She should not have done it. She was sorry.

  Irina had bought her vitamins, gloves, and warm tights. Irina called her every day, and Aspirin knew that sometimes Alyona called her back. Irina brought her CDs even though Aspirin’s collection was a hundred times richer. “She has the potential to be a phenomenal mother, practically perfect,” he remembered Alyona saying. It was wonderful and quite lovely, but what did it have to do with Aspirin?

  “Radio Sweetheart is with you, my dears, and we are continuing our game! You have three more love songs to guess: in one they lie to you, in another they kiss you, in the third, unfortunately, they upset you . . . but love is dangerous, love is cruel! And . . . we have a caller!”

  Two more hours to go. Aspirin asked for coffee.

  Sounds of piano music woke him up. Still half asleep, he thought he was sitting in a concert hall while the entire audience was giving an invisible performer a standing ovation. A second later he patted the blanket by his side: “Irina . . .”

  He immediately sat up: there was no greater crime than calling a woman in one’s bed by another woman’s name.

  But Nadya wasn’t there either. Aspirin woke up fully and realized he was home, in his own bed, and that the deafening noise was coming from the piano on the other side of the wall—and it was truly deafening, like an entire enthusiastic orchestra.

  “For God’s sake,” he mumbled, getting up.

  Alyona looked radiant. Perched on the edge of her chair, head thrown back like a virtuoso pianist, she made the instrument shriek with happiness—it was not necessarily harmonious, but certainly quite emotional.

  He wanted none of it.

  “What do think you’re doing? People are sleeping!”

  “It’s two in the afternoon.” Alyona continued playing. “Good morning to you, Alexey.”

  “Enjoying yourself?” he asked in a calmer tone.

  She held her hands over the keys, then took them off in a gorgeous, concert-appropriate gesture.

  “Am I enjoying myself?” she asked innocently. “I am working my ass off while you gallivant around clubs pawing random women.”

  She attacked the keys again; failing to come up with a witty response, Aspirin went into the kitchen.

  Nadya didn’t come to the club that day—she called with a vague complaint about her parents, the weather, a bruised knee, and the fact that Aspirin had “behaved like a pig.” Aspirin sent her love on the air and dedicated a saccharine-sweet composition to “the girl named Nadya.”

  A fairly large spider ran across the hallways on jointed legs.

  This place is going to seed, Aspirin thought dejectedly. Now there are spiderwebs in all the corners. You’d think it wouldn’t be the case since it’s wintertime—what, pray tell, do they eat when there is not a single fly in the house?

  In a great rush, the spider finally crossed the hallway and dived under the living room door. Aspirin turned to go into the kitchen, but at that moment another spider descended from the attic, grabbed the door handle, moved over the wall, and scampered in the same direction—toward the living room.

  “Come on over, Spider dear, tea is served for you and yours . . . ,” Aspirin muttered. “We have pie for Mrs. Fly.”

  He opened the door and looked for Alyona. She stood facing the window, her back to Aspirin; she played her violin, swaying with her entire body, and by her feet a couple of dozen spiders of different sizes gathered around her in the circle. They moved slowly, as if in a trance.

  Aspirin rubbed his eyes and recoiled.

  “What the hell!”

  The melody stopped. A long second passed, then the spiders, as if coming to their senses, burst in different directions and hid in the tiny cracks in the walls.

  “What was that?”

  “What?” Alyona asked innocently, batting her eyelashes.

  “Like you don’t know?” Aspirin felt nauseated.

  “No.” Whether she was disagreeing with him, or simply denying him a response at all wasn’t clear. She rubbed her chin—the spot where the bloody sore made by the violin in time turned into a hard callus.

  Aspirin growled. Of course now he could have said he imagined things, plus what was the big deal anyway—it was just a handful of spiders. But he was absolutely sure that he did not imagine anything. And little girls shouldn’t be having concerts for arachnids.

  “Sit down.” He nodded toward the sofa. Such an obedient girl, Alyona sat down, patting Mishutka’s soft paw. Aspirin strolled around the room. The spiders disappeared without a trace.

