No Way Out at the Entrance

Athanasius resisted, partly from dignity, partly because the rain had stopped. “From the university!” he said.

“You study here?”

“No.”

“And rightly so!” approved Gulia. “Suspicious place! Here friends speak well of each other. It’s unnatural.”

In the middle of the road full of cars splashing water, it came into Gulia’s head to stop and, arms akimbo, pose the question, “Where did you disappear to then? I waited for your call!”

Knowing that he would not be believed nevertheless, Athanasius craftily lied with the truth. “Was injured. Lying in the clinic. Supovna cursed me ninety-two times. Fed me regularly as much as… That’s because I never finished eating. Dealt her a blow.”

“Everything is clear, reindeer!” said Gulia in the magnanimous voice of a person willing to be taken in.

A car swept past. A canopy of water appeared above it. Athanasius hurriedly shut his mouth and eyes. It was already useless to cover the rest.

“Jerk!” Gulia yelled, jumping like a sparrow. “A natural jerk! Look where you’re going! People are walking here!”

Athanasius carefully grabbed Gulia with both arms and moved her onto the grass. But even on the grass Gulia continued to jump and threaten the cars. Her howls were laughable and silly. Like that of a child who beats the table for hitting him with a corner.

She finally calmed down. “I thought about you,” said Gulia, not making an acknowledgement but simply informatively.

Athanasius began to feel uneasy. He was not used to someone thinking about him. “How is your bear doing? Is it still so green?” he asked in a hurry.

They agreed to meet the next day. This time without excuses.

“I’ll bring a friend. And you’ll also bring one of yours!” ordered Gulia. “I’ve now adapted myself to finding in supermarkets bottles with winning codes! Felt one yesterday, but a woman already had it in her cart.”

“And your friend is also…” Athanasius carefully asked.

“Also what?”

Athanasius hesitated. His tongue was not in a hurry to utter “incubator for elbes.” “Well, does she possess abilities?”

Gulia looked around suspiciously at the elderly man with a professorial beard, who squatted across the street and examined an apple floating in the puddle. “Nina can find any object,” she said.

“She finds treasures?”

“Well, if she sees the one who buried it. Also any lost inanimate object… She’s unhappy. Introduce her to someone!”

Athanasius hesitated. “In order to make two unhappy at once? Certainly!”

“And your friend has abilities?”

“Only one. He ties construction nails into little bows,” answered Athanasius. He imagined that he would bring Max with him.

Athanasius showed up quickly in HDive. There were terribly long lines for the buses to the outlying regions and it seemed to Athanasius a good reason for teleportation. After turning up on the concrete area outside the gates, Athanasius wanted to take a step but realized that, having missed the mark by a centimetre, his soles were stuck. There was no chance of removing the shoes and nothing else to do. He had to take them off and go barefoot into HDive, leaving the boots sticking out in front of the bumper of Kuzepych’s bus.

Athanasius approached Max in the evening, when that one was busy with an important practical matter: pick out from the tangled mess a pair of socks of more or less similar colour. There were six washers for the entire HDive. They were all in the room next to the shower and, since there were many people in HDive, things were always mixed up. What they had not tried. Basins signed with markers, labels on things, ribbons sewn on, and allowing only several people to wash at the same time – nothing helped.

Max stated at first that he did not care. He was not going anywhere. Then he said that, so be it, he would go for the company, although he knew ahead of time that the girl would turn out to be this woofer.

“Why is that?”

“Law of the j-jungle! Pretty g-girls always have dogs as friends. Is your G-Gulia pretty?” he asked.

Athanasius wisely kept quiet. He would not rush to call Gulia “his.” It seemed to him that love at first sight is a TV cliché. It was totally different with Yara. Virus love is outside of the rules. Moreover, he had already recovered.

Max pulled a sock onto his enormous foot and wriggled his toes. “Forbidden to meet with w-warlocks!” he said.

“Nothing in the HDive charter says so. I checked. Besides, they’re not warlocks!” Athanasius stood up for them. It was unpleasant for him that Gulia was called this.

“Then what?”

“Well… eh-eh… simply going astray a little.”

Max neighed. “And what will y-you give me, if I g-go?” he asked.

