The Tool & the Butterflies

by Dmitry Lipskerov

  “There’s a few minutes left …”

  “For you, not me. I’ll be discharged at nine.”

  As he was leaving, she wanted to shout that they wouldn’t just discharge him, that the police had to question him first … But she didn’t. She just whispered.

  “And you don’t have any ID, you little demon!”

  Naked, shamelessly dangling a leg that now smelled like sex over the side of the sofa—that was how Savushkin found her when he showed up for his shift. Thinking that this dish had been prepared for him, he leapt on her naked body like an animal, sneezing twice, and then face-planted as he tried to take his pants and underwear off at the same time.

  “You’re such a prick, Savushkin!” Lilia said, reaching toward the bedside table and downing the last of the champagne straight from the bottle.

  The naked Petya, who was in the manly state and utterly beside himself, insulted yet aroused, didn’t hesitate. He firmly threw his classmate on her back. He took her—like a victorious knight, he thought—and she suddenly stopped trying to resist. She relaxed.

  “Just don’t come in me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She felt nothing: not Savushkin’s pinches, not his snotty kisses, not even him inside her. Lilia’s indifference to what was happening made Petya finish quickly, like he was running a 100-meter dash.

  Ten seconds, and the gong announced his victory. Visibly upset, Petya dressed quickly.

  “You’re frigid, Lilia! You’re a wrapper with no candy!”

  “You’re right, Savushkin. I’m frigid!” The trauma specialist made her get dressed, showered her with lewd insults, and ordered her out. He tidied up the staff room himself and found many traces of passion not left by him … this was not the work of his hands. He suddenly realized whom the physician’s assistant had spent her energy on and experienced a fit of rage. He called his wife, told her how stressed he was, and asked her for a psychotherapeutic session on the spot. Fuming, he told her how many bad people he had around him, how nasty and two-faced they were, how it was making him lose faith in himself, question whether there was anything special about him, and undermining his masculinity … His wise wife offered her support, but she suspected that something fishy was going on, so she tried to ascertain the actual sequence of events. Savushkin muttered something about how Lilia was crazy, how she’d tried to seduce him when he came into the staff room and found her naked. But, he, faithful husband that he was, stoically rebuffed her advances. Petya’s wife was a highly intelligent professional, and she instantly figured out what had really happened. Her significant other was no stoic. He’d been pining after Lilia since his college days, but when he finally got to sleep with her, something had gone awry during their intimate encounter and made him hysterical. She had a rough idea of what it was, too: she knew Savushkin and his physical capabilities, his tendency to shoot fast and miss the target. It had probably happened again that morning. She didn’t dig any deeper, though, just pretended she was entirely on her husband’s side, then told him that he was the best and that work was the best sedative. Savushkin was immeasurably grateful to his wife, since he really had calmed down almost immediately. The trauma specialist made a vow of love and devotion to her and began preparing for his morning rounds. There was only one thing dampening his mood, and that was the fact that his inspection would compel him to come into contact with the patient they admitted yesterday, the one with whom Lilia had apparently spent quite the wild night …

  “Trash!” our dear little Petya grumbled huffily.

  Meanwhile, Eugene, now arrayed in the black garments bestowed on him by Alice, was at the free phone booth in the hospital’s entry hall. He inquired if Mr. Iratov could come to the phone, and, when asked what his business was, he replied that it was personal and was told that they could not connect him without knowing what it was regarding, so the best they could do was put him through to Vitya, Iratov’s assistant. Seasoned aide that he was, Vitya instantly realized that this was no mere petitioner and could even be someone important to his boss.

  “Personal business?” he asked.

  “Precisely …”

  “Mr. Iratov is not in the office at the moment.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say that to begin with?”

  “Not to worry, I will connect you to Mr. Iratov’s mobile phone …”

  8

  The morning after he and Vera fought and then made up proved depressing. The gray sky was falling along with the snow, causing fits of some peculiar despair. The inadequacy he felt upon making a trip to the bathroom only deepened his foul mood. Iratov caught himself thinking that he wanted to grab his tool like a real man and send a taut stream into the toilet—or at least near it.

