The Kukotsky Enigma: A Novel

by Ulitskaya, Ludmila

  She fell asleep on the bare ground without even noticing that she herself was naked …

  Skinhead, like a ship’s captain, came onshore last. What was moving where was entirely unclear: was the fault moving away from the shore, or was the earth itself drifting in an unknown direction? It looked like the wind was pulling the structures up along the shore … Everyone he had helped by extending an aluminum, paint-spattered stepladder between the last landing and the edge of the bluff was disappearing somewhere. The last to come onshore had been the big shepherd dog, its paws slipping on the metal rungs. The dog was met by an entire brigade of tiny humanoid and at the same time slightly avian figures in white cocoons. They took it into their arms and hauled it toward a large tree scorched on one side. The landing on which Skinhead stood rocked and floated away from the shore. He almost dropped the stepladder. An unknown force pulled him forward with the flow of the wind, then rocked, overturned, and pounded his landing into the edge of the precipice.

  Skinhead set foot on land. The first thing he noticed were the bones of his own foot, all twenty-nine of them, just as on an X-ray. Or twenty-eight? They shone unobtrusively through his skin. Skinhead noticed an unpleasant deformity: the joints between his os metatarsi and the bone of his big toe were enlarged. He addressed what he was accustomed to calling his intravision.

  “Well, thanks for not having abandoned me.”

  IT WAS A WONDERFUL PLACE, IF FOR THE SOLE REASON that the sun was at its zenith, indicating noon, and Skinhead was delighted that he was once again in a place where there was west and east, north and south, and ultimately, up and down. He looked around and discovered that the fault had disappeared, had healed over, as if it had never existed. Skinhead smiled and shook his head: it wasn’t much needed …

  The world in which he existed evoked absolute trust, but it demanded he reject his former ways of thinking, and his long-standing ability to adjust to new circumstances prepared him to do this. Everything around him was green, peaceful, and warm. The wind brought the smell of a campfire and food. He set off to the East following the beck of the wind.

  The half-scorched tree remained behind, and he did not see how they covered the dog lying on the earth with a big blanket and then drew lines and formulas over it.

  “Everything all right? Did it come out correctly?” the smallest asked impatiently.

  “I think so. As far as one can tell from the surface,” the largest answered him.

  “It will be a nice woman. Beautiful.”

  “And happy?” inquired the little one.

  “Expect so … The potential is there … All its qualities are supposed to be transformed: fidelity, the ability to serve, ingenuousness … In this case an innate cheerfulness …”

  “Then why can’t we move to phase out and launch?” The little one bombarded its senior with questions, but the latter was patient.

  “What are you saying? How could we do that? On the contrary: it needs to spend some more time here. So that the lower layers fill out. If we launch immediately, just imagine what she will dream of. It’ll be awful! When those animal instincts start breaking through … This is Canis lupus familiaris, a predator after all … You should know what the results are when they’re underprocessed … Well?” The older one awaited an answer.

  The little one was at a loss: “We haven’t studied that yet. I just started the third level …”

  “All right, all right. If you haven’t studied it yet, you will soon … But you’ll also know from practical experience—werewolves, maniacs, and murderers of all sorts, from serial killers to those in the general staff … Got it?” He offered the clarification with pleasure.

  “Oh!” The little one was amazed. “But making sure all the lower layers get filled out—that’s quite a job!”

  “And you thought our work was easy?” The older one raised the edge of the blanket. Under the blanket lay a large woman with an upturned nose and a receding forehead. “But if we do a good job now, it will be a very good woman, a loyal friend, and a devoted wife. Come on,” he beckoned the younger one. He placed his sharp paws on the receding forehead and began massaging lightly …

  14

  THE FOOTPATH NOW WENT UPHILL. WHEN HE REACHED the top of the hill, he saw from above a small, narrow, winding river. In a sandy basin along the riverbank a campfire burned, almost invisible in the sun’s rays, and a smoke-blackened kettle hung over the fire. Near the campfire, with his back turned toward Skinhead, sat a slumped old man with what remained of his gray hair surrounding a shining bald spot. Skinhead approached him and said hello.

