The Tool & the Butterflies Page 13

  “Here?” He nodded at a duffel bag hanging on the back of a chair.

  “There,” Lyosha confirmed.

  “Yours?” He turned toward Iratov.

  “Mine.”

  The little man slid Iratov a business card, took the bag, instructed them to call if anything happened, and withdrew without a backward glance.

  “What’s that?” Iratov asked, looking at the envelope.

  “What you wanted.” Lyosha’s anxiety was still going from momentum alone, but hot blood was running into his buttocks, warming up his icy balls. “Where’s my fifteen large?”

  Iratov looked into the envelope and found a wad of hundred-dollar bills. So this was what five thousand dollars looked like! And in the same instant when his brain realized that a sum that could fit in a little mailing envelope was enough to buy a vacation house in Sochi with his own palm and his own peach tree—in that moment, it was as if his consciousness had expanded boundlessly, exploding like a supernova, and it announced to his soul, “Now I can do anything! Youth isn’t wasted on me!” His soul did not react to that declaration. His soul and his consciousness were not on speaking terms.

  “Where’s my money?” Lyosha’s interruption prevented Iratov’s euphoria from taking his entire being into captivity. “Where’d you go off to just now?”

  “Everywhere!” the newly minted currency speculator said, coming out of his reverie. He tugged the bottom of his shirt out of his pants, pulled out a homemade plastic money belt, and tossed it to Lyosha. “Here, Zykina’s dacha is yours!”

  “What the hell, motherfucker?!” The bartender caught the money belt. “You’ll give us away!” He quickly stuffed the money behind the radiator.

  “Keep your cool.”

  “Couldn’t you have brought it in hundreds? Is this all tens or some shit?” Lyosha asked angrily.

  “There’s tens, fives, and threes. Come on, you know that black market dealers pay 10 percent. That’s all of it—fifteen thousand minus one and a half. Want me to exchange them?”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself!” the bartender cursed. “I want hundreds next time!” Iratov rose from the table and headed for the exit. He turned around in the doorway and addressed Lyosha with a smile.

  “There won’t be a next time!” He waved the business card the little man had left behind. “Goodbye, Mr. Brahman! Or are you an untouchable? It wasn’t the dollars I needed, it was the contact! The dealer will call you tomorrow.”

  Lyosha understood that he was never going to grow to the uppermost levels. He knew that he was a fuckin’ chump, and that upset him once again, but the thought of the fifteen thousand rubles in the money belt was still enough to warm his balls up to their normal temperature. Sure, maybe he was a chump, but he was a chump with a great big dacha! And do chumps make fifteen thousand rubles in one day just for being the middleman? Nah, he was no chump! Those working stiffs getting on the metro over there—they were the chumps!

  That same day, Iratov took a taxi to the foreign currency store and walked in like he owned the place, nodding at the greasy suit looming by the door in a way that said, “Yes, I am in fact a KGB agent,” went up to a pretty clerk named Masha, and inquired, in perfect English, where he might find their outerwear department. Masha had been working there for over two years already; she smiled in reply, stars sparking to life in her eyes. She’d been dreaming that some foreign service officer would notice her; after all, she would make an excellent wife and mother in Europe, or, better still, America. She saw this handsome black-haired man as a potential choice, hoping that he was the son of some important diplomat, and—leaning over whenever possible to show off her inarguable loveliness—led him through their displays of French winter suits, Finnish sweaters, and Irish fur coats with innocent fervor.

  Iratov was reeling. It was a miracle he didn’t faint. Good thing he had his back against a rack of hangers. Of course, he had fantasized about what foreign currency stores looked like for a long time, and sometimes flipped through imported magazines. But the fact that every object, every piece of this store, even the sales princess and the spook, was an incomprehensibly powerful culture shock for him, a mighty flood of endorphins, was something he could never have foreseen. Countless cans of the kind of fish that was always in short supply in regular stores, every kind of ham, the juice of exotic fruits that he had only read about in adventure stories, a meat and fish section, six- and twelve-piece packs of gum, and innumerable cartons of Marlboros—it all spun in his consciousness, an unreal, unfathomable world he had finally gotten to. And now it was getting to him!

