Methodius Buslaev. The Midnight Wizard

Methodius had noticed long ago that Irka, like many handicapped people, loved to joke about herself and her wheelchair. However, when someone else tried to be witty regarding the same, her sense of humour dried up right there and then. She stretched her hand to the control panel and the wheelchair quickly rolled along the corridor to the kitchen. Methodius barely managed to follow her. After all, wheels will always outrun feet, it goes without saying, if there are no fences along the road.

Everything happened eight years ago. Then Irka was four. The automobile, in which Irka and her parents were returning from the dacha, was pushed out into the oncoming traffic towards a scheduled bus. Irka’s father and mother, travelling in the front seats, perished. Irka, with spinal trauma and two long, almost parallel scars from two pieces of iron gashing her back from the left shoulder down, ended up in a wheelchair. Still, Irka was lucky that she had an energetic and sufficiently young grandmother. Although in this case, it was better not to hint at luck at all. With such an argument, it was possible to get looks with daggers in her eyes.

In the kitchen Notre Dame de Paris was roaring. Grandmother Ann – she was the same Granny – was sitting in glory on a high stool by the microwave. Waiting while the chicken with French fries from Ready-made Food was warming up, Granny was listening to the part of the hunchback and conducting with a chef’s knife. Few true grandmothers remain nowadays. They died out like mammoths. For those who think that fifty-year-old grandmothers must walk around in headscarves and spend the entire day working their magic by a stove, it is time to turn in their imagination for recycling.

Granny stared wonderingly at Methodius. Listening to Notre Dame, she missed the moment when he arrived. “Hello, Met! Nice to see you!” she said. A pale yellow glow with a bit of green came off her head and spread along the room. “Of course, not quite enthusiastic, but she’s glad!” Without thinking how he did it, Methodius deciphered. He waited until the glow ceased to be a part of Granny and had spread along the room, then absorbed it and felt that he had become stronger. Maybe, to something like a millionth part of what he was before, but nevertheless… Again, this happened instinctively, without the interference of reason. Simply Methodius understood that everything was so, but how he did this and why – remained in the background. When we breathe, we do not think about breathing. We breathe even in sleep. We would breathe even without knowing that there is respiration. In the same way, Methodius also did not suspect that he was absorbing the energy of other people’s emotions.

“Met, come here, my little tousle! I’ll give you a hug!” Granny said.

“Sure thing! Only please put down the knife!” Methodius said. He loved Granny.

Granny not without interest looked at the knife in her hand. It seemed she had already managed to forget that she was holding it, though very recently she opened the packaging with it. Granny’s hair somewhat resembled Methodius’ hair, although she was not related to Methodius, and in general they did not even meet. “They say that in spring many lunatics have relapses. Herds of maniacs begin to wander along the streets,” she stated thoughtfully.

“Granny, it’s already almost May. People go crazy in March,” said Irka.

“But don’t say that here. You go crazy in March, with me it’s every day. Especially when everyone throws on a clearly unsuccessful dress, and the most successful will hang out of sight and dream of moths,” Granny said. She had a small studio in a semi-basement, which she loved to call the “House of fashion named after me.” Besides Granny herself, two more girls were working in the “House of fashion named after me.” One of them was a terrible gossip, and the second was always ill, moreover somehow so cunning that she could never be reached on her home phone. All the time she “has gone to the doctor’s and not yet returned.” “I like the second girl better. With her you don’t get earaches,” said Granny.

“Gram, Met wants to eat!” Irka said.

“Sure,” agreed Granny. “You know where the fridge is. And you know how to work the microwave. I’m going. By tomorrow morning, I’m under orders to think up such a dress so that the investigator, getting married for the third time, will look as naive as the director of the church choir.”

“Okay, Gram, fine! We’ll do it ourselves!” Irka said. She knew better than Methodius that Granny did not particularly like to cook. Instead, in supermarkets she purchased cartloads of yogurts, sausage, oranges, and frozen dinners. Methodius was greatly amazed. For example, it seemed the upper compartments of the freezer were almost half-packed with ice cream, and Granny did not try to count how many portions there were. Skinflint Eddy with his habit of drawing lines with a pencil on toilet paper would get upset if he found out about this.

Granny, singing, left, and Methodius and Irka remained in the kitchen. They warmed up nothing. They confined themselves to extracting from the refrigerator a big tub of ice cream and a large stick of sausage. The sausage Methodius professionally sliced with a knife – picked up from Eddy, who started out as a cook – and then began to eat ice cream, wielding rounds of smoked sausage instead of a spoon. It seemed to him tastier this way.

“Your grandmother is cool,” said Methodius with a well-packed mouth.

“She’s everything to me,” agreed Irka. “Only she cannot stand it when they call her Grandmother. Here a new teacher for Russian came to me – they come to me at home, you know – and said to her: ‘How do you do, Grandmother!’ And Granny was angry: ‘It’s you,’ she said, ‘who’s a grandmother, I’m a person!’”