  “The tea’s ready. The fish is done.” The old man smiled and picked with his stick at the fish lying on a flat rock in the smoldering coals. “It’s ready.”

  “Did you catch it in this stream?” Skinhead asked, as he sat down and accepted the hot fish arranged on leaves.

  “Some fishermen brought it. I gave up all those pastimes—hunting, fishing—in my youth. To be honest, I also gave up animal-based food then. Out of moral considerations.”

  The baked fish was tasty, although bony. It resembled a large ruff or a marine goby, with a spiny dorsal fin. The old man then poured tea from the kettle into two aluminum mugs, pulled out a small package from his canvas bag, and opened it. Inside was a piece of comb honey.

  The old man’s face was familiar, but Skinhead could not put a name to it. He turned out to be rather chatty, and talked about his children, his grandchildren, and little Vanya, about whom he had worried so much and for absolutely no reason … He lambasted someone named Nikolai Mikhailovich and bewailed his stupidity: “I used to think that stupidity was a misfortune, not a sin. Now I’ve changed my opinion. Stupidity is a great sin because what underlies it is overconfidence, that is, pride.”

  With pursed lips the old man sipped the murky but very tasty tea, then set his mug on the flat rock and sighed.

  “Of course, I’m in no way exonerated by the vulgar rumors or even by the laudatory adulation we so seek in our youth. The Sevastopol Stories brought me that, went to my head, and fed my overconfidence. It was the basis for my own stupidity, which exceeded all the talents granted me for the taking by the Creator … But the stupidity—the stupidity itself was mine alone …”

  “Why, of course, how didn’t I figure it out right away! That’s why the face is so familiar … That face with Socrates’s wrinkles, the little eyes under brushy eyebrows, the broad Russian duckbill nose, and that world-famous beard …”

  Skinhead egged the old man on, not without a certain craftiness.

  “You’re right, you’re right. My wife was raised as a Tolstoyan and spent her entire life quoting you, while I kept kidding her and even teasing her: ‘Lenochka,’ I’d say, ‘that genius of yours was rather stupid …’ She would take offense.”

  The old man knitted his brows and stroked his beard with his large, flat fingers.

  “You said that to her? There weren’t many who understood …”

  “That was in your time … Nowadays a lot of people have figured it out …”

  The old man coughed and grabbed his sack.

  “Let’s take a short walk: I’ll show you my study … I, you know, have taken an interest in the natural sciences of late … I’m working on some theories …”

  Skinhead stood up with regret. He was already being beckoned to the shore by that voice he had grown accustomed to minding, but Skinhead understood that he had insulted the old man and to refuse the invitation would have been thoroughly impolite …

  The little house was hidden away in an old oak grove. It was small, the span of three windows, which were almost entirely hidden behind lilac bushes.

  “The buds have already emerged and should blossom in about five days or so,” Skinhead noted. The porch had three steps. There was a bucket in the entranceway. The old man opened the door into a rather large room with bookcases along the walls. There was a microscope on the table. A second table, near the wall, served as a kind of laborator
y, with chemistry vessels and reactants of some sort … Amazing.

  “You’ll be more comfortable here in the armchair, please … I’ve been wanting to speak to a learned man, a contemporary scholar, for a long time now. My nobleman’s education, you know … I didn’t study the natural sciences in my youth. Goethe, I’ll have you know, received a brilliant education. He knew mineralogy, devised his own theory of color, and had a profound understanding of the natural sciences … We, though, did our schooling at home … A half-baked education, in a way …”

  Either the old man was playing the fool or pulling his, Skinhead’s, leg … He couldn’t tell … Then he pulled out his eyeglass case, extracted from it a pince-nez with a black ribbon, set the pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and made a stern pronouncement, with even a certain suffering in his voice.

