Daughter from the Dark

by Sergey

  But he didn’t scream. He opened his mouth wider yet, like a fish, and continued following Alyona, step by step. Alyona went down the street toward the intersection. Aspirin followed the strange little procession. He didn’t know what to expect, but had a terrible premonition.

  The passersby looked at Alyona with curiosity. Some looked back, others smiled. Aspirin weaved in and out of the crowd, keeping Alyona in his sight.

  She reached the intersection when the green light started blinking. She crossed the street, and Aspirin could have sworn all the drivers watched her with fascination. The light turned red for pedestrians, green for the cars, and a roaring stream of vehicles gushed into the intersection. The boy stopped at the edge of the sidewalk.

  Alyona stopped and lowered the violin. She watched the boy across the busy street. Aspirin couldn’t see the boy’s face, but he had a clear view of Alyona’s.

  She was smiling.

  With a sweeping concert gesture, she brought the violin to her shoulder, the bow suddenly appearing in her hand from out of nowhere, like a magician’s wand.

  Aspirin threw himself forward and bellowed over the din of the street: “Don’t you dare!”

  “What if he was run over by a car and killed? Fine. I assume you consider murder a fair and just punishment for a terrible person. But what about that man, the driver, who would run the boy over—what about him? What had he done to you?”

  Alyona carefully wiped the violin with a dry cloth.

  “Alexey, what does this have to do with me? What murder?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “What did you see? That I was playing, and the boy was following me?”

  “Show me your violin,” Aspirin demanded.

  “Why? It’s not like you’d be able to tell which strings are normal, and which—”

  “Aha! Then you did use his strings?”

  “Only two,” Alyona admitted. “G and A.”

  “G and A,” Aspirin muttered. He got up, went into the hallway, and unlocked the front door.

  “Go.”

  “Where?” Alyona asked.

  “To the intersection. To the square. Anywhere you want. Play your song, find your brother, and get the hell out of here—I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  Alyona made herself more comfortable on the sofa.

  “I can’t. I am not ready yet.”

  “You are ready,” Aspirin barked. “I saw what you can do! You led him, like on a string, like a rat—I saw it!”

  “You don’t understand what you are saying.” Alyona’s face darkened. “And I don’t want to hear you say ‘rat’ ever again, it just sounds creepy.”

  “You are not leaving?”

  “I am not leaving.” Alyona crossed her legs. “I certainly have a lot to thank you for, Alexey. But you should watch your step.”

  The fourth-floor window glowed, a pale green light. Aspirin sat in his car, smoking and watching the dark silhouette occasionally appearing on the green background.

  Like a movie theater. Like a shadow play. Like a dimly lit aquarium. On the fifth floor, his own apartment was brightly lit and Carmina Burana thundered through the open window.

  Aspirin forced himself to come out of the car. He walked in the door and pressed the button. Sveta narrowed her eyes and said slyly: “Alexey, did you hear that Irina from the fourth floor is selling her place? And she said it was urgent. The agent stopped by today, with prospective buyers. Do you know how high the prices are these days? Even if there is urgency—”

  “What?” Aspirin frowned. “Which floor? Irina?”

  “Irina, yes—I just said that! She got the apartment from her parents, they got a good deal—two one-bedroom apartments instead of one with two bedrooms, and they made some money out of it. The parents are dead now, and Irina’s brother owns the second apartment. And now Irina says she wants to make some money too. She doesn’t make much. In the old days, an engineer’s salary—”

  “Engineers never made a lot of money,” Aspirin said, staring dully into the opened elevator doors. “There is even a song about it.”

  The elevator offered a slight reprieve, but eventually its doors closed and the button for the fourth floor went off again. Aspirin pressed it again almost to the wall, the elevator clanged and reopened the doors. Aspirin saw a cop in winter uniform and a woman in an old coat walking in through the front door. Only finding himself face-to-face with him in the tight space of the elevator, did Aspirin recognize the cop. They had already met, only that time the cop wore plainclothes.

