LITMIR.BIZ

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refrigerator door could open itself, or, say, Uncle Herman brushed against it with his elbow when in terror he clutched at his heart, estimating whether to feign a heart attack. The borzoi… hm… the borzoi… Well, let us say, it was tagging along the bus because it was lost and Tanya looked like its mistress. Why think about the dog? Well, and how about the sword? Why did it disappear several minutes after the girl looked at it and what were the words of the security chief referring to: “Either you’ll explain to me what was on the film or I won’t envy you.”

      What was captured on the film? Is it this disgusting monster that appeared to Uncle Herman in a dream? For some reason each time Tanya thought about the old woman, her head began to spin in a terrifying way.

* * *

      Tanya returned from school earlier than usual on Thursday during the day. Senior students moving the new piano accidentally lowered it onto the foot of the fussing music teacher. They cancelled music and let the entire class go immediately after the third period.

      Opening the door with the key, Tanya understood suddenly that she was completely alone.

      Uncle Herman was in session in his committee, where the extremely important question was being discussed, about the delivery of all kinds of marked down downhill skis (Uncle Herman just acquired a batch with plenty of them) to all pensioners older than a hundred. Aunt Ninel went out in the car to the supermarket, and Pipa together with Lenka Mumrikova and half a dozen of the other leeches set off for Russian Bistro. Tanya knew that Pipa, as usual, would start by buying everyone ice cream and crepes with chocolate, and for these the clingfishes would fawningly look her in the mouth and laugh at each of her jokes.

      After that incident in the museum many classmates ceased to notice Tanya altogether or whispered behind her back, only Genka Bulonov alone continuously stared at her in all the classes, and during recesses constantly loomed before her eyes, emitting dreadful sounds – either yawns or sighs. It was likely that the poor fellow, how to call it, had fallen head over heels in love. In any case, Tanya thought so for the time being. Once when there was no one else near, Bulonov approached her from the side, coughed, and shyly hailed her, “Grotter!”

      “What’s with you, Bouillon?”

      Genka looked around timidly, and then mysteriously whispered in her ear, “Let’s rob a bank! I’ve dreamt about this for a long time!”

      “What?” Not believing her own ears, Tanya stared at Bouillon. So here, it appears that this silent lump nurtured some kind of plan, he could not even throw a ball in gym such that, bouncing off anything, it would not deal a blow to his forehead.

      Bouillon impatiently waited for an answer.

      “We’ll rob, we’ll rob! The main thing, you don’t be nervous. Eat your soup well. Gather strength,” Tanya calmed him.

      Genka swallowed nervously, continuing to devour her humbly with his eyes. He had the look of a hungry mongrel waiting for a slice of meat to be thrown to it.

      “And what’s there for me to do?” he asked.

      “Fall on deaf ears! Do you have a cap with slits for eyes?”

      Bouillon shook his head.

      “No cap?” Tanya pressed. “Too bad! And no pistol?”

      “I-e-a-e… Not at present.”

      “With what do you intend to rob the bank, a teapot? Go there quick, Bouillon. Now when you’ve acquired it – then come!”

      Recalling now what a stupid face Bulonov had, Tanya smiled and quickly threw down her jacket. Who knows how long she will be alone, without the Durnevs. Not a minute to lose if she wants to replenish her stock.

      She took out of the refrigerator a couple of yogurts, sawed off with a knife a decent piece of sausage, and slipped an orange into her pocket. Interesting, will Aunt Ninel notice? Hardly. The refrigerator has so much produce in it that it is bursting at the seams, and today she will bring more in the car. Besides produce, Aunt Ninel for sure will purchase two dozen magazines on fitness and aerobics, and also any thick book like How to drop forty kilograms in ten days. As far back as Tanya remembered, Aunt Ninel dreamt her entire life about losing weight, but for some reason only Uncle Herman grew thin. Nothing helped Aunt Ninel, although twice a week she arranged for herself half-hour starvations.

      One-And-A-Half Kilometres from under the table grumbled with hatred at Tanya. If it would be able to, it would certainly rat on her. Not able to control herself, the girl stomped it with her foot and shouted, “Ho-o!” The old pepper-shaker almost choked from indignation on its own bark, but growling, it went to the dish to lap up water.

      “Drink and don’t gurgle, or that tail will fall off!” Tanya advised it.

      Having destroyed in the kitchen all traces of her stay, she, chewing a piece of red fish on the way, left for Pipa’s room, from the floor to ceiling crammed with soft toys. Just lions alone Pipa had seven, not counting bears, cats, gnomes, and giraffes. The soft toys were given to her by Uncle Herman’s numerous business partners, who did not have enough imagination to present as gifts something more worthwhile. If they only knew that Pipa kicked their toys with her feet, ran over them with a bicycle, and occasionally even gutted them with a penknife. It would seem with such an attitude she could give something to Tanya as presents, but that would never even enter Pipa’s head.

      Carefully stepping over the photo albums (fifty pimpled faces of Pipa in each) and the computer game disks scattered on the floor, Tanya picked her way to the balcony. She knew perfectly well that were she to move any disk a centimetre or to flip a page of one of Pipa’s magazines, that one would go into terrible hysterics and, rolling on the floor, would yell that Tanya ransacked her things. And indeed Pipa had a practised eye – each evening she spent an hour measuring with a thread the distance from one toy to another or sticking secret hairsprings in the table drawers.

      Tanya opened the door of the wooden cabinet on the balcony and took out the double bass case. The girl always liked this moment: the case slid out with a low creak, as if it grumbled good-naturedly, greeting her.

      “Hello, old creak!” Tanya said to it.

      It was very pleasant to touch – warm, leathery, rough. It was never cold even in winter and Tanya always warmed her hands against it. Earlier, when Pipa mortally insulted her, or Aunt Ninel, not thinking twice, gave her a box on the ear, Tanya would hide inside the case, lay curled up there, swallowing her tears. And the case protected her. Or only it seemed to her that it did. When Tanya was five, Aunt Ninel attempted to drag her out from the case in order to punish her for an accidentally broken cup. Unexpectedly the cover suddenly without rhyme or reason slammed shut and pinched her hand so that Aunt Ninel for two weeks had it in a sling. Yet she never decided to throw the case out, although she threatened to hundreds of times.

      Tanya opened the small ancient lock and, lifting the cover, slipped her hand into the case. Her fingers usually glided behind the facing into that small and only hiding-place where she hid her diary – not the one for school, accessible to all the teachers and Uncle Herman, poking his nose everywhere, but the personal one to which she entrusted all secrets and sorrows.

      Suddenly the girl yelled and jerked back her hand. Instead of the diary, her palm stumbled onto something sticky and slimy. Tanya, with difficulty, found in this filth her notebook, looking like as if someone chewed it up. The entire satin support for the double bass was damaged in exactly the same manner. Throwing open the other half of the cabinet, Tanya saw that her entire meagre possession appeared no better at all – slippery and slobbery, they were not hanging but literally flowing from the hangers.

      Tanya’s stomach tightened. Fearing that she would throw up, she slammed the cabinet shut. In the first instant, she decided that Pipa played this dirty trick on her, but even the pimpled daughter of Uncle Herman, with all her hatred for Tanya, would not begin to chew up her things. At the most, she would cut them with a razor, squeeze out half a tube of toothpaste into a pocket, or smear ketchup on the clothing. Her resourcefulness was on no account sufficient for anything more. Most likely, her pitiful brain would tie itself up in a wet knot.

      “Who did this? Who?” Tanya groaned.

      Her eyes

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