The Life and Times of the Curious Cockroach

Last time on “The Infinite Possibilities of O”: Alyona Andreevna Volkova attempts to find husband through superstition. Accidentally curses herself with broken mirror. Bedroom walls covered by tiny white spiders. Appearance of squeaky stool and a toad woman named Fortune. The purchase of twenty kilograms of apples as a way of conjuring up future husband’s name in a dream.

“Say what? My electric saw? And just what do you intend to do with an electric saw, young miss?” asked Mr. Kosakov, who stood at his doorway with a mug of steaming tea in his hands.

“Womanly matters, Mr. Kosakov,” said Alyona grimly.

Mr. Kosakov was a quiet, gray-haired man who crafted furniture for a living. While he was accustomed to lending his tools to neighbours, here he found something unsettling. He looked down the hall at Alyona’s apartment door, eyed it suspiciously, and then looked back at the girl.

“Please, Mr. Kosakov,” repeated Alyona, “hand me the prettiest, shiniest saw my nimble arms can lift, and I promise to bring it back in a jiffy.”

By now, dear reader, I imagine you’re wondering what Alyona was doing at her neighbour’s doorway, when she was supposed to be busy pealing the apples she had just bought from the toad-woman. If Misfortune didn’t have the habit of throwing nasty things Alyona’s way, the girl would indeed be doing just that. But upon her return home, Alyona was so tired from her heavy bags, that she was oblivious to her surroundings. There was thus no way the poor girl could prevent, or in the very least predict, being assaulted so viciously in her very own home, by her very own coffee table.

The untrained eye would have missed the assault altogether. The coffee table did indeed remain quite still from the beginning of the incident to the end. How deceiving such airs of innocence can be to a superstitious mind like Alyona’s. The coffee table surely sensed the girl’s exhaustion, when it coaxed her to take a sweet moment’s rest on one of its corners! Not a second too soon did Alyona remember that sitting on the corner of a table meant seven years without marriage. And hadn’t she spent her entire morning trying to avert just that?

Her eye gave another twitch at the thought.

So Alyona now stood in front of Mr. Kosakov, looking pale and grim, wishing to borrow the tool that could solve the issue once and for all. Mr. Kosakov, did not wish to inquire what Alyona had meant by “womanly matters,” so without further questions he lent the girl his electric saw.

Alyona set to work immediately. She sawed off all four corners of the coffee table, but she did not stop there. That afternoon, Alyona purged her apartment of all its corners — the countertops, the kitchen table, even the granite sink could not escape the  girl’s eye and the saw’s teeth.

When Alyona finally switched off the machine, her entire apartment was covered in sawdust. Ksusha looked around with satisfaction, seeing all the accidental misfortune she had just averted.

But at that very moment, two cats started rubbing at her ankles and mewing hungrily. Alyona was so startled that she almost dropped the electric saw on the poor creatures. You see, dear reader, those poor creatures happened to be black.

This was too much for Alyona. Time was flying by, her skin beginning to wither and crease under the weight of immanent spinsterhood, and here were these two black cats roaming around her apartment. They belonged to Mr. Kosakov, and took every opportunity to sneak out of his apartment and startle the other tenants.

They followed Alyona from room to room like a ghastly shadow. Finally the girl gave the cats a last stern look and shut them in the bathroom.

“I’ll deal with you later,” she said, wondering how many more curses she would have fight off that day.

*

The skin on Alyona’s hands stung from the scrapes. But a sweet smell filled her nostrils and coaxed her to carry on pealing.

A yellow-green twilight had descended on the city, followed by a breathless night. But Alyona could not sleep until she finished her task.She spent hours working through the sacs of apples, throwing peal after peal over her left shoulder just as the toad-woman had instructed.

When she finished with the last apple, Alyona collapsed on her coach and fell fast asleep. But that night, the maiden did not dream of her future husband — not even the first letter of his name. All she dreamt about was never-ending apple pealing.

Next morning, Alyona tried to remember her dream. After all her hard work, she refused to be disappointed. She figured that the toad-woman forgot to mention that she was to interpret the dream instead of just recollecting it. So Alyona closed her eyes tightly, and decided that the majority of the apple peals in her dream formed the letter “O”.
Brilliant! thought Alyona. Of all the men she would have had to chase before, that single letter sure did narrow down the possibilities. She thought of the names of all her friends, acquaintances, former classmates, all the O-somethings she could introduce to her parents and grandparents, to her aunt Oksana and uncle Oleg, her cousins Petya and Olga …

So the girl put on her reddest lipstick and furriest coat, and headed for the city centre. She felt so light, as if her little feet were just grazing the ground. She moved faster and faster, her long locks whipping behind her like flames. Alyona was radiant, radiant like a maiden before she is a maiden no more.

This is my last solitary walk, thought Alyona,  I can feel it in all of my bones!

Alyona stepped inside a teashop, and right there in front of her was a handsome gentleman. He was wearing a suit, and a white sticker on his chest read:

“Hello, my name is OLEG”

Alyona almost fainted on the spot. The painting of a toad on the wall seemed to give her a wink.

 

The final part of this short story will be posted soon.

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