Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  She picks Gleb up in her arms, kisses his little nose, his narrow eyes, his floppy my-little-elephant ears.

  “Ma-ma,” says Gleb and crawls away again.

  Marina hasn’t got any furniture, apart from a large mattress at the far end of the room and the bar stool with the monitor glowing on it. Marina used to call it her cybernetic altar, and Ksenia prefers not to think about the kind of rites that were celebrated in front of it during the night. And now here they are sitting on the floor, on a rug as shaggy and huge as a polar bear pelt, the one on which our world stands – according to the legends of northern peoples unknown to the ethnographers. Or perhaps, according to these legends, the whole world is the back of an immense polar bear, and we creep about in its fur, like little Gleb on this huge rug in his mother’s one-room apartment, while she sits there with her oldest and dearest friend. Marina’s wearing a beautiful T-shirt, handmade, brought from California by her lover, but Ksenia, as usual, is wearing a business suit, all dressed up, in full regalia and war paint, strong lips, big eyes, half an hour in front of the mirror in the morning. Even when Marina used to go to the office, she still didn’t wear business suits, she was a designer, a creative girl, almost bohemian, she preferred the ethnic style, men liked that, it suited her – but then, what had style got to do with it? Men had always liked her, with her long legs and that halo of bright hair round her head, with that constant smile that some called whorish and others called innocent.

  “You’re really going overboard,” says Ksenia. “Remember what you used to say when you were pregnant? A boy is an enemy inside, like Intel Inside, you could even hang the logo on your belly. Because men and women are two different species, not simply the male and female of Homo sapiens.”

  “Go figure, I used to be so stupid,” says Marina, “such a fool, I wanted a girl so much, and I was so furious about this pregnancy, such a dimwit, remember?”

  How could she ever forget it? Japanese cinema week in Moscow, free entry, a hall full of people fighting for seats, illegible subtitles, someone’s head blocking out half the screen. Marina politely asks him to get down a bit and then summarily presses the head down with her hand, why’s he acting so stupid, doesn’t he understand plain Russian? But when the lights come up she sees that he doesn’t – slanting eyes, yellowish skin, oh, how embarrassing. Marina says “Arigato,” hoping that in Japanese one polite word can take the place of another, the man laughs and tells her in English that he’s not Japanese, although he does have some Japanese friends he was supposed to meet here, but they don’t seem to have come, and he didn’t understand very much, to be honest, Japanese with Russian subtitles – he had almost no chance. Perhaps a girl who speaks English so well could tell him what actually happened?

  Marina told him, and they drank to friendship between peoples in the nearest restaurant, and then caught a taxi and kissed in the back seat, and Marina, who was already a little bit drunk, felt terribly curious, because she’d never had any Asian men. And is it true that Asians can, well, you know, I mean, well, in bed? The Asians do it much better on a mat than on a bed. What do you mean, a mat? He points down past his feet, at the rubber mat, ah shit, yes, on rice-straw mats, right?

  They couldn’t find a straw mat in Moscow, though, so they tried it on the bed, and on the rug, and then Marina looked at the clock and suddenly remembered that in the morning her lover from California was supposed to call her, the one who would later give her the beautiful T-shirt, handmade, with the acid design, that she was wearing right now. And right now was when eighteen months had passed since that night, which wasn’t hard to figure, if you knew the age of the child and the average duration of pregnancy in females of the species Homo sapiens – that is, of course, if you still believed they were members of the same species.

  But a year earlier, on a depressing winter evening just like this one, Marina had sat on the floor in just the same way, with her legs crossed, with a T-shirt pulled over her large belly, and said the boy was an enemy inside, and some kind of Chinese into the bargain, like his freaking dad.

  “Why didn’t you call him?” Ksenia asked then.

  “I don’t have his number,” Marina answered. “I gave him mine, but I didn’t take his. That is, he wrote it down for me, but I left it on the table in the kitchen, because I was so dimwitted in the morning, which isn’t surprising, we worked so hard, made an entire child together, slaving away for four hours, we were absolutely soaking.”

  “Why didn’t you take any precautions?”

