She Drowned in Baikal

SHE DROWNED IN BAIKAL

1.

My wife used to beat me.

A man is ashamed to admit this...

Even when I cleaned the apartment and cooked her a romantic dinner, she still found something to find fault with. You cooked the wrong thing, it smells of bleach, you work too much! Sometimes she would hit me in the nose with her palm. Swear back? She didn't care what I thought. If we had children, I would have found solace in my love for them, but Lena and I had been sleeping in different rooms for a long time... "Why did you live with me for so many years if you were suffering?" she screamed when I had already filed for divorce. "Because I loved you!" I answered with pain in my voice.

The feeling of loneliness and guilt over the broken relationship undermined my health - and I had memory lapses. Dissociative amnesia. I didn't treat the disease because I own a second-hand bookshop and work there for five or six days in a week. However, I WILL NEVER FORGET one story that began there...

On Friday, I was "rounding up" the cash register at the end of the evening shift. And suddenly a girl flew into the room, a girl, how old was she - nineteen? A blonde with cold turquoise eyes, carelessly drawn eyebrows and pale skin. A torn denim suit that was too big for her hid her thinness.

"I feel like you need a friend, and I need help!" she spoke quickly with a barely perceptible speech defect.

"How can I help you?" I was surprised.

"First with "The Invisible Man." She deftly jumps onto the stepladder and hands me a volume of Herbert Wells from the top shelf.

"Classics are always a great choice!" I approve and think. Her speech impediment could be... an accent. - Are you a tourist? Going to Lake Baikal?

She babbled incoherently in response:

- Look, I'll leave you the contact details of my hotel. It's in Listvyanka. Please call there in three days and ask if I'm okay. If not, go to the police! For this, I will thank you in any way during my life and even after... DID YOU REMEMBER?

The last words sounded with such force and alarm that I did not believe in their seriousness.

- You are traveling alone, young lady, and are you afraid of a maniac from the banks of the Angara? There was one, but these days, nothing will happen to you. Listvyanka is a quiet place. - I paused, seeing her impatience. - But just in case: what is your name?

- Mary Popova, - she answered and unceremoniously squeezed a sticker into the lapel of my jacket. - Did you like me at least?

I left the inappropriate question unanswered. I unfold the paper: written in nervous handwriting are a) a “telegram” from the hotel “1642” (the maximum depth of Lake Baikal in meters), and b) a series of incomprehensible numbers: “9 2 1 20 21”. But what is this? Also units of measurement? Pages? A phone number?

While I was reading, the door slammed. Mary didn’t even say goodbye. She was probably offended that I wasn’t delighted with a girl I was seeing for the first time in my life... I went outside. She was waiting for me there; a wave of a smile rolled across her thin lips:

- Are you thirty? So how is it, a midlife crisis?

This tactlessness was already irritating.

- Mind your own business, honey!

- Young bears like milfs, mature ones like honey...

This time I ignore the provocation.

- Dear Mary! You'd better ask your friends or relatives for that favor.

- What do you know! - she flared up and walked away, then turned, piercing me with her blue eyes: - My uncle Kurt Cobain, and he pulled the trigger... No one knows about my route except you. That's enough. But please don't let me down! I'm betting on you!

She walks away, quickening her pace; her crumpled skirt flutters in the March wind. Miss Fragility, Miss Ridiculousness. I could catch up with her and ask more. But why? Instead, I closed the door, brought another volume of Wells and leafed through pages 9, 2, 1, 20, 21, as if I wanted to read Mary Popov's thoughts there:

"He is black," the maid said, "and here there is only blackness; the bloody iron bar was lying in the nettles; after the murder, the Invisible Man apparently fled towards the hills, and armed manhunters were pursuing him..."

.......................................................

