Wind

In late August, my husband, getting ready for work, told me, "I had a bad dream, that there was a coffin outside my parents' entrance. I wanted to get closer, but a crowd of people was standing there, blocking my way. I asked who died, but they kept silent. I only knew for sure it was someone I knew." I brushed it off, saying, "You always dream nonsense!"

I brushed it off, but I couldn't get that stupid dream out of my head for half a day. My mother-in-law has been sick lately—God forbid anything happened to her. And my grandfather was on his last legs. Thinking about it like that made me feel really bad. Then my mother-in-law called, upset. She told me their neighbor, Seryoga, had jumped out of a window last night. What a dream come true! A young man who should have lived his life, and now he jumped from the ninth floor. And no one knows why. 

My husband rushed straight there after work to offer help and support to the deceased's mother. After all, we'd lived so close for so many years; Seryozhka and I had grown up together. But really, how can you console the poor woman? It hadn't even been two months since her husband was taken from the noose. Forty days had passed, and now they have to bury their son. It's terrifying—a real gang of suicides!

Organizing a funeral is a difficult, troublesome business: it takes you a while to call one, to arrange with another... So my beloved was delayed. It was eleven o'clock, and he hadn't shown up. "Well," I thought, "I'll wait anyway!" I settled down on the couch and opened a book. But what kind of reading would you do if all I could think about was the deceased? He seemed so alive before me: sometimes I remember him as a joyful groom, sometimes as a happy dad, nursing his firstborn. We used to talk, our families were friends. Oh, what have you done, you fool! What have I done!

I would have drowned in these memories if not for the noise on the balcony behind me. I glanced through the glass – nothing. But where could the noise have come from? My daughter and I were home, and she'd been asleep for ages. I'd never had any pets. The neighbors couldn't get in from the street either; the balcony window, though open, had a mosquito net. The bastard was rattling, shaking, as if someone was swinging it. It's strange, the street seemed quiet; look, the trees were barely swaying. And our yard is like a well, hemmed in by other buildings on all sides, the wind never even peeks in. I stepped toward the balcony door, grabbed the handle, and in a second I'd turn it and go out to see what the hell was going on. I don't know what force held me back at that moment, but I'm grateful to it a thousand times over – because the next second a hurricane erupted on the balcony. A strange roar grew louder. It felt like a whirlwind had burst through the window and was now raging, thrashing from wall to wall, trying to find a way out. The clotheslines were shaking, threatening to snap, my daughter's sweaters—she'd hung them up to dry—were scattered in all directions. A flower pot crashed to the floor, spraying earth. I watched all this destruction and realized with horror that only glass and a piece of plastic separated me from this unknown phenomenon. At that moment, the invisible visitor either noticed me or sensed my fear, because now it was pounding into the apartment. And it was clearly standing right in front of me, knocking on the closed balcony door, as if asking to be let in. Lightly at first, then louder and louder. Imagine, no one was there, but it felt like someone was kicking the door with their toe...

Just when I was on the verge of tearless hysteria, the "something" suddenly quieted down. Apparently, it soared upward—the ropes swung again, and all was quiet...

I was terrified; I stared at the dark glass for another ten minutes, unable to move. I couldn't believe my eyes, and wondered if I'd gone crazy, if I was dreaming.

In short, it's hard to say whether I was visited by an ordinary wind, albeit one that came from who knows where, or perhaps the homeless soul of a suicidal person yearning for warmth and light...