Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  “You know,” says Olya, “he’s the only family I have. My dad died, my mom’s in Peter, and to be quite honest, I don’t know what to talk to her about. She keeps sounding me out to see if I’m thinking about having a baby, especially now that I have an apartment in Moscow. As if the apartment could give me a child. With the electric cable, say, or the telephone wire.”

  Olya sees Ksyusha smile at those words, sees her dark eyes turn even darker, as if a tunnel opens up inside her, and all of Olya’s words fall into it, to be transformed into images or memories, the same way ones and zeroes are transformed into pictures or letters. She prefers not to know what lies at the bottom of wells like this, what other uses her friend knows for telephone wire or electric cable, so she repeats what she already said: “You know, he’s the only family I have.”

  Ksyusha pours herself some green tea with a trembling hand and takes a hasty sip, as if her throat has gone dry, then says in a hollow voice, as if she’s shouting into the well:

  “You just shouldn’t let him treat you that way.”

  “He’s my brother,” Olya says, “he’s always treated me that way, you know that, since we were kids.”

  “That’s because you’re not a masochist,” Ksyusha says. “If you allowed yourself to be tied up once a week and whipped with that telephone wire, you wouldn’t let anyone treat you like a doormat for the other six days.”

  I wonder, thinks Olya, when she says “treat you like a doormat,” does she mean that literally? For a second she imagines Ksyusha naked, lying on her back, and someone wiping the sole of his shoe on her taut nipples. It’s so hideous, God almighty, she thinks with a shudder and she too takes a sip of green tea, as if her throat has gone dry. She’s afraid of pain, she loves Ksyusha, and she doesn’t like the thought of anyone hurting her.

  “Six days,” Ksyusha says, but Olya immediately converts that into hours, because even the longest and most varied kind of beating is only a few hours, three, or five at the most. So we have to subtract those five hours from twenty-four times seven.

  Ksyusha explained to me once that 24/7 is a kind of contract. When the submissive partner, typically known as the “sub” or “slave,” places herself at the disposal of the dominant partner (typically known as the “master” or “lord”) for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve never drawn up any contracts like that because, even though my specialty is to do with numbers, it lies at the point where finances meet the internet, not the point where pain meets pleasure. And from the point at which I’m located, I simply can’t see that other point where Ksyusha is located from time to time and, to be quite honest, I’m afraid to look in that direction, it frightens me and gives me a bad feeling.

  I wonder, thinks Olya, drawing in the smoke through the long cigarette holder, if Ksyusha were my daughter, would she be able to teach me about life the way she’s doing now? Would she try to persuade me to go with her to dance the boogie-woogie at a club in Kropotkinskaya district? Would she be able to explain some of the things about sex that I still don’t understand even now, although I’m twelve years older than she is? But if we convert years of life into men, I’m afraid my number will be smaller. So it turns out that I’m more like Ksyusha’s daughter, if we count our ages as the number of men we’ve had in our lives, although we’ve never performed any calculations of that kind. Olya is an innocent little lamb, who barely managed to lose her virginity, and Ksyusha is an experienced woman, a treasure house of wisdom, a well of vice.

  Well then, it’s a good thing Ksyusha isn’t her daughter, although it’s not clear where she could get any other daughter from, after all, your apartment can’t give you a child, even if that apartment is in the “University” subway district and you’ll be paying off the loan for it for another eight years. Eight years, look how the time of my life is passing, the time is passing.

  In eight years Ksyusha will have her own apartment too, she’ll have her own business, or simply a good job. A little tousle-headed black pawn who will become a queen on the eighth horizontal row.

  They bring the check, and Olya automatically verifies it, although she knows they don’t make mistakes here. And then Ksyusha says:

  “You know, I wanted to ask you to check the numbers in something.” She takes a transparent folder out of her purse and holds it out to Olya.

  “Check it? I’ll be glad to,” says Olya. “Numbers are my specialty, you know that. But what is it, Ksyusha? An information site?”

