Methodius Buslaev. The Midnight Wizard. Дмитрий Емец

down. Walking out from the entrance, he watched as, from an automobile parked by the house, an unpleasant copy of the masculine sex stepped out with a large bouquet of roses and a bottle of champagne, which he held with the kind of care that a militia would give to ammunition. Although theoretically the individual could be a guest for any apartment, Methodius instantly grasped that this was Zozo’s new worshipper. It was not even an assumption. He simply knew this and that was that. He knew by a whole hundred percent, as if on the man’s forehead was the sign: “I’m going to Zozo! I’m her type!” Thickset, with grey stubbles, a double chin, and almost without a neck, the new uncle resembled a pylon, through misunderstanding or because of genetic failure, born as a man. Methodius stiffened, looking him over. He did not even consider moving away from the entrance door.

      “Why are you in the way? Don’t hang around here, young man! Quick!” the example of masculine sex said, after making a vain attempt to go around Methodius.

      “Are you talking to me?” Methodius asked with hatred.

      “Yes, you. Now get away from here! Take off!” the example bellowed and, having unceremonious pushed Methodius aside, forced his way into the entrance, while the door did not yet have time to close.

      Methodius calmly looked around. Then he found a rusty nail, approached the automobile, glanced back, and thoroughly shoved its tip into the rear tire cover with the calculation that when the car made a move, the nail would enter deeper and pierce the tire. For a while, Methodius contemplated his work, experiencing a feeling of creative dissatisfaction. One nail seemed to him too little. He found the bottom of a broken bottle and settled it under the front right tire, and put a balloon onto the exhaust pipe, tying it with a wire. Pity he will not be here when the balloon begins to inflate, and then it will break. Well, no matter – let someone else take pleasure from this spectacle. “It’s you who shouldn’t be under foot! Understand?” Methodius said, turning to the car. He experienced not the least pangs of conscience. No one asked this hog swimming with fat to come to his mother with a broom of roses.

***

      Severnyi Boulevard slowly immersed in the embraces of evening. Shadows shrouded its stone sides. A corner house had become mysteriously crumpled and it moved away deep into the shadows. Proportions were playing tricks. A sudden wind gust lashed Methodius in the face with a rumpled newspaper. An empty beer bottle was rolling behind the newspaper, recklessly jumping and attempting to catch up. For some reason this simple event seemed terribly important to Methodius.

      “If the bottle rolls first onto the road, mother will drive away this character!” he quickly proposed, dashing right after them. But, alas… a torn portion of the newspaper was first on the roadway and instantly fell under a truck. The bottle rolled out immediately after it and shared its tragic fate. “Rotten trick! She won’t! Unless he takes off by himself!” Methodius growled. He stared at the newspaper with such irritation that… no, for sure, it only appeared so to him. The newspaper could not flare up without any reason. Moreover, the wind immediately took it away, so that it was not possible to say anything for sure. Methodius discarded all this nonsense from his head. He crossed the road, jumped over the cast iron barrier of the boulevard, and made his way to Irka.

      Irka was his good friend, precisely a friend. The word “girlfriend” gives birth to unhealthy associations in the unhealthy mind of people, whereas the words “female acquaintance” or “lady friend” smack of something rotten. They talk this way about someone they are not sure of. Irka was exactly a friend, moreover with a capital F. Irka lived in the neighbouring building, and it was possible to appear at her place at any time of the day without phoning first, which, you must agree, is especially useful. Even at midnight, since Irka lived on the second floor and the tenants on the first were so kind to fence off the world with very convenient figured latticework. Irka’s grandmother posed no obstacle. She adored Irka so, that every desire of the granddaughter was for her not even a law but an order to the subdivision. The parents… But, about this a little later.

      It was still not so late. A light was burning in the window beyond the porch of the first floor. It was visible through the open curtains that a moustached woman of grenadier build was standing by a cabinet and rearranging something on the shelves. For this reason Methodius decided to use the dullest of all the existing methods of guest appearance – namely to do this through the door. It is extremely unpleasant when they knock you down with a mop through the figured lattice.

      After getting up to the second floor, he rang and almost immediately heard tires rustling in the hallway. This was even not rustling, but a light yet distinct sound of the inflated rubber outer-tires momentarily sticking half-heartedly to the linoleum. “Ir, it’s me, Met!” Methodius shouted so that Irka would not have to look through the peephole.

      The lock clicked, the door opened. Methodius saw the dark corridor and the bright yellow spot of light shining through from the wide open door of the room. In the luminescent spot, a wheelchair was standing with a small stooping figure in it, a rug thrown over the legs of the figure. “Hello! Hop in!” Irka invited him in. She deftly turned around in the narrow corridor and dived into her room. Methodius followed her.

      Irka’s room differed from the remaining ones in that there was not a single chair in it. Bright metallic handrails stretched along the walls at different heights. Irka hated to call her grandmother when it was necessary to get in or out of the wheelchair. The computer monitor twinkled by the window. Irka was in a chat room before Methodius’ arrival. Books and magazines covered the dying sofa. Irka was eternally reading twenty books at once, not counting textbooks. Moreover, she did not read consecutively, but pieces from different places. Strange that with such chaotic reading the books did not tangle up inside her head.

      “Why are you standing like a lonely jerboa? Clear a place for yourself and sit down! And I’ll be right with you! Just have to tell people that I’m not home,” said Irka, nodding towards the bed. She rolled up to the computer and quickly typed:

       Ciao, all! Gone to the front! Me.

      “Well now, politeness, first of all! Otherwise people will think that I was hijacked,” she said, turning to Methodius.

      He was going to sit down on the bed, but somehow he did not. As if there was a perpetual motion machine in the lumbar part of his spine. “Better let’s go to the kitchen. I’d like to get a bite of something,” he said.

      Irka snorted, “Don’t frigging petition to me! Go to Granny. All I know about the refrigerator is that its door opens.”

      “Well, are we going?” Methodius repeated.

      “It’s you ‘go’ and I ‘ride’. Indeed I’m a race car,” explained Irka.

      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