Pegasus, Lion, and Centaur

Then Yara became Yara. In all documents and registers, it goes without saying, it remained “Yaroslava” as before. “Yara” was like the mark of Ul’s property. Economizing the sounds of his own speech, Ul eternally shortened everything, beginning with himself. It would seem that the name “Oleg” was too long. Why not make himself Ul?

Ul hardly talked about love. When it is there, it is not necessary to speak of it. Perhaps he blurted out something in the style of: “tell this to our grandson!” But then he adored life-asserting stories. Well, for example, one fellow went into the drugstore for a thermometer. On the way back two guys attacked him. He began to struggle and during the fight it turned out that the thermometer was shoved into the mouth of one guy and was broken there. “Precisely with all the mercury! Get it?” Yara did. “But how did it get shoved into his mouth?” “Anything can happen in a fight. Maybe, there weren’t any teeth. Maybe, even somehow… And there’re much dumber incidents!” Ul said, and Yara believed that so it was.

The dumber the incident, the closer to the truth. On the contrary, the more romantic, the further from the truth. Not without reason the experienced librarians most often placed books about princes on white horses in the division: “developing literature about animals.”

Occasionally they went to Yara’s sister, who had a son a bit over two. The sister would instantly flutter off somewhere and Yara would serve her duty as an aunt. “Once upon a time there lived a mousey-scouty and a froggy-crocy!” she said solemnly. The diathetic chubby little boy did not care for fairy tales. He immediately lost focus and began to throw a potato. “Come, let’s listen! To whom is the most beautiful girl in the world telling a story about mousey-scouty and froggy-crocy?” Ul said in a dismal voice. The child froze. The mouth began to pull down dangerously. “And hoppy-bunny!” Yara continued to coo. “And money-bunny!” Ul made a correction. “In short, this entire brotherhood lived in a certain kingdom – a certain state, namely at the Savelovskaya subway station, not far from the computer market, and fed on talking cockroaches with no musical ear.”

So flowed the days of this exquisite fall. At times, a silly mood came over the formerly serious, almost stern Yara. “Will you do everything for me? And will you let me touch your eye with my hand?” she asked slyly. Ul was happy and was secretly afraid of his own happiness, understanding that he was absurd in happiness like an enamoured pit bull.

* * *

In that walk before the snowfall, everything was wildly hilarious to Yara and Ul. Goofy people were strolling along comical streets and with an intense look doing amusing things: shopping, answering the phone, looking fearfully at the sky, and pulling up their collars. Nearby a freezing woman with a handcart was stomping and selling snakes for cleaning clogged drains. Established couples politely hissed at each other or squabbled in tired voices.

And here suddenly snow came pouring down and everything was hidden somewhere. The square, the subway, the “chickn meat” in pita, and the woman with the handcart. Only car horns, short lost rays of headlights, and the two of them. And at that minute, when the whole world was only made of snow, Ul kissed Yara. After the kiss, he rubbed his own nose against hers. Yara liked this. They stood and rubbed noses like horses. And snow tried to get between their noses.

“Well, I’m going!” Athanasius’ voice reached them through the snowy shroud. “Where to?” Athanasius wanted to say that he was leaving altogether, but instead growled, “To buy water!” and went away to the kiosk. Ul heard an annoyed exclamation: either someone bumped into him or he against someone.

“He’s strange today! Something’s eating him. He’s probably jealous,” said Yara seriously. “Of whom?” Ul was puzzled. “Of you. Yesterday you were his, but today mine.” Ul was inclined to consider that he was his own man. “Perhaps because of the dive? I can’t stand being the guide. If anything happens, I’ll never forgive myself,” he proposed.

“Who’s he going to guide?” Yara asked, and with a movement showing ownership swept snow from Ul’s shoulder. “Dennis.” “Athanasius can’t be a guide. He has to be completely calm. In this state he won’t be able to make his way through the swamp!” Yara said decisively. Ul looked at her for a long time, then nodded. Better to teleport alive into the meat grinder at the sausage plant than to get stuck in the swamp. Certainly, Athanasius would brag, but must not let him. Yara was right.

