The Tool & the Butterflies Read online

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Iratov understood perfectly well that this was not the time to be purchasing precious stones, but it wasn’t the prospect of future profit that led him to acquire the sapphire. He was doing his partner a favor—no, more like returning a favor, paying off a debt incurred by relying on someone else’s wisdom. Well, and the sapphire was meant for his darling Vera, of course, a reward for her selfless love.

  Iratov was on the phone all day, contacting his architecture firm, then his tailor, Lev, promising to drop by and order a new suit. He called the trainer to inquire how Eros, his beloved thoroughbred, was doing. He planned to do many other things on the day of his miraculous restoration, too.

  Meanwhile, Vera, dressed all in white and wearing a white headscarf, was visiting the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in the Ostozhenka district, where she lit candles, donated money for the church’s needs, bought forty days of prayer, and then went to confession, shedding tears of joy … She was pure now, as pure as the sky above Jerusalem. Assistant Rector Ivan Ostyatsky, a deacon, nearly started crying too, astonished by the light shining from her pristine soul.

  The ritual words were pronounced by Ostyatsky, and he blessed her many times. Then Vera informed the deacon that she wanted a child, but it just wasn’t working out.

  “Well, the Matrona is at Donskoy Monastery! Go petition her!”

  “The man I live with … well, we were never married in a church.”

  “Then I will perform the ceremony.”

  “He doesn’t even know that I go to church.”

  “Just open up to him. If he loves you, will he not understand?” The deacon pressed his hands to his heart.

  Vera had no idea how Iratov would view the fact that she was a churchgoer and was deeply devoted to Jesus Christ, while he regarded the Son of God as one of mankind’s greatest humanitarians, but not His son.

  “But Vera, why would the Creator need a son?”

  She knew the answer perfectly well, but she wanted to avoid theological disputes at home, so she simply shrugged, as if wholeheartedly accepting Iratov’s words. Husband knows best, after all.

  “Is your spouse a man of faith?”

  “No,” Vera answered, “but he knows for certain that God exists.”

  “But that is faith!”

  “He says that knowledge of God is more important than faith in Him.”

  “What an interesting fellow!” Deacon Ivan said with a laugh. “I would like to break bread with him! Bring him with you sometime—I’m sure the rector won’t disapprove.”

  Vera evaded Ostyatsky’s offer, knowing that there would be no meal shared among the three of them, and changed the subject to the Matrona.

  “I will take your advice and visit the saint.”

  “Good thinking.”

  After standing in line for four hours, she realized that at that rate she would be late for dinner with Iratov, so she sadly settled on stepping out of the crowd and back into worldly life, but, at that very moment, a thin, ragged-haired, and hook-nosed old man, who looked vaguely Greek, took her by the arm. He was wearing an ankle-length black coat and a gloomy expression. He hissed that he had someone holding a place in line up ahead, right by the entrance. Before she could even open her mouth, she found herself near the flower-bedecked icons of the Matrona. In front of her stood a strikingly beautiful young woman with dark skin and blue eyes.

  “Where’d she come from?” Vera wondered.

  “Petition her, petition her already!” the old man urged.

  So she began petitioning the Matrona for a miracle—for a little boy with black eyes—whispered a little to herself, and pressed her lips against the protective glass.

  She was swept away to the exit. Carried along by the flow of people, she searched the crowd for the old man with the Greek features, but it was as if he had dissolved in the descending twilight.

  “An angel!” Vera thought. “Or a devil.”

