Читать книгу Tasya - Vincent Gallo - Страница 4

The train doors slid open. Hugh merged into the wave of people exiting onto the platform and rode the wave of humanity to his destination.

He could feel the spade bouncing along in his bag next to work related files and documents. He had been carrying the spade each day just in case he would bump into the black-haired girl or spotted her in the flowerbed. He didn't want to rush back to his flat to find the spade, only to have her disappear once more.

As it stood, he hadn't seen her for some days. Every time he had gone out to work and returned to the fortress, he would look to the flowerbed and benches but found the former untouched and the latter littered with people sitting, chatting, eating, and drinking.

The black-haired girl was never among them, sitting with her parents and having a bite to eat, but Hugh found it fascinating that there were always different people relaxing on those benches. It was as if his courtyard were a rest stop in between the comings and goings of adventurers, vagabonds, and eternal wanderers.

Hugh considered the possibility that the black-haired girl was one of those vagabonds that he would never see again. Perhaps, Hugh reflected, he would be forever hauling around his grandmother's spade.

Hugh followed the crowd like how a molecule of water follows a running river, and flowed with them onto the escalator.

Riding the escalator to the surface of the metro, Hugh questioned why he was applying so much effort to give the black-haired girl the spade. He couldn't find a definite answer, but he attributed the reason to Masha's impact on him. He saw the girl not as a way to connect to other people, but as a way to let go of his own lonely childhood. To some degree, seeing the black-haired girl sitting in the flowerbed without her parents around to take part in her activities reminded Hugh of the loneliness that he had faced at her age.

The girl indeed appeared to be in high spirits. Hugh doubted that she had suffered the same fate as he had as a child where one parent passed away and another then became shackled to work. Regardless, he felt that giving her the spade was a gesture that he himself would have appreciated receiving when he had been a child.

The escalator reached its apex and Hugh stepped off with added acceleration from the escalator's forward movement. He sidestepped around the person in front of him to avoid collision and then struck a path through the slow-moving crowd to the exit, feeling as a lightning bolt through a dense and gelatinous fog.

Hugh burst through the heavy double exit doors and flew down the five or so steps leading down to the sidewalk. He weaved through the crowd of human molasses, careful to avoid clipping the shoulders of those less eager to put distance between themselves and their metro ride.

Coming off the final step, Hugh slammed face first into a man who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The immovable object that halted Hugh's unstoppable forced did not seem perturbed or angered by their chance physical meeting. He gave Hugh a sly smile, as if signaling to Hugh that they shared had shared in some inside joke. What baffled Hugh was that the man hadn't been leaving the metro with the rest of the metro goers, he had been standing and facing the oncoming wave of humanity.

Standing there, trying to understand the forward-facing man's smile, Hugh noticed that crowd started to fork around and avoid them. Hugh and this immovable man were just two people standing there but those exiting the metro treated them as a bulky obstacle. Hugh could have extended his arms at full with, from side to side, and his fingertips wouldn't have brushed the rushing crowd.

“Pardon me sir,” Hugh said to the forward-facing man, “but you are standing in the area where people exit. The entrance is through the other —"

“I’m disappointed that you don’t remember me Mr. Mechta.” The forward-facing man interrupted with his smile still plastered on his face. He deliberately and meticulously adjusted his coke bottle glasses.

“Timmy?” Hugh’s question was incredulous. The person Hugh had met at Office M was a cowering and frail man hunched behind a desk, whereas this man stood with perfect posture seemingly supported by a steel spine, broad shoulders, and a smile that exuded not just confidence, but power.

This air of self-assuredness was supported by Timmy’s dress – a pair of brown leather loafers, black dress pants that looked tailored just for him, and a burgundy dress shirt underneath a matching waist cost lined with light brown buttons brandishing etchings of the letter M.

“You do remember me, Mr. Mechta. How delightful!” Timmy said, ignoring the stampede of people streaming outside arm’s reach.

“What brings you here?” Hugh asked, eyeing Timmy’s perfectly brushed slicked back hair. In front of Hugh, he looked like a model for some high-end hairdresser while at Office M he had looked like a poster boy for a used mop shop. “I find it too coincidental that we’ve run into each other at the metro.”

“There are no coincidences when it comes to Office M.” Timmy said and lifted a squinting gaze towards the sun. “Masha sent me to check up on you and—”

“I am so glad that Office M provides follow up consultations.” It was Hugh’s time to play the interruption game. “Both of you vanished the last time I was there.”

