The Tool & the Butterflies

by Dmitry Lipskerov

  The pregnant and increasingly weak Iseult had to identify her mother’s body, take care of all the paperwork, and have her buried. She did it all with resurgent indifference as her body used the last of its strength to hold the line for the life growing inside. Iseult didn’t even arrange for nine days of mourning, to say nothing of the traditional forty; she was already in Sytin’s private suite by then. The doctor was afraid that his patient would not make it to her due date, since the disease was eating away at her at record speed. Sytin visited her and, trying not to meet her eyes, recommended that they perform a C-section as soon as possible.

  “I won’t live long enough?”

  “No,” the doctor answered honestly.

  “When do you have to do it?”

  “Your pneumonia is progressing and your heart’s giving out.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Iseult had the dream that night, and the old man with the patchy beard promised her that, in the fullness of time, her daughter would be higher than all the kings and queens of the earth put together, that she would be exalted above all humanity, he would see to that … This time, it seemed to her that guests were sitting at the table in perpetual quantities, and that Jesus must be somewhere among them. She cast her eyes about for the Savior, but the old man had seemingly guessed at her hopes, and promptly demolished them.

  “Just not at this table. He is not here.”

  She woke up when they were taking her into the operating room. Doctor Sytin was walking beside her, his hand resting on her frail shoulder. She was having trouble breathing, and her heart was sputtering impotently, dying.

  They started to give her an anesthetic, but there was no need. The vitals monitor was emitting an uninterrupted squeak, announcing that Iseult was no longer in this world.

  “Faster!” Sytin commanded. “We only have a few minutes before oxygen deprivation sets in!”

  For some reason, they started putting iodine on the dead woman’s belly. Sytin cursed at the nurse, repeating that she was dead.

  “Fucking idiot!” He made a confident incision with his scalpel while another pair of hands inserted the forceps, and a few moments later, Doctor Sytin carefully extracted a tiny girl from the lifeless body. “Cut the cord, stat!”

  Then Sytin placed the infant on a table for newborns, branded with the insipid name “Stork,” while the midwife cleaned her mouth and nose with a tiny squeeze bulb, lifted her by the legs and slapped her tushy. The long-awaited cry was heard in the operating room, and everyone burst into joyous applause. Someone noticed that the girl had dark skin and black hair.

  “It’s a baby African!” Sytin announced, then left the operating room, carrying the daughter of Iseult and Adio the Gabonese ambassador out into the land of the living. Everyone else followed him.

  The mutilated Iseult lay on the table, eyes open and belly dissected. Trained staff would soon enter the operating room to clean and disinfect everything …

  The newborn ate well and didn’t require any further medical assistance. Many of the hospital employees came to see the little miracle, the mixed-race baby with blue eyes as piercing as laser beams.

  A week later, Sytin decided to bring social services in, but that proved unnecessary; a strange, elderly man with a patchy beard and harsh eyes came to see him before he could make the call. The old fellow, dressed in a tuxedo and sneakers, presented all the documents necessary to adopt the little girl. All the obstetrician/gynecologist/andrologist could do was put the newborn in the elderly man’s arms.

  “How old are you?” Sytin inquired.

  “Ten thousand …”

  “What?!”

  “Kidding. Fifty-two.”

  “He’s lying,” Sytin thought. “He’s gotta be over seventy. What does he have to do with all of this? Well, I did my job honestly. Why not let the girl have a grandpa? Even if it’ll just be for a little while …”

  “Well … good luck!” said the doctor. “Boy, you have a funny name … Antipatros …”

  “Your good deed will be rewarded,” the old man promised and coughed into his beard. Or maybe he was laughing.

  •

  I woke up, and, when my head cleared, I realized in horror that I’d slept for a month instead of a week. As I was brushing my teeth, I thought in panic that I’d missed some key events and incidents! How could this be?! Then I remembered my dream in the minutest detail and a tiny crack revealed a complex, multifaceted image. I realized that was where Zoika, the mixed-race girl with the blue eyes, had come from, sensing that an understanding of the whole grand design would soon take shape in my head. His adopted daughter or granddaughter …

  I turned on the television and spent two hours straight absorbing the news. What I saw astounded me!

  13

  Mr. Arseny Iratov had abandoned his architecture firm and was spending more and more time at home. Sytin visited him frequently, and they discussed how to get out of their situation, whether they should resort to surgical intervention or try something else. They played cards, and Iratov often used the skills he remembered from his former life to cheat, without the doctor ever noticing his nimble fingers …

  As the days went by, Iratov became more and more convinced that they should leave everything as it was. They were no spring chickens; they had more pressing interests than sex.

  “What about that young wife of yours?”

  “She’s all set. Found herself a young stallion named Eugene. He’s probably my illegitimate son, but he says he’s my member. Haven’t I already told you this?”

  “What a bunch of bull …” Sytin replied rather limply … and was surprised by his own flaccidity. “And hormone replacement therapy doesn’t work. Very strange!”

  “Your therapy sucks dick!”

