Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  “I haven’t killed anyone”

  And my heart was filled with gratitude

  If it is a dream, then I have been given one more chance,

  Perhaps I will understand how to live differently in this world

  The sun came up and I carried on weeping

  And promised myself that this would never happen again

  I went to the dacha and collected all the souvenirs that I had kept

  The cut-off nipples, cut-out lips, eyes, even fingers

  Took it all into the forest, buried it as deep as I could,

  And then tried to forget that place

  * * *

  And then I carried on living, taking no notice of the black cocoon, of the objects that seemed to wink at me and ask “remember?”, of the girls in the subway, in whose eyes I read a premonition of pain that would never be realized. I like to ride the subway, although I’ve had a car for a long time now. Under the ground electric light falls on people’s skin quite differently, the subway is just another concrete basement. That’s why the fates of all the passengers can be read so easily on their faces.

  One day I was on my way to a birthday party, about six months after that night. At the change for the Circle Line a girl got in, wearing cheap trainers completely soaked through and wide trousers with numerous pockets and for some reason a raincoat, with water streaming off it. Her long, light-colored hair was sticking to her cheeks and neck, she unbuttoned the raincoat and took it off. She was probably a little older than twenty, and when she bent down to put the raincoat into a plastic bag, I saw the wet hair lying on her back like sleeping snakes. Light-colored hair, slightly wavy, damp from the rain.

  She straightened up and saw that now her soaking-wet T-shirt was clinging tightly to her small but slightly drooping breasts. She raised her eyebrows and laughed – and at that laugh the train slowed down and people froze as if they had been caught in the gaze of the Medusa. It was the laughter, not the breasts, the laughter, the laughter, although even now I still remember that one nipple was right in the round eye of the letter R, a light-colored T-shirt, red letters. I bit my lips, squeezed my eyes tight shut – and before time was switched back on, I visualized every detail of the concrete basement, with a body crucified in the air. I knew her pubis was not shaved, she had a little gold ring in her navel, a rose tattooed on her buttock, and the light-colored downy fluff on her legs was so tender that I couldn’t touch it without tears springing to my eyes. I knew in advance that she would die on the fifth day, her heart would give out.

  I opened my eyes and the sound of her laughter was still in the air. I walked to the farthest door of the car and for the rest of the journey I felt as if I was limping and her severed head was attached to my leg with an invisible chain, like a convict’s ball. Laughter on her lips, but her light-colored hair was like Medusa’s snakes.

  I got out at the next stop, walked up to the street and took a taxi. I felt as if all the objects were looking at me, the hairs on my body were standing up on end, I couldn’t tell the noise of the cars from the noise of the blood in my ears. In the corridor a friend shook my hand: I twitched as if I’d got an electric shock. I took off my jacket and went into the room. The party was in full flow, lots of people I knew well, a couple of friends and a few girls I’d slept with some time or other. I drank with everyone else, joked and laughed. Then at a certain moment I got up, went to the kitchen, opened a drawer and took out a small knife from IKEA. Without even looking round to check if anyone could see me, I jabbed the knife straight through my jeans into my right thigh. The blood ran down my leg, but the flash of pain sobered me. The noise in my ears faded away, objects returned to their places, my skin recovered its usually sensitivity. I took a Band-Aid out of the first-aid kit, went to the restroom and covered the wound.

  In the next month I killed three times.

  36

  DO EMPIRES REALLY COLLAPSE BECAUSE OF WOMEN? IS the shape of Cleopatra’s nose really all that important? Was Anne of Austria the Duke of Buckingham’s mistress and if so, how did that affect the siege of La Rochelle? How many men had Olga Krushevnitskaya had, and how many of them had been prepared to sacrifice anything at all for her? What was the most beautiful woman of the classical world called? What was the name of the greatest beauty of the graduating class of 1985 in the Faculty of Experimental and Theoretical Physics?

  Olga gets out of her Toyota, nods to the security guard, takes the elevator up to the rented office. Five minutes till the start of the meeting. Sixty-five minutes to the moment when everything will be decided. If there is anyone who can pray for me, thinks Olga, let them do it now. Vlad, my brother, light a candle to Ganesha, burn some incense to your Buddha, or as a last resort simply smoke a few grains of hash to my success. Ksyusha, wish me luck.

  They meet at the door of the elevator on the first floor. They ride upward without saying a word. They hesitate for a second before going in: the door is too narrow for two people. Grigorii gives way, Konstantin goes in and they sit down.

  It’s not possible to seat three people at a round table so that any two of them are not next to each other. They would have been glad to sit facing each other, but they end up sitting almost shoulder to shoulder – more like teammates than rivals – with their elbows touching, as if they are sitting at the front desk, at a seminar on quantum electronics or plasma physics.

  She was called Helen, la Belle Hélène. Troy was destroyed because of her – and twenty-two years ago her namesake put an end to the friendship between Grigorii and Konstantin forever. Olga knows about this, and if she loses everything today, that means the shape of Cleopatra’s nose is more important than conscious calculation, beauty is more powerful than will, old grudges are more important than reason.

