Читать книгу A Bride of Allah - Сергей Бакшеев - Страница 19

After he showed his neighbor out, Vlasov came back to Aiza. The girl’s tension and shivers were gone, her breathing was steady, but she was visibly depressed. She seemed full of sadness and suffering. Upon a close look, he noticed the slight tremor in her fingers and a carefully concealed grimace of pain.

“Poor girl,” Andrei almost said, but he immediately thought back to the outbursts of fury with which the mad girl with TNT wrapped around her waist attacked him in his car. He instinctively touched his neck; the scratches were still hurting.

The bobcat turned into a sick kitten. For how long?

“Have you taken the pills?” Andrei unceremoniously touched the girl’s forehead. Aiza nodded obediently; her sweaty cool skin felt slippery to the touch. “You’re not burning up. Looks like a hangover after a big party. Have you drunk anything since this morning?”

Aiza shook her head no.

“No smell… Have you been injected?”

The girl nodded. Andrei lifted up her powerless hand and rolled up her sleeve.

“Clean,” he concluded after he looked on the insides of both her elbows. “Did you get injected only today? Come on, talk to me!”

“Yes,” the girl said barely audibly.

“Did they say it was for courage, so you feel no fear?”

“Um, yes.”

“That can be fixed. Tell you what, let’s have some vodka! It won’t hurt you. A great antidepressant. I know it from my own experience. In Chechnya, we used to – » Andrei faltered and pulled on the girl’s hand. “Let’s go!”

In the kitchen, he sat Aiza at the table and rummaged on the shelves.

“Here!” He pulled out a bottle of vodka. “ER! Know what it means? Emergency Reserve. To be used only in emergency. Like now.”

He rinsed the glasses and poured vodka.

“Drink.”

Aiza obediently drank, then winced.

“Now that’s good,” Andrei approved. “Now eat something. By the morning, you’d feel cool as a pickle. Speaking of, we’ve got pickles. Great snack. And I’ll boil some dumplings, too.”

He was working the kitchen looking at Aiza over his shoulder and talking almost non-stop. Here are the dumplings, frozen. Now the water is boiling, I am tossing them in. Damn! I almost burned myself; splashes. Now let’s salt it. Do you like dumplings? Mom used to roll her own, but these days, there’s such variety in the stores, just pick. These seem to be okay.

The girl’s face lost its deadly pallor; her eyes came alive. She looked around.

“Do you live here with your mom?”

“Yes. You’ve met her.”

“Do you have a wife?”

“A wife?” Andrei paused, as if looking for an answer to a complicated question. He slowly stirred the boiling dumplings. “I don’t have a wife.”

“A bride?” Aiza asked quietly.

“I did… But not anymore.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sveta. Svetlana.”

“Did you have a fight? Did you break up?” Aiza got interested.

“You could say that.”

“Is she beautiful?”

Andrei turned away, pretending to remove a sore from his eye. He whispered quietly, “Very.”

“Is she nice?” Aiza wouldn’t quit.

Andrei, surprised, look at her. Why did she keep prying? But he answered, “Yes.”

“Then you have to make up! Call her.”

“Now?” Andrei was baffled. “I can’t.”

“It’s late,” the girl agreed and added convincingly, “Sveta will cal you! She definitely will! You’ll see. You’re a good man, she’ll call.”

Andrei instinctively touched the phone in his pocket. It seemed that the phone was about to start vibrating announcing an incoming call.

Just like it did that evening, when he raised a piece of rebar over a woman and a child.

Raised it to kill.