‘Dad?’ Nadya asked in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked at the same time.
Nadya shrugged.
‘Relaxing.’
The boy and girl between whom Nadya had been swaying in the chain pushed their way through to us. They looked … well, appropriate. The boy was wearing a glittering thong and a fluffy shirt (yes, it was a shirt, and it was fluffy), the girl had the same kind of plain blouse and long skirt with slits that Nadya was wearing.
Clearly, that was fashionable.
It was a long time since I’d attended any teenage gatherings.
‘Nadya, what does this ersatz want?’ the boy asked. Not actually threateningly, but defiantly.
‘Pull on back,’ Nadya replied incomprehensibly. ‘This is my abu.’
The boy gave me a look that was unfriendly, but a bit softer. And he asked: ‘Any problems, honourable sir?’
‘No problems,’ I said. ‘And if you disappear straight away, none will arise.’
The boy grinned crookedly. Apparently I hadn’t scared him. The little fool. I could soon have him on his way home to do his homework and wash the floors …
‘Everything’s smooth, Vovik,’ said Nadya. ‘Lighten a bit.’
‘Tap me if anything comes up,’ Vovik answered, and flashed another glance at me. Then he disappeared into the crowd with his girlfriend.
‘What idiot kind of slang’s that?’ I asked.
‘The usual,’ Nadya replied and sniffed. Her eyes were red. ‘What did you come here for, dad?’
‘Nadya, let’s go home,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘Nadya, your mum will be worried,’ I said, appealing to the argument that had worked unfailingly when she was ten.
‘What have you and mum got to do with anything?’ asked Nadya.
I got a terrible cold feeling in my chest.
‘Nadya, I don’t understand what’s happening,’ I said. The music was hammering in my ears, dark storm clouds were covering over the sky on the ceiling screen. ‘Let’s talk somewhere else.’
‘What’s wrong with here?’
‘This is no place for a Higher Other!’ I exclaimed in exasperation.
Nadya laughed. And if at first it was simply quiet laughter, as if she’d heard a good joke, an instant later it had become loud, hysterical giggling.
I hate women’s hysterics! It’s a totally dishonest trick to use in the relations between men and women!
The only thing worse than women’s hysterics is men’s hysterics.
‘For a Higher Other?’ Nadya repeated. ‘For an Other? Dad … daddy, you’ve really lost it! Dad, after what you did to us, how can you even say the word “Other”?’
And she went off into the crowd, still laughing and running her hand over her face, as if she was brushing away tears.
And I stood and watched her go.
Then I shifted my gaze to Kesha.
‘ “You are Anton Gorodetsky …” ’ I said. ‘ “Because of you … all of us …” Just what have I done to “all of you”?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Kesha.
‘Why didn’t Nadya say anything to you?’
‘She didn’t see me.’
Thunder rumbled above my head, and heavy raindrops started pattering down. I held out my hand to them … a drop fell onto my palm and disappeared. There was rain, but it was an illusion – like the clouds above me.
Like everything here.
‘Why didn’t she see you, Kesha?’
‘Because this is your vision, Anton Sergeevich,’ the young man replied. ‘And your dream.’
He swung round and disappeared into the crowd too – still as plump, awkward and unattractive as he had been as a child.
And apparently still as lonely and unhappy.
‘It’s not true!’ I shouted.
And I woke up.
In silence.
The low ceiling of a cheap London hotel. In general the English live in tiny houses the size of postage stamps. Probably so that it’s easier to defend them – after all, ‘my home is my castle’.
Sunlight splashing in through the small window. Morning, although it’s still early …
I glanced at the clock – only seven a.m., local time.
Then I looked at Sir Erasmus’s wooden chalice standing on the bedside table. Maybe it was the beer that was to blame, or maybe it was the glass of cognac I added to it while I was watching the television before I went to bed, but when I wanted a drink of water I had unpacked the gift and drunk the water out of it. And not casually either, but in the profound conviction that I would then hear Darwin’s first prophecy.
It didn’t work, as far as Darwin’s prophecy was concerned. But now I’d got one of my own.
Or had I?
What was it – a very vivid and realistic dream produced by a mixture of alcohol, fatigue and a host of new impressions? A prophecy?
I can foresee the future, like any Other – like any human being, if it comes to that. Even better than many Others – at one time Gesar quite seriously recommended that I should specialise in predictions. But I have dreams that are simply stupid too, like anybody else.
Mulling this over, I went to the toilet and took a shower. (Everything was squeezed very compactly into two square metres – and these people reproached the Soviet Union for the ‘Khrushchev slums’?) I got dressed and walked pensively downstairs into the semi-basement, where the hotel’s small restaurant was located. The waitress who was bustling about there, pouring the guests coffee and clearing away the dirty plates, had such an everyday face that I greeted her in Russian. And I guessed right.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, embarrassed for some reason. ‘Will you have tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ I said with a nod, casting an eye over the food laid out on the table.
‘The coffee’s not great,’ the girl whispered quietly, leaning towards me.
‘Even so,’ I replied just as quietly. ‘I have to wake up.’
‘I’d better make you some instant,’ the girl suggested and disappeared into the kitchen.
I took a yogurt, a piece of bread, a hermetically sealed plastic briquette of cheese (Cheddar is Cheddar) and scrambled eggs, which is the most outrageous insult to eggs that Europe has been able to invent.
But at least they were hot.
I sat down at a table in the corner and picked up a lump of the crumbling eggy mass with my fork, examined it cautiously and popped it into my mouth. It tasted better than it looked …
At that moment I smelled coffee. Good, genuine coffee, not chemicalised instant. And then a huge cup of this delightful coffee appeared in front of me.
‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up.
Smiling, Arina took my plate with the scrambled eggs and left it on an empty table. She said: ‘Don’t eat that garbage. I tell you that as a Witch.’
She held out another plate, with fried eggs, cooked just right, so that the yolks had thickened but were still liquid, sprinkled with finely chopped spring onions and with pieces of fried fatty bacon just visible in the congealed whites. Arina set down another cup of coffee in front of herself.
‘ “Eat the hare’s dung, it makes you feel young”?’ I declared. Since Arina’s only response to Filatov’s poem was simply to raise an eyebrow in surprise, I sighed and said, ‘You’re not a Witch any more, you’re a Light One.’
‘There’s no such thing as a former Witch. How did you sleep, Higher One?’
First I dispatched a piece of fried egg into my mouth and followed it with a large gulp of coffee. Then I said: ‘Your doing, was it?’
‘What, exactly?’ Arina asked in surprise.
‘My dream.’
‘I’ve no idea what you dreamed about,’ she said, shaking her head and frowning. ‘Something unpleasant, was it? Prophetic? I don’t interfere in your dreams.’