Butterfly Skin (28 page)

“This is a strange sort of conversation we’ve had, Ksenia. It’s a pity I turned off the dictaphone. But I can tell you that even your happiness is a dishonest happiness, because you pretend that a few lashes from a whip or jabs from a cigarette – I don’t know what you prefer – can serve as a model for the pain and suffering that other people experience. But that’s dishonest, Ksenia, because other people die from torture, and all you do is come. Because if you tell a mother who has lost her daughter: ‘I understand your pain, I was flogged by my lover last night too’ – she’ll spit in your face and, I’m sorry, but she’ll be right. If your idea is taken to its logical conclusion, in order to remain honest in your pleasure, in the end you have to die under torture. But I’d still recommend therapy.”

“Thank you,” Ksenia says rather coldly and pauses for a moment. “In any case, if not for you, I would probably have killed myself eight years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” says Maya, shaking the last cigarette out of the pack, “I have no right to pry into your life, you’re right. But I’ll tell you anyway, well, just so that you know. There are other ways to stay happy and honest. You understand, we live in a world where there is a war going on every day. It’s the war between life and death. And suffering is on the side of death, and happiness is on the side of life. Pleasure is located at the point where they meet, but that doesn’t mean we should play on both sides. Look at me. I’m forty-five years old, I had breast cancer, I lost thirty-five pounds on chemotherapy, and then they took off both my breasts anyway. My death lived inside me for a very long time, maybe it’s still alive in there even now. But my two little babies, Max and Ilya, were there inside me once too, and they’ll live in this world when I die. And so, by playing on the side of life, I’ve won. I won’t have anymore children, but every time I make love with my husband, it’s as if we’re repeating those two times. And every act of love we perform contains the whole future life of our children until they die – including the pain and the suffering. You know, Ksenia, we make children – and absolutely nothing else is needed for us to regard every sexual act we perform as a miniature model of the universe and to come without any pangs of conscience and without any help from a whip or an electric shock baton.”

Maya reaches into her rucksack, takes out a Kleenex tissue, wipes her eyes and gets up. Ksenia feels a little awkward, successful women shouldn’t cry, although, of course, she understands everything. She catches up with Maya at the door of the cafeteria.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I don’t know what to say to you, you know, I just wanted… anyway, thank you for talking to me today, thank you for everything that you said.”

Maya puts her skinny hand on Ksenia’s frail shoulder.

“Everything’s all right,” she says, “I’ll send you the interview to read. And the therapist’s number, just in case.”

Ksenia watches her go and tries to imagine herself in many years’ time as a famous journalist to whom a young woman says: “Oh, I grew up on your articles. Me and my friends in fifth grade watched your site about the psycho, really great!” – and then her imagination stalls, because even in this imaginary future, there’s no way she can picture herself as a grown woman with a husband and two children.

“VERY GOOD,” SAYS THE ANSWER FLASHING ON THE
flat screen. What’s good? wonders Ksenia, trying to remember, ah yes, “more sub than dom.”

“Sorry, I went away for a while,” she writes, and a minute later alien replies: “I was afraid I’d offended you somehow”, she taps out her reply: “No, no, I’m not easily offended. It’s just that I’m at work.”

He already knows that she’s a journalist, that she works with the news, that she has a friend Olya, who is having an abortion today, and a friend Marina, who stays at home with her little boy. He knows that this morning in the subway Ksenia saw a child’s face chopped to pieces and thought about Olya. Now he knows that Ksenia is into playing, but even so he doesn’t know that she has a lover and that she’s the producer and senior editor of the scandalous site Moscow Psycho.

Ksenia knows that he has his own business, that he’s not married, or rather, he’s divorced, she knows that he lives in Moscow and in his free time he watches his favourite DVDs in his home movie theater, that he doesn’t like
The Matrix
but he likes the films of Dario Argento, the Italian director who always filmed his own hands when he needed to show the hands of a killer. Now she knows he understands what BDSM is. And she still doesn’t know his name or how old he is.

They chat every day, several times in the course of the day. This is probably the first time in Ksenia’s life that a chance encounter in the internet has lasted for so long. Alien really is good company. He’s interesting to talk to.

“How did you choose me?” Ksenia asks.

“I liked your name,” alien replies. “It means the same as mine does.”

“We can think of ourselves as brother and sister
.”

“Then I’ll be your big brother,” he replies, “do you have a big brother?”

“Yes, but he’s in America.”

“Were you friends when you were children?”

“There was a difference of six years. I was too little for him
. He pushed me around.”

“Did he hit you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well then,” replies alien, “clearly, as your virtual big brother, I shall have to beat you virtually too.”

