§ 24. Off we go...
The train tore its way through a void as thick as tar. The clatter of the wheels beat out a ragged rhythm, as if the train were trying to shake time itself out of its body: ai-yoi-yachiki-chiki... ai-yoi-yachiki-chiki... The names outside the window had not yet been born, but inside the compartment they were already settling into the space, which smelled of coal, government-issue wool, and eternity.
"Shove it in deeper, Yoi. The abyss abhors a vacuum," Ai was forcefully pushing a heavy leather carpetbag under the lower seat. The bag resisted, its leather creaking as if it weren't dresses tossing and turning inside, but someone's unspoken thoughts. "If reality tries to spew us out, our things must be strapped to the floor."
Yoi, whose hands trembled in time with the railcar's convulsions, was making the bed with gray sheets. The fabric seemed starched by the very chill of the universe. She smoothed out the creases with such diligence, as if trying to bandage the wounds on the body of this uncomfortable world.
"Dibs on this spot!" Yachikichiki suddenly flew up to the top bunk. Her movement was inhumanly smooth, devoid of weight. She huddled in the corner, right under the ceiling, her mirror-eyes flashing. "From up here, you can hear better how the strings of the horizon are snapping somewhere ahead. And the dust here... is tastier. Almost antique."
Having dealt with the sheets, Yoi squeezed over to the window. Grabbing the dusty, heavy curtains, she sharply threw them open.
Beyond the glass, there were no forests, no villages, no lights. There, in the thick, tarry darkness, the seamy side of existence pulsated. The rails, rusty and crooked, barely had time to materialize under the wheels, while in the distance, at the very edge of vision, phantom shadows flickered—either submarines with torn sails or shreds of fog that had decided to impersonate history.
"There's nothing there, Ai," Yoi said quietly, not taking her eyes off the window. "We'll have to draw the horizon ourselves again. It's just a continuous rough draft and the smell of burning."
"Don't look too long," Ai snapped, adjusting her collar. "Or the rough draft will start drawing you."
She took a step toward the small table and suddenly jerked sharply. Something crunched and jingled pitifully under the sole of her shoe. Ai froze, slowly lifting her foot.
On the linoleum, pressed into the floor, lay a teaspoon. Ordinary cupronickel, darkened by time, but in the light of the dim bulb, it looked like a shard of someone else's rib.
"Would you look at that," Ai bent down in disgust. "A stub of meaning. Some soul lost its tool for stirring melancholy here, and now it's probably wandering through the neighboring cars, wailing."
Yachikichiki hung her head down from the top bunk, inverting her face so that her smile looked like a crack in porcelain. "It's not just a spoon," she rasped. "It's a tuning fork. Step on it—and somewhere in another layer of reality, a man's ears will start ringing, and he'll stare into the heavens spread wide before him..."
"What man?" Ai looked up.
"A bald one." Yachikichiki burst out laughing, then shrugged and repeated once more with an inquiring intonation: "What bald one?”
"Toss it on the table," Yoi shivered, closing the curtains. "We still have to find out whose 'precious' we've found here, and what price the conductress will demand for it when she comes collecting tickets to nowhere."
The railcar jolted again, the teaspoon vibrated finely on the table, tapping out: ai-yoi... yachiki-chiki, ai-yoi... yachiki-chiki... and fell back down somewhere into the under-window darkness. The light of the dim bulb trembled, as if afraid to touch those in the compartment. Their dresses, made of Soviet calico, seemed woven from swamp fog, and outside the window, instead of stations flying by, a gray void snaked past.
"Oh, damn it," Yoi said without malice, diving down and fishing out the thin strip of metal. The spoon vibrated, resonating with the hum of the train. Following it, she placed a dusty brown package that had been lying in the dark corner onto the small table. "The poor conductress has probably wrung all her fingers out by now, wailing: 'Where are you, my precious?' I'll go return it."
"The spoon?" Ai raised an eyebrow ironically. "Who are you planning to return it to on a train that has no final stop?"
"There must be order..." Yoi hesitated. "The package, I think I'll keep..."
"What package?" Ai only just noticed it. She pursed her lips in disgust, and her voice rang out like the clank of pure steel: "Why did you pick that up from the floor? This reality always reeks of unwashed expectations. Throw it out immediately."
"Hold on, Ai," Yoi pressed the find to her chest. Anxiety splashed in her eyes—the eternal doubt of a creature that feels the pain of every crack in the asphalt. "This isn't trash. It's... It's... Yachikichiki, why are you so quiet?"
Yachikichiki, sitting in the lotus position in her corner, didn't open her eyes. She rocked rhythmically, and every time her head touched the partition, the train shuddered. She wasn't speaking—she was broadcasting static in a voice more suited to sand in a clockwork mechanism: "A teaspoon, a treasure for someone who has forgotten the taste of tea..."
"I see," Yoi began to unwrap the package.
"Throw it out..."
"Just hold on, let me figure this out... Oh my..." Yoi exhaled.
