Chapter II.IV
Vitaly Ivolginsky
Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre)
Second Act — Uma Moldura Quebrada
Chapter II.IV
Looking around – as if afraid that they were being overheard – Jo was about to tell his friend about his new neighbour, when suddenly Japhet raised his finger up.
“Listen, mate, what now writing in papers!”, he said loudly.
With these words, apartment’s owner pulled out the latest issue of The Oregonian from under the table.
“Japh, you know…”, Jo said hesitantly.
Mister Thurlow wanted to say that he didn’t care about all these press, but his friend could no longer be stopped.
“Dog earned an bacon”, Japh loudly announced the news headline.
“Sounds like the title of a moral story for kids”, thought Jo, making himself more comfortable in his chair.
“In a controversy, two dog trainers decided to find out which breed is the most patient and causes more sympathy among others”, friend started reading.
“What kind of cynological quarrels…”, mumbled mister Thurlow.
“To resolve the issue, they arranged an examination for their pets”, Japh continued
“Do you really thinking, what this is interesting to me?”, Jo couldn’t resist.
Japhet lowered the newspaper and looked at him – his hidden behind glasses eyes expressed reproach, like that of a mentor.
“Wait a bit, it will be more interesting further”, he said and buried his face in the newspaper.
“You always tell everyone that “more interesting further”, Jo imitated his friend.
The owner of the apartment ignored this guest’s remark and continued reading.
“Cummins and I decided to check whose dog performs the commands “Stay” and “Sit” better, – tells Nuell Saberlow, famous cytologist-instructor of Portland”, Japh read.
“Hmm, I think I’ve heard this name before”, thought Jo.
“We both decided to left our dogs for a whole hour on Pearl District. Well, on a bit of a lark, I placed two felt hats next to them and a “I’M ASKING FOR BACON” signs too”, after these lines, Japh could not help but laugh a little.
“It seems that these are circus performers, not dog handlers”, his friend caught his tone.
But at the same time he thought that this Nuell Saberlow had something in common with that same friend of his late mother who helped her get a dog. Over the years, Jo had forgotten his name, but this extraordinary antics from the newspaper involuntarily made him remember that cheerful, muscular man.
“The winner was my Labrador Flarie – passers-by were pleased to encourage the gallant white giant, who also bowed at each donation”.
Having read this, Japhet raised his head and looked at mister Thurlow over his glasses.
“Do you think you would have acted the same as the onlookers from Pearl District?”, he asked a question.
“Well, that’s unlikely”, Jo replied. “I have my own dog, why should I give money to someone else?”
“There is common sense in your words”, Japh nodded. “Only dogless apartment residents can afford such expenses”.
“How would you do it yourself?”, mister Thurlow decided to turned the spotlight.
“I?”, Japhet, his hands occupied with the newspaper, furrowed his brow.
“You yourself live in an apartment and don’t have a dog”, his friend rightly reminded him.
The owner of the apartment decided to evade this question and returned to the newspaper.
“In an hour Saberlow’s dog Flarie earned whole eight United States dollars, and his competitor, Cummins’ fearsome rottweiler named Raider, just a measly two American bucks”, he read.
“I hate rottweilers, Japh! I hate ’em!”, theatrically exclaimed Jo, imitating a hero from some action movie.
“You’re not the only one in Portland, it’s now scientifically proven”, Japh laughed.
“Was that the end of the article?”, mister Thurlow said, seeing his friend put the newspaper on the table.
“Yes, that’s the whole note. Or do you think that an article about some trainer would deserve a separate page?”
“It’s understandable”, his listener nodded. “The best thing about it is the eye-catching title”.
“And if remove it”, his friend answered, “then there would be nothing interesting left”.
“So why did you read it to me then?”, Jo looked at Japh somewhat reproachfully.
He didn’t answer, he just took off his glasses and began to wipe them with a piece of suede. Jo reached for the newspaper.
“You can take her with you”, apartment’s owner said casually as his friend picked up a copy of The Oregonian.
“No-no, I’ll just take a look”, his guest answered hastily, running his eyes over the lines.
The first thing that caught his eye was the huge heading, under which was indicated the name of note’s author – certain Megan Heaton. Next was the text that Japh had just retold to him, and at the very end of the article there was a black and white photograph in which the big man was holding a huge white Labrador on a leash. The caption under the photo read “Nuell Saberlow and his faithful Flarie”. Jo looked at it and froze, not believing his eyes.
“This is the same trainer who helped our family with dogs!”, he exclaimed, throwing the newspaper back on the table.
Japh, who had already pushed his glasses up his nose, raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“What, do you feel proud that your friends are mentioned in the press?”, he quipped.
Mister Thurlow said nothing to this, only lowering his head down onto the linoleum that covered the kitchen floor.
“Curious”, Japh continued, “how much would your Belgian malinois earn?”, he meant Buffalo.