“
,” Ksenia replies guardedly and waits to see what will come next.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to beat you today,” writes alien, “but I shall demand that you obey me. Like a good little sister.”

“And what do I have to do for you, big brother?” asks Ksenia, joining in the game and looking anxiously at the clock in the bottom corner of her monitor: it’s almost midday, and the work isn’t getting done.

“Dial 0804 on your cell phone and write to me what they tell you.”

Ksenia obediently picks up her phone. A pleasant woman’s voice offers to tell her about the weather. Ksenia types that.

“Well done, little sister,” alien replies, “now go and work.”

Ksenia smiles. She likes the way this man always knows when it’s time to stop.

* * *

Two days later she’s sitting on Marina’s white rug again. Gleb is standing up, laughing, holding on to the bar stool on which the computer used to stand. Now there is a big plush rabbit sitting on the bar stool, a distant relative of the one that Ksenia sleeps with. Marina is still wearing the same robe with a dragon on it, they’re eating Chinese fast food out of small bowls with chopsticks, it was bought from the Huáng-Hé River kiosk and heated up in the microwave.

“They say the Chinese food in China is completely different from anywhere else in the world,” Marina says through her sweet and sour pork, with her cheeks bulging out and looking funny.

“They eat snakes and dogs,” says Ksenia, “and grasshoppers, rats and absolutely anything that moves.”

“Now I understand,” Marina replies, “why that Chinese chose me. Back then I was interested in anything that moved too, although from a slightly different angle. And now there’s only one member of the opposite sex I’m interested in. Gleb, want yum-yum?” – and she takes a piece of pork out of her mouth.

“Is that all right – straight out of your mouth?” asks Ksenia.

“I think so,” Marina replies, “after all, it’s my mouth, not yours. Go figure, kisses are all right, but a piece of meat, like, isn’t? Especially from his own mother. That’s the only way vixens bring food back: they eat something, then regurgitate it for the cubs, half-digested, so it’s easier for them. It doesn’t bother them any.”

“Yuck,” says Ksenia, “I hope my mom never did that.”

“Your mom,” says Marina, putting the pork that Gleb didn’t eat back in her own mouth, “never did love you very much.”

“How do you mean?” asks Ksenia, almost choking.

“You figure it out. You liked the dance studio – she stopped you going.”

“Oh no, she wanted me to do better at school.”

“Sure, sure.” Marina gets up and puts her bowl and chopsticks on the windowsill, out of Gleb’s reach. “It was your dad who liked the way you danced, and she divorced him. And you were the one who suffered for it.”

“How do you make that out?” Ksenia asks testily.

“Why, everybody knew,” Marina says with a shrug. “The dance studio’s just a detail, of course. You can always see if a mother loves a child or not.”

“I don’t think that story has anything to do with love. On the contrary, the fact that Mom made me study is the best possible proof that she did love me.”

“Poor Gleb,” says Marina, “how is he going to know I love him if I don’t give him proofs like that? Well now, come to Momma, my darling little fox cub,” and Marina crawls across the room on all fours toward Gleb. The infant is sitting in the middle of the rug and laughing.

“Marina,” Ksenia begins in an icy voice, “you know, I’ve never taken the liberty…”

“All right, all right, I’m sorry,” Marina says quickly. “I’ve been acting a bit dumb just recently.” She picks Gleb up and goes back to her friend. “Don’t get uptight, I really shouldn’t have said that. Of course your mom loved you, who could ever doubt it?”

“All right, drop it,” Ksenia says dourly. “Why don’t you tell me if you’ve ever had any virtual affairs.”

“How do you mean? Cybersex? In a special suit?”

“No, without any suit. You know, when you chat to a man you don’t know on ICQ, and suddenly you realize you’re thinking about him all the time, fantasizing… and so on.”

“No, not with anyone I didn’t know at all,” says Marina, “but, you know, there was this one young guy from the East Coast. I saw him once at Vika’s farewell party, if you remember, a tall guy in glasses, with beautifully shaped ears?”

“No,” says Ksenia, “Vika and I happened to have a falling-out a week before she went away.”

“Ah, sorry,” says Marina, remembering. “Well, anyway, I danced with him and this and that, I was all set to go, but he was obviously feeling nervous, especially since I think there was some girlfriend or other of his there. And he was going away too, a week after Vika, he was in the same group. The farewell party was for both of them. Well anyway, Vika was going to Germany to marry a German, and Mishka was going to graduate school at MIT. Go figure, all we did was exchange emails, and I’d forgotten all about him, then suddenly a few a months later he pops up – hi, here I am, remember me?”