  The woman was that same youth liaison officer on whom Aspirin tried to palm Alyona off a while ago.

  “The child does not attend a mainstream school. Moreover, she stopped attending the music school as well. She plays violin in underground intersections for money.”

  “That’s not true,” Aspirin blurted out.

  The youth liaison officer pursed her lips. The cop glanced toward the window, at the bright blue March nightfall.

  “Doesn’t she play in underground intersections?” the officer clarified.

  “Not anymore. And she didn’t do it for money.”

  “What for then?”

  “For fun,” Aspirin said through his teeth, feeling like a complete idiot.

  The cop and the liaison officer exchanged glances.

  “Don’t you have anything to do?” Aspirin said, brimming over with quiet fury. “So many homeless people, abandoned children, beggars, drug addicts . . . Do you have that much time on your hands that you can visit me and question why my daughter chooses to perform in the underground intersections? There is no law forbidding doing that!”

  “Alexey Igorevich,” the cop said, “we have an official statement from the children’s services. They want to take away your custody, via legal proceedings.”

  “What?”

  “If the court decides that you are not providing the child with the reasonable amount of care, such as nutrition, education, et cetera, or that you treat the child with cruelty—”

  “Cruelty?”

  “I have a statement signed by her violin teacher,” the woman said. “You have stopped the child from attending the music school under the threat of physical punishment.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  The woman shrugged. “I have spoken with the teacher; she assures me that you threatened to throw her down the stairs and that she has witnesses.”

  “Dammit,” Aspirin muttered. “It’s total nonsense, do you understand? Alyona! Alyona, get over here!”

  Nothing happened.

  Swearing under his breath, Aspirin went to the living room. Alyona lay on the sofa, her feet propped up on the wall, her disheveled head with headphones almost on the floor. The entire floor in the room was covered by CDs, sheet music, candy wrappers, and some other paper trash. Mishutka lay on the piano keys in the same pose as his owner, feet propped up on the lid.

  Irritated, Aspirin jerked the cord out of the socket, switching off the tiny lights on the stereo front panel. Alyona opened her blurry eyes and sat up on the sofa. A pair of wrinkled sweatpants. Pale, withdrawn face.

  The cop and the liaison officer walked in from the kitchen without an invitation and stood behind Aspirin without speaking. He gritted his teeth and walked over to the girl to pull off her headphones: “We have guests. You should brush your hair.”

  “Why don’t you leave me alone, father dear,” Alyona suggested in a clear loud voice. “Turn everything back on and close the door behind you.”

  Aspirin controlled himself.

  “Tell me please: have I forbidden you from attending music school?”

  She glanced at the visitors over his shoulder: “Why?”

  “Have I ever forbidden you, or not?”

  She fell back on the sofa and jerked her feet up in the air: “You have, you have forbidden me! You have put me on a chain, put a muzzle on me, made me live in a doghouse, gave me raw bones to eat! Bowwowwow!”

  He
grabbed the collar of her sweatshirt and pulled so hard the seams crackled. “Oh really? Then get out of here. Here they are, ready to take you to a detention center, right now! Get the hell out of here!”

  The cop and the liaison officer did not utter a sound. Alyona glanced at them again over Aspirin’s shoulder.

  “They are not taking me anywhere. You are my father, you are supposed to take care of me. Let me go, you are hurting me!”

  With a soft dull sound, Mishutka slid from the piano keys to the floor.

  Shuddering inside, Aspirin let go of the girl’s collar. Without looking at Alyona, ignoring the visitors, he left the living room and closed the door behind him. A minute later Carmina Burana rumbled through the speakers at full volume.

  He wasn’t sure what happened with their guests.

  By midnight the slush on the street had frozen to resemble a mirror. Aspirin walked on ice; his reflection walked upside down, pressing on the soles of his shoes and constantly glancing at its watch.

  The entire city was filled with clocks. Clock faces, electronic tableaux, winking, measuring minutes until death: one in the morning . . . half past two . . . five minutes to four . . .

