Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  I was on my way home yesterday, Ksenia reads in the “Suspicions” forum, and this young guy tagged along behind me! I spotted him in the subway, on the escalator. He was giving me this strange kind of stare (OMG), but then I forgot about him, only later, in the passage on the way to my line, I saw him again, it was like he’d tracked me down! He was walking in front of me and then he turned straight onto my platform without even hesitating! I was shit scared, so I let the train go and pretended I was waiting for someone, and I stood there in the middle of the station for a while and then got into a different car from my usual one. There was no one there, so I stopped worrying, but when I got out at my stop (I don’t want to say where I live, in case this psycho reads your stupid forum), he was standing there (OMG!) like he was waiting for me (OMG!) I took out my cell phone and called my boyfriend and said real loud someone was following me and I wanted him to meet me. Then my boyfriend came and this psycho must have got scared and he disappeared. So it was all right in the end. But tell me, everyone, what should I do, because I’m afraid he might be stalking me? And it’s signed “Fluffy.”

  I wonder, thinks Ksenia, why she didn’t approach a cop? Even if she was afraid, I wonder why she didn’t go to a cop afterward? Why didn’t she give him a description? Why doesn’t she even give one here? What if this man really was the serial killer they’ve been trying to catch for the last six months? I wonder what she has inside her head? How old is she? What does her boyfriend look like? Is all this true, or did she make up the entire story so she could get her boyfriend to come to the subway station, and then wrote it down, because she started believing it herself? I wonder how this psycho could tell which station she was going to? Ksenia knows that killers often stalk their victims for months, she knows that many of them can get inside their quarry’s head and guess in advance where she will go, what she will do and what words she’ll respond to. Ksenia knows about this, but she’s still curious.

  I wonder, thinks Ksenia, why she wrote in? Maybe the answer she wanted to read is: Dear Fluffy, I felt so frightened for you when I read your story. I can imagine how frightened you were! But what she feels like writing is something quite different. Why, oh why, Dear Fluffy, didn’t you give us his description? Why, oh why, you hysterical idiot, don’t you go to the police? Don’t you care? is what Ksenia wants to write, or are you just stringing us along, you infantile little fool? But she doesn’t write anything and moves on to the next forum.

  You girls who like to hang out on this site, Ksenia reads, how would you like to be given a real slamming? How would you like to be had by a real man? Write to me at sadist_cruel_ master@yandex.ru, and we’ll get together in my cozy little basement. First I’ll give you a good flogging on your bouncy little backsides, then I’ll make you lick my huge great dong, while my dog stretches your tight wet little holes for you. You’ll be begging me to give you a good screwing but first I’ll hang weights on your tits that’ll stretch your nipples down to the floor, or tear them right off, ha-ha, and then the lads and I will shaft you so hard that when you leave in the morning you’ll be crawling on all fours, and even the celebrated Moscow psycho would be disgusted by your huge tattered holes!

  You are a sick creep, Ksenia reads, children visit this site, clear out. What’s the moderator up to, Ksenia reads, get this filth out of the forum! People, come to your senses, think what you’re writing, Ksenia reads, the dead girls’ families could see this. What abominable filth, Ksenia reads, what kind of scum writes in to this forum? Yes, Ksenia reads, we’re scum, we’re here for a laugh.

  All this, Ksenia reads, is because people have forgotten Christ and sunk into depravity. All this, Ksenia reads, is because the most important things in Russia now are money and financial gain. All this, Ksenia reads, is because the Russian people have forgotten their pride.

  All this is becos its those little Russian bitches own folt. No one will raip a desent girl, she WON’T GO with a man she doesn’t know. My sister always dresses desent, she doesn’t go rownd with her bra showing like all these sluts.