Timmy’s gaze left the sun and descended onto Hugh. His eyes burned with flames of annoyance that had been kindled by Hugh’s attempt at friendly banter.

“Mr. Mechta, I am in no mood for games or jokes, nor do I have the time to expend on them. I have had, and will continue to have, a very busy day. So, please refrain from any extraneous comments.”

“I apologize.” Hugh said and quickly moved to change the topic. “You were mentioning Masha.”

“Yes. Masha.” Timmy said the mystic’s name with a hint of awe. The edge in his voice blunted and the flame in his eyes extinguished. “As I was saying, Masha sent me to check up on you and see how your luck with the spade and the girl are going.”

“Masha knows about the spade and the girl?” Hugh blurted out. “I had spoken to Masha before I met the girl and offered her the spade. How does she know about that?”

“Mr. Mectha, do you really need me to answer that question for you?” Timmy sighed and pushed his enormous glasses up the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. “Let me pose to you a question, what is Masha’s profession?”

“She is a mystic.” Hugh answered after a moment of hesitation, seeing that he had walked into an obvious trap.

“Exactly, Mr. Mechta.” Timmy’s face became a smug representation of a bureaucrat satisfied with finding and resolving a discrepancy between two files.

“Hold on one second,” Hugh hurried to retort, “if she is a mystic, and knows all my business, then why does she need to you touch base with me?”

“Mr. Mechta, she has many clients to keep track of.” Timmy replied. “She does not have the time, nor the resources, to monitor every time you brush your teeth or check your emails. That is why I am here. So, I'll ask you again – how are things going with the spade and the girl?”

“I have the spade in my bag. I'll give it to the girl when I next see her.” Hugh answered, impressed by Timmy's assertiveness, especially comparted to their last encounter, and the quasi-return to his lumberjack form. “Unfortunately, I haven't seen her for a few days.”

Timmy extended an arm out and beckoned with all fingers. “Show me the spade, if you will.”

Hugh slung off his bag and speedily rummaged through it, unconcerned about wrinkling his work files and notes. He found the spade and offered it to Timmy.

“This is exquisite.” Timmy said and took the spade.

Timmy held the handle to his ear, gave it a few flicks with his nail, and listened to the vibration from within. Satisfied with this, he next lifted the spade to the sun and examined how the backside reflected light and how shadows contrasted against the inner curves of the blade.

“If I am correct, this spade belonged to your grandmother.” Timmy said. “This is an appropriate gift with an appropriate sentiment attached.”

Hugh swallowed the question asking how Timmy knew about his grandmother. Hugh hoped that Masha hadn't told Timmy any of his embarrassing secrets or moments in life.

“Mr. Mechta, I can see that all is well.” Timmy flipped the spade in his hand and offered it back to Hugh with a show of reverence, as if he were holding an artifact from the Office M display case. “I'll be sure to inform of that Masha when I return to the office. With that said, I recommend that you go march back to your fortress. I believe she is waiting for you.”

“The girl?” Hugh bobbled the spade and chucked it into his bag after getting a firm hold of it. “Why in the world would the girl be waiting for me? For this silly old spade?”

“See you soon, Mr. Mechta.” Timmy said in a manner of fact way, brushing off Hugh's question. “It is always a pleasure chatting with you.”

Hugh was about to protest and push for more information, but Timmy had already taken his leave – into the oncoming people leaving the metro. Hugh turned and watched as each person staring down at their phones, chatting with their friends, or just looking up at the buildings, sidestepped Timmy without even registering his presence. It was as if some unseen force enveloped Timmy and gently guided the crowd around and away from his path to exit doors.

The range of this force apparently had a limit because as quickly as the sea of people parted for Timmy, it formed back together and came crashing down on Hugh. They pushed and knocked into him while throwing dirty looks and mumbling even dirtier words. It was as if each person coming out of the metro had the sole goal of entertaining themselves by bumping into Hugh and making unsavory comments about his mother.

Hugh managed to turn himself around and join the forward momentum of the crowd. Even as he walked alongside them, some were still keen on persisting with their passive aggressive shoulder shoves.

Not to be left out of this game of human bumper carts, Hugh retaliated in kind and grinned believing that Masha was getting a laugh out of this.

Like many times before, Hugh entered the fortress.