  For some reason, he didn’t want to see Vera at all. Some new attitude toward her had settled in his chest. He understood that a person who can’t do it almost always experiences feelings of enmity toward those who can … and do. Iratov tried to chase those thoughts away, telling himself that he could overcome all of it, and that what he’d lost wasn’t the most important part of his relationship with the woman he loved.

  He drank some coffee with a splash of cognac.

  “It’s a bit early,” he thought. “Not even nine yet.”

  With a menacing squeak, all the computer monitors in his study turned on at once. Leaving his unfinished coffee behind, Mr. Iratov ran over to the desk, glanced at the graphs displayed on the screens, sat down, visited several business websites, and realized that he’d lost something on the order of fifty million dollars that morning. The stock markets of China, Japan, and all of Asia had collapsed, falling by almost 7 percent.

  One must give Mr. Iratov his due, though. He always kept his head in those situations. He held that both triumphs and reversals on the market were inevitable, and they generally balanced each other out. There would always be busts, various Black Mondays and Fridays, but there was no precedent for markets failing to return to their historical maximums, even if it took them a while. Patience was the most important quality for an investor. Slumps come and go, but the green rally will still lead humanity ever upward. Iratov wrote a few emails to his brokers and instructed them to minimize his losses by betting against the currencies of developing countries, telling them which pairs would be most advantageous.

  Mr. Iratov turned away from his financial affairs and looked at the news. Not finding anything of interest, he could think of nothing better to do than type his own name into the search bar and press enter. There was no news about him personally either. Not even knowing why, he pressed the “images” button and saw numerous versions of his face. He looked at his young self winning various architecture prizes, then posing in his Bentley with some hip girl band, whom he’d unhurriedly plowed one after another, followed by endless parties and gatherings of every kind. He saw a rich, steady, confident man with a magical face that had enchanted a great many members of the opposite sex, from small-town airheads to Hollywood stars. Next came photographs where he was already with Vera. Formal events, the fashionable catwalks his wife loved, theater premieres, and even an official photograph of Mr. Arseny Andreivich Iratov receiving the Fourth-Class Medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland from the President of the Russian Federation.

  Iratov finished with the public photographs and moved on to his personal collection. He looked through the shots from his life, sometimes happy and sometimes less so. He even had a photo from his trial, when he was young—full face and in profile. He found himself remembering the prison camp near Vladimir, but he chased away those negative thoughts by clicking on the album labeled “USA.” Then he was young again, a rich speculator from Moscow who had just emigrated to America through Israel—tremendously rich, in fact, by the standards of the time … There he was, meeting the drivers of his own fleet of taxis. A hundred émigrés who owed their medallions to him, assembled and harkening to his speech. Iratov had been the one who figured out how to chase the Indian drivers and the other old-
time aces who had historically dominated the New York taxi business out of Brighton Beach. Outsiders and yellow cabs were only allowed to bring passengers into Brighton. There was no taking them the other direction; they’d always run empty. The residents of that half of Brooklyn could, and did, hire their own drivers—and much more cheaply, too. It couldn’t have been done without the help of the numerous boxers who had come to seek their fame and fortune in the American ring, only to fall one after another, like unripe apples in a strong wind. It was them, the sorcerers of pugilism, hungry as wolves, who ousted the interlopers from Brighton Beach … Then some gangster types tried to gain influence over him. They had arrived in the Land of the Free to hide from the Motherland’s justice and were once again appropriating other ethnic groups’ spheres of influence. They even knifed a couple of young athletes, who retaliated by gunning down some gangsters … But as a young man, Iratov had sworn that he’d never get mixed up with the pigs, and he had kept his word, despite all the problems dealing with gangsters had caused him. He resolved them quietly, with the help of a few diplomats who were actually GRU agents. Dealing with cops was beneath him, but spooks were cool … Photographs of his mother and father. They had both died while he was abroad. His father had a massive heart attack, then his mother followed him into the next world—quietly, the English way. She withered away without her husband and son … But for some reason, Iratov thought of his father more often—his head hunched over his drafting table, a funny little man with nearly red hair …