  Do the victims’ families read this, Ksenia wonders, do they visit the site? Do the people who write in remember about them? I always used to think it was immoral to pester someone in mourning with questions, but now I think maybe I was wrong. Maybe people need to read about what kind of girls they were – Maria Z., age twenty-three, Dasha A., age sixteen, Julia B, age twenty-fIve? So they’ll stop being dismembered bodies and just for a moment at least become girls who loved and wanted to be loved, who dreamed of having children and meeting their man, who hoped for happiness, looked out the window in the evening and thought about what they were going to do tomorrow, laughed at jokes, sobbed at funerals and expected to die when they were old, surrounded by loving grandchildren. When I look at their photographs, Ksenia thinks, I want to cry, but deep in my heart I know there’s a strange truth in everything that has happened. That our future is made of dreams and daydreams, that it bursts like a shimmering rainbow soap-bubble, like a toy balloon pricked with a knife, a scalpel or a piece of a mirror broken in the bathroom. That I, a young interesting girl, a successful professional, the senior editor of a news department, only five minutes away from stardom, can feel a deadly horror pulsating beneath the thin soap-bubble membrane of my rainbow-bright future, like a heart beneath skin that has been slit open. Maybe, thinks Ksenia, that is why I made a site like this, because I’m curious about this horror.

  But I really must write something to this Fluffy, Ksenia thinks, or she’ll never wise up. Only I wonder just why she annoys me so much? I guess it’s because I would have acted differently in her place.

  I think, Ksenia reads, that sooner or later they’ll catch you. And now let me tell you what they do with your kind on the inside. Everyone’ll have your ass, you’ll be licking the ***t out of the slop buckets, and when you get out, we’ll find you anyway and kill you, but not straight away.

  I think, Ksenia reads, that when they catch him, he should be interrogated properly. They should bring our special agents who interrogate the Chechen killers back from Chechnya and let them interrogate this psycho, and then he’ll tell them everything.

  I think, Ksenia reads, that capital punishment is too good for subhuman monsters like this. They should be tortured, to make them realize what they’ve done. I think, Ksenia reads, that first they ought to strip his skin off, but not all of it, or he’ll die too soon. And then stick a pointed stake up his anus and attach electrodes to his nipples so that he twitches like a frog. And they ought to hang him upside down, because I’ve been told they stay conscious longer like that.

  I wonder, thinks Ksenia, what’s inside these people’s heads? I’ve been told they stay conscious longer like that. Who told him that? How did they test it? Sometimes I don’t believe they hate this psycho. Sometimes it seems to me they can feel the killer inside themselves. Sometimes it seems to me that he’s been living inside me for a long time, swelling up like an embryo in the darkness of the womb and one day he’ll come bursting out, break his way through my ribcage, burst out and say: Hi.

  “Hi,” Ksenia says into the phone, “how are you getting on? I’m fine too. I visited a forum and what’s going on in there made my hair stand on end! Maybe we should get a moderator? Figure out how much it will cost, this is really getting embarrassing, take a look and read it for yourself. Or maybe we could have coffee together at lunch time,” says Ksenia, “we haven’t seen each other since last week and I miss you.”

  “No,” says Olya, “I’m sorry, I can’t today, I have to see the doctor.”

  “Is something wrong?” asks Ksenia.

  “No,” Olya replies, “everything’s fine, I’ve just decided not to keep the baby.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” asks Ksenia.

  “No, there’s no need,” Olya replies, “I’ll call you if I need anything.”

  Dear Lyusya, Ksenia reads mechanically, I know you still visit this forum. So I’m telling you, for what you did last F
riday I’m going to catch you and cut your womb out, and all your guts with it.

  Dear Fluffy, Ksenia writes, I was so frightened for you when I read your story. I can imagine how frightened you were! I hope the psycho won’t follow you anymore. Hang in there, and if anything happens, write in again, all of us here are very concerned about you.

  31

  IN MOSCOW IN SUMMER YOU LEARN TO MOVE IN SHORT bursts, as if the street is a sea in which you have to swim from one island to another. Air conditioning in the bedroom at home, air conditioning in the car, at work, at the club. In the gaps between, your shirt instantly becomes soaked under the armpits, you’re the first to find the smell of your own sweat disgusting – and no deodorant will save you. Islands in the sea, yes, I’d prefer the Cote d’Azur or at least Greece, or even, if it comes to that, Turkey, where my friend Mike’s wife is on vacation right now with their seven-year-old son. Mike tells me Lyuba calls him and complains, says it’s tough for her on her own, and threatens that next year she won’t go anywhere without him.

