Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  “And then there is the very popular theory that these are men with sexual problems of some kind. They say Chikatilo was unable to perform the sexual act normally and even after he killed his victim, he would push his sperm into her with his finger. And as for the cannibal Spesivtsev from Novokuznetsk, his penis, begging your pardon, had rotted away from syphilis. And then there are the sodomites, also known as homosexuals or, as they say nowadays, gays. There are quite a number of them among the serial killers. Supposedly they take revenge on women because they’re afraid of them. I will not deny it, no, I will not, that does happen – but that is only one class, so to speak. However to all appearances, this Moscow psycho of yours is not one of them. All the women have been raped while alive, many of them repeatedly.

  “But why are we just sitting here talking like this? I’ll go and make some tea, and in the meantime, you take a glance at the file, I’ve collected some interesting material for you here, perhaps you might publish some of it. There are no atrocities here, don’t you worry about that, these are the serial killers’ letters. This is from David Berkowitz, New York’s famous Son of Sam, look what a touching letter it is: ‘I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don’t belong on Earth.’ He wrote that a long time before he was caught, you mustn’t go thinking that he’s trying to justify himself to the court. ‘To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter.’ Look, there is even a photocopy of the last page, there. You can read English, Alexei Mikhailovich: ‘Police, let me haunt you with these words: I’ll be back! I’ll be back!’ Familiar words, those, are they not? You must have seen Terminator, I’m sure. I’ll be back, this is who he’s quoting, now do you understand?

  “And this is the last will and testament of Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, from my own home parts. ‘I ask you to exile me, like Napoleon, who destroyed millions of lives, to an island – an uninhabited volcanic rock in the North Kuril Crest or to the tigers of the Ussurian taiga. On the wild island I shall feed on moss and God’s dew, as in my childhood I fed on nettles and other wild grasses.’ Now there’s real loneliness for you, Alexei Mikhailovich, that’s what it’s like. But do drink your tea, Alexei Mikhailovich, drink, and let me tell you this: you can analyze as much as you like, you can try to explain – analysis is not important and explanations are not important, that is not the point.

  “I have read the specialist literature and the most various explanations. Take the famous Roy Hazelwood, from the behavioral science unit at the FBI – you’ve seen The Silence of the Lambs, haven’t you? They show him in that, and that is the way things really are. Well then, from what I’ve read, Hazelwood absolutely refuses to talk about these matters. He says: “My job is to catch them, but when it comes to why – other people can try to understand that.” Do you know why he says that? Because he knows a great many facts, almost like I do. And in this matter, Alexei Mikhailovich, the more you learn, the less chance you have of actually understanding anything. Let us be quite honest: we do not know where serials come from. They exist, that’s all.

  “Some say that sexual prohibitions are to blame for everything. The Americans like to tell us that three quarters of serial killers come from their country. And that that is because there is so much violence on television and sex in advertising. This is all nonsense, Alexei Mikhailovich, non-sense. Take Chikatilo, Mukhankin, Dzhumagaliev, Alexander Chaika, Gennadii Mikhasevich – were they in America then? No. And Pedro Alonso Lopez, who killed more than three hundred girls, was he from America? No. Did he kill them in the States? No, he killed them in Peru and Ecuador.

  “Yes, in America they are better at catching them, that is true. But even so, Ottis and Lucas rode around the country and killed people. Do you know how they did it? They drove along a road until they saw a broken-down car or, say, a car with a courting couple in it. Then they stopped and killed the man quickly, but they took the girl with them and raped her by turns, then shot her too. Ottis used to call this a ‘free breakfast.’ Well, nobody even connected these killings together! They were caught because of an unlicensed gun that Lucas had – and he only confessed everything after that! And then there is Mike DeBardeleben, who was arrested for passing counterfeit bills, and they found a whole house full of video recordings and photographs of his torture sessions. The famous Ed Gein was arrested on a charge of stealing a cash register. And he was the psycho to end all psychos! Hitchcock based Norman Bates on him, and he was the model for Harris’s Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. But both of them – Buffalo Bill and Norman Bates – are mere snot-nosed punks compared to him. Ed Gein made necklaces out of women’s nipples, goblets out of skulls, wastepaper baskets out of skin, sculptures out of noses, tongues and vulvar lips. He was a genuine virtuoso.

