Tanya Grotter And The Magic Double Bass

“Yes, Plague-del-Cake,” Sardanapal courageously specified, involuntarily glancing upward: whether an iron would yet whistle. “Grotter wrote: in order to get the Talisman, he used one hundred forty-seven different components, among which, as I assume, carnelian and mouse tears absolutely had to be present… Well, but the secret of all the rest he took with himself to the grave…”

“And his Talisman? You have it?” Medusa asked excitedly.

“The Talisman had vanished. It disappeared in the most improbable way. But you have not listened to the end… Hardly waiting for the end of the thunderstorm, I sat on the jet sofa and flew to Leopold Grotter.”

“You flew on the jet sofa?”

Chernomorov was embarrassed. Nevertheless, one can hardly say very.

“Yes, I understand what you want to say: someone among the students, especially from the “black,” could see and make a laughing stock of me. I’ll say: academician, laureate of the award of Magic Suspenders, head of the legendary Tibidox flying on a tattered sofa with plucked chicken wings… A sofa, from which copper springs stick out… It was already late, and no one saw me… And how? Would someone really look out the window, having heard nothing but a little rumble… Mm… I even almost ran into the stained-glass panel of the Hall of Two Elements, but if the glass also crumbled, then through the course of time… Nevertheless it was seven hundred years old…”

“A nightmare! And I thought that the stained-glass panel was fractured by lightning!” Medusa thought.

“At first I wanted to use a flying carpet, but to set out on a carpet in this dampness would be a waste: moth would damage it. Besides, the jet sofa is almost one-and-a-half times faster… Well, and I don’t speak of boot-runners at all. Since, as they were hexed, their accuracy of landing is almost twenty versts… Oh, of course, I could take a mop with propeller or a flying vacuum, but you know full well that they are uncomfortable. One’s back becomes numb during long flights on them, and the absence of baggage carrier interferes with taking even the smallest load with you.”

The instructor of studies of evil spirits sighed very quietly. For a long time, those in Tibidox were already used to Academician Sardanapal’s eccentricities. He could very well, mixing up the epochs, appear at work in a Roman toga or set someone’s ear wax on fire by mistake, after confusing it with a grey chemical. And what about that case with the guest from Bald Mountain, when the academician sent him on a three-month sleep, having accidentally read to him the hibernation spell for gophers instead of the salutatory speech? But whatever you may say, nevertheless he was the greatest magician since The Ancient One.

“Are you listening to me, Medusa? In my opinion you were distracted!” The academician reproachfully glanced at his companion, and she, worrying, understood too late that she forgot to protect her thoughts with a guard spell.

When you deal with a powerful magician, never overlook any small detail.

“So, I flew to Leopold,” continued Sardanapal. “The wind was favourable, so that I was on the road for no more than three hours. Before reaching the place, I detected a great number of evil spirits swarming around his house. They were behaving very strangely – muttering something, panting, walking in circles, and were generally somewhat dejected. Noticing me, the evil spirits dispersed in countable minutes. You know these essences: first many of them, then suddenly, at one go, none…”

“And no one even attempted an attack?” Medusa was astonished.

“Absolutely not. I did not believe my own eyes. Only Plague-del-Cake could assemble so many evil spirits in one place, and she would indeed not miss a chance to settle a score with me. Here’s the riddle – only very recently the evil spirits were ready to tear us into shreds, but now it’s as if we don’t exist for them… Busy with their own little squabbles.”

“And then you surmised that She-Who-Is-No-More vanished?”

“Well, I haven’t quite surmised yet, but I’m already pondering. I approached the house of Leopold, knocked – no sound in answer. Then I pushed the door, and it opened. It didn’t even open but simply fell from a single touch. In the house everything was turned upside down. Internal walls had collapsed, handrails were charred, only chips left from the furniture. Likely someone endowed with immense magical power uttered a spell of total annihilation. I rushed into the laboratory. It suffered most of all. Even the granite boulder that served Leopold as a table for experiments crumbled into powder, I hardly touched it…” the voice of Sardanapal trembled. “Grotter and his wife Sophia… there was already no help for them. Even I could not help, although, as you know, Medusa, I slightly understand magic. But here’s a miracle – in the middle of the laboratory, on the floor dented by the spell, among the crumbled plaster lay a case for a double bass, and in it – a tiny little girl, their daughter… We knew the Grotters well, Medusa, they were people of skill, magicians of superior material. Magic and music were what they lived for. They didn’t even have a baby carriage for the child, managed entirely with a case for the double bass. Afraid that the girl was also dead, I leaned over the case, and – oh, a miracle! – she was sleeping serenely, and gripped in her palm was a silver scorpion of Plague-del-Cake…”

Medusa straightened abruptly. Her copper-red hair again hissed like snakes.

