Butterfly Skin

by Sergey Kuznetsov

  It’s actually very difficult to cut off a large breast with a single stroke. It takes practice – maybe the characters in the movie actually had it. But anyway, I didn’t see what happened to the blonde’s breasts – not because the camera skipped prudishly to her contorted face, but because at the moment when the machete entered the flesh I jerked spasmodically, grabbed Larisa’s breasts tight and came abundantly.

  Usually I could hold out for quite a long time; Larisa didn’t like condoms and we used to practice coitus interruptus, so she swore, jumped off me and ran into the bathroom. I lay there on my back for a while. My heart was pounding and my body was trembling convulsively.

  I guess Larisa’s probably put in a coil now or she takes the pill. Whatever, but she doesn’t have any other children, and she’s not likely to: America’s the place where businesswomen have children when they’re approaching forty. I’d like to ask her about that, but it’s kind of awkward.

  When we separated I was twenty-four and she was twenty-seven, but now it seems to me that we were complete children who knew nothing of our own desires and were afraid of our own feelings. I wanted to be a rock star, she wanted to be a zoologist, like her mother. She’s ended up as a manager in a large Western firm that produces animal feed. I guess that’s zoology too.

  A little less than a month later we learned that my sperm had not gone to waste: the regulation period was followed by the birth of Denis, my son conceived from a stroke of a machete that severed those breasts so similar to the breasts of his mother.

  I think that now Larisa’s heavy breasts have sagged even more and the fat has probably built up on her thighs. She was always afraid of getting fat, so maybe she has liposuction, follows Dr. Volkov’s method for slimming or goes to Fitness Planet twice a week. I’d like to ask about that, but it’s kind of awkward. She’s getting old, all women get old and they try to hide it. Time deals mercilessly with their flesh that is so beautiful in its youth – they get old and covered in wrinkles, put on fat and then die. But the girls I have killed will stay young forever.

  Larisa drinks her coffee and says they make good coffee in the Coffee Inn, but not as good as I once used to make. Really? I’ve already forgotten how I used to brew coffee back then. Since then I’ve become highly skilled in this art, especially with all the new kinds that have appeared. Does her new husband know how to make coffee? I’d like to ask about that, but it’s kind of awkward.

  It’s hard for me meeting Larisa. Usually I just call into her office, but today she suggested getting together for lunch and I couldn’t refuse, especially since I’ve been in an excellent mood since early morning. After all, she is the woman I loved for six years – longer than any other woman in my life. I used to dream of waking up together every morning and going to sleep together every night, every month breathing in the smell of unborn children leaving her womb when their time came and then, when we started to get old, watching every day as the gray hairs sprouted through her black tresses.

  I was very young and I knew nothing about myself, but that’s not so very important. I licked her body for three years, I knew every square inch of her skin and could tell if she had started menstruating the moment I caught sight of the figure in the artificial blue fur at the far end of the subway platform. Today I look at the artificial platinum hair, the too-regular teeth, the green-tinted eyes and I can’t reach the Larisa I once used to love.

  Now she’s telling me that her old friend Mashka – I remember her: a skinny woman with chestnut hair and incredibly beautiful arms – almost got divorced, but she and her husband went to a marriage counselor and now they’re perfectly happy again.

  We got divorced when Denis was a year old. Larisa went back to work and she was sent to Europe for a week for training. I stayed home with the child. In the evening, when he was already asleep, I used to lie in bed, masturbating. During the first year of our life together I hadn’t done this very often: the door to the shower didn’t lock, and I was frightened by the thought of my wife finding out that I wanked like a teenager. We never talked about it and I was sure she never masturbated herself. If we’d met as adults, I could easily have asked a direct question, but now it’s kind of awkward.

  During Larisa’s pregnancy I rediscovered the taste for masturbation that had almost been lost since my schooldays. Early toxicosis was followed by the danger of a miscarriage and then by late toxicosis, it was a difficult birth and there was no question of sex for three months. It’s curious that it didn’t occur to either of us to recall our rich experience of petting. That night when Larisa was on her training in Europe I came quite quickly – and when I returned to reality, I heard Denis, who was standing up in his little cot, shouting: “Daddy, Daddy!”

  He could hardly have seen anything. Most likely he had got hungry, woken up and started crying. I got up. My right hand and the lower part of my stomach were covered in semen. I darted into the bathroom, swearing and holding down my prick that still hadn’t wilted. For a second I remembered how Larisa had sworn and darted into the bathroom on that night when we made our son. Denis is eleven years old now. He calls Larisa’s new husband Daddy, and I think that’s a good thing. Larisa tells me our son recently won some kind of prize in the academic competitions at school, and I don’t know if I can feel proud of this: after all, I’m not raising the child and my entire contribution to him amounted to a few cubic millimeters of semen released into his mother when I saw a blow from a machete sever a woman’s heavy breasts.

