Methodius Buslaev. The Midnight Wizard. Дмитрий Емец

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