... while reading, I lost my memory - and suddenly found myself sitting on a chair, with numb legs and a rapidly beating heart! I look around. It seems that I have been busy with unclear activities for a long time: it is getting light outside the window, although it is still dark around, and in the display case, illuminated by a lamp... a book by Pamela Travers "Mary Poppins", in the most prominent place. Perhaps the stranger read the title and introduced herself by this name? She even came up with a last name starting with “P-o-p”.

But what is this show for?

A cockroach in the head of a young lady? Or...

2.

I didn’t have to call the “1642” hotel. The next day I notice her face on the news from the hotel’s surveillance cameras; the voiceover anxiously reports:

“Fishermen have discovered the body of a young woman. It floated up in an ice hole near the village of Listvyanka... the identity is being established...”

It was a blonde. How monstrous when young people die! Poor girl. Too fragile for this world or, on the contrary, too stubborn.

False Mary.

DEAD MARY.

3.

In my youth I left a girl with a kindheart, who loved me. Cruelly and without reason. I perceived my second relationship as atonement, karma, and was ready to endure almost everything, but my ex-wife did not understand this sacrifice. Moreover, Lena claimed that I myself pounced on her and then forgot about what I had done. I argued that she was the one who beat me and asked Lena to get treatment; she demanded that I get treatment. The stalemate repeated itself for years...

Having learned about the death of the guest from the bookstore, I felt the already familiar feelings of helplessness and humiliation. On stiff legs, I walked to the police station, where I told them everything in detail and showed them the sticker with numbers that the blonde had left for me. I repeated to the department staff like a mantra:

- If I had known a little more, I would have saved her!..

One young policeman took pity on me (or got tired of my whining) and shared operational information - although already known to journalists:

# hotel "1642" turned out to be a backwater hostel, and the girl checked in there without registering; no documents or phone were found on her;

# locals saw her go down onto the ice while the owner of the hostel, nicknamed "captain" (in fact, a former fisherman) was drinking on the pier and playing backgammon with his assistant; thanks to this alibi, he is not a suspect;

# an examination established the presence of alcohol in the girl's blood; the main version: in a drunken state, she went out onto the ice, walked to a neighboring village and fell into the water in a thawed patch there;

# cause of death - asphyxia as a result of water ingress (self-drowning?).

# the body was not identified and they promised to bury it in three days on the outskirts of the Irkutsk cemetery, with a cross and a number, as required by law for unidentified bodies; no criminal case will be opened;

When I asked why she asked me to call and help three days later and behaved so strangely, the young policeman recommended that I drink glycine and “not worry about it.” But how can I wash down my guilt with glycine if MARY, as I continued to call the deceased, MARY ASKED ME FOR HELP, and I didn’t hear?

SISSY IDIOT!

I ran out of the police station and took some pills for forgetfulness on the go – symptomatic therapy. Then I started my “Skoda” and drove to Listvyanka. I am a careful driver: my car moved smoothly in the daylight between the lapels of the dense forest, like a lock along the zipper of a shaggy jacket, but this only revealed the fear of losing my memory and taking a wrong turn... Fortunately, I reached the village without incident. I parked the car at the pier and collected my thoughts.

To establish the identity of the deceased and help the investigation - that's what I wanted! There were two days off ahead. An eternity. One bad thing: when I opened the glove compartment, I did not find the air pistol there, which was there in case of roadside showdowns.

I was haunted by the feeling that someone was watching me.

4.

The Baikal Mountains stood serenely frozen in the distance, like guardians of an ancient secret. Listvyanka, on the contrary, was bustling: barkers shouted about excursions, tourists bought peled under the guise of omul and took pictures in the melted snow. Only one person attracted my attention. He was from the old guard: a captain's cap with a red star, a tattoo of maps on his wrist. The guy was sitting on a bench by the pier and drinking something cloudy from a metal flask. I immediately guessed who was in front of me.

- Captain, can I ask you a question? I'm a friend of that girl... she stayed with you.

At first, he thought I was a "hidden cop" and didn't want to talk; gradually, sips of an incomprehensible substance loosened the captain's tongue:

- You hipsters, why do you come here? Every year bears gnaw people in Port Baikal, tourists crash on the sharp slopes of Listvyanka, and earthquakes! Have you heard about Proval Bay?

