Part 1/2

Bad luck followed Inyatkin like a shadow. A shadow which needed no light to appear, a dark shadow which dreaded him at every step. He wanted to know why one after another not unexpected but embarrassing things were striking him. Sitting by the river, seeing the moon’s reflection on the water took him to depths of his mind examining every event like an ant inspects its food, playing and replaying them like a piece of symphony.

“Is Mephistopheles with me?” he asked himself throwing a stone on the face of the moon.

Hearing the winds skimming over the river and witnessing the moon restoring itself, he answered himself: “Every succeeding action has precedence, it can’t be that things are just….no….no…. that cannot be, there is no such thing, it’s all a result of a selection gone wrong.”

“Inyatkin… Inyatkin,” a woman’s voice swimmed over the air. “What are you doing there?”

Inyatkin turned around, looked at the moon-filled eyes of the woman and stooped his head low which was turning red.

“Oh! No. Thing… just looking at the moon.”

“Dyadya Dmitrovich is looking for you; it’s close to midnight.”

“Does sun even rise nowadays?” he mumbled.

The woman gave him a bewildered look which seemed to enhance her moonlit beauty, and exclaimed: “Do you think I am stupid Inyatkin!”

“No…that does not what I mean Maria Fyodorovna. It is just… everything…everything goes wrong, out of the box things happen. It’s like God has sent the devil to be with me.”

Maria Fyodorovna being an educated woman assured him that there is no such thing, that bad things do happen to good people sometimes, that good is on its way.  “Didn’t Christ go through so much suffering of which not a dust of it He deserved?”

“Yes. Maria Fyodorovna but I am no God. I am a human.”

“You are, Inyatkin. But pain is inevitable to experience joy.”

“Joy! It seems to circumvent everyone’s life but mine.”

“Why do you say so?” stressed Maria Fyodorovna, blazing her eyes at Inyatkin.

Then the water jumped with the help of the moon, and gave Inyatkin a hot bath in front of Maria Fyodorovna. Seconds later another one swept through and washed the dry parts of Inyatkin.

“See?” said Inyatkin making a stupid face.

“Dear Good Lord!” the dry Maria Fyodorovna muttered.

“You should see a fortune-teller. They have the solution to these things. Has someone black-magicked you? Is there someone with whom you have quarreled with?”

“No! No one!” said Inyatkin. But there held no ground for this question as Inyatkin was so meek, he gave his side of the pavement to stray dogs.

“My Papa told me about this fortune-teller in Moscow. You should go to him. People from Germany visit him, even the French!”

“Moscow?” a shiver ran down Inyatkin’s body.

“Yes, Moscow!” she raised her melodious voice. “Come, let’s go to Papa.”

Papa Fyodor Ivanovich listened to every word of bad luck with a great attention, an unscrupulous seriousness, only biting his lips once or twice. Cut some slack to Fyodor Ivanovich! A serious man is allowed to smile, isn’t he?

“Yes, yes, there’s no way! You should go to Vassiliy Sohnsovich.” stamped Fyodor Ivanovich, finding a piece of paper and scribbling with his carpenter pencil the address of Vassiliy Sohnsovich.

The next morning having taken permission from his own Papa Dmitrovich, he flew to the station. The permission would have, however, not been granted had Fyodor Ivanovich not convinced him. Dmitrovich – a stern man, had become agitated so much throughout his life by his former wife – now in grave – and his son that even seeing a horse neigh made him put his head into a burrow.

“Let the boy go! It could be anything!” Fyodor Ivanovich exclaimed, making a weird face, in a voice that only Dmitrovich’s ear caught.

While climbing onto the train, the spirit of bad luck again arrived. Luggage covered the door, and Inyatkin for a no better way of travel had to cover half the distance from Liptesk to Moscow with his one leg flying in the air. Mid-way, though, he somehow succeeded to push one of them and crept through them to an empty seat. He sat on it, but next second thinking something horrific, went under the seat like a white mouse, a white tail-less mouse.

The train arrived at Moscow, Inyatkin was giggling under the seat on the hope of his fortune becoming of pure gold and had no way of knowing, until a Moscow beggar looked down in his eyes and demanded for some kopecks. Inyatkin, on the account of his frugal nature jumped out of his hole, and finding that no one is in the train, immediately drew the conclusion that he is in Moscow. As for the beggar, he started looking at the Inyatkin-seat in hope of finding a treasure, but no treasure was there just a warm sleep.

Inyatkin got off the station looking for someone who might help him to reach the address that was hanging in his pocket. Behind the river with a glorious sun swimming over it and the white castle dancing, a lady was sitting over the bench. A marvelously beautiful lady, indeed. Inyatkin eyes caught her, but what it didn’t was that he was long before caught in hers.

