What should she do with them? Throw them away?
The doorbell made her jump. One coin slid off her palm and rolled underneath the cot. Nervous, Sasha found it on the dusty rug, threw on Mom’s cotton housecoat, and stepped into the dark hallway.
“Who is it?”
Theoretically, it could be her mother, forgetting her keys. Or a postman. Or …
“It’s me. Open the door.”
Sasha staggered back.
The apartment was empty—the neighbors were at the beach. The door was locked. A flimsy door, made of pressed wood shavings, covered with cheap faux leather.
The coins stuck to her sweaty palm. Holding them in one hand, Sasha used the other hand to open the door—a difficult task that took a while.
“Good day to you,” the man in dark sunglasses stepped over the threshold. “I’ll just be a minute. Let’s go to the kitchen.”
He led the way down the corridor, as if he’d been to this apartment many times before, as if he were its actual owner. Of course, the building was standard enough.
Sasha followed him like a dog on a leash.
“Sit.” The man pushed a chair toward the middle of the kitchen. Sasha fell onto the chair—her legs gave out from under her. The dark man sat down in front of her. “Coins?”
Sasha opened her fist. Three gold disks lay on her red palm, moist, covered with drops of sweat.
“Very good. Keep them. Please retain all of them, all that you will get. Don’t bother with the swimsuit—you must enter the water naked, it’s not dangerous, no one is watching you. Continue swimming, don’t be late, and don’t miss any days. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. And the day after that.”
“I’m leaving on August second,” Sasha said, and was surprised by how thin and pitiful her voice sounded. “I … we have train tickets. I don’t live here, I …”
She was convinced that the dark guest would command her to move to this small town forever and ever, and enter the sea at four in the morning in January, and in February, and until death do us part.
“Didn’t I say that I won’t be asking for the impossible?” He stretched his lips slowly, and Sasha realized that he was smiling. “On August second you will go for a swim in the morning as usual, and you can leave after breakfast.”
“I can?”
“You can.” The man got up. “Remember: Don’t oversleep.”
He walked over to the door.
“Why do you need this?” Sasha whispered.
The only answer was the closing door.
“Where are you going?” Mom sat up in bed.
“For a swim.”
“Have you lost your mind? Get back to bed!”
Sasha took a deep breath.
“Mom, I really need to do this. I’m … building character.”
“You’re what?”
“You know, building character! I’m building up stamina. In the mornings … Sorry, I’m late.”
Gasping for air, she stepped onto the beach. Nervously, she looked behind her—not a soul; even all the windows in the nearby hotels were dark. She took off her sundress, pulled off her underwear, threw herself in the water, and swam, broad front crawl strokes, as if trying to swim out of her own skin.
She was having difficulty breathing. Sasha switched to an easy “beach” breaststroke, scooping up water with her feet, holding her chin high above the water.
Swimming made her happy. She’d had no previous experience of skinny-dipping and had no idea how good it felt. Cold water prickled her skin, warmed up her body, and seemed to be getting warmer with every stroke. With both hands, Sasha grabbed the buoy and kept still, swaying gently, invisible from the shore.
Perhaps she didn’t have to go back at all. She could just keep swimming, across the entire sea, toward Turkey …
Sasha shook her head at that. She flipped onto her back and, lazily moving her arms, swam toward the shore. Sparse morning stars dissolved slowly, like sugar crystals in cold water.
In the changing cabin, Sasha rubbed herself dry with a towel and got dressed. She stepped outside and listened to herself—nothing was happening. She walked toward the beach entrance; the spasms started when she reached the little shack where the lounge chairs were kept under a barn lock. Coughing, sputtering, and holding her throat, Sasha vomited four gold coins.
On the third morning of swimming exercises, she threw up back in the apartment, in the bathroom. The coins clanked into the iron tub. Sasha gathered them up, her hands shaking—the coins were exactly the same, all with the round three-dimensional symbol. Worth zero point zero kopecks. She smirked at her reflection in the mirror, pocketed the coins, washed up, and left the bathroom.
Mom was putting her hair up in curlers. There was absolutely no point to it, since the curls would dissipate in the water, but nowadays Mom spent a lot of time doing her hair, putting on makeup, and ironing her outfits.
“Would you mind if Valentin and I go to a café tomorrow night? Just the two of us?” As Mom asked the question, she carefully avoided Sasha’s eyes. “You can go to the movies,” she continued. “What’s playing right now, in that theater on the wharf?”
“I don’t know.” Sasha fingered the coins in her pocket. “Go ahead. I’ll stay home and read.”
“But what to do about the keys?” Sasha’s compliance clearly took a load off Mom’s shoulders. “In case I’m late … I don’t want to wake you up. But if I take the keys—what if you want to go for a walk?”
“Take the keys. I’ll read,” Sasha repeated.
“But what about fresh air?”
“I’ll sit outside on the balcony. With a table lamp.”
“But tomorrow, maybe tomorrow you will want to go to a club?”
“No.”
The next day Valentin took them out to lunch. He seemed like a nice person, with a sense of humor, with a certain charm; Sasha watched her mom’s happiness and counted the days in her head, the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth. Five days remained. Actually, only four, on the fifth day they were leaving. And it would be all over. She would forget everything. Only five more times …
She swam the next morning, and the morning after.
And then she overslept.
The sun woke her up. It beat into the window that had been left ajar, and Mom’s bed was empty; the alarm clock had twisted from underneath her pillow and lay on the rug.
Refusing to believe, Sasha picked it up. The yellow hand stood on half past three. The coil was disengaged. Why didn’t it ring?
“Mom! Did you touch my alarm clock?”
Mom, content, benevolent, and fresh after her shower, brought in coffee on a tray.
“I did not. It fell down; I didn’t pick it up. I don’t want the landlady to think I broke it. Don’t worry about it, you got practically no sleep in the last few days, and you need rest—you’re on vacation, after all. What is it with you?”
Sasha slumped at the edge of the cot, laden with the firm conviction that something terrible had just happened. Something unidentifiable, inexplicable, some unknown threat—and thus, her terror grew in a geometric progression.
The dark man stood next to the tourist booth, studying a photo of the