Butterfly Skin (33 page)

* * *

But what should I ask about my dream? thinks Ksenia. After all, I know the answer myself.
When I’m called, I’ll come
. The answer’s in the word “call.” I guess I simply believe that my life has some kind of meaning, I have a “calling” and it will manifest itself when the time comes.

She switches off the dictaphone and says:

“Thank you for an excellent interview.”

HE WALKS BACK HOME AFTER MIDNIGHT, FROSTY
Moscow air, a full moon, snow crunching under his feet, powdered snow spiraling across the ground behind him. He ought to stop a car, walking through these alleys and yards you could freeze to death a dozen times over. Alexei switches on his cell, calls Oxana, lies that he fell asleep at work, an awkward kind of lie, but never mind that now. All his life he has wanted to fight against lies – and all his life he has lied to his wife. And now his own lies are heaping up into a snowdrift that all the pro-Putin media couldn’t match in six months. But no, that was going too far. Every month there were more official lies, so many that it seemed like he was doing something very important by telling the truth about anything at all. Even if it was only the truth about the number of wounds on a dead body.

So he had phoned Oxana and lied again, but never mind that now. She could see anyway that something was wrong. Yesterday, when the children went to sleep, she came up, sat down facing him and asked what was going on. He’d put her off somehow, blamed his job, working on the project with Ksenia, did she think it was easy writing about the psycho day in and day out? But at least it meant recognition and a bit of extra money. I always wanted to do something big in the internet, you know, not just interview someone or write the occasional article. So this is my chance, and, well, we’ll all have to put up with it for a while because, of course, you have to pay for a chance like this.

He raises his hand to stop a car. It’s the first time he has ever gone home from his latest flame without feeling any joy or pride. Not even the slightest buzz. He shifts from foot to foot, waves his frozen hand, the cars drive by along the empty road, the powdered snow spiraling across the ground is like the strokes of an immense pencil. Outwardly everything had been as usual, with urgency and passion. He had easily got turned on, after all, this was the first time he had visited Irka for almost three months. He’d done everything the way he liked, this way and that way, they had even come together, which didn’t always happen. But there was no joy in it, no buzz.

Why not just forget the car? Why not sit down here in a snowdrift, entirely sober, pull his jacket up over his head and wait for the spirals of snow to weave into a cocoon around him, fall asleep in it like a little larva and wake up as a butterfly – but already
somewhere else
, in a new life? Because it was pointless trying to deceive himself – no new life had happened
here
. The brand of a failure could not be obliterated by the two interviews he had given, or the money in the envelope, or the five evenings he had spent at Ksenia’s. It could all be counted on the fingers of two hands.

He takes off his glove and looks at his open hand. If I were a palm-reader, he thinks, I could understand what’s wrong here. Should I simply change my fate? Burn out all the lines of my life, obliterate them with red-hot metal, rip them off together with the skin? Write a letter, perhaps, to the hero of our site: dear psycho, I’ve done so much to make you popular and famous that I hope I can now count on a little favor in return. Remove the skin from my hands, it won’t be the first time you’ve done it, allow me to deny my fate, to enter into tomorrow changed and renewed. I know you’re not interested in men, but do this simply out of friendship, not for pleasure. If you like, you can make gloves out of my hands. We’ll put a photo of them on the site, I can do an interesting interview with myself – the man whose hand was taken by the psycho – and bring the copy to Ksenia, I expect she would be pleased with it.

Frosty Moscow air, powdered snow spiraling across the ground, a car stops, the driver opens the door. “Get in, mate, you’ll freeze out there. Where to?” He gives the address and flops back against the seat. “Going home then, are you? From work? Sure, you got delayed, right enough, it’s half past twelve. Will the wife let you in?”