  Thick, soft snow began to fall, and by evening, the whole city was covered with December manna. The new year was coming …

  •

  Mr. Arseny Iratov was sleeping. No alarming dreams tormented his serene consciousness, just nice little pictures of bygone days, flickering fleetingly. Vera’s face … it was a miracle how lovely she looked yesterday, clad all in white. Blue eyes under bright lashes … A skewer with chunks of meat strung on it, a glass of red wine … His mother’s smile, somewhere far away. There was only one picture that didn’t fit in with the rest of the luminous exhibit—it was too crude, too Soviet—Captain Alevtina Vorontsova, in full-dress vestments, baring her teeth in a baleful smile … This last apparition was sent by a full bladder, which forced Mr. Iratov to awaken, though not fully. He rose from his bed on autopilot, without opening his eyes, remaining in contact with his dream, went into the bathroom, suffused with the greenish glow of night-lights, stopped in front of the toilet, pulled down his pajama pants just a little, and reached below his stomach, but couldn’t find what he sought, the means by which the body usually rids itself of excess fluid. He had to wake up, regain his coordination. He opened his eyes, braced one hand against the wall and used the other to try and find the primary organ of the male body. It was nowhere to be found … Iratov’s brain struggled to process this tactile input like an old, lagging computer. He had to bend down and bring his vision into play. Then his consciousness emitted a death cry, as if someone had stabbed it with an electric carving knife.

  It was gone! Gone!

  Searchlights flashed on beneath his cranium, mobilizing his entire nervous system. Iratov, perspiring in horror, stumbling out of his pants, moved over to the huge, six-foot-high mirror. One foot got caught in his pant leg, and he fell, painfully hitting his knee on a floor tile. He rose to his feet, hoping that it was a hallucination brought on by his ailment returning, but when he flipped the switch and stood there, naked and bathed in light, he was finally compelled to accept it: the member was missing from his reflection, as was the scrotum typically adjoining it.

  He recalled an epidemic of jealous American wives cutting off their husbands’ manhood—what if …? His knee still bleeding, he looked at himself in the mirror but could find no trace of a wound in his groin area. Probing beneath his stomach with one fingertip, Mr. Iratov felt only a flat, smooth surface, and a little bump …

  Iratov remembered that he had a magnifying mirror on a telescoping metal arm—the kind often found in hotels. He stood on a chair and moved the mirror toward his groin like a magnifying glass. On the even surface of his skin, so smooth it was as if nothing had ever been growing there to begin with, was a small, neat hole. Mr. Iratov studied it for a long time, like that hole was a wormhole in space, or a black hole sucking up his entire being … His brain refused to believe the visual stream it was receiving, but Iratov famously viewed belief in anything at all as nonsense. He was convinced that knowledge alone defined existence. Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart!

  He got down from the chair, sat on the toilet, and relieved himself like a woman. That black hole was not a black hole, but a urethra. Dumbfounded, he asked himself how something like this could have happened. He stuck his hand into his groin again and again, verifying that what was happening was reality and not a hallucination … He sat on the toilet for so long that he wound up emptying his bladder once more, then pulled on his pajama pants, plodded back to bed, conked out, and slept until morning.

  It was a bitterly cold night; the snow wrapped itself around the streetlights and then froze, so many of them burnt out.

  Of course, the moment he woke up, he plunged his fingers between his thighs in the hope that it had all been some nightmare vision. He detected only emptiness. He rummaged around in his sheets. Nothing. He did not, however, find this situation as horrible as he had a few hours before. His brain was comforting itself, crooning to his consciousness. That wasn’t the most important thing for a man over fifty, and one could view this whole situation as ironic or
even downright funny.

  Iratov just couldn’t laugh at himself, though. He set off for the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth, shaved, and made himself comb his hair. The gray streak, in particular, vexed him, as if he were still a strong, handsome man, ready to win another hundred women’s hearts.

  “That’s just how it goes,” he declared. “But does it?”

  Iratov sat down at the computer without having breakfast, hoping to find an answer on the World Wide Web. Even after an hour, no answer was forthcoming, since he could not even formulate the search term. His brain urged his fingers to type, “Have your sexual organs disappeared?” What utter nonsense! “Did your tool leave you?” It was like something out of a fairy tale. Kolobok, the pancake who rolled away on his own, or the living gingerbread man … He finally managed a smile. “How to live without your member.”