  That night I realized that we had to separate. As I held the bottle that my son was sucking on, I was acutely aware that right now I was doing something monstrous, perhaps more monstrous than everything else that I was going to do. A man who has just ejaculated, picturing to himself a woman with her eyes gouged out and her breasts covered with stab wounds from a corkscrew, has no right to feed a child. He has no right to hold a bottle of breast milk in his hand, even if it is artificial breast milk, as artificial as Larisa’s blue fur and her greenish eyes.

  I was a very good father. I loved my son very much. I didn’t want to hand on to him the hell in which I had lived all my life. That hell was hidden so deep that I forgot about it myself, and only occasionally an image in a movie, a phrase spoken by someone, a dream out of nowhere plunged me back into it. Perhaps I got it from my father – I’d have liked to ask him about that, but it was kind of awkward. What answer would he have given me? Yes, son, I have also lived in hell all my life? I’m sorry you ended up with a piece of it? I didn’t want my son to have even a part of the hell that I lived in. I thought it would be better if he never saw a man who knew that his appearance on Earth had resulted, not from the melding of two loving bodies, but from a machete blow that severed his mother’s breasts.

  “I wonder,” Larisa suddenly says, “if we’d gone to a counselor, would that have saved our marriage?”

  I shrug. It would have been awkward for me to ask about this, especially since Larisa still doesn’t know why I divorced her. Luckily for me, a month later she had a casual office affair, and she repentantly confessed her first infidelity to me. I pretended to be shattered and that evening I left home and went to Mike’s place, and two days later I rented an apartment. I’m ashamed to admit it today, but for an entire year, while our divorce was going on, I took pleasure in the fact that Larisa felt she was guilty. I remember that one day she came to my place slightly drunk and tried to persuade me to come back. I played the offended husband, kept repeating “no, no,” and then she went down on her knees and crawled toward me, whining. While she was unbuttoning my fly, it occurred to me that I liked this kind of behavior, and if she acted like that all the time, I wouldn’t mind carrying on seeing her. Since then, many girls have stood on their knees in front of me, crying, but the first time is always special. The blow job didn’t turn out all that well, though. Maybe because she was still crying, or maybe because she didn’t take her spectacles off.

  That Larisa, tearful and drunk, is even harder t
o see today than the twenty-year-old girl whose heavy breasts I used to fondle on the top floor of all the apartment blocks in the neighborhood. I feel ashamed of that last blow job – but what else could I do? Larisa always acted up when I bought the latest volume of de Sade, who had just started to be translated extensively, and she walked out of the room almost as if she was making a point when Mike and I watched Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS or some other movie of the same kind. As if I’d said to her: dear Larisa, the only things that arouse me are blood and violence, blood and violence. The marriage counselor would have been very surprised too.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “it was so long ago. We were mere children, we didn’t know what we wanted. I dreamed of being a rock star and you dreamed of being a scientist. So it’s hard to imagine now…”

  “But do you regret now that you got divorced?” she asks, and I realize that the old resentment is still alive. I don’t think she has ever stood on her knees, crying, in front of anybody else.

  “Of course I regret it,” I reply, “the way things turned out with you was stupid, and I loved Denis very much. And you?”

  This time she shrugs.

  “No. Everything’s just fine with me. Denis calls Oleg Daddy. I guess it’s actually good that things turned out the way they did…”

  At that moment, just for a second, I imagine that she already knew all about me back then – about masturbating in the shower, about de Sade, about my fantasies, about the machete slicing off the breasts on the TV screen, she knew, but regarded it as endearing eccentricity, nothing serious. Maybe all my friends know and they simply don’t take any notice? People have all kinds of fantasies.

  “Everything’s absolutely fine with me,” Larisa repeats, “but how about you – are you happy with your life? We meet every month, but we don’t ask about the most important things.”

  It would be awkward for me to ask about the most important things, and for a second I freeze. Not because I’m trying to weigh up if everything’s okay with me, but because at that moment I see you. You’re standing on tip-toe so that the sharp point of the stake is jammed into your crotch and your arms, raised above your head, are chained to rings set into the ceiling.

  That’s how I left you this morning and I think your legs must be tired by now. You’re starting to sink lower, little by little, the stake is entering deeper, the blood is flowing onto the floor. You have beautiful, slim thighs, with no cuts on them – yet. I’ll come back late, untie you and wash your wounds, I’ll caress your left breast and remember Larisa in her artificial blue fur jacket. I’ll feed you the best dinner I can cook, pour the wine, and then tell you a story about a little boy and a little girl who grew up in a country far away. They were afraid of sex, they felt ashamed in front of each other, it took them three years to lose their virginity. Since then they’ve grown up, I’ll say, matured a great deal, come to understand many things, but they will never be able to talk to each other about this. This is the most important thing. I’ll ask you to give me a blow job, in memory of the days when Larisa still used to wear spectacles. And afterward I’ll brew coffee, which I know how to do, and pour it – straight from the pot – onto your face.

  “But how about you – are you happy with life?” Larisa asked. I remembered you and replied:

  “I’m happy.”

