Valentina Basan
The love of a bandit or an affair with a Gypsy

They went into a corner apartment with a door lined with red dermantine.

– Please go to the bachelor's lair! Ilya optimistically turned on the light and Nina immediately saw two cockroaches that disappeared somewhere in the direction of the kitchen.

The poor one-room was so cramped that Nina already saw the window of the room on the left from the corridor, and the kitchen window on the right. In the middle of this creation of human insanity called "housing", the island "toilet \ bathroom" stood proudly, which divided the kennel into sleep and devour. The furniture was very poor from the distant fifties: a sideboard on thin legs with a rectangular door in the middle, which became a table for no clear reason, and at the top there were two glasses that moved apart towards each other, and if it was necessary to get a service or documents, then he grabbed one glass with his fingers and gently "pushed" it towards his friend. At the same time, the whole service rattled, the glasses rattled, and on the porcelain cockerel, in which most men hid vodka so that their wife would not guess, the lid threatened to break. Two chairs with thin legs were pushed to such an extent that it seemed that if you sat in them, you would need all the physical form to get back up. And the crown of the furniture was a huge couch in the middle of the hall, thoughtfully covered with a clean sheet. The sheet smelled fresh and Nina realized that it was the only thing she liked in this house. Nina sat down right on the sheet, but not because she wanted to make love, but because it was the only pleasant and clean place in the apartment.

Ilya, obviously unaware of Nina's true intentions, visibly winced.

– Baby, wait, take your time, but what about your jailer?

Nina shuddered:

– What jailer, Ilyusha?

– Well, Harry Potter.

– Yes! Nina jumped up and clapped her hands.

What kind of stupid kid are you, Ilya thought with bitterness and resentment, and added under his breath:

– Really, very beautiful …

– What, Ilyusha? I didn't hear, Nina took off her denim jacket and hung it on the back of the chair.

She was beautiful in a dark school skirt and a light shirt, loose hair beautifully framed her face, wide and thick eyebrows added depth and expressiveness to her bright huge eyes.

– And why aren't you twenty, – Ilya thought, and added aloud:

– Baby, I'm going to find a CD and bring something to chew and drink.

Nina was so happy that she forgot two of the most important things before going to visit a stranger. But Ilya has been a close friend lately, you will say, and you will be right.

Yes, even if Nina remembered two golden rules of behavior in an unfamiliar apartment:

(1. Warn anyone mom, sister, girlfriend, neighbor, but so that at least one living soul knows who you are with. 2. To name the address of the stay.), then she wouldn't have done it anyway. She was too carried away by Ilya, the adventure, the upcoming premiere for her, Nina Konstantinovna Zotova, will be a screening of a film that has just been released on the screens of Europe and America.

In the early noughties, cell phones were gaining popularity exponentially. Therefore, in 2004, even the modest Zotov family had a fairly large but reliable Nokia 3310. And if Nina had not ridden a sea horse through a dubious "lair", but sent her mother or sister an SMS with the address, then many terrible events could have been avoided.

If common sense had risen, he would have asked stupidity where Ilya went to look for the disc if all the television equipment consisting of a poor silver Funai and a video recorder for him was here, near the bed of love. There was no smell of a disk drive anywhere, but we'll omit it.

Common sense was dead and there was no one to ask questions.

Nina settled down with her feet on a clean sheet, the couch creaked with exhaustion. The girl was afraid to stretch her legs back, thinking that she had broken a rarity. One side of the couch was leaning against the wall, on which hung a large brown and burgundy carpet that reached from the door of the room to the window itself. Nina tried to lean on him, but when she touched him, she disturbed such a cloud of dust that she coughed.

Ilya returned to the room in strange dirty shorts and with a bare torso. The ninth-grader has not seen her god in such an outfit yet. But he was still good. The first impressions of the entrance and smell have passed. Sitting on the sofa, Nina watched with a sinking heart as Ilya approached her with a tray.

There was a bottle of open Soviet champagne on the tray (although there was no sound of the bottle being opened, but would Nina have paid attention to it?), two pot-bellied glasses made of dark, colored glass filled to the brim with sparkling drink, three quarters of an apple with bones lay in a plate forlornly, the fourth was chewed by Ilya.

– Baby, help yourself, a wonderful wine for a beautiful girl!

