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“How is it not my business? She’s my student!” Prikhodkin was angry.
“I don’t have the right to reveal anything. The investigation isn’t finished. I’ll ask you to clear the museum!”
However, when they left the hall a minute later, it seemed to Tanya, slightly delayed because her legs felt like cotton wool, that he said to his assistant in an undertone, “Either you’ll explain to me what it was on the film or I won’t envy you. And I won’t envy myself.”
Chapter 3
The Mysterious Double Bass and Lisper the Rabbit
“You eat the noodles from the day before yesterday. They’re sticking together a little, but you can warm them up. Only don’t take it into your head to set fire to the apartment – it’ll happen with you,” Aunt Ninel said sullenly.
“Thankie!” Tanya blurted out mockingly. “Interesting, why doesn’t Pipa eat them? Afraid the noodles will wind around her teeth? Or crawl from her ears? It would be quite lovely with her hairdo.”
“Hold your tongue! Or you’ll be left without breakfast!” Aunt Ninel bellowed.
Considering that even day-before-yesterday noodles were better than nothing, Tanya grabbed a fork.
Three and half days had passed since the incident in the museum. The first day was altogether a nightmare, because, when Tanya returned home, they already knew everything there. It turned out that Irina Vladimirovna and Lenka Mumrikova phoned almost simultaneously and, chattering, each excitedly reported her own version. What these versions were, Tanya did not know exactly, but the Durnevs went completely berserk. Likely, they decided that she stole the sword, and even if she did not, then it did not happen without her participation.
“I said that you’d end up in prison!” Uncle Herman, stomping his feet, began to yell. Then he gripped his side and collapsed onto the chair. “My heart is breaking! When I found out about this, I ate nine instead of seven balls of homeopathic medicine!” he squealed. “If I die now, it’ll be on your conscience! What a stain on my deputy career!”
“Herman! The heart’s not there!” Aunt Ninel whispered.
Pipa poked her head into the kitchen.
“She specially plotted everything! She scalded me, and went on the excursion…” she squeaked.
For someone scalded to death by tea she was looking pretty good, except that she was covered with humongous pimples the size of half a fist. But it was due to her gorging on too many sweets…
“Shut your mouth!” not being able to control herself, Tanya shouted at Pipa. Her nerves were on edge, she had lived through too much today. It seemed to her that a fine string was stretched inside her and any minute now it would break.
“Why do you talk to your cousin like that? And you, Pipa, go! What else can you pick up from this criminal!” Aunt Ninel said, pursing her lips.
“Fleas! Let her roll to her daddy!” Pipa quickly added.
Tanya jumped. Suddenly the door of the refrigerator, next to which Pipa was standing, flung open and hit her nose, and it was so swift that she did not have time to avoid it. The daughter of Uncle Herman squealed and grabbed her nose, instantly swelling to the size of a large plum. Tanya stared at her own hands in amazement. How strange! She indeed only thought about this as the door instantly opened itself. Unbelievable!
Aunt Ninel and Uncle Herman stared fixedly at Tanya, but she was standing too far from the door to be accused of anything. Pipa, wailing unpleasantly, was rolling on the floor.
“My nose is broken! Call emergency! I need plastic surgery urgently!” she howled, panicking.
Aunt Ninel by force removed the palms with which the daughter blocked up her face, and looked at her nose.
“Calm down! The bones are intact, but here you definitely need lotion… And you, trash, march lively to your balcony and stay out of my sight!”
Tanya left for the balcony and there, on the wide windowsill, wrapping herself up in the blanket, began to solve math problems. Everything that took place today seemed to her absolutely unreal. For this very reason, Tanya decided not to think about this now but to put off the thoughts for later, as late as possible.
After some time Pipa entered the room and, having stuck her tongue out at Tanya behind the glass, sat at her own desk. Tanya, with regret, discovered that the nose survived. It was covered with a bandage.
“My compliments! Plaster suits you very well. You became more attractive exactly with three pimples, which it hides!” Tanya said loudly.
Pipa pretended that she heard nothing. To pretend to be a deaf mute was quite her habit. Moreover, whatever you may say, she was in her room and Tanya out on the balcony!
Not paying Tanya any attention, Pipa took from her neck the lace with the key, opened the box and, reaching for the photograph, stared at it with melting eyes. Listening, Tanya distinguished the words the daughter of Uncle Herman muttered, “Oh! If you knew how hard it is for me to stand this fool! Pity that they cannot take her into a colony until she’s fourteen. Imagine how she managed to be original in the museum… She scalded me with boiling hot water, and herself…”
“Ha! Telling the portrait about me! It seems the hit from the door proved to be too strong for our brain even limping slightly without that,” Tanya thought and began to solve the examples.