  “For fifty years I’ve been pondering these questions. The local inhabitants are beings of a higher sort, of great simplicity of mind, and I am unable to discuss everything with them. What’s more, it’s very difficult—impossible almost—for them to make sense of our earthly tragedies because even though they are not entirely fleshless, their flesh differs from our worldly variety both in structure and chemical composition. Their skin is too thin … For me you are a conversation partner long overdue, the kind I have not had for many years …”

  As the elder spoke, he unrolled some papers curled into a tube and flattened the ends with his hand, then pressed one side of the pile under two heavy tomes and the other under a marble paperweight.

  “My discovery concerns love. At its cellular, so to speak, chemical, level. I’d like to share with you, Pavel Alekseevich, a few of my thoughts.”

  Skinhead had not heard his earthly name for quite some time, and he was amazed less by the content of the solemn speech of this majestic man with his slightly too fussy eyes, than by the sound of his name returned to him … A lost connection had been restored …

  “Love, as I now understand, needs to be examined alongside other natural phenomena, like the force of gravity or the law of chemical affinity discovered by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev. Or the law—I forgot, what was that Italian’s name?—according to which liquids in various tubes all even out at one level …”

  “He didn’t attend school … Educated at Yasnaya Polyana, that’s what …” Pavel Alekseevich chuckled to himself. “Apparently the sixth-grade middle school textbooks made a great impression on him …”

  “Haec ego fingebam,” proclaimed Lev Nikolaevich, “that carnal love is allowed for human beings! I erred along with all of our so-called Christianity. Everyone suffered, everyone burned in flames owing to a false understanding of love, owing to its division into the carnal and profane versus the intellectualized, philosophical, and lofty, owing to shame over one’s own, innocent, God-given body for which joining with another is innocent, blissful, and good!”

  “There’s no doubt about that, Lev Nikolaevich,” Pavel Alekseevich interjected quietly, looking over his shoulder at the graph drawn in red and blue pencil. It contained a crudely depicted ovum and spermatozoon.

  “That inclination lies at the foundation of the universe, and the Greeks, and the Hindus, and the Chinese all understood that. We Russians, though, have understood nothing. Only Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov—an essentially odious gentleman—saw the light to an extent. Our upbringing, the diseases of the time, the great lie that has come down to us from the ancient monastic misanthropes have led to our not having achieved love. And a person who has not achieved love of life cannot achieve love of God.” He fell silent and sulked. “Love occurs at the cellular level: that is the essence of my discovery. All laws are concentrated in it—the law of conservation of energy, and the law of conservation of matter. Chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Molecules gravitate toward each other as a function of chemical affinity, which is determined by love. By passion even, if you will. Metal in the presence of oxygen passionately desires to be oxidized. And note the main thing: this chemical love goes as far as self-renunciation! Giving themselves over to each other, each ceases to be itself: metal becomes oxide, and oxygen entirely ceases to be a gas. That is, it yields its natural essence out of love … And the elements? The way water aspires to the earth, filling each and every crevice, dissolving into each and every crack in the earth, the waves licking the seashore! Love, in its most perfect form, also denotes denial of the self, of your own being, in the name of that which is the object of your love …” The old man wrinkled his dry lips. “I, Pavel Alekseevich, rejected everything that I had written. It was misguided. All of it … Now I sit here, and I read, and I think. And I weep, you know … I said so many stupid things, I stirred up so many people’s lives, but I never found the words of truth, no … I never wrote what was most important about what was most important. I failed to understand anything about love …”

  “Pardon me, Lev Nikolaevich! What about the story about the young peasant who fell off the roof and died? Wasn’t that about love? Why that’s the best thing I ever read about love in my whole life,” Pavel Alekseevich objected.

  Lev Nikolaevich started. “Wait a minute, which story was that? I don’t remember.”

  “‘Alyosha the Pot’ it’s called.”

  “Yes, yes … There was one called that,” Lev Nikolaevich reflected. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did write one story.”