  “And on this point, Alexei Mikhailovich, I have a theory of my own. Does this not remind you of something? Necklaces, goblets, corpses? No? Ah, how ignorant you are. And yet, all the books have been published in Russian for a long time now, you know. These, Alexei Mikhailovich, are the traditional attributes of wrathful Hindu deities. And not only Hindu deities, of course.

  “Let me tell you – this is all a matter of ritual. It is not necessary, by the way, for the serial killers themselves to understand this. Well yes, they do say that Ottis’s grandmother was a Satanist and many others also practiced, so to speak. But in point of fact you and I are educated people, we understand that Satanism is just a word. There are, so to speak, certain forces. Why, for instance, are there, in point of fact, so many serial killers in America? Why, because until relatively recently human sacrifice was practiced there. Did you know that they call southern California ‘Psycho Valley’? Well you should, having taken an interest in this subject. There have been very many serial killers there. The Hillside Stranglers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, or Bittaker and Norris, I could tell you about them for a long time. And it’s not all because the area round Hollywood is thick with starlets and other easy meat. Look: this is the place closest of all to Mexico, where five hundred years ago the Maya and the Aztecs offered up human sacrifices.

  “You ask, why then are there no serial killers in Mexico? But you don’t know that. I don’t suppose you have heard about Ciudad Juarez? More than three hundred and seventy women were killed there in ten years. One woman every ten days. The self-same thing: nipples cut off, indications of torture, bodies in the desert. They still can’t find the killers even now, I’ve counted five, no, six conspiracy theories, I won’t detain you by reciting them to you.

  “What I want to say is this: in ancient times people were in contact with their own death. All the religions, not excluding Christianity, tell us about human sacrifices. God sacrifices His own Son and they crucify Him. And do you know why this is so important? Because men are not animals, that’s why! A wolf will never kill a wolf, but one man finds it easy to kill another. Do you know why? Because man is the only animal who knows about his own death. And human sacrifice is one of the ways of understanding your future death. A way of thinking the unthinkable, so to speak. You have to try to look into the eyes of someone who is dying and read in them what will later be reflected in your own eyes, do you understand? That is why the sight of someone else’s death is so attractive. Take Highway Patrol on the television, with all the dead bodies they show. And then there is your site. Public executions continued until the invention of television. The path mankind has chosen is to adopt surrogates: the place of sacrifices is taken by Hollywood movies and news programs. And that, of course, is a very shameful thing.

  “Yes indeed, the fact of the matter is that people have banished the ancient rituals from their lives, do you understand? Just think, if Christ appeared on Earth today, where would he find Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, in order to redeem our sins on the cross? Why, Jesus would have to look for a new John Wayne Gacy, a new Chikatilo, a new Ted Bundy, a new Ottis and Lucas… Two thousand years ago Jesus hung on the cross for six hours and that was enough to redeem the sins of men. But in
two thousand years too many sins have accumulated and six hours isn’t enough now. The Canadian serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, nicknamed Barbie and Ken, tortured fifteen-year-old Kristen for several days. And Hazelwood tells us about a man who didn’t kill his victims until the forty-eighth day. But, of course, you are right, time is not the most important thing, what is important is the degree of suffering. Do you know that in Golovkin’s burial ground they found ten-year-old boys who were entirely gray? Have you ever seen an image of a gray-haired Christ? And after that, will you tell me that he suffered greatly?

  “And do you know what else I will tell you, Alexei Mikhailovich? The new Jesus will be a woman. A new Joan of Arc. Because almost all of them, almost all, kill women. That is why people visit your site, that is why I have many, many friends with whom I correspond all around the world – because people sense that perhaps any one of these so-called psychos could become the source of a new redemption. But of course, we won’t write about that in the interview. The ignorant masses have no need to know that, do they now, Alexei Mikhailovich? We shall wait for our Christ, our Joan.”

