“Gee, I don’t know. Did the Romans have phones?”
“But how will you know when it’s time for you to go back?”
“They have their own methods there,” the Greek chuckled. “So you’re always waiting for a call?”
“Yes, I will admit it. Sometimes I call, too, when I’m feeling despondent …”
“And you’re just waiting and waiting, like you called tech support!” Antipatros laughed, and his laughter was like a cough from ages past. “Which way are you going?”
“Following the Boulevard Ring.”
“Garden Ring for me.” The old Greek laughed again, or coughed, and ran to the right, away from me.
I’m no fool either. I’ve known for a long time that something grand is in the works, and the fact that the old Greek has parted his lips at last only serves to confirm my conclusions. I ran, dreaming that something revolutionary, along with that something grand, would happen to me …
The sky ruptured at last, and a wall of rain assembled from all over the world fell on Moscow. I looked for an awning to stand under so I could wait out the storm and found one in front of a restaurant. I stood under its protection, or, more accurately, continued my run there, but just did it in place.
Then I saw her. Perfection. The tender oval of her face appeared through the wet plate glass of the eatery, and not even the rain could wash that miraculous image away. She had a coffee cup in her hand, white against her white sweater with a neckline somewhere between nakedness and attire … Verushka! I couldn’t see who she was sitting with, conversing breezily and flirting lightly. Her Iratov, I dare say—but how could that be? What good was he to her now?
I took a step under the ocean falling from above and saw a young man—indeed, a young man—a little over twenty, strikingly similar in appearance to the old Iratov. It wasn’t him, though! It wasn’t him, even though they were like two peas in a pod! His son? Impossible! I know all of Iratov’s children: Alevtina’s son, Joseph, God rest his soul, his scion born of Svetlana, and the girl Masha from the foreign currency store had … No, it was an outsider! I looked at the stranger and felt enmity toward him. Even through the glass, my nose picked up the scent of their recent illicit copulation. Forgetting about the marathon, I grabbed the massive door handle and entered the restaurant with a warlike cast to my face. I even felt sorry for the older Iratov, who had suffered such misfortune. I would have approached the young man, but then my chest collided with the huge hand of the manager.
“Where you goin’?” the shift boss asked with a scornful squint, studying my admittedly drenched raiment. He kept poking my chest, trying to push me back into the mighty downpour.
“Well, to the restaurant, of course.”
“Whaddaya want?”
“Just some tea—it’s cold out there on the broad boulevards of Moscow. I must say, this isn’t what I’d call service.”
“Make tea at home.”
“Why?” I was getting annoyed.
“Because I say so! We have a dress code! Beat it!”
“How about some hot water?”
“Out!” The manager shoved me in the chest with both hands, but I was not disposed to give in, so I stood there like a stone statue, not even flinching. The eatery employee, a man with the physique of a bodybuilder, was surprised at this. He looked at his ham-bone arms, then at me. “Resisting, huh?!” He hit me again, this time in the solar plexus. His knuckles struck the steel of my stomach; he groaned and stepped away from me, looking down at his mangled fist. I can take a few hits when necessary, and even defend myself if the situation calls for it.
“Don’t lose your cool,” I warned him.
“I’ll call the police!” the manager warned me right back, still cringing in pain.
“Go right ahead! They’ll find out about your illegal second credit card terminal that sends money to your own bank instead of the one that’s supposed to service this business. Tax evasion! The owners will be over the moon! But you, young man, how will you make a brilliant career after running someone else’s business into the ground over a cup of hot water?”
“We have a dress code …”
“You’re just a broken record! Well, simply seat me behind that curtain then!”
The bodybuilder led me to where the staff ate and personally brought me a cup of tea. A waitress hurried after him, carrying a staff lunch on a tray: pale hot dogs with buckwheat and a bowl of borscht with a chicken leg in it.
“Not quite Michelin-star fare,” I commented. “Now, if you would be so kind as to leave me to my solitude!”
“I’ll be right here, watching,” the manager warned me, but glanced at his fist again. It had ballooned to twice its normal size.
