Guardian Angel. 2. 5. Do not write me ever

"A GUARDIAN ANGEL"
a mistical novel
by Alexandra Kryuchkova

PART II. A DREAMS TRAP

2.5. DON’T WRITE ME EVER!

March 1988, Moscow

I woke up in the middle of the night suddenly, as if someone had woken me up. I opened my eyes and slowly got used to the darkness. I heard my mother breathing in her sleep. She had just returned from the hospital after surgery. And they had bought me a small sofa, so we slept opposite each other on separate beds in our small room that looked like a monastery cell. After my father’s death, we lived with my grandparents, my mom’s parents, with whom she didn’t get along very well.

I heard someone opening the door to our flat, the creaking floorboards in the large room, and I was overcome with panic fear. That someone was quietly and slowly coming closer and closer to our room. I wanted to scream, but I had no right to wake my mother. Grandma and grandpa were sleeping in the room opposite. I heard them snoring. Who was there? The thieves? But what was there to steal? My piano was our biggest asset. After my father’s death, my mother had sent me to a music school. I wanted to play the violin and flute like my great-grandfather. They said that he had been a very famous person and a flautist at the Bolshoi Theater, friends with Bulgakov, and, according to family legend, Margarita and Gella, the sisters of my «French» grandmother (my father’s mother was his daughter), contributed to the «Master and Margarita» novel. The steps were approaching! I looked at the closed door to our room. I wanted to close my eyes and cover my head with the blanket. I knew that the door was about to open slowly. The alien was coming towards me. Or for me? Or… for mom?

My heart was racing. My hands were freezing. I couldn’t move, but I remembered my mother’s words, «The best way to drive away fear is…»

...the door began to open slowly…

«to step towards it and make sure…»

…the door swung open… widely!!!

«that ghosts…»

My eyes widened in horror…

«don’t exist!»

…I saw a GHOST!!!

Grandma’s sister appeared in the room. In a long nightgown with a candle in her hand, she looked like a misty haze. There was emptiness in her eyes, or rather, she had an absent gaze, as if she didn’t see anything in front of her, looking somewhere into the distance, but she took a step towards me and stopped. She seemed to notice that I was awake, but she turned to my sleeping mother. Mesmerized by the ghost and my fear, I couldn’t close my eyes! The ghost approached my mother, stopped in the aisle between our beds, hovering over her. Then she walked back to the door, turned to me, shook her head and floated away from the flat. Ugh!

In the morning, I was going to school. My mother was already awake, but she was weak to get up. Grandma came into our room and asked how many lessons I had that day.

«Your sister died,» I said in response.

«What’s wrong with you, Alice?» My mother got frightened. «How can you say such a thing?!»

«Early in the morning,» I added.

«She had surgery yesterday,» Grandma said. «I called the hospital in the evening. The surgery was successful. Why do you say that, Alice?»

«She came at night to say us goodbye.»

My mother and grandmother looked at each other. Mom thought I was crazy and didn’t believe me. Tears appeared in my eyes. Mom tried to calm down herself, saying, «You were asleep, Alice! It was a dream, just a dream!»

Grandmother silently left the room. We heard her calling the hospital, asking about her sister, hanging up, coming back to us. Mom looked at her with a silent question.

«At five in the morning… a blood clot.»


***
February 2011, Moscow


The Man in White didn’t call me. The composer called me, «I’ve painted Venice for you! Will you be in the Open Literary Club? I’ll bring it there, okay?»

I came to the Open Literary Club «Response». I appeared more and more at various literary events. I went on stage and recited my poems dedicated to the Man in White, my Woland. Someone shouted, «Bravo!» And the composer handed me his picture: black houses, a black boat and the Mist enveloping the city, leaving no hope.

I returned home, trying to find a place to put the composer’s Venice, but all the walls in my flat were already full with my own paintings, except for… Wow! I stopped at it, hanging right above my bed, the largest one, the only one not mine, I had bought so long before that I had completely forgotten about its existence. So harmoniously integrated into the interior, it merged with it without attracting my attention. Venice in the misty haze. Early morning. It was a view of San Marco from the opposite island, where the boatman and the Man in Black were taking me to… I shuddered involuntarily, «Who is he?»