  Two days later, the World Andrology Organization, headquartered in New York, made a sensational announcement. According to their data, 80 percent of adult men, teenagers, and boys, as well as male infants, had lost their sexual organs within a single month. A representative of the State Department confirmed their findings, and every stock exchange in the world plunged by the same percentage. Only one-fifth of the male population, consisting of old men with untreatable erectile dysfunction, still had their primary sex characteristics.

  Hundreds of talk shows all over the world switched their focus to this incredible, seemingly fantastical, unimaginably sensational topic. They discussed the possibility of some sudden genetic glitch caused by a black hole swallowing the gas cloud at the center of the Milky Way, concluding that some situation on the quantum level was being reflected in the male half of humanity. Males of other species were examined, beginning with apes; the organs in question were found right where they belonged, working and producing.

  The world was surprised by this new state of affairs, but not frightened. Men, no longer burdened by testosterone, discoursed on the matter rather limply, while feminists instantly saw it as a reversal of the poles of human civilization. The female sex developed a new conception of itself as dominant. Numerous ethical and political questions emerged. For example, how could heads of state—the presidents of Russia and the USA, let’s say—be expected to control their potent nuclear arsenals when they had no potency of their own? One wag quipped that a man with nothing to scratch when he’s lying on the couch isn’t a man at all. Men had less testosterone in them than a tea rose or the passionate sculptures of Rodin.

  Obviously, a demographic question also arose, giving the world a nasty scare, but then it was announced that sperm banks could provide enough material for several more generations. The stock markets rebounded considerably at this news, but then crashed to historic lows in response to the tragic information that all of it was unviable, nothing but dead spermatozoa … Fortunately, this grim announcement led to a good idea. Man is so full of optimism, so convinced that he is the king of the earth! Kerry Smith, one of the world’s leading family-planning specialists, the director of the Breim Institute (an
organization originally sponsored by the Rockefellers), announced that semen was not at all necessary for human reproduction. They had already practically completed a research project that demonstrated, without the slightest doubt, that the material necessary to reproduce an individual could be acquired from nearly any cell in the body. The markets started climbing again. Kerry Smith left out one detail: those pregnancies would only produce girls. One thing leads to another … this information promptly led to the creation of a secret world government headed by Angela Merkel, since the planet would be populated exclusively by women within a century, and they would have to run it …

  I couldn’t help but be astounded by news like that, and I didn’t know what direction this world was rushing in, this world where I no longer knew what to do, what my function was. I rushed to the barbershop to see Antipatros, who was still carrying out his tonsorial duties as usual.

  I was so impatient that I nearly jumped into the antediluvian chair. Antipatros used the pedal to lift me up slightly, then began trimming my barely noticeable hair.

  “What does all this mean?” I asked, unable to contain myself.

  “You will find out when the time comes,” the barber stated gratingly. He was Pheidippides and God knows who else … Zoika emerged from the back room, smiling at the world, then set about sweeping up the hair, sparks flying from her big blue eyes.

  “I know who she is to you!”

  “Well, at least they put something in your head! They gave the wretch prophetic dreams!” He didn’t say anything else until the end of the haircut. “You will be faced with the necessity of acting soon. Be ready!”

  Back at Senescentova’s apartment, I made myself calm down and tried to formulate a picture of the world at large as it then stood, but despite my best efforts, however I strained my brain, no answer was forthcoming, just disparate pieces from the mosaic of human affairs that teased my imagination … I picked up the phone and made a call … All I heard was the endless, monotone ringing … Strangely enough, it actually comforted me, and I stretched out on the sofa, hands behind my head. Determined not to fall asleep and miss something essential, I thought back to how I had interrupted my retelling of the story of Joseph Josephovich Brodsky, the grandson of Alevtina Vorontsova and Arseny Iratov, whose fate happened to have been coupled to my own, but I also found myself thinking that his story no longer held any significance. It was a secondary plot, of little use to anyone, but the recollections were already appearing, igniting my brain, gradually becoming my waking reality, and I no longer held sway over them.

  Valery Estin didn’t meet with Joseph again, even though the young man was brought to his personal estate outside of Tver and put up in the guest house. Estin, like any great chess player, took an interest in everything that went beyond the boundaries of ordinary human understanding. Psychics, telepaths, people who could levitate or see the future. They helped him win—at least that’s what he thought—so he created an institute for paranormal studies. Absurd as it sounds, it made over a million a year … Mitya Schwartz was exclusively responsible for handling the discharged soldier.

  “Do you know why you were removed from your noncommissioned officer training program?”

  “No,” Joseph replied.

  “You’ll find out in a few days. In the meantime, let’s get some food in you. You can watch some movies and catch up on sleep. There’s a phone right there. You can call your mother as much as you want.”

  “But she can’t come here?”

  “No, especially now that she’s busy decorating the new apartment …”

  “Fine.”

  They didn’t bother the young man for three days. He slept splendidly and watched endless Hollywood movies—fortunately, the house was equipped with an amazing sound system. He ate well, watched more movies, and slept without nocturnal visions. There was only one night when he saw a picture of the dead Slipperov lying in his coffin. He awakened instantly and saw Mitya Schwartz’s face above him.