After my hurried run, I was hungry to the point of spiritual desolation, so I swallowed the borscht in three spoonfuls and sucked on the chicken leg until the bone shone. The hot dogs turned out to be made of soy, and the buckwheat had been crushed, not peeled! Still, my belly was full at least, and the first sip of hot tea flowed through my insides and warmed my body.
Of course, even when I was eating, I had been observing my dearie and the impudent young man with Iratov’s face. It was stunning how much the young woman’s body language had changed. She was pulling faces like a teenager. Vera, whose beauty I have worshipped for many years, was fluttering her eyelashes and sticking out her breasts, which had nearly escaped from the neckline of her white sweater. The young man would occasionally reach out to her face, stroking her cheeks. His eyes, black and bottomless, were home to utter indifference. The cold of space, if you will, radiated from within him. His fingers were indifferent, too, waxy. He stuck one of them in Vera’s mouth; she bit his phalange and all of her, from head to toe, exuded pheromones. If I were interested in erotic matters, it is unlikely I could have withstood that onslaught of love molecules. I would have had to retreat immediately. Since all of those physiological delights had no bearing on me, I strained my ears to hear the substance of their conversation.
“You know, Eugene,” she said, her intonation so saucy it made me shudder. “I’m not afraid of these changes I’m experiencing anymore.”
“Great,” said the young man, who I now knew was named Eugene. What a fucking nasty name. “I told you that all your needless anguish and torment would pass. Iratov isn’t your whole life!”
“Yes,” she agreed submissively. “You’re my life now!”
Oh, great Padishah! I can’t sit here and listen to this stunning woman making these sappy proclamations to a man who is just using her! Now she was whispering something so vile it cut me to the quick.
“Take me.”
“We’re in a restaurant,” replied the young man with a name fit only for a stripper, rather gruffly.
“So what? There’s nobody here, and the stalls in the ladies’ room are as well-appointed as any boudoir.”
“Let’s go,” he agreed with a shrug.
I was squashed like a mouse by an elephant. Coupling in a public place! Pah! That’s too much, even for the snot-nosed, sophomoric, snorting set! How bottomless the fall she had opened up before him! “Well, she certainly doesn’t understand what’s going on,” I thought. “She’s doubtless under the influence of some malevolent charm and is thus not responsible for her actions … Some trick of yours perhaps, kinsman?”
The couple got up from their table, then Vera took Eugene’s hand and drew him toward the ladies’ room. I could not permit this to occur, so I foolishly appealed to the bodybuilder manager, informing him that a man and woman were about to bang in the restroom.
“What’s it to you?” asked the uncomprehending waiter.
“You’ll have problems!” I was losing my mind. “The health inspector will impose fines! A threat to respectable businesses everywhere!”
“You gonna call him or something?”
“If you fail to put a stop to this intolerable behavior, I will nip it in the bud myself without hesitation!”
“Oh yeah?” The
Slav-shithouse waiter blocked my way. I had to get up and meet him with a foot between the legs. No reaction was forthcoming. Realizing that things weren’t what they once were downstairs, I seized his bull-like neck and squeezed his carotid artery. I had about twenty minutes. I ran out from behind the curtain and giant kangaroo leaps carried me to the facilities.
Charging into the bathroom, I detected the repugnant sounds of hasty coupling, then saw the personages themselves by the mosaic window. She was seated on the sill, her legs boundlessly open, and he was digging into her like the very scarabs of Egypt! Scarabs! And she was moaning shamelessly, oblivious to the world around her, and he was glancing at the cover of a yachting magazine that lay nearby. My conviction that this matter could not be explained without recourse to sorcerous influence grew yet firmer, that there are no mere falls, just shoves into fiery Gehenna! This Eugene was the manifestation of a passionless weapon, destroying a woman in the highest sense of that word. This beetle with the long mouthparts was part of my enemy’s dark design.
She suddenly saw a stranger observing their amorous convulsions from the sidelines and wanted to stop their runaway train, but the brakes had long since burned out, so all she could do was cry out ferociously—lewdly, to my ear—giving me a beckoning stare. Before it was destroyed, reduced to mangled metal mixed with flesh, the train sounded a frantic blast on its horn, as if in farewell. She sang out the final note …
The moment had come for the vile youth to cease the movements of his loins; he turned around, scrutinized me, then smirked and winked.
