The Parchment That Rewrote Itself

March 11–12, 2020

"You didn't write it," Somov repeated without any expression. That is how you repeat after a witness when taking a statement — not arguing, not agreeing, just so it's down.

"I didn't write it," said Kesha.

"Your handwriting. Your paper. Your ink too, I'd think. Your thread here." Somov nodded at the coarse thread dangling from the corner of the sleeve. "But you didn't write it."

"I wrote something else," said Kesha, and when Somov asked what, he was silent for a moment: he suddenly understood how it would sound — but he had nothing else.

"That on the tenth he'd meet a girl. In a café. When he was picking up an order."

Somov looked at him attentively, then at the parchment in the sleeve, then at Kesha again.

"Innokenty," he said, and his voice became softer, almost fatherly, "do you understand how this looks?"

Kesha said he understood.

"A man comes to you, pays, gets a bit of paper, and a week later disappears, and on his table is this bit of paper, and on it in your hand — 'you will be called, go out, you are waited for.' And you tell me you wrote about a café."

"I understand," Kesha repeated.

"So do I." Somov sighed and pushed his hat back. "All right, let's say you wrote about a café. Have you got it written down anywhere — a copy, anything?"

And then Kesha remembered.

"I have," he said. "Grisha, give me the book. March."

---

This was another of Grandpa's customs: Grandpa wrote everything down. He had a thick ledger, ruled by hand, and into it he entered every client: the date, the name if given, the request and — briefly, in two or three words — what he had seen. "3 May. Petrenko. Work. Will be sacked on the 17th." "4 May. Woman in red, didn't give name. Heart. Husband unfaithful, she'll find out on the 20th." "5 May. Boy with dog. Caution. Not to climb on the garages on the 11th."

"What for?" little Kesha asked him once.

"For memory," said Grandpa. "It's no shame for a man to forget. It's a shame for a palmist to forget. A man will come to you in a year and say: what did you write me that time? And you don't even remember. Not good."

And Kesha, when he opened the shop, began to do the same. The books stood on the shelf by the entrance — one for each year, in identical cloth bindings — from two thousand and thirteen to the present one, twenty-twenty. Grandpa's old ones lay in the back room, in the wardrobe; Kesha did not touch them. But he kept his own faithfully: every evening, after Grisha left, he sat down and wrote up everyone he had read that day. For the last six months it had been easier — Grisha kept the visitors' book, with names, and all Kesha had to do was add a few words against each name.

Grisha brought the book. Kesha opened it at the first of March and showed Somov.

The handwriting in the book was the same — slanting, small, with tails. Only the ink was different: Kesha filled in the book with a ballpoint pen.

"1 March. Leonid (Lyonya), courier. Heart. Girl won't come back. On the 10th will meet another in a café, on an order. Bright month."

Somov read it, then read it again, then leafed backwards and forwards and looked at other entries — Kesha saw him linger on some: "Kubyshkin, Work," "Angelina Markovna, Caution, dog (Zhuzhu)." At this last entry Somov's eyebrows crept upwards, but he said nothing.

"And when was this written?" he asked, returning to Lyonya.

"The first of March, in the evening."

"That's what you say," said Somov, and Kesha agreed that that was what he said.

Somov closed the book and laid it on his knees.

"You see the thing is, Innokenty," he said. "You could have made this entry any time. On the first of March, or this morning, or five minutes ago while I was waiting here. A ballpoint is a ballpoint. You could do an examination, of course, of how old the ink is — but that takes a long time, costs a lot, and nobody's going to give me one." He paused. "I'm not telling you you're lying. I'm telling you this proves nothing."

"I understand," said Kesha for the third time.

"Good that you understand."

Somov stood up, gave the book back to Grisha — Grisha pressed it to his chest like a baby — and put the sleeve with the parchment back in his folder.

"I'm taking this. Evidence." He hesitated. "You can photograph it if you need to. For yourself."

Kesha took out his phone and photographed it. The parchment in its sleeve, on Somov's folder, under the light of the lamp over the little table. His hands did not shake — he was surprised himself.

"Tell me this," Somov said, fastening the folder. "Did you know this Lyonya before? Before the first of March?"

No, said Kesha — neither before nor after: never saw him, never rang, he never came. Where was he on the evening of the ninth? Here, he's always here. And who can confirm that?

Kesha looked at Grisha.

"Me!" said Grisha eagerly. "I'll confirm it: on the ninth I slept here, there was a blizzard, the marshrutkas weren't running, the master sat here all evening, and I cooked pelmeni, and he ate them — with sour cream!"

Somov looked at Grisha with the same weary bewilderment with which he must have looked at the washing thief.

"With sour cream," he repeated. "All right. Noted."

He put on his hat, went to the door, took hold of the handle, and then stopped and turned round.

"Innokenty," he said, "don't leave town for now. All right? Just in case."

"I don't go anywhere," said Kesha. "Ever."

"There you are, then."

