Tanya Grotter and the Magical Double Bass - The Talisman Edition

4.7 MB·English

by  PHIX

Chapter 1
THE BABY IN THE CASE
O
n a bright autumn morning when everything in the
world appeared garish and excessively cheerful, and
the foliage on the trees shone brightly, as if layered in gold
leaf, from the main entrance of a high-rise apartment house
on Rublevskoye Shosse peered a tall, stoop-shouldered man
in a gray topcoat.
Known to all as German Durnev, he was the director
of the firm SECOND-HAND SOCKS, and the father of a year-
old daughter named Pipa (short for Penelopa).
Stopping under the main entrance awning, Durnev
looked about disapprovingly. The sun, whose rounded
physiognomy was flat as a pancake, basked above the
neighboring roofs, as if lazily pondering whether it would be
worth the bother to go on rising, or if he should just begin to
set. A woman in an orange smock, not far from the entrance,
reclined on a heap of leaves as she gazed into an open
manhole. Her profile was attractive and Grecian in outline,
but her distended copper-red hair involuntarily recalled
thoughts of snakes. Inside the manhole, someone violently
romped and rumbled about. Inflated sparrows briskly
pecked at something on the asphalt, jumping aside from
passers-by like bouncy rubber balls.
From windows and basements, from playgrounds
and narrow public squares, from treetops and the washcloth
storm clouds hanging in the sky, from cat’s eyes and
women’s handbags, from the exhaust pipes of automobiles,
from the price tags in the shops and the still-charred noses
of the summer residents — from everywhere, rubbing
together carrot-yellow palms, stared the recently reborn
infant October.
But German Durnev did not notice any of the beauty
that surrounded him. The only interest weather (and nature
in general) held for him came in determining whether or
not to take an umbrella or place studded snow tires on his
car.
He checked his watch and took out a box of
homeopathic pills.
“The sun has some chutzpah! One, two… It’s not even
close enough to spit on… If only it would go out once and for
all... Really, how could anyone be in a working mood on a
day like this? Five, six... Sooner or later, I’ll definitely get an
ulcer… if I haven’t one already... Seven…” he muttered,
counting out the marble-like pills and placing them under
his tongue.
When the marbles had dissolved, Durnev thought he
felt a little better and said to himself:
“Well, now I should live to see dinnertime, provided
my new corn plasters don’t just happen to give me blood
poisoning.”
Little did Durnev suspect he was being watched. A
large, disgusting-looking bird — gloomy and bedraggled,
with a long, molting neck on which almost no feathers were
still left — was watching him from above the entrance. In his
beak, the bird held a photograph that had been cut out from
a magazine, at which he now looked… Yes, that was he,
German Durnev, who was captured in the photo, taken with
his wife Ninel and their daughter Pipa at the All-Russia
Exhibition Center's “International Suspenders” expo.
Occasionally, the bird lowered the clipping to the tin
shingles and meticulously compared the present-day
Durnev to the one in the photograph. As he did so,
disgusting greenish lumps of mucus dripped from his beak
onto the photo.
One could easily imagine how surprised Durnev
would have been had he randomly glanced up at what was
sitting on the main entrance awning. German Nikitich,
however, was not one of those who pay attention to birds
(with the exception, of course, of a boiled hen lying before
him on a plate). Moreover, at that given moment, the dodgy
mind of the SECOND-HAND SOCKS firm director was busy
working out how to clear two railroad cars' worth of used
handkerchiefs being passed off as children’s goods through
customs.
Durnev descended from the porch, and stepping on
some charmingly bright yellow leaves, ground them under
his heels several times with explicit pleasure. After doing so,
he passed by a great many other leaves with complete
indifference before starting his new black automobile. The
car snorted before finally starting. The naked-necked bird
quickly tore away from the awning and flew after the
automobile, obviously not willing to lose sight of it.
* * *
The woman sitting on the lawn, whom Durnev casually
assumed to be a repairwoman, followed the bird with her
piercing eyes and muttered to herself:
“What’s the Macabre Griffon doing here, I’d like to
know? The last time we crossed paths was at the launch of
the Titanic. I can't recall what happened to that steamship,
but I’ve no doubt it was something awful.”
She raised her hand, on the middle finger of which
was a sparkling ring, and in a low voice whispered:
“Iskris frontis!”
A green spark instantaneously shot out of the ring
and singed the bird's wing. Losing feathers, the Macabre
Griffon collapsed like a stone onto the asphalt, crowed out
hoarsely, and took off again, heading toward the nearest
apartment building.
The mysterious woman blew on her incandescent
ring.
“I hate these living corpses. They cannot be killed a
second time. Dealing with unholy spirits is really so much
easier,” she complained.
Meanwhile, in the manhole something once again
fell with a terrible crash. Water splashed.
“A-a-chh!” The sound from inside the manhole was
so deafening, even the manhole cover jumped!
Forgetting about the bird, the repairwoman (if, of
course, she was a repairwoman) anxiously bent over the
manhole:
“Academician, you're catching a cold! I beseech you,
at least put on a scarf!”
“Meduziya, don’t be foolish! A scarf is of no use to a
diver!” the voice answered immediately.
But this did not calm the woman one bit.
“I swear by the hair of Drevnir, this is completely
unacceptable! Just think of it: you, the academician of Bright
Magic himself — the head of the Tibidoxs School of Magic,