Chapter 1
The D Route Minibus
Four brothers go to the oldest.
“How do you do, Tommy Thumb!” they say.
“Hello, Peter Pointer,
Toby Tall,
Ruby Ring,
And Baby Small!”
Finger game
Rina was sitting on a bollard swinging her legs and waiting. The subway next to her was spitting out people. Rina counted nine hundred people. Among them five hundred and ten were women. Leaving the five-hundred-and-eleventh woman uncounted, Rina jumped off the bollard and went to buy ice cream. She had enough money for either one good ice cream or to two so-so ones. After wavering for a while, she asked for two. “Who said that they’re bad? They’re underrated!” she said to herself and relaxed.
A drunk tumbled out of the rear door of a stopped car. He started to shove his passport under her nose and said that there was no kid in it. This did not surprise Rina too much: she always got into some mess.
Instead of quickly walking away, she took the passport and shook it. Not even one smallest kid fell out of the passport. “True!” she said. “No kid! Well, doesn’t matter: when you do, come quickly for teaching tips!” The drunk was offended and started to grab her sleeve.
Rina ran to the stern guard, who had risked his life catching an old hag illegally selling mushrooms on a string, and slipped him the passport. “Here, I found a document! Will you please have a look whose?” she asked and dived behind the pavilion.
Thirty minutes left for her to wait. In any case, so Kuzepych said. When she saw that nine people had gathered at the appointed place, she should press the centaur. Once. And that was all.
* * *
“Cool! Third generation Muscovite and was never on Planernaya!” Sashka realized, after walking up to the city. He always pronounced his favourite “cool” with a stress at the end. Something bright flew high above the buildings. At first Sashka thought it was a ball, but looking closely he figured out that it was an ordinary plastic bag. It was flying by itself and was not bothered at all that under it was twenty floors of emptiness.
Sashka took a step to the post and looked around with interest. Amusing region. Cramped, toy-like. The buildings come right up to the subway shelter. One can go out to the balcony and stare at the crowd. At night, when you are lying in silence, you listen as the floor shudders and trains rush past somewhere under you. Sashka focused to determine where he was now. Before him stretched an asphalt area with islands, where buses and minibuses docked. As always there were many of them at subway stations.
“Please, do you know where the Route D minibus is?” he asked a woman in a red windbreaker. The woman was playing with a child. She absent-mindedly lifted her eyes and part of the tenderness addressed to the child accidentally splashed onto Sashka. Almost immediately on the face that came to the tenderness waned, fell somewhere inside, and Sashka was sorry that he had torn a person away from a pleasant occupation. “Don’t know!” the woman said and again dived into her child as into a pond.
“Excuse me, please? Route D minibus?” Sashka turned to a stooping back emerging from behind the post. The back wobbled, and Sashka realized that he had missed the mark with the respect. A person of his age was looking at him. True, in order to determine this, Sashka had to lift up his head infinitely. The fellow was not simply two metres tall but somewhere close to two-ten. Narrow-shouldered, long-armed. The teeth were big. Two front ones like a beaver’s. The eyes were green, mocking. The arms dangled like ropes while walking, and the chin was making “snap-snap,” right-left. On the stranger’s forehead Sashka saw a long abrasion, badly overgrown, exiting under the hair.
“Didn’t fit into the elevator. Moscow is a town of dwarfs,” tracking his look, lanky explained talkatively. “And I'm powerless to help on the subject of the minibus. I’m searching for it myself! ”
Sashka continued to roam along the area. No one knew about the route D minibus. Sashka reached the last asphalt island and was prepared to return to the subway, when he suddenly saw a sheet with the bold letter “D” on the post. After surveying the queue, Sashka was convinced that they would completely fit into one vehicle.
Turning, his knapsack hit the fellow standing in front of him. That one looked around, gave Sashka the once-over, and not so much spat but hissed at the asphalt. Sashka thought that they call such a fellow “a lad” or “a young lad.” Not tall, thickset, in a turtleneck. He was moving unhurriedly, ingratiatingly, like a cat.