“Madame, can you tell me how to reach Leningradsky Prospekt?” he reluctantly asked her with a red face.

“What?”

“Leningradsky Prospekt,” Inyatkin said, tearing off the paper hanging from his pocket and putting before her bluish poisonous eyes.

She took an uncanny gaze at it, a full-fledged gaze, carried her right arm to her mouth and started giggling.

“Is there something wrong, madame?”

She took a look at him and continued her preoccupation. Inyatkin had no clue why she was laughing, or giggling as is appropriate for women, even in our more than equal Union. But despite his best attempts to know, he failed wretchedly to decrypt it. Inyatkin continued flowing on the streets of Moscow reading one sign after another in order to reach Leningradsky. He didn’t wish to ask someone now; the dread of open lips was too much.

A sign popped up in front of him, like it was too on a search expedition to find Inyatkin. The big white letters gave Inyatkin no clue as to where the Prospekt was, but beneath it written in small letters was the lady luck that he had been seeking for twelve hours.

After much ado, with star covers hanging in the sky, Inyatkin found himself at the door of a little house that had been calling him for Liptesk. The house’s windows were projecting not electric lights but of that of natural fire forming a tetrahedron. The house did smell of the 1890s or 1880s; it cannot be said certainly but it did give you a feel that it has travelled into the future.

Inyatkin with his invisible knuckles knocked at the door twice, then did two more times. A creaking sound made its appearance, then the unlocking of the door. A lamp looked out of the door. It made the pink face of Inyatkin yellowish. A bear face hooked itself above the lamp and boorishly examined Inyatkin.

“Vassiliy Sohnsovich?”

The glowing bear man continued dissecting Inyatkin like he was a member of a Napoleon’s army out on a crusade to capture his nineteenth century house, not a comrade. Having done his surgery – or it was just the lamp whose soul was near it’s end – he said:

“I am.”

“Fyodor Ivanovich has sent me. My…”

“Come Inside,” Vassiliy Sohnsovich scissors cut Inyatkin’s introduction. He with his wildly confusing but soft and careful legs seeped inside the house.

Vassiliy Sohnsovich’s house had Japnese imprints for wallpapers which aggravated it’s already uncanny appearance. A chameleon was dancing around a beautifully lit fire giving birth to dragons on the walls of the hall. Through the corridor filled with kittens’ music, Vassiliy Sohnsovich took him to the end of it in a room, which in new Russia should appropriately be called a closet, but in Moscow still a room. The room had two sofa’s placed in front of one another who seemed to have finished a conversation just before the intruders invaded; a candle was burning beside them. Nothing but those sofas with dirty old books were forming an image in the eyes of the viewers.

“Have a seat,” said Sohnsovich, brushing aside the books on the left one. 

Inyatkin sat on it, his head filling with a nostalgic smoke from the closet.

“Inyatkin – you are. Am I right?” Vassiliy Sohnsovich said lighting his pipe.

“How do you know me, Vassiliy Sohnsovich? I didn’t introduce myself.” said Inyatkin daintily.

“Inyatkin Gregorivich Ozyelov, Assistant to the assistant of the minor assistant of the third part second period tenth branch of the State soap factory at Liptesk.”

“The Devil take me! Vassiliy Sohnsovich, how do you know that?”

Hearing a certain word enraged Sohnsovich, he brought his bear face, which was not pretty even before fuming, now truly ugly up in front of Inyatkin’s, and said spitting to the core of his soul:

“DO NOT SAY SUCH NAMES! NOT HERE! YOU STUPID PULP SUCKING BEDBUG!”

A white candle illuminated the sofa now, though the bear had backed down.

“What have you come to me for?” said Sohnsovich taking a long puff of the tobacco.

Taking a bucket of breath, Inyatkin replied: “My luck Vassiliy Sohnsovich. Lately, everything is going not as expected, everything as if controlled by the D… controlled by forces not good, truly bad forces.”

Vassiliy Sohnsovich sat down took one of the hands of Inyatkin and closed his eyes as if seeing a vision. His brows flickering now and then, his pipe oscillating in his mouth. It is hard to tell how long Vassiliy Sohnsovich did that, but it was long and gruesome enough for Inyatkin to fall into a dream. A dream in which he was making breakfast for Dmitrovich: Scrambled eggs – what better for a morning. Only that the scrambled eggs turned into a white cat which took his uniform to play a game of its own. Inyatkin took a baton to chase the beautiful cat away, but Alas! It came to him, changed to Maria Fyodorovna and gave him a morning hot kiss.

To be continued….