Natasha reluctantly lowered herself onto the stool, holding her handbag firmly on her knees. Trying to seize the initiative, she said:
‘It’s just the way life worked out. Well … I would have had a child for him, but you can’t ruin your career for that.’
‘That’s true too.’ The seer didn’t try to argue. She rubbed her face with her hands. ‘It’s your choice … Right then, you want to bring him back? But why did he leave? The other woman’s already carrying his child … and she made a real effort too. Listening to him, and sympathising with him, and getting up to all sorts of tricks in bed … You had a good man, the kind every woman wants to get. Do you want to bring him back? Even now?’
Natasha pursed her lips.
‘Yes.’
The seer sighed.
‘We can bring him back … we can…’ Her tone of voice had changed subtly, become firm and emphatic. ‘… only it won’t be easy Just bringing him back isn’t all that hard, it’s keeping him that’s the problem!’
‘I want to anyway.’
‘All of us, my daughter, have our own magic inside us.’ Darya leaned forward across the table. Her eyes seemed to be drilling right through Natasha. ‘Simple, ancient female magic. With all your ambitions, you’ve completely forgotten about it, and that’s a mistake. But never mind. I’ll help you. Only we’ll have to do everything in three stages.’
She knocked gently on the table.
‘The first thing … I’ll give you a love potion. This is not a great sin … The potion will bring your man back home. It will bring him back, but it won’t keep him there.’
Natasha nodded uncertainly. The idea of dividing the spell into ‘three stages’ seemed inappropriate somehow – especially coming from this woman in this apartment …
‘The second thing … Your rival’s child must never be born. If it is, you won’t be able to keep your man. So you’ll have to commit a great sin, destroy an innocent child in the womb …’
‘What do you mean?’ Natasha said, shuddering. ‘I’m not going to end up in court!’
‘I’m not talking about poison, Natashenka. I’ll make a pass with my hands’ – and the seer did just that with her open palms – ‘and then clap them … And the job’s done, the sin’s committed. No courts involved.’
Natasha said nothing.
‘Only I won’t take that sin on myself,’ said Darya, crossing herself hurriedly ‘I’ll help you if you like, but then you’ll have to answer to God!’
Evidently taking silence as consent, she continued:
‘The third thing … You’ll have a child yourself. I’ll help with that too. You’ll have a beautiful, clever daughter who’ll be a support to you and a joy to your husband. Then all your troubles will be over.’
‘Are you serious about all this?’ Natasha asked in a quiet voice. ‘You can really do all this …?’
‘I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Darya, standing up. ‘You say “yes,” and it will all happen. Your husband will come back tomorrow and the day after tomorrow your rival will miscarry. And I won’t take any money from you until you get pregnant. But afterwards I will – and I’ll take a lot, I tell you that now, I swear by Christ the Lord.’
Natasha gave a crooked smile.
‘And what if I cheat you and don’t bring you the money? After everything’s already happened …’
She stopped short. The seer was looking at her sternly, saying nothing. With an air of gentle sympathy, like a mother looking at a foolish daughter …
‘You won’t cheat me, Natashenka. Just think about it for a moment and you’ll realise it’s not even worth trying.’
Natasha swallowed hard. She tried to make a joke of it:
‘So it’s cash on delivery?’
‘Ah, my little businesswoman,’ Darya said ironically. ‘Who’s going to love you, so practical and clever? A woman should always have some foolishness in her … Ah, yes … cash on delivery Delivery of all three items.’
‘How much?’
‘Five.’
‘You want five?’ Natasha burst out and broke off. ‘I thought it was going to be a lot less than that.’
‘If you just want to get your husband back, that will be cheaper. Only then, after a while, he’ll go away again. But I’m offering you real help, a certain cure.’
‘I want to do it,’ Natasha said with a nod. What was happening felt slightly unreal. So that was all there was to it, just a clap of the hands – and the unborn child would disappear? Another clap – and she would bear her beloved idiot husband a child of her own?
‘Do you take the sin upon yourself?’ the seer asked insistently.
‘What sin is there in that?’ Natasha retorted, her irritation suddenly breaking through. ‘Every woman’s committed that sin at least once! And perhaps there isn’t anything there anyway!’
The seer pondered, as if listening to something. She nodded her head.
‘There is … And I think it’s definitely a daughter.’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Natasha, still irritated. ‘I’ll take all the sins on myself, any you like. Do we have a deal?’
The seer looked at her sternly, disapprovingly: ‘That’s not right, my daughter … All the sins. Who knows what sins I might decide to hand over to you? My own, somebody else’s … and then you would have to answer to God.’
‘We’d sort it out somehow.’
Darya sighed:
‘Oh, these young people are so foolish. Do you think He wastes his time rummaging about in people’s sins? Every sin leaves its own trace, and the judgement fits the trace … But all right, don’t be afraid. I won’t make you answerable for anybody else’s sins.’
‘I’m not afraid.’
The seer didn’t seem to be listening to her any more. She was sitting there as if she was listening alertly to something else. Then she shrugged:
‘All right … let’s get the job done. Give me your hand!’
Natasha held out her right hand uncertainly, keeping a worried eye on her diamond ring. It didn’t come off her finger very easily, but …
‘Oh!’
The seer had pricked her little finger so quickly and deftly that Natasha hadn’t felt a thing. She froze, dumbfounded, watching the red drop welling up. As if this was all perfectly routine, Darya dropped the medical needle onto a dirty plate encrusted with old borscht. The needle was flat, with a sharp little point – the kind they use to take blood in laboratories.
‘Don’t be afraid, everything’s sterile, the needles are disposable.’
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Natasha tried to pull her hand away, but Darya shifted her grip with a surprisingly powerful and precise movement.
‘Stop, you idiot! Or I’ll have to prick you again!’
She took a small chemist’s bottle of dark-brown glass out of her pocket. The label had been washed off, but poorly, the first letters were still visible: ‘Tinc …’. She deftly twisted out the cork, set the bottle down and shook Natasha’s little finger over it. The drop of blood fell into the bottle.
‘Some people believe,’ the seer said contentedly, ‘that the more blood there is in a potion, the stronger it will be. It’s not true. The blood in it has to be good quality, but the quantity makes no difference at all …’
The medicine woman opened the fridge and took out a fifty-gram bottle of Privet vodka. Natasha remembered her driver calling that kind of vodka ‘the reanimator’.