In progress

Ipso, novel (excerpt)

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1. The Lane

 

Thoughts began to sprout in my head again. Osten—my name. Eighth of September, Monday—today’s date. Satisfied, I took my thoughts lower, to my right hand. My left hand was clutching it, sticky and slippery at the same time. I knew why my hand felt like this. Blood. Torrents and buckets of it. But I refused to look.

Did this really happen? Only minutes ago? Left turn at the diversion sign. Unpaved lane bordered by pines. Something big and hairy lurching out of the woods, across the bonnet, and back into the woods. Accelerator instead of brakes, thud of the grille hugging a tree, seatbelt squeezing the air out of me, severed branch smashing the window, the skin on my hand busting open.

I shuffled back to the blocked T junction. Diverted Trafic, the sign said, in crooked letters hand-painted on a rough board attached to a wooden barrier. I should have steered around it and stayed on the B road. A rusted-out digger slumbered in the weedy ditch; tree stumps decorated the roadside, but the tarmac looked intact as it snaked into the first slopes of the Highlands.

Despite the sun, I couldn’t stop shivering. Not a single car on the road, not since I left England hours ago. I kicked the sign over but, seconds later, pushed it up again using my feet. Nothing existed except the grey dust, the ringing of the midges, and my hand. It was swelling up. Goddamn it all. The trip, my parents, the letter. I should have stayed in Foxhills. And now what? The wound will get infected, gangrene will set in, the wet kind, with a rainbow of colours like in Dad’s medical textbooks. Then sepsis. On the way back to the car, I found shade under a colossal, resin-smelling pine.

‘One look. Maybe it’s not so bad,’ I said, though my hand started to hurt a lot. My neck and shoulders ached too. I told myself to sit down and then look, in case I fainted.

Sitting against the tree, I decided to count to ten. No, fifty. Better yet, a hundred. ‘Thirty, thirty-one…’ My eyes refused to stay open. The breeze cooled my sweaty forehead. ‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two.’

 

 

 

I woke up to the feeling of a stranger in my space and pretended to be asleep.

‘Anyone home?’ Asked a woman’s voice, calm and dry.

I stopped playing dead. She was standing over me in a grey, hooded trench, dark hair loose about her thin shoulders. Frown lines notched her high forehead. She moved her eyes, green and tired behind thick-rimmed glasses, from my hand to my face.

I almost burst into tears. ‘Does it look like minced beef? Do you see maggots?’

The woman’s eyebrows narrowed. ‘Don’t be scared. You’ve got a gash alright, but ninety-nine per cent chance, it’s nothing to fret about.’ How she managed to sound both cold and caring, I had no idea.

I pressed the back of my head into the tree and darted a glance at my hand. Fat, with a jagged smile near the knuckles, it looked as if it had been dipped in red paint. A film prop-looking monstrosity connected to me by pain. ‘God! Nothing to fret about?’

‘Of course. Never had bumps and bruises when you were a kid?’

‘Heaps,’ I lied.

I rolled my shoulders and willed my body to relax. The hiker lady said it was nothing serious, so don’t fight it.

She disappeared in the undergrowth and returned with a leaf. I must have slept for hours. The day crept towards twilight, and against the pinks and purples of the sky, her face sharpened with all the symmetry and cheekbones of a Roman bust. Under her coat, she wore a grey shirt and dark trousers, and a belt hung with old-fashioned leather pouches and vials of carved bone.

‘Little beauties,’ I whispered. Mountains of trinkets had moved through my workshop over the years, but none as glorious as these.

‘What was that?’

‘No, no. Sore and tired, that’s all.’

 The woman pushed a waterskin strapped across her chest out of the way and squatted by my side. Her old leather boots groaned. She placed my bad hand on my stomach and crumpled the leaf. It smelled green. The slimy wad, pinched in her skinny fingers, hovered an inch above my wound. ‘You know, there might be a first-aid kit in the car.’ I pointed to my poor old Viva, whose boot stuck out of the underbrush a little way down the lane. Trying to get up, I propped myself on one elbow.

‘There’s positively no need for it.’ She gestured for me to lie back down.

‘Really? A leaf from a ditch?’ I shrilled. With a quick breath, her mouth became a button, her nostrils arched. ‘But then again, a leaf is all you need sometimes. Right?’ I pulled a smile across my face. ‘Thank you for saving me.’ I wiggled back into my spot by the tree.

