“Bring the hourglass!”
Sergey Ilyich anxiously turned pink. He thought for several seconds, knitted his brows, and made a decision. “I’m quick! I had the feeling that everything would be decided today.”
“So the thing is with you?” Guy was surprised.
“No, no, not at all! A friend is waiting for me not far from here,” he acknowledged.
Guy smiled. “Ingvar! The money!” Guy reminded Till, who got up reluctantly and began to get down tottering. He returned quickly. The berserkers accompanying him unloaded from the trunk an enormous TV box glued together with Scotch tape.
Their recent guest emerged from the parking lot simultaneously with Till. Apparently, he had been watching from the bushes. His boots were wet. He was holding in his hands a briefcase stained with soil.
“Saw your friend?” Guy asked with irony. “Let’s have a look!”
The antique dealer nervously looked sideways at the box. “This is ridiculous! You’re a serious person. Of course you won’t cheat me!” he said, having convinced himself, and handed the briefcase to Guy.
Guy wiped with his sleeve the soil from the lock. He took out a bulky, thick hourglass with a copper stand. The sand inside the hourglass was bluish. “No doubt. The work is truly his,” Guy acknowledged in an undertone. “Look, Ingvar! What do the numbers 300 and 1 mean?”
Till took the hourglass from Guy, looked at it, and poked at the stand with a rigid finger. “I don’t know about the numbers. Doesn’t this clay idol remind you of anyone?” he asked, wheezing.
Sergey Ilyich gave a cough, drawing attention to himself. Guy turned to him. “It seems you said something about some skin!” he reminded him. The antique dealer hurriedly shoved a hand into the briefcase and with readiness handed Guy a ripped leather rag covered with writing. The other half was missing.
“This is all? I hope you don’t have the other half? And then it’ll surface in a month for an additional three wishes,” Guy asked severely. The antique dealer hastily shook his head. He held before himself the briefcase, clutching it with both hands.
“Ah yes! The wishes!” Guy recalled and with disgust nudged the box with his foot to the antique dealer. Then he stretched out his hands and simultaneously touched the right and left temple of his guest. Sergey Ilyich took a sip of air. For a moment, it even seemed to him that Guy’s hands met inside his head. At the same time, the fingers of one hand were icy while those of the other were almost white hot.
“Well, that’s it!” Guy said tiredly, taking away his hands. “Ingvar! As usual!”
With great care Nekalaev and Till took the trader by the arms and led him onto the gangway for Gomorrah. A well-fed berserker solemnly carried the enormous box behind them. His wide face like a samovar panted with importance.
Sergey Ilyich took a dozen steps and, coming to his senses, stopped. “Why there? Perhaps I came from there?” he asked suspiciously. Nekalaev let go of his arm and courteously moved aside, yielding his place to the sturdy fellow with the neck of a bull.
The water babbled. Sergey Ilyich sat and laughed hysterically. Guy did not cheat. He actually obtained all that he wanted. The open box stood by his feet. Occasionally he took out a bundle, took off the seal, and tossed it up. Money flew away like a fan. They fell into the water and floated on it. The cough torturing him since winter had disappeared somewhere. He felt in himself such health as he had never felt for twenty years. And, most importantly, with his new gift, the antique dealer knew what would happen to him. He knew so precisely and unmistakably that he even did not jump up to beat on the thick door tightly pressed into the partition.
It was useless even to shout. No one would hear. He was in a ship’s hold lower than the Moscow River. Above it were two more empty decks. The pump outside hummed monotonically. The tight cabin deprived of windows in the hold of Gomorrah slowly filled up with water…
In the same minute two decks above, foreheads touching, Till and Guy were examining the parchment cut slantwise:
Its demise is clever
Only true to the
Mysterious verd
On golden wings to it wi
Given three hundred
And that same time
When day has
Will break the jug an
Will open hissing
Traitor on
In that the lie
Truth
Guy again picked up the hourglass. He began to look closely. Earlier it seemed to him that all the sand had trickled through. Now he made out bluish grains of sand sticking to the upper flask. How much? Two dozens? Less? It was not simple to count them.
“Mityai Zheltoglazyi disappeared three centuries ago. He didn’t return from a dive. Before the dive, he wrote a little poem, made the hourglass, and drew Gorshenya on them. Purpose?” he asked. Till, starting to snuffle, tugged at his wild boar head on a short choker chain. “A real watchdog!” thought Guy.
Chapter 4
At Volokolamskaya Station
Between Shchukinskaya and Tushinskaya stations, passengers following the Krasnopresnenskii radius can see Volokolamskaya Station in the window of the subway car.
This station was intended for the residents of a housing estate on the Tushino airfield site but was never constructed. Exit to the surface and any external decorations are absent at the station, only several lamps illuminate the deserted platform and two rows of pillars.
It is a station of standard design, with pillars, shallow placement. 10
Only subconscious suicides, tunnel explorers, and hdivers risk riding between subway cars. A young person belonging at once to all three groups jumped at the last second between the last and next-to-last subway car of a train starting at Tushinskaya Station. He was twenty percent suicide, sixty percent tunnel explorer, and hundred percent hdiver. Although today he had replaced the hdiver jacket with a hoodie.
The train caterpillar slowly pushed its way into the tunnel. It crawled lazily at first, but after getting excited, began to twitch its sides, desiring to scratch them against the thick wires sheathed in rubber. Each jerk could turn out to be the last for the person in the sweatshirt. The foothold was poor and there was even nothing really for the hands to hold onto properly. Soon he would have to touch his clms, and how to hang on then was incomprehensible.
Light cut through the windows of the subway car. He saw how the yellow quadrangle, shaking, slid along the sheathing. All of a metre separated him from the people in the car, daydreaming, reading, listening to music, texting. Interesting, will someone hear his scream if he flies under the wheels? He began to feel sorry that he had gotten involved in all this when the caterpillar slowed down. The rumble of the train spread and ceased to deafen. The light from the windows no longer reflected off the walls but stumbled against vertical white pillars appearing out of nowhere.
A light flickered for a second between the third or fourth pillar. Someone switched on and immediately switched off a lamp. This served as the signal for the young person in the sweatshirt. He pulled up his sleeve using his teeth, gauged the distance, and, after seizing the lion on the blazing
The distinctive characteristic of a shallow placement subway station in Moscow is its depth underground – just below the frost line.
