The Tool & the Butterflies Read online

  “I love you, too.” Iratov took his wife’s hand and began to caress it. “It’s such a beautiful stone!”

  “Beauty for my beauty,” he said. She drew his hand to her face, her blue eyes looking into the impenetrable black gloom of his.

  Then they went home, and Iratov related the story of what had happened, how he had lost his private parts under the strangest of circumstances. At first, Vera took it for a joke—and not a good one, either. She didn’t like below-the-belt humor. Iratov knew that, so he hardly ever used it. What had gotten into him? Too much grappa? But Mr. Iratov’s entire demeanor demonstrated that he was dead serious, that it was the bitter truth, but there was still hope of making him his old self again through surgery.

  “Enough already!” Vera said with unexpected abruptness. “I don’t like this! It’s disgusting!”

  Iratov sighed heavily, went into the bathroom, and changed into his bathrobe. He came back into the living room, froze like a statue for a moment, then opened the flaps of his robe with one motion and stood there, tall and simultaneously thick, with his mighty legs, voluminous ribcage, and glowing skin.

  Vera looked at the area below her husband’s stomach for so long; it was as if she had not processed this picture at all. Then she spoke matter-of-factly.

  “Iratov, you’ve got no fuckin’ dick!”

  “I don’t like it when women use that kind of language,” Mr. Iratov answered, cringing.

  “Well, I don’t like it that you don’t have one! It’s gone!” she said with a nervous laugh.

  “Do you think I like it? I told you: everything can be fixed surgically.”

  “But it won’t be your f—” she stopped herself. “It won’t be yours! How could this happen?”

  “I’d like an answer to that question myself,” Iratov replied with a shrug, closing his robe and pulling the belt tight. “But I don’t have one! And I don’t have an answer either!”

  “This is horrible!”

  “What if I went to war and got wounded like this?”

  “But you didn’t go to war!” She was truly shocked and full of uncharacteristic acrimony. “You just lost it, lost it in your own bed!” Iratov was angry now, too, so he answered harshly.

  “If you don’t like it, and you can’t accept me this way, then get out!”

  “You’re throwing me out at a time like this?” asked Vera, suddenly looking distraught.

  “I was counting on you to support me, not lash out at me! I can’t take this! So get out! Now!”

  He went into his study and made a great show of slamming the door behind him.

  As she went upstairs, Vera rubbed her face as if trying to scrub away some delusion or hallucination. Back in her apartment, she downed two glasses of red wine and collapsed into an armchair, descending into a nervous breakdown that left her shaking and trembling for almost an hour.

  “It was aliens!” she thought convulsively. “Instant castration, without leaving a scar or changing the endocrine profile—there’s no such technology on earth! Or was it some kind of bacteria?” Ages ago, in another life, when Vera was twenty, she had been employed as a paramedic in her native city of Samara. She saw a lot in her two years on the job. She saw the bloody mush in the crotch of a man who got hit in the stomach with a powerful firework. She was once in the ambulance with a transgender person suffering from appendicitis. There was at least something resembling female organs down there … “Yes, it must have been aliens,” she reassured herself.

  Vera began to feel ashamed. If it was aliens, then why had she been so cruel? Without him, she couldn’t even live, just exist, and pathetically at that! Of course, Iratov’s loss of his penis would not radically change their relationship. Vera also thought about how she would probably never have children with Iratov. So, if she stayed with him forever, she would never have children at all. She drank another glass of wine, which made her intoxicated enough to be indifferent.

  It was him who went to her, realizing that if a urologist was astonished by what he had seen, his darling Vera must have suffered a near-fatal shock. Iratov found his wife sleeping in an armchair, carefully picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. He undressed her and covered her with a blanket.

  “Wait!” she cried as he was leaving. He stopped. “Come here.”

  Mr. Iratov shed his robe and lay down beside his wife. A moment later, he felt her probing fingers beneath his stomach. Then those restless fingers relaxed, and her hand began to pet his pubic mound. Iratov calmed down. He felt warm, good, like a fixed cat getting scratched.

  “I love you,” Vera repeated drunkenly.

  “Thank you.”

