by Mari Saat
Dmitri Dmitrievich felt sad – whether for the butterfly or himself he didn’t know. He was confused. He had always regarded women as beings that had been brought into the world only as a temptation. He neither despised nor hated them – perish the thought! On the contrary, he admired them, and that was his greatest weakness. He was otherwise something of a slouch – if he had the opportunity to eat, he ate more than he needed, and was unable to refuse good food, and the same was true of booze. Although he never got properly drunk, there was no question he enjoyed good wine and stronger drink, even vodka in cold weather, and the feeling of his head spinning gently, but no more than that… And it was of no great concern to him if he’d run out of tea at home or had no dry bread somewhere in a cupboard corner. He would simply boil some water, hot water was great, and it dulled hunger. It even lifted his mood. Neither food nor drink were real problems.
But when it came to women – they were things of beauty, fragile and exciting – even the ones who were wrinkled and haggard, even the ones who aroused pity on sight… or the slatternly alcoholics with bloated faces curing their hangovers with a morning beer outside Tallinn’s main railway station – the very sight of them was downright painful… But then there was something more fragile, more lovely about them than there was with men of that ilk… Of course he had tried to convince himself that there was nothing more special about women than humans in general, or indeed any living creatures, that their special magic was merely the product of their own sensuality. No amount of sermonising was any use. There was no way out; it was completely hopeless. Time and again when he had to talk to a woman, explain something to her, and he was unable to avert his gaze from her delicate, smooth skin and the curves of her cheek and neck, he would feel his excitement rising, want to kiss the curves… and the rest, of course. Women were so trusting; they had no idea of the danger they embodied… Once Dmitri Dmitrievich had feared he could endure it no longer. That would have been a disgrace – he would have been deemed mad. And then he definitely would have been unable to carry on living.
Vova was the way out. Through Vova he’d obtained satisfaction for some time now. Each time he bought a service through Vova, he convinced himself with the thought that it was just like eating and drinking, he was just satisfying his appetite, a foolish rubbing. If only he had the will, if only he weren’t so indolent, he’d be able to make himself the focus of his energies, reach new heights…
A bought woman was good – with a bought woman everything was clear. She wanted money and provided a service in exchange for it – it was something you could envisage as mechanical, at least once it was over. You could imagine it as a temporary weakness that you might eventually, gradually overcome, one that the service provider recorded simply in the form of the banknote she earned. To the service provider it was just work… What’s more, at a place like Vova’s everything was matter-of-fact and freely entered into. There was no fear that young girls were held by force or that anyone was being treated badly. It was a safe, businesslike transaction. With an older woman… Or, as Vova put it – it was good for an older bit of skirt, a bit of a workout did them good – and the good thing for him was simply that it appeased his own body…
But now, suddenly, everything was becoming more complicated. And ironic, too – as if it were not the devil but God Himself directing temptation! He had replaced the indifferent, cold Madam Ira in that bed with a woman who was tormented by her work and frankly had ultimately been driven to it, and whom he had almost raped… The shame of it… A woman who, as he languished fretting next to her there in that bed, radiated enticement and purity at once… He had never felt that way about a woman before, felt that he wanted just to embrace, stroke, caress her – especially caress – and then sleep with, oh yes, of course that’s what his body wanted, but more powerful was another feeling that he had never felt for a woman before, or anyone else – to embrace, to caress, to protect, just hold in his arms, holding himself back…
He didn’t know what was going on or what might happen when he set off to visit Natalya Filippovna with his book. Clearly they would drink tea. Then he would let Natalya Filippovna look at the pictures and explain them. The pictures were so pure and beautiful in themselves… But then… Yes, fortunately, Natalya Filippovna had a daughter – and she said that she lived with her and hopefully her daughter would be at home. So in fact nothing could happen… So what was his real reason for going there? If the only talking he’d be able to do would be to explain the pictures? He would actually have liked to make a clean breast of everything to this woman, to tell her everything he felt and what it was that perplexed him and that he wanted to sleep with her but never there in that defiled bed. And that most of all he would like to buy Natalya Filippovna her freedom, including her freedom from himself, tell her that never again would she have to feel forced to sleep with someone, provide sexual satisfaction, not to anyone. Tell Natalya Filippovna that he could pay even for her not to have to sleep with him, however difficult that might be for him. But his earnings wouldn’t stretch that far… the whole thing would be pointless. So it would be better if the daughter was at home. And it was much better to explain the pictures there than sweating and fretting as he languished in that sordid bed. Surely the fairest thing to do might be just to back out? Not to call, not to make an agreement, and just back out of the arrangement with Vova too? How simple it would be.