“I’ll guide Dennis myself!” Ul proposed. Yara clicked her tongue. “You can’t. You have a different speed of passage.” It was useless for Ul to object. Passage depends neither on age nor on sex. An iron and a feather bed will not sink with the same speed even if they are of equal weights. “Who then?” Ul asked perplexedly. “Athanasius shouldn’t. Me neither. Kavaleria generally plunges like a needle. Maybe we’ll ask Max or Rodion?” “No need to ask anyone,” said Yara. “I’ll be the guide.” Ul was worried. “You’ve never been a guide! It’s not the same as diving yourself! I’m against it.” “Have to start some time. I’ll have a talk with Kavaleria, and you with Athanasius. Okay?” Yara said pleadingly.

Ul threw back his head, opened his mouth and began to catch snowflakes. Yara imagined that a snowdrift was growing in his stomach. “Say it!” she demanded. “That I agree? I don’t agree!” “Well, say it!” Ul swallowed some snow. “Don’t interfere! Don’t you see: the man is feeding.” “Please!” “Well, fine: I say it,” he yielded unwillingly. “Satisfied?”

“No. Say also that you love me!” Ul frowned. “Don’t blackmail!” “Say it!” Yara insisted. He stopped catching snowflakes. His face was wet. Only the snowflakes on his eyebrows did not melt. “I don’t know how to say it! My tongue is frozen.” “Don’t weasel out! Repeat: ‘I love you’” “You love me.” “OLEG!” Yara tried to strangle him but his neck was too muscular. With her pitiful vain attempts, she only delivered pleasure to Ul. Ul always uttered the words “I love” under the greatest pressure, asserting that the less often you utter them, the more they are worth.

“And why did you hide roses all over town and stealthily plant the coordinates? I found one rose in an old pigeon loft on Savelovskaya, another on the garret of a two-storey house on Polianka! Answer!” Ul leaned over and scooped up some snow. “Didn’t find it at Voikovskaya? I thought so.” “Confessed! Aha!” “Not aha. I simply saw how he put it there,” Ul extricated himself. “Who?” “An unknown in a black mask. I pursued him, drove him into a corner, but he drank acid. Only smoking laces remained,”

Ul quickly looked at Yara’s indignant face and suddenly proposed, “Fine. Come, I’ll shout this at the top of my lungs!” Before Yara could stop him, he jumped on a box and, holding onto a post, shouted through the snow, “Humanity, hey! This is my girl! Here she is, in the green cap! She’s not visible because she’s hiding behind the post!” “I’m not!” Yara was outraged and, making use of the fact that he was standing on one leg, pulled him by the ankle.

Ul flew sideways. In the air, he dodged like a cat, rolled over and jumped. It could seem to someone that he had broken all his bones. But only if the person does not know what a hdiver and such a hdiver jacket are capable of. “Must think first! It’s asphalt after all!” he was indignant. “I’d visit you in the hospital. Would bring rolled oats and oatmeal!” Yara encouraged him. “Wait!” Ul quickly asked. “Do you actually consider that rolled oats and oatmeal are different things? Some good mother I picked for my poor children!” “Wh-at???” Yara was mad. “What children?”

Athanasius approached with the mineral water. The water was icy, and snow had settled on top of the bottle. “Anybody want any?” he asked with hope. No one wanted any. Then Athanasius, feeling unhappy, gulped down the water, and his gums immediately froze.

On recalling something, Ul unbuttoned his sleeve and looked anxiously at the laced-up leather buckler on his left arm. Similar to a medieval vambrace and continued from the wrist to the elbow, the buckler was decorated with small cast figures. A bird with a female head; a suspiciously short-legged centaur; a goggle-eyed lady with a forked fish tail; a lion resembling a chubby sneering cat. Someone who has never seen a live lion could imagine one like this, but then would beat off the goggle-eyed fish-tailed lady with a harpoon. The figures were interwoven and, alternating with grape clusters, formed a guard plate rigidly fixed on rough skin. The only surprising thing was the difference in the colour of the metal. The goggle-eyed lady was dim, but the sneering lion, the centaur, and the bird blazed, as if they were cast a minute ago.

“Why has the mermaid faded? Ah, yes! We stole the herring from the hypermarket and released it into the Moscow River!” Ul recollected. “A mirror carp! Your idea, by the way!” Yara corrected him. After seeing how it opened its mouth in the aquarium, Ul assumed that it was shouting, “Oooh! Bro, I’m in ambush!” He touched the mermaid, and there was one less fish in the hypermarket but one more in the Moscow River. Ul blew snow away from Yara’s cheek. “Well, let’s go, snow grandma, to charge the clms!”[1 - Clms (c.l.m.s.) is pronounced “clams”.] he said pertly. “And you’re snow grandpa!” Yara snapped.