  He shows Alexei out into the hallway and Alexei looks at the beads of sweat glinting in the light of the dull lamp and thinks: Where does he get these affected manners, how can he still be like this? Wool tracksuit, slippers, this way of talking straight out of the nineteenth century? – and in the doorway he asks:

  “Are you retired now?”

  “Why would I be retired?” Roman Ivanovich asks in surprise. “I’m only forty, how could I retire? I’m a school teacher, a teacher of Russian literature. And a good teacher too, I think. You know, sometimes it is a pleasure to listen to what really young people have to say. Only recently we were looking at Mayakovsky, following an expanded program, so to speak – I included a couple of rather interesting poems. There I am in the classroom, you know, and one of the A-students, a girl, is up at the blackboard running through the lesson. She says Mayakovsky was trying to shock the bourgeoisie with his line ‘I like to watch children die.’ Of course, that is the right answer, that is what it says in all the books. Shock the bourgeoisie. So I listen and look at her. Sixteen years old, her figure is all in place, you know what I mean, but she is still an absolute child. And I was filled with such joy, I simply do not have the words to express it. You know, the little fool doesn’t understand that it’s all much simpler than that; that if someone says ‘I like to watch children die,’ all it means is that he enjoys watching children die. And nothing else. And the bourgeoisie has nothing to do with it. And he is not interested in shocking anyone. It’s hard to understand that at sixteen, of course. Unless, that is, you happen to attend Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. But here in Russia, thank God, we have all that still to come, do we not, Alexei Mikhailovich?”

  “Yes indeed, Roman Ivanovich,” Alexei replies hastily, and as he rides down in the elevator, he thinks how lucky he is to live in a world of normal people and to have a wife, two children and a woman he loves.

  30

  EVEN SO, IT FEELS GOOD TO BE A STAR, THINKS KSENIA, after all, I always knew that journalism was my true calling. That I could put together a good project, and people would be interested in it. Sometimes it surprises even me the way I know what interests other people. After all, it’s hard to believe I can find people who will share my own preferences. It is hard to believe and, in fact, I’m not having any luck finding them. I wonder when was the last time I had proper sex? Not vanilla sex with my colleague Alexei, who is actually my subordinate, but real sex, the kind of play that leaves you bloody and bruised, with that sweet trembling in every part of your body? Six weeks ago, that’s when it was.

  I don’t get it, thinks Ksenia, how can a girl like me create something that normal people find interesting? Although, after all, I am curious about all sorts of different things. I’m curious about the way they roll up rice, seaweed and raw fish to make sushi, although I’ve seen it done several times, and Olya even promised to come to my place some day and teach me how to make them, but I still don’t understand how it works. I’m curious about the way a body starts moving to the music of its own accord after six months’ training, I’m curious about the way people dance and the things they talk about. About the way with some people you can tell at first sight you’ll be friends for the rest of your life and with others it takes years and years before you figure it out. I’m curious about why people change when they have children, and about why they have children too. I wonder about whether the people I remember, remember me; I even wonder about whether the ones I forgot a long time ago still remember me. I wonder who I have forgotten and whether I’ll ever remember them again.

  I’m curious about lots of things, thinks Ksenia, but I happen to have made a site about a psychotic killer, and people find it interesting. What do people feel when they see our banners? A map of the subway with one station circled and the words “psycho kills here.” Shock? Curiosity? Horror?

  I realized it a couple of weeks ago: I was sitting in the Atrium with Olya, in the café with the chessboard tables. Olya was telling me something about the chess tournaments she played in as a child, when suddenly I saw the huge sign behind her, on a concrete building from the old Soviet days. Through the bluish glass of the mall windows the letters looked like the broken shards of an amphora lying under water. The sign said MOSGAS.

  Mosgas was the most famous Russian serial killer before Chikatilo. If it had been a banner, I’d have clicked on it. But at the time I didn’t say anything to Olya, I don’t know why, I just carried on drinking coffee and listening to that string jangling inside me in a joyful, liberating premonition of horror.