  He answered the phone. It was Vera, inquiring as to whether he’d already had breakfast or if he wanted to join her.

  “You may come downstairs,” Mr. Iratov said.

  She prepared an excellent omelet with tomatoes and mushrooms, made toast with cheese, and brewed some coffee.

  Iratov ate, not without enjoyment, all the while thinking about what problems this situation might cause. He didn’t like going to the sauna—he found the whole thing repellant. What about tennis? Well, he could get changed in a VIP booth, and swimming would actually be easier … Or maybe he could stick something from a sex shop in his swimsuit? And there was another plus: he could ride a bike without worrying about his groin hitting the frame …

  Meanwhile, Vera was cheerfully relating something, smiling and chirping away, like a princess from a movie. She was describing some adorable little tykes she’d seen playing outside, romping in the white drifts and making a snowman. Then she was wondering how mothers ever got by without diapers, dietary supplements, and formula. Vera did not consciously realize why she was talking about the neighborhood kids, that it was all leading to the subject that was most important to her, the glorious laurel every single woman dreams will crown her life: motherhood. Iratov could only spare his eyes and face for her, simply letting them react to her tone of voice. He raised his eyebrows, chuckled, and squinted in response, seemingly listening intently, but his brain was considering his new circumstances from every angle, as they were quite extraordinary.

  “Well,” his brain demanded, “what about your darling Vera? That’s the big question. She’s singing away about some triviality, like a bird, unaware that her beloved raven has become a chick.” That question brought him around to the problem he’d been afraid to consider, the biggest problem: he couldn’t just love Vera platonically. She was a young woman who needed the delights of intimacy. On the other hand, Iratov was an experienced man, and he knew many ways to please a woman without using his primary organ. But it was one thing to have options besides the main event, and quite another to have all options and no event …

  “Do you know the origin of the expression ‘sand’s falling out of him?’” he asked, interrupting her.

  “No,” Vera answered.

  “In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, men, both young and old, wore hose. Well, they were tight, so naturally, a younger man would have a distinct outline showing through the fabric. As their masculine organs withered, the older men would attach little bags of sand to their family jewels. So when one of those bags broke, sand would fall out of an old man’s hose. That’s why we say ‘sand’s falling out of him’ when a man’s getting old.”

  “I never knew that,” Vera admitted. There was very little in their domestic life that made her peevish, but now she was experiencing a certain displeasure at this story that had nothing to do with what she was talking about, with where her monologue was heading …

  “He probably doesn’t want another child,” she thought and bit her lip painfully, becoming truly upset, to the point that it almost made her unattractive. Claiming to be indisposed, she asked to be excused.

  “Certainly, certainly,” Mr. Iratov answered graciously. “If you need any help—”

  “No, no, it’s just female things.”

  At two p.m., he went to visit a doctor he knew, a specialist in urology and gynecology who worked at a private andrology clinic. Iratov had barely seen him since their college days, but he happened upon the doctor’s ad in a magazine. A gray-haired man with the face of a butcher promised to solve any men’s health problem.

  The doctor was a strange fellow. He started making his money in the eighties, just like Iratov. While he was a medical student, the future Doctor Sytin boasted that he was related to the very same Sytin who was the publisher of all publishers. He made a name for himself selling platinum ingots of the highest grade, stolen from a state enterprise. It was big business. It was also a firing-squad offense, but he was never brought in by the Soviet police, not even when they checked his papers. He always had a complete set in his pocket: ID, Communist Youth League card, union membership papers. They called Sytin “the Wizard” because he handled millions of ill-gotten rubles, was admitted to some big-time urology association, but never encountered the law enforcement organs of the USSR, not even on a drunk and disorderly charge. That’s because he didn’t drink. Iratov was one of Sytin’s regular customers. He bought precious metals, and lots of them, while the Wizard treated him for gonorrhea, which almost everyone in the country had.

  “Sytin’s probably no poorer than I am,” Iratov thought as he waited. “But he’s still slaving away. Maybe he lost everything in the financial crisis? Or is he using his job to protect his fortune? Passing himself off as a regular doctor so nobody tries to raid his assets?”

