I tuned in on Monday, dressed, fed a starving flock behind the aquarium glass as it chatted about the weather, and rushed outside.
Indeed, it was drizzling in the morning, adding colors, or rather, depths to the surrounding landscape. Trees and flowers, washed and elegant, could be depicted on a canvas… I was again agitated by the thoughts of my abandoned painting and saved from other thoughts of an unknown author.
Opening the laboratory doors, I finally calmed down. Strangely enough, I didn't remember about the damn letter until the evening…
Eva's diary:
August 23, 1998.
Sunday.
It can be very difficult to start a conversation, even with the closest.
It seems like the words are stuck in the tongue, clinging to its papillae, and the only thing left is to swallow them.
Mom, I hope you never read these lines.
I write all these words, because otherwise I will suffocate or burst under the pressure.
They are so prickly.
I hate myself because I allow these thoughts appear.
«The world is full of surprises!» you reassured me when I was bored. You made me believe in the most incredible stories in order to cheer me up.
You gave me new books, believing that they could distract me from sad thoughts…
Chapter 4
Something That Remains
August pampered with warm weather. I lived in anticipation of a wonderful trip. I Googled and chose the most interesting tours. A tour to Croatia was my most tremulous and crystal dream.
Actually, I like traveling. All the money I save thanks to my Spartan lifestyle I spend on this particular type of human activity. I also make small sketches and photograph monuments or landscapes from an unusual angle. I collect impressions, writing down the very first thoughts that come to mind, as soon as I set foot in a new country.
Nothing overshadowed my preparations for departure. Nothing extraordinary or even a little unusual. No letters or calls.
Silence.
I decided to drop by Doremi the next day to say goodbye, and arrive to Moscow in two days. I would spend a night in Izmailovo, and get on my next plane in the morning. This time straight to Dubrovnik!
Long live the sea, relaxation, new experiences, meetings and again…
Long live the sea!!!
In the most joyful and carefree mood, I opened the doors of the university dormitory without even paying attention to some kind of a dull blow behind me. Behind the doors leading to my abode…
He was still alive when I came in. The man was lying on the floor. His eyes turned to the sky were open. In fact, the sky was replaced by the high ceiling of our five-story dormitory.
Perhaps this was some last impulse… He extended his hand to me and said:
«Now the thread is broken!»
His hand trembled, and he somehow immediately changed his face, as if petrified.
I stood at the door, unable to move. This stranger was the first dead man I've ever seen…
The spiral staircase is not the most successful invention of mankind. It rushes up, steep and narrow.
Oddly enough, I was not sick, and there were no unpleasant sensations. I looked at him like an empty vessel. Like a body that life just slipped out of…
Eva's diary:
January 23, 1999.
Saturday.
Alone. Alone. Alone…
If you ever burned to blisters, and then the skin came off, leaving moist red circles, then you can understand how painful it is! Taska probably cannot accept this decision completely.
But our parents are adamant.
Mom has her new love, father has his insult.
I really wanted to hug Taska goodbye, but she froze like a mummy… No. I literally felt her spines grow. I was afraid to approach her.
I just brushed away the tears, got into the car and no longer looked in her direction. When the car started, I looked around. It seemed to me that my sister, not believing in everything that was happening, extended her neck, looking at the trail of the departing car…
Chapter 5
Doremi
I met Doremi in September two thousand and eight. We were twenty-three, and we came to the first composition lesson of the first year of evening art school.
Doremi was a very handsome young man dressed in a white embodied sweater, which emphasized his natural attractiveness extremely. I was sitting to his right, behind the others by the window, examining the crowd, but from time to time I turned to admire the big brown curls of the stranger.
He felt my tenacious gaze with his back, stood up and, moving his chair, sat next to me. This is how our friendship began.
I believe it was friendship.
Our tastes and habits coincided. All but one… Doremi was a complete romantic and monogamous. His first love, a girl with a rare name Kira, long ago left their native Khabarovsk when Doremi was sixteen, not even suspecting his feelings.
For some time, he tried to find her on the network and did not lose hope, but so far this has not brought any results.
The girl seemed to evaporate… Perhaps, of course, she just got married and changed her name, or even used some strange nickname. Besides, she knew Doremi under a different name…
When his parents, young surgeons who worked at the Oncology Clinical Center, were expecting their first child, they asked God for one thing:
«Lord! Send us a girl. We've come up with a name for her. We'll call her Sophia! God, you will not allow our hopes collapse. And we don't have any suitable name for the boy! Unless it's Dormidont!»
God must not have heard their prayers.
Or he had completely different plans…
Or perhaps he took the appeal of future parents as a challenge or a joke, and thus he made a joke himself. Of course, we can assume that he simply liked this name…
But in due time a strong and healthy baby was born. It was a boy. A beautiful dark-haired boy!
Doremi's parents had no choice but to nod three times in agreement, when an elderly registry office employee who had seen a lot in her life repeated her question three times, wrapping it in various words:
«A very unusual name… Greek. Ancient. So shall I write: D-O-R-M-I-D-O-N-T?»
«Exactly,» the young parents answered, not at all embarrassed.
«Is this someone's honor?» The employee inquired, losing any enthusiasm in her voice.
«It means a condition of the Agreement,» young people uttered simultaneously.
«Agreement? Interesting… You know, yesterday we registered another rare name here. Not as harmonious as yours of course. Imagine a boy named Nestor! So, I shall write „Dormidont“?» Kind woman specified for the last time.
«Yes Yes!» His parents nodded.
Doremi was lucky.
When there was a roll call in the first grade of school number nineteen, a dozen ordinary names were called besides his rare name: Zakhar, Sevostyan, Ilya, Kirill, Vasily, Grigory… Therefore, the boy had no problems with nicknames. No one paid particular attention to the unusualness of his name, which had its own history, moreover, quite beautiful.
The first time young man seriously wondered if he should change his name was when he applied for physics at Tomsk State University. A young girl from the admissions committee could not even repeat it without distorting it.
Therefore, at the age of twenty, when passport replacement was required, Doremi received a new passport which stated:
Dorian Vsevolodovich Cooper.
When Dorian told me the whole story, I remembered my parents and since then no longer believed that their experiment was cruel…
Dormidont's parents were far more inventive.
However, I came up with another short name:
Doremi.
It turned out somehow very musically, and he got used to it immediately. Since we were also involved in high art, being in a good mood I sometimes called him Doremi Gray.
Like Dorian Gray…
This is the story.
In any case, his watercolor portrait painted by me on my third year of art school now hangs on the left side wall of Doremi's huge hallway, right above the large black leather sofa, reflected in the glass cabinets along the opposite wall.