Butterfly Skin (13 page)

I’m not going to get any boogie-woogie today, thinks Ksenia, no dancing to Indigo Swing and Jump4Joy, no chance to invite Alexei to join me. What is it Pasha wants to say to me, he’s not a stupid man, and the most important thing is that he has flair.

Pasha puts a folder of printouts on the desk.

“You asked me to check this man out through my contacts,” he says. “Read it here, I won’t let you take it out.”

Ksenia reads, and Pasha carries on thinking about the serial killer, about Putin’s politics, about piles of rubble on the streets of cities. Even so, he thinks, the ruins are produced by inanimate machines. A detonator, hexogen, a trigger mechanism, a bomb hatch. The person who presses the button doesn’t see the bloody scraps of bodies go flying through the air. The dust from the ruins doesn’t settle on his clothes. The person who takes the decisions doesn’t see their consequences. He lives in the same unreal world as all of us.

“Impressive,” says Ksenia, closing the folder, “and a girlfriend of mine was thinking of setting up a business with him.”

“I wouldn’t advise it, Ksenichka,” replies Pasha.

“A horrible man.” She carefully lays the folder in the middle of the desk.

No, thinks Pasha, he’s not horrible, he’s an ordinary man. The one who presses the button, the one who sets the machine working.

“Not so very horrible,” he says, “it’s just that in his business the rules were different from the very beginning.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to change the rules?” asks Ksenia. “For instance, we could behave as if there was no Putin TV and Khodorkovsky wasn’t in jail.”

Pasha laughs and thinks: she has drive, she’s a beautiful girl. I wonder if she has a boyfriend – or whatever it is they’re called nowadays?

“You could have said yes to us today,” says Ksenia, “after all, everything you said was just excuses. Explain to me what the problem is. Don’t you believe in this project?”

“Listen, Ksenia,” he says, “we both know this is an excellent idea. It’s a commercial dead cert. But you know, you said
he
…” – Pasha nods toward the folder – “…is a horrible man. But then, all he’s done is pay the money, give the orders and, and fly off to Spain or Greece to give himself an alibi. We can understand him. For him the murders – if there really have been any murders – are just a way to redistribute property. Redirect the cash flows. When you get right down to it, he’s been living in a world of abstractions for a long time already. But this man you want to set up the site about – he lives in the same city as we do. Goes to the same shops. Probably eats in the same restaurants. And what he does, he does himself. With his own hands.”

You got away, the only one, you got away.

You had little feet and hands

And shoulder-length brown hair

A pubis shaved with just a thin line of hair untouched by the razor

And I thought a cutthroat had never touched your body before

There are so many things you don’t know in this life

But we have time

I undressed you, unconscious, on the table in the concrete basement

And stood there for a moment, listening

As a string started quivering somewhere inside me

Like a tuning fork responding to an old familiar melody

Like a faded leaf clinging desperately to the branch

In the gusts of autumn wind

You had a Walkman, I crushed it under my heel

You won’t need it now, I’ll teach you a different music

The faded leaves out on my lot

Could not cling to the branches

They lie on the cold ground and wait for you

I ran my hand over your stomach

Gently rounded, like a little hill

Perhaps you thought “I’ve got fat this summer, now I must lose weight”

Believe me, I have known many women

Closer than anybody else

I tell you, as sincerely as the razor

Slicing through the skin:

You have a lovely body

Your body is lovely from its outer coverings

To its inner depths, to the moist pink depths of the mouth

The red muscles, the yellow fat, the blue veins

Visible even now beneath your summer suntan skin

Two white triangles, front and back,

Where the swimsuit was

Now you have nothing to hide

Something quivers inside me, like music playing in a crushed Walkman

Wait, and you will hear it too, you will respond

You said “I must lose weight, slim down”

Let me tell you that losing weight is very simple

Like a tree dropping its leaves in autumn

I’ll teach you how when you wake up

Her eyes were closed, but I remembered their color

They were brown with amber-yellow veins

When I first saw them, I could feel

The world grow still around me, curling up like a scroll

Brown eyes with amber-yellow veins

The plump lips of a teenage girl

Who kissed all evening in the empty corridors at school

While dance music thundered downstairs in the hall

Oh, what a shame to stretch that mouth with a rag or a gag

But I wanted so much to go outside with you

Where the faded leaves were lying on the cold ground

Waiting for you

I gave you an injection to make you sleep soundly

And then I took a needle and thread

My granny taught me to darn things

She said “No need to throw away what can be darned”

Yes, the war generation, poverty and hunger

They weren’t bothered about being overweight at your age

They were hungry all the time anyway

I finished and then wiped away the blood

Licked it off with my tongue but it still wouldn’t stop

It was like a kiss

My eyelashes trembled on your cheek

I tied your hands together

Little hands like a child’s

They could easily slip out of the ropes

I tied them tighter

I put shackles on your legs so you could walk, but not too fast

I knew straight off you weren’t one of those girls

Who give themselves with tears and make no effort

To get their own way

We will have plenty of time, I said to you

We’ll get to know each other better

I’ll show you things you never thought you’d see

Your body will reveal its mysteries

And you will know there was no need to worry

About how much you weigh

You’re not really heavy, I can easily carry you in my arms

I’ll tell you how I’ve lived for all these years

Without you here beside me

Tell you about the world where I was born and I grew up

I’ll lead you into its forbidden groves

Where flayed skin hangs on branches

Like faded leaves

Where a little boy can’t sleep

Listening to the trembling growing louder

As if someone is choosing music

To make the tuning fork respond

You sat there on the porch

Faded leaves lying at your feet

Your lips pressed tightly closed

The white triangle below your stomach

Bisected by the thin line of hair

Glowed in the evening twilight

It was a peaceful autumn evening

In the cool air

Sounds carried well

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked

And a train hooted

You opened your eyes

You had brown eyes with amber veins

When I first saw them, I could feel

The world grow still around me, curling up like a scroll

Like a fallen leaf on the ground

You didn’t try to stand, you simply tensed your arms

As though testing the strength of the ropes

Red muscles, interwoven tissues

Little mounds on your forearms

Under the skin that was still tanned

And then you suddenly did something with your face

I didn’t understand what happened

A fountain of blood spurted out

Your mouth opened

And you screamed

It was a peaceful autumn evening

In the cool air

Sounds carried well

Before I realized what was happening

I darted to your side but you kept on screaming

A single note, like some broken mechanical toy

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I darted to you, and in one swift stroke

