Methodius Buslaev. Ticket to Bald Mountain

Chapter 2

A Spirit Pygmy

Eugeny Moshkin, Petruchio Chimodanov, and Nata Vikhrova were sitting in the fireplace hall in 13 Bolshaya Dmitrovka and waiting for the return of Daphne and Methodius, who had gone to the taxidermist for fresh skins for business correspondence. They were bored, and for something to do, Nata began to ask Moshkin and Chimodanov whether they had ever fallen in love.

“Love? For me it’s irrelevant! I haven’t yet achieved anything real. I emphasize! I simply have no time for it,” Petruchio snorted.

“Now you underscore it!” Nata chuckled and raised an eyebrow threateningly.

“BUT! I’m also not very afraid… If your magic works on me, then not for long!” Chimodanov stated.

“Why’s that?”

“I was born on the same day as you. I have primordial immunity to your magic. Julitta told me this… Sooner or later I’ll recover and take vengeance. I’ll send a whole bunch of plasticine killers to you! Thousands of them! They’ll climb out of all crevices and sewers, and each will have a poisoned pin in its hand!”

Nata shivered. “I have had enough of your Zuduka! It always hides in some corner and makes mischief! It recently filled my whole pocket with toothpaste!” she muttered conciliatorily.

Realizing that he had won this round and Nata’s magic would not threaten him, Chimodanov grinned contentedly. “Here’s what I think. The smarter and more complex the creature, the more time passes from the moment of birth to the moment it falls in love. Well, for example, the hamster. It’s all of three months old and it’s already a father. In six months, a grand-dad… But an elephant will have a family only after fifty years.”

“What are you, an elephant? Thanks for admitting it,” Nata remarked mercifully.

“It’s also the same with people,” Petruchio continued, not listening to her. “Some, well, like you, Vikhrova, have already stopped developing at thirteen. And what’s there for them to do next? Unwilling to learn. Too early to lie in a coffin. Still have time to work. The only thing remaining is to fall in love. Those who are smarter, first learn, get settled in life, and then fall in love at around thirty or thirty five. I don’t know why, but it’s always this way.”

Nata looked at Chimodanov through a hole in her fist. “Here’s what I suggest to you,” she purred maliciously. “When would you intend on falling in love? At thirty-five? Why so early? What if you don’t manage? Fall in love at seventy! In the meantime, take mama by the arm and install traffic lights with her.”

Chimodanov could not find an answer, and Nata had already turned to Moshkin, “And you, Gene? Were you ever in love?”

Eugeny moved his lips and glanced hesitantly at her. His answer sounded strange. “Do dreams count?” he asked.

Nata’s jaw dropped like the rating of a politician who accidentally ate a live kitten in front of the camera. “How’s that? You dreamt of someone? Or you were in love in a dream?”

“Why was? I still am,” Moshkin replied seriously and did not answer any more questions, despite all of Nata’s persuasion.

Vikhrova’s curiosity was never satisfied. She had no choice but to stroll around the hall, examining and twirling the occasional knickknacks and black magic protective talismans in her hands.

The hall, recently arranged from nothing in the literal sense by the efforts of Ares with Julitta helping him, was located on the second floor exactly between the student rooms. Four doors faced each other in pairs.

“It’ll be quite good for you here, my chicks! All kinds of trash eternally crowd in reception below. Not a single succubus will poke in here, and I don’t even talk about agents!” Julitta said.

“Shielding runes?” Moshkin asked, having had time to pick up superficial knowledge.

“Nope. Ask her over there!” Julitta said and somehow incomprehensibly looked at Daphne, either approvingly or, on the contrary, defiantly.

Daph smiled modestly. “Just a twig of an Eden beech… I accidentally had it in my backpack and I slipped it under the threshold. Spirits of Gloom can’t stand our plants.”

“And Ares? He allowed it?” Nata asked incredulously.

“Not enough power in a small branch to bother him particularly.”

“So, does he know or not?”

“Not that he knows, and at the same time not that he doesn’t know… Let’s say this: he closes his eyes to small things, because his office is downstairs, and Tukhlomon annoyed him badly…” Julitta announced with a smile.

The aforementioned conversation took place the previous night, and in the morning, Ares and Julitta took off in haste to Tartarus for some celebration connected with the hunchback Ligul. Methodius did not particularly get to the heart of it. Ares said that he would explain everything later. Soon, Methodius and Daph also left. As already said, to the taxidermist.

* * *

“I didn’t really have one sneaker, no? Well, this morning?” Moshkin suddenly asked. He had already sat for about three minutes with an unhappy face, gathering courage for this simple question.

“Not one,” Nata assured him.

“You’re sure? Hundred percent?”

“Over two hundred.”

“Then I’ve lost the second one! Did anyone see it anywhere?” Moshkin complained.

“Watch over your goulashes yourself, dearie! I’m not the sultan’s eighteenth wife to you, in charge of shoes,” Nata remarked.

“I did… Took them off for all of a minute, and then…” Eugeny, smiling guiltily and amiably, showed off a foot in a white sock.

“I love looking at other people’s socks! And if I throw up?” Nata asked.

Chimodanov chuckled. As recently as the morning before yesterday he had the opportunity to observe how Nata learned to read a rat’s innards. However, the divination did not go right from the very beginning, according to Julitta’s assertion, because Nata was chewing gum while gutting the dead rat.

“It’s disrespectful. Magic doesn’t like that,” Julitta remarked.

“You think… I don’t care…” Nata said.

Now she was sitting at the table, on which Marie de’ Medici[2 - Mrie de’ Medici (1575–1642) was Queen of France and second wife of Henry IV of France. She was known for political intrigues at the French court.] once kept the severed head of her favourite, and drinking tea, stirring the sugar in the cup with a silver spoon. This was the spoon of the famous pharmacist-poisoner, who lived in town N. of the Tula province in the middle of the XIX century. Next to it was a small sausage knife, with which Yashka the convict ambushed two merchants in the inn’s courtyard.

Yes, all the objects in the fireplace hall had just such gloomy history. Thus, taking from the table a random pencil stub, it was possible to assume with confidence that either it had been shoved into someone’s eye, or Lavrentii Beria,[3 - Lavrentii Pavlovich Beria (1899–1953) was a Soviet security administrator under Joseph Stalin. He was Stalin’s longest-lived and most influential secret police chief.] sitting at home on a settee under a fig tree, had made notes with it on official papers.

At first, it was not too pleasant for Methodius and the rest to be among such objects; however, they soon got accustomed to it. Well, a chair is a chair, a table, a table, and a knife, a knife. Man was created such that nothing terrifies him infinitely. What is the difference who, when, and whom, if the firewood in the fireplace, which once warmed the great inquisitor, crackles so comfortably at home? Possibly, this was Gloom’s plan – to gradually, step by step, concession after concession, to erode the ability to wonder and be horrified and to push back the boundary of tolerance, until finally, permissiveness becomes all-encompassing.

Zuduka, the only one of Chimodanov’s artificial monsters he brought with him, jumped out from under the table. Hobbling, Zuduka made its way to Moshkin, dragging a sneaker by the lace.

“You found it! Smart boy! Good boy!” Eugeny was moved.

Zuduka hurriedly hobbled to him, for some reason continually looking back.

“Don’t! I don’t advise it!” Chimodanov said lazily, cutting a wafer cake with Yashka the convict’s knife.

“Why? It’s mine!” Eugeny was surprised. The sneaker was already in his hand.

Zuduka, which he was about to thank, fled with all possible haste, not waiting for a reward.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with your sneaker, but if I were you, I wouldn’t put it on…” Petruchio continued thoughtfully.