  When he saw the price tag on a fur coat, written out in dollars, he calculated that instead of a vacation home in Sochi, he could only afford to buy five mutton coats. Sure, they were fashionable, but good God! His arithmetic stunned him, drove him into a deeper stupor when he realized that this one store alone held millions of Soviet rubles’ worth of goods … Iratov looked in the mirror and saw the face of a moron. Crimson, with an idiotic smile and the eyes of an orangutan who had just seen the zookeeper’s bucket of bananas for the first time. He realized that he was an inescapably Soviet person who only had the means to buy himself two suitcases full of getups from this other world he’d stumbled into by accident, and maybe stuff himself with some foreign canned food too, if there was any money left …

  “Have you found anything to your liking?”

  “Indeed I have, Masha. I would like to buy some orange juice, a bottle of champagne, and a carton of cigarettes.”

  “Excellent!” The clerk, fluttering her eyelashes all the while, put everything into a plastic bag. “Thirty-five dollars and forty cents, please. But how did you know my name was Masha?” That was a tried-and-true trick, but it had never worked on Iratov.

  “The name tag on your chest. How much does the bag cost?”

  “Bags are free here. I always forget about that name tag … Let me double-bag these for you, just in case. Here is your champagne. Are you celebrating something?” Iratov was automatically calculating that bags like that, with a foreign cigarette logo on them, could be resold for five rubles a pop, ten total.

  “Oh yes, I am …”

  “How lovely!”

  “The champagne’s for you, Masha! I wouldn’t mind celebrating you …” Iratov went over to her place at eleven-thirty. A huge celebratory moon hung above Moscow and Masha’s skin shone in the dark. Very pale, as if sprinkled with flour, soft and responsive … She moaned and whispered, “Alex,” trying to time her slim hips to his motions, kissed him hotly and eagerly, and finally cried out so loudly that Iratov had to cover her passion-parched mouth with his hand to keep her from waking the neighbors.

  “Hush, Masha, hush …”

  When he was pulling on his jeans in the dawn light, he said, “good morning” to the happy, sleepy Masha in English first, then in Russian.

  “Your pronunciation is great!” the girl said, gently kissing his cheek.

  “Masha, I’m from here, from the USSR! No need for English! My name’s Vasily!”

  There was a pause …

  The magnificent Masha fired a string of curses in his direction, far filthier than he had heard from any man. To the accompaniment of enraged shrieking, Iratov quickly pulled on his T-shirt and raced out of there without even tying his shoelaces. As he ran down the stairs, he neighed with laughter, listening to last night’s fairy princess shriek increasingly florid obscenities at him. Her cries of hatred were just as despairing as her cries of ecstasy, and they pierced the concrete of the apartment block’s walls while the satisfied young Iratov loped down the stairs, four at a time, feeling that life was beautiful, that his happiness had only just begun and would never end! The last thing he heard as he burst into a warm Moscow morning filled with the smell of blooming lilacs and the splash of street-washing machines, was “I’ll turn you in, asshole!”

  Iratov had no way of knowing that his visit to the foreign currency store was immediately reported to the KGB unit responsible
for overseeing the Tishinka district. It was the lieutenant who did it, the one who had it written all over his face that he was a spook. He had an extremely peculiar name: Photios Prytki.

  “Soviet?” the commander asked.

  “Absolutely, and he’s only just starting out. I can always tell when someone’s not a foreigner.”

  “That’s why we have you working currency, Lieutenant! You’ll be handling the duty-free store before you know it! Maybe he’s got relatives that go abroad? Diplomatic service? Did he spend a lot?”

  “No, chump change,” reported Photios Prytki, whose monthly salary was three times less than the cost of Iratov’s purchase in dollars. “Maybe he’s got relatives … But they would’ve had to convert their currency to checks, and he paid with a hundred-dollar bill.”

  “That’s true … Okay, you all keep an eye out. If he shows up again, you sing out.”

  “Yes sir!”