“How? That same scorpion-killer which She-Who-Is-No-More sent to sting her victims when she wanted to take pleasure in their tortures?”

“Yes. But it couldn’t injure the girl, although on the tip of her nose I noticed two red spots. Likely, the scorpion stung her directly on the birthmark. Even a light bite was usually sufficient to kill an adult magician… But she, this baby, simply crushed it. A year-old girl, not even awake, dealt with the silver scorpion.”

“However, it’s incredible that she survived. But if the scorpion got rid of its venom? Or was it used earlier?” Gorgonova asked with distrust.

“No, there was enough venom. And Plague-del-Cake didn’t keep old scorpions. But even if we forget about the scorpion, another thing remains: the spell of complete annihilation – this terrible white flash which burns out everything all around – also couldn’t harm Tanya. Indeed this form of magic is not among those directed selectively. It destroys everyone and everything that happened to be close by, with the exception of the one who cast it.”

Tears rolled down Medusa’s cheeks and fell onto the pile of maple leaves. The leaves began to smoke. The first unknown folk narrator calling female tears hot was likely acquainted with a sorceress.

“The unlucky Grotters! But what about the Talisman of Four Elements?” Medusa sobbed.

“I was never able to find it,” said Sardanapal. “It was not near Leopold nor his wife Sophia nor the child… It was nowhere in the house. Most likely, it was destroyed by the spell together with all the rest of Grotter’s inventions. True, at first I suspected that Plague-del-Cake took it, but, if this were so, we would already have known about it. No, it actually disappeared, and the strange behaviour of the evil spirits – a better confirmation of that. I don’t know what happened in the house of the Grotters, but this tiny little girl did what no single magician could… She stopped She-Who-Is-No-More…”

Only now detecting the burning leaves under her feet, Medusa uttered a short spell accompanied by a sign, which her magic ring traced directly in the air. The fire went out. For a little while, the sign traced by Medusa hung in the air, weakly wavering. Gorgonova angrily wiped it off with her palm.

“But why do you want to give the girl up to Durnev? Why send her to the moronoid world? Why can’t we bring her up in Tibidox?” she asked with vexation.

“Medusa, have you forgotten what place Tibidox is? You should indeed know, but there’s absolutely nothing for a child to do there. Only imagine to yourself, Tibidox – and suddenly a child?

“And if Eyeless Horror comes to the surface? Or, let us say, Dumpling Maker let go of his Coffin Lid, and it, like last time, lying in wait for students lingering on the dark stairs? And the cyclopes, getting violent each full moon? And Ripper, whom, by the way, you wrongfully dragged out of the scorching cave in the Earth’s core, where he was incarcerated.”

“He promised that he would drop all his habits and would be our porter. You yourself know that it’s complicated to rely on the cyclopes. These dimwits have heads like sieves,” Medusa said, justifying herself. “And later… well, you yourself know what happened later…”

“Precisely… The invisible Ripper walks along the corridors of Tibidox, howls, croaks, and does what suits him, and even we cannot catch him because he can be reflected only in the Mirror of Fate, but he doesn’t show his nose there!” Sardanapal shouted angrily. “And you want me to let the daughter of Grotter into Tibidox?”

“But I can cast guard spells! The most powerful guard spells, which neither Ripper nor Death nor Wooden Hag nor Eyeless Horror will trespass. And the empty Wheelchair and the flying Coffin Lid – they are indeed a trifle altogether. They are only capable of causing harm to a novice not knowing the rebuff spell…” Medusa said with contempt.

“And a newborn girl, in your opinion, is capable of uttering it?”

“No, she isn’t capable. But, Sardanapal, we can, after all, bathe her in the Deflecting Bath, and then…”

The academician of white magic interrupted her:

“Yes, I agree. We can. Coffin Lid – it’s nothing. Wheelchair – also nothing. Freezing Traps and Statue-Crushers also, perhaps, nonsense. But Nameless Cellar? And is the Vanishing Floor also a trifle? We, up to now, still don’t know what became of those two bums who managed to make their way there. And in conclusion, what will you say about the Sinister Gates?”