I slit your throat

Forgive me.

It was autumn, people closing up their dachas for the winter

The whole village full of visitors

Sounds carried well in the cool air

Now there will be nothing more

No music and no trembling

I’ll never know how your skin comes away

Or peel your breasts, like two halves

Of a single orange

The sound broke off as if someone stamped on a Walkman

You clung to life for one more second

Like an autumn leaf in a cold wind

Clinging to the branch

You lay there in my arms

Your lips, the plump lips of a teenage girl

Were torn to shreds

I didn’t think you had such strength in you

Maybe my granny taught me darning badly

Or I was a careless pupil

While the dance music thundered downstairs in the school hall

I wanted to kiss you in the empty corridors

I wanted to walk with you up the dark stairs of a school

Where every classroom holds new pain and new humiliation

And the graduation diploma is a gob of spittle in the face

And a shout of “get lost”

I was the only pupil in that school

I’m still amazed that they made such a big building for me

My dad, mom, granddad and two grannies who survived the war

But failed to teach me to darn properly

I took you in my arms and carried you to the basement

You were really light, believe me

You didn’t need to worry about your weight

I put you on the table where a few hours earlier

I undressed you, and then turned out the light

Standing on the steps, I turned to look:

The white triangle below your stomach

Glowed in the darkness of the cellar

Bisected by the thin line of hair

Like a razor

IT’S EASY TO BE UNFAITHFUL TO YOUR WIFE. ESPECIALLY
if you happen to work in one of the liberal professions. You can be delayed at work, you don’t have to sit in the office all day long and, when all’s said and done, you can even work at weekends: the latest issue has to be put to bed, or you need to do an exclusive interview. The important thing is to find a place, because finding a woman is no problem. Women in the liberal professions are liberal-minded when it comes to friendly sex. But it’s better not to sleep with your colleagues – apart from the female journalists there are always the female designers, page makers and photographers.

Three years ago I even met a girl courier, only sixteen years old. She was as curious as a little squirrel and every time I came up with a new place and new position for her to give herself to me in, teaching her the psychogeography of the city and sexual acrobatics at the same time. We opened the season in a cubicle of the editorial office restroom, where I dragged her after the bottle of wine with which we had celebrated her first pay packet. Then came an attic, the stairway of a Stalinist skyscraper, a basement, where my courier suddenly started feeling dizzy and I had to drag her back out into the fresh air, stumbling over the pipes and tearing my jacket. Then the driver’s cab of a dump truck that had been left unlocked overnight, a building still under construction and – the brilliant crowning moment of our affair – a room in the Rossiya Hotel, where I saw her completely naked for the first time: her navel was pierced and she had a little rose tattooed on her left buttock. The girl used to wear boots with thick soles and she only put on a skirt for her assignations with me – because it was too awkward taking off the trousers with numerous pockets that were her uniform on every other day. That evening in the hotel we completely satisfied our mutual curiosity and when we parted, I think we took away only the very best of memories.

I knew all the places where I passed the time with my little courier very well. With my practiced eye I could tell immediately which entrance would be best for our next brief encounter. I prefer the ones where the elevator and the stairs are separate and you can feel safe on the landing of the top floor. As I grew older, however, I started preferring girls who had their own apartments. Fortunately, there were more and more of those, nowadays even students try to rent a place to avoid being crammed in with the old folks, never mind Ksenia, who’s my boss, after all, and not even the memory of her lips clasped round my prick can change that fact. But even if we forget about that, it really would be embarrassing for a respectable grown-up man to carry his young companion off to a basement, like some spotty teenager. There were still hotels, but they have been getting more expensive with every year that passes, and I can’t bring myself to pay a fifth of my monthly salary for two hours in my lover’s arms. I’m a family man after all, the father of two children, the husband of my wife.

It’s easy to be unfaithful to your wife. Especially if your wife also happens to work in the liberal professions and has a liberal outlook on life, if you have an open marriage and she is willing to close her eyes to your infidelities. She sits on top of you, closes her eyes and starts swaying smoothly to and fro until she suddenly explodes into a long, drawn-out sigh and collapses, pressing down on you with her heavy breasts and scattering her red hair that is starting to turn gray. Holding her carefully by the buttocks, you make two or three thrusts into her and shoot your load too. And that’s it,
finito
, you can open your eyes. In our sexual duet Oxana assigns the passive role to me, and even that doesn’t happen very often. It’s a long time since I last managed to persuade her to vary our games – the times when the young student of the Russian University for the Humanities demonstrated the fundamentals of sexual acrobatics to me on the carpet in her parents’ parlor were consigned to oblivion long ago. She likes to be on top, and I don’t know what’s more important here – subtle points of physiology or the desire to dominate. In our family life the missionary position has been an exotic exception. The last time we tried it was probably on the day when Oxana refused to let me go to Chechnya.