The Tool & the Butterflies

by Dmitry Lipskerov

  “Are you a telepath or something?” The mathematician twitched, threw his head back, and started sniffing the air for some reason.

  “Are those the people that can read minds?”

  “Why can’t I smell it on you?”

  “You have abnormally sensitive olfactory perception. You’re like a dog. That’s very rare! I’m not a telepath, though.”

  “What, then?” The mathematician was on the verge of barking.

  “I’m just a person who knows how to read books. I read about you a long time ago, back in the army … Estin didn’t find a use for you. He probably just didn’t think of it. But you could find truffles with that miraculous nose of yours. The black ones are worth their weight in gold, you know.”

  “Are you comparing me to a pig?”

  “Better yet, why not just go out in the taiga and dig up ginseng? What do you need Estin for?”

  “Now listen here—”

  “Why are we arguing anyway, Mitya?” Joseph said with a smile. “Nothing good will come of it. I’m not your captive and you’re not my jailer. Shall we reach an amicable agreement? Ask me whatever you want, and I will give you answers, but not to every question. Estin will be happy, and you will get paid. By the way, you won’t get to marry Olga Photiosevna Prytki, no matter how badly you want it.”

  “So you are a telepath!”

  “No, I told you! I repeat—all of my knowledge comes from the book.”

  “You’re lying! Why can’t I marry her?”

  “You know why—she’s a general’s daughter and you’re a Jew.”

  “That bastard has to retire eventually!”

  “There’s no such thing as an ex-FSB general. You know that, too.” Mitya fell silent, looking inward, trying to squeeze out his negativity, hoping that there was some other variation, some parallel universe where everything would be different for him …

  “When will Estin die?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” Joseph replied with a shrug.

  “It isn’t written in the book?”

  “Everyone is in the book.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t read about everyone. Why would I? I know everything about myself and my mom. That’s enough for me. Well, and I know about the events going on around me …”

  “Well, that’s where the money is,” the mathematician stated, rather sadly. “But you aren’t interested in money, right?”

  “Only as a means to exchange essential goods.”

  “So all I can do is work as a truffle pig?!”

  “Don’t get bent out of shape! Let’s just reach an agreement. People who are prepared to reach honest agreements can live side by side and help rather than hinder one another.”

  “What are you offering?”

  “Well, what does Estin need?”

  “Information on any subject, provided he can use it to gain a competitive, material, or political advantage.”

  “You can tell him that I have telepathic abilities … in a loose sense. Let’s say I sometimes have epiphanies. They don’t happen often, though, and I have no control over them. You can also tell him that you’ll have to work with me intensively, and it will not always produce real results. But I will have answers to some of his questions.”

  “So you are a telepath!”

  “No! Come on … I tell the truth and nobody believes me. If I just lied, everyone would be fooled! I spend all my free time studying and I find answers to my questions.”

  “In the book?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Maybe I can find the answers myself? I have books, too.”

  “If you are capable of that … of being consumed with a book, if it is fated to open up to you, then … But you’re meant to do something else.”

  “Well, what is it?” In that moment, Mitya Schwartz was weighing the idea of sticking a fork in the eye of this haughty, handsome youth in the role of cut-rate prophet.

  “Digging up ginseng!”

  Mitya lost control then, obviously. He leapt on Joseph, swinging his fists. The mathematician had a funny way of fighting, leaning backward, head bent away so he could hardly see his opponent, but he kept repeating, “Take that! Take that, you frickin’ prophet!” He was throwing punches with gusto, but Joseph dodged the blows, saying that Schwartz could make up to ten thousand dollars a day hunting for ginseng with a nose like that!

  “Take that, bastard!”

  “What are you doing?” Joseph was indignant, avoiding yet another jab at his nose. “Since when do Jews start brawls? Come on, Schwartz, you’re a scientist! Stop it! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Tired of throwing punches at nothing, Estin’s assistant collapsed on to the leather sofa, where he couldn’t catch his breath for some time. He had never been in a fight before, so he had no idea it was so strenuous. His blood pressure was running high, his face red. The mathematician rummaged around in his pockets, took out some medication, and swallowed it dry.

