the bookings would be unpaid. And that would be bad news. Indeed, he nodded grimly to himself, the pay was the whole point.
A cloud of steam hissed from a pipe by the roadside, and Sveta evaporated from his thoughts, replaced by recollections of the empty pan, and the steamy face. Had it been real, or a hallucination? Were his nerves really that bad? Maybe neither he nor Sveta belonged on the stage. Maybe he should forget his plan. Would he really be able to confound and perplex and command a paying audience, if he couldn’t successfully boil an egg? Did people these days even want magic? What with their pop music, private enterprise and foreign holidays … He rubbed his chin and nodded as her building came into view, allowing himself a quick ‘rum-pum-pum-pah’ along with Rachmaninov to raise his spirits.
When Sveta opened the door to Flat 8, Building 4, Corpus 6 on Turgenev Boulevard, Gor was taken aback to see that the apartment behind her was entirely in darkness. She looked dishevelled compared to previous weeks, her blonde hair puffy and tufted around her hamster-like cheeks, and her make-up smudged. They stood facing each other, him nodding good day and she seemingly frozen.
‘Good—’ Gor began and was immediately quelled with a ‘sssh!’ that rattled his bones. ‘What is it, Sveta? Is something wrong?’ he whispered, still standing in the doorway.
‘Quietly, Gor! As I told you, my little girl is sick today. She must have absolute quiet. She is … she is a highly strung girl, and suffers, you understand?’
Gor thought he did not understand, and frowned. ‘I have to get my things from the car. That will, I am sure, make a little noise, but I will be as careful—’
‘Oh no! You must not bring the magical cabinet into the apartment! No, no, that would be too much! The noise and excitement! We must just rehearse, as if we had it with us. No equipment, thank you.’
‘Make believe, Sveta? I am not convinced. Maybe we need to have a talk.’ He raised his eyebrows. Still Sveta stood in the doorway, stepping uneasily from one swollen, slippered foot to the other, not inviting him in. The warm smell of the apartment rolled into his nostrils: furniture polish and something edible – gravy, perhaps.
He cleared his throat. ‘May I?’
‘Oh, of course, of course, come in, how silly of me!’ She stood away from the door and flicked the light switch. A blowsy ceiling lamp trickled pinkish light along the narrow hallway. ‘Please, take off your shoes! Here we are, some slippers – for men!’ Sveta, her face beaming in a way that made Gor uncomfortable, handed him a pair of navy suede slippers with grubby woollen insides. He had the impression they had been waiting a long time for a suitable pair of feet, although they were not particularly dusty, and gave no home to spiders. There was something about them that reminded him of the pleasure boats down on the river: abandoned.
She bade him sit on the bench by the telephone table to remove his shoes, and stood over him as he did so. She repeatedly glanced down the corridor to a room at the end, where a door lay ajar. He guessed the daughter must be occupying that wing, and must be suffering: her mama was clearly anxious. Perhaps he should have brought melon.
As he pulled on the second slipper he heard a flapping, followed by a whistle of wings through the air. He raised his head as an avian screech rang out, followed by what sounded like a series of muffled oaths, deep within the apartment. Sveta giggled, her fist pressed into her mouth, pushing down on her small, receding chin. She turned to him.
‘That’s Kopek, our parakeet. Albina loves him, and she’s teaching him to talk. I think Albina has a special relationship with animals – an affinity, I think it’s called,’ she confided with an air of pride.
Gor raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The bird had sounded as if it were in pain. The screeches continued, becoming louder and more insistent, and then interspersed with a series of thuds that made the light fittings rattle. Gor and Sveta looked at each other. The latter dropped her smile, sighed and pursed her lips.
‘Just one moment,’ she said, raising a lone index finger into his face before hurrying down the corridor and through the open door at the end, pulling it closed behind her.
‘Be my guest,’ he murmured to himself.
He turned to the bookcase as he waited, perusing the familiar titles and shaking his head occasionally. Scratchy sibilants hissed from the door at the far end of the hall, followed by a storm of shushing. He hunched his shoulders into his ears as the unfortunate bird continued squawking. He dropped the book in his hand – The Mother, by Maxim Gorky – and leapt inches into the air when the mysterious door clattered open and a shrieking girl-cum-devil came dashing into the corridor. A round, pink face framed rolling marble eyes under ropes of hair, fixed into pigtails by two enormous shaggy pom-poms, which flew fiercely about her. She was laughing. Or crying. He wasn’t sure. She was definitely running – towards him.
The shrieking noise the girl was making morphed into an extended ‘ahhhh!’ of terror as her foot caught in the edge of the runner and she started to tumble. In that moment, as she sought to regain her balance, she reminded Gor of a bear cub in a hunter’s trap: her half-grown body out of her control, its constituent parts flailing around her haunches, the fore-paws and hind-paws huge and silly, but also full of menace. It was in the last moment before impact that Gor noticed she was carrying a small, brightly coloured bird in her right hand, its beak stretched in a soundless, endless squawk of terror. He raised his hands.
He heard the impact before he felt it. The air whistled from his lungs as he dropped backwards onto the bookcase, the girl felling him like a tree in the forest. For a moment he was in blackness as a mass of hair, smelling of gravy, furniture polish and pom-poms, claimed his face. He was aware of pain in his back and a tightness in his chest. There followed a second of absolute quiet, and then a roar as if a shell had struck the apartment. The girl began heaving sobs, coughing and spluttering as she fought to right herself, all the time not letting go of the small, still bird in her hand.
‘Kopeka! My Kopek-chik! He’s deeeeaaaaadddd!’ The words erupted from her.
‘Oh, malysh, shush now, collect yourself, and let’s have a look at you.’ Sveta huddled over her daughter, trying to heave her up from the tangle of rug and bookcase and Gor, yanking ineffectually at her arm. ‘I’ve told you not to run in the house, haven’t I?’
‘He’s deeeaaaaadddd! You made me kill him!’
‘No no, I can see his eyes are gleaming – look! He’s just stunned. Let’s get you up and check on our poor guest. Are you injured?’
‘I hate you!’
‘Now, now baby-kins! Mummy didn’t mean to make you fall over.’
‘But you diiiiiidddddd!’
‘I just want you to behave—’
‘Ladies – I can’t breathe,’ Gor broke in as the discussion became heated. The girl crushing his chest glowered at her mother and snivelled at the limp bird cupped in her hands. They carried on arguing. A flutter of panic rose in his throat and his hands flew into the air.
‘Help!’ It was the only thing he was able to say.
Albina squinted into his face, sniffed behind her trembling hands for a moment and shifted her weight up and sideways.
As she did so, the bird made an utterance in a high-pitched, acid voice. Gor’s eyebrows met his hairline and Sveta’s jaw dropped. Albina grinned as she wiped her nose on her