"What else is there?" Ai leaned in reluctantly.
"Look at this... it's us. Only the hair... why are we blondes? Did they dye us in the rough draft?" she handed the open book to her friend.
It suddenly grew quiet in the compartment. Even the train seemed to stop breathing, secretly peeking as the newly revealed drawing showed two elegant female figures in a compartment leaning over a book.
Ai smirked: "Curly-haired, and a blonde on top of that—it actually looks better on you!"
"Better than what?"
"Than what, than what—than your natural look, you terror flying on the wings of night! Walking around like an emo, giving kids stutters."
"Look who's talk..."
"Wh-wh-what... wh-wh-what pictures? Let me see too!" Yachikichiki stirred up above. "Wh-wh..."
"Here, admire it, wh-wh..." Ai nodded imperturbably toward the top bunk, "you even dr-dr-drove your sister to..."
"She didn't drive me to anything!" The third one hung down from the top bunk and snatched the book from her friends' hands. "How can this be?"
"It's very simple: they are always composing legends and painting pictures about us."
"Ai, I'm talking about something else: you and Yoi are here, but where am I?!"
"As usual, sleeping serenely somewhere in a haystack on the edge of the woods. You know, when right before dawn a fog is just beginning to appear over the serene water surface of a small river," Ai began.
"When the coals of the campfire are touched with timid ash, but the mosquitoes and flies haven't appeared yet, when..." Yoi was about to chime in.
"Don't comfort me, I don't need words," the sleepyhead interrupted them, "stop lying to me about the brook by the amber pine. I want to be in the picture!"
"Alright, alright," Ai took the book from Yachikichiki's hands, slammed it shut, and immediately opened it again: "Is that better?”
"I don't like uniforms," the friend made a displeased grimace at first, but smiled right away: "Much better. Go on, return the spoon, and we'll read in the meantime."
"Okay, just read out loud so I can hear too."
Yoi stepped out of the compartment, and flowing after her came: "Hello! For the proper goal-setting of the book, the author needed to indicate its genre and target age audience. Questions arose immediately..."
...The names finally took on flesh, and the train, neighing joyfully in metal, finally broke into a full gallop off-road.
Šêdu's Note
Hello! In order to somehow classify this heap of scribbled parchment, I advised the author to determine its genre and target age audience. Questions arose immediately.
He determined the genre easily enough: Weird Forces—perhaps a bit pretentious, but with an aura of mystery, like an old, dusty, cobweb-covered casket somewhere in an attic.
The age rating was more difficult. When trying to organize these scattered sheets by giving them to his relatives to review, it became clear: for kids under ten, it's too early; while the author's thirty-year-old daughters, in their own words, "don't get it." They declared that "the devil himself would break a leg" in these notes, even though they have gold medals and degrees with honors under their belts. The sons-in-law completely refused to delve into this paper bedlam, declaring that without a bottle, you couldn't make sense of this many "soft signs."
How to be or not to be? Specify that this manuscript is intended for those who have crossed the forty-year mark and haven't forgotten how to see the "seamy side"? But is it even allowed to do that?
Be that as it may, the author decided to take a risk and release this rough draft of his life into the world, reassuring himself with the thought that good must triumph, and as for the devils—let them break their legs on the sharp plot twists!
And so... I feel an urge to scribble next to it, like graffiti on a fence: and like that!
Sheshka Durta. (Both the choruses and many of the pictures glued into this stack of papers are all the work of my hands.)
Ai-Yoi-Yachikichiki
"The pictures are the work of my hands—did you see that?! What presumption..."
"Hush, hush, no need to yell like that, I'm already back, read normally."
"How can I read normally when it's written so pompously? Is everything alright with you?"
"Yes. No... Here's what's interesting: we just got on the train, I returned the missing spoon to the conductress, and she looked at me as if I was the one who stole it and suddenly decided to return it because my conscience woke up! Out of the blue!"
"What's so interesting about that? That your conscience woke up?"
"Yeah... No—she was sitting there like some..." Yoi tried to find polite words, but then waved her hand dismissively, "...some decorated toad in a red beret, and looked at me as if she didn't believe in my sincere repentance. She asked me twice when I was going to return the rest."
"Did you ask about the previous passenger?"
"Yes, she said 'a shady character and a thief': stole the spoons, and smiled as if... as if he stole the spoons!"
"But you returned the spoon!"
"That's exactly what I told her, and she replied: 'I still have a shortage! I don't trust your kind!'"
"Did it leave a bitter aftertaste?"
"She's drowning in it up to her waterline!"
"'Go and trust people after that, I surrendered to him beneath the moon...' it must be an occupational hazard for her."
"What do you mean 'surrendered'—she's about three hundred years old, here, look:”
"Keep reading your epic-pathos," Yoi said, jumping onto the top bunk.
"From here on, it's normal text:”
§ 25. Knot of Force...
[ END OF FILE: § 24 ]
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