  “I agree,” he said suddenly.

  “To what?”

  “Your offer.”

  “Well, that’s great! Why get all bent out of shape, why throw down like that? Two smart people can always reach an agreement, and between the two of us, we have an IQ of 360!”

  “Yes, yes,” said the flushed Mitya. “We’ll reach an agreement.”

  That was when Joseph began working with Estin, the former world chess champion. The day after the altercation, he appeared in person, flying in on a light helicopter accompanied by an enormous mastiff named Fischer. It was a little hot for the dog; his enormous, blood-colored tongue nearly dragged along the ground, and drool flowed abundantly from his chops … First they all had lunch together. Estin inquired as to how Joseph’s compulsory military service had gone, and whether he liked the new apartment, then asked if he had any physics-and-mathematics-related news, and what major he had chosen. Joseph gave him exhaustive answers, but in response to the last one, he evinced a desire to specialize in … Well, Estin and Schwartz listened to Joseph Brodsky’s ten-minute monologue without managing to understand a single sentence. Oh, they’d heard those words before, but they had no idea how he was using them!

  Then Estin talked to Mitya, rubbing Fischer the mastiff’s enormous ear and griping to the mathematician that those 180 IQ points Schwartz had been so enamored of made him feel like an idiot. Had he gotten anything out of what the young man was saying?

  “Yes, I could follow it,” Mitya lied. “It was terminology from quantum mechanics. I think he was speaking Hebrew some of the time, though, so I couldn’t follow then … Perhaps he’s another Einstein?”

  “We don’t need an Einstein! It’s all very simple. I’m a curious man, but I keep my feet on the ground. I have a ton of questions and very few answers!”

  “He agreed to give us answers. But not very often …”

  “So when will I die?” the chess master asked his assistant.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Or he won’t say …”

  “Perhaps you should speak to him yourself? You may fare better.”

  “I’ll try. I have to do everything. What are you good for anyway?” Estin wiped the dog drool from his hands with a monogrammed handkerchief, then gave it to Schwartz.

  They spoke that same evening in the chess master’s study, its large windows offering a view of an artificial pond where two black swans lived. Someone—apparently the designated fisherman—was pulling nice fat carp out of the water. Scales shone, sunrays ricocheting as the latest one flopped on the hook. Joseph figured it was for dinner. They talked about various things, while Estin played on a miniature mother-of-pearl chessboard until he moved the white queen four squares and toppled the black king with a flick of his finger.

  “So, how long do I have to live?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” the young man answered.

  “Can you find out?”

  “The answer will be imprecise.”

  “How imprec
ise?”

  “Do you remember how the Lord promised Abraham that he would die at a venerable age, in perfect peace and satisfaction?”

  “Vaguely …”

  “Abraham had a grandson named Esau who grew up to be an excellent boy, but he was fated to change and become a criminal by the age of sixteen. Then the Lord shortened the life of his righteous grandpa by five years.”

  “I don’t follow …”

  “Well, He promised Abraham that he would die in peace and satisfaction. But can it truly be called peace if your grandson is a robber? By the way, that is the only instance of a man’s life being shortened for the future sins of his descendants.”

  “I don’t have any grandchildren,” the former champion declared.

  “All I can do is tell you if you will suffer a sudden death soon, if that interests you.”

  Estin tensed up. The mastiff smelled his master’s fear and began to growl.

  “Knock it off, Fischer!” He leaned his whole body forward.

  “Don’t worry. You will not die suddenly, and your life will not be short.” Estin relaxed, thinking for a moment that this kid was just a swindler, so he asked how much he would like to be paid, expecting him to name a tidy sum. “I don’t need money. I’d just like to repay you for that apartment somehow …”

  “You want to work for free?”