If Alexei liked talking to taxi drivers, he would have said that of course his wife will let him in, of course his wife understands that maybe he has a mid-life crisis, or maybe just an ordinary-type crisis. The driver would have told him that his brother had a crisis too, but then it turned into a long bender, so he had that stuff stitched into his stomach and the crises disappeared as if by magic, it was just a pity that a year later he got run down by a car at a bus stop. Some drunken idiot who obviously left it too late to get his stomach stitched.
It was clearly written in the stars that your brother would be killed by vodka
, Alexei would have said, and the taxi driver would have said,
well, there you go
, and they would have passed the time making this conversation. Maybe the driver would have come out with some piece of folk wisdom like
children are the most important thing
or
you should make do with the wife God gave you
, or maybe something else – Alexei always had problems with popular sayings and folk wisdom. But one way or another, if he’d got into conversation with the taxi driver, he might have stopped thinking about Ksenia, remembering the way she lay stretched out on her back, so touchingly thin, with the veins showing through her skin, lying there with her legs spread shamelessly, although, of course, what was there to be ashamed of if they had only just made love, or at least, he had made love, kissed the little scars on the folds of her elbows, rolled the little cylinders of her nipples between his teeth, gently, trying not to hurt her, run his finger across the fresh wound on the inner surface of her thigh (what’s that? nothing, just a cut). Only just made love, you say? When was it, that “only just”? A month ago, at least. Tell me Ksenia, what happened? We see each other every day in the office, you’re kind and friendly, but I can sense some kind of invisible wall growing up between us, and I can’t understand what I’ve done wrong. And so all the way home he talks to Ksenia, instead of talking to the taxi driver, and that, as it happens, is a big mistake, because Ksenia doesn’t answer him, and the taxi driver might have uttered some
bon mot
like
time heals what must be borne
, whatever that might mean, although basically it’s clear enough, it means patience is all that is left to us and time heals. And it destroys too, as a matter of fact – which means either that it heals only what it doesn’t destroy or destruction is in itself a part of healing. That’s always the way with proverbs and popular sayings, even when their meaning is vague, check them out and you find they couldn’t possibly be more banal. But even so, it would have been better to talk to the taxi driver, and then when he got his money, he wouldn’t have roared off, leaving you standing in the frosty Moscow air, long after midnight, he would probably have asked:
Hey, lad, what’s up, come to the wrong place have you, why are you gawping like that?
And you would have answered him:
Aw, shit, I gave you the wrong address, I’ll pay if you get me away from this place
, that is, to be more precise, definitely take me home this time. And the taxi driver would have said:
Well, mate, that’s incredible!
Or:
You really have been working too hard!
But one way or another, you would have got back in the car, and it would have taken you away from that place. But for that, it goes without saying, you would have had to talk to the taxi driver all the way and not conduct an interminable monologue directed at Ksenia, who couldn’t answer it anyway, because just then she was at home with her laptop switched on, using one hand to answer alien’s questions and the other… but then, you’d better not think about that or even know about it, after all, right now Ksenia isn’t thinking about you and she doesn’t know you’re standing right outside the entrance to her apartment block and the powdered snow is spiraling over the ground round your feet, like someone’s lifelines, lines that the wind changes with a single breath.