“What, old-timer? Found something fun to watch?” Vera kept looking at me, but her eyes were full of madness, her body absorbing the enemy’s seed, her numb mouth still open, her cheeks blushing a hellish red. “Well?”
“My darling Vera …” I pronounced her name with calm pity. “Leave this place at once!”
“Do you know him?” Eugene asked in surprise.
“No,” she answered hoarsely, finally lifting her hand to cover her breasts, which had worked their way out of the neckline of her sweater, and closing her legs tight, as if I meant to lay claim to the shredded prize between them.
“Who are you, old-timer?” he asked again.
“Vera, leave this place forthwith! How will you ever be able to face your husband?! On a windowsill in the shitter, letting an impostor know you!?”
“You know Mr. Iratov?” she asked in drunken surprise.
“I have for many years!”
She was about to get scared, but then she remembered the events of the past few days, her husband’s disability, how he had then fallen so low, observing her and Eugene with sickly passion rather than killing the thief on the spot, the fact that she could never have children with him—all of that erased her fear, making room for the strongest feeling to take shape … love. I realized that she truly did love this monster, that she had been remade, whether by sorcery, charms, or curses.
“Oh Vera …” I began to weep.
Eugene continued looking at me as he zipped up his jeans. Something alarmed him about this peculiar person with the spiky white buzz cut and no eyelashes or brows crying there in front of him; Eugene could sense some threat to his existence, but he attributed it to a chemical imbalance or a failure to interpret his own distemper.
“Get out of here,” he commanded.
“Oh Vera …” I said, wiping the tears away with my sleeve. “You could have been …” I threw my hands high, toward the bathroom ceiling. “You could have been … You were my Verushka … my dearie … now you’re just some Vera, one of thousands!”
“Listen, old-timer,” Eugene said threateningly, lightly hugging his consort around the shoulders. “If you want to stay in the ladies’ room, nobody’s stopping you. Just let us by, please! Or else I’m going to have to …”
Yes, I did let them by, then stood there for a moment before I returned to the main room. They were back at their table, where she was daintily holding a tea fork, eating a fruit tart.
I wanted to brand her as a harlot in front of the whole restaurant, but then I heard police sirens. The bodybuilder had apparently called for backup. I had to leave via the staff entrance, and I did it like a true professional …
I had to clear my head, so I ran for the next three days, racking up nearly 400 miles.
Then I went back to Senescentova’s apartment, took a shower, wanted to make a call on the landline telephone, but remembered Antipatros; I exercised some self-control and went to bed for a week, with an alarm set to awaken me in due course. Even as I was falling asleep, I found myself thinking that the planet would soon face events of historic import.
Instead of withdrawing from this world so I could experience my former nature, or memories of it, at least in the illusory world of dreams, I saw pictures from the lives of ordinary Muscovites.
I dreamed of Masha, the one from the foreign currency store, whom the young Iratov had once used in passing.
I saw her with a little girl in her arms, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Masha gave birth to her in utter solitude, deprived of any opportunity to find decent employment, cut off from her friends and even her father, who turned his back on her because of the efforts of Photios Prytki, that spook and denouncer of innocents. He adroitly manipulated everyone close to Masha, claiming that she had prostituted herself for foreign currency. The striking word “hooker” had only just come into popular usage. It resulted in banishment from the Communist Youth League, blacklisting, and all the associated delights. Masha never had a mother; she had run away from the maternity ward, leaving behind everything superfluous, everything she didn’t need in her life …
She named her daughter Iseult. What disposed her to choose such an obscure name remains unknown. On the other hand, Masha herself was a spiteful personage, spiteful in the extreme; her only dream was to marry a foreign citizen. She hated this country with all her heart, hated the pressed cotton she had to use instead of real tampons, the meager diet available, the unkempt, depressed men; she couldn’t stand this land’s emblematic white birches and watching Seventeen Moments of Spring infuriated her. If she were Stierlitz, the superspy in the movie, she would have stayed in Germany and surrendered to the Americans. But in the movie, all that prick got for all his heroic efforts was a tiny little dacha made of about three planks, and it seemed like he was happy with his wife, just like Tikhonov, the actor who played him. She’d seen him in his Moscow-made suit at a screening of a French movie about the trials and tribulations of the self-indulgent bourgeoisie at Dom Kino. He smiled at everyone who recognized him; everyone else found him touchingly gentle, but to her, he was another worthless Russian sissy. To hell with all those local Delons, Belmondos, and Richards!