  “A special project,” says Ksyusha, “a supplement for our Evening.”

  That’s good, Olya tells herself, now I can remind her. But not straight away. First take the folder and take a look at what’s inside it.

  “Politics?” she asks. “The election?”

  We make an unreal world, Olya tells herself, an unreal world of numbers, wires and luminescent monitors. Politics, elections, the Russian internet, banner shows, hits and traffic. An unreal world, an unreal life.

  “No,” says Ksyusha, shaking her head and setting the locks of hair swaying at her temples. “Not politics, more like crime. I want to do a special project on the Moscow Psycho – I think it’s far more important than any election.”

  Far more important than any election, yes, that’s what Ksyusha really does think. Olya knows that. Don’t complain about the unreality of your world, Ksyusha once told her, are you sure you want to see the real one? I know how, I’ve told you many times. Pain doesn’t lie.

  The transparent folder lies on the table between them.

  “I’ll do it tomorrow, okay?” Olya says, but she doesn’t reach out her hand.

  Ksyusha nods, and then Olya says:

  “Listen, do you remember I asked you to find out about someone…”

  “Of course,” Olya answers, “I looked on the web and Googled his name – there’s nothing about him.”

  Googled his name, thinks Olya, I did that myself. Numbers are my specialty, and Google’s the best search engine on the web, but even so, it can only find what’s in the internet. And That Man keeps everything secret, he doesn’t give his name to the newspapers, and he’s not mentioned on Dirt.ru.

  “I Googled him,” Olya replies, “I thought you would enquire through your own channels…”

  “Of course,” Ksyusha answers, “I’m sorry, I’m going through a bad patch right now, and I got kind of tied up. I asked around, but no one knows anything. But I’ll ask Pasha too, the next time I talk to him.”

  “Thanks,” Olya replies, “thanks and sorry for pestering you. It’s just that I need it very badly – and as soon as possible.”

  If she were my daughter, thinks Olya, I’d still be reluctant to put pressure on her. I’d still say thanks and sorry for pestering you, but even so I wouldn’t let her do a project on a murderer who cuts girls’ breasts off and gouges their eyes out. But she’s not my daughter, so all I can do is take the folder and put it in my purse.

  “No, thank you,” Ksenia answers, getting up.

  It’s snowing outside, like in a Japanese movie.

  12

  IT IS GOOD TO KILL IN WINTER. ESPECIALLY IF IT HAS snowed overnight, and the ground is covered with a delicate blanket of white. You put the bound naked body on it. The blood from the wounds flows more freely in the cold frosty air, and the warmth of life departs with it. If you are lucky and she does not die too quickly, she will see the solid film of ice cover what was flowing through her veins so recently. Red on white, there is no more beautiful combination than that.

  They say freezing to death is like going to sleep. Put her head on your knees, watch as the pupils glaze over, as the eyes close, gently stroke the cooling skin, rouse her occasionally with searing blows of the knife, so that she shudders in pain and returns to life for a moment, catch the final glimmers of consciousness in her eyes, sing a quiet lullaby, touch her forehead like Mom did when you were ill as a child and she checked to see if you were feverish. Repeat that gesture all these years later, check, feel the skin gett
ing colder and colder every time, as if the Snow Queen is wafting her breath over her, notice that the blows no longer make her shudder. Then you can cut the ropes, take the gag out of her mouth, sit down beside her and cry, watching as your tears mingle with the blood that is already starting to congeal.

  * * *

  It is good to kill in spring. Especially when the first leaves are opening and the forest you look out at through the window is covered with the delicate green mildew of new life. On days like this it is good to gather fresh branches of pussy willow, full of spring sap, and go down into the deep basement where she is already waiting for you, crucified on ropes between the floor and the ceiling. Take out the gag, let her scream, walk round her a few times, and then strike the first blow. Gradually, shriek after shriek, her thighs, back, stomach and breasts will be covered with a network of weals and a reddish mildew of blood. Then loosen the ropes, put her on her knees, lean down and ask what her name is. It’s very important to know the girl’s name in order to call to her when she’s leaving, to keep her here as long as possible.