Passing through the archway, Hugh observed the playground. Many more children than usual were playing, and their parents lined the parameter of the playground, keeping one eye on their children and another laser focused on their smartphones in hand. He saw a wide range of ages. Some were infants, others were just pushing four, a handful were preteens, and even a group of teenagers were hanging out on a bench. In this painting of different generations inhabiting shared space, the black-haired girl was not among them.

He considered it odd that she wasn't there, laughing and running with other children around through the sandbox, past the swings, down the slides, and up and along the miniature rope course.

Why wasn't she there playing made up games with the others and taking brief imperceptible pauses to steal glances at her parents to catch the admiration and love in their eyes?

Hugh walked on, trying to recall a memory of himself on a playground, riding the seesaw, and shooting down a slide. All he managed to retrieve from the database of his long-term memory was being too overweight to swing himself from rung to rung on the monkey bars, and the accompanying envy that he had felt when seeing other children who could do it with ease. The other children also had their parents around to encourage them when they slipped off the bars, but all Hugh had were the jeers of his peers and the blank stares from their parents.

Masha had advised him to let go of the past and Hugh knew that he needed to head her words. Pushing away those monkey bar memories before they could infect him with self-pity, the flowerbed came into view.

Just as Timmy had foretold, the black-haired girl was there and was engrossed in the business of digging holes.

Turning onto the path that led to the flowerbed, Hugh saw that she was no longer clawing the soil with her nails, nor poking with a stick. She had elevated her digging to a more sophisticated plane of manual labor. The black-haired girl had entered the age of metal, having replaced her wooden stick with a long and wide metallic spoon.

Hugh came to the bricks lining the flowerbed, but she didn't stop to greet him. She was too absorbed in digging with her advanced form of technology.

“Hey, how's the digging going?” Hugh asked.

The black-haired girl drove her spoon into the soil, like a conqueror claiming new land, and left it there. She regarded Hugh with bared teeth, flared nostrils, and furrowed brows that narrowed her eyes into violent slits. With her short black hair framing her face, she gave the appearance of an otherworldly demon ready to strike.

“Where in the heck did you go the other day!? I was waiting here, and you never returned!” She was all hellfire, and it was evident from how she roared that this inferno had been burning for some time. “Some elderly couple even offered a drinking straw to help me dig. A drinking straw! How could anyone believe they could dig with a drinking straw? Still, they offered up something quicker and more tangible than you, without even making the promise to do so!” The black-haired girl's pale cheeks flushed red with anger and Hugh anticipated that she would peg him between the eyes with her spoon.

Hugh said nothing, ashamed that he had disappointed the girl.

He wanted to muster up an excuse for his tardiness, but he couldn't bear to tell her that it was due to a pair of talking dogs. Unable to articulate himself, he did what he thought to be the next best thing.

He unslung his backpack, shifted it onto his chest, and plunged his hand deep inside. He rummaged around the bag, fingers risking nicks and papercuts from all his work documents but was unable to locate the spade.

Hugh panicked and doubted whether Timmy had given the spade back to him.

The girl rested her hands on her lap and observed Hugh as he dove his arm shoulder deep into the bag. The raging red in her cheeks gave way to their usual pale, and her pinched lips suppressing a smile told Hugh that she was getting amusement out of him looking like an incompetent magician failing to pull an uncooperative rabbit out of a hat.

Frustration and worry were overcoming Hugh, fearing that he had been too ignorant to put the spade back in the bag when he had been speaking to Timmy, so he evoked the final solution for when one faces a lost phone, key or knickknack in a bag.

He flipped the bag over and dumped all its contents to the ground.

Work papers and files, pencils, crumpled up café checks, unused plastic utensils, a pin depicting a smiling spaniel in front of a sunset that Hugh didn’t even know he owned, charging wires and other loose items that he had forgotten even existed, came tumbling out of the bag in a freefall mess.

But, the spade was not among the mess.

Desperate to hear metal bouncing and scraping against concrete, Hugh shook the bag like a house cleaner waving and whipping a dirty and shoe trodden rug over the balcony. Just as Hugh thought his hands were going to dislocate from his wrists, he heard what he had longed for and then some.

“Wow…” The black-haired girl whispered after the spade skidded and skipped across the cement into arm’s reach.

Kicking up soil, she scrambled over to the spade, snatched it up and held it to the sun.

In the same manner that Timmy had, she held it by the handle and slowly rotated it. She examined the edges and how the sunrays reflected off the faded metal.

