Ice Trilogy (47 page)

“What for?”

“Well, I mean, not exactly about Communism itself, who the fuck needs Communism...It’s not too hot?” She turned on the hot water.

“It’s fine.”

“But, you know, about how in Communism there would be communal women...and...he...Oy, oy, oy...he...ummm. Oy, oy, oy...I mean...Oy, oy...oy...”

“Fucked all of them.” Lapin held Vika’s breasts.

“Oy, oy, oy...” She frowned. “Oy, I’m coming...O-o-o-o-oy...”

“For some reason, ummm, I mean, I can’t seem to come...”

“Oy...oy...” She stopped moving. “Koma will give us a hit — and you’ll come.”

“I want to now,” said Lapin, moving.

“If you want, stick it in my ass. Koma does that sometimes too, when he can’t come, he sticks it in my ass — and it spurts out right away. Want to?”

“I don’t know...I’ve never tried...umm...there’s shit in there.”

“You jerk-off. There’s no shit in there! So are you going to or not...Then let me masturbate you.”

“You?”

“I’m really good at it. Come on, turn on your side...and I’ll lie down behind you. It’s hot already.”

She turned the faucet off. Put the plug in.

Lapin turned on his side. Vika laid down behind him. Her right hand took his penis. She stuck the left one between his legs and squeezed his balls.

“Oh, poor guy, we’re so tense here.”

She began masturbating his member.

Lapin let his eyes shut. He dropped off into a dream.

He was an old man. Eighty-two years old, thin and dried up. He was descending the dark, cold staircase of a large apartment building. Pieces of plaster and broken glass lay on the stairs. He was wearing a heavy winter coat, felt boots, and heavy mittens. It was very cold. He shivered down to his very bone marrow. A slight steam escaped from his dried lips. His right arm was half bent. He held the handle of a copper teakettle in the bend of his elbow. The empty kettle knocked against his hip. Descending, he held on to a wooden banister. Each step was difficult. The cold air burned his throat. His head trembled slightly, and as a result, everything he saw also trembled and swayed. He stopped on the landing of the second floor and fell back against the gray, cracked wall. He held the kettle with his left hand. He stood there, breathing heavily. He looked at the space between two doors. The words the kuzolevs are kulaks! and slonik is a tick had been scratched on the wall. One of the doors had been pulled out. The black space of a burned apartment yawned beyond it. The insignia of the Zenith soccer team was drawn in ink on the door of the other. He stood there, his eyes half open. He breathed. Below, someone was climbing the stairs. He opened his eyes. A hunched figure in a gray padded jacket appeared before him. The man placed an icy bucket of water on the dirty cement floor. He straightened up with a faint moan. He wore a black navy-issue winter hat with earflaps, tied with a torn gray scarf, and huge mittens; his soiled padded pants were tucked into felt boots. A thin, yellowish-gray, ageless face with an overgrown beard arose in front of him. The whitish eyes looked at him.

“Building 2 has been completely cordoned off. Half of it collapsed.”

“And...this one?” he asked.

“Now you have to go through 12.”

The bearded man glanced through the door of the burned-out apartment.

“While we were standing around with our mouths open, the stoker and Yanko took everything out. I dropped in yesterday — not a splinter left. The SOBs. They could’ve at least shared. Shut themselves up in the boiler room — and that’s it. Can’t get through to them. That’s who should be shot. They’re worse than the Fascists.”

The bearded man picked up his bucket and moaned as he lifted it. He suddenly really wanted to ask the bearded man something important. But then he immediately forgot what, exactly. Worried, he pushed himself away from the wall.

“Umm and...Andrei Samoilovich...I’m, you know...not a Party member. You don’t have any plywood, do you?”

But the bearded man was already lugging the bucket upstairs, holding out his left arm for balance.

His eyes followed the man for a long time. Then he continued down. Exiting the half-dark entryway, he was immediately blinded: everything around was bathed in bright sunlight. Standing for a bit, he opened his eyes. The courtyard was still the same: enormous snowdrifts, the stumps of two poplars that were cut down, the carcass of a burned-out truck. A narrow path led through the snowdrifts to the street. He moved cautiously along it. A black arch swam over his head. This is the gateway. Dangerous. Very dangerous! He moved along the wall, leaning on it with his left hand. But there’s light ahead: the street. He took longer steps — and he was suddenly on the avenue. In this place it was wide open. The middle of the avenue had been cleared, but near the houses there were still mountainous snowdrifts. People moved along the avenue. There weren’t many of them. He moved slowly. Someone was pulling something on a sled. A sled! He had had one. But the Borisovs stole it. They burned the wooden seat in their makeshift stove; they hauled water on the iron frame. But he carries it in his teakettle. It’s a long way to the Neva. You can melt snow, of course. But you need a lot of it. And it’s heavy too...

