THE WITCHING HOUR
by Alexander Kudriavtsev
Dostoevsky Museum
Translated by Marian Schwartz
They sussed him out immediately.
The slutty mermaid by the bar gave him a lurid smile. The dark, bony vamp “accidentally” brushed her bare shoulder against him when she passed. Two underage Barbies drilled their gaze into him. The bitches could smell the aroma of large round numbers at a distance. Whoever said money had no scent?
He nonchalantly loosened the neck of his Dolce & Gabbana and looked around.
No, this was all wrong. Your typical club lemmings who inhabit the institutions of the night and sleep it off by day in their office cubicles. What a drag.
Although… his gaze latched onto a figure dancing madly in the crashing, colorful gloom. The tall bitch was swinging her mane and slithering to the music like liquid flame. He examined her round ass, narrow waist, and high breasts with approval. When she emerged from the crowd, he walked up and asked for a light.
“Have a light!” She grinned, holding out a lock of her tousled hair. A rough voice, as if she had cigarette smoke in her throat.
He smiled. “I’m afraid of burning myself.”
Her ruffled, bright red hair really did remind him of a bonfire.
“My name is Anatoly.”
“Zlata.” She offered a curtsey.
“You’ll have a drink with me,” he said assertively, and he ordered two daiquiris from the bartender. “I love this swill,” Anatoly added to get the conversation going.
Zlata squinted her eyes, which held a hint of green, and sloshed her glass with a chuckle.
Up and down.
Puffy lips and fat straw.
Up and down.
Anatoly swallowed and nearly choked.
“Did you know that daiquiris are the preferred drink of Havana whores?” she shouted over the club’s din, but the hammers in Anatoly’s ears were drumming too loud.
“What?”
She repeated herself. Her hot mouth was now next to his ear. He tried to feel up her bare knee, but she flicked the impertinent hand away.
Anatoly stared blankly at his glass of yellow liquid. She bubbled with laughter; in the chic ultraviolet, her teeth were blue pearls.
He felt like hitting her in the face till she bled. She was laughing at him. Him! This close to becoming a deputy in the city parliament! A year away from becoming the second capital’s deputy governor! Yeah, he could always make a call for a girl.
They’d come. The best were from the massage parlors. Black, white, yellow. Thin, fat, pregnant, whatever. And for free. Hadn’t he once provided them with protection? Just let them whine… But that was low-hanging fruit. It didn’t hang any lower… It was interesting to toy with them, track them down, a trap here, a trap there, bring them to bay, attack… Now that was a hunt. The cleverer the beast, the sweeter the victory.
Caveman was sweating and grinning. She looked at his large head, meaty ears and cheeks, and red neck—Nozdrev’s spitting image. They were all alike there at the feeding trough: the Russian power breed. An oily little smile and a dash of money grease in his voice.
“This little skirt of yours… I adore minis,” he said, making eye contact.
“And I don’t,” she replied. “You know when women’s dresses started getting shorter? After World War I. After all that lead decimated the supply of men, there was competition for the ones left over. Miniskirts were invented after World War II. There’s a man’s death in every millimeter of bared female leg.”
“Gothic,” Anatoly attempted to recall the young people’s slang.
“No. But I know where it really is gothic.” She held out a shiny key.
“What’s this?”
“Have you heard, the Dostoevsky Museum opened an offsite exhibit?”
“A museum?” Anatoly felt himself tuning out.
“An offsite exhibit from the torture chamber”—she smiled broadly—”like at the Peter and Paul Fortress, only more naturalistic. I lead tours there, and the guard is my good friend. Sometimes I get the keys from him for the night. When I really want to let my feelings go”—Zlata shot a glance at him and gazed down—”and my body.”
The bitch was a little twisted. All the better. They say redheads are hurricanes in bed. We’ll just see about that today… He thought it over briefly and beamed the best smile in his collection.
“I have an idea!” he said, a little too enthusiastically.
“I’m listening.”
“I’m inviting you to dinner. Dinner in a torture chamber. Sound good?” He snuck a glance at himself in the mirror and was satisfied. “You provide the key. I’ll take care of the rest…”
She hesitated a moment before answering.
“What are you blushing about?” he cackled.
“Fact: redheads blush very easily.”
Anatoly had a hard time restraining the urge to lunge and throw her down right on the table, sweep the glasses aside with a crash, and… Settle down… What’s that the Arabs say? Anticipation whets the appetite.
She finally nodded. “Okay.”
A gold-toothed Tajik in a rusty Lada 6 picked them up and drove them down Petersburg’s deserted night roads. Anatoly couldn’t take his eyes off her, while Zlata gazed out the window at the under-lit hulks of the old buildings flashing by and smiled at something.
“Charming little spot!” he said when the metal lock clanged behind him. Swaying, he walked through the narrow slit of a door. “What stinks?”
“Ethyl alcohol. The very impressionable start feeling bad and they have to be brought out of their Turgenevan faint. A little alcohol-soaked cotton wool under their nose—and they’re good.”
The museum lobby greeted them with an enormous plaster executioner with a beard. An ax gleamed in the hands of the red-smocked man. Anatoly playfully touched the steel with his finger. Dull.
Zlata flipped the switch in the first hall. A thin yellow light bathed the predatory exhibits, which had frozen piranha-like behind the display glass. Anatoly thought some of them may even have stirred impatiently. He felt a chill, ran his palm across his forehead, and burst out laughing.
“Hello!” Anatoly amiably flicked the nose of a mannequin nicely set on a spike and spotted with stage blood. It didn’t answer, and Anatoly laughed even louder. His head was spinning pleasantly from the adventure and the daiquiris.
“Where’s our food?” She walked over to a prep table where a broad hatchet had been wedged in a corner. “I propose we raise our glasses.”
“You really are something!” Anatoly gave her a slap on her rear and immediately received a jab in the chest in return.
“Remember your manners, boy.”
“Of course, of course!”
He raised his hands in jest and pulled out a flask he’d bought at the bar.
“Are we going to have a tour?” Anatoly winked, splashing them fresh drinks.
“All night long,” Zlata responded.
“It’s beautiful,” Anatoly clumsily changed tactics.
The young woman frowned. Zlata was getting noticeably drunk. It’s time, Anatoly thought, as he always did in these instances. I’ll lay her out right on this table, next to the shiny hatchet, and I’ll watch the nervy bitch squirm naked in the broad blade, bellowing with pleasure…
He had trouble pulling off the Hugo that crackled under his arms and tried to free the Versace over his tightly belted belly.
“Easy now, wild man.” She grinned. “Take your seat in the audience. Have you ever seen a striptease in a torture chamber?”
Anatoly jokingly folded his sweaty palms into a submissive stack on his chest.