She learned perfect English; by eighth grade, she already knew that there was no way she was going to stay in the USSR. She educated herself independently by visiting museums and theaters so she wouldn’t look uncouth in front of whomever from wherever. She would show just how well-rounded she was. She learned to prepare European dishes from a cookbook by Vasilisa Zudova, the chef at a restaurant called “Prague”—who, it must be noted in passing, had never been to a single European country.
For as long as she could remember, she had devoted her life to backbreaking self-improvement, all so one day some rotten malefactor, some worthless playboy, could negate her work and her future, rob her of all her hopes! Worse still, she was left utterly alone, with a pretty-boy swindler’s child in her arms. How could she not be spiteful?
First it fell to her to sell everything in the house she had accumulated during her time at the foreign currency store to feed and clothe her daughter, Iseult. The child turned out to have a good appetite, and she grew at a remarkable rate. By the age of three, tormented by her mother’s hatred for everyone and everything, she had already lost all her loveliness and was an overfed, blue-eyed mediocrity. The illegitimate child grew up surprisingly lazy and indifferent to everything. Whether it was her strange name weighing her do
wn or sloth passed down from her ancestors remains unknown and, in truth, unimportant.
Never once in her whole adolescent period did she bemoan the fact that her mother brought men home—men who, by the time she was sexually mature, were shaking the hardwood floors down to the foundation as they trod the path to her mother’s bedroom. Iseult understood that it was Masha’s men—she called her mother “Masha”—on whom her prosperity and ability to live as she saw fit depended. At school, she was considered a disadvantaged child, and there was nothing to be found on her report cards but Cs, with only a single A in physical education shining among them. Realizing that her excess weight made her unattractive, and given her lack of any prospects whatsoever, she cajoled the teacher to work with her after class, and after a few years of tenacious exercise, she was pretty again. A new haircut, a manicure, and her mother’s push-up bra improved her appearance, making her a lure for the opposite sex. Her sloth evaporated in her early youth, but her indifference remained with her forever. She soon learned the ways of intimacy, losing her virginity to the gym teacher, obviously, thereby repaying him for all his extracurricular work. Her mother had taught her well: she always had safe sex, so as not to wind up with her own unplanned Iseult or Brunhilda, forcing the boys to wear product no. 2, with no concessions, not even for her regular clients. If the local youth lacked the experience to put on a rubber, the girl was always ready to offer commensurate assistance—just so she wouldn’t get knocked up. Iseult didn’t experience any disgust from intimacy with men but took no pleasure in it either, which made her doubly surprised that her mother saw her work as a way to recharge her emotional energy, as well as make good money. Iseult never had to charge herself; her battery was always empty, but she collected material compensation from boys and teenagers for the use of her insensate body, which she spent exclusively on herself, never giving her mother a penny. Her clients did not pay with money alone, of course; the young prostitute also used the barter system: panties, T-shirts, foreign cigarettes, alcohol—even if it was Bulgarian—all kinds of stuff. One time she even got paid with a one-hundred-piece package of cherry-flavored gum … Iseult sold what she didn’t need at the flea market near Leningradsky Station, and, by the age of fifteen, she already had a tidy sum in her savings account. Iratov’s flesh and blood tirelessly forged her happy little future. An initial analysis would suggest that Iseult, indifferent to the world as she was, was toiling away like a draft horse in the domain of illicit intimate services. She was, in a manner of speaking, the second in a dynasty. Her mother, Masha, and her. The only person the girl wasn’t indifferent to was herself, though.
The Tool & the Butterflies Page 26