He readied himself to go out into the middle of the avenue. A ways away, the groundskeeper was talking to Lidia Konstantinovna from building 8. They stood next to a corpse lying facedown in the snow. The corpse’s buttocks had been cut off.

“Just look, all the dead have their asses sliced off!” croaked the groundskeeper, who was wrapped up in some kind of rags. “And why is that, I wonder? A gang! They make croquettes and meatballs from corpses and fry them up in axle grease! Then they barter them for bread at the market!”

Lidia Konstantinovna crossed herself. “We should show the patrols.”

He walked over to them. “You wouldn’t have a splinter or two?”

They turn away and plod off.

“How does the earth stand these goddamned White Guard bastards?” he hears.

Chewing his lips, he walks out onto the prospect. What were they talking about? Croquettes! He remembered the pork croquettes at the Vienna restaurant on Bolshoi Morskoi, and at Testova’s Moscow pub. And at the Yar restaurant. At the Yar! They were served with potato croutons, red cabbage, and green peas. The Yar had truffles, too, a divine six-layered kulebiaka pasty, sterlet soup, crème brûlée, and Lizanka made a fuss, she wanted to go visit those...that...oh...the one with the mustache who couldn’t say his
r
’s...poems, poems, lord, how the frost goes right through you...croquettes....Meatballs.

A truck suddenly passed him, almost hitting him. Red Army soldiers with rifles sat in it, wrapped in overcoats. The chains on the truck’s wheels clanked. He stopped. His eyes teared as they followed the truck. What’s this? On the side of the truck instead of a number there was a large white sign: croquettes. Croquettes!! There were croquettes in there! He suddenly understood this keenly and clearly, with every cell of his weak body.

Throwing down the kettle and waving his hands, he began to run after the truck. His large kneecaps jolted forward, the mittens flew off of his bony black hands and hung on their elastic. He ran after the truck. It was crawling along slowly. He could catch up with it. There are croquettes in there! He could see them, skewered on Red Army bayonets. Hundreds, thousands of them!

“Let me have a croquette, too!” he screeched like a rooster.

“Cr...cro...quette...too!”

“And...let me...croque...too!”

“Cr...cro...croque...ettoo
o
...!”

His heart was beating, beating, beating. Broad and wide. Like building 6. Like the Irtysh River in May 1918. Like Big Bertha. Like the siege itself. Like God.

His feet became tangled. He careened. Creaked. Cracked. And split in pieces like a rotten tree, on the snow the truck had tamped down. A whitish haze swallowed up the truck. His heart beat.

Pdum.

P-dum.

Pa-dum.

And stopped. Forever.

Lapin opened his eyes. He was crying. Clots of sperm spurted from his penis into the water. Vika’s hand helped. Lapin’s legs jerked convulsively.

“Like thick sour cream.” Vika’s huge, wet lips moved near Lapin’s ear. “Don’t get laid much, huh?”

14:11
,
The Balaganchik, 10 Tryokhprudny Lane

A half-empty restaurant. Nikolaeva came out of the restroom, approached a table.

Lida
was sitting at it and smoking: 23 years old, a slender model’s figure in a tight leather outfit, mid-size breasts, a long neck, a small head with a very short haircut, a pretty face.

“The john is downstairs.” Nikolaeva sat down opposite Lida. “It’s not very convenient.”

“But the food is fabulous,” said Lida, chewing.

“The cook is French,” said Nikolaeva, pouring red wine into their wineglasses. “So, where did I stop?”

“Cheers,” said Lida, raising her glass. “At the naked blond with blue eyes.”

“Cheers,” said Nikolaeva, clinking glasses with her.

They drank. Nikolaeva took an olive, chewed it, spit out the pit.

“It didn’t even matter, naked — or not. You know, the thing is that I’ve never felt anything like it, nothing has ever gotten to me that way. I just...sort of like fell into it...and my heart felt so...sweet...sort of...as if...I don’t know...it was like...I don’t know. Like being with Mama in childhood. I cried my eyes out later. You get it?”