  Mike would be glad to go, the beach is better every way than a stuffy night club, where the air conditioning can’t handle the vapors exuded by hundreds of bodies, most of them appealingly young. If you think of this club as an island and the heat as water, then the place is about to suffer the same fate as Atlantis. Not much of an island, in other words.

  I used to differentiate between the Moscow clubs, I used to think that was important. I used to think one was fashionable and another was outmoded. Now they’ve all fused into a single dance floor ablaze with lights where the young things dance – the new clubbing generation that has come on the scene. They skip around to music that I have no more clue about nowadays than I do about the clubs; they skip about like puppies having fun in a dog park.

  Mike wipes the sweat off his face. Good old Mike, endowed with a figure that allowed him to impersonate his own “protection” during the post-Soviet capitalist frenzy of the early nineties: he put on a fierce expression, crossed his arms on his chest and sat there at negotiations without saying a word. “I don’t really look like a gangster, do I?” He used to say to me. “I’m just a regular Moscow boy.” Ever since those days he still has the habit of wearing a gold bracelet and signet ring.

  We’re sitting right beside the dance floor, and I spot you straight away: skin-tight pants down to just below your knees, glittering shoes with high heels, a short top, already wet with sweat. Hair dyed in streaks, ginger on light yellow – straw color, almost white. So far I can’t see your face, but the hemispheres of your buttocks are twitching rhythmically, sending me greetings. I pretend I haven’t noticed you, we order two beers and I sit there half-turned away, still following you out of the corner of my eye.

  Mike would be glad to go, the beach is better every way than the swelter of the city, but in the construction business summer is the hot season in every sense of the word. So Lyubka and Sevka are down there in Turkey, and Mike’s here with me in a club with a name that’s not really important. He hangs his jacket on the back of his chair and straight away I can see the spots under the arms of his light-colored shirt. No deodorant can save you. “No,” he says, “you should never stay in this city in summer.”

  I look at you, you’ve turned in three-quarter profile and in the beams of light wandering around the dance floor I can make out a snub nose, rather sweet, and a two-tone bang that falls over your eyes every now and then. Before Igor went away to America to get his MBA, he had a little dog like that, one day he had it clipped, and the poor thing spent two weeks behind the curtain, with the fringe falling over its eyes instead of the hair that had been cut off. What kind was it now? A fox terrier, was it?

  Mike is complaining about builders who don’t want to work and clients who set impossible deadlines. He can understand the builders – you can’t put air conditioning into an unfinished building. In that respect my office is far more pleasant. The waves of heat beat against the glass like the waves of the Mediterranean on the cost of Turkey where Lyubka and Sevka are suffering so terribly – if, that is, you can believe what she says on the phone.

  Right then, Mike works in the construction business, but I wonder where you work? I used to differentiate between girls, I preferred educated professionals, I used to think that was important. Now that I know a lot more about women than I ever did before, I realize there’s no great difference between a homeless tramp (provided you give her a wash, of course), a secretary and a successful businesswoman with an MBA of her own. Women are differentiated by the texture of her skin, the shape of their nipples and their lips, the density and size of their breasts and how easily the skin comes away from their muscles. Stop, I tell myself, stop.

  Lyubka and Sevka are suffering by the sea down in Turkey and on this sweltering Friday evening Mike is sitting on the edge of a dog park and eyeing some girl, like a regular Moscow boy. In hot summer Moscow it’s not that difficult to find yourself some girl, especially on Friday evening, especially if you know how to look. So far he hasn’t noticed you, the fox-terrier girl with the twin-tone bang, red and straw-colored, red and white. Now you’ve turned to face me, little mouth, big eyes, snub nose, top tight across your breasts. Size C, probably. A pity I can’t see the color of your eyes.

  The music falls silent for a second and I can hear the noise of the air conditioner vainly struggling to transform the sweltering Moscow air into a pitiful simulacrum of a sea breeze. The sea is too far away, the wind can’t reach this far, maybe that’s for the best, it means it can’t carry the news to Lyubka on her Turkish beach about the way her husband is eyeing the twenty-year-old girls skipping about in a dark night club where the air conditioning can’t handle the sweltering Moscow air.