- I know, I'm one of the locals, - I noted, - but people were saved there!

- And three hundred houses, and three hundred yurts, thousands of heads of cattle, - the captain listed in a hoarse voice, - water poured out of wells, people prayed out of fear!.. And have you heard about the two Capes of the Dead on different banks? There, all the villagers were poisoned by sturgeon at a wedding, from which the cartilage was not removed.

I felt like a character in a horror movie, as if this were Twin Peaks, and not Listvyanka!

- Listen, captain, but cartilage is not poisonous.

- Don't be smart, young man, but listen! The further north you go, the more dangerous it is: in the forest you can be shot by poachers and even the military, and on the water... When I worked as a rescuer, back in the Soviet era, we received an SOS signal, we sailed in, and there... (Drumming his fingers on the flask, he almost screamed:) NO ONE! NO PEOPLE, NO SHIP! THEY ALL DISAPPEARED INTO NOWHERE! Do you understand?

The interlocutor started chatting - it means it's time to ask questions about Mary:

- Captain, please tell me, did this missing tourist communicate with other guests? What time did she leave? Did she leave any things?.. Maybe you drank together, chatted?

- NO! That's my answer to all the questions at once. She arrived in the evening and left. She didn't even have a phone, only a bag with women's rags and cash...

The captain fell silent, took a sip from his flask, looked around. Then he grabbed me by the sleeve, pulled me towards him:

- Do you know why I named my hostel that? "1642". It's not about marketing. SHADOWS of the lake live at such a depth and drag their victims there. I feel sorry for the girl, but what can I do... just close the topic and hush it up!

I didn't ask him any more questions. It was already getting dark and "the weather was blowing," as the old people say - the wind was pushing me in the back and beckoning me onto the ice of the lake, to walk along the same route as Mary.

It was a mistake. Thoughts about the deceased distorted my sense of reality...

5.

Baikal is a glass eye, indifferently looking at the sky. The ice stretches to the very horizon. Below me is a crystal abyss, beautiful and cold, with bubbles-"nails" inside the blackness. I slowly walk along the ice along the shore and think about the shadows in the transparent depths...

Ships and planes were sinking in Baikal. White Guards were drowning in Baikal, retreating under the blows of the Reds. Genghis Khan's servants threw the last warriors of the Kurykan Turkic tribe, their wives and horses into the icy waters of the lake... People will forever divide the lake between themselves and invent terrible legends about it to justify their own helplessness before the forces of nature. But the lake doesn't care. It belongs to other, immortal forces... What if THEY stole the ships the captain spoke of? SHADOWS that erase people from the very fabric of existence! No photographs, no traces. This is how totalitarian states destroyed the memory of their victims...

I quicken my pace, feel myself freezing in the wind and no longer remember how long I've been walking and how far I've gone from the shore. It seems as if my legs are repeating a familiar path. Lonely algae and crustaceans, frozen by the frost, occasionally flash under the ice. My knees involuntarily buckle and my boots slip into the ice hummocks, but I want to think not about my own safety, but about the mysterious numbers on Mary's sticker; they sound like a song of the wind:

“9 2 1 20 21”.

I have already tried calling them as a number - no use; I tried to see the date in the numbers; I simply entered them into the search engine on my phone. I only found the coordinates of a dense forest in the African state of Togo... Nothing else, no coincidences. Then what could it be? Random financial transactions or a password? But they did not find either a phone or a bank card on her.

And what if this is a code for me personally? I have read about such cases...

For example, in 1970, in the Norwegian Isdal Valley, the charred body of a young woman with phenobarbital in her blood was found. According to her false passports, it was established that she had traveled around Europe under different names. The official version is suicide. But there are suggestions that she was involved in encryption and espionage, or was a sex worker and was hiding from someone.

