Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  That was their favourite game. First Ksenia had to do a chin-up on the children’s sports frame, and then Lyova appeared from the hallway, holding a toy pump-action shotgun and shouting “I’ll be back!” and Ksenia screamed “It’s him, it’s him, I knew he would come!” and made a dash for it, and Lyova pursued her all round the flat. The skirt covering her childish knees trembled in terror, Ksenia ran and ran until Lyova squeezed her into a corner, grabbed both her wrists in his fist and said: “Calm down, Sarah, I’ve come to save you.” Their parents didn’t like this game – perhaps because one day, during a gallop along the corridors of the imaginary insane asylum Ksenia (Linda Hamilton) and Lyova (Arnold Schwarzenegger) caught the cable of the VCR standing on the old Soviet “Ruby” TV and the video went crashing to the floor. Fortunately, it wasn’t damaged, apart from a crack in the silvery plastic. It was symbolic, said Dad, that when they played Terminator, they knocked the video recorder over. After that their favourite game was banned, which only made them like it all the more. When their parents were out, Ksenia ran round the flat time and time again, choking on her fear and fatigue as she anticipated the feeling of Lyova’s strong hands, the crunching of her wrists and the calm voice that spoke at the peak of her terror: “Calm down, I’ve come to save you.”

  Standing in the corridor where Lyova once used to pursue Ksenia is aunty Mila, a small brunette the same height as Ksenia, or perhaps even shorter. She’s standing on her toes, kissing Valera (or Vadim? – Ksenia can’t remember) who is married either to aunty Sveta or aunty Lera – or was married first to one and then the other. They take no notice of Ksenia, perhaps they’re too absorbed in what they’re doing, or perhaps they’re too used to the idea that Ksenia is only Masha’s daughter, still just a little girl – funny, she looks so much like Masha, but she isn’t beautiful at all.

  Today Mom is wearing a green dress that she brought from America when Ksenia was fifteen. She kisses her daughter on the cheek and for a second the half-forgotten smell of perfume and wine is back again.

  “See, I’m not late,” Ksenia says.

  “You could at least have gone home to change,” her mom replies. “This is my birthday party and you’ve come dressed for work.”

  “I’m sorry,” says Ksenia, lowering her head. “I just didn’t think.”

  “Never mind, it’s too late now,” says her mom, giving her a gentle nudge in the side. “Go in the kitchen and help Sveta with the salads.”

  * * *

  They’ve already drunk to their hostess, the birthday girl, our beautiful Masha, to this house and to love, yes, of course, to love. Mom never laid tables crowded with food, like the parties at Granny’s house. She preferred the à la fourchette approach, even though she still cooked a whole series of different dishes: hors d’oeuvres, salads, entrees and then tea with cake. Mom was an excellent cook, so good that Ksenia couldn’t even hope to achieve such perfection. That was probably why now, when Ksenia celebrated her own birthday, she simply bought readymade food or invited everyone to a café or a club: it didn’t cost much more, and you didn’t have to clear up in the morning. But Mom! Mom was a born cook. Dad always said that if no one needed translators any longer, Masha could always get a job in a restaurant. He used to say it every time they had guests and one day aunty Lelya, Slava’s wife, couldn’t stand it anymore, and at the end of Dad’s tirade she added “as a waitress.” Mom ran out of the room and slammed the door, Dad went running after her to apologize, and he never mentioned the restaurant again, while aunty Lelya, a beautiful plump blonde, carried on turning up at the important events with Slava, twisting the corners of her mouth without saying anything as she waited for the chance to put in her drop of poison. This annoyed Ksenia and one day, when she was already fifteen, she actually said to aunt Lelya – it was while the two of them were cutting the vegetables for the salads in the kitchen – “You don’t like my mom, do you?” Lelya shrugged her white shoulders under her loose-fitting semi-transparent blouse and answered: “I don’t really have any reason to like her much. Your mom’s never done anything good for me” – and at that moment the knife in Ksenia’s hand slipped, she shrieked, the blood spurted into the plate and the salad was ruined. The scream brought her mom running in, she grabbed Ksenia’s hand and lifted the cut finger to lips painted the same color as Ksenia’s blood, kissed it several times and shouted into the flat: “Lera, bring the first-aid kit!” Then she sat Ksenia on her knees, stroked her hair and kept stroking it until aunty Lera and aunty Sveta stuck a plaster over the cut with a glance of reproach at Lelya, who briskly threw the salad into the rubbish bucket and started slicing everything all over again. Ksenia didn’t cry, but she felt resentful and ashamed, not because of her finger, but because a few minutes earlier, for just a second, she had thought there really wasn’t any reason to love her mom – as if she loved her for some reason or other, and not just because she was her mom, the best mom in the world, the only person who loved Ksenia, the most beautiful, the sexiest, the kindest.

