The Virtuoso

THE VIRTUOSO

               The Virtuoso will put your family back together. 

            Heed to his doctrine, follow his ways, and good fortune will be granted to you and your house until the end of your days.

It was what the stories said. It was the truth the rumours insisted. These were the words, filtered long enough between cold pillows and stale brews, that Vsevolod’s wife had used to convince him. The name was continuous with her tongue, and embedded in every sentence, becoming a subject of barely tolerable obsession, it was more pursued than the titles of mavens like Rasputin. It drew in the desperate. It siphoned in the ignorance of the misfits. The Virtuoso was embittered by the surest of magicians, of witches, of politicians, and he was revered for how his advices and superstitions suffocated the courts of the Romanovs. Emboldening the most unprepossessing of warlords, the devices of theurgy and superstition he wove into his practice to make him a friend of the indigent and an enemy of the sorcerer. 

He was fraud. 

At least, that was what one of the most barbaric men in Russia, Vsevolod Abramov, thought. He didn’t need superstition and religious fallacy to make him feel secure — he had brawn. He had no fear. This man could kill when it was needed and not fear his victims’ ghosts in his ears. Bleating. Blearing. No mercy. Uncaring. He wasn’t like The Virtuoso, ignorant of the self made fears that could ruin consciences and vulnerable children and make fools out of wives. No, he was better. He’d always been better, even in childhood. And if that wasn’t enough, he was at least honest in his evil. 

The Virtuoso was too scared. 

This maven, Vsevolod had once believed, was a political saboteur and a charlatan. He was just like the famed Rasputin because, and not in spite of his vices. The nets in which he enswathed the blue-stockinged, the indigent, but mostly the terribly stupid, vulnerable, and incurious of Russia’s impoverished were only successful because of the country’s already evident decadence. People didn’t understand that luck simply didn’t exist. Sometimes life was harsh. Sometimes hunger was inconsistent. These realities were difficult for women, especially like Anuschka, to understand — that was why she worshipped men like him. The Rasputins of Russia gave the plebeian hope — deceptive. Contrived in every sense. Enough to get them to the winter season. It was too easy. Too tempting. Too tantalising.

And Anuschka already had history in entertaining such men: finding solace in ex-husbands… dead husbands. Corpses and all their fantasies she couldn’t let go of. 

All these calumnies to his character — this was what Vsevolod believed. He’d never afforded the magician any true credence, he’d scoffed at every laudation of his talents until, one terrible day, the brute of a man had been all but dragged to The Virtuoso’s dining table. 

But that was only after everything went wrong. 

The Abramov family had long become familiar with a struggling economy’s harsher austerities —  like the rest of Russia, but Vsevolod was convinced that their state of depravity had been aggravated by his wife’s improvidence. It was obvious. She’d learnt it from her previous husband. Ivan. So weak. So pitiful. So stupid. Just like the sore-minded beauty who’d married him. It was only well and good that Vsevolod came when he did. The murder had been necessary, crucial, to the young woman’s survival. It was only well and good that he’d rescued her. They — the unborn child and her both — would have probably died from starvation… or from the cold. Or from disease. Or from war. Death would have reached them before it even touched the damned Romanov royal courts. 

And it nearly did. 

It was selfish, that Anuschka pinned all their hope on The Virtuoso. 

She should have idolised him before preening upon a self-proclaimed thaumaturge who was too excited by his own lies to disclose his real name. 

Again, there would come a time when the situation called for Vsevolod to swallow his pride and suffocate these thoughts. 

There would come a time when the Abramovs became too desperate. Too cold. Too circumspect of the government responsible to keep them fed. 

Every misfortune you’ve ever tasted — erased, by The Virtuoso, they’d said. Give him what he asks for, ad your riches will be multiplied by hundredfold — the sentence was abused into his ears by almost every muzhik he disclosed his problems to. Even the ones who died at his violent hand, the ones who sputtered blood at his shoes. They’d perished with a dove’s feather between their teeth — believing The Virtuoso’s espousal that it would take them to heaven. He didn’t care for it. He thought them stupid. And his problems were many, yes, but before the marriage, they’d never been so plentiful. They never used to amass in such frustrating abundance. It made him sick. Anuschka seemed to be getting hollower and hollower with every year that they were together, and he was only further incensed that she’d gone ahead and borne them a daughter instead of a son, like she’d promised him. 

            That child was bad luck. 

            Innessa was the only subject of relevance where he and The Virtuoso found any agreement:

            She made everything worse. 