They quickly went to the underpass. A large shaggy dog emerged from somewhere, ran after them, and started to bark at them furiously. Ul stopped and the dog stopped. “HOLY! Dang! So what’s next? No way, huh?” Ul was interested. The dog also did not know what was next. Its life’s plans disintegrated. It was confused, but could not stop barking immediately and, after several loud yelps, leisurely retreated. Athanasius attempted to treat the dog with water, but it only sniffed the neck in passing.

The underpass was full of people. Many were standing on the stairs and apprehensively stuck their heads out. “Has it stopped? It hasn’t stopped?” they asked every second. It was funny to Yara: they were sitting in a pit dug under the road, pushing and getting angry that they could not force their way to their multi-apartment burrows. Ul stepped in front like an icebreaker, breaking through the crowd with his wide shoulders. “Please allow us through!” he politely asked. Athanasius settled behind Ul and used the path opened up by him. Yara had a different tactic – where Ul was squeezing through, she glided like a snake.

Nearer to the centre of the underpass, Ul was inexplicably filled with politeness and began to make way for the counter-flow. To do this he had to press against the wall lined with a greyish tile. Ul got hold of the tile with his sleeve and proceeded further. Several seconds later Athanasius turned up in the same place of the underpass. He did not begin to complicate matters especially: tossed the bottle from his left hand to the right, touched the wall, and quickly proceeded forward. After touching the tile as Ul and Athanasius did, Yara felt a tingling in her wrist and light heat rising from her fingers to the elbow. Having ascertained that the clms was charged, she wanted to tear her hand away immediately, but here the crowd caught her and she delayed slightly.

On the street, a little girl of about eight flew over to Yara. She bounced off like a ball, but immediately hopped back and stared inquisitively at Yara’s sleeve. The sleeve was shining as if engulfed in fire. “The snow!” said the little girl. The snow falling on Yara’s sleeve up to the elbow instantly disappeared. On the other parts of her coat, it was lying like firm white cereal grains. Yara in a hurry hid her arm behind her back. The obstinate little girl kept stomping beside her and did not intend to leave. A returning Ul saved Yara from the girl. Approaching from behind, he patted the curious child on the back of her head. “Did you see the maniac? Come, I’ll show you!” he proposed in a nice voice. The child sped away in short spurts, frequently glancing back and whimpering. “Am I really not some gadget? Scared the child!” Ul stated smugly.

He took Athanasius aside and told him about tomorrow’s dive. Athanasius became pigheaded, especially when he found out who would be guide instead of him. Usually reasonable, here he simply showed asinine stubbornness. “Holy, dang!!!!” said Ul, grabbing him by the neck like a bear. “Now you listen to me! You’re not in shape. You’ll get stuck and ruin the newbie too! I have a girl and a friend! And I need you both!”

The subway station emerged unexpectedly. It had the external appearance of a red letter S on the side of the passage. Beside it stood a frozen old lady in a downy shawl, already almost transformed into a snowdrift, and who was selling violets sprouting in mayo jars. There were four. Yara purchased all from her, in order to keep Ul’s hands busy and deprive him of the possibility of hugging her in the subway. True, Ul got himself out of it and loaded Athanasius down with the violets. “All the same for you!” he said.

On top of the escalator, they launched beer bottles. Yara was pondering something and her face was temporarily in stillness. The green ski cap did not suit her. Her face seemed boyish, rather rude. Athanasius thought that she was plain and started to cultivate this thought in every way. Like any person fighting the love virus, he had in his heart a special box, where Yara’s shortcomings were carefully gathered. When love heated up, he would usually blow on some of her deficiencies like on coal, until it began to seem unbearable. Approximately, at the middle of the escalator, Athanasius finally conquered love and complacently drew himself up, perceiving himself free. However, here Yara revived, started to talk, smiled. Athanasius, confident that nothing would break him already, haughtily looked at her and… he wanted to howl.