  Lelya had got divorced ages ago and married some German from the Siemens office; she didn’t come to the parties anymore. Slava still attended all the birthday gatherings but, looking at him today, Ksenia thought for the first time that he was five years older than Mom, really old, his beard was almost gray, he was almost completely bald and his face was covered with wrinkles. He’d got drunk very quickly and now he was passionately trying to persuade the other guests in the kitchen about something or other. Ksenia didn’t remember all of their names any longer. They were talking about the explosions in Moscow, about Berezovsky, the FSB and Zakaev, and if they weren’t her mom’s friends, Ksenia would have put in her own two cents’ worth and explained how it was all done, how the media created events and put out exaggerated conspiracy theories that were designed to lay the truth bare and obscure it in equal measure. Whatever you might say, she was the only person there who had any direct connection with the mass media, although the guests probably didn’t know that, because her mom usually just said simply, “My daughter does something on the internet.” Ksenia’s achievements paled in the light of the brilliant career ahead of Lyova: after the third year at college he had gone away to America and suddenly been transformed from a physicist into a businessman with an MBA and an unbelievable annual salary.

  And there they are talking about Berezovsky, Zakaev and the FSB: Slava, who never wanted to be called “uncle Slava,” Vadim (or Valera), who had been kissing aunty Mila, uncle Kolya, who never objected to the word “uncle” and liked to tickle Ksenia when she was little, and after she turned fifteen took a liking to kissing her when they met, pressing her against himself so tightly that one day she had to say “don’t” in that voice that already worked on men even then, regardless of their age or how intimate she was with them. When Ksenia grew up, that “don’t” served her as an effective replacement for the stop-word that they wrote so much about on the BDSM sites, because that “don’t” worked even on the most arrant of dominants, who liked a girl to come crawling to them on her knees, hanging her head and exposing her breasts, submissively handing them a riding crop or a paddle; that “don’t” stopped even them without any advance agreement about a stop-word. So it’s not surprising that uncle Kolya recoiled at Ksenia’s response as if she had struck him, struck him with one of those katas that Lyova had once tried in vain to teach her. After that uncle Kolya was always emphatically polite, but his eyes still followed Ksenia as she walked round the room.

  And there they are talking about Zakaev, Berezovsky and the FSB, and her mom comes into the kitchen in her green dress and high heels, with her lips the same color as Ksenia’s blood, enveloped in a cloud of perfume and wine, she comes into the kitchen and looks at them, all steamed up already and shouting at each other as if their words can change something in this world, as if they can stop the suburban trains and apartment blocks being blown up, stop the soldiers raping and killing, make the bullets pass through the flesh without damaging it, like a ray
of light passing through a cloud of dust, make the federal forces and the Chechens suddenly stop making money out of this war and turn the pain into pure joy, happiness and love. Her mom looks at them, smiles sweetly and says: “What excitable boys you are… and you know… you all have something in common, and I know what it is…” and then she gives them the look that Ksenia remembers so well from her childhood, the look that heralds sighs in the night, she looks at them, smiles sweetly and pronounces these words so loudly that they can probably be heard by her girlfriends in the next room, the former or present wives of these gray-haired boys, and they understand perfectly well what the men who have gathered here today all have in common, what unites them above and beyond their excitability, the smell of alcohol, the mid-life crisis, imminent old age and inevitable death.