  If it had been a banner, I’d have clicked on it – and people do click on the banners that all of us invent and Marina draws. Every day I get letters thanking me, but more often they advise me to see a psychiatrist, because I’m a sick bitch who gloats over other people’s suffering and takes pleasure in cruelty. These people wonder what my sex life is like and if I often get fucked, as they call it. They wonder if I’m frigid or, on the contrary, if I’m a nymphomaniac. I wonder, by the way, is it possible to be both at once? But I’m not really interested in the answer to that question – especially since I’m not frigid and I’m not a nympho.

  People are curious about my life, thinks Ksenia, and that means I’ve made an interesting site, because they like to wonder about the people who made the site. People like to wonder about other people, it’s true. But I try not to wonder about the man who is the subject of this site – although it’s hard not to wonder about him. Who is he, and what goes on inside his head? What is he like in everyday life? Was he abused and raped as a child? Does he have an incurable illness? Does he hate the world? Or does he only hate women? I wonder about this – but I try not to, because it’s impossible to think about him without hating him. And what right do I have to hate him, if I get aroused myself when I read about nipples that have been bitten off and lips that have been cut out?

  I think someone with my tastes has no right to judge others.

  People wonder what’s inside my head, thinks Ksenia, but no one’s asked me about that in an interview yet. I guess all that’s still ahead of me. Look, today I got a letter from Maya Lvova, the woman to whom I owe so much, asking for an interview. She says she’s interested in talking to me. It would be interesting for me to meet her, I think, and I answer yes, by all means, let’s have a talk, it could be tomorrow, or Friday, whatever suits you best. She used to like doing sensational interviews, she might ask what’s inside my head. I wonder what I’ll tell her?

  I wonder what’s inside the head of the man I chat with every day on ICQ. I should ask why he called himself “alien,” what he meant by that. I wonder if he really doesn’t know who I am – although, to be quite honest, I shouldn’t exaggerate my own fame, he might not listen to the radio or read the internet newspapers, and even if he does read them, I can’t be the only girl in the world called Ksenia Iono
va, why should he remember that name in particular?

  Every day Ksenia reads the forums on her site. She’s curious about what people talk about after they visit the site to find out about the Moscow Psycho. When she invented the site, she thought all she would do was give people information, put them on their guard, and counter the spread of rumors. But now she’s not sure anymore that people visit the site for information – they come for something else.

  We really admire you, Ksenia reads. You’re a cool dude. I think these babes deserve to be carved up, because they don’t put out for us, heh-heh, it’s signed Beavis and Butthead. Heh-heh, that really is interesting, thinks Ksenia, and reads the next thread. We’d like to meet you, because WE HATE this world too. WE’RE SATANISTS! Just recently we went to a graveyard, turned the crosses upside down and hanged a black cat. We were going to burn it, but max wouldn’t let us, because he’s a wimp and a tosser. It’s signed “666” and there’s an answer under it: why don’t you lads go and have a drink instead of bothering with this sick f***ing rubbish? It’s signed “777” and the asterisks are there because Ksenia installed an obscenity filter on her computer and it replaces all obscene words with asterisks.

  I wonder, thinks Ksenia, what these people have inside their heads? Why do clueless teenagers, smart-ass jokers and pimply-faced wankers all come flocking to the smell of blood? She remembers that after one of the murders committed by Chikatilo, the mother of the victim received a note: “To the parents of the missing girl. Hello, parents. Do not grieve. Yours isn’t the first and she’s not the last. We need ten of them by the New Year. If you want to bury her – look in the leaves of the Darovsky Plantation. Black Cat the Sadist.” They didn’t find anything in the leaves of the Darovsky Plantation, the body was hidden somewhere completely different, when Chikatilo was caught he said he never wrote this note, but he really did kill another ten people before the New Year. Who was this joker, this black cat the sadist, this distant relative of the black cat that was hanged, but not burned and – she would like to hope – never even existed.