  “Go figure, I was so stupid,” said Marina, “such a fool, I took precautions the first two times, and then I ran out of condoms and he wasn’t so hard any longer, and I said, ah go for it, because I really wanted to, and anyway, I’d heard there was much less chance of getting pregnant from the third ejaculation in a row. And in general I was planning to take the morning-after pill, but I was so stupid I fell asleep at home, and then I forgot everything. I forgot absolutely everything, I even left his phone number on the kitchen table, but I wouldn’t have called him anyway, since he didn’t call, so what if I did get pregnant, I should have been more careful, right?”

  “It’s a good thing he was disease-free, or you wouldn’t just have been pregnant, you’d have been HIV-positive.”

  “Don’t say that, don’t hassle me, I don’t tell you that someday one of your sadist lovers will simply cut your throat.”

  “You don’t? I hear that from you all the time.”

  “And now you can frighten me by saying I’ll die in childbirth.”

  “Whatever next! I wouldn’t dream of it. You’ll have a beautiful baby, strong and healthy.”

  That was what they’d said a year earlier, and that was the way things had turned out, there’s the baby, strong and healthy, crawling around on the white rug as if it were the back of a female polar bear, not a male bear, because it’s his mom’s rug, his mom’s room, his mom’s apartment, his mom’s little Chinese boy, her little mandarin, her little orange, who’s my tasty little boy? “That was why I got the dragon tattoo,” says Marina, “to have a bit of the East, because if I have a Chinese son, then I’m a little bit Chinese myself, aren’t I? And don’t worry about the pink patch, that’ll be gone by summer, and right now I’ve got nobody to show it to, apart from you.”

  “Wow,” says Ksenia, “what does that mean, nobody? What have you done with all your men, your lovers from the four corners of the earth, every age and color, the ones you find it so interesting to be with, because you’ve never tried that kind before? Have you really exhausted all the combinations, have you really had everyone you could ever imagine, even a hundred-year-old Afro-American with a touch of Inuit blood, the result of a short visit to Alaska before the First World War by a battalion of marines, what is it they call them in America – Seals? Polar bears?”

  “You laugh as much as you like,” Marina replies, “I’ve found the most important man in my life, just look at him, just feast your eyes on him, he’s the best, the most beautiful man in the world, look at his face, look at his balls, look at his prick – I’ve never seen such beautiful balls and such a beautiful prick on any man. And, you know, I’ve seen plenty in my time.”

  Yes, you really have seen plenty of men, I know. And has your eye really wearied of looking, has its lens grown dull, has the keenness of your gaze dimmed? Where’s the Marina I could never take to anyone’s place, because she immediately started looking around to see who she could drag off to screw in the bathroom? Where’s the Marina who, if she couldn’t get to sleep, used to count her lovers the same way other people count sheep or elephants, and always fell asleep before she’d counted them all? Where’s the Marina who used to know everything about the sexual preferences of every man in Moscow and the countries served by Sheremetyevo International Airport? Where’s the Marina who introduced me to Nikita at the age of fifteen when she found out that I was into playing? Where’s the Marina l used to love so much that for her sake I would have become a man for ju
st one night?

  She’s sitting on the floor with her legs folded underneath her, wearing a handmade T-shirt from her lover in California, and the acid pattern on the fabric is like a radiance shining from her belly, and the acid pattern on the computer monitor is like a blessing from the cybernetic gods, and little Gleb is crawling around near her, like a celestial Inuit child on the back of the Great Polar Bear Mother.

  11

  LOOK HOW THE TIME OF MY LIFE IS PASSING, THINKS Olya. Look how the time is passing, I’m already thirty-five years old. Eight years ago I came to Moscow from Peter. A year ago I bought myself an apartment. Eight minus one is seven, seven years in other people’s places, two of them in the same apartment as Vlad and his constantly changing mob of friends. So seven minus two leaves five. Five years on my own, five years as my own woman. Five plus one makes six. It’s six years, because when I’m in my own apartment I’m alone too – there’s nothing to be done about it, that’s the number.