  “I’d just like to go back to my mother. You can send me your questions in an envelope through Mitya, and I’ll write my answers. Okay?” Estin thought for a moment, looking Joseph right in the eye, as if he were trying to find evidence of a common or garden-variety scam there, but all he saw was the silent black ocean of eternity.

  “I don’t know …”

  “The organizers in Japan will give in. Don’t take the million, hold out for a million and a half.”

  “How do you even know about that?” Estin lunged forward. “It’s confidential!”

  “Isn’t that precisely what you wanted from me? It’s the perfect way to make sure I am not a swindler.”

  “When will they sign the contract?”

  “Your match with Deep Fritz will take place in November. Three weeks from the present day, you will agree on a million and a half dollars.”

  The information Joseph was somehow privy to was remarkably specific, and so confidential that even Estin’s assistant Schwartz had been kept in the dark. The chess master clenched his jaw in anticipation of some strange euphoria. He did not intend to smile at his informer, though—that would make him look too gullible.

  “Why don’t you want to live here? We have all the amenities and it’s all free … There’s a training camp for rhythmic gymnasts on the other side of the woods … Some of them are pretty adventurous …”

  “I’d like to go back to my mother, if you don’t mind.”

  “Are you gay?”

  “It’s funny, Mitya asked me the same thing. No, I’m not gay. I just want to live with my mom. She needs my help.”

  “Deal.” Estin got out of his chair, forcing Fischer to rise from the floor, and extended his hand to Joseph. The titanic dog let out a loud bark, putting the seal on their handshake.

  The young man went to Moscow by helicopter, delighting from the height of the faint clouds in the great living picture of the world the Creator had made. He flew over Istra and spotted the yeshiva where he had studied. Joseph’s soul fluttered, thirsty for this proximity to the Lord’s creation that grew with every second. They landed near the Moscow Ring Road, then a Mercedes took him to his new apartment downtown, right by Pushkin Square.

  Dasha just couldn’t get enough of staring at her now grown son, hugging and kissing him all the while. Even when he was sleeping soundly, she looked at him, thinking how funny life was—it can go from the awful, insane racket of a shaman’s tambourine to an all-encompassing flute of happiness. Anyone can be happy, even a Jew and a Buryat. The sun is for everyone, after all; it warms even the worst of scumbags …

  The following day, they went to the cemetery and paid tribute to his father, Joseph. Dasha cried in memory of her adopted son and husband, lamenting that life had been so merciless to him. It never gave him anything nice, not even a measly scrap of brain. Life hadn’t been like that to her, though …

  “Dad’s okay now,” Joseph informed his mother, smiling tenderly. “You have nothing to worry about. Believe me, he’s much better off there than he was here.”

  Once they were back in the city, they went to the Rossiya Cinema and saw a foreign film packed with sex and violence. After that, Joseph would never visit another movie theater, museum, or stage production, realizing that such entertainment was unworthy when he had big books and big thoughts in his head. He did not even try to persuade his mother that such cultural institutions were unacceptable. Dasha liked movies; they were a kind of outlandish depiction of a life that didn’t really exist. Everything that was good for his mother was good for him. When she asked her son to get his hair cut, calling him a “hippie,” he did not defy her. He just found a barbershop on Petrovsky Boulevard, a three-minute walk from their building, where his long, peculiarly beautiful hair was trimmed by an old man with Greek features and a patchy beard who kept smiling and trying to look into Joseph’s eyes.

  Then Joseph saw a girl of about ten, with dark skin and bright blue eyes, standing by the door to the back room, smiling slyly, one dainty leg bent at the knee, and his soul filled with certain knowledge …

  “Come again!” the barber said invitingly, nearly giving the manicurist a heart attack; for the last fifteen years, she had been convinced that Antipatros was mute.

  “I most certainly will.”