Athanasius punched him in the back and hurt his own fist. Max liked this. He adored it when they hurt themselves against him. But Max liked to pretend to be a dull bodybuilder more. Moreover, he pretended with such perseverance that increasingly he was actually becoming one.

“Okay, I’ll go for free. Only t-take this! I…I’ll not talk with your woofer. And if she tries to come near me, I’ll un… un…unscrew her head!”

“Of course, not a problem!” Athanasius hurriedly agreed.

Max’s subsequent behaviour surprised him. The giant, allegedly not attaching any special importance to the meeting, began nervously to choose a pair of jeans and fling out turtlenecks from the dresser.

“This will k-kill me! And this is s-small!” he swore and again declared that he was not going anywhere, because there was nothing for him to wear and could in no way go in the hdiver jacket. Athanasius wanted to propose his own sweater to Max but understood that for such a moose it would only be fit to be carried in the pocket as a talisman.

Max kicked the dresser and dejectedly sat down on the floor. “I hate S-Supovna! She fattened me so that now I can’t get into anything!”

“What’s the difference to you? You’re going for the company,” Athanasius consoled him.

“I don’t want them to th…think that I’m a d…dolt!” Max declared.

Finally, he succeeded in finding decent clothing and calmed down. True, not for long, because he was concerned about what to do with his hair. Max did not have hair lying on top. He did not want to comb straight back. One obstinate strand always fell down with a comb-over to the left, while one to the right would show an unfortunate pimple.

Athanasius wisely kept away. The best way to enrage someone is to start to calm him down. The words “Calm down!” have a clearly expressed psychopathic effect. However, it was useless to explain to Max that he would look seven times better if he would not stare or try to walk with tense muscles.

Ul was lying around on the hammock and watching Max blowing hot and cold. “Take an example from me! The last time I looked into the mirror was when I helped drag it along the stairs!” he bragged.

“It’s b…because you’re an i…invalid!”

“I’m not an invalid! I’m a user of my own appearance!” Ul objected.

“Then clean up your own m-mess, loser of your own appearance! I’m stumbling all over!” Max bellowed and, after pulling the rope, catapulted Ul from the hammock.

Ul cackled. He was a slob not even squared but to some degree off the chart. So, if an object of his fell, he would not try to pick it up but simply began to consider that where it fell would be its new place. “I wouldn’t dream of it! I can live both in cleanliness and in a den. But you only in cleanliness. It means I’m the more advanced model of man.”

Here Ul belittled Max slightly. By and large, Max was also a slob, just that he was convinced that outside spreaders prevented him from living in tidiness.

Max made preparations till four in the morning and so tired all the inhabitants of the attic that Ul left to sleep in the stable and the quick-tempered Rodion began to throw heavy objects at Max. Sometimes he even got a hit.

The meeting was set at Belorusskaya at six in the evening, in the centre hall. Here at the place, Athanasius stopped and belatedly recalled that there are altogether two Belorusskaya.13 However, Gulia answered rather strangely in the text message.

What station are we meeting at : Koltsevaya or Radialnaya? Athanasius hurriedly texted and obtained an answer in the style, Hee-hee! Green bear kisses you!

I am serious!

Hee-hee! It too!

Athanasius tortured the phone with one hand, and caught the fleeing Max with the other. Along the way Max managed to change his mind three times, and at the very last moment Athanasius almost had to pull the emergency stop, because Max tried to remain in the subway car.

They arrived at six oh one. There were no girls. They ran off to Koltsevaya, but they were not there either. Athanasius argued at length about which centre hall. Max psyched out. He stood and cursed Gulia’s friend. Athanasius was a hundred times sorry that he had gotten Max involved. Although who else to bring? Ul has Yara, and useless to ask Rodion.

A beautiful woman emerged from the passageway and began to shout into her phone, “The weather here is disgusting! No sun! The tap in the shower is broken!” There was triumph in her voice that she could not be made happy again.

“I bet she was talking to her husband. Her voice has a domestic intonation!” said Athanasius, when the woman had left.

“Ah! Would kill all of them broads! Indeed, where does the sun come from in the subway?” answered Max.

Probably, in order not to let Max kill all women, a puny policeman with a big stick approached him and checked his documents. Two minutes later, another policeman without a baton also approached and checked the documents. Again they turned out to be in order. Athanasius hoped that someone would also look at his passport but no one was interested. He was even offended that he appeared so exemplary.