The railroad car was the new type, trimmed with white plastic. Without the delightful corners for standing by the door. Because of the violets, there was no way Athanasius could hang on. He was swaying from side to side and Ul caught him by the collar. “You see how lucky you are that I’m beside you?” he asked, and then suddenly shouted to the entire car, “Hey, people! I’m happy! This is my friend, and this is my girl!” The superstitious Yara tugged at his sleeve. “Shh! Keep quiet! You’ll frighten off happiness!” It would be better if she had kept quiet. Ul immediately wanted to be contradictory. “Hey! Happiness! Hello!” he began to yell.

“Cuc-koo! I’m leaving already!” a person passing by commented in an intoxicated voice. His back was striped like a zebra with clearly marked steps. The railroad car started and like a sluggish caterpillar crawled into the tunnel.

Chapter 2

The Wings of a Friend

When a man does not deny himself pleasures but gets too many of them, he becomes accustomed to them and ceases to feel anything. He needs increasingly more ingenious and artificial pleasures, and everything ends with inevitable degradation. But if pleasures, on the contrary, are limited by degrees, then each day everything will be new. Real. Even just a drop of water, the sun, or a five-minute rest on a hike will make you incredibly happy.

    From the diary of a non-returning hdiver

At five in the morning Ul got up to guide Yara. He climbed up, then again descended and, taking a shortcut, went through the gallery. His steps resounded far along the long empty corridors of HDive. In the dining room there was not a soul – not even the angry old lady Supovna, who, unceasingly grumbling and complaining that no one helped her, allowed no one to approach within ten metres of the stove. However, even without Supovna in person, her presence was felt. The infallible remedy for sleep stood on the centre table: three mugs of strong tea, pickles, and a plate with heavily salted black bread. One mug was empty.

“It means Dennis is already in the stable,” said Yara, appearing soon after Ul. She was eternally late, but late in a civilized manner: about five minutes. Ul nodded and salted a pickle. “I love everything salted!” he said to himself. “Although what can one think about the man who salts pickles? Lacking some mineral!” Sitting in the semi-darkness, Yara bit off black bread in large mouthfuls, sipped her tea, and examined a thick stack of photographs, small and hard as playing cards. The photographs were taken in part with a hidden camera, in part with the help of a telescopic lens.

“This is only in the last week. What do a system administrator, a gym teacher, a theatre lighting technician, a student, a boiler room attendant, and a deaf fellow, a former musician, have in common?” she asked, hiding the photographs from Ul. “The same as the elderly astrologer, the gloomy unsociable person with an umbrella, and the respected-by-law criminal with fingers like sausages. But earlier we didn’t deal with these. It means they’re recruiting new warlocks. Expanding the reserves of the forts,” Ul instantly answered. Yara stopped chewing. “What? You knew?” “It was simple to guess. Athanasius took the picture of the lighting guy. Then showed me the scratch on his jacket. He maintains: they fired at him from a schnepper,”[2 - A pistol crossbow.] said Ul.

“I wish they were vampires,” Yara sighed. “In your dreams. If they were vampires, the problem would be solved in a week with the strength of forty-fifty people. Or could appeal to the Vends.[3 - “Vend” is an abbreviation and will be explained in Chapter 6.] But they aren’t vampires, and there’s nothing more to say,” Ul cut her off.

He went out first and stopped on the porch to wait for Yara. Suddenly huge hands grabbed him and lifted him up off the floor. Ul was dangling with his head down and contemplating the wide-mouthed essence in an unbuttoned sheepskin coat. By the porch, a giant of three-and-a-half meters in height was standing unsteadily. This was a living attraction, an incident, animated by one of the founding fathers of HDive. In the daytime it hid in the Green Labyrinth, at night it trampled around HDive. Several times girls that had disappeared were found in its stomach, once even Kuzepych himself.

“I am Gorshenya, clay head, hungry belly! I’ll eat you!” the giant informed him. He pronounced the words slowly and thoughtfully. “You’ll choke! Let me run up and jump!” proposed Ul. Gorshenya chewed on this thought for a while and then unclenched its hands. Ul’s head stuck in a snowdrift. Gorshenya took a step back and trustingly opened its enormous mouth. Four hundred years in a row it had fallen for one and the same trick.

The snow thawed in the night and shaped well. Ul rolled a snowball and threw it into Gorshenya’s mouth. When Gorshenya was standing with mouth open it saw nothing, because the two amber buttons, which served as its eyes, were thrown back together with the upper half of the head. Gorshenya slammed shut its mouth. “Perhaps I did not eat you?” “You ate my brother. And you’re not supposed to eat two brothers in one day.” said Ul. Gorshenya was saddened.