And there you are standing at her entrance and wondering what to do now, since you gave this address instead of your own, but you’re not thinking about where to find a car, and what lie you’ll tell to Oxana this time, when she doesn’t really believe your last lie anyway, but about how, now that you’ve already come here, this is your chance to change your fate. And you mutter it to yourself –
change my fate, change my fate
– almost the same way you repeated that mantra several weeks ago – kseniakseniakseniaIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou – a mantra that no longer holds any promises of salvation, the shroud of anguish enveloping you simply becomes even denser, like the snow covering over anyone who decides to sit down in the middle of the night in a dirty Moscow snowdrift. And now you try to remember where the windows of her apartment are, what you could see when you stood at the window of her room and Ksenia remained lying there, stretched out on her back, so thin and touching with her legs shamelessly spread to reveal the mons pubis into which, it seems, you will never again introduce your jade wand or your sexual organ, or whatever you would have called it if you needed to use words to call it anything. And now, with your head thrown back, breathing in the frosty Moscow air, you see that both of Ksenia’s windows are lit up, like a double lodestar, and then you realize that it is fate or, rather, a chance to change your fate –
change my fate, change my fate
– and, of course, you have to pay for a chance like this, but right now you are willing to pay any price, and I can tell you that’s right, because, because no price will be too much for you. After all, if you, Alexei Rokotov, the husband of your wife Oxana and the father of two children, who have collected young lovers the same way your latest hero probably collects the lips and nipples that he cuts off, and more successful journalists collect photographs of the places where they’ve been or the autographs of the celebrities they have spoken to, well then, if you’re standing here long after midnight facing the door of the woman who for the last month has been making it absolutely clear that she has absolutely no need of either your jade wand or your sexual organ, well then, since you’re already here, go up, why don’t you, and pay any price finally to put an end to this?

What could you have seen up there? Ksenia, bound hand and foot, covered with cooling wax – very convenient, despite the searing pain, melted wax leaves no marks on skin – or she could be lacerated by a lash or a whip, thrashed with a riding crop or swatted with a paddle. While you and she were putting the site together, you saw photographs of worse things than that: at least, whatever game Ksenia might indulge in, her eyes are still in place, and her nipples, although they’re painful after the clamps (almost a hundred dollars in a specialized sex shop, this BDSM business is an expensive indulgence!) anyway, her nipples have not yet been added to anyone’s collection, her lips, all three pairs, have not lost their ability to dilate with blood and function normally, her arms and legs are still whole, look, one hand is hammering at the keyboard and Ksenia is nibbling on the other one nervously, savoring her own astringent taste on the fingers. So don’t be afraid, go up and ring the doorbell.

Ksenia gets up and looks through the spy hole. “What’s happened?” she asks in a voice more alarmed than annoyed.

“Can I come in?” you ask in a very quiet voice, because on the threshold of Ksenia’s apartment your courage has suddenly deserted you, together with your hopes of a miraculous change in your fate.

“Wait, I’ll just put something on,” says Ksenia, and at that point you could really have turned round and gone away, because even ex-lovers are not too embarrassed by being naked in front of each other, if they still remember that they were once lovers.

And now you stand there in the middle of the hallway, little Ksenia with no makeup, with a shirt over her naked body and old jeans, and Alexei Rokotov, the successful failure, that is, a man who has managed to turn even the major success of his life into failure. “What’s happened?” Ksenia repeats, puzzled.

“I love you,” you say and Ksenia sighs, completely at a loss, not knowing what to do with this man who is years older than her, the father of two children, the husband of his wife Oxana, whom she has never seen, except in photos in an online vacation album. She sighs again and wants to say something like:
Oh, come on, you just imagined it
or:
Listen, maybe you don’t really?
– but then she looks him in the face and realizes that
no, he didn’t imagine it
and
yes, he does
. So, she looks him in the face, reaches out her hand and strokes his cheek with her palm and then says:

“I’m sorry. I’ve fallen in love with another man” – and this answer is so unexpected even to her that she falls silent and carries on standing there as Alexei turns round and goes out without saying anything, out to the frosty Moscow air, the powdered snow spiraling across the ground, the car going his way that instantly appears. And there’s Alexei sitting on the front seat, not saying a word to the driver, or Oxana, who is getting closer, or Ksenia, who is getting further away, sitting there genuinely silent, sitting there understanding that you can’t scrape your fate off the palm of your hand, you can’t burn it out with a red-hot iron, you can’t take it off like a leather glove – and that’s why being unfaithful to your fate is as impossible as being unfaithful to your wife. And as he thinks about this, Ksenia’s image on his retina fades a little bit, although Ksenia is still standing there in the hallway of the apartment that he has just left, still holding her hand up in the air and repeating to herself:
I’ve fallen in love with another man
, as if she is trying out the taste of words that are new to her.