I smiled to Vasily in a half of a mouth and went to study the territory.
It is noisy around. Someone dances under hard rock. Someone loudly laughs at trite jokes of the friends. Someone throws into the stripper a cheap trifle and iron traffic jams from glass bottles from beer, thus crying out something loud with cool laughter. Here it, local entertainment! How this remote place lagged behind the modern city. All behave as savages, as the criminals as animals who ran away from prison from a zoo.
Behind a little table at a window, near a main entrance I caught sight of one bearded little man. He sits in the place as if it – his own and personal. The drunken man in proud loneliness finishes drinking the remained two drinks of beer from the mug. Look its sad, lonely; and it seems, that he simply wants to sleep.
I returned to a bar counter, and asked the acquaintance already to me bartender to fill one and a half liter mug with beer.
– Hold, leave the rest to yourself. – I put one thousand rubles in front of the bartender, and having taken beer went to the man with a gray-haired beard.
I sat down to him at a little table, having put in front of the alcoholic’s nose a glass with amber liquid. He has being stared at me with drunk eyes, then at the bubbles in the favourite drink going from a bottom to top. I sat down at a little table, opposite to the man.
– Who are you? – having transferred an amazed look to me, he asked with the braided speech.
On the head of the drunk man the small spotty hat with round fields rises, and the mouth is completely hidden behind the gray-haired beard which extended to a breast. His small eyes and the extended aquiline nose are in harmony with other features, including with an amusing beard which gives to the owner similarity with the children’s New Year’s hero Father Frost.
– I am the one who wants to talk to you.
– And about what, lovely person? – the drunk man interrogatively began to blink.
– Now you’ll learn, – I began.
– How to call you?
– Nikolay.
– Me, Valentin Mikhaylovich.
– So we got acquainted, we will get down to business, – I slightly irritably uttered. – You know Sergey Sokolov?
– And who doesn’t know him…, – my present interlocutor exhaled, a loving look having taken of a mug with beer. He put his hands in front of himself, and asked a silly question – is to me?
I silently nodded.
– Thanks, – having told it, the man grabbed a glass and began to devastate it.
– How I understood, you know Sergey Sokolov that is, you will be able to tell something about him?!
– How can I not know everything about the best friend, – having come off beer he told and with knock put on a little table surface a thin glass.
– Tell me, has he got children?
– Children… yeah, the daughter, little.
– And the wife – the child’s mother?
– It is an old story, – the man frowned a little, – it came to a bad end. In confidence I will tell, Seregi in general has no children, at least, he told me so, – he added having held up a palm vertically to a mouth corner.
– And…
– And… I don’t know, why to you to know everything about Sokolov.
– It is possible to repeat, – I made the corresponding gesture, having asked the bartender to bring a new portion of beer.
In twenty seconds the bartender obligingly presented a fresh glass of beer to our little table. It seemed to me that the person with whom at present I conduct dialogue, considered insufficient that “gift” that I presented to him on arrival for his little table. That glass of beer it appeared little, and I simply had to order another from an urgent need. Amazingly!
– Is it to me? – the man asked modestly.
– Like you don’t know! – I grinned.
Having understood what I want, my interlocutor began to spread obediently a tragic story. Having listened to it, I learned the sea of the interesting facts. It appeared that Sergey Sokolov’s daughter not his native. It wasn’t secret. The matter is that the child’s mother, young eighteen-year-old Darya was disgraced by some guy. When Sergey learned about it, found the bastard and punished, but made it accidentally. Court recognized murder on imprudence and sentenced him for five years. When Sokolov was released, Dasha wasn’t alive any more. After violation she became pregnant. It appeared that having given birth to the child, Dasha couldn’t reconcile to that fate which she had to test and committed suicide, having jumped off from the fifth floor. This height was enough that from the young woman there was a big red spot on asphalt. The child’s grandmother on the fatherly line became the trustee of the newborn girl. After releasing from imprisonment places, Sokolov didn’t hurry to take part in education of the girl, or at least to help the mother with it. Instead the man began to drink much. He took out all valuable things from the house. So to speak, he filled with alcohol the immortal grief. Dasha was Sergey’s love, and he loved her very much. He told the friend Valentin more than once about the dreams in which he is visited by dear Dashenka and she calls him with herself.
– And after all, the little girl was young, only eighteen years, – Valentin Mikhaylovich added, having sent a thoughtful look to a floor.
– Were they married?