  Then he returned to Russia, a renewed country concealing within itself unlimited opportunities for those seeking to rise to Olympian heights of success. Mr. Iratov thrived. Thanks to his enormous financial resources, he opened his own architecture firm and assembled an energetic young staff. Within three months, he had designed an apartment building for major theater and film figures, which was erected right in the heart of Moscow. He ran around like an errand boy, visiting all those Honored Artists and Actors of the Soviet Union, making sure everything was set up properly, the interior design was comfortable, and the bathroom containing both toilet and shower—nearly unheard of in the Soviet Union—wasn’t too much of a shock … In memory of his father, who had given him his unrealized talent, Iratov had decided to bring his ideas to life, though he modernized them and added his own visionary spin. Naturally, it was impossible to put up buildings like that in Moscow; it was just boxes full of tiny apartments there—no creativity, not a drop of innovation. On the other hand, his ideas were in great demand elsewhere, both East and West. He built in Dubai, Japan, and Panama. He signed every design with his father’s name as well as his own.

  Iratov would sometimes visit Staroglebsky, the former president of the institute who had allowed the ex-con to graduate and receive his diploma as an architect, and his wife. He’d bring the elderly, poverty-stricken old couple the finest groceries and, just as in his college days, present him with pipe tobacco and her with Lucky Strikes.

  All his girlfriends from the institute—Shevtsova the Communist Youth League organizer, Katya the volleyball star, and all the rest—had long since gotten hitched and popped out kids. They were women now, not girls, and good for them! Iratov remembered when Shevtsova visited him after he’d returned from abroad. He had only just bought the office and started to put things in order. Chubby-cheeked, broad-bottomed, with DD breasts, she had asked nothing of him, not money, not special treatment for her husband. She just took a bottle of Moskovskaya out of her shopping bag, along with a half pound of choice sausage. She poured some vodka into the glasses she’d brought, proposed a toast to their reunion, and poured hers into herself. Iratov didn’t know how she got him going, how he wound up squeezed between her mighty legs, but Shevtsova neighed and rode him like a cavalryman. Iratov was as happy as his old girlfriend, especially when he saw her huge, firm breasts bouncing up and down—like basketballs … Then they sat there, naked, on newspapers spread across the floor, their bodies smeared with fresh whitewash, and finished the vodka.

  “Do you know who invented those table glasses you brought?”

  “Do glasses really have to be invented?” Shevtsova asked with a surprised laugh.

  “The famous architect Mukhina came up with the idea of a glass with facets. She improved the design of nails, too!”

  “No kiddin’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry, Iratov. I won’t come here again. I’m not unfaithful to my husband. I just wanted to remember the old days!”

  “Where’s Katya?”

  “Katya?” The former Communist Youth League girl was already dressed and adjusting her skirt. “She was working the Hotel National for a while, then she bought the farm in Turkey …”

  “Strange times …”

  “I’m off,” Shevtsova declared. “Gotta pick the kids up from school. Take care!” Iratov never saw her again.

  Once he had finished setting up the office and gotten to work on the practical aspects of architecture—in close collaboration with the mayor of Moscow—the line of visitors at his door was as long as at Lenin’s mausoleum. These were people who had come to see him personally. Some of them were proposing joint projects, going into oil or what have you, but he always refused.

  “Me, go into oil, really?” he’d say. Others suggested doing some joint design work. It was a boundless field, but he knew what he was about. What the hell did he need partners for? But mostly they were petitioners: old acquaintances, his friends, his parents’ friends. He threw the swindlers and interlopers out on their ears but helped the ones he actually recognized as best he could.

  One day, when Iratov was busy negotiating with some shifty businessmen from Singapore, his assistant, Vitya, informed him that an older woman had showed up with a kid of about fifteen.