  “How about the salesgirls, are they whoring themselves out?”

  “If they are, it’s not with me …”

  “Vigilance, Prytki!”

  … An envelope addressed to Arseny Iratov arrived in the mail from the Moscow Architectural Institute informing the applicant that his sketches had been accepted and he would be permitted to take the entrance exams but would first have to come to the president’s office for an interview. His mother opened the dispatch and met her son with surprised delight.

  “I always believed in you!” Tears of joy ran down her plump cheeks. “I never lost faith! Why did you hide it? Andrei, can you hear me?” She turned to her husband. “Our son is well on his way to becoming an architect!”

  This news surprised Iratov, and he looked at the bent back of his father, who seemed not even to be listening to his wife’s triumphant announcement. For an instant, Arseny felt a rush of tenderness for this man who shared his blood. His eyes clouding with mounting tears, the son looked at the back of his father’s head: the dimming red hair, its wild plumes sticking out in every direction, the little bald spot on top … The flashes of tenderness passed, the tears dried up …

  The interview was conducted by a panel of the institute’s instructors, headed by the president himself. Iratov later learned that he was a legendary figure in the world of architecture, who, on Khrushchev’s orders, led the creation of the now ubiquitous five-story buildings that provided the people with their own apartments—minuscule as they were.

  President Staroglebsky’s head towered over those of the other admissions committee members. He was a tall, gray-haired gentleman resembling a monument erected in honor of some heroic polar explorer, his walrus mustache hanging down to his chin. Its ends had been colored yellow. Staroglebsky was an inveterate pipe smoker, and the dark amber of nicotine had eaten its way into his mustache and the tip of his thumb.

  “State your name for the record,” commanded the secretary of the admissions committee, who, concurrently, was Staroglebsky’s wife. She was much younger than her husband, but her hair was just as gray. She smoked, too, but preferred unfiltered cigarettes that sent clouds of radioactive smoke into the atmosphere. She loved her husband, took great pride in him, and tried to be as faithful a comrade to him as she was to the Communist Party …

  Iratov was later to become the president’s pet, and he took on the modest duty of presenting him with elegant pipes for his collection. He didn’t forget Staroglebsky’s wife either. He always managed to get her unfiltered American Lucky Strikes. But that was all to come later … Now he was listening to laudatory words from the president’s own lips about how such unusual ideas had come into such a young head.

  “You’ve got a spark in you, Iratov! A pumpkin, I tell you!”

  “Try and turn that spark into a fire and not a pumpkin, though!” said his wife, sending a puff of smoke at the ceiling.

  “As you are no doubt already aware, your projects are for the distant future,” the president explained. “What Soviet people need now is simple, comfortable modern housing.” He spoke grandly, as if he were at a Party meeting. “We must design new proletarian cultural centers. Not just some buildings where they can have dances and sewing circles, but real centers! Hundred-thousand-square-foot buildings equipped with theaters and exhibition halls, where talented Soviet artists will have access to the facilities they need and the guidance of their more seasoned peers …” Staroglebsky broke into a coughing fit and stopped to drink some water out of a table glass. “Tell me, young man, do you know who invented this item right here?” He extended a long, bony hand, holding the glass as if it were a torch.

  Iratov had no idea that glasses had to be invented.

  “This simple table glass that can be found in any Soviet kitchen?” the president continued. “It was the great Vera Mukhina! All of us will die, our children and grandchildren will pass into oblivion, but Mukhina’s glass will endure forever, for it is a work of art!”

  “Yes,” concurred Iratov, who had never heard of Mukhina. There wasn’t a single architect he had heard of. Once again, the son felt tenderness for his progenitor. That feeling was both painfully vexing and torturously pleasant.

  “Start studying for your exams!” the president concluded. “You have a spark in you!”

  Iratov’s two gal pals were waiting for him outside the door: Shevtsova, the Communist Youth League chieftainess, and Katya, the volleyball champion, both with the same mute question on their lovely pink-cheeked faces.

  “I made it,” Iratov answered.