He left, and his boots rang on the stairs — heavily, unhurriedly, the same way they had come down.

---

The rumour that the police had been to the palmist's spread along Krivaya faster than Somov reached the corner — news here generally travels not along wires but along benches, and there are more benches on Krivaya than wires. By lunchtime Granny Tosya from Oktyabrskaya already knew that "they're arresting the palmist for murder," by three — "for drugs," and by evening — "for telling some MP's fortune wrong," and each version was told with such detail as if the teller had been present herself. The clients, however, did not decrease because of it but increased: in our town nothing raises a fortune-teller's reputation like police at the door.

For the rest of the day Kesha read three — he could not manage more, his head was splitting — and let Grisha go early. Grisha left reluctantly: he shuffled by the door, looked back, kept wanting to say something and not saying it.

"Master," he said at last, "they won't put you in prison, will they?"

They won't, said Kesha, definitely not.

"Because I… I'll confirm it. Don't you worry. I'll tell them everything how it was. The pelmeni and everything."

"I know, Grisha. Go."

Grisha left, and Kesha sat down at the desk and began to think.

He thought about the parchment. About how it could have happened. Had someone forged his handwriting? But why? Who would need to forge the handwriting of the palmist on Krivaya? And how — so exactly, with the tails, with the loop, with the same ink, on the same paper? Kesha bought his parchment from a craftsman who made it by hand in a workshop near Tver — a bearded, taciturn man who sent parcels tied with string, with a note saying "do not wet, do not bend, do not burn" — and nobody else had any like it. The ink came from an old little shop in the capital, by special order.

No, nobody had forged it — Kesha knew that: the parchment had rewritten itself.

The way the month had rewritten itself for the old man with the stick, for Lyonya, for everyone who had a blot. The future had changed, and the pictures had changed with it. And the parchment — the parchment was also about the future. Kesha wrote on it what he saw — and it came true. "Everything comes true." That was not just boasting on a signboard. It was the truth — a truth Kesha had never fully understood, but believed in as simply as he believed the sun would rise in the morning. What he wrote — would be.

But what if the future changed and the parchment stayed the same? Then the parchment would have lied. And a parchment cannot lie.

So it rewrote itself. Adjusted. So as not to lie.

Only — Kesha thought, and this thought was colder than all the ones before — only here was the question. Which came first: did the month change and the parchment adjust to it? Or was the parchment rewritten — by someone, by something — and the month adjusted to the parchment?

"On the evening of the ninth you will be called by name. Go out."

Lyonya had read it. Sat at his table on Zarechnaya, unrolled the parchment — and read it. Perhaps he was surprised: odd, I thought it said something else. Or perhaps he wasn't surprised — who rereads parchments? He read it and remembered: "called — go out." And on the evening of the ninth, in the dark, someone outside the window or the door called: "Lyonya." Quietly. From far away.

And he went out. Without his jacket, without his boots, without his slippers. Because that was what was written. Because everything comes true.

Kesha covered his face with his hands.

Eight people. Eight people had a blot. Tamara Petrovna, Kubyshkin, Oksana with the pram, the taxi driver, the teacher, the old man with the stick, the man with the car, the student. Eight parchments he had handed them in his own hand. And if they rewrote themselves…

He could not gather them back. He did not know where these people lived. Some did not even have names. All he could do was wait — and hope that what he had written them afterwards, "don't go out, don't answer," would prove stronger than what someone else might write for them.

---

At night he opened on his phone the picture he had taken in the day.

The parchment lay in its sleeve on Somov's folder; the light of the lamp over the table was reflected in the plastic as a glare, but the text could be seen.

"Heart. March. On the evening of the ninth you will be called by name. Go out. You have long been waited for."

Kesha looked at these lines and tried to find in them anything at all that wasn't his. A single letter formed differently. A single tail curled the wrong way. And he found nothing. It was his. All of it — his. He would have written it exactly like that, if he had written it.

And then he noticed that below, under the last line — where in the daytime there had been nothing, only the yellowish field of the parchment — another line was showing through.

Pale, barely distinguishable, as if the ink had not yet dried and had only begun to darken. But the letters could already be made out. The same handwriting — his handwriting — only a little larger and pressed hard, the way people write when they want something remembered.

Kesha zoomed in on the picture.

"Debts are paid by hand."

He sat and looked for a long time, and the line did not vanish. On the contrary — while he looked, it seemed to grow darker, clearer, as though someone on the other side of the picture were tracing it over with a pen again and again.

"Debt" — what debt, who owed whom: Lyonya — someone? Kesha — someone?

He remembered Madame Zoya saying "tell your grandad…" and breaking off, and the man in the coat asking "is Grigory at home?" and then saying "no, another."

Kesha switched off the screen. In the back room, on the shelf above the bed, lay the notebook with the copper palm. Locked by Grandpa's hand. Kesha felt it from there, through the wall, through the curtain, through the darkness — heavy, cold, silent.

He thought that if it was written anywhere what this debt was, it was written there — and that he could not open it.