  Iratov turned around and started kissing his wife’s naked body. He was particularly fond of the one breast that was slightly smaller than the other. His full lips touched her stomach, his tongue almost tickling her navel. Then Vera drew a sultry breath and her thighs trembled …

  Relaxing after their one-sided intimacy, Iratov thought back to the distant past, when a legless cripple who got around on a board with ball bearings on the bottom instead of wheels was halted by him and his college buddies with the question, “Hey buddy, how are things in the bedroom with you like that?”

  “Everything’s dope!” the cripple answered. “I’m married, with two kids!”

  “No kidding?” asked Shevtsova in surprise. She was an upperclassman and the head of the Communist Youth League at the Moscow Architectural Institute. “And everything still works?”

  “Well, let me tell ya, honey,” the guy explained. “Not everything has to work. Nature has blessed me with nimble fingers, a long nose, and a long tongue. So long as I have one finger left, I’m not impotent!”

  They applauded the legless man and gave him two bottles of Zhiguli. He accepted them, yet said that he didn’t drink.

  “Then give ’em back!” the students demanded.

  “I’ll bring ’em back to my wife. She likes Zhiguli.”

  “There you have it,” Iratov thought. “I’m not impotent, and I’m not a cripple!”

  Vera went to sleep, and he went back downstairs, drank some cognac, and lay down, hoping that what he had lost would, sooner or later, be returned to him.

  2

  Suffering would not leave my soul. I would say that I only endured my protracted anguish because I realized I could relate Iratov’s story to the world. And boy can I! I was troubled by moral and ethical questions, though. Do I have the right? Can I complete the act? Is it not despicable to reveal someone else’s intimate secrets? And who am I in comparison with such a lordly personage as Iratov, an aristocrat of blood and spirit?! A hissing serpent! A mute worm! Ah, it takes my breath away, it makes me flush with heat! But when I think about doing it! The sudden lightness that comes with bearing the heavy load of another soul and finally consigning it to memory. The temptation to bring a secret out into the open! A secret made public is like a maiden who has lost her innocence; there is no allure there, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing left unsaid … Yesterday, sometime after six p.m., when the cubicle mice of Moscow were waiting in traffic on their way home, I thought I spotted that personage, Iratov, in a store on Znamenka Street—one of those places that sells prepared food. He was standing by the counter—no, more like towering over the marble, an aristocrat with a long streak of gray hair down to his Adam’s apple, detached from his hairdo. That streak was draped demonically over his right eye, and, with the left, Iratov studied the freshly prepared, steaming hot chicken Kiev. Just imagine, Iratov in a place like that! I was mistaken, much to my chagrin. It wasn’t him, no, it couldn’t have been! It was a Gypsy I know. An actor, I think … Maybe. Well, they look alike. I went into the prepared food section and tried to buy that same chicken, with the warm butter oozing out of it. I was seven rubles short, but I got two Poltava cutlets instead—more food by weight, meatier, more filling. Plus, I got a small side of fried potatoes. That’s a bargain, no two ways about it. Let Iratov enjoy his chicken Kiev. God knows he
can afford it … Then notes of conscience sounded in my heart again. First of all, I have always considered envy a sin, and this was envy for mythical chicken … that’s beneath me. I need to develop finer feelings. Including the feeling of envy, sure! But it should be envy elevated to an absolute. Not envy for material possessions, but for their endlessly transparent influence on everyone and everything. Envying the man who lives next to you isn’t just about being tortured by fantasies of taking his beautiful wife away from him—no, you dream of pouncing on her like a bogatyr! Iratov has his little Vera. Well, she isn’t a perfect ten by my standards, but there’s something about her that’s higher than beauty: a certain tranquility under her pale skin, a fine mind thrumming with the vein in her temple, pure, sublime blue eyes—and the way she looks at Iratov! I can see how well this girl’s mother raised her: my man is divine, I bow my head in recognition of his Biblically appointed purpose, but I, too, am enlightened. I am just a little lower than him, so I can shine forth my light for him while he walks the dark road to his goal—and he will take me with him.