  A few minutes later, they greeted each other with a hug—they were old college buddies, after all.

  “Hey there, Wizard!” Iratov said with a genuine smile.

  “How’s it going, Yakut!” the speculator with the prominent chin and gray hair answered in his bass voice, taking Mr. Iratov by the shoulders and examining him at arm’s length. “Man, you sure are a handsome guy, still looking good after all these years! How about some coffee?”

  “It must be my genes … Some coffee would be great.”

  “Marina! Two coffees! Cream for you?”

  “I take it black.”

  “One with cream!” the famous publisher’s relative shouted.

  They sat down on opposite ends of a sofa and continued examining each other, grasping for memories of their youth.

  “Where’d you disappear to, back then?”

  “Before Gorbachev, you mean?”

  “Yeah, around then,” Sytin answered, trying to remember. “I almost went down because of that metal for you. You never picked up the order! Boy, I lost a good chunk of change! Well, water under the bridge …”

  “I did a little time.”

  “No kidding? I had no idea!” The doctor lit a cigarette and thought for a few minutes. “I was pretty pissed at you back then, Yakut. I thought I’d never forgive you. But if that’s how it went down … I should be thanking you for not turning me in … How long were you in the can?”

  “They promised to shoot me …” Iratov didn’t enjoy remembering all that. He went pale, momentarily finding himself back then. “It all blew over. They didn’t even put me in a high-security camp!”

  “Yeah …” Sytin drawled, sending a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “Those were some crazy times …”

  “How come they let you off the hook? How come you never got caught?”

  “Actually, I got caught right away,” the urologist answered with a chuckle. “But then they made me an offer—” Iratov tensed up at this. “No, no, they didn’t make me their mole. This one guy took me on—interesting character—it turned out he worked for Andropov. Well, he worked for himself more than anything. Who the hell knows, though? Anyway, he proposed that I keep doing the same thing but give him a 90 percent cut. He covered for me, and I earned him ten mil. But after that—sometime in the late eighties—he started divvying up
the cash among the most committed Communist Youth League guys … three of them are in the Russian Forbes top ten now. I probably wasn’t the only guy like that he had … No, I couldn’t have been. I put everything I had into government bonds, then I got greedy in ’98 and lost everything, so I went back to my profession, and five years later I’d built my own clinic, all with legit money.”

  “There’s no keeping you down,” Iratov said. “You really are a wizard, if you managed to get your business off the ground in times like these. Rising after a fall is no mean feat!”

  “Well, how about you, Yakut? Did you manage to hang on to anything?” Sytin asked.

  “Oh, you know, a crumb or two … So are you really related to Sytin, or were you just pulling our legs to look like a big shot?”

  “Yeah, I’m related to him …” said the urologist/gynecologist/andrologist. “Well, distantly …”

  The old friends found that they had nothing else to talk about. They finished their coffee.

  “Yeah …” one of them drawled significantly.

  “Yeah …” the other seconded.

  “Well, let’s get down to business!” said the urologist, returning to his desk. “You didn’t just come here to reminisce, after all. There’s something troubling you, I can see it in your eyes. I’m at your service—this is no place to be shy!”

  Iratov didn’t know where to begin; he merely muttered sheepishly. The clinic owner waited calmly for his patient to work up the nerve, looking him in the eye intently, as if hypnotizing him.

  “Well, what is there to say? I’d better just show you,” said Mr. Iratov, finally ready. He got off the sofa, undid his belt, and dropped his pants and underwear to his knees.

  The doctor silently examined Iratov’s groin, smooth as a piece of cardboard. He looked and thought in silence, while his patient pulled his shirt up to his navel so he could get a good look.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Idrisov is on line two,” Marina proclaimed.

  “Not now!” Sytin barked at the locked door. “Getting ready for gender reassignment?” he asked Iratov quietly.