That night Dmitri Dmitrievich had dreamt of a huge Russian fireplace, broad and tall, with a sleeping area on top. The sleeping area was so high you could stand in it without any trouble. On it stood a long, simple, stout table. And in the dimness, on chairs around the table in the sleeping area, a council of some kind was in session. A ladder reached the sleeping area from the floor below. The ladder stood very upright and there were wide gaps between the rungs making it fairly tricky to climb. But he, Dmitri Dmitrievich, needed at all costs, for some reason, to climb it. No doubt it wouldn’t have been so very difficult if he had held the rungs with both hands. He would have had no problem then, but one hand was full – in one hand he had the book, eternally thick and heavy, and getting heavier and heavier… The council watched him climbing and one of them said… or rather they were discussing him up there among themselves and asking, “Why is he holding that book under his arm? It makes climbing so much more difficult…” But he wouldn’t let the book go, because without it he wouldn’t have been fit to go visiting. He simply had to deliver the book…
Sofia had to go to Zhanna’s for her birthday. Actually, it wasn’t Zhanna’s birthday but her rat’s. The rat’s name was Johnny – in honour of Johnny Depp. He was Zhanna’s third rat already – the other two had both died when they were barely two years old from cancer. Zhanna said that actually the rats sold in pet shops were all lab animals bred with delicate, weak immune systems that made them all prone to cancer. When Zhanna explained this, the boys teased her that her rats had AIDS, infuriating her. She said that if Johnny also died aged two, then there was no way she’d be getting another, but added quickly that what did she or anyone else know: she had said the same about the previous one too… Anyhow, Johnny appeared to be a completely different kind of rat. She’d never seen such an intelligent creature before, not even a dog, to say nothing of cats. And come what may, they had to mark its first birthday, because there just might not be a rat to celebrate with in two years’ time.
Another reason why it was a good day for a celebration was that Zhanna’s parents had, admittedly with some misgivings, gone to St Petersburg for the weekend taking her younger brother with them, leaving her at home alone with dire warnings. In any case, Zhanna couldn’t have gone with them because she had a dance performance on the Sunday morning. Not that she’d have wanted to – in St Petersburg they’d be staying at her grandma’s in the city outskirts, drinking tea all the time, talking non-stop, never going anywhere interesting and afterwards, on the way back, would be amazed at how the time had sped by so quickly that they’d not been able
to get anywhere…
“Bring what you can,” Zhanna had told Sofia, “everyone’s bringing what they can…”
Sofia knew, obviously, what that meant. That if anyone could get hold of some alcohol, then to bring as much as they could. She even had money to buy some with now that the braces had already been fitted and her mum had that horrible job that seemed to earn her perhaps even more than her work at the electronics factory had. And Sofia was earning too, from reading to Rael’s grandma. What a good feeling that was. Now she could go shopping and ponder what to buy. A bottle of wine would be cool. But who would sell one to her? They’d definitely want to see her passport. They’d definitely not believe her if she claimed to be eighteen… And they’d definitely not sell her even a beer. Anyway, she didn’t have a taste for beer. In the end, after a great deal of indecision, she loaded her shopping basket with a packet of fudge, a packet of sunflower seeds for the rat and two mini-cans of gin and tonic. She shouldn’t spend any more than that. The cashier didn’t so much as give them a second glance; apparently she didn’t regard the cans as alcoholic drink.
The party was very civilised to begin with. Zhanna gave a warning that no one must drink lying down or throw up on the carpet and at first they were all sober, no one was smoking even though there were ashtrays in the kitchen and the living room, and Zhanna had said that her mum smoked like a chimney and that her dad had a ciggie once in a while, so smoking wasn’t a problem. They’d never twig when they got back… It looked like nearly everyone had managed to bring something with them. There were several sorts of wine and even a couple of bottles of vodka, as well as cream liqueurs. Sofia’s two metal cans seemed paltry next to all this bounty, but they were immediately mixed with vodka and offered as aperitifs, just until the sandwiches were ready.
There was music of all kinds, although Zhanna said that they mustn’t play heavy stuff at full volume. If they did, the neighbour, an old witch from hell, would come up to complain and might even call her parents, which would be the end of parties for good, because there’d be no skiving off trips to St Petersburg any more… The good news, she said, was that the old cow turned her TV up to full volume so she must be half-deaf… And the other neighbours underneath were always yelling at or scolding or beating their kids so someone was always screaming the place down…
As the evening proceeded the drink began to take hold. Everyone became jollier and tried to talk over the music and writhed to the beat. Fortunately no witch came up from below to put a stop to it – perhaps she’d taken a sleeping potion or was holding her own party, seeing as it was Saturday night. Sofia didn’t like parties. She enjoyed them at first, but from the moment that the booze went to people’s heads, their eyes would glaze over and their chatter would lose its meaning. They would talk about something that was on their mind, perhaps something important, but it was impossible to understand them. Perhaps she should have got herself drunk as well, but she had to be home by midnight at the latest – before Mum got back – and she didn’t want her mum to realise she was drunk, or that she was coming home so late – Mum would go ballistic. Mum was permanently afraid of what might happen – that someone might murder her or rape her, or worse – that she might get AIDS… Her mother’s fear was forever ringing in her ears – she always had the feeling that something might be about to happen and that the thing that might happen would be something sordid and shameful. Being run over or meeting with some other kind of accident wouldn’t be so bad…