  The Poltava cutlets turned out to be more air than meat. Those jerks! And it was the most expensive joint like that in Moscow, too. And that Gypsy, the actor, I figure he’ll take to his bed for a few days from the indigestion, and some young guy from the same tribe, let’s call him Baxtalo, will take his place, and at his birthday party, the scumbag’s gonna holler, “He’s here, Roman’s here!” Roman is truly the most generous of his clients. He’s been dragging his whole Gypsy band around for twenty years. On an ordinary day in a regular luncheonette, he’ll shower his dark-haired posse with hundred-dollar bills. At birthday parties, he’ll hand out whole stacks of them, and then on anniversaries, he’ll offer precious stones for God’s sake. His uncle, Vladlen Gubaidullin, owns some coal mines, and where there is coal, there are diamond pipes. It’s rather strange. We’re talking about a family of Tatars, but they hold Gypsies in high regard—like Russian industrialists before the Bolshevik Revolution. But hey—Russians, Tatars, what’s the difference? Well, maybe that party made it so Baxtalo could finally buy that Toyota Camry he’d always dreamed of. A brand-new car, at twenty-two! And now that redhead Khmali, this one Gypsy baron’s brother’s cousin—Baro, the guy’s name is—maybe she favored him with the chance to hold her soft, dusky hand in his. The hand he ran over the sound-board of his guitar so tenderly, strumming the strings—he’ll run that same hand over his beloved’s cheek. Just you wait … when spring rolls around, Baxtalo and Khmali will get married, and by then, Roman’s uncle Vladlen Gubaidullin’s birthday will come around too, and the aging Gypsy actor will stuff his face with something that’ll make him sick, get knocked out of commission by that prepared food joint or some other eatery. And the youngsters will be buying themselves a country home …

  I was sick all night. I threw up my potatoes and Poltava cutlets … it was the Battle of Poltava all over again, but I came off even worse than the Swedes did. I took five doses of Imodium, which tightened me up so much it felt like I was carrying bricks in my stomach for a week.

  On the eighth day, liberation was at hand, and I got on a B-Line trolleybus and headed for the Bolshoi Theatre. I had a dress circle ticket for the premiere of an avant-garde production of Eugene Onegin. It wasn’t hard to get—I saw the gilded corner of a fancy envelope sticking out of my neighbor’s mailbox. He’s a bureaucratic swine, without the breeding to go to the theater. I always find expired tickets by the trash can.

  The little old ushers didn’t want to let me in, since I wasn’t exactly outfitted for visiting a temple of the arts. My clothes were neat, though—sleek, even. That’s my style. I gave the old ladies a wolfish scowl, and they relented.

  “It’s the fashion!” I proclaimed. “And I have a tie with me.”

  “Let him in, why not?” the senior usher said in a low contralto. Was she a singer or something? “It’s not like he’s going to sit in the stalls,” she declared imperiously.

  “Why not?” the others agreed.

  I went up to the snack bar and positioned myself in line for a salmon canapé, but the lingering heaviness in my underbelly advised against eating fish. I’d only just rid myself of bodily disarray—no more of that. So I bought some chocolate and a cup of coffee. I settled in at a little table, crowding two young ladies in ball gowns. My side even brushed one girl’s brocade—the blonde (the real blonde—the second was actually a brunette)—but then I remembered I had forgotten to rent opera glasses, so I quickly finished my Mishka, gulped down my coffee, and went back to the ushers. They greeted me like an old friend, equipped me with the requisite eyepiece, and presented me with a program. I rushed back to the snack bar to catch another whiff of crinoline mixed with elegant perfumes and maybe give the blonde a cheeky wink. I didn’t run into the girls, though, which made me a little upset. I heard the first call and went to assume my lawful place, lined with new velvet and marked with the number 19 on a mother-of-pearl plaque.

  The grand chandeliers burned bright as day and the orchestra tuned up; the woodwinds and especially the oboes were really going for it. The big strings seemed quite lazy to me. Contemplating the burgundy curtains, the light instrumental cacophony, and the susurrus of humanity made me feel so good that I grinned from ear to ear, covering my missing right incisor with my program.

  Ah, the theater! What a magical deception! But, as Pushkin once wrote, I am delighted to be deceived!

  The second call boomed forth, and, eye pressed against my opera glasses, I began examining the audience in the stalls. I spotted my young acquaintances from the snack bar and waved to the blonde. She was all in crinoline, with a fan and a corset, which made turning around difficult. Well, forget her! I scanned the theater, from stalls to dress circle. So many celebrities here! Designers, politicians, pop stars, gays—and that must be that famous writer over there, signaling with the reflected light from his bald spot. A grand event, to be sure … At that moment, I turned my opera glasses toward the boxes, where the richest and most important people always sit. I saw the industrial oligarch Arnold Ivanovich Tyunin hiding behind his wife. Even the president of our Motherland holds him in high esteem. He entrusts him with projects of national importance. I even spotted Mike Tyson in the opposite box, reclining in his seat and flashing a predatory smile. “Oh, yes,” I thought. “He has master classes planned in Moscow. I never imagined that tattooed baboon would know anything about the opera …” The government box was dark—nobody there. Top officials don’t go to avant-garde plays, especially premieres … I shifted my opera glasses and suddenly encountered Iratov’s face—a close shot—and I instantly forgot all about the celebrities. Even Eugene Onegin became secondary.

