In November the weather suddenly improved. Unexpected, conditionally autumnal, but quite tangible warmth returned. The sun came out every day—not for long, but it was generous enough. Dried-up leaves rustled underfoot and smelled fresh and tangy, sad but not without hope.
Sasha would wake up at four thirty, one minute before the alarm clocks’ roll call. She deactivated them one after the other, like mines, pulled on a warm jogging suit, a jacket, and walked to the park. In one month, she learned all the minute details of the path. She knew where the asphalt was touched by erosion, the places where puddles collected after the rain, knew all the slopes and all the flat spots. Running along the dry alleys, jumping over the piles of leaves gathered by the park rangers, she used the time to repeat her English dialogues, plan that day’s chores and silently sing a song that she heard on the radio the day before. Finishing the third and then the fourth circle around the flowerbed, she knew for sure that nothing bad could happen to her, or to Mom. From that, she derived bitter, detached, autumnal joy.
Unexpectedly, “the days of rest,” spent without the morning jog, turned out to be the most excruciating in the last few weeks. Sasha continued to wake up at half past four, and lay without sleep until seven, listening to the waking up sounds of her building: the rumbling of the dump truck, the din of the elevator, fights between the street cleaners. The ritual was broken; Sasha imagined her fate stretched out like a thread, pulling, drying, about to break. Every day she got more and more nervous, until the morning finally came when she could pull on her sneakers and, leaving footsteps on the frosted grass, walk into the November sunrise.
Then Valentin arrived.
Sasha came back from school for a minute, to drop off her bag, grab a bite to eat and run to her lesson. A stranger sat on the bench near the entrance to her building. She said hello (she always said hello to anyone sitting on that bench, just in case) and only then recognized the pale-skinned, thin non-stranger.
“Hello,” said Valentin. “I noticed no one was home.”
“Mom will be back by six,” said a bewildered Sasha. “And I… um..”
“I’ll wait.”
It was half past two. Sasha glanced at her watch, then at Valentin.
There was no hope that he would leave. She did not feel too optimistic about Mom chasing him away. Plus, how could she make any decisions regarding Mom’s fate according to her own desires?
“You can call her at the office,” she said frostily. And added, a little too late, “How are you feeling?”
She woke up at four twenty-nine, turned off the alarm clocks, shuffled over to the kitchen, gulped some tea from a thermos. She got dressed and went into the hall; she locked the door.
Last night Mom and Valentin stayed up in the kitchen, talking softly for a long time. Sasha went to bed early (she always did these days, the lack of sleep was getting to her), covered her head with a pillow to avoid inadvertent eavesdropping, shut her eyes and tried to fall asleep. But sleep evaded her. Sasha thought of life as a collection of identical days. To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days become a little different, but they still flow, still repeat, and that very monotony conceals the meaning of life…
She was probably falling asleep. Never before she had thoughts like that, not in a conscious state.
A long time ago, when Sasha was little, she wanted to get herself a daddy. Not the one who left and now lives someplace else, without a care in the world, but a real one, one who would live with them, in the same apartment. Audaciously, Sasha tried to convince her mother to date any one of the more or less suitable men; life “with mommy and daddy” to her symbolized a true happiness.
That was years ago. Sasha’s heart ached when she thought of her mother and Valentin. He lied to her once, he would probably do it again. Mom realizes it, but she still speaks softly to him in the kitchen over a cup of cool tea; they sit, heads almost touching, and talk, even though it is already past midnight…
Nocturnal frost made the puddles sparkle. Through her woolen socks and the soles of her sneakers, Sasha could feel how cold the ground had become overnight. Her daily training made running easy. A lone streetlight burned near the park entrance. The old man with the dog lingered, and Sasha nodded to him, as if greeting an old acquaintance.
Somebody was in the park. That somebody stood on the path, shifting from foot to foot, wearing a jogging suit, a windbreaker, and sneakers, like Sasha herself. She had to come almost face to face before she recognized him.
It was Ivan Konev, Kon, her classmate.
“Hey. Shall we run?”
Sasha did not reply. Kon fell into step with her, almost touching her sleeve with his own. When their jacket sleeves did touch, the fabric made a harsh swishing sound— shhikh-shhikh.
Sasha ran, skillfully skirting the familiar puddles. Ivan slipped a couple of times; once he broke through the thin ice and stepped into the water, but kept up.
“Do you run every day?” he asked, panting. “My grandpa, he’s got insomnia, he walks the dog early, and he says, ‘A girl from your class runs every day like crazy, at five in the morning.’ oh!”
He stumbled upon a tree root and almost fell down.
“Are you into sports now? I’ve never thought that about you. Or are you training your willpower?”
“Training willpower.”
“That’s what I thought…” they completed only two circles, but he already seemed out of breath.
“And you?” Sasha deigned to ask. “What are you training?”
“Willpower,” Kon said seriously. “I could be in my nice warm bed right now, sleeping soundly.”
He slowed down.
“Think it’s enough?”
Sasha stopped.
The sky was peppered with stars, bright like crystals illuminated by spotlights. Red-cheeked and out of breath, Ivan looked at her with unabashed humor.
“You’re a strange creature, Samokhina. A transcendental object. A closed book. Now you’re running. My grandpa says, every day, five in the morning. Are you some kind of a coded princess?”
He babbled nervously, smirking a little, afraid of appearing ridiculous. He himself was a closed book, a boy geared towards success. A winner of competitions and glutton of science fiction, with high cheekbones and dark curls, dressed in shirts always neatly ironed by mom or sister, a dandy who at sixteen knew three different tie knots.
Sasha watched him and thought of one thing: right now she had to go into the bushes. Immediately. Otherwise the ritual would be broken; plus, to be honest, she wasn’t going to make it home anyway.
“Kon, wait for me at the entrance.”
He did not understand. He kept talking, smiling coyly in the half-light, kept sputtering nonsense about an encrypted princess, and how she must be deciphered.
“Kon, go and wait for me! I’ll be right there!”
He did not get it. Idiot. Conceited chatter-box. Time was running out, the run was completed, but the ritual was not.
“I have to pee!” Sasha snapped. “Do you get it?”
When she left the park, the entrance was deserted. No old man with a dog, no Ivan Konev. Only a chain of footsteps stretched over frosted grass.
Valentin left. Sasha hoped for good, but it was not to be. The three of them celebrated New Year’s Eve together—like a family, with champagne and a little fir tree that Mom decorated herself, rejecting Sasha’s help.
All night fireworks rumbled outside. At half past four, when Mom and Valentin were still watching The Irony of Fate on one of the local channels, Sasha pulled on her boots (she did not dare run over the snow in sneakers) and wound a scarf around her neck.