Aida Plakhovna threw up her hands. “I dare say you’ve grown bolder, to talk to me so! I’ve heard much about your feats, heard much! Passed the Labyrinth, seized the magic of the ancients, but so far haven’t found the key to the force… Don’t grieve, big-eyes, everything will come together. What won’t come together will be hidden. What won’t be hidden will lie as dust. Gloom also wasn’t built in a day.” Methodius nodded impatiently. He did not like it when they hinted to him that sooner or later he would become the sovereign of Gloom. This was as intolerable as the flattery of agents and sweet giggling succubae.
Mamzelkina quizzically inclined her head to one side and started to move with such speed on a chair towards Methodius, as if the chair was mincing along on bent legs. “Why so sullen, huh? Is your spiritual pain troubling you? How’s your eidos, kinfolk? No grabby hands have reached it for the present? Watch, many such hands here, oh, many!” she moaned.
“Don’t you try to scare me with empty threats! I’m not so easily deceived!” Methodius snapped carelessly. Lately he had gotten so used to being rude to agents that now it was not easy to break the habit. He would be rude and at once felt like he sweated from his own bravery. The encased scythe, standing in the corner, tinkled nastily. Its shadow, falling onto the wall and mysteriously crushed, formed into the words, “Mors sola fatetur, quantula sint hominum corpuscula.” (Death alone reveals how small are men’s bodies (Latin) Juvenal, Satires, X)
However, Aida Plakhovna either was in a good mood or had decided to turn a blind eye this time. “And, dear, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What jests… We don’t need to deceive others. We’re working people, we’re mowers… Except eide, we require nothing from others… We’re not chemists, not carpenters, we’re grave workers! So, my diamond, you’re my unfilled hole!”
Meanwhile Julitta reached for a large piece of chocolate slipped to her by one enterprising succubus and rustled the foil. With her usual thoughtlessness, she did not treat Methodius, and Mamzelkina, besides honey wine, abused nothing. “Now yesterday I thought of something…” said Julitta with a mouth full of chocolate. “Thought of you! You have a strange last name for the sovereign of Gloom. Buslaev! It’s kind of suspicious in our difficult time. That is, I understand, of course, Vaska Buslaev, Novgorod hero, swung a shaft, this and that… Likely good and reliable all the time… Only not quite for a leader nevertheless. You would be better as Petrov or Smirnov.”
Mamzelkina did not agree with her. “Ne-a, my dear, no use talking nonsense. He shouldn’t be a Smirnov. Many Smirnovs are wanted. Indeed, I know. And if the initials also coincide – now that’s a real misfortune. Once I drag one into Tartarus, but it turns out: namesake! ‘You made a mistake,’ they tell me, ‘old woman! Do you just snatch anyone?’ But what mistake did I make? Here’s the order: Smirnov P.A., 1964. Here you are: Smirnov PA, 1964! Receive the goods!” Aida Plakhovna said and rubbed her hands.
“So, did you take him back?” Methodius asked. Julitta began to laugh, looking sideways at the confused old woman, who, out of surprise, even dropped the ladle with honey wine. “My dear, who would kindly take him back from Tartarus? We’re not a government office for little fellows to run here and there. Already brought in – such a slim lie is customary and you drag along another load. Okay, my sweets, I’ve chatted too long with you already… I have people who have exceeded their allotted span in white light!” Aida Plakhovna started to mumble in a hurry.
Obviously steering clear of the slippery theme, she took down the dirty knapsack from her shoulder and poured out for Julitta a whole pile of soiled parchments onto the table. The witch made a face when the parchments rolled out onto the table. Many of them had brown dried spots and fresh mucus covered the others. “Now here, my aspen coffins, are invoices for suicides, and here are those who mortgaged their eide in life, meaning they miscalculated a little with the terms… And atheists, desecraters, and those philosophizing… as they negotiated a separate invoice with Ligul … Will you sort it out, dear? If you can’t, here’s the complete list. One grave to another!” Mamzelkina talked at a great speed.
Checking whether anything remained in her knapsack, Aida Plakhovna decisively shook it. A trapped parchment fell out onto the table. “And who’s this?” Julitta asked. “And this is… a suicide. The wretch swallowed sleeping pills. She decided to frighten her husband a little. Twice she did it and they pumped them out. Did it the third time and here her husband was detained at work… Someone brought him a game disk! As if all these aren’t attached to our Chancellery,” willingly explained Mamzelkina. “Careful with the parchment, Juliatta, my little birch not yet sawn! Here the eidos is glued underneath, so as not to be mislaid. Take some pains with the receipt! Eide without a receipt will cost you dearly. Later you can’t render an account!”
Julitta unwillingly wrote a receipt, took the stamp pad out of the box, and began to stamp with loathing where needed. She had hardly finished as bloody letters oozed on Mamzelkina’s copy.
Delivered: Mamzelkina A.P.
Senior Manager of the Necro-department
Accepted: witch Julitta,
Russian Division of the Chancellery of Gloom
Secretary and Laboratory Assistant
Witness: Buslaev M.I.
Student of Gloom
Mamzelkina had not yet read the parchment when the letters suddenly became milky and that part of the record, which concerned the witness Buslaev M.I., vanished into thin air. Methodius began to blink dumbfounded. The old woman sternly threatened him, “Oh, I know whose trick this is! It’s all your unsold eidos making a row! Doesn’t matter, I implicated a witness for the pile. And it’s okay without him,” muttered the old woman.
Aida Plakhovna carelessly put the receipt into the knapsack and, staggering, picked up the scythe. “I’m going, kids, I’ll mow a wee bit. Already the legs don’t walk but the hands toil over everything. Well, if I take to my bed for good, how will people on Earth die, my hearts? Take care, Juliatta, take care, little orphan! Look after Ares, it’s hard for him. Ares suffers, indeed I feel for him. It’s all the cursed memory! And you, Methy, be healthy! Here, I know, trouble will come with such speed that you’ll be in a terrible mess!”
“What trouble?” Methodius asked. “A-a-and, my dear, one immediately sees how green you are! Who asks Death about the future! If I answer you, then I’ll have to cut you down! So, interested?” Mamzelkina glanced at Met so pointedly that he even stepped back. A hot and empty abyss blazed in Aida Plakhovna’s small eyes. “No, don’t!” he said in a hurry. “As you wish! Suit yourself, paradise saved! Ciao, clear-eyes, and you know to watch over your eidos. Perhaps your eidos isn’t better than others’. I’ve transferred many of them, I know the price of each… But indeed awfully powerful forces stand behind it, your eidos, they do, they do… Here’s like in the casino: now and then, the seven is so bound to the eight that even an ace can’t butt in! Clear?” “Clear.”
The old woman smirked. “I love intelligence. Are you indeed intelligent?” “Yes.” “That’s nice. And look after your Daphne! Indeed a painfully bright girlie – lest something doesn’t work out. Because of her. And… with her… Understand me?” It seemed to Methodius there was a hint – a very clear hint – in the old woman’s words. But to what extent her prophecy had to do with the near future – this he did not know. Buslaev felt that everything was not so simple here. Oh, how complex!
Aida Plakhovna left, dragging her legs. Her dry, efficient cough reached them from the outside, and almost immediately somewhere on an adjacent street the siren of an ambulance howled heartrendingly. Whether these events were connected, Methodius did not know. Although he would not be surprised to find out that the old woman started her work while she was still here. True pros of the necro-department never stop working for a moment. Their scythe shoots up and falls down ten times a minute.
