American Gods

“Good boy,” she said. “I am going to buy groceries. You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread. Do you think you will be here for supper?”

“I would hope so,” said Wednesday.

“Then you had better give me some money to buy more food,” she said. “I am proud, but I am not stupid. The others are prouder than I am, and he is the proudest of all. So give me money and do not tell them that you give me money.”

Wednesday opened his wallet, and reached in. He took out a twenty. Zorya Vechernyaya plucked it from his fingers, and waited. He took out another twenty and gave it to her.

“Is good,” she said. “We will feed you like princes. Now, go up the stairs to the top. Zorya Utrennyaya is awake, but our other sister is still asleep, so do not be making too much noise.”

Shadow and Wednesday climbed the dark stairs. The landing two stories up was half filled with black plastic garbage bags and it smelled of rotting vegetables.

“Are they gypsies?” asked Shadow.

“Zorya and her family? Not at all. They’re not Rom. They’re Russian. Slavs, I believe.”

“But she does fortune-telling.”

“Lots of people do fortune-telling. I dabble in it myself.” Wednesday was panting as they went up the final flight of stairs. “I’m out of shape.”

The landing at the top of the stairs ended in a single door painted red, with a peephole in it.

Wednesday knocked at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, louder this time.

“Okay! Okay! I heard you! I heard you!” The sound of locks being undone, of bolts being pulled, the rattle of a chain. The red door opened a crack.

“Who is it?” A man’s voice, old and cigarette-roughened.

“An old friend, Czernobog. With an associate.”

The door opened as far as the security chain would allow. Shadow could see a gray face, in the shadows, peering out at them. “What do you want, Votan?”

“Initially, simply the pleasure of your company. And I have information to share. What’s that phrase? . . . Oh yes. You may learn something to your advantage.”

The door opened all the way. The man in the dusty bathrobe was short, with iron-gray hair and craggy features. He wore gray pinstripe pants, shiny from age, and slippers. He held an unfiltered cigarette with square-tipped fingers, sucking the tip while keeping it cupped in his fist—like a convict, thought Shadow, or a soldier. He extended his left hand to Wednesday. “Welcome then, Votan.”

“They call me Wednesday these days,” he said, shaking the old man’s hand.

A narrow smile; a flash of yellow teeth. “Yes,” he said. “Very funny. And this is?”

“This is my associate. Shadow, meet Mr. Czernobog.”

“Well met,” said Czernobog. He shook Shadow’s left hand with his own. His hands were rough and callused, and the tips of his fingers were as yellow as if they had been dipped in iodine.

“How do you do, Mr. Czernobog?”

“I do old. My guts ache, and my back hurts, and I cough my chest apart every morning.”

“Why you are standing at the door?” asked a woman’s voice. Shadow looked over Czernobog’s shoulder, at the old woman standing behind him. She was smaller and frailer than her sister, but her hair was long and still golden. “I am Zorya Utrennyaya,” she said. “You must not stand there in the hall. You must go in, sit down. I will bring you coffee.”

Through the doorway into an apartment that smelled like overboiled cabbage and cat box and unfiltered foreign cigarettes, and they were ushered through a tiny hallway past several closed doors to the sitting room at the far end of the corridor, and were seated on a huge old horsehair sofa, disturbing an elderly gray cat in the process, who stretched, stood up, and walked, stiffly, to a distant part of the sofa, where he lay down, warily stared at each of them in turn, then closed one eye and went back to sleep. Czernobog sat in an armchair across from them.

Zorya Utrennyaya found an empty ashtray and placed it beside Czernobog. “How you want your coffee?” she asked her guests. “Here we take it black as night, sweet as sin.”

“That’ll be fine, ma’am,” said Shadow. He looked out of the window, at the buildings across the street.

Zorya Utrennyaya went out. Czernobog stared at her as she left. “That’s a good woman,” he said. “Not like her sisters. One of them is a harpy, the other, all she does is sleep.” He put his slippered feet up on a long, low coffee table, a chess board inset in the middle, cigarette burns and mug rings on its surface.

“Is she your wife?” asked Shadow.

“She’s nobody’s wife.” The old man sat in silence for a moment, looking down at his rough hands. “No. We are all relatives. We come over here together, long time ago.”