            Not a few weeks after the child was born, she’d become subject to a range of illnesses that no doctor could make sense of, not the heaviest of coin bring relief from, or under which the steeliest of patiences could survive for long. It’d been the first weight their marriage had to endure, and compounded with her still mourning the husband he’d only rightfully killed — protecting her from a life of simpleness and abuse and every destruction to her innocence  — Innessa’s childhood strained every hopeful flare from his wife’s eyes. It left her fingers cold. It made her eyes so swollen, yet too dry. Pitiful. Wanting. There were no more tears left to cry. Not from him, at least. Not if their daughter didn’t stop wrenching at her parent’s heartstrings from eventide to daybreak and make up her mind when she decided to die.

            As anyone can imagine, these were the complexities that made hell of a marriage. 

            Fights about food. Irritations about the unpleasantness of his mood. Yelling. Screaming. Tossing utensils, throwing forks, and among them every indignation cruel and crude. They fought about how they were going to continue living, about how many times Innessa was going to get sick before, in sacrifice of money for food, they would be the ones who ended up dying. Times were exacting for everyone, her mother-in-law insisted, but the woman was ill — as woman often proved to be: weak, sickly, and useless — and the reason for the family’s disharmonies was not his disagreeableness, but Anuschka’s disobedience. 

            It hardly a coincidence when she’d suggested the young, enfeebled toddler be taken to live temporarily with her estranged uncle to relieve them financially, and things, unsurprisingly, improved. The marriage. The complexities of money. All of it. 

            Made better by getting rid of one factor: 

            A girl. 

            It was so simple, Vsevolod thought to not recognise the connection would to admit yourself a fool.  

            Anuschka said he was being ridiculous, but was mum when, upon her daughter’s return, things went back to the disorganised chaos that soon became normal. Innessa and her brother became inseparable nuisances, and even though he preferred his step-son, the only real financial hope for the family, to stay away from her, they were constantly at each other’s hips. Constantly embroiled in mischief. Never a time when they weren’t together—

            Except for when their parents fought. 

            Now this was when things starting going wrong. 

            It was the manifestation of a disturbing and inexplicable phenomenon.

            In the times when their antagonisms reached their acmes of disfunction, of bitterness, of Anuschka’s fear — the children would simply, well… disappear. 

            Vanish into thin air. 

            They pulled the trick in the marketplace, in the town square, in the synagogue — wherever would command their parent’s panic and attention. He was certain that this was all just a game for them. He was even convinced that their mother had somehow put them up to it. But when he saw the shadow of unhinged panic cloud her eyes, how her frame convulsed into itself with every splintered sobbing note, he knew it couldn’t have been dissembled. She truly didn’t know where their children went.

            But once they stopped fighting, the kids, out of thin air, reappeared again. 

            And too easily, too frustratingly, it was as if their disappearances had never happened. 

            This pattern continued on for months. 

            Disappearing, returning. Fighting, reconciliation. Fears, and then hopes, and then fears again. Teasing. Irritating. The bright moments kneaded in-between, though, were too tenuous — only lasting for a moment. They were such brevities that the reprieve, however grateful they might have been, felt like a mockery. Tortuous. Exacting. It never seemed to end. The cycle would enervate and make the days restless. And every time, his wife’s spirit grew wearier and wearier with searching and coming back, with finding and returning to a still blistered, still broken family. 

            That was when they started seeing The Virtuoso. 

            “He can help us,” she’d pleaded with him. “The Virtuoso has given so many families good luck — those that listen to him. I’ve seen what he can do, his truths can be trusted, my love—“ 

            “You talk of those ridiculous superstitions?” He’d snapped her, and ignored the way her hands instinctively went to shield her brow as he approached. “What, that we should give him money in the hopes that he’ll use some demonic craft to curse us further? To bring us more misfortune?” 

            “No… no, I’ve seen him fix families—“ she’d muttered. Her voice had slipped beneath her breath so that there was confusion between her inhalations and how much air the words took from her. “He puts them back together, my love. He saves them. He makes injustices whole agai—“:

            “It is out of the question. We’re not wasting money and resources on ‘magicians’ who swindle to make a living.”

            That’s what he’d said. 

            That’s what he’d insisted. 

            But things didn’t go to plan. 

            As it turned out, the Abamrov family suffered the pains of a struggling economy too greatly.   

            Upon her husband’s eventual concession, Anuschka’s lips had split into a grin too stupid and too wanting. 

            She’d been too eager follow The Virtuoso’s wisdoms. She’d been too excited to throw salt over her shoulder and bless the skies with deep, humbled countenance upon discovering a four-leafed clover. There was a dove’s feather constantly shivering at her mouth, a rabbit’s ear that stank all things wretched at the door to the house. Her knuckles grew sanguined and alabaster from knocking on wood, yet she never complained for the inconvenience it caused her — she sedulously followed The Virtuoso’s doctrines. 

            “For three days,” The Virtuoso had said, and turned his fingers before their faces in mesmeric presentation. “Do not look directly into the sun as you will curse yourself to blindness before you can see your third child. I will perform a ritual of blessing on your household, but I’ll need the payment — thirty silver pieces, by tomorrow.” 