The colour rose in her cheeks. ‘I wouldn’t call it saving. This will need closing.’ She nodded at the wound. ‘But as I said, the odds have been in your favour.’ Holding my arm by the wrist, she poured water from her flask on the bloody mess. Then squeezed a few drops of the green juice onto the gouge and wiped my hand with the leaf. ‘It will dull the pain.’

‘I see.’ It didn’t dull anything. It stung. I turned the other way.

The pines creaked and swayed, brushing the gathering clouds. Everything here had bark and moss, and weight. And I was a foreign body with no roots or leaves, wrapped in flimsy skin, intruding on a special kind of peace. ‘I’m Osten. I was going to visit my parents. They had the excellent idea to move to some forsaken hole way north of here. No offence,’ I said to the forest and to the woman, who was now sitting next to me on the carpet of pine needles, fumbling at her belt.

‘None taken. Technically, the place is full of forsaken holes.’ She freed one of the engraved vials and smelled its contents, screwing up her face. ‘My name is Hester.’ Our eyes met for a moment before she went back to digging in her pouches.

‘You don’t sound Scottish.’ With all the nerves, the words tumbled out unchecked. ‘I hope I’m not prying.’ I rushed to add.

Hester smiled with a corner of her mouth. ‘Inquisitiveness is not a crime. I live here now, but I’m from the south originally.’ Her fingers traced a vague circle in the air.

The sky had grown fuller and rumbled with thunder. I wanted my slippers, my armchair, and a hot drink. Or, at least, proper shelter. The idea of sleeping in the car made me shiver as much as the mushroom-scented damp that had got into my jumper and trousers.

‘Whereabouts is the nearest village? Town? A place with a surgery and a telephone?’ I squirmed, my body stiff from sitting, and prayed for a simple answer. Though the endless mountains and woods, brooding in the greying light, gave little hope of that.

‘The nearest place is Tigh Na Eun, ten miles away. They have no surgery.’

‘Ten miles and no surgery. No time to waste then. Surely, the car is in decent shape. Need to find some bandages. Drive to the village. Easy does it. Phone for help.’ I pulled myself to my feet. Drops of blood landed on Hester’s boots. She stood up too, and I found myself rising on tiptoe. She slouched, and we were almost eye-to-eye.

‘You can’t leave yet. You require assistance.’

‘Assistance is what I’m going to get.’ Slowly, I walked off.

Hester followed me to the car for more bad news. My Viva had careened into a hollow by the tree, got a puncture, and was leaking fluids everywhere. In the blur of the crash, I hadn’t noticed any of that. ‘No, no, no.’ Flinging open the passenger door, I pressed my shoulder into the frame, dug in with my feet, and pushed against gravity and a tonne of metal. A stab of pain in my hand brought me back to reality. I searched for the stupid first-aid kit with no luck. The one time in twelve years I left Foxhills, I’d forgotten to pack the most important item. What happened to the meticulous Osten? ‘I’m fucked.’ I dropped my forehead against the doorpost. My chin trembled.

‘Don’t exaggerate.’ The bite in Hester’s voice was new. Rubbing the bridge of her owlish nose, she announced—‘The car is scrap, but there’s another solution. I can put you up for the night. Then we can think of salvaging the rest of your expedition.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Do you want a roof over your head or not?’ She raised her shoulders and folded her arms.

‘Yes, sorry, yes, thank you.’ I resorted to my zen breathing. In – hold – out – hold, nose only. It kind of worked. ‘I think I startled a deer.’ My Viva’s sky blue bonnet had a dent the size of a workman’s boot with five parallel scratches around the toe area. ‘I don’t know what else lives in these parts.’

Hester examined the crater. ‘Yes, those deer can be quite daft.’

The tree tops rustled louder in the wind, urging me to do something. One-handed, I struggled with the zipper of my suitcase. When it opened, I pulled out an undershirt and wrapped it badly around my hand.

‘Listen.’ Hester scratched her head. ‘We need to stop the bleeding.’ She reached for my hand and placed it on the bonnet, on top of the undershirt, already stained red.

‘Didn’t you say it was nothing to fret about?’ I whined.

‘I said a ninety-nine per cent chance.’

‘Sure.’ I swallowed hard.

‘This will look most unorthodox.’ She glanced over her shoulder and brought her lips to my ear. ‘But it works.’ Out came the two vials she’d been holding in her fist. From one, she applied a dark, phenolic-smelling paste in a circle around my wound and put a dot on each swollen knuckle. She sprinkled beige powder from the other vial on top of the gash and stared into nothingness, eyelids fluttering. Her fingers massaged my hand, her mouth shaped silent words. Veins and a sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead.