I put the picture of Black Venice on the shelf next to my books and thought about the Man in White. He didn’t call, but I was drawn to him. Madly. Irrationally. I wanted to be with him. I needed him for some reason. I was scared of him. Why? What could he do to me?

I remembered my mother’s words, «The best way to drive away fear is to step towards it and make sure that it’s just a figment of your imagination.» If I couldn’t defeat my fear, one day it would defeat me. On Saturday, I had been wrong. The Man in White hadn’t done me any harm. I had offended him. I had to make amends for my terrible behavior.

Not wanting to lose him, I forced myself to step on the throat of my fear. No, I wasn’t able to call him to hear his arrogant tone, rough voice, ruthlessly cutting me like a knife into pieces. I decided to write to him. It was easier to write what one couldn’t say out loud. I wanted to write something very, very kind and tender, so that he understood I wanted to be with him badly and forgave me. Besides, I had stained his whitest sweater with my lipstick, not on purpose. So I wrote, referring to him without «Mister», apologizing for both the sweater and everything else. I wanted to stay alone with him, to go somewhere together. I remembered Venice, where I knew every bridge, every street, where I felt like at home. «Would you like me to show you Venice? My favorite city? You had never seen it like this…»

The next day, Tuesday, they called me from the Union of Writers and asked me to come by 16:00. What for? For the announcement of the results of the 1st International Competition «Literary Olympus». I had already forgotten that I had submitted my «Another Reality» novel, but I arrived in the crowded hall. They called me as the winner in the Prose nomination, hung the «Literary Olympus» medal around my neck. I didn’t believe it was happening with me and wept. I sent a message to my friends about my first (!) victory in literature, and everyone congratulated me in response, except for…

«It’s not Him,» I sighed heavily, biting my lip nervously.

On Wednesday morning, driving out to the Moscow Ring Road on the way to work (I worked in the fields, where one could get only on one’s own vehicle), I heard my phone ringing. With one hand on the steering wheel, the other frantically looking for the phone in my bag, I felt that inexplicable panic fear of something inevitable about to happen. I looked at the phone display. It was my Woland. I smiled, he hadn’t forgotten me. He was calling to congratulate me on my award.

«Hi,» I forced myself to say that word instead of «hello’ while trying not to give out any of my feelings.

«Hi,» he thundered loudly and somehow menacingly in response. «You have no right to write to me anymore! Don’t ever write to me anything! Do you understand me?! If you really want to say something, call me. Did you hear well what I just told you?!»

«Yes,» I squeezed out.

Everything that he said afterwards, without even congratulating me on my award, about some book to be written for his friends about the early nineties, I didn’t even hear. Why didn’t I hang up the phone right away? Perhaps, because my mother had taught me to be polite. When our conversation, or rather, his monologue was finally over, I stopped the car on the side of the road and put my head on the steering wheel.

«What do you know about me to talk to me like that?! As the arrogant «life-wise’ kings talk to the underage girls, who have nothing in their heads but… and who haven’t gone through what I went through in my life. You consider me some kind of poetess and offer me as a great favor to write a book about the gangsters of the nineties. Sorry, I don’t like favors and I don’t write on demand. One day I’ll become the Queen of Poets. And you’ll understand how deeply wrong you’ve been. But I’ll never let you talk to me like that again. Whoever you are…»

Soon the thunder will strike as a penalty boom.
And the night left as eldest will shudder at greeting.
Welcome, Prince of the world! Let the Moscow lights
write a mythical story about lost people.

No Paradise waits for such sinners. In vain
cling to Life, — it’s unfriendly, bursts out of envy.
Where Death doesn’t fit into our route,
idle dances will swirl us with valueless hopes.

In the mortar, take off! Let the ponds close eyes,
and the glamorous capital shaking in shivers!
Evening gossip of snakes will confuse any track.
An Apocalypse darkness will cover the city.

What’s the point left in crying in public in grief,
or in taking from seas all the stars fallen down?
Give me only a chance just to gift you my soul,
even Evil refused to accept it for gratis…