“And that’s true. Parents are people too. What, are they guilty, perhaps, that they’re parents?” Methodius agreed.

He suddenly recalled how and under what circumstances he was introduced to Irka two years ago. With his one friend – already former – he was passing by her entrance at the moment when Irka was trying to get the wheelchair onto the step in front of the entrance door. Irka, for the first time getting out of the house without the grandmother (afterwards she really got it for this), was considering how she could get out of the tight spot. Possibly, Methodius would have rushed past altogether, not noticing anything, if not for his friend, who began to laugh aloud. He found it very comical that a freak in a wheelchair could not get into the entrance – all the time rolling backwards.

For a long time Methodius attentively, as if comparing them, looked first at the friend, then at Irka, who was pretending with all her might that she had heard nothing, though her cheeks and ears were already crimson, and then very swiftly and precisely he clouted his friend in the chin. This (like the slicing of sausages) was also a lesson of Eddy Khavron, who, until the failure with nested dolls and army hats spent about three years being busy in the boxing ring. “Throw a punch without effort like a stone. The power of the impact is in the legs and the turning of the trunk,” he taught.

The impact turned out unexpectedly powerful. Methodius almost dislocated his hand. After the punch, the friend settled on the asphalt like a bag of manure. He sat on the asphalt and shook his head. A neigh not entirely quieted down yet gurgled in his throat. After this, he essentially stopped being a friend. On the other hand in the life of Methodius appeared his first true friend – Irka.

They sat in the kitchen and ate ice cream, chatting about all kinds of nonsense. Methodius did not mention Zozo, expecting her hog, escorting him from the house. He could not bear to complain. There is something fundamentally pitiful in someone complaining, even with a reason – this he mastered sufficiently long ago. Irka also never complained – and this united them much stronger than if they on meeting cried on each other’s shoulder.

“And how’s your dream?” Irka suddenly asked.

Methodius tensed up, “You know about that dream?”

“Aha.”

“Well, it happens sometimes. Not very often,” he unwillingly said.

“Always the same one?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to recall this.” However, he involuntarily recalled nevertheless, and his mood immediately crawled down like the worm that did not like the Eiffel Tower.

This was one and the same disgusting dream, which he had once or twice a month. In this dream, he was standing in front of and looking at a dull closed lead sarcophagus with ancient signs imprinted on it. Methodius did not know what was inside there, but sensed it was something terrible, something he should never look at, something that must on no account escape. But at the same time he could not take his eyes off it. And the most terrible thing was that the lead sarcophagus began to melt under his gaze. However, every time Methodius woke up before what was in the sarcophagus managed to break loose. Once he even yelled in his sleep, waking Zozo and Eddy. Eddy was so astonished that he did not even swear. “I understand you perfectly, buddy! I have nightmares. Somehow, I dreamt that they ordered my foot with vegetable ragout for supper, and at the same time – dig the impudence? – puckered all the time afterwards and asserted that the meat was over-cooked!” he said then.

They talked some more still, until finally, about ten o’clock, Zozo phoned Methodius. “Come home. I’m waiting for you,” she said.

“And this one has already rolled away on his cart?” Methodius was interested.

“From where did you know that he was not on foot… Everything fell apart.” Zozo’s voice was quite crestfallen.

“How’s this?”

“He arrived a little early. I wasn’t ready and in order to gain time, asked him to dash into the supermarket to buy white wine. I hate it when people with nothing to do hang about near the door and prevent me from putting make-up on. He was about to go, but returned almost immediately – mad like you on Sunday mornings when I wake you up out of habit. Something there with his Audi… Well, I started to calm him down a little, to warm him with sincere heat, and here, imagine, his eyes fell on the wedding picture of your daddy, which Eddy throws darts at. He began to coax and fished out, such a parasite, that I have a son. I didn’t violently deny, nevertheless he indeed found out, even showed him some of your photos. Who knows, I think, what if he manages some major male bonding? Play soccer together, share a first cigarette. ‘Do you smoke, son? I hope, with filter?’ Not frigging likely, didn’t come through! He sat for nearly an hour as if on needles, and then left… My life is shattered!” Zozo’s voice rose to a tragic Mont Blanc and hung there, intending to break loose into the abyss of hysterics.

“Nonsense, mom! Your life shatters about three times a month, and then immediately grows together,” Methodius comforted her. He had already lost count of how often his mother met with second-hand princes from the dating magazine. And each time everything concluded with an inoffensive zero, except one case when the prince at hand dragged away a pathos-arousing bronze ashtray, which Eddy, in turn, had hauled away from the cafe, where he worked before Ladyfingers. The next day this prince returned drunk, drummed on the door for a long time, attempting to have a talk, and fell asleep right on the landing, laying his impetuous head down on the rug. Good that Eddy returned early and, taking revenge for the ashtray, with well-aimed kicks banished Adam from paradise.