‘Folk remedy?’ I asked with a mix of paranoia and gratitude.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ she breathed out, keeping her eyes down. ‘Give it ninety seconds.’

I finished the count in my head. The wound kept slowly beading with blood. ‘Is this good or bad?’ I finally asked, shifting from foot to foot. ‘Are we still waiting? I think it itched for a second or two. Or burned. Or, maybe, not. Was it meant to itch?’

Hester chewed her lip, tapping her fingers on the bonnet. ‘It’s not working. Shhhit.’ She lifted her face to the monumental trees, where birds had gone quiet. ‘The skin aspect takes the tar of man. The primary state…,’ she mumbled something else cryptic, then peered inside her vials. ‘Maybe they are too old.’ She snatched a notepad and a pencil from an inside pocket and started scribbling. ‘Maybe the cut is too deep.’

The rain interrupted her. Driving through the canopy, it hammered on my Viva’s metal body. Hester raised her hood and wiped her glasses on her sleeve. ‘Apologies. Got distracted.’ Arms crossed, she eyed the scene, with me as the centrepiece—rumpled, bloody, covered in pine needles. ‘Let’s take you back to mine… to finish the repairs, as it were. The abbey is only an hour’s walk from here.’

‘That’s grand.’ I tried to sound cheerful. In the evening cold, my damp clothes stuck to me like a bodysuit of ice. I unpacked my waterproof jacket. Hester buttoned it up for me and bandaged my hand with the undershirt. My intuition was still juggling the choices: go with her, walk off, or curl up inside the car. The pines sagged, and the rain poured through my Viva’s broken window. Daylight was seeping away. ‘Ready when you are.’ I pulled my red suitcase from the backseat.

‘Do you need all this? You can come back for it later. It’s safe here.’

‘The suitcase comes with me.’

Hester shrugged. ‘Fine. Do you, at least, want help with it? It must be what—no less than eight kilos? Based on the dimensions and packing density.’

Blinking like mad I hid my eye roll, strangled the wet handle with my left hand, and did my best to stand straight. ‘No help needed, thanks. It’s light as a feather.’

After a few turns on the spot to get her bearings, Hester dove into the woods. Her long legs danced over the deadfall, and I dragged myself after her, feet sinking with a crunch into the cushion of moss and rotten twigs. Soon, she stopped at a thin dirt road vaulted by twisting boughs and waited for me.

 

2. St Rhian’s Miracles

 

The bottom of the suitcase was catching on glistening roots. To protect my loafers from the rainwater streaming down the middle of the track, I toddled after Hester with my feet wide apart. Every time the distance between us grew to more than five yards, she slowed down and I sped up.

‘What’s this abbey we’re going to?’ My teeth stopped chattering as I started to sweat.

‘St Rhian’s Abbey. A legendary stronghold of early Christianity in western Scotland. At one time.’ Came from inside Hester’s hood.

‘Sounds lovely. Are you in the… ecclesiastical field?’

‘Negative.’

‘Right. Research then? Experimental archaeology? Anthropology? Bringing the past to life?’

‘Research. Yes, there’s research, indeed.’ Hester’s antique waterskin kept a beat against her side as she walked.

‘Must be exciting to work somewhere special like that.’

‘It is. It’s home now.’ She quickened her pace.

The trees thinned. We stepped into a valley drained of colour by the gloom and ridged by a semi-bowl of stark peaks. In the middle of the open space stood a hill with a grove on top. The mist smudged the outlines of the land. The slab of the sky pressed from all sides, the grey of it reflected in the puddles. As we trekked further away from the forest, I felt an urge to look back. Inexplicable, like a push from a presence that stayed behind, watching, a keenness focused on my back. The rain and my hair plastered to my face made it hard to see, but at the edge of my vision, I caught a shape. Hunched, thick, human-like, it quickly blended with the dark.

‘Did you see that? A tree, was it? Must have been. Was it moving?’ I strained my eyes.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ Hester called out as I walked into a puddle.

‘Bastard! This one’s deep.’ Trying to keep my suitcase above water, I wobbled. Hester thrust out her arms. I pushed my luggage over to her and waded out of the puddle. ‘It’s Italian leather. Vintage.’ I shook the life back into my left arm and adjusted the soggy bandage on my right hand. A headache squeezed my temples. ‘All better.’ I took the case from her.

‘We’re nearly there.’ Hester pointed to the overgrown crown of the hill, where towers and craggy bits of wall peeked through the vegetation.