  Ksenia walks out of the kitchen and opens the door of her room – the room that was hers. The light is off, but as always the street lamp is shining in through the window, and by its ghostly light she sees aunty Mila standing on tiptoe and kissing someone enthusiastically… but who is it? What difference does it make, these people have known each other for so many years, they’ve probably all slept together as couples, perhaps even as threesomes and foursomes. Ksenia closes the door, there are loud voices in the large room, Zakaev, Berezovsky and the FSB are in the kitchen, and she decides not to go into the bedroom, not because the childish prohibition is still in effect, but it would simply be awkward to see two fifty-year-old people making love in the bed that to Ksenia is forever her parents’ bed, although her father hasn’t spent the night here for many years now. But whoever might be in there, it would certainly be a primal scene, Ksenia thinks. Just the month before, Olya had finished explaining to her about psychoanalysis, childhood traumas and the Oedipus complex – all the things she hadn’t remembered from AIDS-Info when she used to read it, in those days when her parents’ bedroom really belonged to her parents.

  Ksenia walks along the corridor: the sound of voices, Leonard Cohen singing in the room, uncle Kolya walking toward her, opening his arms wide, and for a moment Ksenia cringes in fright, because she suddenly has a very clear vision of her right hand sinking into his solar plexus. This vision is so real that Ksenia takes a step back, and just in time, because Sveta comes out of the room carrying a pile of plates and falls straight into uncle Kolya’s embrace. The top plate falls and breaks, Ksenia ducks into the bathroom and locks the door behind her.

  She is shuddering in revulsion, despair and arousal. There are clothes pegs hanging on a line, she chooses a green one and a red one, then sits down on the edge of the bath and pulls down her skirt and panties. There is a tight ball of warmth rolling about somewhere below her belly, she pulls up her shirt, unfastens her bra, bites on her lip to stop herself crying out, clamps the clothes pegs on her nipples – first the red one, then the green one – closes her eyes that are filled with tears of pain, puts her right hand on her clitoris and the fingers of her left hand into her vagina and starts to masturbate.

  At moments like this she doesn’t have to think about anything. She forgets about her mother and her father, she forgets about the Evening.ru office, she forgets about Sasha, she forgets about her own loneliness – until eventually the pain and the pleasure climax and intersect, merging into one.

  Still in the darkness of her closed eyelids, Ksenia unclamps the clothes pegs, freeing her nipples, and they flare up, sending a final tremor through her entire body; there’s a salty taste in her mouth, she must have bitten her lip after all. Then Ksenia opens her eyes and looks at the pattern traced out by the small tiles on the bathroom floor that she has known since her childhood. A dark skirt, black panties, two clothes pegs – red and green – today’s MK tabloid newspaper, open at the “events” page, a blurred photograph and a large headline: “Moscow psycho kills again.”

  7

  I REMEMBER VERY CLEARLY THE FIRST TIME IT happened. When I realized that I would kill soon.

  It was evening, I was masturbating in the shower. The jets of water were streaming over my skin, my prick seemed huge. It was swollen up as if all the blood in the world had flowed into it, that evening when I realized for the first time.

  I always found it hard to come quickly. Except perhaps when I used to toss off as a kid, after waiting for my little brother to go to sleep. I used to imagine Roman patricians raping female slaves by the hundred, or barbarians on prancing horses bursting into Rome to dishonor and kill. I don’t think I was the only one who imagined such things: naked flesh was only accessible in the form of classical statues, sex was taboo and it seemed quite impossible that women could do it of their own free will. So I used to imagine Red Indians in the deserts of the Wild West, standing beside a wagon and tearing the clothes off the juvenile granddaughters of a gray-haired patriarch with a biblical name. A chief with the noble profile of Gojko Miti, the star of the East German Westerns, would tell his deputy – or whoever it is that Red Indians have: “I’ll rape the youngest one, you rape their mother. Then we’ll swap.”

