We spend our summers in Vnukovo. It’s very convenient; the monorail station is five minutes walk from the old country house. In the forest on the other side of the road grow different kinds of edible mushrooms, the brown caps that grow beneath the birches and the orange caps that grow near the pines, but they are far outnumbered by the mushroom hunters.
I arrived at the country house straight from the Zoo and instead of settling in to a rest found myself up to my ears in the local goings on. It centered around a local boy, Colin, who had become notorious in the Vnukovo area for seizing other children’s toys. His parents had gone so far as to summon a psychologist from Vladivostok, who had in turn written his dissertation on the lad. The psychologist studied Colin, and Colin ate pot stickers and whimpered all day long. I had brought the kid a model photon rocket just to shut him up.
Aside from Colin there was his grandmother, who loved to talk about genetics and had written a novel about Mendel, Alice’s grandmother, a kid named Yura and his mother, Karma, a set of triplets on a neighboring street who sang in a chorus underneath my window whether I wanted it or not, and, of course, the apparition.
The apparition lived somewhere near the apple tree and was a quite recent arrival.
I was sitting with Alice on the terrace and waiting for the new house robot to finish my super. So far the robot had tried its hands at cooking twice, and failed, leaving two saucepans sitting on the kitchen counter with overdone maccaroni and burned rice, and Alice and I were cussing out the factory, but neither of us wanted to bother with the chore, and Alice’s grandmother had already set off for the theater, nor could we have called for instructions. Our house-com was broken and she had taken the pocket-com with her.
Alice said:
“He’ll come today.”
“Who — he?”
“My parition.”
“Ap-parition. One word.” I corrected her automatically, not taking my eyes from the robot.
“Okay.” Alice wasn’t going to argue. “So he’ll be my AP-parition. And Colin stole some nuts from the twins. Isn’t that remarkable?”
“Remarkable. What’s your apparition like?”
“He’s nice.”
“Everyone you know is nice.”
“Other than Colin.”
“All right, other than Colin…. I was thinking; if I brought you home a fire breathing dragon lizard would you be able to make friends with it too?”
“Sure. Is it nice?”
“No one’s been able to talk with it yet to find out. It comes from Mars and spits fiery venom.”
“Sure. They got it angry. Why did they take it from Mars?”
There was no possible answer that I could give. It as the simple truth. No one had certainly ever asked the lizard when they removed it from Mars. And on the way back to Earth the lizard had eaten the ship’s pet dog, making all of the space men very angry.
“Well, what can you tell me about the apparition?” I asked to change the subject. “What’s it like.”
“He only walks when it becomes real dark.”
“Well, that’s to be expected. From time immemorial. It’s recounted in all of the fairy tales. Colin’s grandmother….”
“Colin’s grandmother just wants to tell me the history of genetics. How they persecuted Mendel…”
“Yes, and by the way, does your apparition react to the cry of a cock?”
“He doesn’t. Why do you ask?”
“You see, a real apparition finds it useful to vanish from sight with terrible curses when a cock crows at dawn.”
“I’ll ask him tonight about the cock.”
“Fine.”
“And I have to go to bed later tonight. I have to speak to the apparition.”
“As you will.” Alas, our joking had come to an end. At long last the robot removed the frozen suppers from the microwave, beaming with pride in accomplishment.
Alice started to eat and I went back to my notes on the National Parks of Guinea. There was a very interesting article on Sirian Wickers. A revolution in zoology. They had been able to breed Wickers in captivity. The offspring were born dark green, despite the shells of both parents having been blue.
It grew dark outside the windows. Alice said,
“Well, I’ll be off?”
“And where are you going?”
“To the apparition. I promised.”
“And here I was thinking that you were joking. Well, if you really have to go out into the garden, then go, only put on a jacket because it’s become cold. And don’t go any further than the apple tree.”
“But why should I go further? He’s waiting for me there.”
Alice ran out into the garden. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. I did not want to enter into her fantasy world. If she wanted, let her surround herself with apparitions and wizards and enchanted nights, good giants from the magic blue planet… Just so long as she would go to bed on time and eat normally.
I lowered the lights on the veranda so I could keep an eye on Alice better in the darkness. So I watched as she ran up to the apple tree, an old tree with mighty branches, and she stood beneath it.
And then… A blue shadow separated itself from the apple tree’s trunk and moved to meet my daughter. The shadow swam through the air, not touching the ground. The next moment, grabbing something heavy for a club I had already jumped down the three steps to the lawn. I didn’t like it at all. Either it was some sort of really dumb joke, or… It was the ‘or’ that I didn’t want to even think about…
“Be careful, papa!” Alice said in a loud whisper. She had heard my heavy steps. “You’ll frighten him!”
I grabbed Alice by the hand. In front of me a blue silhouette came apart like mist.
“Papa, what you’ve done! And I almost saved him!”
Alice howled shamefully while I carried her back to the terrace.
What was that thing beneath the apple tree? A hallucination?
“Why did you do it, Papa?” Alice howled. “You promised…”
“I didn’t do anything.” I answered. “Apparitions do not exist.”
“You saw him yourself. Why won’t you speak the truth? He can’t stand it when the air moves. Don’t you understand you have to come up to him slow so not to make a wind?”
I really did not know how to answer her. Of one thing I was certain, as soon as Alice fell asleep I was going out into the garden with a flash light to take a look.
“And he gave me a letter for you. Only now I won’t give it to you.”
“What sort of letter.”
“Can’t have it.”
I finally noticed the piece of paper she had clutched in her fist. Alice looked at me, I looked at her, and she handed over the piece of paper anyway.
On the paper were notes for the feeding of red Crooms. I had been missing the note for the last three days.
“Alice, where did you find my notes?”
“Turn it over. The apparition didn’t have any paper so I gave him some of yours.”
On the reverse side of the paper, written in English in an unknown hand, was:
“Honorable Professor!
“I have summoned my courage to appeal to you, for I have fallen into a most unpleasant situation from which I may not emerge without outside intervention. Alas, neither can I go further than one meter from the center of this apple tree. You may look upon me in my woeful condition only during darkness.
“Thanks to your daughter, so thoughtful and sympathetic a being, I am finally able to resetablish communication with the outside world. “I, the woeful Professor Kuraki, am the victim of an unsuccessful experiment. I have been conducting experiments in matter transmission. I was able to transmit two turkey hens from Tokyo to Paris. They were received without problems by my colleagues. However, on the day I decided to test the equipment myself, the fuses in my laboratory overheated precisely at the moment of transmission. And the energy for molecular re-integration was insufficient. I was dispersed in space, however, my most concentrated locus is located in the region of your honorable garden. In this vexatious condition I have found myself for two weeks, and no doubt I have been given up for dead. “I beg of you, immediately upon receipt of this letter communicate with my colleagues in Tokyo. Someone must fix the fuses in my laboratory. Only then will rematerialization be able to occur. “Thanks a million, Kuraki”