‘Right. This? Eclectic. You live in it? Inside? Not much of it left, is there? ’ Panting as quietly as possible, I followed Hester up a side path.

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover. Looks can be deceiving. Pick your cliché, but you get my point.’ Once at the top, she held aside a branch for me as we entered the small grove. The trail all but disappeared in the grass and wild flowers. The thick walls stretched further than I expected—crumbled in places, drowned in ivy and climbing roses. Over the walls, square towers and roofless buildings loomed like pieces on a giant chess board, elegant in their simplicity. An arched gate with no door led into blackness. Above the gate, a female statue, its features smoothed by time to a ghostly suggestion. I hauled myself under the arch and dropped my suitcase, waiting for Hester to take out a torch and head through the gate. From inside the ruin came a whiff of wood-smoke.

Moving past me, Hester skirted the wall, her spidery shape softened by the shadows.

‘What’s the matter? Hester? The gate is here!’ I stomped my foot and swore under my breath.

She waved me over. As she reached a corner tower, she pried apart the curtain of ivy to reveal a crack in the stonework that ran all the way to the top. She stepped forward and to the left, and instead of walking into the wall disappeared. Vanished, as if the fracture were the end of a scroll, and she hid behind it.

‘Hester.’ I shook my head. ‘Hester, I don’t like this. This can’t be.’ I whispered at the top of my voice. ‘I’d better turn back.’

‘Don’t overreact. Geometry and light are wonderful things when used together.’ Her muffled voice came from behind the stones.

‘Geometry. Bloody hell.’ I hissed. ‘Herbs and vials is one thing. But this is a lot. More than a lot.’ Sitting on my suitcase, I folded, my head between my knees.

‘Come.’

‘Hester?’ My teeth gave a drumroll.

‘What?’

‘How much blood do you think I’ve lost? Is that why my feet are so cold?’

‘Come.’

‘Sure about this?’

‘Come.’

By fractions of a step, I approached the crack. It turned out to be the outer edge of a six-foot-deep nook built into a double wall. Shimmying back and forth, rubbing the sandstone, I studied the illusion from different angles. No matter how I tried, the tower wall looked flat until I took that impossible step around the edge of the tight hiding space. The last of the light fell sideways on a low door at the end of the niche and bounced off Hester’s glasses. ‘Clever. Was this always here?’

‘Yes, as far as I know.’ She paused, then sank a long, rusted key into the keyhole. ‘Although knowledge is slippery these days.’ The face of a weathered skull, its eye-sockets filled with clay, jutted from the head of the door.

‘Lord, help me.’

‘Stop it.’

The lock grumbled. I squeezed into the doorway after Hester, feeling the ornate hinges, orange with rust, against my shoulder. The door had been carved with a string of characters I didn’t recognise, the squiggles barely visible on the ancient planks.

Hester shut the door and plunged us into a warm darkness that smelled of old stone, beeswax, and cooking. Brushing past me, she shuffled around the stone floor in her muddy boots. A match flared, illuminating her wet face. She lit a candle in a chamberstick that sat on a side table. We were standing in a small foyer.

‘Look at this place. Personality in every inch.’ I pushed back the hood of my jacket. ‘Sorry about earlier.’

‘Understandable, given the situation. Let’s leave our things here.’ Hester’s trench went on a peg in the wall, next to waxed coats and hats. She kicked off her boots by a wrought-iron umbrella stand made to look like a column of vines. I followed her example, tucked my suitcase out of the way, and plodded after her down a hallway in my wet socks. Foot by foot, the corridor came at me from the dark into the yellow candlelight—bare, uneven floor and soot-stained walls. Hester’s head almost skimmed the ceiling.

 At the end of the hallway, another door. Hester cracked it open. ‘Mother Yersinia! We have a visitor!’

‘Mother?’ I whispered.

With her ear to the door, she put a finger across her lips. We waited; only my pulsing headache and the snap of the candle flame in the draught breaking the silence.

‘Welcome, welcome.’ A tender voice trickled in from far away.

We entered a hall lit by a fireplace big enough to stand in and candelabras that covered the furniture in waterfalls of hardened wax. A peaked door in each of the four walls. Shadows twisted and merged to hide the ceiling above high, shuttered windows.

‘Incredible.’ I held a corner of a wooden dining table, blackened and shining with age, and admired the bow-legged rosewood bureaus and iron-bound chests standing guard along the walls. Drawn by the heat, I made my way to the chimney corner, occupied by two high-backed armchairs with ottomans and a delicate pedestal table.