  They say in China bamboo grows so fast that if you tie a man to the ground, the young shoots pierce right through his body overnight. I wish the spring grass had the same strength, so that the new life and the new death would fuse into one, and the red drops would freeze like flowers on the broad leaves of the snowdrops blossoming in her crotch, on the yellow inflorescences of the dandelions growing up between her breasts that have already been torn open by the thrust of the bitter wormwood. So that she would be lying there, still alive, among all the flowers that have grown through her body, and her final breath would mingle with their spring scent.

  * * *

  It is good to kill in summer. The naked body is at its most natural in summer – most natural and most defenseless. Hammer a dozen pegs into the ground of the yard, bring the weakened girl up out of the basement, tie her down quickly, without giving her a chance to gather her wits, spreading her arms and legs as wide as possible and not forgetting to check the gag properly, because in summer there are people everywhere and there will always be some do-gooder who will hear the screams and knock on the gate in the tall fence and ask what is going on here.

  I would like to take him by the hand and lead him over to where the girl is lying naked, like someone on a nudist beach. She knows she is going to die soon. I would like to tell him to squat down and look into her eyes. That is what terror looks like, I would tell him, that is what despair looks like when it condenses so much that you can touch it. Do not be afraid, touch her hand, touch the slippery watering spheres of her eyes. I will give you one of them as a souvenir, if you like.

  But if the gag is inserted properly, there will not be any scream, and you will have to look into her eyes alone and listen closely to the shuddering of the body that responds so subtly to each new stroke, each new flourish of the design that you burn into her skin with a magnifying glass. The heat of the sun, so highly concentrated that it can’t help but move her. The flesh chars, the small pink mounds of the nipples darken in front of your eyes, the clitoris can no longer hide in the undergrowth of the hairs that have been shaven off, or in the hood of skin that has been cut away in advance.

  Do not forget to wipe the sweat off her forehead, do not let it flood her eyes, let her see the sky, the sun and the green leaves. Have a damp towel ready, remember what Mommy used to do for you when you were sick, wipe the sweat off her forehead, look into her eyes, try to find the glimmer of your childhood anguish in them.

  * * *

  It is good to kill in autumn. The blood cannot be seen on the red leaves and the yellow leaves float in the crimson puddles like little toy boats. Tie her to a tree, arm yourself with a set of darts and play at St. Sebastian with her. Remember, a dart lodges best of all in the breasts, and there is no chance at all that it will stick in the forehead.

  Leave her tied there overnight, if you like. In the morning you will find her freezing cold, but still alive. Untie her from the tree, take her into the warm basement, take the gag out of the mouth torn by its own silent screams, let her cry a little, feed her the breakfast you have cooked yourself, and then take her tenderly, as if this is your wedding night, and you have been waiting for it for two years. Lick the drops of blood off the marks from your darts—in a certain sense they are Cupid’s arrows too. When you come, tie her up again, take her out into the yard and start all over again from the beginning.

  Autumn is a time of slow dying. There is no need to hurry. The leaves will have time to shrivel, the branches of the trees will be denuded, the leaden clouds will drift across the sky. On one chilly rainy night go out into the yard and approach the unconscious body slumped helplessly in the ropes and look to see what is left of the woman you brought here a month ago. If you are lucky, she will survive the daily crucifixion between the branches of the old apple tree, the blows of the darts, the tender, stifling lovemaking in the cellar, your rough tongue licking her fresh wounds. Pick up a lump of soil swollen with rain and rub this mud over her tortured body. We shall all lie in earth like that sooner or later. Look at her one last time, take the gag out of her mouth and hope that the sound of the pouring rain will drown out her final screams. Take a knife and kill her with a few blows, before winter begins.

  * * *

  That’s what my calendar is like. My four seasons. Pictures from an exhibition.