  “Move it to tomorrow!” Mr. Iratov instructed.

  “She is prepared to wait. She said she won’t have the nerve to come again.”

  “Why can’t it be tomorrow?”

  “She is not certain that she wants to see you, but this seems important.”

  “Did she introduce herself at least?”

  “Yes,” Vitya replied. “She says her name is Svetlana.” He turned that name around in his mind for a while, but it didn’t ring a bell. He still asked his assistant to have the petitioners give him another fifteen minutes.

  “Bring them in during the break.”

  “Very good, Mr. Iratov.” When the aging, simply dressed woman and the kid stepped into his office, he was fully convinced that he had no clue who she was, but the boy … He said hello, asked them to sit down, and inquired to what he owed this honor.

  “I told you he wouldn’t recognize me,” the woman said, turning toward her son. Iratov really didn’t recognize her. But that voice! There was something in its melody that sent his soul into the past, into his late teens. He thought hard … “Let’s go,” she said quietly to the kid.

  They rose from their cozy armchairs, the woman apologized for disturbing him, Iratov nodded in both parting and pardon … He sat there for a few minutes, his gaze detached, still lost in remembrance of his youth. When he had almost broken loose, flown out of his heavy meditative state, when his thoughts had nearly jumped over the boundary dividing past and present, Iratov burst from his stupor, suddenly remembering. It couldn’t be! He sprang out of his chair and, leaving his jacket behind, his collar unbuttoned, charged after that strange pair, running down the street, looking in every direction, searching for her with pain and passion in his eyes. When he saw them standing by the trolleybus stop, poplar fuzz falling on their shoulders, he shouted as he had once shouted in his youth, in blinkered impotence and despair.

  “Svetla-a-n-a!” The name carried down the avenues and alleyways of Moscow. “Svetla-a-n-a!”

  She turned around. He was already running toward her, and his hair fluttered in the wind. He stopped in front of her, still breathing rapidly.

  “Svetlana! Is it really you?”

  She nod
ded. He convinced her to come back to the office and led her into his private room, where he made coffee and broke up a big chocolate bar.

  “So … how are you?” he asked, taking her hands in his. Her palms were soft and moist.

  “Well … how can I tell you about my whole life?”

  “You’re right … Maybe the boy can take a tour of the office in the meantime? We have a big sheet of Whatman paper you can draw on,” Iratov said, turning toward Svetlana’s son—and once again, he felt like he had seen that face before. “We have a thousand felt-tips!”

  “Okay,” the boy agreed, and a minute later Vitya had taken him away to explore the architecture firm.

  “Well, how are you?” “You already asked that,” she said with a smile.

  “Yeah …”

  He sat there in silence, suddenly realizing that he had nothing to say to her. Their shared past had been so fleeting, like a single night and day, but it contained his first love and his first true suffering.

  “How’s that husband of yours?”

  She shrugged, and Iratov felt an unbearably strong desire to hold the past against her: the package sent from an exotic land, stealing his naiveté. But he just couldn’t. It’s impossible to be mad at the aging woman who saved you from spending your life with an aging woman. You just have to thank her!

  He put his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair just as she once had, twisting his black ringlets around her fingers. Iratov realized he could only do this with her—bury his face in her lap and let himself be a little weak. His mother was dead, and it had never even occurred to him to put his trust in the women who came in and out of his life. He asked her son’s name.

  “Arseny …”

  “Like me. Did you name him after me?”

  “No, after the poet, Tarkovsky.”

  “Oh yeah … that’s good … Arseny Gryazev.”

  “Arseny Iratov,” Svetlana corrected him, and her knees were suddenly tense.

  He had never given serious thought to children before, nor was he inclined to now. Hearing such startling, fateful information that could change his life forever didn’t even make Iratov flinch. For an instant, he thought that Svetlana was pinning Gryazev’s kid on him, but he immediately understood that it wasn’t like that. He also realized what he had recognized in the boy’s face—himself, his own face at thirteen.