Hester was warming her hands by the fire. ‘Sit, relax. Some day, wasn’t it?’ Nodding towards one of the chairs, she pushed an ottoman closer to me with her foot. A deer skull with antlers like jets of petrified flame, no less than ten feet across, stared at me from above the mantelpiece.

‘Whoa.’ My mouth hung open.

‘Megaloceros Giganteus. Irish elk. Quite extinct, mind you.’ Hester put a log on the fire, stirring up a riot of sparks and hungry crackles.

‘I see you’ve met Seamus. Strong, silent type he is.’ The same voice I heard earlier came from behind. She must have entered through another door. ‘An ancestor of mine took him as a hunting trophy. At least, that’s how the story goes.’

Mother Yersinia glided closer, her shape firming up in the vague light. They couldn’t be more opposite, Hester and she. Brandy versus strawberry liqueur. My second hostess was petite, dressed in a nun’s habit of white silk, threadbare along the cuffs and hemline. Her folded hands glittered with rings: rubies, sapphires, emeralds. The biggest ring, too big for her frame, was set with an amber. Like a dollop of the purest honey in silver filigree. Inside the stone, a petrified silverfish, trapped forever mid-stride; its antennae and three-pronged tail almost part of the gentle ornament. A coif covered Mother Yersinia’s chest and cradled a soft, heart-shaped face, marked somehow by time but not age. Stiff and alert, the white wings of her headpiece spread wider than her shoulders. The fire shimmered in the darkness of her immense eyes.

I remembered to breathe and sucked in my stomach. ‘Osten. How do you do, madam. Mother. Your Holiness.’ I tipped my head to her.

She laughed, baring perfect little teeth that made her red lipstick even redder. ‘Yersinia. Or Reverend Mother, if you insist. Humbly at your service, darling.’ Her small, sparkling hand stretched forward. Before I knew it, I was thrusting my bloody undershirt-stump at her.

‘Sorry.’ I jerked my hand back.

‘Oh my! What happened here, you poor thing?’ She looked at me first, then at Hester, who was sitting on the other ottoman, meditating on her socks, and wiggling her toes.

‘I took the wrong turn and had a terrifying encounter. With a deer. Deer? Maybe a bear. It was huge. Seamus-huge. My car is a steel pancake. I barely made it out, thanks to Hester over here.’ It all spilled out in one breath, and my words rang in the invisible heights of the hall. Yersinia blinked, fidgeting with the ruby-studded cross that hung around her neck.

‘He drove into a tree and cut his hand,’ said Hester quietly, and hugged her knees.

Yersinia beamed. ‘Of course. I see. I’m so proud.’ She wrapped her arms around Hester and pecked her on the head. ‘Isn’t she wonderful? Always ready to help.’ Her eyes turned to me, and I nodded. She patted the stains on Hester’s shirt where the rain had seeped in around the collar. ‘You’re soaking wet, change before you fall ill.’

Hester shrugged off Yersinia’s hand. ‘I tried to stop the bleeding when I found him, but it didn’t work. It never works. Anyway, you’d better assess him.’ She jerked her chin in my direction.

Yersinia stroked Hester’s hair. ‘It will work, pet. I know it, you must believe and be patient. You are such a clever bean.’ She brought her face level with Hester’s. ‘You know how it is.’ Hester gave her a weak smile. ‘Like balancing a feather on the point of a needle,’ they finished in unison. ‘Now then.’ Yersinia spun around to face me and pushed her sleeves up, showing her slim wrists. ‘Have a seat, young man. Let’s get you fixed up, shall we?’

The velvet armchair, bald in places, swallowed me. Moving with precision, Yersinia put the pedestal table by my side and laid my hand on it. Inside her amber ring, the firelight swirled. She sat on my ottoman and gently peeled off the bandage, the wound black from Hester’s disgusting goop. The giant headpiece got in the way when the Reverend Mother leaned in for a closer look. ‘Bugger,’ she mumbled, and unpinned her origami bird-hat along with the coif. I averted my eyes for a whole five seconds before they swung back to her uncovered head. Piled high, her silver hair was fastened with garnet-encrusted gold clips, a few locks clinging to her neck. Large garnet earrings pulled on her earlobes. She dabbed a finger in a drop of my blood, brought it to her nose, inhaled, and purred. ‘You did the right thing, pet,’ she concluded after poking and turning my hand every which way.

‘Looks bad, doesn’t it?’ I grimaced. ‘And dirty.’

‘You will be just fine, love.’ Yersinia rubbed my arm.