In another case, a dead man was found in Australia. He had no documents with him, and all the tags on his clothes were cut off. In his pocket were cigarettes (possibly poisoned) and a scrap of paper with the Persian words Tamam Shud, "The End", torn from a collection of rubai by Omar Khayyam. The book itself, with a missing page, was found in an abandoned car, and encrypted notes remained on its cover. Even the most powerful computers in the world have not been able to decipher them.

Then why did I think that I could single-handedly decipher Mary's cipher? - the Poetry of Death and Loneliness itself...

......................................................

... I lost my memory and did not perceive the world around me... consciousness returned when the ice under me was already breaking and pulling me down. This is the end! Water pierced my body. I try to cling to the edges of the ice hole, my fingers are slipping, I'm drowning... at the last moment I manage to break free, pushing off with my feet from something viscous. Shark, shark! - I crawl along the ice, - just so as not to end up in a new thawed patch!

After a while, having gained courage, I get up. I run through the wind to the shore, where, like a lighthouse, a familiar sign flickers: "H TEL 1642". Two letters do not glow. Now it is clear why a hostel without stars is mistaken for a hotel. I would smile at this, but my facial muscles are cramping from the cold...

Finally, voices are heard nearby - salvation! - the hostel door opens, strong hands grab me by the shoulders, pull me into the warmth. But who is it? I see: the captain and a red-haired girl unfamiliar to me... The smell of smoke from the stove tickles my nose, they hastily wrap me in a warm blanket, put tea with something citrusy on the table. I drink greedily, and the hot drink burns my lips.

- Stupid blockhead, ...! - the captain yells meanwhile and adds choice swear words to every word. - Why did you go there alone, ...?.. stay here now, ...

I nod, bring my palms together in a gesture of supplication and look for words of gratitude for my saviors, but my tongue does not obey me, and my eyes stick together. Under the captain's curses, sleep unexpectedly overtakes me... In it, I dream of Mary. I caught up with her, and she ran away - through the bookshelves, along the street, through the forest, on the ice. At some point I fall on her and we fall to the bottom of the lake, into the dark waters, and we unite there, either in a kiss, or in a bite, or, dying, in a desperate theft of each other's breath...

Then the dream repeated itself.

6.

In the morning, yesterday's kind angel wakes me up with a light touch: henna-colored hair, Asian features elusive in the semi-darkness - it's hard to say what she is like, but her strong hands are pleasant, and her voice sounds soft:
I made breakfast! It's on the chair. Have a snack. You don't look well.

I noticed a bowl of soup on the bedside chair; I took a few sips and found ramen with bean sprouts in it.

- Thank you, hostess! - I thank you, surprised by such care. - What's your...

- Ayana. "Traveler" in Buryat. I'm from Ulan-Ude myself, but I want to see other places in the region. And so I work in tourism: I cook Buryat poses with Japanese ramen here, and Viktor Aleksandrovich takes guests on a hovercraft. By the way, he's a good guy. He just drinks hard and scares tourists for no reason.

- Ah, captain, - I realized who she was talking about. - Thank him and you very much! Without you, I would have frozen to death.

Ayana sat down on the edge of the bed, and then I saw that she had beautiful eyes and a nice round face.

- Better to be on first-name terms, wouldn't you? Victor said you wanted to know more about the drowned tourist.

I told Ayana the whole story, from our meeting with the stranger in the bookstore to the moment I fell through the ice and ended up here, in the 1642 hostel.

- The deceased refused dinner, - Ayana says after listening to me. - Then she went towards the lake when it got dark. I saw it myself.

I finish my ramen, while Ayana is thinking animatedly out loud:

- Let's immediately dismiss the version with shadows and other mysticism! That's Victor's nonsense...

- Then what?

Ayana looked me straight in the eyes:

- The tourist was hiding from someone, that's what! She traveled without documents, under a false name, did not use a phone so that they would not find her location. She asked you to make a noise if she was caught. And she was caught in the end, pumped full of alcohol and drowned! They made it look like an accident.