  “What were you playing?”

  “Saint-Saëns,” Alyona lied without batting an eye, “‘The Swan.’”

  “Do you really think I’ve never heard ‘The Swan’ before?”

  “Why does it matter what I played?”

  Aspirin steepled his fingers. “Listen, I am quite close to losing my cool.”

  “Scaring a porcupine with a naked ass again? All you do is lose your cool.”

  He made another circle around the room and recalled Whiskas’s warning:

  “Do your best not to upset her. Try to agree with everything she says.”

  “Fine,” he said as meekly as he could manage. “Join me for an omelet?”

  “Sure.” Alyona rose and put the violin to her neck. “Please call me when it’s ready.”

  He kept an eye out for spiders the rest of the night.

  March

  With the first days of spring, it seemed Alyona had been possessed by a demon. She made a terrible racket on the piano, listened to music without headphones, danced and jumped, stomping her feet so loudly that Aspirin wondered if paint came off Irina’s ceiling.

  Sometimes he wished Irina would call and say something like “Stop stomping your feet, my chandelier is about to crash.” But Irina never called, not even when Alyona decided to jump off the sofa at half past eleven in the evening. Irina simply pretended her neighbors a floor above did not exist.

  Alyona spent hours in the bathroom. She played her violin when Aspirin was trying to sleep, she disappeared somewhere and showed up out of nowhere—but he said nothing, recusing himself. Once, looking under the bed in search of a lost disc, he saw a tiny spider and shuddered so forcefully that the back of his head slammed into the bed frame. Every time Alyona began playing an unfamiliar, strange melody, Aspirin tensed up and looked around for some crawling creatures.

  None had been detected, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  He still had Nadya’s complete adoration and devotion, but it no longer held any excitement. Her parents left again, this time for Egypt, and their apartment was at the disposal of the “young ’uns,” as Nadya called herself and Aspirin, but the problem was that he no longer felt young. Next to Nadya’s sailor outfit (he discovered that all her clothes were rather infantile, almost doll-like), he felt at best
like a preschool teacher, at worst—like an old pervert.

  Also, he tired easily these days. Previously, he always had enough energy for the club, for Radio Sweetheart, for parties, and for moonlighting. But now, with three nights a week at Kuklabuck added to the mix, it all absolutely exhausted him: he had a headache, his ears were itchy and sensitive, and the only treatment he had at his disposal was brandy. Having slept until midday, Aspirin looked at himself in the mirror and recoiled at the sight of a puffy, unwell, middle-aged monster.

  “Vitamin deficiency,” Nadya had said. “You should take some vitamin C.”

  He wasn’t sure orange juice was going to cure whatever malady afflicted him.

  Once on his way back from the garage, Aspirin saw Alyona.

  She had gone for walks before, strolling around the building, kicking icicles with the tip of her shoe, occasionally stopping to stare at a rainbow oil slick on the wet pavement, or some broken furniture left by the side of the road, or a puddle. Aspirin had never seen her in the company of other children. Also, Alyona never took her violin outside. Today, for some reason, was different.

  The sun was shining. Alyona walked without purpose, the violin squeezed between her shoulder and chin, and she played something very softly, pizzicato. She seemed to have been completely lost in her thoughts. But it wasn’t Alyona who made Aspirin stop.

  A boy followed Alyona, step by step, only a couple of dozen steps behind. The boy was about fourteen or fifteen, and Aspirin thought he looked familiar.

  Could the boy simply be going about his business? Of course he could, and yet Aspirin had no doubt that the boy was following Alyona, and no one else. A second later, looking more closely at his face, Aspirin realized that it was one of those juvenile assholes who’d attacked Alyona inside the old building. One of those boys Aspirin had tried to intimidate behind the garage.

  Aspirin tensed up, ready to run after them and grab the boy, but for some reason he didn’t run. Maybe because of a strange expression on the boy’s face: an expression of fear. The boy looked confused and scared—mostly scared—and with each step his wide face with its potato-shaped nose grew paler and paler, and his mouth opened wider, as if the boy wanted to scream.