  “What about The Cossacks? Or Hadji-Murat? No, no, I can’t agree with you, Lev Nikolaevich. Isn’t the word itself an element, and doesn’t the same process occur in it as the one you just described? And if our speech is an element—even if not of the highest order, at least you’ll agree, sufficiently highly organized—then you, Lev Nikolaevich, are the master of love and nothing less …”

  The old man stood up. He was not very tall, bandy-legged, but broad in the shoulders and impressive. He went up to the bookcase: it held his first posthumous collected works in worn paper bindings. Lev Nikolaevich pulled out volume after volume, searching for the story. Then he opened it to the page he needed. Pavel Alekseevich looked tenderly over the old man’s shoulder at the yellowed pages: the same edition had been rescued from Lenochka’s apartment on Trekhprudny.

  “So you propose that this is a good story?”

  “A masterpiece.” Pavel Alekseevich responded concisely.

  “I’ll be sure to reread it. I’d forgotten all about it. Maybe I really did write something worthwhile …” he mumbled, glancing through his pince-nez at the yellowed pages.

  The sun was already setting. Pavel Alekseevich rose, said good-bye, and promised to come again, if he were able. Lev Nikolaevich, who had invited him for a conversation about the natural sciences, now seemed little interested in his opinion. He was in a rush to reread his old story. Like all elderly people, his own opinion was more important than anyone else’s …

  The old man walked out onto the porch with Pavel Alekseevich and even kissed him good-bye. Pavel Alekseevich rushed to return to the place where not long ago there had been a riverbank.

  15

  THE FOOTPATH WOUND ALTERNATELY UPHILL, THEN DOWNhill, and Pavel Alekseevich marveled that the view here—constructed of various planes—was layered, as in the theater, so that a tree in the distance was as visible as the grass alongside the path. At each turn new details of the local world order opened out before him: it turned out that the bed of the stream was raised, and that the water flowed thick and slow. A large pink fish was motionless in the water and looked at Pavel Alekseevich with an unpiscine gaze that was both benevolent and intrigued.

  The next turn revealed a lowlying, curly garden. In the garden stood a bench nailed together from white planks. A tall woman got up from the bench and came out to meet him, tapping a striped cane ahead of herself. This could only be Vasilisa, no one else. Her eyes were covered by a white bandage like the blindfolds children use when playing blindman’s bluff. But there was something else that was strange about her face. When she came closer, he saw that above the bandage, in the middle of her f
orehead, there was a large—more bovine than human in size—bright blue eye with thick girlish eyelashes.

  “Pavel Alekseevich, I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been sitting and sitting, and you never come.” Vasilisa rejoiced. They were already next to each other, and he embraced her.

  “Hello, Vasilisa, sweetie.”

  “We’ve met again, thank the Lord,” she sniffled. Pavel Alekseevich nodded. The eye had two tear ducts, so it was neither left nor right and very symmetrically placed in the center of her forehead. “They took away the old eyes and gave her a new one?” he thought, but, it turned out, he said aloud. Vasilisa laughed. Pavel Alekseevich realized that he had never heard her laugh before.

  “They didn’t take them away. They operated on them. On these, the little ones. They said that only you could remove the bandage. After I told you something. But they’re clever: they didn’t tell me what to say. So I’ve been sitting here on this bench and thinking all the time about what to say to you.”

  “And?” he inquired. “And what is it?”

  “Forgive me, Pavel Alekseevich,” she said ingenuously. Pavel Alekseevich was astonished beyond words. What sort of child’s play was this: planting her on that bench and punishing her, ordering her to ask for forgiveness …

  “It’s all silliness. It doesn’t matter.” He waved her off.

  “What do you mean? I grouped you with the evildoers. Forgive me. And now take off the bandage. Please.”

  They returned to the bench. Vasilisa shuffled with her stick, and Pavel Alekseevich supported her by her elbow. How strange: didn’t that beautiful bovine eye see anything?

  The bandage had been applied competently, the cloth was high quality—imported, apparently. He removed the bandage and unfastened the protective cap from one eye. Under it there was yet a layer of gauze. Carefully he detached it. All the sutures were internal. The eye was swollen, and the eyelids slightly stuck together.