- But who was stalking her?

- A maniac stalker, a jealous husband, bandits, a secret organization... maybe she was a spy or an intelligence officer. Remember her accent?

- Wow, Ayana! Did you notice the accent too? - I am surprised.

- Yes, I am attentive and listen to "true crime" on the Internet, - she says, a little embarrassed. - That’s my guilty pleasure!

- And your English is not bad either... that’s what working in tourism does to people!

- You just gave me an idea about the code. Let's solve it!

I finished my ramen and reluctantly took out a sticker and started dictating:

- 9, 2, 1, 20, 21... Repeat again?

- If this is a Simple Substitution Cipher, - Ayana reasoned, clicking something on her phone, - then “I” is the ninth letter of the English alphabet. So, “B” is the second, “A” is the first, “T” and “U” are the twentieth and twenty-first, respectively. The word is: “IBATU”!

- And what is this?

Ayana shrugged.

We googled: Ibatu is the name of a remote village in Tanzania. A couple of posts on social networks about how there is a shortage of fresh water there, and one youth organization from Europe brings this water. Just in case, I wrote an email to this volunteer organization, attaching a photo from the news... Another fact, seemingly optional, was that if you translate the name of our hostel "1642" into letters using Ayana's method, you get the combination "AFDB" - the abbreviation of a large African bank.

"All roads lead to Africa," Ayana summed up with excitement in her voice. "We worked well together! Although we didn't understand a damn thing. And now it's time for me to prepare the sheets for the guests' arrival..."

At that moment, I felt like I had walked on thin ice in every sense of the word and almost died, and now, as if as a reward, I had found a like-minded person. For the first time in a long time, loneliness left me. I wanted to compliment the girl:

"You'll make an ideal investigator!"

"Or a criminal," she winked, and then whispered: "Things in the hostel change places. And you're the only guest right now. I'm afraid to sound alarmist, but let me bring you a kitchen knife or a Pepper Spray canister. This is Victor's canister, but Victor is going into town today.

- Canister! - I chose.

Before she left, I put the canister next to the bed, and I felt a little calmer. But I felt like I was being watched!

7

Sunday came, my last day off. Ayana kindly left me a bottle of Ebisu beer (or a fake one) with a picture from the anime "Evangelion" in the hostel fridge. A cute reference to my age? Or is Ayana herself an "otaku", a passionate person? But I didn't like alcohol, and I preferred books or meditative contemplation of the world to watching anime. And now I was looking at the gray Baikal sky: sharp rays of gold shone through the dark clouds. This gave me hope. I have the last day to find at least something... talk to the locals?

As an option! But first - the method of free association. So, what is the connection between Baikal and Africa? Shamanic practices. It is interesting that in Africa the percentage of albinos among blacks is hundreds of times higher than among Caucasians - probably due to shamanic practices of the past, when "blond blacks" were given an advantage in reproduction. True, now they can be killed and dismembered because of superstitious ideas about the healing power of albino body parts, and a patient with HIV infection who rapes such a girl, according to this perverted logic, is instantly cured of the disease...

I open the "VK" feed. Tam news stories about Mary, already federal. I look at her photo again. Her face is crystal clear, like ice, like a mask. What if it's suicide? People with depression have impaired facial expressions. Then her mention of rock musician Cobain is not accidental - he is a well-known suicide. And he also sang: "A mulato, an albino, a moscito, my libido..."

So, maybe the blonde is an albino? She lived somewhere in South Africa, where white Europeans live, and used a popular African bank. Albinism is one person out of 40,000. Such people are easier to find. It's not for nothing that Mary bought a book about the most famous albino in world literature! "The Invisible Man" deprived himself of pigmentation in hemoglobin and became transparent. True, then he went crazy and committed crimes...