  * * *

  I used to dream of being a rock and roll star. Of screaming out the injustice of the world and my own suffering. Of standing on a stage, covered in blood, like Iggy Pop or Nick Rock’n’Roll. I guess my dream came true.

  I became a serial killer.

  41

  TRY A PENCIL WITH A SHARP POINT. TRY MASTURBATING for exactly twenty seconds once every fifteen minutes. Time yourself and report on your performance. Try putting the clamps on your nipples before the daily briefing and sitting like that for an hour. Don’t faint. If you do, tell him about it when you come round. Try typing with just your left hand for a whole day. Try buying the very heaviest earrings you can find. Go to a workshop and ask them to make some even heavier. Try to feel the pain in your ear lobes every moment.

  Try simply talking to him.

  14.26 Ksenia

  Do you want me to tell you something funny?

  14.26 alien

  Yes. I like your funny stories.

  14.26 Ksenia

  I read it yesterday in a forum, I don’t know if you’ll find it funny, but Marina and I laughed a lot. A girl wrote that she was walking home and she thought a psycho was following her. But luckily she met some of her friends who were really drunk, coming back from a party. She ran up to them, told them what was going on, and the whole bunch set off to escort her. But the man, the one who was supposed to be a psycho, carried on following them. And then one of these guys said: “shit, he’s really pissed me off, I’ll go and sort him out.” He walks over to the man, says something to him quickly – and the man immediately turns round and runs away. Well, everyone asks him what it was he said. Of course, the young guy acts stubborn, but then he confesses: “I leaned down to him and I said: you’re a sex maniac, and I’m a sex maniac too.” That’s all.

  14.28 alien

  14.29 Ksenia

  Just imagine if he was some ordinary passer-by! How frightened he must have been: a group of drunks, some young guy who comes over and says he’s a sex maniac.

  14.29 alien

  14.29 Ksenia

  I realize it’s a rather specific kind of humor…

  14.30 alien

  No, it’s fine, I liked it. I understand, it’s a professional thing with you.

  Try loving a man without any flesh. Try living every day dashing from one computer to another. Try seeing it, even as you go to sleep, that yellow ICQ rectangle blinking in the corner of the screen. Try picturing a man when you don’t even know his name. Try explaining all this to your friends. Try not being offended by their jokes.

  22.12 Marina

  Maybe he’s a freak? An invalid with only one finger?

  22.12 Ksenia

  No, he types too quickly.

  22.13 Marina

  A Chechen war veteran with no legs. A ninety-year-old impotent. Actually a woman. The mannish lesbian sadist type.

  22.13 Ksenia

  Just a little bit longer and I’ll agree to meet, even if that’s all true.

  22.14 Marina

  Even all of it at once?

  Try to explain. Try to find the words. So what if I’ve never seen him. Women love with their ears. Yes, yes, their ears. With the lobes of their ears. With the tips of their fingers. With a lip bitten so hard that it hurts. With aching nipples. With the inner surfaces of thighs, jabbed all over with a sharp pencil. With a damp throbbing between their legs. With their entire body.

  Try to tell him about yourself. Try not to hide anything. Try to find the words. Try to remember everything: Mom, Dad, Lyova, Nikita. Try not to hide anything. Try to tell him about your work. Try to tell him your name. Try not to be disappointed that it doesn’t mean anything to him. Try to accept that all fame has its limits. Try to come to terms with the fact that journalists exaggerate the importance of their work.

  Try to describe everything that you have at home. The cat-o’-nine-tails, the whip, the riding crop, the nipple clamps, the gag. Try to tell him how all these objects can be used. Offer several different alternatives to choose from. Promise to go to the special sex shop and buy what’s missing. Try to make sure that afterward you have enough money to last to the end of the month. Try to list the ordinary objects you used to use before. Clothes pegs, hair pins, sewing needles, shards of glass. Try to think up a few more. Suggest that he could bring something with him.

  Try not to talk about sex. Try not to talk about playing. Try simply to talk. Try not to get aroused while you do it.

  14.46 alien

  Good. You told me a funny story, and now I want a frightening one.

  14.46 Ksenia

  A frightening story about the tortures you’re going to subject me
to?

  14.46 alien

  No need for that. Just some frightening story.

  14.48 Ksenia

  All right then. During the war in Yugoslavia a female journalist ended up beside a sniper. He was lying in an attic somewhere, the windows looked out onto a large square, with a clear view of everything. They were talking about something, and suddenly a woman carrying a box of food appeared in the square. The town was under siege, there wasn’t much food, so she carried the box with great care. The sniper took aim, and the journalist said to him: “Hey, what’s this, are you going to kill that woman?” – “No,” the sniper replied, “I’ll just frighten her.” He fired into the box and the food scattered across the ground. But the woman wasn’t frightened and she started gathering it up. And then the sniper killed her with his second shot.

  14.48 alien

  A good story. Why do you think it’s so frightening?

  14.49 Ksenia

  Because you can feel it has a hidden meaning that you can’t quite grasp. At first I thought it was a parable about the way we cling to material comforts when our very life is at stake: if the woman had run, the sniper might not have shot her.