            They’d been more than happy to oblige. But after three days enswathed in shadows, their luck not changed, they’d returned to The Virtuoso’s chambers in haste — feeling betrayed and foolish and afraid.

            “Do you drink from the well in the Northern city state?” Was his too settled response to their complaints. “That water is filled with spirits, don’t you know? Come, let me purify it for you. I’ll need another thirty pieces at least. And a goat. And a donkey. At least one lock of your son’s hair, too — boys are signs of good luck. With all these items, I assure you, I am certain that I can turn your fortunes around.”

            Anuschka had been unstinting. She’d given him their only mule and half of their life’s savings. But still, it didn’t work. Still, it wasn’t enough. The couple’s fights grew more bitter until eventually, they found themselves in a situation they’d never thought would befall them: 

            The children did not come return. 

            Not after twelve hours, not after two days. 

            Even after reconciliation, even after apologies and prayers and promises that they would never fight again, after four days, they only found one. Their son. 

            Innessa it seemed had been lost to the city marketplace. The young girl was gone. 

            But The Virtuoso was too suspicious of their tale when the Vsevolod and Anuschka came to him, frenetic and blubbering and stuttering of explanations that didn’t make sense. 

            He couldn’t see how the child could have simply disappeared, and knew, by the husband’s air of calmness, they were probably testing him. He probably believed that he was a swindler, chousing them and every other indigent Russian out of their own living, and that if they could impute the girl’s disappearance as the ‘magician’s’ fault… The Virtuoso would be ruined. In espousing that only males were good luck, Vsevolod would say The Virtuoso had machinated and used his courtly connections not his otherworldly gifts, to get a vulnerable girl abducted. Probably screaming for her life somewhere. Probably killed. 

            When Vsevolod’s lips curled at his honest horror, having heard his wife recite to him the tale, The Virtuoso was almost convinced that he’d had something to do with the missing girl. 

            Until a shattering admittance. 

            “I gave the girl poison.” 

            Anuschka’s sob rippled the incense clogged air that choked his chambers. It shook the ceiling, it bristled the curtains. 

            “I… I thought it would help us — thought if she was gone, our son would bring us good luck—“ 

            “You vile, stupid woman.” Her husband had recoiled. His hand had folded away like a withering branch from her fingers, as if having been stroking a viper, instead of a woman’s skin, this entire time. As if having been burnt. 

            “How could you kill your own flesh and blood?” He cried, reddened and sickened and horrified. 

            “How long?” The Virtuoso would inquire, ignoring the man outburst. 

            “Since the last payment.” Anuschka would admit. At least three harvesting seasons, Vsevolod thought. It was probably that lock of hair that did it, he presupposed. Probably the implication of the luck brought by their son and the travails of their daughter that drove her this far. 

            “I must say then… it makes sense.” 

            “It does?” 

            Even the young boy, nestled in his mother’s lap, was forced to turn his attention from the scraggly doll he fiddled with — undoubtedly his sister’s — to The Virtuoso’s gaze. 

            The Virtuoso nodded. “Indeed. I assure you, your daughter is still alive. She is safe and taken care of.”

            “How would you know?” Vsevolod accused. Then he narrowed his eyes. Then he thought.

And he turned. 

“Unless, that is…, you were involved.” 

            “Oh, no, of course not,” The Virtuoso had chortled — a cold, bitter thing. “Remember what I’ve always said: should sickness brush you once, no man can ever kill you.” 

            Vsevolod nodded his head sardonically. Mockingly. “I’m so tired of your nonsense. I once had a brother full of those very same words, who was so ill and hollow-headed that he made his wife mild of mind, too. Now she walks around with feathers in her mouth and bangles on her shoes. He was dead before he even saw his firstborn daughter. Everyone knows what you say, and what he did, isn’t true.” 

            “Or, perhaps, it’s just you.”

            “Excuse me?” 

            “Why,” The Virtuoso smiled. “Have you forgotten what I do?” 

            The Virtuoso will put your family back together. 

            “I wonder how much the people you’ve terrorised would give for the head of a tormentor? The blood of a murderer? How much would people pay for the bones of an abuser?” 

            “Get away from me, mad man.” Vsevolod snapped. He’d stumbled on the chair, tumbled into the wooden floorboard. His arms were flayed about as if they didn’t know where to go. He could only stare at his wife, sitting serenely in her chair — not a tear in her eyes. Not a silver of concern. Not a single intention of going home. “This wasn’t in our agreement.” He felt a storm within him. “This isn’t what they said you do.” 

            “But I put families back together, don’t I?” Ivan said quietly. 

            “And remember,” two soft, immature voices haunted him from his right. A girl’s and a boy’s. Both sounded like ghosts, although to him, only one of them had died—

            “He has a family, too.” 

            END