  “Did you see Slipperov?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes,” Joseph answered.

  “How did you know that he had an aneurysm?”

  “I didn’t know.” Joseph sat up in bed, stretched, and yawned.

  “But you—”

  “I predicted it.”

  “Predicting something is almost exactly the same as knowing it!” Mitya said, keeping up the pressure.

  “Almost,” Joseph agreed. “Did you put that picture in my head?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “It’s the first dream I’ve ever had.”

  “What, you mean you’ve never even dreamed about naked girls?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t happen to be gay, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Strange. All people dream … you apparently just can’t remember.”

  “I remembered Slipperov … By the way, could you bring me my books?” Joseph asked.

  “No problem … So you’re interested in Judaism?”

  “It’s hard to say …”

  “There’s a synagogue not too far from here. Would you like to go?”

  “Sure … So you put Slipperov in my head?”

  “Let’s just say it was me … Listen, go take a shower, and … you know, freshen up, if you need to. I’ll meet you downstairs in the dining room.”

  While Joseph stood under the hot water, washing the image of his dead comrade from his consciousness, Mitya Schwartz was peeking into his bag for some reason, rummaging around. Then he went over to the bed and looked under the pillow. He even sniffed the pillowcase, just like a working dog …

  They sat at a round dinner table, where Joseph breakfasted on fresh farmer’s cheese with berries, drenching the dish with condensed milk and thoroughly enjoying himself … Mitya had eaten a while ago, so he was mixing five spoonfuls of white sugar into the impenetrable gloom of his coffee, giving his young charge a sideways glance.

  “There’s some excellent sausage. We make it ourselves! Want to try it?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t mix meat and dairy.”

  “You keep kosher?” Mitya asked, surprised.

  “No …”

  “Then how come you don’t mix them?”

  “It gives me an upset stomach … Maybe I’ll have some curd fritters, though, if you don’t mind.”

  Mitya Schwartz was finding him more and more irritating, this handsome, well-built youth with the eyes of a wise old man and the hair he’d grown out since his discharge shining like blue steel. The mathematician’s own IQ was off the charts, too; he had made a name for himself by applying mathematical analytics to new developments in quantum theory, but he knew very well that he was no Einstein. He wasn’t a genius, and his looks were nothing to write home about either. This new charge of his wasn’t exceptional, but Estin had sensed something in the kid, like he had with Mitya himself in his day, so he had bade him work with him. He was to do it gently, though, without all the psychological bells and whistles he was so adept at using.

  A song by the Nikitins about a town in Uzbekistan resounded into the summer, variations on its name forming the cheerful refrain “Brichmulla, Brichmelja, Brichmalla, Brichmiga,” but the mathematician heard it as “Brit Milah, brit major, brit mama, brit bigger!”

  “Gah …”

  “Is everything alright?” Joseph asked with a smile.

  “I don’t like this song. Well, you probably realize you weren’t just brought here to get you out of doing your duty to the Fatherland?”

  “I do,” Joseph said with a nod, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I take it I’m not here to play chess?”

  “Only in your free time.”

  “So what can I do for you?”

  In addition to the enmity he was experiencing toward his guest, the mathematician could not shake the feeling that it was the new guy who was in control, not him. That made Mitya suddenly feel hot.

  “Well, what do you need me for?
/>
  “What’s the hurry? You’ll know when you need to!”

  “I’m not in the army anymore, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Why exactly are you speaking to me as if I’m your property?”

  “You can go back to the army today if you want!” Schwartz was barely containing his emotions.

  “I was discharged.”

  “They’ll call you up again.”

  “That won’t go anywhere.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll find my arrhythmia … And I’ve been accepted to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, so I have a five-year deferment.”

  Mitya did not have that information—a serious oversight for which he could face a serious punishment. He also thought of Olga, a girl he’d been in love with for seven years now. It was mutual, but she was born the daughter of an FSB general, and her father, Photios Prytki, wasn’t especially enamored of people with curly hair and big noses. The lovers were limited to extremely rare trysts. They would possess each other with Shakespearean fury, but Prytki’s people almost always found them, and it would end with Mitya getting his face busted up and Olga throwing a fit … Schwartz thought about trying to use the new apartment Joseph’s mother was living in as leverage, but he refrained from doing so for the time being.

  All the while, the radio relayed retro joy for people born in the USSR, the refrain ringing out: “Brichmulla, Brichmelja, Brichmalla, Brichmiga …”

  “When did you manage that?”

  “Well, I was with my mom for two days. I went over to the institute and submitted an application. I graduated from high school with a gold medal, so I got an automatic acceptance.”

  “What department?” The mathematician was sweating, thinking about what he’d tell Estin. Brit bigger, bitch!

  “Quantum mechanics …” Joseph rose from the table and did some calisthenics to limber up. “You are a nervous, servile type, Mitya. I’ll tell Estin that I applied while I was still in the army. So you calm yourself down somehow, please. You will not be punished.”