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Дмитрий Емец

Tanya Grotter And The Magic Double Bass

Prologue

The black sorceress Plague-del-Cake, whose name they dread even to utter aloud, climbing to power, destroys the brilliant magicians one by one. Among her victims is the remarkable white magician Leopold Grotter. His daughter Tanya, by some unknown means, manages to avoid death, but on the tip of her nose, a mysterious birthmark remains for life… Plague-del-Cake mysteriously disappears, and Tanya Grotter turns out to be abandoned to the family of businessman Durnev, her distant relative… She lives with this extremely unpleasant family until the age of ten, and then finds herself in the unique world of the Tibidox School of Magic…

Chapter 1

A Baby in a Case

On a bright autumnal morning when everything in the world appeared harshly vivid and disgracefully happy and the foliage on the trees shone as if it was doused with golden tinsel, a stooping tall person in a grey coat came out of the entrance of a multi-storey building on Rublev Road.

His name was Herman Durnev, the director of the firm Second-Hand Socks and the father of a year-old daughter Pipa (short for Penelope).

Stopping under the eaves of the entrance, Durnev looked around disapprovingly. The sun, whose roundish face was as flat as a pancake, indulged itself on the neighbouring roof as if being lazy and considering whether it would be worthwhile for it to rise further or to come down as is. On a pile of leaves not far from the entrance a woman in an orange overall was half lying and looking into an open hatch. Her profile was regular, Greek outlines, and the copper-red hair puffed out so that they made one involuntarily think of snakes. In the hatch someone was rumbling and messing around boisterously.

The haughty sparrows were pecking something on the asphalt, briskly, like rubber balls, jumping away from passers-by.

From the windows and cellars, from squares and empty parks, from the crowns of trees and the sky with wisps of clouds hanging, from cats’ eyes and ladies’ handbags, from the exhaust pipes of automobiles, from price lists at the stores, and the still sunburnt noses of summer residents – from everywhere, rubbing carrot yellow palms, the quite young, recently born October looked out.

But all this beauty was of no concern whatever to Herman Durnev. Weather, and in general nature, only interested him enough for determining whether or not to take an umbrella with him or whether it was time to put snow tires with spikes on the car.

He looked at his watch and reached for a small box with homeopathic medicine.

“What a cad this sun is! One, two… And you can’t even spit on it… At least it generally dies out… Really, on such a day who can be in the mood for work? Five, six… Sooner or later I’ll really have an ulcer… Or already have… Seven…” he muttered, counting off little beads and placing them under his tongue.

When the little beads had dissolved, Durnev started to think better and said to himself, “Well now, now I’ll indeed live until dinner if I don’t get blood poisoning from the new corn plaster. ”