“I don’t think anyone would give him even a cent”, Jo noted with some sadness. “He’s so rude…”
“This same Saberlow fitted it for you, right?”, his friend smiled.
“Yes of course”, mister Thurlow remarked with some annoyance.
“Everyone is always fooling you”, the owner of the apartment said either comforting or mocking. “And then they write about those who fooled you in the newspapers”.
“Stop it”, his guest was not amused.
Meanwhile, Japhet suddenly pretended that there was no conversation between them about dogs, and asked his friend with sudden gaiety in his voice:
“Well, you must have been very surprised when you opened the folder yesterday and saw materials about Greece there? Yesterday I was quite surprised when, instead of materials regarding Kinthia, I found in my folder sheets covered in someone else’s handwriting, telling about some book bestsellers in Munich in the seventies”.
Yes, it was true, mister Thurlow was tasked by his boss to collect information of this kind. The task was essentially to collect information on the sales of several famous fantasy novels in the above-mentioned city. In this matter, Jo was greatly helped by one man who was called onkel Korble behind his back. He was an old German from Wiesbaden, who in the early eighties moved from there to America – or rather to Portland – according to him, because of the contraband trade. On the Das gelobte Land he did not stop his dirty deeds, on the contrary, he organized a bookstore, where – illegally, of course – he sold German books at half price to people who could read in this language. Among them, as you might guess, was mister Thurlow himself, who more or less learned German as a child through the school curriculum – one might even say, he was one of the few among his peers who really became proficient in studying it.
As a matter of fact, with the support of onkel Korble, Jo began to write his little investigation. To be brief, for some strange reason among the Munich residents enjoyed wide popularity book by certain Die Brüder Strugatzki, whose long title could be roughly translated into English as “It’s Not An Easy, To Being A God”. Mister Thurlow had no idea what the book was about, but the impressive figure that appeared in the column “Am Besten Verkaufen” (Best Sellers list) interested him in the sense that if the Germans bought this book in great demand, then why shouldn’t lazy American Jo read it at least once.
On the advice of old German, Jo, without using the services of a translator, under the his dictation, wrote something like an application, where he indicated the title of the book and the author, and gave it to Korble, who stated, that thanks to this procedure, the desired book will be on mister Thurlow’s desk in a couple of weeks. By the way, the old jackal didn’t even take a cent from him for this operation – apparently, friendly relations among the German people have some kind of almost sacred value, although, looking at onkel Korble, Jo strongly doubted it…
Putting aside thoughts of the proud German people, Jo answered the question addressed to him regarding the folder:
“No, Japh, to be honest, I was so tired yesterday during the bus ride that I was too lazy to look at the materials – I immediately went to wash. And you distracted me from the bath with your call”.
He couldn’t resist inserting a barb into his sentence, which in good faith should have been said yesterday on the phone, but then he was a little in the wrong mood.
“Well, I’m sorry, Jo, I didn’t know that you were simmering in boiling water like a chicken in a saucepan”, Japh was also not averse to exchanging jokes with his friend.
“Oh, how I’m already sick of this chicken topic!”, mister Thurlow shouted in anger.
The owner of the apartment asked his guest what was the matter, and Jo briefly told him his previously mentioned thoughts regarding the fact that since yesterday evening he had not really eaten anything other than eggs. Japhet joked that today, at least, he treated him to peas and fish, but his interlocutor, having expressed his experiences, closed himself off and did not really hear his words. Japh, noticing his friend’s condition, hinted to him that it might be time for him to go home. Shuddering slightly, mister Thurlow agreed with him and, shaking Japh’s hand, wanted to say something, but his tongue no longer obeyed him…
Leaving his apartment on the fourth floor stairwell, Jo shivered a little – it turns out that he could not even imagine that because of the cooking it was so hot in Japhet’s apartment that, having gotten used to such a temperature, he was already frankly cold outside its walls. Barely moving his feet, mister Thurlow went downstairs and, almost colliding at the door with some neat man with wide eyes (out of fear or what?), finally left this building.
Outside, he felt that the weather had changed somewhat. And in fact, the sun, previously shining brightly in the sky, was covered with clouds for the first time this week. Now, Jo thought, he wouldn’t have to squint in the blinding sunlight as he approached his house. This essentially simple circumstance for some reason filled him with energy, and he ran forward, as he had in the morning. To his own surprise, mister Thurlow was not exactly exhausted, his legs were not even tired by the time he had covered the entire path and, pulling the gate key out of his pocket, looked at the roof of the Har… Sorry, Yonce family.
His sensitive ears caught the sound of walking on the grass, which was coming from behind the neighbours’ fence. Someone from the female half – for mister Yonce himself could hardly move so easily – was walking near the house. Jo, after a slight hesitation, opened the gate door and almost lost his balance – his starving dog pressed paws against his stomach with such force, that if his owner had not grabbed the iron gate with left hand, he would inevitably have been lying on the grass right now.