  Numbers are my specialty, thinks Olya, drawing in the smoke through the long cigarette holder. How did a humanities girl from a cultured Petersburg family develop such a fondness for numbers? Maybe it’s all because of the chess. I used to have a grade two ranking, after all. I used to be able to figure out the alternatives pretty well. Black and white squares, letters on the horizontal rows, numbers on the vertical ones.

  Numbers are my specialty. I started off as an accountant, I was an IT manager, and for three years now I’ve been an executive director, the co-owner of a small company. Cashflows aren’t much different from computer networks, the figures add up to numbers, the numbers line up in columns, the columns gather together into tables, the ones and zeroes march through the wires and when they come out they turn into a picture, a word or another number. All this is called financial accounting; all this is called the internet. The place where finance meets the internet is the precise spot where I’m located.

  The spot where I’m located physically just at the moment is called “The Hollows” after the holes under the low tables to accommodate the customers’ legs. It has the cheapest Japanese lunch in Moscow, one hundred and forty-nine rubles. Numbers are my specialty, they’re always with me, even at lunch. Ksyusha’s twenty-three, I’m thirty-five, so she’s twelve years younger than me. If I’d got pregnant straight after my first period, my daughter would be exactly the same age. I’d like her to be like Ksyusha now. That’s if it was a daughter, of course, and not a son. She’d call me “Mom,” and I’d stroke her hair and say “don’t worry, Ksyushenka, everything will be all right, you know I love you.” I’d stroke her tousled black hair, because it’s very important to have someone who loves you.

  When I was twenty-three, I didn’t understand that. I thought there were lots of other things in the world far more important than the love of one woman for another. For instance, the love of a man for a woman, or a woman for a man. In fact, it was Vlad who taught me that lesson by explaining that the love of a man for a man means a lot too. Vlad is five years older than me. Twenty-three plus five is twenty-eight. He came out of the closet at twenty-five, so I’d known for three years that my brother was a homosexual. That means since I was twenty.

  I’d like to have a daughter like Ksyusha. But it’s not possible. I slept with a man for the first time at the age of twenty-two. I was so confused and in love that I didn’t take any precautions, so if I’d got pregnant then, my daughter would be twelve years old already. Exactly the same age that I was when Ksyusha was born.

  Look how the time of my life is passing, thinks Olya, the time is passing. Grisha and Kostya aren’t talking anymore, and today I got the bill for an ad that was shown on the sites of Grisha’s holding company, and I didn’t like it. Numbers are my specialty, and I don’t have to go digging last month’s out of the files to notice that something’s wrong with them. After lunch I’ll go back to the office, call Grisha and ask him what happened, where have all the internal discounts disappeared to, isn’t my shop part of his holding company anymore – and I’ll be prepared to be told no, that thirty-seven point five percent of the shares still belong to Kostya, my company isn’t part of the holding company, so it will have to pay the same as everyone else. We will pay the same as everyone else. That is, I’ll pay the same as everyone else. I know in advance that’s what I’m going to hear. Numbers are my specialty, so I know what the people who write these numbers are going to tell me. I know the numbers, I know the people. But not all of them.

  Last week I asked Ksyusha to find out about That Man, the Big Investor, but Ksyusha’s not saying anything, as if she’s forgotten, or she couldn’t find out, and I suddenly realize that it’s hard for me to raise the subject again. I look at her, dark circles under her eyes, nails bitten down almost to the quick. Poor Ksyusha, what’s happening to you? How can I bother you with my own business? I’ll cope on my own somehow. Somehow or other.

  Because we all have moments when we realize there’s something wrong with the world around us. And it takes all our strength not to cry in front of other people. And then everyone hangs on the best way they know how.

  Numbers are my specialty, numbers reassure me. My daughter would be the same age as I was when Ksyusha was born – and that means that in some cunning way Ksyusha is my daughter, if only for a moment.