My thoughts were interrupted by a shadow. Flashed outside the window for a moment! I went to check: scared a seagull off the windowsill and saw nothing but lilacs swollen with buds and the Church of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. The church let a sunbeam into my room and seemed to invite me to leave the dark, empty hostel.

I locked the hostel and went outside.

Another stupid move.

8

During the four hours of walking, I walked through the main attractions of Listvyanka. I lit two candles, for health and for the repose, in the Church of St. Nicholas; climbed the Chersky Stone with a panoramic view of the lake; as always, I hung around idly near the Baikal Museum with a sign "by appointment only". Space did not help. All hope was in people; along the way, I asked them about the girl with blond hair...

The minibus and taxi drivers did not recognize her photo and assumed that she was hitchhiking. The locals did not sell her alcohol. Nothing strange happened in the village these days either. They say that the men were walking near the pier on Friday, celebrating a corporate party. They say that the mulatto and the oriental woman argued in an incomprehensible language, and then left the village by taxi. That's it! Nothing else remarkable.

Disappointed, I returned to the hostel. Shadows are already furrowing the mountains in the east - it's getting dark, but the lights are not on in the hostel windows yet. I notice an open window in my room - right where the shadow flickered. The front door is also wide open. Airing before new guests arrive? I tell myself: don't panic, calm down, you're too carried away by horrors! And I carefully enter the house...

The creak of the door reaches my ears.

- Is that you, Ayana?

No. Another woman was standing in the doorway.

LENA!

My ex-wife, exhausted, with disheveled graying hair and a dirty demi-season raincoat. Worse yet (I shudder), in her right hand there is... A KITCHEN KNIFE.

"How long have I waited for you, weakling, and you..." her voice trembles; her gaze is glassy. "THIS IS WHO YOU left me FOR! For the sake of the narrow-eyed red-haired bitch! I was watching you. I know everything!"

The tension in the room is stifling. I raise my hands, slowly, showing that I am unarmed.

"Lena," I began carefully. "It's not what you think. She just works here. Let's talk. It's not love when one person wishes another to suffer!"

My ex takes a step forward, clutching the knife so tightly that her knuckles have turned white.

"You're a sadist. You dumped your first girlfriend, then you bullied me and drove me crazy! You dumped me too. Then you killed that girl... You will pay for everything!

- What girl? Lena, you are delirious!

With every step my wife takes, my pulse quickens. There is nowhere to retreat in the cramped room. There were no more than two meters between us, and I saw how her gaze literally shot at me with hatred and contempt. And then I heard a barely audible rustle behind me. Ayana. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught how she stretched out her hand and silently opened the cap of the can.

- Lena, please! - Half a step to the side, distracting her attention. - Love is the desire for good...

- But you always wished me harm!.. DIE! - she roared and rushed forward...

At that very moment, a caustic spirit spread through the air, the stream touched Lena. She screamed, blindly raised her hands to her face. I rush forward, grab her wrists and knock the knife away.

"Run!" Ayana almost begs and pulls me by the hand. "I don't want you to die!"

I look at Lena, cowering on the floor, her eyes closed in pain and resentment. She is no longer screaming, but whispering curses, over and over again... the woman I once loved more than life. How many years she tormented me with baseless jealousy, suppressed me with her evil will. NO, I don't want to be her victim anymore!

At that moment, Lena snatches something dark from under her cloak - a pistol! - and blindly shoots in Ayana's direction. I manage to cover the red-haired girl with myself, but a puddle of pain has already spread in my chest - and I screamed...

Is this really the end?

9

The gun turned out to be my weapon from the glove compartment. An air gun. So the bullet got stuck in my jacket and only slightly damaged my solar plexus. I didn't go to the doctors or the police, but immediately called Lena's relatives. They took my ex-wife to Moscow for treatment. I often call her mother to inquire about the patient's health, and transfer money. Lena herself no longer bothers me, at least for now...