“This is exquisite.” She said, copying not only Timmy’s words from not too long ago, but also his pronunciation and intonation.

“It was my grandmother’s.” Hugh said and kept to himself how Timmy’s and the girl’s admiration for the spade baffled him. To Hugh, it was just an old spade that his grandmother had used. “Seeing that you enjoy working in the flowerbed, and are in need of the correct tool for the job, I think she would be happy for you to have it.”

The black-haired girl’s eyes grew wider than sunflowers.

“I can really have her spade?” The girl asked full of disbelief.

“Of course, you can have it.” Hugh said and scratched his head, still confused by the awe with which the girl was showing to the spade. “I don’t think I’ve touched it once in my life until this week. You’ll make better use out of it than I.”

“That’s… That’s so nice of you.” The black-haired girl said. She gripped the handle with both hands and pressed the spade’s flat surface to her chest. To Hugh she appeared to be afraid that he would go back on his words and steal it away from her. “I’m sorry I was mean to you before, about you not returning. I could’ve waited a bit longer for you to return.”

“All’s well that ends well.” Hugh said, touched by her apology. Not many people apologize anymore, nor mean it when they do. “I’m here. You’re here. And you finally got the spade. So, what’s next?”

She burst out laughing, humor returning to her.

“What’s next you ask? What do you think is next when one has a spade in hand?” She extended her arm upwards and pointed the spade to the sky, looking like the true incarnation of the soil knight. “We dig!”

She scuttled back to her previous spot in the flowerbed and stabbed the spade into the soil. She proceeded to make her holes, thrusting, lifting, and placing soil. The spade became an extension of her hand as she fell into an efficient and mechanical rhythm of soil removal. Hugh stood there and watched, seeing a shine of innocent happiness across the girl’s face.

Hugh stood there for a few minutes more, admiring her dedication to digging, when she slowly came to a stop and looked up at him. The joy in her face had not waned but had become mixed with concern.

She placed the spade upon her lap, not minding the soil on her clothes.

“I’m sorry. I just got so wrapped up in the spade, and with digging, that I ignored you.” She looked around at the holes that she had made. “Would you like to help me dig? There are plenty of more holes to make.”

“Sure, why not?” Hugh crossed into the flowerbed and sat down next to the girl.

“Wait one second!” The girl pipped up. “Aren’t you afraid to get your clothes dirty?”

“They’re just clothes, no worries at all.” Hugh gave a dismissive shrug. He wasn’t going to bring up that he had already been in flowerbed. “If they get dirty then I’ll wash them. But, what should I dig with? My hands?”

“While not the best digging tool,” the black-haired girl tossed the spoon to Hugh, “it gets the job done.”

Hugh started to dig, and similar to his first time in the flowerbed, he fell into a trance.

His shoveling hand moved independently of thought as it worked overtime to scoop and carve out holes with the impractically long spoon that was ill suited to digging. While the black-haired girl could form a hole with a single scoop or two, Hugh required five or more scoops to dig his own. Not only was the spoon’s head much smaller than the spade’s blade, but the head’s curvature caused a fraction of the soil that Hugh drew from the ground to sprinkle back into the hole. Instead of deterring and frustrating Hugh, these spoon-based limitations narrowed his focus and concentration.

“Hey, snap out of it.” The girl roused him with a playful, but sharp, poke from the shade. “I see that you’re keen on digging, but it’s time for something grander!” She tossed a small packet to him. “Now, get to planting!”

Hugh opened the packet that contained a copious number of seeds. “So, how many should I plant?”

“All of them!” The girl shouted with glee and tore open a packet of her own.

They filled each hole with seeds and buried each seed with soil. Feeling like a bird scanning a landscape littered with foothills, Hugh looked down at the myriad of mounds that would one day germinate life. He had never done any sort of planting before in his life, having only seen his grandmother toiling away in her own garden. Hugh didn’t know which types of plants these seeds would produce, nor when, but the act of planting made him feel closer to her through the satisfaction that he imagined that she had felt while gardening.

The girl jabbed the spade into the ground, craned her neck to the sky and let out an exaggerated yawn.

“Oh boy! I’m feeling exhausted after that.” She said and looked over at Hugh. “Are you hungry at all? I have some snacks in my bag that I could share”

Hugh peered over at her bag. It was one of those overly tiny bags that barely spanned two hand widths.