– Yes, they were. Sokolov was older than the Dashka for ten years. But it’s said, all age are obedient to love.
Later half a year, after Sokolov’s release, his mother got a heart attack which was promoted diligently a grief by the killed sonny, the ungrateful egoist. As a result, the girl lost her grandmother who died directly at home as there was nobody to call an ambulance. The five-year-old child was sent to orphanage. For that time Sokolov was already deprived of the parental rights. And everything ended with that the little girl wasn’t necessary to the only remained native person, on the earth. What to speak, in the world didn’t remain the person whom the child in general somehow interested.
– In which orphanage the girl is?
– I have no concept, – Valentin Mikhaylovich shrugged shoulders. – She was taken away more than three years ago, just when the grandma died.
Looking at the interlocutor, I feel hostility and even hatred to him and to the girl’s father. This indifference, this self-love simply enraged. It is simple to these fiddleheaded alcoholics to spit on all except themselves. But that is already not present in live, he was responsible for the behavior. Now I am not sorry for killing Sokolov Sergey. And that pendent that he so carefully stored, now doesn’t say about anything to me unless how he grieved for the suicide-wife and he dreamed of death.
– Guy, beer ended, – Valentin told and carefree smiled. – Listen, I can tell Sokolov’s address.
The man got the grown old rumpled tram ticket from a breast pocket.
– Is anybody has a pen? – he asked loudly to the visitors of bar. And right there the simple pencil ground to the small sizes departed to its party and fell to it under feet. – Thanks, friends.
Valentin Mikhaylovich lifted a pencil from a floor and scratched something on the ticket. After, I stretched it to me. I didn’t manage to read note contents as on the street the alarm system outside raised a howl.
Having jumped out of bar, I began to look around, didn’t stop a look till I got the car. Before eyes the shocking picture appeared. On a back wheel of brand new Lexus the type which I initially faced before getting in bar started up a stream. On the street still there was that company, and it with pride watched “feat” of the cranky friend.
– What are you doing? – I shouted maliciously to him, then approached and pushed away from the car.
Being unsteady and faltering the offender of my transport jumped aside.
– You went nuts, – he began to roar with a drunk voice.
Meanwhile I inspected a bumper of the car on which there were wet spots too which appeared thanks to this “the pissing boy”.
– I will show you, son of a bitch …, – sounded nearby.
Having turned back, I right there managed to evade from the fist flying to my party. From running start the man fell to the ground and tore apart to himself an elbow about asphalt. He began to roar from pain, talking smut in my address. But I didn’t catch these words as it was occupied with something. His blood! His blood! His blood! The head stopped only on it. I am not hungry, but this liquid simply dements. And his hands are soiled by it.
– You are a freak, asshole, a stupid motherfucker, – hysterical growled the man.
– Hey, you don’t want to apologize? – the female voice shouted. And right there on eyes there was a lady with a mohawk.
There was such feeling as if I am the animal driven into a corner. In total because of the blood which flowed out from a wound of this type. He sat, having grabbed the torn apart elbow, rocking forward, back. I felt as eyes became covered by a black film. You know what feelings I give out it? As if the sharp needle entering more deeply and more deeply sticks into the center of a pupil.
– What’s wrong with you, guy? You are crazy? – the same woman told.
Well, no one called me crazy yet. When there come such moments, I can’t simply control myself and the acts. Don’t think that I am really crazy and the washed-up freak. Get it, I am an animal, a predator.
– What did you say there? – I asked silently.
– The fucking loony, look what you made with him.
– I didn’t even touch him, – quiet and laconically I said, approaching closer.
– Hey, steer clear better, – with an easy fright in the eyes the woman with a freak hairdress uttered.
– And so what? – even more silently as if I was inhaling a smell of rose told and doing it a compliment.
– Zhora, it he that, runs, perhaps on me? – the excited lady opened a dribbling mouth.
– You thrust, – the wounded man said whom now as I understood, call Zhora. He rose from a sitting position, and went to me. Other part of their company silently watched the events, being in a shadow and drinking beer from bottles.
– Is it visible little for you?
– It now won’t seem to you a little.
Everything occurred literally for some seconds. The type again flew on me with fists, and I again evaded, twisted his hands and threw on the earth. He fell and fainted.
– What have you done? – his girlfriend began to yell and jumped up to the Zhora.
– Don’t cry, he’s alive, – I threw, having opened a car door.