In about five minutes, Pipa stopped talking as to a child and, pressing the portrait to her chest, loudly exclaimed, “Oh G.P.! Oh dear G.P.!”
Tanya even dropped the pen. This was the first occasion with her around that Pipa named the mysterious dandy depicted in the portrait. Who is this G.P.? There was definitely no one with such initials among her acquaintances and classmates. There was, true, Genka Bulonov, but he was G.B., not G.P. Moreover, to fall in love with Bulonov… Even such a thing could not be expected of Pipa. So, it was necessary to search for someone else.
“What does G.P. stand for? Goga Pupsikov? Gunya Pepets?” Tanya began to guess, but immediately recalled suddenly that she had more important matters than to think about this nonsense. What matters to her about some Grisha Ponchikov, with whom the best deputy’s muddle-headed daughter has fallen in love? Were there not enough strange events in recent days for which there is no explanation? Durnev’s dream… The refrigerator door… The sheet stuck to the glass… The Russian borzoi… The vanished gold sword…
The longer Tanya reflected on all this, the tighter the knot of questions. Well fine, the sheet was brought by the wind and stuck to the glass because it was wet. The 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 pinched. A lump rose in her throat. It was her dear diary, to which she confided the deepest of her secrets, the only thing, not counting the double bass case, which belonged to her personally!
“If I find the one who did this, I’ll hit him!” Tanya shouted in fury.
Suddenly someone in the cabinet started to snigger nastily. Here the sound was as if someone was scraping one sheet of sandpaper on another. The girl jerked her head up, and immediately an icky stinky lump of paper fell down onto her forehead, she vaguely guessed it to be the last pages of her diary.
“H-ho! She’ll hit me, h-ho! Hit me, hit, h-ho! No one yet never hit Agukh!”
Onto Tanya’s shoulder jumped a small gross creature with a fat body covered with stiff greasy hair. It had a tiny head with a wrinkled forehead, short curved legs with strong toes, a long, naked, pinkish tail like a rat’s, and long arms deprived of elbows bending in all directions. When the creature, sniggering abominably, threw open its enormous mouth full of small teeth, the lower part of its head remained on the spot, the upper part – with the nose, the forehead, up to the crown covered with mould – settled back as on a hinge. There were disgusting yellowish horns on the creature’s crown: the right one growing straight, and the left, small and undeveloped, bent slightly forward and to the side.
Seizing Tanya’s shoulder, it forcefully pushed itself away from her and, with its head shattering a window into smithereens, was thrown into Pipa’s room. Leaving on the parquet slippery and dirty tracks, the creature scrambled onto the Durnevs’ daughter’s desk and in the blink of an eye drooled all over the entire mountain of magazines and textbooks, simultaneously biting off the heads of dolls in the expensive collection.
“It’ll be ba-ad for you, ba-ad!” it hissed, insolently looking at Tanya with eyes discharging pus. “Better give me what you’re hiding, or you’ll di-e in terrible cramps! You’ll become a dead Lifeless Griffin!”
“I don’t understand what you want!”
“Don’t want to give it? H-ho!” The vile mouth opened with a crack like a dry nut, biting the phone receiver. “Don’t wa-nt to? Go figure!”
“Give what?” the girl shouted, almost crying from loathing and horror.
“You li-e that you don’t kno-ow! You know everything, Grotter!” Agukh became furious.
Its thin hand stretched to the monitor of Pipa’s computer on which she put all of her 300 game disks. The monitor was thin, liquid-crystal – a gift from Aunt Ninel to Pipa for managing to get a four in botany for the year. Pipa presented this as her greatest achievement, although in reality the botany teacher placed the marks by posing the question: starfish – is this a plant? Those who answered “no” got a “five” and everyone else – a “four.”
“Don’t! Don’t touch the monitor!” Tanya shouted in horror, imagining what Pipa would do if it were broken.
“Afra-id? So there you go! H-ho! Let them hang or quarter you for this! They’ll peel off the skin, cook you in red-hot lead!” the freak sniggered vilely.
Grabbing the monitor by the cord, it dragged it to the edge of the table and pushed it downward. Something inside the monitor exploded faintly.
“H-ho! Agukh punished you! So it will be with all Grotters! If you knew how Leopold implored the mistress not to kill you! Pitiful cow-ward!”
Immediately on hearing the name of her father, Tanya recoiled in amazement.