– Thank you, Ilyusha! Nina broke into a smile and took the glass in her small hand, obviously expecting a toast. But since the guy waved his glass in one gulp, the girl took a little sip from her own.

Nina rarely tasted alcohol, her mother allowed her to drink a glass of wine on New Year's or birthday. Therefore, Nina was not a black sheep among her classmates, she knew the taste of alcohol and could take a sip at the disco. But she never got drunk in the trash and did not vomit in the school toilet, like some girlfriends who had an iron curtain at home, and at school discos they broke loose and drank everything in a row. Then the parents of such girls came to school with terrible scandals, blamed teachers who forced their children to lap up swill.

Nina knew the taste of Soviet champagne, but this one seemed too bitter to her.

– Silly, for love to the bottom! – Ilya literally guided the stem of the glass until it was empty.

Nina felt bad right away. First the room floated, and then Ilya floated. He bent down to ask something, smiled, but the drugged girl no longer heard anything. Her eyes could still focus a little on objects, but sense of hearing was completely gone, as if the sound in the room and in the whole world had been turned off. The hungry young organism, not poisoned by toxins, passed out instantly, once Nina in a semi-conscious state hung down from a clean sheet to vomit, and then the sound turned on again. Ilya yelled and cursed, called her very bad words, and she just smiled stupidly and kept wanting to remind her that "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is written and read with a "z", not a "s". It was getting light outside, Nina opened her eyes and moaned. The headache from the light was so strong that the girl almost lost consciousness. After catching her breath a little, she stirred. Nothing hurt except my head. Once in her childhood Nina had a concussion, she was constantly sick and vomiting, in the hospital they put her on a bed and gave her medications and strictly ordered her to remain completely calm.

Nina remembered where yesterday she could have fallen so hard that she again received such a terrible concussion from which she felt sick, constantly wanted to vomit, and the headache was close to torture. Then she noticed Ilya sitting next to her, enthusiastically reading the contents of her phone.

– Oh, baby, you are awake! Well, you're my silly, you got drunk yesterday, like the last pig, behaved madly, and also attacked me. Practically raped me.

A church bell was ringing in Nina's head. The tongue has stuck to the lower palate and to part of the lower teeth. There was a taste of bile and a rotten egg in her mouth. She tried to open her mouth, but then slowly got up and walked along the wall to the toilet.

The toilet was so small that it was possible to sit on the toilet only with the door wide open. The walls of the toilet were plastered to the ceiling with naked beauties with appetizing forms. But looking at the toilet bowl, the poor women on the posters could only sympathize, because they poor, had to sniff the rusty, leaking sewer for years, the brown toilet bowl, which in its distant youth was white and immaculate, and the layer of feces that the unfortunate busty girls from the posters not only sniffed, but also contemplated.

Nina threw up without closing the door behind her. Bent double with her legs, she was standing in the hallway, and her face was over the toilet. There was no strength to go to the bathroom and wash, Nina fell on the bed.

– Do you like to ride, love to carry sleds, there was nothing to get drunk and rowdy yesterday, baby. By the way, here's a jar for you, go pee in it and bring it to me, I'll do a pregnancy test. And then you tear up all the time. You're not using protection, are you? Don't you take any pills?

Nina shook her head and mumbled something inarticulate. There was a small bulldozer in her head, which was going to dismantle the skull.

– Go, go, baby, here's a jar. Faster.

Nina stood and stared at the two strips. Jump out, jump out, jump out from the fifth floor, so that it all stops at once. She wanted to kill two birds with one stone: to put an end to this monstrous headache and the shame of drunken copulation, which she does not even remember.

Ilya brought Nina to Rimskaya metro station, kissed her on the cheek and asked the question: Baby, are we going to give birth or what?

Nina shook her head.

– Well, smart girl, if you want Mom and Natasha not to find out anything, you have to take out the whole cash for me. This, of course, is not enough for everything, but I will add. Understand?

Nina nodded her head. The horror of her mother and sister finding out about her adventures drove her to hysterics. And then she realized that no one since yesterday knows where she is, with whom and whether she is alive.

Ilya saw the rebirth of sober thoughts in the helpless eyes of the girl and added: – Baby, if you just tell your mom or sister that you were with me, then I will tell them in all the details what you did you do to me, understand?