Hester sprang up and stood on the other side of me, leaning on the back of the chair. Her hair smelled like rain.

‘I think it’s a grade two or three, with tendon exposure,’ she rattled off to Yersinia. ‘Maybe that’s why it failed.’

I almost threw up at the mention of tendon exposure.

‘Fail is an awful word, pet. The skin aspect is fickle at the best of times, and you were caught unawares.’ Yersinia, still holding my hand, beckoned to Hester, who put the two bone vials in her palm. ‘There is a remedy for almost everything.’ A smile blossomed on her ageless face. ‘And are you alright, Osten, dear?’ She pronounced my name slowly, tasting it.

‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’ Caught between being a polite guest and begging to phone for help, I shifted in my seat.

‘Of course, you don’t know, my poor sweet. But this pickle is easy to unpickle. You’ve been fortunate today. For Hester to stumble upon you, I mean. And we are blessed to offer our skill.’ Yersinia drew the circle and dots on my hand. Rocking back and forth on the ottoman, she caressed my raw skin, massaged my palm and fingers. ‘Sadly, we don’t get many guests. This is a solitary place, darling, always has been. Good for the spirit, bad if you get lost. But we like it here—the fresh air and the quiet.’ Her voice expanded, filled my veins, pushed my shoulder blades down, and settled my spine into the contour of my chair. The headache lifted. Her words trailed off into a whisper I could no longer understand. Busy as a spider’s legs, her fingers tickled my wound inside the black circle, and soon it was impossible to tell where her flesh ended and mine began. The gash blurred, like writing in the sand being erased. Yersinia’s eyes rolled back in her head, and her breathing became heavy. A bead of sweat sparkled on the tip of her nose. In her open mouth, something moved—a pale blue, glowing vapour, strings of it escaping through her nostrils into the air and through her fingertips into my skin. Flushed and gasping, she trembled. With no power to pull away, I closed my eyes and whimpered. For a small eternity, my arm, dissolved and undefined, dangled in a void. Then, in a flash of blue, my body was mine again. ‘How’s that for a miracle, darling?’ Yersinia said in a thin voice.

I opened one eye, then the other, and lifted my right hand. ‘What?’ My tongue struggled, glued to my palate like a dried-up slug. I closed and opened my fist over and over. No pain. Under the black gunk and dried blood, no sign of injury. Not even the smallest scab. The Reverend Mother slumped on her ottoman. Hester scooped her up like a sleepy child. Burning and sweaty, her face looked heavy, with no lustre left in her coal-dark eyes. As Hester carried her out of the hall, she swung her silver head towards me. ‘Now get some rest, young man.’

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​Submitted for publication

Lom, short story (excerpt)

Good news - the forecast called for rain later on. Bad news – Misha’s eyebrow pimple had matured but refused to leave his face, well-protected from roaming fingers in its home. Trying to ignore the craving for another round of zit hunting, Misha cast his eyes around the auditorium and propped up his head, covering his eyebrow with his hand. The room, filled half-and-half with sleeping and almost sleeping students melting into their seats, soaked up the lecturer’s blah-blah with its two hundred-year-old walls. Sergei Alexeevich finished squeaking the last differential equation of the day onto the chalkboard when Misha’s palms went sweaty. Fine, no one noticed him or his zit. But what if he’d lost his idea? A good idea, it came less than an hour ago. Maybe the idea. Ideas don’t like distraction: the volcano on his face, Sergei Alexeevich, and from an open window - birds chirping hysterically at summer’s arrival. Misha checked the clock, then checked his idea. It still pottered in the furrows of his brain.
   At three o’clock he popped up, arms in the straps of his backpack, to join the crowd streaming down the funnel of the lecture hall, past Sergei Alexeevich in his usual cloud of old vodka fumes, and out the door. With one annoyance gone, Misha’s world nudged back to equilibrium.
   He ploughed through the hallway, turning sideways every five seconds to fit into the gaps in the human traffic. The imbeciles from the PE faculty, hogging the corners like pigeons in track suits, smirked and followed him with their eyes – his speed-walking, arm-swinging, step-skipping self, gliding across the scuffed linoleum. No matter. He knew something they didn’t, and he had big plans, while their ambition went no further than fixing blue lights to the undercarriage of dad’s Lada. He held his nose at the sight of the second-floor toilet; the reek of urine had become a trademark, much like the bronze Lenin in the recess above the university’s entrance. The school boasted a Space Research Institute and an Institute of Information Technology. They should’ve opened an Institute of How Not To Piss On The Floor instead.