‘For a long time that man was trying to get rid of the desire to kiss your lovely lips… Would you let him do it?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t love him.’
‘To love is an obligatory for kissing?’
‘Of course! How can you kiss a person whom you don’t love? I can’t even imagine someone’s mouth touching mine! Ugh! I have you to kiss.’
‘So, you mean when people date, they don’t kiss with others?’ Kharon asked, having finally understood why Vasilisa had been constantly telling about their joint bad moves.
The demon started understanding that people preferred monogamy. At least in the beginning and in reality they did. Victoria stopped and turned to pensive Kharon and looked at his eyes.
‘Is there a definition of adultery in hell?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. What does it mean for you, people?’ he kept on walking, being thoughtful about his moves.
‘If you discover any adultery it means the end. If you don’t then it means nothing. As a rule, the end means breaking up. It’s painful for both. Someone can forgive. More precisely someone is able to say that they forgive but the thing that a beloved person did is gonna be with that couple for entire life.’
‘Would you forgive?’ the demon silly asked.
‘I’d kill.’ Victoria answered with all her seriousness. ‘I’d kill her. I wouldn’t be able to kill you but her…’
‘You’re too cruel!’ Kharon opened the door of the bookshop.
‘Thank you.’ Vic gave a seductive smile to the powerful demon and jumped into the shop under his hand, holding the door open.
‘Any adultery is always a betrayal. Betrayal is miserable and loathsome, and it hurts. All human creatures are too much twisted between each other and it goes that a thing can’t be without another one. If you don’t know what love is, you will never know what adultery is.’
Kharon was behind the girl, with the emptiness in his eyes he watched her looking through the books of the same type, seeking for the needed one. He realized that he had made a great mistake in the very beginning when his unhuman mind had had opinion of people. He hadn’t taken the people could be able to feel into account. He didn’t understand most of all what to do, how to pretend that he was able to feel also.
‘Ok, let’s go.’ Vic said sadly but fast, having put the book back at the shelf.
‘Aren’t you going to buy it?’ The demon was surprised, taking back the book. ‘You’ve been dreaming about it for a month already. What’s the matter?’
Victoria looked around. He knew already that feeling.
‘Confusion? Yes, it’s confusion. Why, dear?’
‘No, no, it’s ok. There’s no confusion…’
‘It’s a lie.’ The demon stopped smiling.
Victoria knew what it meant. In a second she turned to be in his arms and his hand carefully stroked her head. From an outsiders’ viewpoint they looked like lovers giving to each other a little of unobtrusive tenderness. But Victoria perfectly knew that the demon like a black widow was lying the threads between his hand and the human mind. In a second the spider threads turned into the most powerful wires which Kharon freakily needed when he stopped understanding the girl’s speech.
In her mind Vic pleaded the man to stop and not to get into her mind. She couldn’t stop him in reality as Kharon was too sweaty fumbling in her mind.
‘The book… is a dream,’ the demon whispered, having closed the eyes. ‘Number. Big number. The number again. The 5th of November. What’s gonna be on the 5th of Number? Vic? Come on, dear, think about it, I must understand what’s going on… The 5th of November… The 5th. Here it is – your payment day. The number is 5996 roubles…. The number is on the book. This is the cost.’
The demon opened his eyes and looked at her face definitely. She was excited. Her eyes were lowered, she had rose cheeks of childhood.
‘This book is too expensive and you’re not ready to spend that kind of money but you’re waiting for your payment and you’re gonna come here again. Have I collected right your incoherent ideas?’ he asked giving the book to the girl.
She couldn’t look at his eyes. She was ashamed. She was greatly ashamed because being well-paid she all the same couldn’t spend easily almost 6000 roubles.
‘Have I understood you right, dear?’ the demon repeated his question again, gently touching her chin, trying to catch her ashamed eyes.
She silently nodded and her eyes were dim with tears. She didn’t want Kharon to see her crying again.
‘Can I buy it for you?’ he asked, without letting the girl turn away.
He was important to look at her eyes to understand how her emotions were shown. He needed her real emotions. The demon recognized, however, rather rapidly that without reading minds he could just look at the eyes and get all the necessary information out of there.
‘No, Kharon, it’s too expensive. As all the other art books. I’ll get paid and…’
‘I’ve put it in a wrong way,’ the man interrupted her, taking back the massive book, ‘I’ll buy it. No objections can be accepted.’
He turned away and went to the checkout lane. Victoria was open-mouthed staying near the bookshelves, understanding nothing how that could happen.
‘I can hear your pulse accelerating,’ Kharon said in a low voice with the smile on his lips when Victoria came up to him in the queue.
‘Kharon…’
‘I know the reason. You’re waiting for this book! You’re glad! These are emotions of happiness and joy. I’ve rather well known these because they are the brightest, strongest and purest you can ever have.’
‘Thank you!’ Vic put her head on his shoulder, hiding her the most pleased smile.
‘What for? We’re still in the queue.’
‘For what’s gonna happen in two minutes.’
As the book was bought Vic was happy. She had tried to buy it when she was a student, she graduated and even when she got a job. She madly wanted it but every time something prevented her from buying.
They were walking down the street from Kuznetsky most metro station. Kharon was carrying the massive book packed for all of life’s emergencies. Victoria’s arm linked in his and she didn’t even try to hide her happiness and smiling like a brewer’s horse. What could go wrong but she suddenly felt woozy. A waltz. A villainous loathful waltz. There were no things static before. The building started floating down like escaped from surrealistical pictures. Concrete, brick and iron objects turned into a ductile elastic band who knows who starched it. In a flash the sky and the earth switched places. Vic sorted out the darkened cumulus and the stars awaking in the distance. The earth sprinkled with the pellets of dirty from above, the asphalt threw back lumps in people. Upside down the raced giving its light to all around, blinding the eyes. The eyes what they did! Cars like sturdy immortal bacteria divided like cells. Vic saw right before her eyes the world gathered its double-ganger and they both were so disgusting! They were too damned painful look! It was possible. With its diploid abnormality it drove the girl crazy. Her eyes couldn’t focus on. They didn’t belong to her. Everything was at sixes and seven!
Victoria couldn’t take a step forward. She just didn’t understand what was going on, where the asphalt was, where to put step. She was like an astronaut tirelessly worked on the ISS, having completely forgotten what gravity and Newtonian constant of gravitation were. There was no coordination. It absented. There was confusion and surging up fear.
The girl tried to say something, to ask the standing near demon in catatonic way for help. He only heard her like as a lonely cow in the field of thistles weakly bellowing.
Her heart was beating faster and faster. It was getting scarier and scarier. The half of the body was getting heavier as if came off and flew into the abyss. No, it didn’t hurt. It scared. The body was getting covered with a layer of something soft and disgusting, something that made you remember the true belonging of the body and didn’t allow to feel more and more.
