Polina Dashkova - Madness Treads Lightly

They whispered together. A minute later they started a duet:

The boy turned out to have a decent voice, low and deep. And he had a good ear. Closing his eyes, Venya leaned back in his seat. The words and melody didn’t arouse any fire or trembling in him. He liked a ballad performed well, only…

He decided he wouldn’t say that hard cliché to Regina tonight. He needed a little longer. He knew Regina would hear him out calmly and wouldn’t make a fuss. She would treat his decision with understanding, sympathy even.

“Oh well,” she would say. “If that’s what you want, if that’s better for you, I’m prepared…”

And then she’d kill Lena.

She’d find a way. She wouldn’t miss again. Something unexpected would happen. An accident. For instance, the plane from Tyumen to Moscow would blow up in midair.

Let Lena get back and have a talk with her husband. Venya didn’t doubt for a second that she’d agree to his proposal. She belonged to him and him alone. Who else could his happiness, his youth belong to?

The whole long, terrible stretch of life called his youth compressed in his memory down to a few days, a few happy days in June 1982. There was nothing but that one vital love. Now she would come back to him. She already had. Lena Polyanskaya loved him. They’d be together. He was healthy. He hadn’t killed anyone.

“Oh, golden days, go on and on,” the boy and girl on stage sang with utter abandon.

“That’s it. We’re here,” the killer said hoarsely, and he fell on the snow.

Lena looked around. There wasn’t any hermitage, just a small, snow-drifted mound. Vasya was lying on the snow with his eyes shut. The morning sun was pounding his face. Lena sat on a fallen trunk, feeling dizzy.

The last section of the journey had been almost easy. She’d gotten her second wind. She started to think she wasn’t even tired and could go on as long as need be. Only now, having stopped, did she realize she was dead on her feet.

The killer lay on the snow with his eyes shut for ten minutes. He knew how to relax completely and give each cell in his body a respite. Even the pain in his injured shoulder didn’t bother him. Lena shut her eyes, leaned against a tree trunk, and fell instantly into a deep sleep.

He didn’t attempt to wake her. He picked up a suitable birch branch and used it to sweep clear the dugout’s entrance. The job took him less than half an hour. When the entrance was cleared, the killer collected fir-branch litter and spread several layers of it on the bottom of the refuge. Only after that did he wake up Lena.

She opened her eyes and for a moment couldn’t understand where she was. She felt a little better after her brief nap, but her body ached and demanded more rest.

“No helicopter so far,” the killer said. “You have to look and see what’s happening with my shoulder. We’ll sit at the entrance, and as soon as we hear a helicopter, we’ll hide inside.”

“Fine.” Lena nodded and immediately thought, But what if it’s a different helicopter? Not the crooks’?

But she didn’t say a word.

From the many pockets of his leather jacket, the killer retrieved a small flat flask, a Finnish knife in a thick leather sheath, and a bar of chocolate. Neatly removing the wrapper, he broke off four squares, gave two to Lena, and put two in his own mouth.

“Eat slowly. This is all our food for the next few days,” he said. “Later, I’ll try to boil some snow for water.”

Under his jacket, Blindboy was wearing a thick sweater, and under his sweater he was wearing a striped T-shirt that made the bloody hole in the upper part of his right shoulder look particularly nasty. Lena was amazed at how easily he moved the injured shoulder, pulling the sweater and T-shirt over his head.

“You’re not cold?” she asked when he’d undressed to the waist.

“Look at my shoulder,” the killer replied.

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor,” Lena warned as she examined the bleeding wound.

“I know. But we don’t have a doctor. Use snow to wipe away the blood.”

“What do you have in your flask?”

“Alcohol.”

“Then why snow? It could get infected.”

“There’s not much alcohol. It’ll come in handy. But the snow here is clean, so pure it’s basically sterile. Just do what I tell you.”

Lena dug a handful of soft snow out from under the hardened ice crust and began carefully wiping the blood around the wound. The killer didn’t even wince.

“The bleeding’s not bad; it’s nearly stopped. I think I can feel the bullet,” Lena told him. “Do you have a handkerchief? It needs bandaging.”

“No. It does need bandaging, but that comes later. Right now you’re going to take out the bullet.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re going to make an incision and pull out the bullet. Then you’ll bandage it up.”

Lena examined the wound one more time. She could feel the bullet right under the skin. A doctor could probably have pulled it out in ten minutes, even in these conditions. But Lena had never pulled out anything more than a splinter, but she knew Vasya was right. She had to pull out the bullet. Otherwise infection could set in.

“Don’t be scared,” he said gently. “I know human anatomy pretty well. There aren’t any major arteries there. I can feel it right under the skin. There’s no one but you to do this. And it has to be done.”

All Lena found in the pockets of the stranger’s peacoat was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She unzipped the inside pocket and searched it. Five hundred dollars, that was it. She needed a clean handkerchief. She took off the peacoat and pulled the hem of her long knit shirt out of her jeans and cut off a strip of fabric about thirty centimeters wide with the Finnish knife. Then she cut a few smaller scraps from that strip. And then she carefully rubbed her hands, the knife blade, and the edge of the wound with alcohol. Taking a deep breath and crossing herself, she stretched the skin around the wound a little and made a precise cut with the knife.

“Well done,” the killer praised her. “Do you see it?”

“Yes.”

Lena saw the dark metal tip. The bullet was smaller than she thought it would be. She tried not to think about the pain she was inflicting on Vasya Slepak. Her fingers were slender and deft, but for the first time in her life she regretted she didn’t have long nails. They would have helped her snag the bullet.

Finally she got ahold of it, and she showed the killer the small, elongated piece of lead.

“You can throw it away,” he said.

She soaked another scrap with alcohol, carefully wiped the wound, and used the last long piece of fabric to tightly bind his shoulder.

“Very nicely done, Lena Polyanskaya. With skills like that, why didn’t you become a doctor?” the killer asked, pulling on his T-shirt.

“I’m not asking you why you don’t write poetry anymore, Vasya Slepak, and why you became a killer, am I?” She smiled weakly in reply. “Can you give me another piece of chocolate? A very little one.”

“Here.” He broke off two squares and held out both to her. “You earned it. Wash it down with snow. Only don’t swallow it right away. Let it melt in your mouth. It’ll be a little like cold cocoa.”

“Yes, an excellent breakfast.” Lena took out the pack of cigarettes from the coat pocket.

Parliaments again. That’s probably all the crooks in the taiga house smoked. She held the pack out to Vasya, but he shook his head.

“I don’t smoke. Now tell me, who framed my father?”