Athanasius again wanted to go down to Koltsevaya but was afraid that while he ran about, Max would skip off. He started to phone. The first time the line was out of range, and the second time Gulia picked it up but only the rumble of a train was heard.

Gulia and friend phoned back about fifteen minutes later, but from the city, not from Belorusskaya. It turned out they were sitting in a little cafe at Mayakovskaya14 and had no intention of going down to the subway. After speculating a little about the working principles of a girl’s brain and even about its location, they went to Mayakovskaya.

“Oh, I live not particularly f-far from here! Can drop in at mine later!” Max came to life.

“With the girls?”

Max was even frightened, “What, are you m-mocking me? You don’t kn-know my mama! And g-grandma,” he added after twenty seconds. “And a-aunt,” he said as well a minute later.

This might sound funny, but the big guy Max grew up in strictly female surroundings. Papa, once available, did not last longer than the mother-in-law’s first bout of greediness, the aunt’s first spring aggravation, and the first timid attempt to explain to grandmother that a latch is structurally provided in the john.

Max lived in the centre of Moscow, in a seven-storied building, with ceilings so high that in childhood he lured friends into the apartment and proposed to spit to the ceiling. Over the years there turned out only one, not so much a spitting but jumping comrade, and the saliva, with a good mix of chocolate, was still visible about six years later.

The apartment was old, poorly planned, with bricked-up doors leading nowhere, and a huge built-in closet, in which one could spend the night if necessary. True, to do this one had to sort out the mess of hundreds of jars of preserves so ancient that no one resolved to try or lifted a hand to throw them out.

The windows looked out onto the Garden Ring. When cerebral laziness attacked Max (and for some strange reason it always coincided with the need to get something ready), he would sit on the windowsill and watch as the cars crawled along the Ring.

Cars were always crawling along it and it worried small Max whether they could end sometimes. In the middle of the night, woken up by the roar of motorcycles, he would approach a window barefoot and check if there were cars. Convinced that they were still moving and, meaning they did not end, reassured, he would lie down in bed.

The little cafe turned out to be in the courtyard. “The place’s o-out of the way. Am…ambush!” Max stated confidently.

“Why?”

“Simpler to ar…arrange it in a cafe! You have the schnepper?” It turned out that Athanasius did not have his schnepper. Only his clms, and even that was in the knapsack.

“Let’s do this! I’ll drop in and if I don’t appear in sixty seconds, run to save me!” Athanasius said and pushed the door.

When he came out ten minutes later, Max, huffing and puffing, was breaking off an iron rod from the fence. “Why so l-long?”

“They’re right at the entrance. Chatting!” Athanasius, embarrassed, started to justify himself.

Gulia and Nina were sitting at the second table from the door. Max was presented by Athanasius as “my friend Maximilian.” He himself did not know why he blurted out “Maximilian.” When he was nervous, his tongue accomplished unthinkable tricks.

“Athanasius showed us in the window how you broke the fence! It was so amusing! Nina even thought that your turtleneck would burst!” Gulia chirped.

On this remark “the friend Maximilian” sorted out which was which girl, and began to examine Nina unnoticeably. To his amazement, she turned out to be not bad. The horse lover Max would describe the colour of her hair as “rose grey” blond.

Athanasius was also surprised. Yesterday, when Gulia said that Nina was unhappy, he imagined to himself a rather skinny girl, whom they would support under the elbow. The “rose grey” blonde turned out to be rosy, excellently proportioned, but somewhat in the style of “Why did you lose my bow?”

The lost-bow style was manifested in that she batted her eyelashes, pouted her lips, and constantly uttered, “Why did you drag me here? And coffee without cognac here? You just watch, I’ll kick up a fuss. You’ll have to answer for everything!”

She liked the strong Max. Soon she began to throw little bread balls at him, nudged him with an elbow, and repeated, “You have terrible eyes! I’m certain you’re a terrible person!” The “terrible person” listened and was delighted. He reminded Athanasius of a large dog, which no one ever patted, but now suddenly they decided to be nice to.

The cafe was comfortable, with cheerful figures on the walls and the ceiling. An amusing family sat at the first table. The father was chewing with such caricature importance, as if eating up the chocolate cake was doing an enormous favour to the cake, the institution, and to humanity as a whole. The son huddled up to the mother and was an exact copy of her.

