Sasha and her mother walked by. They bought some pies, placed their beach chair on the rocks, and sat on it sideways. The sea was a little choppy, the red buoy jumped in the waves, and water scooters’ motors sputtered in the distance. Sasha chewed her pie not really tasting it. Perhaps everything will turn out fine, and the dark man will never appear again, and tomorrow will finally be the twenty-fifth of July?
After lunch, Mom lay down for a nap. The room felt stuffy, the sun leaning west shot right through the closed curtains that used to be green and were now sun-bleached into something vaguely pistachio-colored. The neighbors came home; they chatted happily in the kitchen, there was a sound of poured water and tinkling dishes. Sasha held a book in her lap, stared at the gray symbols and understood nothing.
The metal alarm clock on the bedside table ticked deafeningly, counting seconds.
“So, shall we talk, Sasha?”
Evening. Mom leaned on the balustrade, chatting with a man of about forty, fair-haired and pale, clearly a new arrival. Mom smiled, and her cheeks dimpled. It was a special smile. Sasha was used to a different one from her mother.
Sasha was waiting on the bench under the acacia tree. A second ago the dark man sat down between her and a street artist at the other end of the bench. Even the southern twilight did not force him to lose his dark glasses. Sasha sensed his stare from beneath the black lenses. Out of complete darkness.
She could probably call for her mother. She could simply cry for help. She could tell herself it was just a dream. And it would be a dream. A never-ending dream.
“What… What do you want from me?”
“I want to give you a task to perform. It’s not hard. I never ask for the impossible.”
“How… What does it have to…?”
“Here is the task. Every day, at four in the morning, you must go to the beach. You will undress, go into the water, swim one hundred meters and touch the buoy. At four in the morning the beach is empty, there won’t be anyone to hide from.”
Sasha felt as if someone hit her on the head. Is he crazy? Are they both crazy?
“What if I won’t do it? Why would I…?”
The black lenses hung in front of her like two black holes leading nowhere.
“You will, Sasha. You will. Because the world around you is very fragile. Every day people fall down, break their bones, die under the wheels of a car, drown, get hepatitis or tuberculosis. I really don’t want to tell you all this. But it is in your interests to simply do everything I ask of you. It’s not complicated.”
Near the balustrade, Mom was laughing. She turned, waved, and said something to her companion—they may have been talking about her, about Sasha.
“Are you a pervert?” asked Sasha hopefully.
The black glasses shook.
“No. Let’s just settle this right away before we incapacitate ourselves here: you’re healthy, and I’m not a pervert. You have a choice: dangle forever between a scary dream and a real nightmare. Or you can pull yourself together, calmly perform the task that is asked of you, and continue living normally. You can say “This is a dream,” and wake up again. And then we’ll meet again, with certain variations. But why would you want to?”
People strolled along the boardwalk. Mom exclaimed: “Look! Dolphins!” and pointed toward the sea, her companion broke into a series of excited interjections, passersby stopped and looked for something in the blue cloth of the shore, and Sasha, too, saw the distant black bodies that looked like upside-down parentheses, flying over the sea and disappearing again.
“Do we have a deal, Sasha?”
Mom chatted, watching the dolphins, and her companion listened attentively, nodding. Mom’s teeth sparkled, her eyes shined, and Sasha suddenly saw how young she still was. And how—at that moment in time—happy.
“Tomorrow is your first official takeoff,” the dark man smiled. “But remember: every day, at four in the morning. Make sure you set the alarm. It’s crucial for you not to oversleep and not to be late. Try hard. Got it?”
Sasha tossed and turned on her cot, wide awake. The curtains were pushed aside, and the songs of nightingales and sounds of a distant disco music poured into the open window. At two in the morning, the music stopped.
A noisy gang walked by. The voices died down in the distance. Three motorbikes, one after another, roared by. A car alarm went off. Mom stirred, turned over, fell back asleep.
At three in the morning, Sasha dozed off. At three thirty, she jumped up as if someone had shoved her. She pulled the alarm clock from under her pillow. In ten minutes, the short black hand would join the long yellow minute hand.
Sasha pressed down the button and rotated the yellow hand. The alarm clock squeaked and went limp.
Sasha got up. She pulled on her swimsuit and a sundress, picked up her keys and gingerly, trying not to wake up Mom, left the room. She stopped in the empty kitchen, tiptoed out to the balcony, and grabbed the still wet towel from the rope. With her keys in one hand and a towel in the other, she crawled out onto the staircase.
A single light bulb was on.
Her neighbors, the blissful young couple, were coming up the stairs, shushing each other. Four bewildered eyes stared up at Sasha.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” Sasha was shaking, her teeth chattered. “I just wanted to go for a swim. See the sunrise.”
“Wow, that’s cool!” the guy was clearly impressed.
Sasha let them pass and hurried out of the building. It had to be quarter to four. She was running late.
Streetlights still burned on the empty street. Sasha ran—running down turned out to be easier than she thought, she warmed up and stopped shivering. The dark sky was getting lighter. Sasha sprinted by the fence of the official town beach and reached her favorite secluded spot. The sharp white of plastic cups stood out in piles of trash. Five or six windows were lit in the hotel closest to the beach. A large clock in the front of the building showed three minutes to four.
Sasha took off her dress. Stumbling on the gravel, she walked into the high tide. Standing neck-deep in the water, she unhooked her top and crumpled it into a ball. She pulled off the trunks. Holding her swimsuit in her balled fist, she swam out to the buoy.
In the mottled light of the sunrise, the buoy seemed gray, not red. Sasha slapped its iron side. The buoy responded with a dull echo. Sasha looked back at the shore—no one. It was utterly deserted.
She started back. The cold water caused her to shiver again. Barely managing to reach the rocks with her feet, she rose, balancing in the waves, and realized that the ties of her wet swimsuit were hopelessly tangled.
With a short sob, she threw the crumpled ball of faded fabric onto the shore, got on all fours, and half crawled, half ran toward her towel. She wrapped herself and looked around again.
No one. Not a single soul. The sea played with her discarded swimsuit, and the sky was becoming lighter with every minute. Nightingales crooned in the park.
Sasha picked up her bikini, sundress and sandals. She staggered over to the blue changing cabin. She dried herself and suddenly felt well. She straightened her shoulders. Her skin glowed, becoming firm and radiant from the inside, like the skin of a ripe apple. Taking her time, Sasha got dressed, put on her sandals and found the keys in her pocket. She squeezed water out of her swimsuit, walked out of the changing cabin and almost immediately doubled over retching.
She fell on her knees and vomited on the gravel. It was mostly seawater, but along with it, strange yellow disks splashed out of her. Sasha coughed and tried to calm her breathing. The retching disappeared as quickly as it came. Three tarnished gold coins lay on the gravel.