  I didn’t know any other verbs. In my fantasies they never said “fuck” – I thought that word sounded vulgar, and I never heard the word “screw” until I was nineteen, in a dubbed version of Russ Meyer’s film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The characters in my fantasies didn’t fuck or screw. They preferred to rape or even dishonor. “I’ll dishonor the youngest one, you dishonor their mother. Then we’ll swap.” I was a bookish boy and it couldn’t be helped – I could never find the right words. Although, as you recall, I certainly had a rich imagination.

  Sex was taboo, and even the word seemed almost obscene. In my adolescent years they used to write it on walls in English, beside the word “prick.” It was hard to believe that the word “sex” even existed in the Russian language.

  Then I grew up and learned about the right words and the warmth of women’s bodies. I was considered a good lover, they used to think I was taking care to please the girl and that was why I took so long to come. In my young years this was highly valued. But in fact, the reason I didn’t come for a long time was not at all that I was concerned to satisfy the girl moaning like a wild animal with her eyes closed somewhere underneath me. It’s just that in order to come, I had to imagine a knife slicing through skin, blood streaming from the wound and a severed nipple falling to the bloody floor. Imagine flayed scalps, a stake transfixing someone from anus to throat, little girls, with breasts that are still tiny, weeping, down on their knees with their hands cut off.

  All the blood in the world, yes all the blood in the world.

  Imagining such things is not really very pleasant – especially when a woman you love is lying beside you. And so I used to take a long time making love, holding back right to the end, only letting my imagination off the leash when I was really tired. When I was tired or when it got too boring. Then I came quickly, in the same one or two minutes as my peers who were regarded as quick finishers.

  That evening I was home alone. I stood there masturbating in the shower, the jets of water were streaming over my skin, but not the jet of cum, no, the jet of cum was still biding its time. All in all, it was a comic scene. A grown man who has been tossing off for so long he’s starting to get tired. You know, like in the joke: “change hands” said the doctor. I did change hands, and more than once. The jets of water were streaming over my skin, my prick seemed huge, the fantasies that used to bring me to orgasm flashed past one after another in front of my closed eyes. But nothing happened.

  All in all, it was a comic scene. But I didn’t find it funny at all. When I was tired I sat on the edge of the bath, looking at my prick, which was still aroused, its head as huge and red as if all the blood in the world had flowed into it. As a young child I had already guessed what the world around me was like. I didn’t even have to watch TV, I already knew anyway. Although I do remember the anchorman on the Sunday politics program explaining that in America a rape took place every fifteen minutes. The Sunday politics program, a fatted hog, a pri
vileged swine. Every fifteen minutes. Only in America.

  My parents sat beside me, watched the same screen, listened to the same words. Not a single muscle twitched in their faces, as if this had nothing to do with them – incredible, every fifteen minutes a woman weeps and struggles with tears of despair in her eyes, her scream smothered by a sweaty palm. I didn’t know then how much time one rape takes, but I did understand that just as one rapist started cooling off, the next was setting to work – on the other side of the country, with a different woman. Believe it or not, I felt that this concerned all of us, not just the ideological struggle, the conflict between two systems and TV propaganda.

  I was fourteen years old, I already masturbated, imagining youthful plantation owners flogging black female slaves with canes – but at that moment I wasn’t thinking about my fantasies, I wasn’t aroused – after all, I didn’t feel aroused when the TV news told us about the labor camps in Cambodia, and Soviet war films showed Nazi German newsreels with dump trucks piling up skeletons covered with skin from the concentration camps. I wasn’t aroused – I just felt I’d heard something that was directly connected with my life.