And so Nina sat in front of Valya in the small kitchen, red, sobbing, trembling and unhappy. And Valya, clenching her teeth, was afraid to come up and smack with all the dope on a stupid and tear-stained face.

Chapter 7

Valya leaned over to Nina and asked in a loud whisper:

– Did you call your mother? I'm asking you, did you call your mother? The whisper became threatening and resembled the hissing of a disturbed snake.

Nina shrank into a ball and seemed even smaller, younger, thinner and more unhappy.

– No.

– Are you a fool? No, I'm asking you, are you a fool or are you just pretending? Although why am I asking when it is necessary to assert that you are a fool! You were sitting on a dark floor and waiting for me while your mother and sister were calling morgues and hospitals, perhaps they had already written a statement to the relevant authorities. And now the police are questioning your classmates, teachers and the director.

If the girl's emotions could be represented in the form of certain decorations (as sometimes happens in cartoons or movies), it would look something like this: four little men in white coat knocking on the door with the inscription "Brain". The door is overgrown with cobwebs and poison ivy. Paramedics actively cut off ivy and cobwebs, pull the handle and the door slowly creaks on rusty hinges. The small room is dark, stuffy and very messy. There are scraps of Backstreet Boys posters lying around, which were replaced by Harry Potter in time. Harry Potter books are everywhere. A couple of lipsticks, high-heeled shoes, school notebooks sticking out of the trash and photos of Ilya everywhere. The whole tiny room (which symbolizes the brain, you know) is covered with different photos with Ilya. Where he is alone or with Nina, a heart is placed with a red marker, and where he is with Natalia, the older sister, a skull and a wish for a speedy death (to Natasha, of course) is drawn with a black marker. In the middle of the room is the corpse of a little girl with glasses and Bunin's book "Dark Alleys". Doctors began intensive therapy without words. A brisk "Did you call your mother?" came through the skull, a discharge, once and the girl had a pulse on the floor, "mother and sister called the morgue," another discharge, the pulse quickened and breathing appeared, the heart was started.

The doctor: "The brain is not hopeless, colleagues, we will resuscitate further!" The phrase "the police interrogate the whole school" forced the Brain to open its eyes. She was weak, so weak. She kept muttering…

– Idleness hit me on the head with a book, Anger and Fear did nothing, just watched. I passed out before I got to the subway. And what happened? The doctors looked with wise eyes:

– Brain, come to life and get to work, life is a complete kick-ass without you. We will neutralize idleness now, let him sit a little with Fear. He's always hiding in the ass. So she's going there, too. And you, Brain, dear, be strong. You can't go to the ass! Your goal is to survive, you know? You will be felled more than once, but you, like a phoenix bird, will always rise from the ashes.

The Brain began to move, began to tear off all the photos, put them in garbage bags, she was vacuuming, mopping the floors, after a few seconds the room was shining, yes, it was empty, but the Brain had already given the command to the subconscious according to the list of literature.

The resuscitation of Valya's words helped Nina to recover. For the first time in months of acquaintance and friendship with Ilya, a thought appeared in her brain. Then the second, the third. It was an unusual feeling for Nina to move her Brain, but she liked the micro-girl with glasses inside her head too.

– Valentina, you're right! I need to call my mother immediately.

But then, Nina's eyes filled with tears.

– What about pregnancy? What am I going to tell Mom? She'll kick me out of the house! I am a disgrace to my family and school. I'd rather go and die under the fence.

Valya climbed onto a stool and took out a huge shoe box from under women's boots. There were so many medicines in it that it was easy to cure several villages in Africa at once. Pregnancy tests were here too. Nina looked questioningly at Valya, who nodded.

– Yes, mom's patients also feel bad sometimes, mom has different methods of treating mental and psychological diseases. The reaction to the test sometimes shows the essence hidden deep inside. Mom, of course, does not apply this technique to everyone, but it helped a couple of times.

Here's a jar of mayonnaise, take it and go to the toilet. Of course not here, bring the can of urine here, just be quiet, otherwise my mother, a psychologist, will cure you quickly.

Nina stared blankly at the test. One strip. What nonsense.

Valya was sitting with the face of a man who showed Columbus in which direction America was.