  He slipped and fell, hitting his elbow and hip. He rose, hissing with rage more than with pain, and shook dirty, prickly snow off his pants with his burning palms.

  It was five in the morning. Clubs were closing. Happy, tired, temporarily deaf people went home. Two or three cars with hopelessly tinted windows passed by Aspirin.

  “What the hell?” he asked out loud.

  No one answered.

  “Wake up. Come on, get up.”

  If it weren’t for Mishutka nestling under his owner’s arm as usual, Aspirin wouldn’t have hesitated to shake her by the shoulder. The clock showed half past five; it was still pitch-black outside the window.

  “Alyona! Get up, do you hear me?”

  “What happened?” she asked earnestly, without a hint of irritation.

  “Nothing. I want to know why you despise me.”

  She sat up.

  “Why I what?”

  “Why you despise me. What for? After all I’ve . . .”

  He wanted to say “After all I’ve done for you,” but made himself stop just in time.

  Alyona took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, and blinked.

  “Just don’t pretend you don’t understand what I am saying,” Aspirin said.

  “I understand,” she said catching him off-guard. “You are right.”

  For a minute they gazed at each other without saying a word: Aspirin—cold, tired, wearing dirty boots and a heavy winter jacket with traces of whitewash on the shoulder, and Alyona—pale, sleepy, wearing wrinkled pajamas, with Mishutka in her lap.

  “I do despise you,” she finally said. “Because my brother left . . . he dropped everything. Things you have no idea about. He dropped everything just to be in your place, Alexey. Just to have a right to compose new songs. And you live in the world where creation is possible, and you could care less. You could give a fuck about it. You took this right, this privilege for which my brother . . .” Her voice broke. “You took this privilege and you wiped your ass with it. And then you threw it in the toilet and forgot all about it. How could I not despise you?”

  Again the room was silent.

  “But it’s not true,” Aspirin said.

  “It is true.” Alyona’s eyes glistened. “You know it is.”

  Aspirin opened his mouth and closed it again, not knowing what to say. He turned and went to his bedroom. He lay down on the bed, then remembered that he should have taken off his jacket. And boots. Heavily, like an ailing bear, he went to the hallway, but instead of taking off his jacket, he opened the front door.

  He went downstairs, and into the street.

  The fourth-floor window glowed green.

  “Irina, please open the door.”

  Silence. The doorbell sent a long echo into the depths of the quiet apartment.

  “Irina, I really need to talk to you! I know you’re home.”

  Silence. Aspirin moved his hands along the reinforced door. It was locked. Was he in prison, or was he the warden?

  “Irina, open the door!”

  A shadow moved behind one of her neighbors’ spyholes. He must have looked pretty dumb standing in front of a locked door. Like “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” for God’s sake. And he was the grasshopper.

  Aspirin turned and shuffled back to his place. He unlocked the door and went straight into the kitchen. He hesitated, then plugged the sink, taped the drain, and turned on the water, at full capacity.

  He sat by the table, propped himself up on his elbows, and stared at the graying morning sky. The clock showed nearly nine.

  Happily splashing, water filled the sink. Aspirin recalled a school trip to the pool, and the way sunlight played on the white ceramic walls.

  The water rose to the top of the sink and poured over the edges. It flowed over the table to the floor, spread in a puddle, dived under the sink. The faucet kept pumping out a thick stream that cut into the warm, dancing surface. Aspirin sat by the table and stared out of the window. Minutes passed by.

  Alyona appeared at the kitchen door, clutching Mishutka to her chest. Silently, she watched the water, stepping back when it reached her bare feet.

  The doorbell rang with violent force, like retribution. Only then Aspirin rose, slowly approached the sink, walking on water like St. Peter, and turned off the faucet. The doorbell kept ringing shrilly. Aspirin opened the door.

  She stood at the threshold, a vicious Fury in a long terry bathrobe.