  Olga starts unhurriedly, approaching the subject gradually, as if they are having an ordinary business meeting. She shows them tables, moving the diagrams closer first to one of them, then to the other. She puts them in the middle of the table – and two heads are lowered over the quarterly balance.

  “What’s this, the statements for the tax office?” asks Kostya.

  “Unfortunately not,” replies Olga. “That’s what we really have.”

  “Fucking awful,” says Grisha and moves back from the table: he’s seen everything and he doesn’t want to sit beside Kostya anymore.

  If this were a game of chess, thinks Olga, we’d have to play according to some weird set of rules. We have to reconcile the two kings, and all we have are the phantoms of pieces that were taken long ago and the shadows of pieces not yet introduced into the game. The board is practically empty: there are only three pieces on it.

  How many tablets to take to begin with and how many later? How soon will the bleeding start? How painful will it be? La Belle Hélène didn’t have to answer these questions – the method of drug-induced abortion was not widespread four thousand or even twenty years ago.

  Olga carries on talking. She talks about why expenditure has increased, says that in a few months they can just close the business down. She realizes both the others know this just as well as she does – but she talks at a relaxed pace, as if she is trying to lull them to sleep. They’re probably thinking: what a clueless bint. She’s just wasting our time here. We should have told her to fuck off straight away. Now I have to sit next to this lousy creep.

  They sat side by side the whole semester. Elbow to elbow, head beside head. For the whole semester they stuck to their guns and fought determinedly to win la Belle Hélène. They wrote her class notes for her and did her laboratory work. They brought her flowers and plied her with cheap sweet wine. La Belle Hélène smiled graciously and didn’t grant her favors to either of them.

  How many men were there in her life afterward? How many of them did she really love? Did she ever really love anyone? If she did, then that fortunate man wasn’t Grisha or Kostya. By the end of the year they’d realized that themselves.

  Here are the answers to the questions that Olga as
ked the doctor: first two, then three. It won’t be any more painful than an ordinary period. Bleeding within twenty-four hours.

  Her body works like a chronometer. Twenty-five hours have gone by and nothing’s happening. Olga looks at Kostya and Grisha, at Konstantin and Grigorii, at the two kings, the two student boys.

  “What are we going to do?” she asks. “I want to ask you as the major investors: do you have a comprehensive development plan? What can you suggest to cut costs?”

  She knows the answer: they have to go back to the old system, make the old discounts available on banner ads in Grisha’s holding company, make support available from Kostya’s resources. She knows the answer and she knows they both know it.

  Neither of them says anything, and then Olga launches her gambit with a cautious, almost meaningless move. It is no more than a vague threat, a feeler.

  “For instance, we can sell the company. If we do it now, at least we’ll get something.”

  She reads disappointment in their faces. Is that it? Is that what we were brought here for?

  “Garbage,” says Grisha, “nobody will buy it.”

  “No,” Kostya says, nodding, “there aren’t any players in our market who can support it properly. You can see for yourself what the costs are. Nobody will be interested.”

  Yes, it’s not nice having to agree with each other, but Olga’s suggestion is so absurd, there’s nothing else they can do.

  “Well, we can look for someone from the outside,” says Olga.

  Who was the newcomer from the outside twenty-two years ago?

  How did he enchant la Belle Hélène? Why did she get married in such a rush that her two suitors didn’t even have the time to make peace with each other in the face of their common defeat?

  Olga doesn’t know his name. Everyone she has spoken to about this story has simply called him the “embassy boy” as if he had no individual features, only generic ones. Two weeks after the wedding the young couple flew off to join his parents in Paris – which, to Olga’s philological turn of mind, gave the story yet another point of contact with the story of Beautiful Helen and Paris, the prince of Troy.

  Unlike Menelaus, Grigorii and Konstantin were not able to pursue the fugitive. She and her abductor were securely shielded by the iron curtain – a far stronger protective screen than the one created by Aphrodite when she helped Paris and Helen flee from Sparta.

  They were young and ambitious. Each of them saw the other as a witness of his own miserable failure. Their friendship ended, giving way to rivalry: the university faculty become too cramped for them, it was followed by trading in computers, and now the small industry of the Russian internet.

  “I don’t think anyone from the outside will be interested,” Kostya says uncertainly.

  “But if some wanker does turn up, we’ll sell him the company, why not?” says Grisha.

  And then Olga introduces a new piece into the game, a piece for which there is no term in traditional chess. An Outsider, a King from a different board.

  “I have a buyer,” she says.

  “And what’s his price?” asks Kostya.

  “Does he want to buy our shares or the entire company?” asks Grisha.

  “He only wants to buy one of your shares,” says Olga, “and my share to go with it.”

  Is it possible to hold on to a company in which you don’t hold a controlling block of shares? Is it possible to earn profit from it if you simply put in money but don’t sit in the office every day as Olga Krushevnitskaya does? Do Olga’s block of shares and the block of either of the other shareholders add up to a controlling interest?