– Nina, you were cheated like the last sucker. You realize that you couldn't get pregnant and the test would instantly show a positive result. It's impossible. It should take time for the body to understand itself, to receive a signal about pregnancy. In general, you will learn more on anatomy. Listen, and you are this.... Ilya didn't rape you by any chance? Do you have any burning, itching, blood, stains on your underwear?

Nina shook her head in fright.

– Valyusha, no, I'm fine, physically, I mean. I think Ilya was squeamish, I smelled so much vomit.

And Valya thought to herself: "Your bastard Ilya was afraid to go to prison for rape and child molestation, this is a terrible sentence, article and term. It's not like you're trying to get money out of a stupid girl."

Nina reached into her backpack in search of her cherished phone.

– Do you have a charger? – she said in a barely audible voice, – because my phone is dead.

– Now. Wait a minute.

Valya silently retreated out the door.

The phone greeted the negligent hostess affably and showed the main screen. Nina dialed her mother's number several times.. At first there were long beeps, and then the phone stopped answering at all. The plastic tube insisted that the subscriber was out of reach.

– Maybe it's discharged? Nina said awkwardly, looking at Valya?

– Get a sister! Valya commanded.

– Uh, well, I don't seem to communicate with her…

– Nina, I'm going to punch you! Dial your sister immediately! Are you crazy? Do you even know what you've done?

– Natasha, hi, don't yell into the phone. What about Mom? I can't reach her.

The girl's tense face showed that the news were sad. She tried to justify herself, began to sob excitedly, Nina began a form of hysteria.

Valya did not hear the conversation, but she realized that something very terrible had happened. Nina hung up and said:

– Mom's in the hospital. She has a suspected heart attack.

Chapter 8

– Mom, Mom… My dear. Please, God, make Mom get better. Please, Lord, I will never leave her again, I will never worry, please, You are the Almighty. Please help Mom, please heal her. Please, please, please.

Nina muttered a prayer to herself and out loud, kissed her cross, washed her face with tears, while Valya in the front seat pointed out to the taxi driver where it was better to park near the hospital.

Natasha, wearing a white robe, was already waiting for the girls on the first floor. When Natasha saw Valya, she looked at her with such gratitude and love, with which she did not look at her own sister.

– Valentina, thank you for coming and… Natasha awkwardly thanked Valya, but her eyes were – instead of a thousand words, full of tears, pity and sadness.

Valya quickly put her hand on Natasha's shoulder:

– Natalie, what are you doing? Calm down! How is Tatiana Sergeevna? How is her health? What do the doctors say?

– They say that this is an acute coronary syndrome, a pre-infarction condition. It is necessary to undergo treatment now, then complete rest and rest. No nerves, you know. I came home from work in the evening, my mother is nervous, she says, go look for Nina. I tell her, Ma, she's sitting somewhere with her friends or she's stuck in a food court at the mall. After 22:00, the guards will expel them all, don't worry.

I took a shower, ate and just passed out, I was on my feet all day, I had no strength. At 5:00, my mother woke me up, pale as death herself, said that she walked around our neighborhood all night, Nina is nowhere to be found. The phone is not answering. I jumped up, called the police, but they didn't accept the application. They said, let the time pass, your teenager would show up, and they would not issue an application ahead of time in vain. I called the hospitals until 8:00, I didn't dare to go to the morgues, I just didn't raise my hand. Yes, you know I called to all the hospitals in Moscow.

We ran to school, we thought maybe she was scared, but she would come to school in the morning. Like nothing happened, and my mom and I were ashamed to make a row in front of classmates and teachers. I asked off at work, said I was on sick leave. We spent several lessons with my mother in the school yard, and from there she was taken away by ambulance. I was so scared for my mother that I was no longer up to the loss. I came to my senses in the evening when this fool dialed me herself.

I spent the whole day running for medicines, collecting bed linen, slippers, and a bathrobe for my mother. While I was running, our doctor said that the crisis was over. They applied on time, they didn't let lie down at home. And if they had gone home to "lie down", it is unknown what would have ended up. It's good that I called my mom's friends in dentistry, they immediately found a place in the hospital and a wonderful cardiologist.

Valya, I was so scared, I thought my mother was dying," – Natasha said through tears. All the stress, horror and fear that Natasha so courageously kept to herself all day broke through the dam of bitter tears. The girls were sitting hugging, on the first floor, two friends who had never been exes. It's just that life separated them for a while, but in difficult times it became clear that each of them remained a person, a good person.