My memory lapses have stopped. I'mI work in a bookstore every day. I appointed Ayana as my assistant, and she happily moved to Irkutsk. With each passing day, a strong bond developed between us. Ayana showed sensitive care and attention, which I had not seen in people for a long time, and in me she valued loyalty and a calm character. A year later, we got married. On vacation, we traveled a lot, especially in Asia, but always tacitly avoided Africa...

Meanwhile, a letter in good English arrived from the Ibatu volunteer center and, it seems, shed light on the story of the drowned woman of Baikal.

“Dear Mister,

We learned with deep regret about the death of a girl on Lake Baikal. We at our center are saddened by this tragedy. We sincerely sympathize with you!

I would like to inform you that many students with blond hair worked in the organization “Youth Helping Africa” over the years, and we cannot establish the fact of their albinism. However, one of the girls whose data may correspond to your description was especially memorable to me. She was German and definitely did not speak Russian, but she called herself by the fictitious name Rebecca Morier and refused to have joint photographs.

Moreover, this young lady told her roommates that she was allegedly “persecuted by fascists” for the sake of pseudoscientific experiments with her body. She constantly entered into intimate relationships with men, asking them for protection from her “persecutors” in exchange for sex. This looked like serious mental problems such as persecution mania or bipolar disorder. However, I am a social worker, not a psychiatrist, and I will not violate my area of ;;expertise.

Judge for yourself: she stole a bike from our center and went traveling around Africa alone. We were unable to detain her and do not know what happened to her after that trip... However, I believe that this volunteer could have significantly improved her life if she had undergone professional treatment and taken the appropriate medications.

I emphasize once again that I cannot confirm with certainty that the Rebecca Morier I mentioned is your unidentified girl in Russia. I have only seen her a couple of times and have already forgotten her face. I apologize, but it seems that we cannot help more in this matter.

Sincerely,

Director of the Volunteer Center "Youth Helping Africa"

Gustavo Moraes"

The first thought: what if the volunteers from Tanzania hid something? And madness has nothing to do with it, and human trafficking, for example, HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT. But overall, the letter seemed convincing to me. Poor Mary really did behave too brazenly, but only in order to flee across the entire planet from her own madness. To look for healing on Baikal, but to find death. I myself almost drowned under the ice, without having a psychiatric diagnosis at all (except for a couple of memory lapses, of course).

My new wife, however, still does not believe the letter from Africa. Like, it's about another "Dora the traveler". "It was your ex who drowned Mary out of jealousy!" - Ayana declares with the intuition of a Buryat shaman. So, Lena's phrase "you killed a girl" is not the ravings of a madwoman, but a CONFESSION of what he did... However, in my new wife's version, the resentment towards Lena is too obvious. And really, how can you objectively evaluate someone who called you a "slant-eyed bitch"?

No, another thought is more important to me: I could have solved the code incorrectly!

If "IBATU" is an anagram, then from the letters of this word you can form, for example, the word "BAUTI", which is similar to the name Bautista. It is also easy to form the form "TABUI" ("I melted" in Latin) - the name of an Italian travel app. I can probably call some Bautista in their support service, and he will also remember one eccentric albino who looks like Mary... This is how the Law of Large Numbers works, for which we are grains of sand! And only my reptilian brain imagines itself unique and looks for connections where there are none.

I shared these thoughts online, on my newly created channel "Bring (UP) your friends". Several "altushki" who listen to crime podcasts subscribed to me, but none of them recognized Mary. Even an advanced search by the girl's photo led only to stock images of her denim jacket, which, being a Chinese consumer product, could be found in all corners of the world...

In the end, I decided not to torture myself with solving this Rubik's cube, where all the squares turned out to be white, and to live a full life again, free from secrets. So I sealed the sticker with the "code" in a bottle and during one of my trips threw it into the restless waves near the Shaman Stone, as if I had made an ancient sacrifice. I don't know if it is strength or weakness on my part to refuse to search, but I refuse. Let the truth languish at the bottom of Lake Baikal until better times. Let someone else fish it out! And I need to live and build a family.

Amen.