Medusa shuddered.

“You’re right, Sardanapal,” she said, crushed. “I forgot about Nameless Cellar and Sinister Gates… But she’s the daughter of Grotter! A girl who managed to survive a meeting with She-Who-Is-No-More and to endure…”

The academician interrupted her, “We don’t know how she managed it, but we know what this cost Leopold and Sophia. And to subject the girl to danger again… Besides this…” here Sardanapal made a long pause, “there is still one more reason… Extremely important, for which Tanya in no way can be found in Tibidox. In any case, she must not appear there for as long as possible…”

“What reason?!” Medusa exclaimed hotly. Sardanapal looked at her reproachfully.

“For the time being I cannot tell you, although I trust you more than anybody. It’s that same reason why Grotter didn’t remain to live in Tibidox, but took Sophia and the child away into such wilderness, where, besides swamp brownies, werewolves, and evil spirits, you’ll meet no one else. And it’s Grotter – with his capital education, excellent manners, and habit of making music daily. Understand, Medusa?”

The associate professor Gorgonova nodded despondently, realizing that the reason that drove Grotter into the wilderness and forced him to forsake Tibidox in the bloom of his career had to be very weighty.

“So, it’s decided… Tonight we’ll return here with the child and abandon her to Herman Durnev and his wife. The sight of a poor orphan cannot but touch their hearts… Let them bring her up together with their own daughter. Girls of the same age will be merrier together. We’re going, Medusa. It’s time! A-a-a-a-choo!” The academician suddenly sneezed so deafeningly that all the constellations were blown off his hanky at once, and the phone booth standing by the house tumbled with a crash to one side.

“I said you’d catch a cold!” Medusa said reproachfully.

“Nonsense!” Sardanapal was angry. “Stop keeping an eye on my health! He who had his head chopped off three times cannot be afraid of a common head cold… Choo!”

The academician of white magic wrapped himself tighter in his orange robe and, decisively treading on his beard, made his way past the houses to the small square. His restless moustaches were making a signal in time to the steps: one-two, one-two. Medusa picked her way after him.

Many passers-by filling the street in that hour and hurrying on their own affairs paid them very little attention. And what should even draw their curiosity when they only saw a shaggy mongrel and barely at a distance a thin elegant borzoi with a long snout? For the experienced magicians it constituted no difficulty to cook up a couple of deflecting spells.

Having taken about thirty steps, the academician Sardanapal awkwardly jumped up, clicked his knees in the air and, growling out a spell, dissolved in the air. Medusa in contrast to her teacher did not possess the ability of instantaneous disappearances from the human world. She reached the square and extracted from the bushes a kid’s rocking horse painted with Khokhloma designs. Having checked that all twelve talismans, without which the rocking horse simply would not take off, were in place, she clambered up onto it with difficulty and, soaring up steeply, disappeared among the clouds.

It was curious that even on the ridiculous kiddie rocker the associate professor Gorgonova contrived to appear majestic and to look ahead like a hawk. Somewhere along the way she ran into Lifeless Griffin; the wretch would have to pay. However, it was already dead, so there was nothing for it to lose.

The sun started to yawn lazily and climbed up from the roof. The unusual day continued.

* * *

Herman Durnev had one hundred and seventeen bad moods. If it is possible to describe the first mood as slightly bad, then the last, the hundred-and-seventeenth, amounted to a good force-eight storm. The head of the firm Second-Hand Socks returned home that day precisely in this hundred-and-seventeenth bad mood. On the road it constantly seemed to him that other cars were moving too slowly, and he began to hit the horn continually with his palm.

At the same time it twice seemed to him that the sound of the horn was too quiet, and then, sticking his head out the window of the car, he roared, “Hey, what are you dragging? Move it, move! You want me to come out and beat you up? You want to give a sick person a stroke?”

Durnev, it goes without saying, considered himself the sick person.

