The Coin

March 4, 2020

There are people who live by an established routine so firmly that their neighbours notice any deviation from it before they do themselves. If Valya the postwoman should one day walk down Krivaya not at nine but at ten, the whole street will know her grandson is ill; if the old man from number nineteen does not come out at noon to feed the pigeons, someone will be knocking at his door by one. Kesha was one of those people: for seven years he had never come out from behind the curtain before Grisha had finished the floor, put the kettle on and said his "Good morning, master" — and Grisha was so used to this that if the curtain had ever been drawn back earlier, he would probably have decided a burglar had got into the shop.

The next morning Kesha did what, it seemed, he had never done: he came out from behind the curtain while Grisha was still washing the floor, and Grisha dropped his cloth in surprise.

"Master?"

"Carry on, carry on," said Kesha. "I'm not here for you."

He went over to the little table. The eight black coins lay where they had been left. Beside them, a little apart, as if keeping their distance, lay Tamara Petrovna's three ordinary silvers. Grisha had not touched those either: he did not know whether he was allowed to and was afraid to ask.

Kesha took a handkerchief from his pocket — a large checked one, his grandfather's — covered one of the black coins with it, hooked it up and lifted it.

It turned out to be heavy. Heavier than you would have thought from its look — as if inside it was not silver but lead, or something heavier than lead. And cold. The cold came through the handkerchief, through the cloth, the way the cold of an icicle comes through a mitten.

Kesha held it up to the lamp.

On one side there was, after all, not a coat of arms but a face. A profile. Worn so that only the forehead, nose and chin could be made out — but made out clearly, and for some reason Kesha did not like the way this profile looked: not straight ahead, as on all coins, but a little sideways, as if glancing askance at whoever held the coin in his hand.

On the other side there were letters round the edge. Kesha studied them for a long time through his grandfather's magnifying glass and made out only one, at the very beginning — old-fashioned, with a flourish — and also, it seemed, the figure seven. The rest had been eaten by time.

The rim was jagged. Now, close up, Kesha could see that the nicks were not random — they ran all round the edge, small, frequent, semicircular, and really did look, as Grisha had said, like tooth marks. Small teeth. As though a mouse had gnawed the coin long and patiently. Or a child.

"Master," said Grisha from the door, "maybe we could look it up on the internet? Everything's on there. Take a picture and search."

Kesha looked at him. It was a sensible idea — unexpectedly sensible, for Grisha.

"Take a picture," said Kesha.

Grisha wiped his hands on his overall, took out his phone and photographed the coin in Kesha's hand, on the checked handkerchief, from both sides. Then he prodded the screen. Then he prodded some more. His face grew more and more puzzled.

"It can't find it," he said at last. "It says 'similar images.' And shows buttons."

"Buttons?"

"Yeah. Old buttons. And some medal. And a cat."

"A cat?"

Grisha showed him. There really was a cat, a black one, curled up in a ball on somebody's windowsill.

Kesha put the coin back on the table with the others and folded up the handkerchief.

"All right," he said. "Wash the floor."

---

He thought about the coin all day while he read. Five clients. The twenty-second empty for all five. In the evening, when Grisha had gone, Kesha threw on his coat — his grandfather's too, long, with a worn astrakhan collar — and went out into the street.

Across the road from the shop, on the diagonal, in just the same kind of half-basement, only in house number twenty, was the Arcana salon.

Kesha did not like the Arcana. Not that he had any reason: it was simply that, walking past in the evenings, he would see violet light in the half-basement window, see beads hung on the walls, crystal balls and dried herbs, see the proprietress herself — a large lady with hair dyed black, in a fringed shawl — and he felt awkward, the way you feel awkward when you see someone in the street in fancy dress when it isn't carnival.

In our town, if you count honestly, there have always been more fortune-tellers than dentists, and nobody is surprised by it: a tooth aches once a year, but the heart aches every day. Gypsy women told fortunes at the market; Lyuda the manicurist at the hairdresser's on Zarechnaya told them from coffee grounds — free, if you had your nails done with her; they say even the cashier at the bus station told fortunes, and could tell from your ticket whether you would get there or not. But only one on Krivaya kept a sign with underlined words.

The proprietress was called Madame Zoya. That was what the sign said: "Madame Zoya. Tarot. Runes. Curses lifted. Love spells (white only!)." The words "white only" were underlined twice.

Kesha and Madame Zoya were, so to speak, competitors. Though "competitors" is a big word: people went to Kesha for the truth and to Madame Zoya for comfort, and these, as Kesha had long since understood, were quite different clients. Sometimes they overlapped: someone, having received an unpleasant parchment from Kesha, would run across the road to Madame Zoya, and Madame Zoya would lay out the cards and say that everything would be fine. And the person would leave her comforted. And then everything would turn out the way Kesha had written.

When they met they greeted each other with a nod. They had spoken — Kesha remembered exactly — twice in all seven years: once when the power went off in the district and Madame Zoya came to ask whether he had a spare candle, and once when on New Year's night some drunk smashed her window and Kesha called the police.

Now Kesha went down the steps to her door — her steps were stone and chipped, and on each stood a pot of dried-up geranium — and knocked.

Inside something clinked and rustled, and the door opened.

Close up, Madame Zoya turned out to be older than he had thought. Under the make-up — thick, theatrical, with eyes lined out to the temples — her face was tired and finely wrinkled, and Kesha suddenly realised that she must be over fifty, perhaps nearer sixty. She smelled of perfume, sweet and heavy, and of something else that Kesha did not recognise at first and then did: it was how his grandfather's wardrobe had smelled. Mothballs. Old age.