“Not true, my papa is alive!” she shouted.
“Cow-ward! Cow-ward! Cow-ward! He and his wife Sophia, stupid hen, all feared the mistress!”
A red veil of anger obscured Tanya’s eyes. She could not endure when someone spoke thus about her parents – especially this vile, slippery creature with a rat-tail and puny horns.
“Well, get away from here, runt!” she shouted and, grabbing the pot of cactus from the windowsill, threw it with all her might at the disgusting creation. The pot got it right in the stomach, knocking it off the table, and in the next moment, the needles of the upset cactus stuck directly to its soft face.
Squealing hideously, the squirt threw himself under the bed and, leaning out from there, yelled angrily, “Nightmares ravings ex! I curse you! No one treated Agukh this way! You don’t know what disaster you’ve brought on yourself! Remember: you don’t gi-ve – you di-e! You’ll di-e in ter-rible pain! Mistress said so!” Threatening Tanya with a fist, the horned object slipped into the corridor and disappeared.
Tanya got hold of a rag. The tracks left by the creature did not rub off, and with the attempt to clean them they only ate even deeper into the parquet and the polishing.
Imagining how the Durnevs would behave when they returned, Tanya dejectedly lowered herself onto Pipa’s bed. Pipa, it goes without saying, will kick up a fuss if she sees her here, and… and she will simply do it, with barely a glance into the room. There is nothing to lose.
Tanya’s cheeks were burning. Who was that vile runt? What did he know about her parents, and he knew something – there is no doubt about it. To what mistress was he referring? What was he searching for in the empty apartment? Why did he nibble the diary? One thing could be said precisely – the freak appeared not of his own free will. Someone who was very definitely incited, someone thinking that Tanya could be hiding something in her case, sent him. Moreover, what he was searching for was a hundred times more valuable than the contents of Uncle Herman’s safe, the antique porcelain of Aunt Ninel, and all the junk of Pipa, together.
Despite that everything was extremely dirty and nothing good to be expected, Tanya involuntarily smiled and knocked with a bent finger on her forehead.
“Beep-beep, roof, beep-beep!” she said.
What, have they all gone crazy? And who is she, after all, such that around her all this devilry is created? Does she really have any belongings besides what is hidden in the double bass case and some filthy rags?
True, this case is clearly very ancient, perhaps a little less ancient than the gold sword from the museum, which disappeared soon after she pressed against the glass with admiration, discerning the mysterious signs on the blade. Especially memorized by her was the seemingly imprint of a bird foot on wet sand. It still seemed to her that she saw something similar once before… And even not only saw it, but also… touched it.
Tanya hardly thought about this “touched” when in a flash before her eyes arose the small tarnished plate which she had always squeezed with two fingers – the thumb and the forefinger – and afterward pulled to herself. She remembered! It is the clasp of her case!
Tanya dashed to the balcony and, getting down on her knees, turned the double bass case onto the side toward her. Here are the deep folds of the warm leather, and here is the clasp with exactly the same symbol – three fine lines taking off upwards and one down.
And then – Tanya herself did not know what compelled her to act so, she carefully traced with the little finger all four lines and, placing the finger in the small hollow in the centre, turned it exactly a half-turn. She waited a minute, two… Nothing happened. The same dull fall day, the same roofs of neighbouring houses. Sensing terrible disappointment, Tanya made these movements again – only now, tracing the outlines of the bird track, she began from the centre claw… Again nothing… But what if we first touch lightly the hollow, and then move a finger lightly along all four lines of the track? No, it is useless.
With each minute, Tanya was seized by stronger despondency. Why did she decide that something unusual must take place? Well, a plate is a plate. Must imagine less and know her place. After all, it is time to think about what she will say to Uncle Herman and Aunt Ninel when they discover the chaos in the apartment.
“Ah you! I don’t want you, and don’t need you!” Tanya exclaimed and, with disappointment, slammed shut the cover of the case, smacking a nail on the lock.
She did not have time to sense the light pain in her nail and even hardly heard the sound of a smack as something elusive flashed by in the air. Most of all it resembled a gold vortex suddenly bursting into the open window of the balcony. Irrepressible and swift, the vortex playfully tore away all the papers from the place, overturned flower pots, tore up notebooks, and then, after descending directly to the centre of the case, assumed the form of an ancient double bass with four strings – gold, silver, copper, and iron. The case fitted the instrument so ideally that it left no doubts – this was its case.
Next to the double bass lay a small bow that was almost two times shorter than the instrument.