Swaying in the hinterland between sobriety and drunkenness was highly unpleasant… And to think that right now, or in no more than half an hour, she had to pull herself together and find a reason to leave. Or just secretly slip out – that would be the most sensible thing because it seemed that no one in the party as it was now would pay the least attention… She was sorry – everyone else seemed to be happy. They weren’t thinking. They weren’t worrying. Why did she have to worry all the time? And why wasn’t she happy? Why did she enjoy completely different things? She didn’t even like dancing with others, but at home, on her own, she could move and writhe exactly as she wanted… It was ridiculous to think that anyone like her would ever begin to deliver speeches…
She went to the window. Beyond it was the great, black sky, and far below, eight storeys down, dots of light moving, dot-like lanterns cleanly puncturing the darkness, the burning eyes of the windows of buildings lining the road, the lights of cars travelling along the long boulevards – twinkled and dotted roads flowed up into the sky and back… Like rivers. It was a real, large, unfamiliar city, not Lasnamäe but a city that stretched to the edge of the sky… And then she noticed amidst it all an eye glowing in the deep, dark sky, an eye that was staring into her, as if seeing through her…
She quickly realised that it was her own eye. It was reflected in the outer windowpane – upon studying it an indistinct face complete with two eyes, a mouth and nose appeared. But if she focused her gaze elsewhere, there was only a single, large, clear eye somewhere in the middle, opposite the bridge of her nose. It was as if that eye looked down from the sky above, over everything, over the roads, the buildings, the crawling twinkling bugs on the roads… It was her eye, and yet it was not, as if from heaven above, omniscient, staring right into her…
It was then that Tolik and Venya arrived – that was how Zhanna introduced them. They were probably friends of hers, although they looked older than the others here.
Venya was tall, sturdy, slow. He didn’t talk at all, merely smirked to himself, but he was able to find a glass on the table and drain it in one… Tolik was small, thin and very nervous – his eyes burned, he spoke rapidly, excitably, as if forever having to prove something, persuade someone, protect himself against someone. He reminded Sofia of the members of the communist youth from one of the old Soviet films, a Young Communist League figure working for free on one of the Great Construction Projects of Communism, the type who campaigned zealously and actually believed everything they said, the type who sprayed machine-gun fire or galloped on fiery steeds, budenovkas on their heads. They were ready to die for their ideas…
Tolik suddenly began talking about something that was apparently close to his soul – he tried to explain that young people were being messed around – people said that drugs would kill you, make you drop dead straight away, as soon as you tried them you’d be ill forever. He’d tried everything, more or less everything, and there was nothing that he couldn’t do without if he needed to. LSD and weed were completely harmless – the whole world smoked weed. He grabbed his silent friend’s glass, as if in passing, as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do, and drained it completely. Venya didn’t so much as flinch, and merely turned to the next glassful.
“There’s no way I’m going to start injecting myself,” said Zhanna, “I reckon it’s completely stupid to get AIDS just for a high.”
“You don’t have to inject at all,” objected Tolik hotly. “That’s just for people who like injecting. People who want to inject, inject; people who want to snort, snort… There’s all sorts of stuff you can snort, if all you want to do is get high.”
“What do you get out of it?” said Andryusha sceptically. “You snort, it’s okay the once, and afterwards you’re left with the shakes your whole life…”
“Am I shaking?” yelled Tolik.
“So what do you get out of it?”
“I get everything. It’s a completely different world… You just have to be in that world once, and everything turns upside down… It’s like you’re free. In it you’re completely free.”
For some reason the conversation made Sofia sad – both sad and uncomfortable – somehow very uncomfortable… The boys seemed to be the type to talk them all round: Tolik was nervous and jumpy, Venya was slow in comparison, yet there was nothing placid in his sluggishness, instead it was heavy somehow, and they worked together like some kind of mesmerising machine, each knowing how to complement the other… And then that thing that Tolik said – it’s li
ke you’re free, completely free… No one had ever talked like that about getting stoned. All they’d done in school was terrify them in health education classes, but no one had given them chapter and verse like this, yet perhaps this was the most important thing about it all?
To Sofia’s right, on a little table by the window, Johnny began rattling about in the coffee box and hurried out. He always did everything in a hurry – he even yawned hurriedly. He abruptly jumped upright on to the cage bars and looked at Sofia questioningly, his nose quivering. He had a sharply pointed nose, sensitive and restive like Johnny Depp’s – like the one he had in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; the little paws with which he clung to the cage bars were just like human hands with their little pink fingers. Not that they were really human hands; they were hands with long, sharp claws, more like Edward Scissorhands’s… And then there were his eyes, bulging in surprise… those eyes and that face that couldn’t laugh…
For some reason Sofia began to feel very sad for the rat, well, not sad so much as afraid for it. The creature was here and completely at their mercy, as it happened, they were supposed to be responsible for it but they weren’t by any stretch the kind of people it thought them to be: it trusted them, but they could be very dangerous. What would happen if someone more drunk than Sofia were suddenly to get it into their head that rats should be destroyed? She should really let it out of the cage; it had to escape. But it wouldn’t have anywhere to go, would it? It was a situation with no way out, and Sofia felt tearful because of it.