Yara came out onto the porch. Gorshenya stretched its hand out to her, but Ul slapped it on the fingers. “She doesn’t taste good,” he whispered, “but she has a tasty sister. She went that a way!” Gorshenya, waddling, limped off to search for the sister. “Poor dear! It believes everything,” Ul leniently said. “We’re the poor ones, believing nothing,” remarked Yara. “They say it buried treasure somewhere, and now it’s guarding it,” recalled Ul. The body warmed in the night was lazy. Ul generously scooped up snow and, snorting, washed himself. Melted water flowed down his collar. After understanding that whining would only make it worse, his body put up with it and agreed to be cheerful.

The scattering of stars drew a path to Moscow. From here, the vicinities of Moscow, the city was not discernible, but on a clear day it was possible to climb up the high pine tree and, from the “robber’s lookout” hammered together from boards, see a bright flat spot. That was Moscow. The path was covered. It could only be surmised by the lantern posts and the long snowdrifts, from which projected the humps of park benches. In the huge hdiver jacket, Yara seemed deceptively plump. Ul teasingly called her Winnie the Pooh. Staying on the main path, they reached the place where old oaks outlined a proper oval shape. Yara extracted a boot from the snowdrift and… placed it already on green grass.

Edged with stones, slender straight cypresses stretched to the sky. A climbing rose weaved itself around the iron arches. The lower part of its stem was the thickness of a kid’s hand. Stripping the petals, the wind carried them beyond the invisible boundary and dropped them onto the snow. It seemed to Ul that the snow was stained by blood, but to Yara the snow had been kissed. Yara looked around. The boundary of snow and grass was designated very clearly. Two distant oaks dozed in the snow, but a third, finding itself inside the boundary, did not even know that winter was somewhere beside it.

This oak was Yara’s favourite. She embraced the warm tree and pressed her cheek to it. Ul had noticed long ago how much skin and hands could tell Yara. Now she caressed the bark. Felt it not only with her palms, but also the back of her hand, her nails, and her wrists. She took in the tree with all its bends with the greediness of the blind, gaining a new sense instead of sight. Somehow she acknowledged to Ul that she would want to scratch her hand down to the nerves so that the sensations would intensify. “It happens,” said Ul.

Now he was standing beside her, chewing on a blade of grass and admiring Yara like a technician admiring a female humanist who does not remember what an integral is but willingly discusses the historical fates of peoples. The difference between Yara and Ul was approximately the same as that between a two-handed sword and a nervous foil. He respected her mind and sensitivity; she respected his determination and the ability to grasp the essence of anything without being distracted by details.

“You want to hide the newest tank from the female spy, place a nest with chickens on its motor,” remarked Ul. Practical things interested Ul greatly. He knew that somewhere here the most powerful marker was hidden from the day of the founding of HDive. This was what warmed the earth thoroughly and gave trees the life force. Now Ul for the umpteenth time gauged where the marker was hidden and what would be its size. Its power was colossal. Not a single one of those markers that Ul himself extracted could melt snow for more than five-six steps.

In front of Ul, creaking slightly from time to time, a huge pine tree, similar to a sail and with a flat top, was swinging from the wind. Among its roots was a blue beehive, along the roof of which lazily crept morning bees yet not thoroughly warmed by the sun. From the pine tree began the extensive Green Labyrinth – a carefully pruned mix of acacia, laurel, juniper, and boxwood. In the centre of the Labyrinth was the fountain – an enormous split stone with a whimsical crack, along which water flowed.

All around chrysanthemums grew wildly. Yara usually fell on her knees and felt the flowers with impatient fingers. Ul, though, was amused by the names. “How many rounds of hookah must one smoke in order to name chrysanthemums ‘Ping pong pink’? And ‘A spring dawn on the dam of essence’?” he was interested. Yara would visit the chrysanthemums even now, but this was impossible. After going around the Labyrinth, they crossed one more invisible boundary and again snow began to creak under their feet.

* * *

Dennis was waiting for them by the winged-horse stable. He sat on the planted-in tire and reproachfully froze. Frail, his face was pale. His nose was similar to a radish. He looked a year or two younger than his sixteen years of age. His hdiver jacket was zipped all the way to the top. His eyes were like that of a hamster: like beads. His right shoulder was lower than the left.