The basic reason Herman Nikitich’s mood was so abruptly spoilt was the sensation that some strange and mysterious forces were pursuing him and making fun of him. Everything began from that same morning when he just set off for work. Even along the way something started to rumble violently in the baggage carrier of the car, rumbling so that the car even jumped, but when he went out to look, it turned out there was nothing in there. When Durnev got back behind the wheel, he discovered that his own portrait from a magazine was stuck to the windshield of the automobile. Moreover, it appeared as if the wind dropped onto the glass a page soaked in a puddle…

The director was so anxious that when he ripped off his picture, his fingers were shaking and he accidentally tore part of his head, together with the ear, from the photograph. Seeing in this a bad omen for himself, Herman Nikitich immediately swallowed thirty Relief tablets and washed them down with a bottle of valerian tincture.

When he nevertheless got to the office, he discovered that the wastebasket in his office was turned upside down, and all the garbage from it was unceremoniously shaken out onto the carpet. And not simply shaken out but also steeped in something stinky. The furious Durnev immediately fired the cleaning woman, though she swore that she did not even drop into his office.

Having opened the safe in order to get the press, he beheld there a pale fungus on a thin leg, which, when Herman Nikitich stretched out his hand to it, spread on the papers a sticky slime that could not be wiped off. After this incident, Durnev collapsed into the armchair and sat in it for a long time, sweating and counting off small fractions with his teeth.

“Twenty five… twenty six… I’m not nervous at all… Why are you staring at me? Get back to work! Really, didn’t I ask you to get for me the price on old toothbrushes?” he began to yell at an employee timidly looking in.

The unlucky employee slid into his own tiny little office, which smelled of moth-eaten sweaters and worn jeans, and, collapsing onto the chair, nearly died of fright.

No need to explain that toward the evening Durnev had had quite a drop too much.

“Pour me anything to drink… Now you’ll see, soon something bad will happen!” he groaned as soon as he found himself at home.

In contrast to the office literally choked up from floor to ceiling with cut-price junk and worn out things, everything was completely new in Durnev’s home.

Herman Nikitich’s wife – Ninel – was as fat as her husband was thin. When she slept, her wrinkled cheeks spread all over the pillow, and her body, covered with a blanket, resembled a snowy mountain from which it was possible to ski down.

“Ah, Hermanchik, you imagine all sorts of things! Don’t be so upset! You’re completely green like the fir on New Year! Let me kiss you on the cheek!” Ninel cooed with a juicy bass, reassuringly patting her husband on the frail back with a hand adorned with rings.

“Phew! Drop this tenderness!” Herman Nikitich growled. However, his bad mood dispersed a little, jumping from hundred-and-seventeenth to sixty-sixth, and later even to fiftieth.

After supper, Durnev cheered up so much that he had the desire to spend time with his year-old daughter Penelope, or Pipa as she was tenderly called by her parents, who inherited from mama the moving eyebrows and figure of a porter, and from papa eyes bunched together, protruding ears, and sparse whitish hair. Of course, the Durnevs doted on her and considered their Pipa the first beauty in the world.

The heiress of the Durnev family was sitting in the playpen and concentrating on breaking a doll. Three beheaded dolls were already scattered about on the floor, and their heads were mounted on parts of rattles decorating the playpen.

“What a smart little girl! She will be a director like her papa!” Durnev was touched.

He leaned over the playpen and made an attempt to kiss Pipa on the top of her head. The daughter grasped papa by the hair with her right hand, and with the plastic shovel clutched in her left hand she started to saw papa’s neck, clearly intending to do with him the same as she had done with the dolls.

“Darling! Wonderful child!” Papa panted.

He freed his hair with difficulty and, just in case, moved further away from the playpen where he could not be reached or spat on. Pipa forcefully threw the shovel after him, but it only fell into the vase on the TV, and immediately, with the greatest readiness, scattered splinters.

“Oh, what a strong girlie we have! What good aim!” Ninel squealed enthusiastically.

“Careful… She’s taking off her boots!” Durnev warned, covering his head with his hands, just in case, to dodge these sufficiently heavy projectiles.

At this moment, there was suddenly a ringing in the apartment. The bell, usually squeaking spitefully, now issued a loud, almost triumphant trill. Durnev and his spouse shuddered at once.

“Are you expecting someone, mousie?” Ninel asked.

“No, no one. You?”

“Me neither…” Ninel answered and, following Herman, made her way to the door.

Pipa threw her boots after them, but the laces got tied up around her hand, and the boots, recoiling, struck her on the nose. Pipa began to wail like a steamer siren.

Meanwhile, Herman looked into the peephole. No one was visible, although the bell, not stopping for a second, continued to demand persistently that they open the door.