  “I’ll go have a dance,” says Mike, and I nod to him as if to say go on, maybe you’ll pick someone up.

  It would be good if you had a girlfriend. Mike likes tall thin blondes, Lyubka used to be one once, but after Sevka was born, first she plumped out, and then she stopped dyeing her hair, saying everyone thought blondes were fools and that interfered with her work. Bearing in mind that she’s a lecturer in some college of the humanities it’s hard to understand what it could interfere with. As if anyone could make a brilliant career there.

  It’s not easy for Mike to find a tall thin blonde, even in hot summer Moscow. Even on Friday evening. Tall thin blondes aren’t very fond of men who are over thirty and weigh more than 220 pounds. On the dog park of the dance floor Mike looks like a bewildered bear. He suddenly turns out to be almost a head taller than everyone else, or maybe he’s just bigger. He dances the way they once used to dance at college discos: waving his arms around, stamping up and down on the spot, jerking his head, which many years ago used to be surrounded by long, flailing hippie hair, but now it looks as if a bear has just climbed out of the water and is trying to shake itself dry. Drops of sweat go flying in all directions – I guess that’s not very sexy either. The little hares, doggies and pussycats cringe out of the way, watching Bruin with a mixture of fear and mockery. The way the guy gets it on is a gas, but who the hell is he: what if he turns out to be a gangster and starts a shootout? I used to differentiate between gangsters and regular Moscow boys too. I used to think it was important.

  The fox-terrier girl squeezes her way through toward the bar, but she can’t get to it. She looks round, trying to find someone, I wave to her and point to an empty chair. Naturally, she comes over. “You’re a great dancer,” I say. The fox-terrier girl smiles with her little mouth and says “thank you.” She has a high voice with just a bit of a whine to it, exactly the kind a little puppy ought to have. “What can I get you?” I ask.

  You look at the menu, adjusting your two-tone bang. Your skin’s just a little bit dusky, or maybe that’s the lighting, but two glittering silver rings stand out on your ring finger and index finger. You choose a martini with juice. Now that you’re really close I can take a good look at you: a yellow top soaked in sweat, big gray eyes, snub nose.
I wonder what kind of noses fox terriers have and, by the way, what your name is. You say “Alice” and I smile in reply as if to say that’s a beautiful, wonderful name. Without waiting to be asked, you start telling me about yourself.

  When you speak, it’s not important what it’s about. What’s important is your intonation, which words you put in what order, the way you wrinkle up your little nose, the way you pick up your glass of martini with your dusky fingers. I can see straight away that you’re a good little girl, not some kind of little scrubber, just a good little girl who’s used to obeying her elders. You’re used to obeying, so when I say, an hour and a half and four martinis later, Let’s go to my place, you won’t object, you might just ask for my cell phone to call your mom, if you live with your mom. I can spot obedient girls anywhere in any crowd. Stop.

  Mike comes back – alone, just as I thought he would. “Listen, you don’t happen to have a blonde friend, the peroxide giraffe type? My friend’s bored and he’d like to have a dance or even just have a drink with someone. Take no notice that he’s such a big brute, in actual fact he’s a regular Moscow boy.” You half get up and start looking round the room for someone. Your dusky stomach shows under your short top, gathered in below the navel by the elastic of your red panties, which creep out half an inch above your tight pants, in the style of this summer.

  Mike sits down on a chair, you introduce yourselves. Your hands lie beside each other: Mike’s big hand with the signet ring and massive wedding ring, and your little hand with the cheap silver rings on the dusky fingers. So you work as a secretary and you call yourself a “receptionist,” which sounds a lot better, of course, because you know what everybody thinks about secretaries. They’re wrong to think that, by the way. I would guard a good secretary like the apple of my eye and protect her – not only from my colleagues and partners, but from myself. It’s very hard to find a good secretary. In hot summer Moscow it’s much easier to find a girl who’s prepared to sit at your table and drink a martini – the third glass, by the way – and tell you all about her life.