She struck him with a meat hammer, with the burled side. Danaë knew beforehand that just once on the head wouldn’t be enough. Neither would two. During the process she realized that it would be enough only when she had lost count for the third time. Then she stood there listening, without looking. She imagined a monitor with a wan green image of her dad’s threadlike pulse. Then she dropped the hammer, went to the kitchen, washed her hands, went to the hallway, grabbed her bag of notebooks, came back to the kitchen, sat down at the table, and began grading papers. After a half hour she was sick of it. She moved into her dad’s room, turned on the light (it had grown dark outside, but the rain was still pouring down), and peered at him. Innokentii Karaklev was sitting in the same armchair, but tilted over on his side so that his knuckles were trapped against the rug. His thoroughly beaten head was glazed in its own juices.
Danaë decided to leave everything as it was, at least for now, until she took a bath with some fragrant salts. Salts always had a positive effect on her body. Sitting on the edge of the tub and looking into a mirror, Danaë pronounced: “This is easy.”
Later she was told that she’d gone mad. Just like her mom. Those who said it were right. She knew it and she’d reply: “And you’re all bastards, bastards, all of you.” It’s possible that she was right too.
CHRISTMAS
BY IRINA DENEZHKINA
There should be a comma after “tighter,” Yulia noted in the margin, then set her pencil down and rubbed her temples. As usual, the words were swimming before her eyes. They would keep swimming for another half hour, until Yulia put on her coat, picked up her purse, and left the publishing house. She put drops in her eyes. I’m going to have to move on to glasses pretty soon, she thought sadly.
As Yulia left the Barrikadnaya metro station, the heavy glass doors swung closed behind her with a loud wallop.
She heaved a distraught sigh, her head finally clearing after the stench of the sweaty underground crowd and their identical faces, on each of which she distinctly read:
Yulia wiped the sweat from her forehead and made her habitual motion of smoothing down her jacket.
Her wallet was gone.
She had her cell phone. Here it was, on the right. But her wallet was missing.
Frightened, Yulia looked from side to side, feverishly trying to figure out who might have relieved her of her salary and bonus and where, when, and how.
Yulia moved forward on cotton legs and leaned her shoulder against one of the vans selling burned
How was she going to live now?
Go to the police? Yulia laughed nervously. A lady walking by, wearing a gray puffer coat, gave her a nasty look and sent a tut-tutting curse her way. Rush back, down there, into the bowels of the underground, wrest her money back (from whom, dear Yulia?), howl …? Pretty funny.
She gathered all her strength and walked on. Toward her building.
She moved past the
