a fleeting impression; Aspirin had never heard this music before. Moreover, he wasn’t even sure it was music at all.
The sounds that Alyona’s hands—small, with bitten nails—extracted out of an ordinary piano should not have been possible from an eleven-year-old girl. Aspirin listened, chills running up and down his spine, his umbrella dripping on the hardwood floor. In her music, Alyona seemed to portray the world the way she saw it; Aspirin’s heart seized and his lips cracked when that image revealed itself.
The iron clockwork of the music turned one more time and slowed down. Alyona’s right hand dropped on the keys, then slid off, as if having lost its last strength. The girl sighed and hunched over, still staring directly ahead.
Without a word, Aspirin turned and went into the kitchen. He boiled some water, forgot about the teakettle, and had to boil the water again. He took some salami out of the refrigerator and put it back again. He made tea and only then realized he was still wearing his wet raincoat and dirty shoes.
Alyona came out of the living room and stood in the doorway.
“So what are we going to do?” Aspirin asked out loud.
“Did you get your visa?”
Aspirin shook his head. “Monday. Alyona, how old are you?”
She shrugged. “Eleven.”
The kitchen was quiet. Aspirin wanted to say something, but words that usually poured out of him in a stream now dried up and hardened, blocking his throat.
“Take off your raincoat,” Alyona said. “You are making a mess.”
Getting up to hang his coat, Aspirin saw a strange expression on Alyona’s face.
“Are you telling me you saw what I was playing?”
“I didn’t see it,” he admitted. “I think I sensed it.”
“You don’t say,” Alyona said, and again Aspirin missed something in the way she said it.
“Listen,” he said. “The guy who gave you the strings. If anything happens, will he protect you?”
“If what happens?”
“If . . . if an enemy attacks.”
“If an enemy attacks, Mishutka will protect me,” she explained to Aspirin in the same way parents calm their children’s fears.
“And here we are, my darlings, and how unlucky we are with this weather! Alas, October is not May, not in the least! October is here at last; the grove has shaken off its last reluctant leaf . . . I saw a grove today, and it had shaken off everything, just as Aleksandr Pushkin described it, it had shaken it all off. Seeing things so bare, we crave warmth, simple human warmth, and now our warm and soft Radio Sweetheart is enveloping you in super-comfortable, super-autumnal music!”
On Friday he worked a long, dull shift at the club, pulling a set through like pulling a car along a wet dirt road. He then worked a radio shift on Saturday morning; time stretched, medieval, dusty time. He chose a saccharine song next, knowing quite well that it was going to make someone young and impressionable lose any sense of nuance and halftones. He didn’t care.
The day after tomorrow he would get his visa. They couldn’t deny him. And the day after tomorrow—on Tuesday at the latest—he would get out of here. For a long time. Probably forever. The goddamn girl with her bear had managed to destroy his life, and she was welcome to what remained.
He was recalling her playing the piano when he missed his cue. The song had ended, and now the sound engineer was swearing like a sailor behind the soundproof glass, and Aspirin just stared at nothing, trying to figure out—who was he? What was happening to him?
“My dearest listeners . . . today is Saturday. Radio Sweetheart is here with you. For the next half hour we have everyone’s favorite texting game. The first person who sends us a text . . . wait, wait. It’s too early to grab your phones . . . you have yet to find out what we want from you. And all you need to do is to think and tell us—what does a shark have in its middle? Think of an answer and text us, and the winner receives—what will the winner receive? Ah, the winner will receive two tickets to the Shark movie theater. And while you are thinking—please listen to our next song!”
When he got home, he was frazzled and cranky. He only barely noticed how pale and strangely focused Alyona looked, but it didn’t register fully.
In the afternoon the clouds parted and eventually gave way to a decent sunset. When the last of the sunlight seeped