She moved deeper into the water, took off her flip-flops, and tossed them onto the beach, aiming far to avoid losing them to a chance wave. She dove, swam a few feet under water, resurfaced, snorted, laughed, and made a beeline for the buoy, leaving behind the shore, the din, the baklava seller, her fear of the dark man …
In the afternoon they discovered that they’d forgotten to buy oil to fry their fish.
Pink blossoms swayed on the “peacock” trees. Farther down, in the bushes, something else blooming and aromatic was trying to attract bees. An old woman dozed off on the bench. A boy of about four dragged colored chalk over the concrete ridge of the sidewalk. The usual throng of people poured down the Street That Leads to the Sea.
Sasha entered the street and took another look around. She ran to the store, to get her errand over with as quickly as possible.
“Excuse me, are you the last one in line?”
She nodded to the person behind her. The queue moved not too fast, but not too slowly either. Sasha had only three people in front of her when she felt his gaze.
The dark man appeared in the store entrance. He took a step inside. Ignoring the queue, he moved to the counter and stopped, pretending to examine the produce. His eyes, covered by sunglasses, bore into Sasha. Bore right through her.
She did not move. First, because her feet stuck to the floor. Then because she thought it through and decided that here, in the store, she wasn’t in danger. There was no danger at all … and dropping everything, losing her place in line, and running home would just be stupid. He’d catch her in the hallway.
Maybe she could yell for her mother from the yard. Make her look out the window. And then what? Caught in the indecision—
“Excuse me, is it your turn?”
She asked for some oil, then spilled her change when paying for it. An old man behind her in line helped her pick it up. She considered asking someone for help with the dark man.
He stood at the counter, watching Sasha. His stare made her thoughts scramble in her head. Embarrassing, but she really needed to use the bathroom now.
Should she scream for help?
Nobody would understand. Nobody knew why Sasha felt terrorized by this rather ordinary person—nobody seemed to notice him much at all. So his face was pale—what of it? Then the dark glasses—but many people wore those, too. How could she explain what was happening to her when he stared through those opaque lenses?
Squeezing the handle of the shopping bag bulging with butter and oil in her fist, Sasha stepped out of the store. The man followed her. He did not bother pretending. His movements were direct, determined, and businesslike.
Once out of the store, she sprinted. Gray pigeons flew from underneath her feet. She crossed the street and dashed toward home, wind screaming in her ears, to her mother, into the familiar courtyard …
She had never seen this place before. Sasha looked around—the “peacock” trees bloomed as before and the sidewalk was covered by random designs in colored chalk, but the entrance was completely different, and the bench was in the wrong place. Was it a different courtyard?
The dark man did not run—he simply walked, each step bringing him five feet closer. Losing her head in sheer terror, Sasha threw herself into the entrance hall; she should not have done that and she knew it, but she ran inside anyway. A door slammed downstairs. She sprinted up the stairs, but there were only five stories. The staircase ended in a row of locked doors. Sasha rang someone’s doorbell; the sound could be heard clearly inside—ding-dong—but no one opened the door. It was empty.
And then the man stood next to her, blocking the exit, blocking her escape.
“It’s a dream!” She screamed the first thing that came into her head. “I want it to be a dream!”
She woke up in her foldaway bed, in tears, her ear painfully pressed against her pillow.
They left the house around eight, as usual, and bought some yogurt on the street corner. Skillfully, Sasha made her mother cross onto the other side of the street, the opposite of the one with the tourist booth.
And she was right to do so—the dark man stood under the large poster of the Swallow’s Nest Palace. He watched Sasha from behind his impenetrable lenses.
“I can’t take it anymore. It’s psychotic …”
“Now what?” her mother said.
“There he is again, he’s watching me …”
She wasn’t quick enough to stop her mother, who turned and crossed the street. She walked right up to the dark man and asked him something; the man answered, still staring at Sasha. Yet at the same time his face was turned toward her mother, and his mouth looked natural and quite friendly … if there were such a thing as a friendly mouth.
Mom returned, simultaneously pleased and annoyed.
“Relax; he’s on vacation, just like you and me. I don’t know what your problem is. He’s from Nizhnevartovsk. He’s allergic to direct sun rays.”
Sasha was silent. It made sense … and yet it didn’t. Why does he follow me, then? And why doesn’t Mom care?
At lunchtime, coming back from the shore, they stopped at the market, and Sasha took great care to make sure they didn’t forget anything. They returned to the empty apartment, heated up water, and took turns with an improvised bucket shower (water was scarce during the day), and started making their lunch.
That’s when they realized they were out of salt.
The dark man was sitting on the bench in the courtyard. Sasha saw him as soon as she poked her head out of the building.
She withdrew her head.
An orange cat with a damaged ear was lapping up cream in a small bowl left by some nice person. The cat slurped and licked its chops. Its yellow eye stared at Sasha; the cat continued licking the bowl.
Sasha did not know what to do. Turn back? Proceed as if nothing was wrong? It was crazy …
The hallway darkened. The man in the blue cap stood in the doorway blocking the light.
“Alexandra.”
She jerked as if shocked by electricity.
“We need to talk. You can run from me forever, but there is no joy or point in it.”
“Who are you? How do you know my name?”
Immediately, she thought of all those times her mother called her by her name, on the street, on the beach, everywhere. There was nothing surprising about him knowing her name. It wasn’t really difficult.
“Let us sit down and talk.”
“I am not … if you don’t stop following me, I will … I will call the police.”
“Sasha, I am not a thief or a murderer. We need to have a serious discussion, which will influence your entire life. It will be better for you to listen to me.”
“I am not going to. Leave me alone!”
She turned and ran up the stairs. Toward the black faux leather door numbered 25.
All the doors on the second floor were dark brown. The numbers on the small glass plates were completely different. Sasha froze.
Behind