  “Hoo-oo-oo-ray!” the college girls shouted in glee. “Party time!”

  It turned out there were some bedroom tricks they had yet to teach the recent high school graduate. They celebrated his successful interview by guzzling Soviet champagne and wolfing down custard éclairs. The chicks got so carried away that their lips suddenly met in a passionate kiss. The stunned Iratov, lying naked on bedsheets spread over the floor, laughingly asked if they’d gotten something mixed up. He was ready for action over here, wasn’t that more appealing? But there was no tearing the girls apart; they were breathing hard and had apparently forgotten all about Arseny.

  He had never even suspected that such things existed, and in his frenzy, he thought that this was a little too much, but in mere seconds, his brain had abandoned thinking; it was running on instinct alone. The sight of two girls making love had left Iratov with no sensory organs except his eyes and nose. The latter was detecting something unfamiliar, something animal, disquieting, something that made the young man’s body shiver feverishly. He clutched his shoulders with his hands. Charged to the limit with lust, Arseny kept drawing closer and closer to the two lovers, moving like a dominant chimpanzee, and when Shevtsova began to groan quietly, signaling that the peak of her pleasure was near at hand, that the air was full of molecules of love, he exploded like a compressed spring and leapt on the girls like a wildcat … Three human bodies reached the culmination of one event together, then lingered long, entwined in a tangle of shared consciousness, skin clinging to skin … A few minutes later, when consciousness had returned to his sprawled body and overcome his instincts, Iratov once again thought that everything was just beginning, that man was created to be happy and his newfound happiness was here to stay.

  6

  Sorry, I’ll start up again soon. Just needed some water. Dry throat, you know. I leaned toward the faucet and greedily sucked at the lukewarm stream until I’d had my fill. The ancient Senescentova was sleeping, slumped back in an armchair.

  “Now I can eat the chocolate-covered marshmallows, too,” I thought and then returned to the table. I tried one. Hard as a rock. Weird, I thought they would be fresh. I glanced out the window and noted that the white snowbanks were sinking, and streams of springtime water were running out of their blackened foundations. I cracked the window and heard the clamor of birdsong. “It’s spring alright,” I thought. “How did I let the time get away from me like that?” An unexpected hunch drove me to approach my auntie, move very close to her, bend down, but I k
new. I had already smelled it, if you will. She was dead. I can always smell death … Senescentova, Honored Actor of the USSR, my “adoptive aunt,” had passed away … “She really was clairvoyant,” I thought with a chuckle. “She sensed it coming a while ago.”

  I had to go home for a bit, but first, I lifted the lifeless body—it felt light and dry—from the armchair and laid it on a rug. To make sure that the body would really be lying down and not just sitting there on the floor like a dressed-up doll, I straightened her petrified joints, tied her chin in place with gauze, took another look around, and got out of there.

  Moscow is magnificent in the spring! The smell of the new, the aroma of rebirth, tickled my nostrils. Even the cars stuck in traffic no longer looked so hopelessly bleak. All the buildings had splashed spring rain on their faces and stood there looking renewed.

  I went to see Antipatros on Petrovsky Boulevard. The Greek shaved me in his customary fashion, trimmed my hair with the clippers, and removed my excess nose hair. On my way out, I inquired how he was doing, but he was as silent as usual and paid no attention to my inquiries.

  “How do you ask them for a ticket to Prague at the train station?” I asked as a parting shot. “Or do you never have to go there? No, everybody has to go to Prague! How does he buy tickets?” I asked the mixed-race girl who worked there, but she just blinked her blue eyes and hid herself away in the basement, leaving behind a faint whiff of sweet musk. They’re all mute here.

  Near the entrance to my building, I saw my neighbor Ivanov, who, as always, was so hungover he was trembling.

  “I don’t have any money,” I fired off instantly.

  “I thought that you’d kicked the … you know, from …” He mimed chugging straight from a bottle.

  “You thought I kicked what?”

  “Well, that you were dead! You haven’t left your room for three weeks! I already sniffed through the keyhole and arranged for Georgadze the locksmith to pry the door open!”