  Three days later, Joseph went out to the yeshiva in Istra, where he begged for permission to audit classes until they relented. The teacher remembered him, but warned him that it was just a primary school.

  “I doubt you will find the classes with the children interesting. If I’m not mistaken, you have memorized the book?”

  “I can actually claim to know it a little now,” Joseph replied, with appropriate modesty.

  “Very well,” said the rabbi. “Come three times a week at five o’clock. I will try to talk with you …”

  On Mondays, Mitya Schwartz delivered the envelopes containing Estin’s questions. Joseph would meet the messenger in a public cafeteria. In the first letter, he inquired if it might be a good idea to ask the match organizers for a little more. The young man replied that it would not, since they were holding negotiations with Kasparov and Kramnik, and they were both asking for more.

  No more letters from Estin were delivered for a whole month after that. Joseph went to the yeshiva in Istra to see the teacher. Anything might serve as a topic for their conversations. Time, for instance.

  “Yes,” Joseph replied when Rabbi Yitskhok asked if he remembered the first lines of the Torah, then recited them: “‘In the beginning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.’”

  “So what did the Almighty—may His name shine—create first?”

  “The heavens and the earth,” the student replied.

  “What does the word ‘beginning’ itself tell us?”

  “First of all?”

  “You know, of course, that there is nothing accidental in the book, nothing that could have been phrased better than it is in the text?”

  “I do.”

  “So what does this phrase ‘in the beginning’ tell us? What did the Lord create before the heavens and the earth? Time!” he answered himself. “That is the meaning of the word ‘beginning.’ That is why, my dear Mr.—pardon me, I’ve forgotten your surname.”

  “Brodsky.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Well, my dear Mr. Brodsky, a parrot can memorize. Admittedly, it’s good to have the book memorized so when you’re old, you can find new meanings, if you’re capable of doing so. The text itself is not as impo
rtant as the key to it, the key to understanding. There was one Jew who was only repatriated to the Holy Land when he was as old as Methuselah. He decided to learn Hebrew so he could read the Torah in the original. He studied and studied, but he only managed to read one page before he died … but that was enough for him to become a righteous man. It all comes down to how you make yourself better. The book is about uninterrupted study—every second of every day—discovering more and more new things about your soul in lines already pored over for decades … The old man who read a single page at the cost of titanic effort changed himself, made himself better. We come into this world to make ourselves better …”

  Estin sent a second letter, which Joseph read in front of Schwartz over a cup of hot chocolate.

  “What medicines should I take to make sure I feel good?” went the chess master’s first question. Joseph promptly replied that the sensible thing to do would be to take medicines prescribed by a doctor, ideally a good doctor.

  “So what was his little question?” Mitya pried, through a protracted yawn.

  “That’s confidential!” Joseph replied.

  “Oh yeah …”

  “When will the world end?” went the second—rather strange—question.

  “In two hundred and thirty-eight years,” Joseph replied, promptly, again.

  The young student loved to goof around with the children at the yeshiva; he would often bring them sweets or little toys, and he especially enjoyed celebrations, like the upsherin, when a three-year-old boy’s hair was cut for the first time. Everyone who was invited received a lock, and a wish was made on every curl. A thirteen-year-old’s bar mitzvah was the happiest celebration at that age, when a child becomes a man and takes on an adult’s responsibility before the laws.

  Rabbi Yitskhok once came upon Joseph with a book in ancient Aramaic. He was rather at a loss himself when it came to reading older texts, so he was quite surprised.

  “You read Aramaic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remarkable!” the teacher exclaimed.

  “I know other languages, too …”

  “How many?”

  “Seventy or so …”

  “The Lord is infinitely generous! But you must know, my dear Joseph, that what the Lord has given you is a gift, but that realizing this gift will do nothing for your soul. For your soul, you must seek a different nourishment entirely … You know, of course, about the schools of Hillel and Shammai, which have debated for centuries on end and arrived at different answers to the same questions?”