“You think so? Okay, forget it,” Zozo said sadly. Methodius felt that in this very minute she was tearing the fat hog out from her heart, crumpling and throwing him into the wastebasket. “Will you come yourself or do I have to meet you?” Zozo asked. It clearly sounded in her voice that she was too lazy to get dressed.

“With biker escorts,” Methodius said.

“Well then, by yourself. I’ll wait! We still have the trophy cake left,” Zozo said.

“That’s it, you’re going?” Irka asked when Methodius replaced the receiver.

“Aha. Tomorrow I’ll hop over after school!”

“Do, bye!” Irka said with light envy. She had never walked into a school. However, Methodius now and then felt that she, working alone at home and with teachers coming, outstripped him by about two grades, no less. In any case, in some subjects Irka had already passed exams for grade nine.

***

Methodius crossed Severnyi Boulevard and approached the house – this time, for variety, from the other side. Here his way was barred by an enormous puddle, which absorbed the melted snow of surrounding courtyards and occasionally with delight sipped water from broken pipes. This gave crafty real estate agents the chance to assert that the house was located in picturesque locality next to a pond. Through the puddle was a caravan path of bricks and boards, scattered at whimsical intervals.

The moon lay like a gold coin on the flat dark surface of the puddle. Once in a while, hardly noticeable ripples passed over it. Methodius looked at the moon – at first in the puddle and then raising his face to the sky – and suddenly a strange feeling enveloped him. It seemed to him that he was absorbing the force of the moonlight – saturating him with its calm power and deathly void. Startled, this was the first time after all, he lowered his eyes and suddenly saw how, obeying his gaze, the reflection of the moon glided along the puddle like a spotlight. Methodius’ skin crawled. He decided that he was going insane. To chase the moon like a ball with his gaze! To describe such things to the school psychologist would be extremely dangerous. Methodius again tossed his head up. No… the big moon, fortunately remained on the spot. His gaze governed only the lunar reflection. Met shook his head and blinked several times, breaking off his gaze from the lunar reflection. He succeeded. The reflection stuck and continued to bathe in the black water already by itself. “It only appeared so!” Methodius thought, experiencing simultaneously easing and disappointment. To govern the reflection of the moon was, of course, eerie, but at the same time, it was something difficult to refuse.

Jumping over from brick to brick, he crossed to the other side of the puddle and approached the entrance. A bell began to ring suddenly in Methodius’ consciousness. This was the special bell of intuition, which Met had long since gotten used to trusting. Now this bell clearly ordered him not to walk into the entrance. Methodius looked around – everything was somewhat quiet: nothing and no one. However, the bell nevertheless did not break off. “Well then, am I to climb to the sixteenth floor along the balconies?” Methodius thought perplexedly. He wavered for a while, and then approached the entrance nevertheless. He had already typed in the code and even heard the inviting peep of the door, when from behind someone’s shadow flickered. A strong hand shoved and dragged Methodius to the gate. He attempted to hold onto the doorknob, but a strong slap pushed him into the entrance. Stumbling, half-thunderstruck, he took several steps.

“Well, finally! I thought you’d never return, puppy,” someone said triumphantly. Methodius already recognized the hog by the voice. In the semi-darkness of the entrance – lights only at the four corners by the elevators and mailboxes – his face seemed greenish and swollen. Methodius puckered from the pain. The strong fingers of the hog sunk so into his collarbone that it was as if they desired to take it with them by way of moral compensation. Methodius almost felt sick from the red waves of fury projected by the hog. They rolled over him, shoved him. Methodius sensed that he could absorb their force, but he involuntarily repelled, deflected, and set up a block – for this reason the wave also smashed with such sprays.

“Let go of me!”

“Let go? Only from the roof head first! What did you do to my car, piglet?”

“What car? I never saw your car at all! Didn’t see who pierced you tires!” The powerful box on the ear, which jerked his head to the side, burned Methodius’ cheek. He was shaken with doubled fury and dragged along the steps to the elevators. Methodius realized that he had committed a strategic error. He could not but see the hog’s car, indeed the first time they met was precisely beside it. And indeed all the more, being innocent, he could not have known at all that the tires were punctured.

“Well, don’t try to escape! I’ll take out all of your insides and wind them around my hand! We’ll now go together to your devilish mother, and I’ll have a heart-to-heart talk with her! I’ll take from you triple for each tire cover, and if not, I’ll break everything in your home!” the hog wheezed. He was so angry and retained with such fury the breaking away Methodius that he in no way could put his finger on the button to summon the elevator. Finally, he managed it. But at the moment the button lit up with the sad red eye, someone’s calm voice uttered, “Hey you, victim of a printer, leave him alone!”

Chapter 2

The Skomoroshya Settlement