  Answers: no, no, yes.

  “You mean he only wants to take a controlling interest?” says Kostya.

  “And he wants to throw one of us out of the business,” says Grisha.

  “Yes,” says Olga, nodding, “that seems logical to me. You don’t want to work together any longer.”

  The two kings hesitate, the phantom of la Belle Hélène appears at the far side of the board.

  “Please understand,” Olga continues, “I am only doing this because I want to save the company one way or another. I don’t want it to go under for no good reason.”

  Perhaps in chess that would have been called “stalemate”. Neither side has a move that they can make. If one of them gets up and says “I’ll sell my stake,” the other will immediately name a lower price.

  In this situation can you toss a coin? Or should you trust a random numbers generator? Perhaps it would be better to go away now and conduct a round of backstage negotiations? How obvious is their outcome?

  Yes, it is obvious. The buyer, whoever he might be, has the opportunity to carry on knocking down the price ad infinitum. When there are two sellers, one buyer, and the item for sale is losing value every day, the price inevitably tends toward zero.

  There is only one question left, and they ask it mostly as a formality, because it still seems to them that the answer to it is not all that important.

  “By the way, who is he?” says Kostya.

  And then Olga tells them the name.

  “I only have a vague idea…” Grisha begins, but Olga says: “I’ll explain everything.”

  She begins. Ksyusha remembered very well everything that Pasha Silverman dug up through his contacts. Olga repeats what she said, adding almost nothing from herself.

  How many attempts have been made on the life of This Man? How many failed criminal proceedings have been instigated against him?

  Two and three. Exactly like the tablets, although that, of course, is pure coincidence.

  How much do the doctors play down the possible pain when they prescribe the tablets that induce a miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy?

  Answer: substantially.

  Can it be regarded as coincidence that it was while recounting the criminal background of the new buyer that Olga experienced the first powerful spasm? Did Grisha notice that she clutched at the edge of the table? Did Kostya pay attention to how pale she turned? Had she said enough before excusing herself and leaving the room?

  Yes, quite enough.

  The two kings say nothing. Now the picture is clear: not only is it being suggested that they should give the company away for a song – it is being suggested that they themselves should introduce the wolf into their own fold. It is being suggested that they make a deal that will fundamentally change the balance of power on the internet market, bring in a player who will not stop until he takes away from them everything that they have.

  Has even one contract killing been committed in the Russian internet in the 1990s and 2000s? How important is a negative answer to that question for the self-image of the players on the internet market? How often do internet businessmen resort to the services of gangsters and/or the law enforcement agencies in their competitive struggle? How do they feel, knowing that the answer to this question is “extremely rarely”?

  The two kings sit there motionless at the round table. They raise their eyes to look at each other. Two phantoms hover in the room like pillars of mist: the specter of la Belle Hélène, which has almost melted away, and the specter of the Outsider, the King from a different board. He becomes more palpable with every moment that passes.

  “In principle, we do have another way out,” says Kostya.

  “Yes,” says Grisha, “we can not sell the company and go back to the old arrangement.”

  “I think that’s the best solution,” says Kostya, and holds his hand out across the table.

  Grisha shakes it.

  At that moment the IT manager, successful businesswoman and executive director of the company that has just been saved, Olga Krushevnitskaya, is writhing in agony from an intense spasm as she waits for a pain killer to take effect.

  Does she realize that she has won? Not yet.

  Has she met This Man even once? No, not even once.

  Has This Man ever even heard of the little internet shop? No, never.

 
Does he take any interest at all in the Russian internet? No, none at all.

  * * *

  Is it true what they say, that woman can save the world? Who will Jesus be, when and if he comes to Earth again? Are the radical feminists right when they claim that no man could endure monthly menstruation?

  Did Olga Krushevnitskaya cry after her investors left the office of the company that had just been saved? And if so, what was the reason for her tears: physical pain? The bitterness of loss? The joy of victory? Is it really so very important for us to receive an unambiguous answer to that question?

  37

  11.23 alien

  Are you there?

  11.23 Ksenia

  Yes, I’m writing a column. Are you busy?

  11.23 alien

  No.

  11.24 Ksenia

  Then ask me to do something.

  11.25 alien

  Ask?

  11.25 Ksenia

  I meant to say “order.” I like it when you order me.

  11.26 alien

  Can you break off from work for five minutes?

  11.26 Ksenia

  Don’t ask me. For you – always.

  11.26 alien

  The pencil you used last week, is it still on your desk?

  11.27 Ksenia

  I think so.

  11.27 alien

  You think so or definitely?

  11.27 Ksenia

  Definitely, definitely

  I’ll mark it. I’ll brand it with a special brand. Do you have a branding iron?

  11.28 alien

  You’ll find out in good time Is it still sharp?

  11.28 Ksenia

  Yes, I don’t use it.

  11.29 alien

  Very good. Then open your legs and stick the pointed end into your vagina.

  11.29 Ksenia

  E-e-er… Dearest brother, there are a lot of people here and I’m wearing trousers, so that’s a bit difficult.