– Natasha, dear, while Nina is with her mother, I'll tell you something… Don't be nervous. But we have to make a decision.

Valya told everything: from Nina's meeting on the floor to her arrival at the hospital.

Natasha was sitting neither alive nor dead. Fear for her sister, hatred for Ilya, the disclosure of the main motives of his interest in the family finished off Natasha. Clutching her mouth with her palm, she flew like a bullet to the toilet. Natasha came back wet and cold, her teeth were chattering, it seemed that the girl was dipping into the washbasin with her head, or maybe it was. Valya could not keep silent about Nina, who foolishly almost killed her mother, and maybe she herself would have lost her life from intoxication of the body, nor about the bastard plan that the bastard endured like a native child.

Natasha told her friend that Ilya began to behave too nervously, hinted at a wedding, against which the girl basically had nothing, but there was one nuance. Ilya stipulated that after the wedding, he and Natasha would move into a two-bedroom apartment (with his residence permit, of course), and Tatiana Sergeevna and Nina would go to live in Ilya's one-bedroom apartment. For Natasha, this was a strange condition, she sincerely did not understand and tried to convince her beloved. She was flattered that he wanted to improve their living conditions, the only thing that confused her was the improvement at the expense of her family. Natasha convinced him that he could take out a loan and calmly change his apartment for two, or even three. Hearing this, Ilya went berserk, he yelled at the bride for a long time and called her a fool for the first time. Natasha was sobbing, sitting on the couch, on which her sister almost poisoned herself later. The doorbell made her come to her senses, through the closed door to the only room, Natasha realized that the landlady of the apartment had come to claim the debt and threatened eviction with the police. Strangely, Ilya promised to repay the debt exactly after the wedding date.

It was the last date of the future newlyweds. Natasha was an adult, working girl, she silently put on her shoes, dressed and closed the door behind her. Ilya, of course, did not stop her. She was bitter, disgusted, disgusted. Natasha walked to the subway intuitively, not taking apart the road. She did not cry, but only bit her lips until they bled and blinked her dry eyes often, often. She really wasn't offended by the smelly bedbug with the ever-soiled toilet bowl, which she honestly filled with everything she could find from Domestos to sulfuric acid, but it only had to be burned. Not for the money he borrowed from her, and she paid off the debt with a salary and a credit card. Not for strange acquaintances and eternal secrets in SMS and phone conversations. She was hurt because she really liked him. He had a zest, he could be funny, courageous, gentle and very personable. He knew how to throw dust in her eyes, and behind all this storm in a glass of water, Natasha trusted and did not see the main thing – falsehood from beginning to end.

After telling Valya her bitter truth, she covered her face with her hands.

– Natasha, I'm sorry, please… Nina came out of her mother's room and hugged her sister.

The girls sat hugging and crying. Two sisters, two blood relatives, two closest people almost lost each other.

Valya delicately stepped aside and looked at the display, 1 missed "Vadim".

– Natasha, Vadim called me. Do you mind if he visits Tatiana Sergeevna tomorrow? – Valentina, of course! Thanks. I'm also has blame before him, I'll explain. I hope we will remain friends.

– Girls, what about the hiding place? Ilya told me to bring everything to the metro station tomorrow morning… – Nina uttered a phrase and fell silent, she was ashamed, but now and forever she spoke only the truth, too terrible a lesson was the result of her lies.

– Nina, what time is it in the morning? – Valya smelled prey and made a stand.

– First I have to write to him that I have the "giblets", it means the contents of the cash, Ilya called it that," Nina answered to Valya's raised eyebrow in question.

– And then? – Natasha was biting her nails.

– Then he will tell me which metro station to bring all the "giblets" to.

Valya no longer listened to about the metro station and Nina's courier delivery, she dialed the number:

– Egor Ivanovich, I need your help, my sister got into trouble, a bad person offended her, and now she is trying to give him all her money. Good. Thank you. I'm waiting.