Having sat down in salon, I got a piece of paper which to me was given by Valentin Mikhaylovich from a pocket. On it he wrote the address of the house of Sokolov Sergey. Reading a small note took away from me no more than five seconds.
I started, and my car soon was gone from a field of vision of those Neanderthal men. Finally, I looked through tinted glass. Aside bar I noticed how Zhora, to whose prompt falling I just promoted, slowly rises to the feet, holding a free hand the blood-stained chin. His girlfriend diligently tries to help him to get up, but he, having standed, pushed away the woman from himself, having shouted at her.
Chapter 6
My car rushes on the long route. In all parties is wide forest. High shadows of trees cast black shadows on without that the dark, impenetrable road. Lamps aren’t present.
I curtailed on a roadside and howled down the engine. I remained squeezed in a palm the old tram ticket, with the couple of words scratched on it. I forgot to put it in a glove compartment. Words which the normal person wouldn’t understand rather are scribbled on a small slice of the paper which turned yellow from time. I twisted the handle on a door, and window slowly slipped down. In salon the cool breeze blew. Imperceptibly, it snatched out a note from my hand and carried away somewhere afar. I didn’t accept this nonsense in seriousness, besides, the address well remembered, and to forget it to me not really, at least, in the next some hours. One more quite good quality of the vampire – unconditional memory.
Where to look for this place, this house, this street? I don’t know. In total, because of that loser who didn’t find more adequate place to pee than my car. I didn’t manage to specify concrete coordinates of a place necessary to me from Valentin Mikhaylovich, and somehow from the head it took off. And to all fault this crude Zhora, God damn it.
Having thought a little, with the head which fell to a wheel, I turned the car, and returned back to bar.
Gloomy light, ominous buildings, the lane where the bar is located – a place reminds a crypt with one small window. The neon sign went out, and lifelessly dominates over doors.
I left the car round the corner. This time no one from those Neanderthal men wasn’t visible, as on the waste ground. From bar doors, there was a familiar young man, the bartender Vasya.
– You are late, – having seen me the guy sadly uttered, locking doors, turning a key in a padlock.
– You remember type to which I talked in the bar, quite recently?
– Which?
– He sat at a table at a window, such in a hat with a long, gray-haired beard.
– I remembered, he just left bar after you left, even beer didn’t drink up, strange some, – the young man hemmed, having delayed one corner of a mouth.
– Where he went you don’t know, am I right? – I uttered hopelessly, and rested a back about a wall.
– You are right, – the guy answered.
Vasily faces me, with the hands ground in pockets blue джинс. From above on it an old-fashioned beige windbreaker, and standing shabby black moccasins. On his one shoulder the black bag on a long thong of the same color which is carried usually by workers of the railroads hangs. He resembles the poor student.
– Are you a student?
– Yes, – Vasya stretched.
– You earn additionally?
– Well, I have to, – he exhaled.
Having told anything, I looked away from the interlocutor on an opposite wall.
– And., you are student too? – uncertainly the young man after several seconds of silence took an interest.
– No.
– Right, – uncertainty of the guy grew; he started picking a sock of the footwear naked asphalt.
– You aren’t afraid to work in such place?
– There is no choice even if I am afraid. Much more don’t take, and to Lev Borisovich all the same who will spill beer in his institution.
– Lev Borisovich is an owner?!
– Yes. He pays little, but for food is enough.
But not for clothes. This thought slipped in a brain. It is cruel and ugly to think so. It is good that before to state something, we can consider and filter the speech text.
– What about parents?
Vasya hung the head, and became a little sad.
– I don’t have them, – he told, having added, – never was. The guy looked at the sky, having thrown back slightly the head.
– I’m sorry; I lost parents too, long ago. Except the sister remained nobody. If something happens to her, I don’t know how I will live.
– To have a sister is probably cool.
– You won’t believe as much as, – I uttered ironically.
Unexpectedly the small stone arrived to my part.
– What is it? – Vasily cried out.
One more stone, one more, and one more. And so some pieces.
– I probably should go, – words of the bartender were heard.
– Wait, – I told.
– You scoff?!
– Good evening, – was heard nearby. It was the maiden voice, a voice which seemed to me vaguely familiar.
From the round of the the building’s corner standing opposite bar there was a young girl, years of seventeen. Her pale face, her black eyes, her blonde hair topped in a tail on a nape and the bang waving from a wind… it seemed that I already somewhere saw all this. I don’t feel that she is live. From the girl blows as cold, a cemeterial cool which proceeds from me. It means, that she is a vampire. No way.