The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19. Ви Корс
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were lowered and almost invisible, but Kors, sitting in a chair and looking down at the girl, saw her chestnut fluffy eyelashes tremble when she blinked. He saw that her upper eyelids were beautifully accentuated with black paint. He himself didn’t understand why this irritated him so much, and therefore angrily continued to imagine how he was squeezing her neck with both hands, but Tyutya didn’t raise her eyes and calmly continued to rub his feet with a washcloth. Nothing worked with her!
“Well, if I can’t touch such weak rubbish, then what can I say about others! They’ll kill me now if they want to! On distance!” In desperation, Kors again tried to squeeze Tyutya, and again nothing happened. He stepped back. Tyutya began to rinse his clean feet with water from a jug.
“Tyutya… Tyutya… does this bitch even have a name? Maybe knowing her real name, I can influence her?” And as soon as Kors thought about it, a set of numbers and letters appeared before his eyes. Kors saw it very clearly – “ms13590vg”. He always memorized numerical combinations easily, often marking his documents with numbers. He said to his secretary: “Bring me a folder number such and such from the archive …” I knew by heart all the numbers of the articles of the code. No, it seemed that Tyuti never had a name as such, but she had an inventory number!
Night. A low gray barrack with rows of wicker mats on the floor. Many girls, a couple of dozen, or even more, lie on mats and sleep. Here is Tyutya. She doesn’t sleep, clings to the girl lying next to her, they hug, cling to each other. Tyutya is eight or nine years old, but girls can be older, Kors is already used to the fact that the children in his visions always look not at their real age, because of difficult life circumstances they are thin and small. And Tyutya still has a tongue, and her breast has not yet been touched, it simply doesn’t exist, because it has not grown yet. A whole kaleidoscope of very bright, warm and pleasant moments swirls past his gaze, always associated with this other girl, whose inventory number is “ms137100of”. She and Tyutya are best friends, always together, laughing, hugging, kissing each other. He sees some classes in which slaves are taught to work. Girls also learn to wear a cape, Tyutya and all other learners have no face. They are constantly washing, scrubbing, rubbing and cleaning. They don’t really like it, but there is nowhere to go, and they dutifully perform tasks: they sweep and wash the floors, wash dirty dishes to a shine, weed some beds, pick ripe dark red berries from tall bushes. Daily work from early morning to late evening. On a certain day they are beaten, not for any faults, but just for order, they are beaten quite noticeably. Kors quickly flips through the story of the life of a slave, like the pages of a book that is not interesting to him. He doesn’t want to look at the memories, consisting of endless work, beatings and violence. But he sees that every night Tyutya and “ms137100of” cling to each other on their miserable mats and love each other. Oddly enough, their teachers don’t pay much attention to this. Adult women, covered with capes and faceless, they are not interested in the life of their wards.
And the girls themselves perceive them indifferently, like day and night, rain and wind, some forces of nature that exist in the world around them. Tyutya and her girlfriend dutifully live in the proposed circumstances and at the same time in their personal little world, which no one cares about, and that’s where the girlfriends are interested, and they are happy. But only for the time being. Kors notes that the girls have grown and hears one of the mentors say to the other, pointing to “ms137100of”:
“This one is very lazy, she shall be sent to the hospital, the wounded soldiers need blood. And this one,” and she points to Tyutya, “is more industrious, and a little smarter than her, she shall be a domestic assistant.”
The friends are separated, and Kors realizes that Tyutya has never seen “ms137100of” again, most likely, in the hospital she was very soon gutted into organs for wounded soldiers. And Tyutya was crippled according to tradition, finally wrapped in a yarn and sent to work. But, oddly enough, Kors gets the impression that this girl seems to be always next to Tyutya. Tyutya continues to mentally return to her, recalls their childhood games, and absolutely every night she sees her in a dream, where they play together and love each other. No, she doesn’t suffer, and probably doesn’t even miss her friend in the literal sense of the word, experiencing rather a slight sadness – it happened and, therefore, it was destined to be. Complete acceptance of the situation and submission to fate, no matter how unfair it may be. Accept the situation. ACCEPT and RELEASE.
“Fuck you in the ass, Tyutya!” Kors flared up indignantly in his thoughts. “The last thing I need is your senseless childhood! Well, what a misfortune is this gift – to see other people’s lives! Why do I need this information? So, you, Tyutya, are not indifferent to girls, but what difference does it make to me?!”
Having done her job, Tyutya calmly left, but what was Kors to do now?
“Order to bring more water and wash? Fix myself up?” But he didn’t want to. “Order to bring lunch?” There was no desire. “Order to bring wine?” But Kors knew that in such a mood, wine wouldn’t help him, but only aggravate the situation. Intoxication would give false relief for a short time, and for this it will be necessary to drink a lot, and when he sobers up, he will begin to experience unbearable attacks of fear, much stronger than now, and he would have to drink again to calm down, he would get stuck, and would be long and painfully get out of all this shit. It already happened.
“Maybe go to sleep? But the time is noon,” Kors lost interest in life, and everything was indifferent to him. He lay down on his camp bed and just lay there stupidly, not moving, until Parky disturbed him.
“Commander, may I report? Verniy has come there, he is asking you.”
Kors jumped to his feet, his heart pounding wildly, but he pulled himself together and said with a wry smile:
“What, your friend has come, the same stupid wolf?”
But Parky shook his head in a negative gesture.
“No, commander, don’t compare us. I’m from a free tribe, and Ver is a watchdog.”
“Let him enter!”
But to Kors’ dismay, Verniy didn’t say “Master is calling you back” or anything like that, he only brought dried clothes, boots and a bottle of water.
“Sir, your clothes. And you asked for water, I boiled it well and cooled it. I poured it into a bottle for easy drinking. Here is your drinking water.”
“Thanks,” Kors muttered.
“I wonder what Nik is doing there now?” Kors thought, and couldn’t resist:
“Verniy, what does the master do?”
“The masters are sleeping,” Verniy replied.
“Well, of course! What else can they do!” thought Kors and said:
“Verniy, shift your master from the floor, cover him with a blanket, take care of him.”
Verniy nodded.
“But only if he wants to, you understand.”
“Yes. But try! Don’t you care that your master lay down on the floor and might catch a cold?”
“I try to do my duty as best as possible, but I don’t have the right to tell him what to do,” Verniy explained, “DO YOUR OWN AND DON’T GO OUT OF YOUR OWN.”
“What a stupid dog,” Kors was indignant, “okay! But I hope you still love your master!”
“I love him,” Verniy agreed and left.
And Kors looked at the pile of clothes that the unclean one had brought him. “What's the point of dressing now? Change clothes?” He took his golden cigarette case out of his jacket pocket and turned the flat box sadly between his fingers.
Hike to the Ore Town.
“Vitor, take it.”
Nik tells him, and Kors looks up in confusion.
Nik is holding his golden cigarette case in his hand:
“I have put your favorite cigarettes in it.”
“My cigarette case?”
“Yes,