  I’d like to write a book like that. A beautiful and bitter book, in which the beauty of nature and the beauty of death would merge into one. But unfortunately I cannot do it, for everything I have said is a lie.

  When you kill, you do not think about the seasons of the year. When you kill, you just kill. And there is nothing inside you but horror.

  Horror and arousal.

  13

  “MAKING A SITE LIKE THAT IS CHILD’S PLAY,” OLYA writes on ICQ Messenger. “If you have a blog engine, then it’s three days’ work, including the design.”

  “I have a blog engine,” Ksyusha replies, “it’s at Evening.ru, and we can put it in here too.”

  “I don’t understand where you’re going to get content from. You export what Tickertape has written about this monster, and then you run all the interviews you can dig up in the press. Then what?”

  “We have to make this site the place all the information flows to,” Ksyusha hammers out briskly on the keyboard, “a place where people who think of themselves as specialists on this sort of thing can publish their articles.”

  “An expert site?”

  “Well, yes. An expert site with a strong community-oriented component. A system of forums, a chat room, blogs.”

  “You think people will go for it?”

  “Of course they will.”

  “Okay, they’ll show up once from the banners or the links, but what’s going to make them come back? What are they going to discuss in the forums?”

  “Suggestions about the psychological profile of the killer, previous similar cases in history, possible motives… there’s plenty of stuff!”

  “You idealize our subscribers. Everything you just mentioned is material for expert articles. The simple reader will only visit a forum for one reason: to say what should be done with this man when they catch him.”

  “All right. If that’s so, we’ll drop the forums. But I think the site could become a gateway for the public to talk with the authorities. The police could use the site to warn the people of Moscow, people could report their suspicions, demand that measures be taken, etc.”

  “You’re an idealist . What makes you think the authorities are prepared to talk to the public?”

  “ The authorities need to exploit every possible channel for getting information across. They won’t close the site down, and they won’t take it away from us either. That’s too much hassle – they’ll have to give us interviews and write press releases for us. Apart from that, we’ll get the charities and non-profit organizations involved: psychological help for parents of the victims, fundraisi
ng for those who can still be helped by money, announcements of people who have gone missing. My experience as a journalist tells me there’ll be more than enough content .”

  “OK. If that’s right, your site will get into the news programs. And you get five or seven thousand unique visitors a day.”

  “Wow! We’re in the Rambler top ten! ”

  “ And then we’ll start selling advertising and make it into a commercial project.”

  “Will we sell a lot?”

  “You won’t make much on banners. But the targeted ads – that’s a real wow!”

  “And where will we get them from?”

  “All the fitness clubs that have anything remotely like courses of self-defense for women; online bookshops who sell books like the hundred most famous killers of our time; CDs and DVDs like Murder Ballads or The Silence of the Lambs. The promotion company for any new film about a psycho – and they come out every month. Shops that sell weapons for self-defense. And there must be something else I’ve forgotten.”

  “Is this all realistic?”

  “IMHO yes. You collect the material, and I’ll find the clients.”

  “Wow, at last we’ll be working together!”

  “Like in the good old days .”

  “Okay, all I have to do now is talk to Pasha.”

  * * *

  The medium, as Marshall McLuhan once said, is the message. That is, the means for the mass distribution of information is more important than the information itself. Or to put it slightly differently, the messenger is the message. Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian academic who studied means of communication. He died a long time ago, and his most famous phrase was spoken about television. It would be amusing to hear what he would have said if he’d seen the internet. But Marshall McLuhan isn’t saying anything and there’s no way he can know if his prophecies came true. Anyway, almost fifty years ago, he forecast that with the appearance of national TV, local dialects would die out. Well, now half a century has passed and what’s happened? Local dialects are still the same as they were – and not just in Russia, but in America, where there’s far more TV around. This alone would be enough for the Canadian academic McLuhan to be forgotten forever. But in our business, as I know only too well, what’s valued is not how accurate a prediction is, but how neatly it’s formulated, how catchy the idea is. The form is the content, the messenger is the message, a rose is a rose is a rose.