  How could it be him?! How dare he appear before this kind of crowd after what happened to him?! Beside Iratov’s face, the face of Vera, my dearie, emerged as if from the very fabric of reality—stunningly beautiful, framed by fair locks. So dutiful, and—once again—beautiful! What is she doing next to Iratov? What happened to him should have driven such an elegant creature away! I was so agitated that I even rose from my seat a little, examining the couple, twisting the focus knob on my opera glasses to make the image sharper. Someone behind me grabbed my shirt and hissed at my back that everyone wanted to look around. And my back was all they could see! I turned around—a portly old man with a cow of a wife, both with their own opera glasses offering sixteen-times magnification. I made such a scary face that the portly little man muttered an “excuse me” while his better half held out her opera glasses to me.

  “Would you like to take a look?”

  “Yes,” I answered formidably, but I tempered justice with mercy and gave her a crooked smile designed to reveal my missing right incisor. I grabbed the opera glasses and directed them at Iratov’s box.

  “What a miraculous instrument,” I thought as I saw my dearie Vera’s face close up. Her magnificently shaped ears were drawn slightly downward by diamond earrings, and on her neck—no, a little lower—in t
he nook between her breasts—I could see a big, heavy diamond, a real one, pure as water, ringed with a smattering of emerald undergrowth. The facets shone brightly enough to cut my eyes. She wafted some air toward her face with a fan of white ostrich feathers. One of them stuck to her lovely little nose, fluttered in her warm breath, and contemplating this vision filled me with exquisite tenderness.

  What the hell is she doing with Iratov? What good is he to her, after what happened? She cannot be expected to carry this cross forever! Poor Verushka! Do you remember that model in the sixties, an unbelievably beautiful gem of a woman who drove grown men out of their minds, whose assets haunted the dreams of pubescent youths?! Her name was Vera, too, but everyone called her by a pet name—Veruschka. Everyone was in love with her. Iratov’s Verushka is that model reincarnated! But Iratov, that earthbound realist, just calls her Vera, or something disgustingly trite like “my darling.” There’s no romantic spirit in him, no capacity to understand that beside him is a dream that has yet to come true, the treasure of treasures, the sun of suns!

  Iratov turned away from Verushka and told an offhand joke to some acquaintance, who burst into affected laughter, its false tones reaching all the way to my modest dress circle seat. The tails of a black tuxedo opened with a flash of burgundy lining. Iratov’s raiment was supplemented with jewelry, after the old fashion: a chain bracelet coiling around his broad wrist, a ring protruding from his index finger, laden with precious stones and elegant designs. I once had the opportunity to observe that ring from close up, very close up indeed, on the B-Line trolleybus. Iratov was standing up, holding on to a handrail, and I was sitting, almost directly beneath his hand—it was big, but the skin was soft—and I studied every detail. Iratov’s ring has many layers. It is not some petty merchant’s signet ring with a large central stone, but the most elegant ornament I have beheld in all my days. There was a cavity in the surface of the ring, containing a little fish in a vignette of white gold, seemingly swimming, along with inserts made of common stone, pieces of marble, and a thin little line of granite. There was also a luminous ruby, of course, like blood bubbling under glass, positioned to the side, adding a dazzling asymmetry to the piece. I even tried to snap a stealthy picture of that miracle of the jeweler’s art with my phone, but Iratov instinctively removed his hand, clasping an ebonite-handled cane, then clutched the rail with the other. But why was Iratov traveling by trolleybus that day when he had his own black limousine at his heels? Was he taking public transportation so he could check out the girls? Was he trying to find out if somebody was tailing his limo? No, he wasn’t looking around; he just hopped off near Neopalimovsky Lane without really observing his surroundings and went into a luxury tobacco store. I had to stay on to remain unnoticed, even though it meant missing my stop …