He used to live a simple life: whittling, digging in the sand, reading adventure books; lying in bed, he would listen to the night trees anxiously moving outside his window, and think that miracles happened on distant islands, in parrot-filled jungles, or in tiny South America, narrowing downward, with its plastic Indians and rubber crocodiles. But the world, it turned out, was imbued with mystery, sadness, and magic, rustling in the branches, swaying in the dark waters. In the evenings, he and his mother walked along the lake: the sun set in the crenellated forest, the air smelled of blueberries and pine resin, and high above the ground red fir cones glimmered gold. The water in the lake looks cold, but when you put your hand in, it’s even hot. A large gray lady in a cream dress walks along the high shore: she walks slowly, using a stick, smiles gently, but her eyes are dark and her gaze empty. Many years ago her little daughter drowned in the lake, and she is waiting for her to come home: it’s bedtime, but the daughter still hasn’t come. The gray lady stops and asks, “What time is it?” When she hears the reply, she shakes her head. “Just think.” And when you come back, she’ll stop and ask again, “What time is it?”
Petya has felt sorry for the lady ever since he learned her secret. But Tamila says little girls don’t drown, they simply cannot drown. Children have gills: when they get underwater they turn into fish, though not right away. The girl is swimming around, a silver fish, and she pokes her head out, wanting to call to her mother. But she has no voice…
And here, not far away, is a boarded-up dacha. No one comes to live there, the porch is rotted through, the shutters nailed, the paths overgrown. Evil had been done in that dacha, and now no one can live there. The owners tried to get tenants, even offered them money to live there; but no, no one will. Some people tried, but they didn’t last three days: the lights went out by themselves, the water wouldn’t come to a boil in the kettle, wet laundry wouldn’t dry, knives dulled on their own, and the children couldn’t shut their eyes at night, sitting up like white columns in their beds.
And on that side—see? You can’t go there, it’s a dark fir forest; twilight, smoothly swept paths, white fields with intoxicating flowers. And that’s where the bird Sirin lives, amid the branches, the bird of death, as big as a wood grouse. Petya’s grandfather is afraid of the bird Sirin, it might sit on his chest and suffocate him. It has six toes on each foot, leathery, cold, and muscular, and a face like a sleeping girl’s. Cu-goo! Cu-goo! the Sirin bird cries in the evenings, fluttering in its fir grove. Don’t let it near Grandfather, shut the windows and doors, light the lamp, let’s read out loud. But Grandfather is afraid, he watches the window anxiously, breathes heavily, plucks at his blanket. Cu-goo! Cu-goo! What do you want from us, bird? Leave Grandfather alone! Grandfather, don’t look at the window like that, what do you see there? Those are just fir branches waving in the dark, it’s just the wind acting up, unable to fall asleep. Grandfather, we’re all here. The lamp is on and the tablecloth is white and I’ve cut out a boat, and Lenechka has drawn a rooster. Grandfather?
“Go on, go on, children.” Mother shoos them from Grandfather’s room, frowning, with tears in her eyes. Black oxygen pillows lie on a chair in the corner—to chase away the Sirin bird. All night it flies over the house, scratching at windows; and toward morning it finds a crack, climbs up, heavy, on the windowsill, on the bed, walks on the blanket, looking for Grandfather. Mother grabs a scary black pillow, shouts, waves it about, chases the Sirin bird… gets rid of it.
Petya tells Tamila about the bird: maybe she knows a spell, a word to ward off the Sirin bird? But Tamila shakes her head sadly: no; she used to, but it’s back on the glass mountain. She would give Grandfather her protective toad ring—but then she’d turn into black powder herself… And she drinks from her black bottle.
She’s so strange! He wanted to think about her, about what she said, to listen to her dreams; he wanted to sit on her veranda steps, steps of the house where everything was allowed: eat bread and jam with unwashed hands, slouch, bite your nails, walk with your shoes on—if you felt like it—right in the flowerbeds; and no one shouted, lectured, called for order, cleanliness, and common sense. You could take a pair of scissors and cut out a picture you liked from any book—Tamila didn’t care, she was capable of tearing out a picture and cutting it herself, except she always did it crooked. You could say whatever came into your head without fear of being laughed at: Tamila shook her head sadly, understanding; and if she did laugh, it was as if she were crying. If you ask, she’ll play cards: Go Fish, anything; but she played badly, mixing up cards and losing.
Everything rational, boring, customary; all that remained on the other side of the fence overgrown with flowering bushes.
Ah, he didn’t want to leave! At home he had to be quiet about Tamila (when I grow up and marry her, then you’ll find out); and about the Sirin; and about the sparkling egg of the Alkonost bird, whose owner will be depressed for life….
Petya remembered the egg, got it out of the matchbox, stuck it under his pillow, and sailed off on The Flying Dutchman over the black nocturnal seas.
In the morning Uncle Borya, with a puffy face, was smoking before breakfast on the porch. His black beard stuck out challengingly and his eyes were narrowed in disdain. Seeing his nephew, he began whistling yesterday’s disgusting tune… and laughed. His teeth—rarely visible because of the beard—were like a wolf’s. His black eyebrows crawled upward.
“Greetings to the young romantic.” He nodded briskly. “Come on, Peter, saddle up your bike and go to the store. Your mother needs bread, and you can get me two packs of Kazbeks. They’ll sell it to you, they will. I know Nina in the store, she’ll give kids under sixteen anything at all.”
Uncle Borya opened his mouth and laughed. Petya took the ruble and walked his sweaty bike out of the shed. On the ruble, written in tiny letters, were incomprehensible words, left over from Atlantis: Bir sum. Bir som. Bir manat. And beneath that, a warning: “Forging state treasury bills is punishable by law.” Boring, adult words. The sober morning had swept away the magical evening birds, the girl-fish had gone down to the bottom of the lake, and the golden three-eyed statues of Atlantis slept under a layer of yellow sand. Uncle Borya had dissipated the fragile secrets with his loud, offensive laughter, had thrown out the fairy-tale rubbish—but not forever, Uncle Borya, just for a while. The sun would start leaning toward the west, the air would turn yellow, the oblique rays would spread, and the mysterious world would awaken, start moving, the mute silvery drowned girl would splash her tail, and the heavy, gray Sirin bird would bustle in the fir forest, and in some unpopulated spot, the morning bird Alkonost perhaps already would have hidden its fiery pink egg in a water lily, so that someone could long for things that did not come to pass… Bir sum, bir som, bir manat.
Fat-nosed Nina gave him the cigarettes without a word, and asked him to say hello to Uncle Borya—a disgusting hello for a disgusting person—and Petya rode back, ringing his bell, bouncing on the knotty roots that resembled Grandfather’s enormous hands. He carefully rode around a dead crow—a wheel had run over the bird, its eye was covered with a white film, the black dragged wings were covered with ashes, and the beak was frozen in a bitter avian smile.