“I haven’t eaten since this morning,” Hugh said, indeed quite hungry, “but I doubt that you have enough snacks in that bag for the two of us.”

The girl grabbed her bag and dropped it onto the soil in front of her.

“Neither of us will starve today,” she said, “I got enough for the both of us.”

With that said she unclasped the bag and retrieved the contents within. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said that she had enough for both of them. She had enough to feed all the people sitting on the benches, the dozen or so finches hopping around at their feet, and the pigeons plodding around in circles.

Out of the bag came two bottles of water, two apples, two packets of cashews, two halves of a sandwich in their own air sealed containers, and two sets of cookies wrapped in cellophane paper. Hugh looked on in amazement at how she was able to unpack all that food from her tiny, seemingly useless, novelty bag.

There must have been some curse on that bag, where it would swallow her whole if she didn’t fill its bottomless belly.

“Can you tell me, how in the world were you able to pack all that stuff into such a tiny bag?” Hugh asked and accepted his share of water, apples, nuts, cookies, and sandwich halves. “And why do you have so much food in the first place?”

“What do you mean?” The girl gave him a confused look and popped off the sandwich container’s lid.

“Well, your bag is awfully small. Too small indeed for all that food,” Hugh said, struggling to open his sandwich container, “and if I had to make a guess, you wouldn’t be able to eat all that food on your own. I know that I couldn’t.”

“You are quite the pessimist, aren’t you? Just because the task seems difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” She took the container away from Hugh and swiftly popped it open with her thumbs. She handed the container back to Hugh and dove into her sandwich. “I wanted to pack the bag, and so I did it. As for the food, my pessimistic friend… I packed so much, well, because…” She trailed off and averted her eyes to the sandwich half in her hands that was now a sandwich eighth after a single one of her bites. “Um, it’s hard to say, honestly. I had a feeling we would meet again, that you would bring the spade. That you wouldn’t….” She trailed off again, eyes looking down to nowhere in particular.

“That I wouldn’t what?” Hugh asked.

“That you would disappoint me.” The black-haired finished off her sandwich, palmed an apple and chomped on it vigorously.

It was Hugh’s turn to wear a confused expression. “Why would I disappoint you?”

“Look. I said enough.” The girl aimed for a strict tone, but her mouthful of apple and accompanying munching worked against her. “If you want to keep your food then I recommend you drop the issue.”

“Honestly, I don't want to give up these cookies.” Hugh replied.

The black-haired dropped the apple core into the plastic container and unknotted the bag of cashews.

“Not a single word more and you can keep the cookies.” The black-haired girl said. “Deal?”

He didn't want to test his luck by responding with a ‘yes,’ because caution told him that she would have taken his verbal agreement as a breach of her conditions and thus grounds for confiscating his cookies.

To retain his bounty of food, Hugh pledged himself to their deal with a simple nod.

The black-haired girl chuckled and quickly covered her mouth with both hands. Hugh's dedication to cookies amused her and she didn't want to shatter the serious atmosphere with her laughs. The very act of trying to calm herself only incited even more laughter to the point where she could no longer contain it. Her hands fell to her sides and she permitted her laughter to ring out loudly and freely.

Hugh didn't ask her what she had found so funny, not because he was suspicious that she would seize his cookies if he uttered a word, but because her joy and laugher had infected him. He joined her and allowed himself to let out his own joy and share in the moment's positive emotion.

They both calmed down, wiping stray tears from their eyes. A sudden giggle would pip up and deep breaths would quiet them down. They returned to their food and ate in silence, their spirits lifted by their shared laughter.

Time moved on and it soon came time to go.

They tidied up the apple cores, rolled up the small bags now absent of peanuts, brushed away breadcrumbs, balled up the cellophane wrappers, and sealed all of it away inside the plastic containers. Despite having less items to return to her bag, Hugh was still astonished how it even possessed enough space for the two containers.

He was convinced that the bag was cursed and that he needed to mention it to Masha the next time their paths crossed.

“It's time head home.” The black-haired girl said and slung her bag onto her back. “I have a lot of cleaning to do, and it won't do it itself. You know, you put it off and then bam, there are piles of dishes and a dust everywhere.”

“I'm going home as well,” Hugh said after an imperceptible pause to consider what the black-haired girl had just said. She had spoken as if she were the homeowner, living alone, and not a young girl of about eleven living with her parents. “I have some work to do and, you know, it won't do it itself.”