“Hey, who’s there? I warn you: I don’t like these jokes!” Durnev bellowed and, armed with a hammer, looked onto the landing. Suddenly his face became like that of an old lady who, by mistake, instead of a poodle stroked a crocodile from the Nile.

In front of the door, barely finding room in the narrow landing, lay an enormous case for a double bass. The case was exceptionally old, trimmed on the outside with very thick rough leather, something simultaneously resembling scales. If Herman Nikitich were a little more learned or had the habit, for example, of leafing through books, he would easily understand that artists always depict such things as dragon skin. Furthermore, to the bulging handle of the double bass case was riveted a small copper tag; half-obliterated letters on it read:

…ilver …truments wizard Theo…: drums, …ble basses etc.

But Durnev had not the least desire to examine either the case or especially the tag on it. He only saw that a large and extremely suspicious object was tossed up to him on the threshold and the one who tossed it up most likely was running away now.

Shedding his sneakers, Herman Nikitich clumsily jumped over the case and, darting out to the stairs, began to yell into the resonant void:

“Hey you there! Hey! Take away your suspicious thingamajig, or I’ll call the police! No good throwing me a bomb!”

No one answered his cry. Only for a moment, it seemed to Durnev, pushing his head through between the rails, that a shadow flickered several floors below. Then the external door slammed and everything was quiet. The director of the firm Second-Hand Socks considered that the old foxes, having tossed the mysterious thingamajig up to him, had run out.

Screaming out yet a couple more threats, Herman Nikitich dragged his feet back. The case was in its previous place. Walking a few steps toward it, Durnev squatted down and propped up his head with his palms.

“Ninel, Ninel, come here – see what was tossed up to us!” he called mournfully.

From the apartment the fat-cheeked head of his spouse looked around. Ninel clutched a T-Fal frying pan in her hand, grabbed for the same purpose as her husband arming himself with a hammer.

“Look, a case!” she was astonished.

“Don’t take it into your head to touch it! For sure it’s a bomb!” Herman Nikitich yelped.

At that moment, a strange sound came from the case. The Durnevs decided that it was the ticking of a clock mechanism.

“Now it’ll go off with a jerk! Down!” the head of the firm Second-Hand Socks started to shout and quickly began to crawl away. His spouse flopped onto the linoleum, covering her head with the T-Fal frying pan.

But the expected explosion did not follow. Instead, the weeping of a demanding child was heard from the case. Exchanging dumbfounded glances, Durnev and his spouse crawled up to the case. The old lock clicked, the cover was thrown back…

“Ah-ha! Do you see? It’s a child!” Ninel exclaimed, her forehead bumping into her husband.

“A bomb would be better!” Herman Nikitich groaned.

In the case, on a carefully stretched out red blanket, lay a little girl with curly hair. On the tip of her nose was a small buckwheat grain, the birthmark. The baby just woke up and now she was crying loudly from hunger, energetically drumming on the double bass case with her hands and feet. Ninel winced with disgust, “No, I’ll not take her into our home! What if she has some infection? Even infectious for sure! Look at this suspicious spot on the nose! And I’ll be shaking with loathing if she turns up in the same bed with Pipa. But we also can’t abandon her here. The neighbours will gather…”

“Oh, it goes without saying, we won’t abandon her! We’re humane people! We’ll turn the girl in to the orphanage! There she’ll learn to paint fences, sweep the streets, and a hundred other remarkable professions!” Durnev said cheerfully.

Having gathered the sneakers scattered on the landing, he already started to drag his feet to the telephone when suddenly his wife exclaimed, “Look, mousie, here’s a letter! Here it is, attached to the child’s wrist! And don’t you swing your hands, little frog, all the same I’ll take it away!”

Leaning down, Ninel freed the envelope with disgust. In it was inserted a photograph, after glancing at which Herman Nikitich was covered with beads of sweat. In the photograph were two boys – one whitish, emaciated, with a sour and evil face, and the other pensive and sad, with a large nose and red ringlets of hair.

“Oh, no!” Durnev groaned. “It’s Lenchik Grotter, my grandmother’s second cousin’s nephew. Here, look: I’m trying to whack him on the forehead with a truck, and he’s staring into his own devil’s telescope! It was not without reason that today presented itself as such a bad day. Is this little girl really his daughter? If so, we’ll have to take her in or my political career will come to an end. You know, Ninel, I want to be a candidate for deputy…”