Chapter 7: Shadows

The evening of the weekend found Yulia in the gym, in an elite fitness club, a grateful restaurateur extended the subscription for Yulia Sergeevna, Albert was gone, and none of the instructors knew what happened to the guy, Alyona was engaged as before, the bride and groom were preparing for a magnificent wedding in the idyll of relations.

It’s almost December outside. A call from the past. Tatiana, Kira’s friend, croaked into the phone:

– Be quiet and listen. Kira ordered you for me, the photo is buried in the cemetery. Soon everything will rot away. But you should know about this...” the voice, cracked like a rusty axe stump, was interrupted by the wheezing of an asthmatic.

Julia, mechanically continued her quiet step, trying to catch the meaning of the telephone message, a huge crypt appeared in front of her eyes, and immediately crushed the living one with a cemetery slab.

The heart became a stone, under the weight of such a load, dry tears disappeared, evaporated before they could be shed, the woman automatically went out onto the winter terrace.

The fitness club was located on the fourth floor, an incredibly beautiful city sparkled in the dark from a pigeon’s flight, warm white snow under the light of dim lanterns and a neon cafe sign gave a feeling of otherworldliness.

Julia begged, begging Dad to take her home. Immediately. The scent of Alpine herbs filled the playground. The glass wall opposite trembled in the flicker, and a silhouette rose out of the fine mist.

Human. A dark tweed suit, a light floor-length cashmere coat and a bright green scarf with a square amber clasp. Barefoot. The look of honey-emerald eyes, full of sympathy and love. Julia pressed her whole body against the window pane, quiet sobs drowned in the cold air.

“Now you know everything,” my grandfather’s voice echoed in my head. – You can handle it, you’re one of us. That’s what you’ve decided.

– Forgive me and let Mark go, he’s not your teacher anymore. You will go your separate ways. Don’t rush HOME. Your long and wonderful life is just beginning...

The flickering of snowflakes in the winter sky carried away the last words, the echo echoed with tenderness, leaving bare footprints in the snow. On her knees, the woman was saying goodbye to her past life, Yulia Sergeevna, a descendant of great-grandfathers, was born from the crypt.

It was getting late, the city was clanking with tram rails, Julia was driving into the solitude – the vacuum of the apartment.

Katz met me on the doorstep today.

“The world is fair to everyone,” he whispered with his lips and disappeared into the shadows of the mirrors. The ghost man again.

A blank sheet of paper.

It’s time to rewrite the years. It sounds like a spell. Thirty years later, into the well. To the bottom to push off and soar through kilometers of emptiness. A greedy, passionate flame on the table. Candles, candles, candles ... tongues of fire kiss the night.

The dress rehearsal of a half-century-long life ended with a benefit. From now on, different rules are in effect. By morning, a woman was shining in the mirror opposite through thin sheets of scribbled fate.

Colonel Rotting

Mark woke up, the hatred of last night again covered with a heavy cloud, the body, a little rested from the pain, grated with an old saw, as if playing dominoes, rusty bones beat against each other, joints ached unbearably, so through the years the frosty snows reminded of themselves.

My mother remained in the snow-covered land, an absurd tumor strangled a woman in six months who did not have time to enjoy an early retirement, an activist, one of many who suffered the bitter experience of the Soviet Komsomol, money-hungry Munira remained forever hidden in glass ice fantasies, the northern allowance deceived a woman with a cold mirage in the desert.

Mark stared out the window with desperate longing, in the courtyard, like a ghost reflected on the glass dirty from the autumn rain, the brick chimney of the boiler room froze with a stone reminder of the asphalt paths of the village leading through crooked alleys in the short northern summer of childhood.

The man put the kettle on, reached for a mug in the wall cabinet, and a sharp pain pierced his elbow, he screamed and almost cried.

In the last year before her death, her sister suffered greatly from terrible pain, the man fearfully drove away evil thoughts, Mark was not ready to try on a terrible diagnosis.

- What an obsession! - earlier, when Julia lived nearby, it was enough for her wife to put her palms on Mark’s body, and the hot wave relieved the spasm, subsided, released the pain, but now she has disappeared - where she ran away, bitch, he will find out later.

After swallowing a ketanov tablet, the man sat down in an armchair, carefully placing pillows under his lower back, Mark had been on pharmacy anesthesia for the last week.