“A child looks like the one who loves him,” Athanasius summed it up and began to gauge whether this was so. This was his internal game. He brought forth a thesis, and then chose arguments “for” and “against.”

“Hey!” Gulia hailed him. “You’ve been stirring the tea for ten minutes already! Maybe you’ll stop?”

Athanasius came to. “Don’t pay any attention! I have a fit of contentment!” he explained.

Gulia had a short argument with the waiter that she would guess all the numbers of his student card and they would not have to pay for coffee. “It’s nothing!” Gulia said modestly. “But then I lose things all the time! Here Nina just finds things!”

Athanasius unnoticeably sent two roubles through a hole in his pocket into his boots and proposed to Nina to say where they were. She found them, slightly screwing up her face like a math professor whose multiplication table was being checked.

Max thought for a long time what to ask, then recalled that in school they stole his phys ed form from the locker room, and asked who needed it. The rose-grey blonde smiled coquettishly. Her face was unbelievably flexible and expressive, with dimples. These pits, like shots from mortar, appeared at a new place every time.

“No one. They simply dropped it out the window. But here the little soldier in the crack behind the heater, this is interesting. Do you remember, you cried all night?” It turned out Max remembered. He also began to stutter then, although they had a popular story in the family that the neighbour’s dog frightened him.

Then they went to stroll around the centre. Max, timid at first and holding Nina fearfully like a doorknob in a public sanitary facility, gradually grew bolder and proposed to show her how to break the sentry’s neck correctly so that he would not let out a squeak.

“Look, I’m squeaking! Squeak-squeak-squeak!” Nina immediately gave voice. A happy Max grabbed her by the neck.

Gulia and Athanasius were walking behind, not too close so that the violent pair would not bump into them.

“Why did you say that she’s unhappy? I think she’s cheerful,” asked Athanasius.

“They all abandoned her. Mlada – this is our acquaintance – says that she has an aura of celibacy and can only wash it off with elephant blood!” said Gulia in complete seriousness. She pronounced with awe the name of Beldo’s servant.

“With what blood?”

“You mock in vain. We even went to the zoo, but really, how do you get to an elephant?”

Athanasius mumbled something.

Nina was talking animatedly about something, whereas Max was largely limited to gestures. Not wanting to stutter once more, he substituted words with movements of the head. He had the richest mimicry. He knew how to pucker his forehead in twenty ways. As for his nose – like the tuber of a jolly tractor driver – in general it skilfully conveyed expressions of every kind. It became a harmonica, fidgeted, or merrily breathed heavily and noisily.

At the end of Tverskaya, the hdivers had a charge marker under one of the numerous memorial boards. Athanasius recalled it when fifty steps away Nina suddenly sprained her ankle and Gulia in the same second dashed onto the road. He had noticed earlier that the concept of roadway did not exist for her.

Athanasius caught her a second before she was smeared on the side of a van sweeping past. Cars squealed with their brakes. Max and Nina, having pulled off her shoes, rushed from behind. The traffic cop, this herdsman of cars, with his stomach sticking out, stood in his booth. When they crossed the road, he whistled angrily but did not try to catch them. Pedestrians, even clearly mad, were small game to him.

“Well, and where were you rushing to?” Athanasius asked on the other side of Tverskaya.

Gulia thought for a bit, obviously trying to figure out why. “I forgot to buy napkins… Yes, napkins!” she said uncertainly.

Athanasius was surprised by the speed of reaction of the newborn ele. About five seconds later Gulia was finally convinced that she needed napkins and it was for them that she hardly remained on the sidewalk.

After mending Nina’s heel, they strolled for about another two hours and before parting they started to negotiate another date.

“Let’s meet F-Friday!” said Max.

Nina and Gulia exchanged glances. “We can’t on Friday.”

“Why?”

They did not get a clear answer. The girls hesitated. Nevertheless, Athanasius knew how to sum up from the scraps of answers that on Friday the warlocks were up to something. And it would be in the psychology school at Bolotnaya Square, on the next admission day.

They said goodbye at the subway. Nina offered her cheek to Max and outlined the place with a long nail. “I hope you don’t intend to kiss me? It’s so disgusting!” she prompted.

Max smooched her with athletic honesty, holding her head with his hands. Athanasius waited for some time to see whether Nina’s skull would crunch, but Nina turned out to be durable.