  “Idiot! What do you think you’re doing? It’s now down to the third floor! You are a crazy asshole!”

  He watched her silently. Under his gaze, she grew quiet, swallowed, gasping for air.

  “What are you—”

  “I have insurance,” Aspirin said. “I’ll pay for the damage. And I will pay those people from the third floor too.”

  She took a step back and looked at him, from top to bottom, then at Alyona standing still behind his back with her bear at her side.

  “Irina,” Aspirin said, “please don’t leave me.”

  She took another step back, hugging her shoulders as if she was cold. She left, the hem of her robe rising and falling around her legs, her slippers slapping the staircase.

  The door creaked, swaying back and forth in the draft. Aspirin listened to the rasping noises of the key turning in the door a floor below. Irina either locked it tighter than usual, or was having trouble with her locks.

  His wet feet suddenly felt extremely cold, nearly frozen. He locked the door and returned to the kitchen.

  Alyona wielded a rag. She squeezed gritty torrents of water into a pail, wiped the puddle, then squeezed the rag again. The plug lay by the side of the sink, a grubby gray ribbon of used duct tape next to it.

  Aspirin sat by the table, propped himself up on his elbows and lowered his head onto his laced fingers.

  “That was cool,” Alyona said, her head still lowered down to the floor, “but it is not enough, Alexey. It is not enough.”

  April

  “Greetings, my dearest listeners, I have sad news for you today. The most comforting, most delicate and gentle Radio Sweetheart is on the verge of a human resources overhaul, and you will never again hear your darling Aspirin on the air. Time passes, the old medicine for the soul gets replaced by the new medicine—soulful Advil, sensitive Prozac, kind-hearted Imodium . . . You don’t need Aspirin when you can listen to the others and forget all about him! No? You don’t agree? You, sitting in your office, or behind the wheel, or in your own home—are you outraged? And you would be absolutely right! April first is April Fools’ Day, and you should not believe anyone, especially today. This was a joke, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I repeat—this was a cheerful April first joke. Aspirin is still with you, and to confirm, we will now listen to t.A.T.u.!”

  He took a deep breath
and pulled off his headphones. Last night Alyona left the house and didn’t return for almost two hours. Waiting for her to come back, he was late for his shift at the club.

  “Where have you been?”

  Alyona had breathed heavily. In one hand she held a grocery bag, an outline of a baguette peeking through the plastic. With another, she pressed Mishutka to her chest as if someone meant to take him away.

  “Don’t come closer, Alexey.”

  She opened her fingers and the grocery bag fell on the floor. Gingerly, Alyona pulled Mishutka away from her chest. In the bright light of the hallway, Aspirin saw a spark of something in the bear’s chocolate fur, as if a shard of glass was stuck in Mishutka’s temple.

  “What is—”

  “Don’t touch it! Step back!”

  Fear filled her voice. Aspirin took a step back.

  With the tips of two fingers, Alyona grabbed the shard and struggled to pull it from the bear’s head. Aspirin saw a needle, long and hollow. The needle contained a single drop of dark liquid.

  “What is that?”

  “He shielded me,” Alyona said dully. “Mishutka. He always protects me.”

  “Is that . . . what is that?” he repeated dumbly.

  “Give me a plate,” Alyona said. “Quickly.”

  The needle clinked when she placed it on a saucer.

  “This is evidence,” Aspirin said, reaching for the phone. “Whatever it is—”

  “It’s made of ice,” Alyona informed him in a voice just as hollow as before. “It started melting while still in Mishutka’s head.”

  “What?”

  But she wasn’t kidding—in front of his eyes, the needle had started melting into a tiny puddle. The dark liquid spread, changing its color.

  “This is not evidence,” Alyona muttered. “Why would I care about evidence anyway? Had I known who shot us and from where, I would force him out with a song. I’d pull him out of his hiding place, and that would be his trial. But I didn’t even understand what happened right away. Nothing. If it weren’t for Mishutka . . .”