“And you’re sure he didn’t screw you?”

“Absolutely.”

Lida shook her head.

“Hmmm. One of two things: it’s either some kind of druggies, or Satanists.”

“They didn’t shoot me up with anything.”

“But you lost consciousness. You said you fainted.”

“Yeah, but there’s no tracks! My veins are intact.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t in a vein. I had one client and he stuck cocaine up his ass. Got high. He said that that way his septum wouldn’t get ruined.”

Nikolaeva shook her head in disagreement.

“No, Lidka, they definitely weren’t druggies. There’s something else going on there. You know what kind of assets they have? This is a serious company. You can tell.”

“So that means Satanists. Talk to Birutia. The Satanists fucked her once.”

“And? Was it hardcore?”

“Nah, but they smeared so much chicken blood on her that she kept on washing and washing — ”

“Yeah but this was my blood, not chicken blood.”

Lida stubbed out her cigarette.

“Well, I just don’t get it.”

“Me neither.”

“Alya, you weren’t soused, were you?”

“Come on!”

“Yeah, well...And your heart, you said...well...it was really intense? Like if you fall in love with someone?”

“Stronger...it...how the hell to explain it...well...like when you really really feel sorry for someone and it’s someone really really close to you. So close, so close that you’re ready to give him everything, everything...I mean...well, it’s...”

Nikolaeva sniffled. Her lips trembled. And suddenly she began sobbing, readily and intensely, as though she’d vomited. The sobs overwhelmed her.

Lida grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Alya, sweetie, calm down...”

But Nikolaeva sobbed harder and harder.

The few customers in the restaurant looked at her. Her head was shaking. Her fingers clutched her mouth and she began to slide off the chair.

“Alechka, Alya!” said Lida, holding her up.

Nikolaeva’s body writhed and shuddered. Her face turned red. The waiter came over.

Sobs burst from Nikolaeva’s mouth along with saliva, her head shook and tears spurted on all sides. Powerless, she sank to the floor. Lida leaned over and began to slap her on the cheeks. Then she took a swallow from a bottle of mineral water and sprayed it on the ugly red face and distorted features.

Nikolaeva sobbed. Until she was hoarse. Until she began hiccuping. She arched on the floor, twitching like an epileptic.

“Oh my God, what’s wrong with her?” Frightened, Lida tried to help her.

“Give her ammonia salts!” a portly man advised loudly. “It’s a typical case of hysteria.”

The waiter leaned over and stroked Nikolaeva. She passed a violent stream of gas and began sobbing with renewed force.

A woman came up.

“Did something happen to her?”

“She was mistreated,” said Lida, looking at her in fright. “Oh my God, this is awful! I’ve never seen her like this...Alya, sweetie, come on, Alya! Oy, call a doctor!”

The woman got out her cell phone and dialed 03.

“What should I say?”

“It doesn’t matter!” said Lida, brushing her aside. “I can’t stand this!”

“Well...I have to say something...”

“Just say...” The waiter chewed on his small lips worriedly. “Say that a girl is crying.”

21:40
,
Empty lot near Karamzin Passage

A silver Audi-A8 stood with dimmed headlights. Inside were Dato, Volodya Straw, and Crowbar. A dark blue Lincoln Navigator turned off from the road and approached them. It stopped twenty meters away. Uranov and Frop got out. Uranov held a briefcase in his hand.

Dato, Straw, and Crowbar got out of the car. Dato raised his hand. Uranov raised his in response. Uranov and Frop approached Dato.

“Hey, man.” Dato proffered his stubby fingers.

“Hello, Dato.” Uranov offered his long, slender hand.

They shook hands.

“Why the delay?” asked Uranov. “Are there problems?”

“There was one problem. But we disposed of it. Now everything’s in order.”

“Something having to do with delivery?”

“No, no. Internal affairs.”

Uranov nodded. He looked around. “Well, then, shall we touch it?”

“Touch it, my friend.”

Uranov raised his hand. Frop opened the back door of the vehicle. Mair got out and walked over to Dato’s car.

Crowbar opened the trunk. A refrigerated coffer lay in it. Crowbar opened it. Ice shone in the coffer.

Mair took her blue leather gloves off and put them in her pocket. She stood, looking at the ice. Then she put her hands on it. Her eyes closed.

Everyone froze.