“Well now! Not enough that this terrible person meanly dragged me to a date! He even attacked me!” Nina was outraged, taking out a mirror in order to check the damage inflicted on her face.

While Athanasius was pondering whether he was obligated to kiss Gulia for the reason that Max kissed Nina and whether this would be plagiarism, Gulia got up on tiptoe – the difference in their height was large – and kissed Athanasius on the eyebrow. “Till we meet!”

Max neighed so abominably that Athanasius again gave him a fist. The train approached. They hopped into a car.

“Well, how do you like her?” Athanasius asked in the tunnel.

Max looked suspiciously at him. He, like that lady on the phone, did not like to admit being happy. Dissatisfaction, if you examine it, is universal currency, with which everything can be purchased, if we bargain long enough. “Who?”

“You know who.”

“N-not bad. Okay,” answered Max.

“For some reason it seems to me that this is for a long time,” said Athanasius. “Well, with Gulia. Not that intuition… Simply the more confused a situation, the more real it is, perhaps.” Max understood nothing and chuckled. The train slowed down, stopped, and again set off. “Now I’ll not calm down until I nail her ele. I know myself…” said Athanasius.

“Watch you don’t n-nail her together with it!” Max advised quietly. They were silent again. Max swayed peacefully, holding onto the handrail. Athanasius was bouncing like a sparrow.

“Did you understand everything?” he yelled into Max’s ear.

“Yes,” Max winced. “What did I un-understand?”

“Think!”

Max thought till the next station. “Ah! That my Nina, most likely, is from Beldo’s fort but not from D-Dolbushin’s? She’s a pr-practical student,” he stuttered.

“Oho!” thought Athanasius. “My Nina! He labelled her quickly! And several hours ago called her a dog.”

“I’m not on about that,” he said. “The warlocks are having a new recruitment! Would be nice to see how all this progress with them? Eh?”

Athanasius met Ul in HDive. Ul was standing with his schnepper similar to a double-barrel and aiming at a food can from fifteen steps away. He shot. The can remained standing. “Here I’m thinking about female whims. When it seems to someone that more time is spent with a horse and all that…” he said.

“Is it true?” asked Athanasius.

“It’s not about that. What forces them to behave like that at all? Maybe, a woman is capricious because it’s important for her to check if a man will stand the whims of a possible child? Some kind of test?”

“There are girls who aren’t capricious,” Athanasius said carelessly.

Ul again took a shot. “Who? Your telegrapher from Honduras? Holy! Dang! I suppose they learn to sleep on nails, eat with the head down, and open tanks with a finger.”

“They learned,” said Athanasius.

“What learned?”

“She perished,” Athanasius lowered his eyes. “Didn’t make contact. In the mountains, where there was the hidden transmitter, they found the safety pin from a grenade trampled into the ground.”

Ul grabbed his hand. “And you kept quiet?”

“I was joking. She’s alive. Sits at home. Bought a cookbook,” said Athanasius half-heartedly.

Ul pushed him away. “Some jokes!!! You’re simply a blockhead!”

“Aha,” admitted Athanasius. “I know.”

The can, which Ul aimed at, fell by itself.

Athanasius found Kaleria Valerevna in the teachers’ room, long and narrow. There was an argument: whether Kuzepych blocked up part of the corridor or it was stretched as a result of an unsuccessful dance of the shamans, who wanted to crush the teaching staff of HDive with the walls but did not manage and only stretched out the room.

Kavaleria was standing by the board with the timetable and considering how to make four instructors out of one free one in order to fill all the “windows.”

“Nothing pans out! People will again hang around with nothing to do! Looks like you have to be busy with the novices,” she complained.

“With the novices? Really the bees…?”

Kavaleria’s plait bobbed like a fishing float. “The last departed today. The bees calmed down, it means fall recruitment is finished. This fall we will recruit nine. Plus ‘beeless’ Rina.”

“You hand them over to Kuzepych. He knows how to keep everyone busy,” advised Athanasius.

Kavaleria smiled. “Well, what can I do for you?”

Athanasius told her, supplying the details. In his version, they met with the girls exclusively in the interests of HDive. “Certainly, can blast an attack marker, but there won’t just be some warlocks. Pity the ‘incubators’,” he finished.