"Well, well," said Madame Zoya. "The neighbour. There's a guest. Power off again?"

"No," said Kesha. "May I come in?"

Madame Zoya looked at him attentively. Then she stood aside.

---

Inside, the Arcana was exactly as it looked from outside, only more cramped. A violet lamp under the ceiling. Beads. A crystal ball on a stand shaped like three bronze paws. A deck of cards on a little table covered with a fringed velvet cloth. A stuffed owl on the wardrobe — moth-eaten, with one glass eye. On the walls, pictures with signs of some sort, engravings, calendars, photographs of Madame Zoya with people who were evidently celebrities, though Kesha did not recognise a single one.

"Sit down," said Madame Zoya, pointing to the chair opposite her. "Tea? Coffee? Cognac?"

"No, thank you."

"Suit yourself." She sat down herself, heavily, with a sigh, and her shawl spread over the chair like wings. "Well? What have you come for? Only don't tell me it's to have your fortune told. I won't believe it."

Kesha took the handkerchief out of his pocket and unfolded it. On the handkerchief lay a black coin. He had brought it with him — wrapped it up without touching it, and all the way across the street had felt its weight in his pocket, as if he were carrying a stone.

"Have you seen ones like this?" he asked.

Madame Zoya bent over the handkerchief.

Kesha recalled that minute many times afterwards. Her face did not change at once — at first she looked with curiosity, as one looks at a trinket being shown. Then she narrowed her eyes. Then she bent lower. And then — and this was the strangest thing — she did not recoil, did not cry out, nothing of the sort. She simply went pale. Under the thick layer of make-up it was almost invisible, but Kesha saw it: the blood drained from her face, and her lips, painted bright red, suddenly seemed to be drawn on white paper.

"Put it away," she said quietly.

"Do you know what it is?"

"Put it away, I said."

Kesha wrapped the coin in the handkerchief. Madame Zoya leaned back in her chair and for a while sat in silence, looking somewhere past him, at the owl. Then she reached into the cupboard behind her, took out a bottle and a glass without looking, poured herself one and drank it in a single gulp without wincing.

"Where from?" she asked.

"A client left it. The day before yesterday. Eight of them."

"Eight," Madame Zoya repeated. "'The Main Day,' then."

Kesha started. He had not told her what the client had ordered.

"How do you…"

"Well, you've got your price list hanging on the door," said Madame Zoya with a sort of crooked smile. "I know it by heart. Eight silvers — 'The Main Day.' Not hard to work out."

That was true, and Kesha felt awkward for not having worked it out himself.

"What are these coins?" he asked.

Madame Zoya poured herself another, but did not drink it; she held the glass in her hand and looked into it.

"That's what people used to pay with," she said at last.

"Used to — when?"

"Before." She paused. "Only not to people."

"Then to whom?"

Madame Zoya raised her eyes to him. Under all that black liner her eyes were light, almost colourless, like the eyes of very old people — and Kesha was surprised to see in them not fear but pity.

"What, you really don't know anything?" she said. "He never told you anything?"

"Who — he?"

Madame Zoya opened her mouth — and shut it. She set the glass down on the table. She stood up, heavily, leaning on the edge of the table, and went to the door.

"Go, neighbour," she said. "It's late. I have to close."

"But you yourself…"

"Go."

She opened the door. Cold and wet snow came in from the street. Kesha stood up, pushed the handkerchief with the coin into his pocket and went to the door. On the threshold he turned round.

"Madame Zoya. Please. Who is 'he'?"

She stood holding the door, large, in her shawl, under the violet light, and suddenly she seemed to him very old and very lonely.

"You know what," she said. "Tell your grandad…"

And she broke off.

Kesha saw it happen. As if she were walking along a familiar road and suddenly stepped on empty air. Her eyes widened. Her hand tightened on the door. She looked at Kesha as though she had just remembered something terrible — or, on the contrary, as though the terrible thing was that she had forgotten.

"My grandad?" Kesha repeated.

"Nothing," said Madame Zoya. "Nothing. A slip of the tongue. I'm getting old, I mix everything up. Go."

"My grandfather died twelve years ago."

"I know," said Madame Zoya. "I know, neighbour. I was at the funeral. Go."

And she shut the door.

---

Kesha stood on the stone steps among the pots of dried geranium and looked at the closed door. A minute later the violet light in the window went out.

He crossed the street. Krivaya was empty. The streetlights were lit at every other post, and this made the street seem longer than it really was, as if it stretched out in the dark. The snow was falling fine, wet and slanting.

Madame Zoya had been at the funeral. Kesha did not remember that. He remembered little of the funeral at all: he had been fifteen, and he had stood by the coffin looking at his grandfather's hands folded on his chest — big, yellow, with long fingers — and thought only that he would never again see those hands holding a pen. There had been many people around. Who they were he did not know and did not ask. Many people in town had known his grandfather.

"Tell your grandad."

Kesha went down the iron stairs to his door, unlocked it, went in and switched on the light.

On the little table by the door lay seven black coins — and Tamara Petrovna's three ordinary silvers.

Kesha took the handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it and put the eighth coin with the others. He put it down carefully, without touching, shaking it off the handkerchief.

The coin fell onto the table and lay not the way he had put it. It turned over. Kesha saw it happen — it fell tails up, letters up, and then, already lying there, it rocked the way an uneven button rocks on a table, and settled profile up.

The worn profile was looking sideways. At Kesha.

Kesha stood looking at it. Then he switched off the light by the door and went behind the curtain. And for a long time he sat there under the green lamp, listening — though there was nothing to listen to: only the dripping in the neighbouring cellar, drip, drip, drip.