  Look how the time of my life is passing, thinks Olya, the time is passing. Yesterday Vlad was forty, there was a big birthday party…

  I went to the Auchan hypermarket with him, she thinks, he asked me to go and I went, we bought so much stuff that the receipt they printed out for us was a yard and a half long, we loaded the car right up to the gills and took it all to his place. I’m a really good sister, Ksyusha, you know that. I cooked everything, laid the table, and then the guests started arriving, his guests, you understand, bohemian types, the regulars from the Mix Club, theater stars, DJs, VJs, I don’t even know who else, thirty-eight people, even more than Vlad was expecting. Thirty-eight plus two makes forty, exactly his age, strange, isn’t it? And all those thirty-eight people looked right through me, no, thirty-nine, because Vlad didn’t notice me either. Even though there was a time when I lived in the same apartment as some of them. And don’t think there were just gays there, there were straight men too, some with girlfriends, but they just looked right through me, as if I was a waitress in an expensive restaurant. As if there were thirty-nine of me too, and I was standing there beside every place setting as still as a statue. Can you understand how hurt I felt?

  Yesterday evening I went out onto the closed balcony with the cold December wind blowing in through a little gap, I pretended I wanted to smoke, I took out my cell and dialed Ksyusha’s number. Of course, I know it off by heart, numbers are my specialty, but it’s entered in my phone as number 2, because number 1 is Oleg’s number, and Vlad’s is number 3, even though I remember all these numbers anyway, I have a good memory for numbers, which is hardly surprising, with my specialty. You were temporarily unavailable, Ksyusha, so I won’t tell you now about the way I stood on that cold glazed balcony, pressing my forehead against the window frame and sobbing because I felt so hurt. I would have liked someone to put their hand on my shoulder, pat me on the head and say don’t worry, everything will be all right, you know, but we were separated by a distance of twelve years and miles of frosty air, frozen concrete and Moscow ground crammed as full as a birthday cake with water mains, underground utilities, telephone cables and fiber optic internet lines, with all those ones and zeroes running through them and turning into pictures, letters and other numbers when they come out.

  It takes all our strength not to cry in front of other people. I wiped away the tears and went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes. Vlad asked me to do it, he’s always hated it, ever since he was a child, there are gays who like housework, but I’m unlucky. I went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and now, sitting here at a low table in The Hollows, I don’t tell Ksyusha how I dialed her number on that balcony filled with the chill of D
ecember, I just ask why does Vlad treat me like that? Maybe it’s because he’s gay?

  Ksyusha laughs, pushes away her miso soup and reaches for the sushi with her chopsticks. “Listen, Olya,” she tells me. “Don’t you of all people turn homophobic. We all know plenty of fags who get on perfectly well with women, quite splendidly in fact. But your brother, your brother is just a straightforward heel, I’m sorry. A talented stage director, a society celebrity, whatever – but still just a straightforward dominant-type heel, so stop beating up on fags, they’re fine guys. And it’s not true that they’re afraid of women, it’s you who’s afraid of men, otherwise you wouldn’t let them treat you like a doormat.”

  I wonder, if I had a son, would he be gay? I know it isn’t inherited, especially not from an uncle on the mother’s side, but maybe a bad example is infectious. Oh, what am I thinking, why bad? Ksyusha’s right, I feel so ashamed. Just different. A different example is infectious. That’s more politically correct, definitely.

  As if she can read my mind, Ksyusha laughs and says it’s not a matter of political correctness at all – she learned about the existence of homosexuals at about the same age she learned how men and women screw, and from pretty much the same source.

  If she were my daughter, she wouldn’t have spent her childhood reading AIDS-Info: even after I lost my virginity, I still thought that newspaper was incredibly vulgar and horrid and, to be quite honest, I still think so. If Ksyusha were my daughter, I wouldn’t have let her read all sorts of filth, I would have taught her to love poetry instead.

  My mom always loved poetry, and she still loves it. A cultured Petersburg family, Dad a retired army officer, Mom a teacher of German. Dad always used to laugh at her and say she’d have been better off if she’d learned to cook instead of how to conjugate German verbs. Dad died three years ago and Mom… Mom’s in Peter, and she still loves poetry, but somehow I don’t like it as much as I used to. I don’t call her very often. It’s a good thing Vlad doesn’t forget to call. He’s probably a better son than I am a daughter – even though his life is such a mess and he’s always changing partners.