«What are you doing?» I asked.
«Helping your liver out. Have some water and you'll feel better.»
It helped all right.
Five minutes later I walked out of the toilet, sweaty and wet, but absolutely sober. I even tried to protest at the violation of my rights.
«What did you interfere for? I wanted to get drunk and I did.»
«You young people,» said Semyon, shaking his head reproachfully. «He wanted to get drunk? Who gets drunk on cognac? Especially after wine? And especially that quick, half a liter in half an hour. There was this time Sasha Kuprin and I decided to get drunk…«
«Which Sasha's that?»
«You know the one, the writer. Only he wasn't a writer then. We got loaded the right way, the civilized way, totally smashed, complete with dancing on the tables, shooting into the ceiling, and wild debauchery.»
«Was he an Other then?»
«Sasha? No, but he was a good man. We drank a quarter of a bucket, and we got the grammar school girls tipsy on champagne.»
I slumped down onto the couch. I looked at the empty bottle and gulped, starting to feel sick again.
«A quarter of a bucket; you must have got really drunk?»
«Of course we got drunk!» Semyon said. «It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart.»
«So what's vodka for?»
«For the soul. If it's hurting real bad.»
He looked at me in gentle reproach, a funny little magician with a cunning face, with his own funny little memories about great people and great battles.
«I was wrong,» I admitted. «Thanks for your help.»
«No problem, my man. I once sobered up another Anton three times in the same evening, when he needed to drink without getting drunk; it was work.»
«Another Anton? Chekhov?» I asked in astonishment.
«No, don't be stupid. It was another Anton, one of us. He was killed in the Far East, when the samurai…« Semyon flipped his hand through the air and stopped. Then he said almost affectionately. «Don't you be in such a hurry. We'll do things the civilized way this evening. Right now we've got to catch up with the others. Let's go, Anton.»
I followed Semyon meekly out of the house. And I saw Sveta. She was sitting on a lounger, already wearing her bathing suit and bright-colored skirt, or rather a strip of cloth around her hips.
«Are you okay?» she asked, looking at me in surprise.
«Absolutely. The kebabs just didn't agree with me.»
Svetlana stared hard at me. But apparently the dark flush on my face and my wet hair were the only signs I'd gotten drunk so quickly.
«You should have your pancreas checked out.»
«Everything's okay,» Semyon put in rapidly. «Believe me, I studied healing too. It was the heat, the sour wine, the fatty kebabs—nothing more to it. What he needs now is a swim, and in the cool of the evening we'll polish off a bottle together. That's all the treatment he needs.»
Sveta got up, walked up to me, and looked into my eyes sympathetically.
«Maybe we should just sit here for a while? I'll make some strong tea.»
Yes, probably. It would be good. Just to sit here. The two of us. And drink tea. Talk or not say a word. That didn't matter. Look at her sometimes or not even look. Just hear her breathing—or stop up my ears. Simply know that we're together. Just the two of us, and not the entire Night Watch team. Together because we want to be, not because of some plan hatched up by Gesar.
Had I really forgotten how to smile?
I shook my head, twisting my stubborn face into a cowardly smile.
«Let's go. I'm not a doddery old veteran of the magic wars yet. Let's go, Sveta.»
Semyon had already gone on ahead, but somehow I could tell that he winked. In approval.
The night didn't bring any real coolness, but at least it took the edge off the heat. From about six or seven the company split up into little groups. The indefatigable Ignat stayed down by the lake with Lena and, strangely enough, Olga. Tiger Cub and Yulia went off to wander through the forest. The others were scattered around the house and the surrounding yard.
Semyon and I occupied the large balcony on the second floor. It was cozy in there; with its comfortable wicker furniture, the breeze blows through—the perfect place for hot weather.
«Number one,» said Semyon, taking a bottle of Smirnovskaya vodka out of a plastic bag with an advertisement for «Dannon kids'» yogurt.
«Do you recommend that?» I asked doubtfully. I didn't regard myself as a great specialist on vodka.
«I've been drinking it for more than a hundred years. And it used to be far worse than it is now, believe me.»
He took two plain glasses out of the bag, a two-liter jar with little pickles floating in brine under its flat tin lid, and a large container of sauerkraut.
«What about something to drink with it?» I asked.
«You don't drink anything else with vodka, my boy,» said Semyon, shaking his head. «Only with the fake stuff.»
«There's always something new to learn.»
«You'll learn this lesson soon enough. And there's no need to worry about the vodka, Chernogolovka village is in the territory I patrol. I know this wizard who works in the distillery there, small-fry, not particularly nasty. He gets me the right stuff.»
«An exchange of petty favors,» I commented.
«No exchange. I pay him money, all honest and above board. It's our private business, nothing to do with the Watches.»
Semyon deftly twisted the cap off the bottle and poured us half a glass each. His bag had been standing on the veranda all day, but the vodka was still cold.
«To good health?» I suggested.
«Too soon for that. To us.»
When he'd sobered me up, he must have done a thorough job and not just removed the alcohol from my bloodstream, but all the metabolic by-products as well. I drank the half-glass without even shuddering and was amazed to discover that vodka could taste good after the heat of a summer day, not only after a winter frost.
«Well, now,» said Semyon with a grunt of satisfaction, settling down more comfortably. «We should drop a hint to Tiger Cub that a pair of rocking chairs would be good up here.»
He took out his appalling Yavas and lit up. When he spotted the expression of annoyance on my face he said:
«I'm going to continue smoking them anyway. I'm a patriot, I love my country.»
«I'm a patriot too, I love my health,» I retorted.
Semyon chuckled.
«There was one time this foreigner I knew invited me to go around to his place,» he began.
«A long time ago?» I asked, playing along.
«Not really, last year. He invited me around so I could teach him how to drink Russian-style. He was staying in the Penta hotel. So I picked up a casual girlfriend of mine and her brother—he was just back from prison camp, with nowhere to go—and off we went.»
I imagined what the group must have looked like and shook my head.
«And they let you in?»
«Yes.»
«You used magic?»
«No, my foreign friend used money. He'd laid in plenty of vodka and snacks; we started drinking on April thirtieth and finished on May second. We didn't let the maids in and we never turned the television off.»
Looking at Semyon in his crumpled, Russian-made check shirt, scruffy Turkish jeans, and battered Czech sandals, I could easily imagine him drinking beer poured out of a three-liter metal keg. But it was hard to imagine him in the Penta.
«You monsters,» I said in horror.
«Why? My friend was very pleased. He said now he understood what real Russian drunkenness was all about.»