It seems that during this incident some funny sound came from Jo’s mouth – apparently a muffled cry – for on the other side of the fence, from the side of the new neighbours’ house, a well-known ringing laughter, like the sound of bells, was heard. Mister Thurlow suddenly felt a surge of shame. He was almost completely sure that the little girl could not see anything behind the tightly packed boards of the wooden fence, but he understood that the very noise of the fuss (as well as his scream – although he couldn’t remember whether he actually made it at that moment) caught her attention. Hesitantly struggling with himself, he was able to control his feeling of embarrassment and, as if nothing had happened, said to his faithful Buffalo:
“Well, excuse me, chum, I completely forgot that you’ve been hungry for six whole days”.
After patting the dog behind the ear, he went into his home. Pulling the formal shoes off your feet (he could not get used to the fact that wearing sandals is not a sign of falling into childhood), he said out loud so as not to forget:
“Okay, Jo, remember – you must feed the dog, otherwise you will pay dearly for not looking after protector!”
The somewhat commanding tone of his own address slightly stretched the corners of his lips, but inside he was not laughing. For now, he wants to take a short nap. He was decidedly too lazy to go to the bedroom, so Jo settled down right on the sofa, which stood in a fairly spacious kitchen next to the dining table and, putting a seemingly tightly packed sack of flour under his head, stretched out his legs and, forgetting about everything in the world, surrendered to the power of the younger brother of death.
The dream he had then on the kitchen sofa struck him with its strange combination of cute and creepy in equal proportions. In more or less detail he saw the coast of some sea. On sand strewn with shells of vieira (a scallop), two children were running around – a boy and a girl, both of them looked about ten years old each. The children were dressed in some old fashion, evoking an association with Victorian England. They ran after each other across the sand, unwittingly scattering it with their feet. Then they stopped next to each other, and the boy, taking out a black bowler from somewhere in his bosom – Jo remembered that it was clearly sized for someone older than that child – threw it up. The hat spun in the air and fell into an air current, which carried it away from the water. The boy rushed to catch up with the headdress. The girl remained standing in place, looking after him and shouting something – apparently, these were encouraging words. Soon the figure of her friend disappeared behind the sand dunes that stretched deep into the beach. The little girl apparently got tired of standing in one place, and she skipped along the tracks left by her friend’s bare feet.
And then, in fact, mister Thurlow saw what plunged him into horror then – as soon as the girl came quite close to the dunes, when suddenly four creepy people jumped out of there – they were dressed in black suits, black cloaks fluttered behind them like raven wings, and all of them, except one, the fattest one, had black bowlers on their heads shiny with sweat. These men in black were running at a slow pace – as if the world itself had stopped at that second – and as they walked, they pulled black rubber-covered police batons from their belts… The last thing Jo remembered was the heart-rending scream of the girl from whose eyes he saw this action.
“What a nightmare!” having woken up and, trying to calm down his wildly beating heart, he blurted out throughout the kitchen.
Sitting on the sofa, he suddenly felt that his cheeks and hair were covered with something like dust. He quickly rose to his feet and saw dense clouds of white powder rise in the air. Jo swore angrily – it turns out that while he was sleeping, the sack of flour opened up and now he will have to put himself in order again. Well, okay, he, who likes to lie in the bathroom longer, is no stranger to washing, but here’s what to do with the flour scattered on the sofa and on the floor… Cleaning had never been a priority for mister Thurlow’s household chores, so when he thought that sooner or later he would have to collect the spilled flour into a garbage bag with a broom and dustpan, he suddenly felt uneasy.
He glanced at his left hand. The wristwatch, the glass of which was lightly coated with flour, showed twenty minutes to six. Must hurry, suddenly it dawned on Jo. The butcher’s shop closed at six thirty, therefore, he needed to leave the house as soon as possible so that his dog would not die of hunger. Mister Thurlow walked into the bathroom and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Flour covered his hair just this morning… Jo decided not to resort to water, because if he went outside now with a wet head, then “come to me, common cold!”. Therefore, he solved the problem of unpresentable appearance in this way – he took off his flour-stained jacket, shirt and pants, and put on a T-shirt and shorts instead (for a long time he had not taken both of these items of clothing out of his wardrobe due to his strange complexes). After that, Jo stood over the trash can and, using a comb, began to comb out the flour stuck in his hair as thoroughly as possible.
After looking in the mirror, he decided that some kind of headdress would come in very handy for his wardrobe, because he couldn’t get rid of the flour dry, and he didn’t want to scare people with his white hair. Barely audibly swearing at his own sloppiness, he opened the wardrobe again. There he found an old camouflage cap, clearly designed for a much younger person. But, lacking anything else, mister Thurlow put it on his flour-dusted head and once again looked at his reflection.