Chapter 9

Egor Ivanovich Levin, born in 1954, a native of the Tver region, was the namesake of the character of the classic Leo Tolstoy from the novel Anna Karenina, but at the beginning of the terrible and dashing nineties he was known as Gosha Tverskoy. By the age of forty, Egor had a karate school "kyokushinkai", two young sons Vladimir, twelve years old and Valentin, six years old, a beloved wife, dying of cancer mother, and enemies in the wonderful city of Tver. Egor stopped paying "tribute" to the servants of the vile bandit Anatoly Podnebesny a few weeks ago. It was August of the ninety-second, Egor was returning home after training, half of the children did not pay again.

Egor was a patient and kind man, he allowed poor families to train for free, and some children, whom he caught stealing, forcibly brought to school for training. He forced the children to "work out" the crime, one of such loyal and devoted students was a Gypsy. The coach caught the fifteen-year-old kid stealing at the central market, where he sold grown vegetables in the summer season. The kid stole a man's wallet, and he was literally kicked to death if it wasn't for Egor.

– Guys, guys! Good. You'll kill the kid," he yelled, grabbing the unconscious body.

– This scum cut my wallet, let him die! – feeling the blood and excitement, the victim hissed.

– I'll answer for him. Now he's walking under me," Egor said, taking a club from behind the counter.

Looking at the size of the guarantor, the two insulted and humiliated spat on the bloody body and turned around and went.

Egor dragged the kid behind the counter and ran to the phone.

– Vovik, is your car on the move? Come to me, thank you, brother.

Together with his best friend Vladimir, whom he considered a brother, Egor dragged the guy's thin body into the car and drove home. Svetlana the wife was scared, but quickly got her bearings. The family knew that it was impossible to call an ambulance, the police would intervene, and nothing good could be expected from it. The guy was washed, the abrasions and bruises were bandaged, they gave him broth from the cheapest bones through a tube, they ate it themselves, and the body slowly transformed into a live wolf cub. Only his eyes were burning on his face, but it was clear that any movement gave him hell of a pain. Egor introduced him to his family, wife, mother, sons and a friend. The boy didn't speak well, but he listened attentively. Egor took him to his first training session a month later and realized that he had found a great student. The gypsy, so called the kid, did not know his first and last name, judging by the short stories, alcoholic parents threw him into the Tver orphanage from which he escaped. For a couple of years he lived with homeless people and stole what he had to. Egor taught him manners and behavior for a long time, how to go to the toilet without smearing anything around, but he liked something about the kid that he realized in training. The gypsy was burning with passion and love for sports. He poured out all the pain, all the sorrow and sadness in the gym. He looked at Egor as a God, and this was really his religion. The Gypsy, with the help of Egor, graduated from nine grades (the certificate was written out behind his eyes, because the director's chubby son also practiced karate and the Gypsy often protected him from local punks, as a fellow trainee). According to the documents, it was Ivan Ivanovich Tsygankov, working as an apprentice at the factory. In life, he was the best fighter of Tver, Moscow and other regions. On that ill-fated evening, he trained hard in the gym. Egor rented the basement of a neighboring house from the housing department, which was conceived as a parking lot, a Gypsy lived there, looked after the equipment and always brought brilliant cleanliness. The gypsy carefully rolled up a huge poster of Masutatsu Oyama, the founder of the Japanese Kyokushin karate school, and "chinden" – a hieroglyph that became the symbol of the school, i.e. "The Union of Seekers of Absolute Truth." It was a small Japan in the middle of impoverished, criminal Tver.

And on this hot August evening Egor was returning home with heavy thoughts. The market does not bring anything, only ten people go to school, everyone has left for the holidays in the villages, what to pay for the rent of the hall, utilities and, most importantly, what to buy food for the whole family.

An open door on the second floor in a five-storey building did not bode well. Egor taught everyone to close the doors tightly, the first ordinary "dermantine", and the second wooden, heavy with an iron bolt. The bolted door was ajar. Yegor silently descended to the first floor and took a stick for knocking out mailboxes. Silently entering his apartment, he heard the sound of water and moans, slipping into the bathroom, Egor saw his own wife slurping water from the brimming bathroom, where she was dipped with her head, a vile ex-convict drug addict was standing behind her and viciously lifting her robe. Sveta on her bent legs, tried to push off with her hands from the bathroom, but it was her few seconds.

Egor hit his legs with a stick, the convict broke like an aspen. Before he could recover, the fighter hit the bald skull with a stick with such force that pieces of the brain flew across the peeling walls of the old bathroom. Wiping his wife 's face , he asked in a whisper: